Chapter 144: The Long Road and the Short One
The yard outside the Mud Gate was chaos in the way only a Northern departure could be—horses, carts, crates, Skagosi shouting at Winterguard sergeants who shouted back, and somewhere in the middle of it, six people trying to say goodbye properly.
Artos took them one at a time. It seemed the only way to do it.
First came Ned, his brother, his pride.
They clasped forearms first, the way they always had, and then Ned pulled him into an embrace that lasted longer than either of them would admit to afterward.
"Write to me, Arty" Ned said against his shoulder. " And Not just reports and council business. Letters, don't be foolish and tried to carry all that burden alone alright."
"I'll write alright, Don't worry about me I am grown man and not a damn Boy."
Ned laughed, and it came out unsteady. He pulled back and gripped his brother's shoulders, holding him at arm's length as though committing the sight to memory.
"You come home when you can," he said. "Any excuse. A wedding, a name day, a bloody harvest festival. I don't care. You come home."
"Aye."
"Say it properly."
Artos held his gaze. "I'll come home, Ned."
Ned nodded once, jaw working, and did not trust himself to say anything else.
Next turn for Robb and Loras.
The two of them came together, as they always did, which spared Artos the trouble of repeating himself.
"You're both grown men now," he said. "Whether you feel it or not."
Robb straightened slightly.
"Robb—your father carries the whole of the North on his back and has done since forever now. He'll never once ask you to take any of it from him." Artos's voice was even. "So don't wait to be asked. Get into the administration. Grain stores, tax rolls, petitions, disputes between bannermen. The dull, endless, unglamorous work that keeps hundreds of thousands people from starving in a bad winter."
"Father's already got me sitting in on—"
"Sitting in isn't doing." Artos raised a brow. "Take work off his desk. Whole tasks, start to finish, and hand them back done. He'll fight you on it for about a month, and then one day he'll simply stop, and you'll realize you've been running half of it without either of you noticing." He paused. "That's what it means to be ready. Not a ceremony. A slow theft of responsibility."
Robb absorbed that with the particular expression of a man who'd just been handed something heavier than he expected.
"And Sansa will help you," Artos added. "More than you think. Think about it."
"I will."
Artos turned to Loras.
"You'll assist him where you can. But that's not what I want to say to you."
Loras's brows rose. "My lord?"
"You've spent your life being useful to other people's houses. Ward here, sworn sword there, tourney champion for whoever's watching." Artos studied him. "Knight of the Wolf. It's a fine alias. But it's still .."
Loras said nothing.
"Find something that's yours, lad. A cause, a command, a purpose—I don't much care what it is, but find it before you feel lost." Artos's mouth curved slightly. "You're too talented to spend your life without a purpose."
Loras was quiet for a long moment. Then he bowed—properly, deeply, the way he almost never did.
"I'll think on that. Truly."
"Good. And Loras." Artos lowered his voice fractionally. "Whatever you decide about Sansa—do it honestly, and do it through Ned. Not around him."
Loras went slightly pale, then nodded once.
Bjorn.
His son came last of the men, and there was less to say than either of them expected.
"Waymar will be there to guide you." Artos allowed himself a small smile. "Listen to him about anything you can't put your head."
Then he reached out and gripped the back of Bjorn's neck, pulling their foreheads briefly together—the old Skagosi gesture, blunt and wordless.
"Build something, son," he said quietly. "Not for me. That's rather the entire point."
"I know."
"Then go."
Sansa.
She had been crying and had stopped, and she stood very straight when he came to her, chin lifted the way a lady's ought to be.
Artos looked at her for a moment.
"Do you know," he said, "when your father brought you south, you asked me whether the Red Keep had gardens as fine as the songs said."
Sansa flushed.
"His expression softened. "And you're not the same girl who asked it. That's what I wanted to tell you before you go."
She blinked.
"You've seen this city for what it is. You've watched men lie beautifully and mean nothing by it, and you've learned to hear the difference." He held her gaze. "That's not a small thing, Sansa. Most people never learn it. Most people who do learn it get cruel about it, and you haven't. You've simply gotten clear-eyed."
Her mouth trembled once, and held.
"I spoke to your father. You'll be working at Robb's side in Winterfell—petitions, ledgers, holding court, all of it." He raised a brow. "Not as an ornament. As his sense."
"He said yes?"
"Oh He said yes." Artos's smile widened slightly. "You'll be better at it than he is within a year, and you'll have the good grace never to say so out loud. That's most of statecraft, that last part."
Sansa laughed, wet and startled, and then hugged him fiercely and entirely improperly in front of half the court.
Artos let her.
Arya.
She stood with her arms crossed and her chin out, already braced for a lecture.
Arya scowled not very pleased at leaving King's Landing. It's like leaving her freedom behind.
"First: don't make war on your mother." He held up a hand before she could object. " Vakho will keep teaching you. That's already settled and she'll find it out soon enough. But there's a difference between a girl who trains and a girl who makes her mother's life a misery about it. Be the first one. It's how you keep the second thing."
Arya's scowl faltered, calculating.
"Second: get along with people. Especially your sister." Artos's voice went flatter. "She's the only one you'll ever have, Arya. You get exactly one. You may spend the next forty years discovering that she's the only person alive who remembers the same childhood you do, and you'll want her then."
"She's—"
"She's changed. So have you. Look properly."
Arya went quiet.
"Third: look after the little ones. Bran climbs things he shouldn't and and young Arty—" Artos paused, and something warm and slightly pained crossed his face at the name. "Well. He'll be trouble. I'm told he's named for someone dreadful."
Arya snorted.
"They'll follow you, not Robb. You know that, don't you? Robb is too busy to take care of them." He crouched slightly to meet her eyes. "So be worth following."
She threw her arms around his neck without warning and squeezed hard enough to hurt.
"You're a bloody menace you know, but I love you the most" he told her.
Then the horns sounded, and the column began to move, and the yard emptied slowly the way a wound closes—awkwardly, and not all the way.
Artos stood and watched until the last cart had passed through the gate, and then a good while after that, until there was nothing to look at but the road.
Then he turned around and went back to work.
The climb up the Tower of the Hand felt longer than usual.
There was no sound waiting for him at the top. No Arya arguing with Vakho in the outer chamber, no Sansa reading by the window, no Bjorn's boots on the stairs. Just parchment, and candle wax, and the endless business of a realm that had not paused for a single moment of any of it.
So, he thought. Back to being the Hand, then.
He pushed open his solar door and stopped.
There was a man already sitting in the guest chair, feet not quite reaching the floor, a cup of Artos's own wine in his hand.
"How was the farewell, Lord Stark?" said Tyrion Lannister.
Artos crossed the room and dropped into his own chair without hurry.
"Good," he said. "How was yours? I hear Lord Tywin took Prince Tommen back to Casterly Rock."
Tyrion's smile turned bitter at the edges. "Ah, yes. My father's new way to insult me further. The great consolation of my life. Well I hope my nephew had a better time there more than I have."
"I imagine so."
"Though it hasn't been entirely without pleasure." Tyrion took a drink. "My sister and my father had words about it. Several rounds of words. She was scolded like a girl caught at the sweets, and she's been frustrated and miserable ever since." He raised the cup. "So yes. I'm quite happy."
"That certainly is news worth being happy about," Artos agreed.
"I'd be happier on the council, mind." Tyrion tilted his head. "We had a deal, my lord. And I'm currently a man with no gold from his father and a great many expensive habits. So I am also quite miserable."
Artos laughed. "Come now, Lord Tyrion. From what I hear you've been having the time of your life at Chataya's. At my expense, no less. That doesn't sound like hardship."
"It isn't a bad life," Tyrion conceded cheerfully. "But whose courtesy is it that I've no gold of my own? I'd appreciate the more comfortable position, is all I'm saying."
"Two days. Three at most." Artos leaned back. "I've been debating whether to inform the King beforehand."
Tyrion's cup stopped halfway to his mouth.
"The King doesn't know?" He set it down. "Shouldn't he rather be the first to know?"
"Normally, yes." Artos's expression was entirely serene. "But I remain deeply annoyed with him for handing me the tutelage of our beloved Prince Joffrey. So I thought I'd give him a surprise instead."
Tyrion barked a laugh. "Gods, he'll be stunned."
"Oh He'll be fine. I've dropped enough hints that he'll pretend he saw it coming." Artos's tone shifted, cooling. "And it hardly matters. We have the proofs. There's a gold trail, Tyrion, and it runs a long way. You've read the ledgers."
"I've read them." Tyrion made a face. "They're a nightmare. Not merely complicated—designed to confuse. Deliberately. Every entry cross-referenced against three others that don't exist."
"Which is itself the confession."
"Granted." Tyrion turned his cup slowly. "Between the Manderlys, your Braavosi people and the Iron Bank's own clerks, we've assembled a fair picture. But will we actually recover the gold?"
"Not all of it." Artos's voice went flat and serious. "Most of it. The man was a genuine financial genius, I'll give him that—he put it to work rather than sitting on it. Which means it's traceable. We seize the holdings, the ventures, the shares, the properties. Every business with his fingerprints on it."
"And the Crown's debts?"
"That will be your problem soon enough. You're his successor." Artos's mouth curved. "Fortunately, it's the easy part. The Iron Bank has undertaken to locate his slush funds themselves—they'll seize whatever they find and set it against what we owe them. My influence there has its uses."
"And my father's been an unusually loyal retainer about the rest," Tyrion observed dryly.
"Aye, Your father cleared most of it. We're in a genuinely good position for the first time in years." Artos shrugged. "The houses that colluded with Littlefinger will also pay for the privilege, and that's another river of gold. Add sane taxation and a Master of Coin who can count—we're solvent. Improbably, insultingly solvent."
Tyrion stared at him for a moment, then raised his cup.
"Well. To our success, then. And to the burdens waiting for us."
Artos picked up his own glass and touched it to Tyrion's.
They talked long into the evening—the council, the Reach, the debts, the thousand small knives of governance—and the tower did not feel quite so empty by the end of it.
The Kingsroad,
The column had settled into the rhythm of long travel, and the three of them rode a little apart from it, as they always managed to.
"So it's true, then," Robb said. "You are going to Braavos. Father mentioned it."
"Aye," said Bjorn.
"Why?" Robb glanced over. "You've a seat now. Lands. A hall you haven't gotten used to, and your first act as lord is to sail east?"
Bjorn smiled slightly. "Trades, holdings, contacts. All the things I ought to understand firsthand instead of through Aldric's letters." He paused. "And I miss them. Aldric and Sera. I'd like to see my brother and sister."
Loras nodded slowly at that.
"I understand that better than I'd like to admit," he said. "I miss mine too, sometimes. Highgarden. Garlan's insufferable laughing. My grandmother terrorizing the household." He exhaled. "Perhaps I ought to go."
"Don't fret over it," Robb said, and something in his voice made Loras look up. "We'll be going soon enough after. From what I understand—you, me, and Margaery."
Loras's expression changed as he worked out precisely what that meant.
"So it's settled, then," he said quietly.
Robb glanced ahead down the column, where Margaery rode between Sansa and Arya, saying something that made both of them laugh at once.
"Aye," Robb said, and smiled. "It's settled."
They rode a while in comfortable silence, hooves and harness and the wind off the fields.
"Can I ask you both something," Bjorn said eventually.
"That's never a good beginning," said Loras.
"What am I meant to do with it?" Bjorn's brow furrowed. "Sea Dragon Point. The name. All of it." He shook his head slowly. "Father told me to build something of my own. Not his legacy, not Winterfell's. Mine." He looked out toward the horizon. "He never once told me what."
Neither of them answered right away.
"I keep turning it over," Bjorn said. "Every night since the throne room. Ships, trade, a fleet, a fortress, a war—I don't know. Something that lasts." His jaw tightened. "And I've no bloody idea where to start."
The road stretched north ahead of them, long and open and entirely undecided.
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