"Who is this?" Lady Barbery Dustin demanded. "And where is the boy? Did your bastard refuse to surrender him?" She leaned forwards to inspect him closer. "And this old man-" Barbery recoiled. "Oh, gods be good! What in all the hells is that smell? Has the old wretch soiled himself?"
"He has been with Ramsey," was Lord Roose's clipped reply. "Lady Barbery, allow me to present you the rightful lord of the Iron Isles, Theon Greyjoy."
Reek swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, dizzy, his throat seemingly tightening of its own volition, his heart beginning to race. No no no no. Don't say that name. He'll hear it. Ramsay'll hear it, and he'll know, and he'll hurt me for it.
Lady Barbery gave him a second look over, expression plainly stunned before her features soured, lips pursed in disgust. "He..." she said after a long moment, "is not what I expected. What did your bastard do to him?"
"Removed some skin, some bones - or so I surmised. Small pieces. Fingers and toes. Nothing too essential."
She looked at him like he was a hunk of rotted meat. "Is he mad? Why is he like that?"
Roose could only shrug. "So what if he is? What does it change?"
Without his control, Reek began to shake his head, tears brimming in his eyes. "I'm not him, I'm not the Turncloak. Please, m'lord, m'lady, there's been some mistake. I'm not him. I'm not the Turncloak. He died here, at Winterfell. My name is Reek. Reek, m'lord, m'lady."
Reek watched as disgust fused with pity on Lady Barbery's face. "Aye," she agreed with a sigh. "You reek." Her head turned to Lord Roose. "And what have use have you found for... Reek, my lord?"
Cold eyes flicked over Reek, gleaming with possibility. "I haven't yet decided, though I have some ideas."
"Well, whatever your ideas are, do they require the lad to smell like he's just loosed his bowels in his breeches?"
"No, most don't."
"Then for the sake of all the gods can you have him washed? I mislike having to hold my nose."
And with a wave of Lord Roose's pale hand, Reek was shunned. Cold-handed serving girls led him away from the hall, through the bowels of a ruined Winterfell. Not for the first time, Reek was grateful for the springs beneath the keep. For beyond the castle itself, winter had long since come and entrenched itself. It seemed every outdoor path was lousy with black ice - liable to crack one's head if you weren't careful. Drifts of dirty snow had piled high on every wall, tall enough at times to hide entire doors and passages, meeting with icicles the length of longswords hanging precariously from battlements and ledges, scattering with every cutting gust of wind into every nook and cranny. It tasted funny on the tongue - a mix of bitter soot and ash thrown up from the sacking of the keep as well as the snows.
Blackened beams still littered place. Every now and then one might stumble onto a pack of bones, scraps of skin or hair or a smear of dried blood, or if one was lucky a rotting corpse - though Ramsey's hounds had long since seen to most of them. Mercifully the mists were so thick that one struggled to see very far beyond arm's length when outdoors - or else Reek feared the true extent of the damage might be known.
In a sense, it was a small mercy that the lords of the North had been so slow to answer Lord Roose's summons. It gave him time to do his best to make repairs, to beat back the sense of death and despair that now infested a place that a younger Reek had only known to be full of life. To rebuild the kitchens and barracks, to clean away the shattered glass of Winterfell's once-famous gardens, to erect new gates, and re-roof the collapsed hall. And though much work had already been done using what remained of Winterfell's existing men, much still remained. Tents swarmed the yard, half covered in grey snow - most the castle still unsuitable for living. Yet memories of that life swarmed around Reek as he walked through the passages and halls. A shadow in the flickering torchlight, a distant laugh, the subtle growl of a wolf.
"Turncloak," one of the men hissed at him as he was led away to his bath. Reek ignored it. He was the traitor who'd slain his own foster brothers, delivered his men from Moat Cailin only to see them flayed. Roose Bolton might make use of him, Ramsey might indulge in his twisted pleasures with him, but any true northman was like as to loathe what he'd become, to desire nothing more than to hack Reek's head off.
And how loathsome I must look! Reek thought. The missing toes on his left foot had forced him into a sort of limping crab-walk, back forever hunched. His visage was no better to look upon - flesh hollowed out from his cheeks, hair white and coarse and thin and patchy, teeth mostly smashed into uneven lumps of enamel that made it painful to eat any real foods.
He could tell he was a horror by the way the women treated him as he climbed in the bath. Washerwoman was the polite way of saying camp follower, which was the polite way of saying whore. Of the ones who bathed Reek, some seemed veteran, hardened enough to suffer twenty brutal rapes in quick succession and still be able to laugh and jape with their rapists right after, demanding coin for their cunts. Others seemed softer, younger, like prissy little maidens. None were, of course. It was all an act, a way to earn coin and a little kindness along the way.
But for him, none of the softness was on display. They scrubbed his flayed skin roughly, scraping off the dirt and grime in a quick, quiet way that suggested they wanted nothing more than to be away, to be done with him. Once he was clean he was clad in new breeches and boots and a tunic and even a mantle of sorts - nothing quite yet lordly, but far better than the rags he'd become used to.
And off he went, limping through the halls of Winterfell. The stone was grey - grey everywhere he looked. The ground was white with snow. All around, all Reek could see were Stark colours, and his dazed rambling carried him through the passages and out into the open. Even through his new boots he could feel the coldness of the earth underfoot, the harshness of a bladed breeze on his face. But it was warmer in the godswood, strange to say. Here there were no snows, and the turf beneath his feet was soft and warm, almost inviting. The frost and ice of the surrounding lands were left behind as one entered this most precious sanctum of the old gods, cloaked in gentle steam wafting off the surface of the pools.
Reek was no stranger to this wood. He'd played here as a boy, skipping stones and giving chase to the boys he would one day betray. He'd stalked squirrels between these vast trunks, shared his first kisses here, come here for refuge after suffering bruises at the hands of Jory and Robb.
Reek gazed up at the bleeding eyes of the heart tree and, unbidden, began to weep.
The tears came quietly at first, cloudy droplets rolling down his cheeks, but before long his eyes were red and desperate, gut-wrenching sobs were spilling out. Here he stood; broken, bloodied, betrayed and betrayer both. Here he stood, in the last untarnished place of his youth, the last place the cold lump of meat he called his heart could still find warmth. And though Reek had prayed to the Drowned God his whole life, he fell to his knees before the heart tree, before the old gods.
He'd never known the godswood like this, grey and ghostly all the same; yet draped in mists thick enough to be blankets, dancing with lights, echoing with voices from a half-forgotten past. Above his head were beady, black, judging eyes. Maester Luwin's ravens, Reek knew. Luwin might be dead, but this was still their home.
It felt like some strange purgatory; neither the heavens nor the nether but merely some timeless place beyond the worlds themselves. A place for the damned and devoted alike to find some strange absolution. The weirwood's red eyes stared down at him, its great mouth open as though to laugh or shout. But no sound came, and as Reek sobbed he felt the face in the heart tree gaze at him, felt the heavy carved features soften with pity - even though nothing moved.
...
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