Fear did not leave Ramsay, even in the daylight hours. He could hear Reek screaming in the adjacent room, the sounds penetrating the walls at irregular intervals. Gendry's soldiers had dispersed the Bolton party across several rooms in an isolated manor house on the edge of the city. The Bolton household guards had not been touched. Only Reek received the undivided attention of the interrogation team, round after round.
Ramsay had begun to think that Roose keeping him locked away in the Dreadfort was, perhaps, not entirely without merit. It meant he had never faced humiliation across the Narrow Sea.
I will repay this a hundredfold, Ramsay promised himself, staring at the ceiling. He thought of Gendry's face—that clean, infuriatingly handsome, luminous face. Only by destroying beautiful things could Ramsay feel the sweet, flooding relief of power. The Starks, the Greyjoys, all the well-fed, well-born sons of great houses. He wanted to ruin them. But first he had to get out of here. He had to return to the Dreadfort.
The thought of Reek nagged at him. Reek knew everything. Reek had always been there. There was an urgent, cold calculus to this problem; Reek was a liability now, and Ramsay had not acted quickly enough to eliminate him.
In the sun-soaked interrogation chamber on the floor below, the air was thick with the mingled reek of copper blood, medicinal fire-paste, and the pervasive, clinging smell that Reek carried everywhere. The light here was almost cheerful, a grotesque contrast to what it illuminated.
Reek was bound tightly to a heavy oak chair, his wrists and ankles lashed to the arms and legs. The room was small and stained. On a low table nearby lay the tools of the trade: pincers, a small hatchet, hammers, wooden rods, a serrated knife, a leather whip, and a furnace of hot coals. Four interrogators stood at intervals around the room.
Qyburn sat behind a small writing table in the corner, a quill resting across a blank page, his hands folded in his lap. He was a tall man, slightly stooped, carrying his years with the unhurried patience of a man who had made peace with the uglier sides of human existence. His eyes were a pale, watery blue, deeply lined at the corners, and his hair was the particular grey of ash. The small, constant smile on his lips had unnerved far stronger men than Reek.
"Now then," Qyburn said pleasantly. "Shall we have a proper conversation?"
He looked at Reek, who was already significantly the worse for wear.
"Reek knows nothing. Reek is Lord Ramsay's servant. Reek is only a servant." Reek coughed a wet, bloody bubble. Several of his teeth had been loosened. But his mouth remained shut.
"Look at yourself, Reek," Qyburn said, with the gentle instruction of a maester advising a student.
"Lord Ramsay! Lord Roose! Save me, save your poor servant!" Reek wailed.
When appeals to his masters produced no result, the bound man tried another angle. "I—I am of House Bolton," he stammered, desperate. "Lord Roose... Lord Roose will not... he will not allow this."
"Good child," Qyburn said, unmoved. "Speak to me, and I will ensure you die quickly. Continue your silence, and we proceed to the third finger."
A broad-shouldered interrogator stepped forward. Reek's arms were already pinned. The man raised the pincers, finding the nail of Reek's index finger, and began to work methodically. Reek's shrieks filled the room. The interrogator applied the Myrish fire-paste to the exposed wound—not to cauterize, but to sharpen the pain and prevent Reek from losing consciousness through blood loss.
"Ahh! Kill me, kill me, just kill me!" Reek sobbed, his whole body shaking.
"If you persist in your silence, that will be the third finger," Qyburn noted, watching the pincers catch the light as the interrogator advanced again.
Then Qyburn smiled. "And if you still refuse after that... I shall have Lord Ramsay brought down instead. You will talk either way. The only question is whether you speak first, or whether you are forced to watch him answer for you."
"No. No, no. Don't touch Lord Ramsay, please don't touch him. I'll talk... I'll talk." Reek's head dropped forward onto his chest. These men had no boundaries. The Bastard King was crueler than the Starks, crueler than anyone Reek had ever imagined, and he had grown up in the shadow of the Dreadfort.
An interrogator carefully poured a small measure of warm medicinal broth into Reek's cracked lips, ensuring the man remained coherent enough to speak clearly.
Reek began to talk.
"Lord Ramsay is Lord Roose's son," Reek said, his voice a wet, hollow thing. "His mother was the wife of a miller on the Weeping Water. Lord Roose had the miller killed, because the man had not come to the castle to report that he had taken a wife. Lord Roose said the miller had trampled his right of first night. And then... and then Lord Roose took the wife."
Reek could not bring himself to say "bastard." The word sat in his throat like a stone. Even here, even now, with Ramsay locked in a room upstairs and Reek strapped to a chair dripping blood, he could not say the word. Because if he said it aloud, and Ramsay somehow heard it, Ramsay would know. And Ramsay always found a way to make you pay.
"Continue, Reek," Qyburn said softly.
"Yes, ser. At first Lord Roose wanted nothing to do with the boy. He gave the miller's wife some silver when she came to the Dreadfort with the child, and sent them away. That is when I was assigned to them."
"Why was the boy brought back?" Qyburn pressed. "Explain fully. Bringing a bastard into the Dreadfort is not a typical arrangement, even for a northern lord."
"It was Lord Domeric's doing," Reek whispered. "Lord Domeric was Lord Roose's true son. He had been a ward in the Vale, in the Eyrie, learning the ways of a proper knight. He was a gentle young man. He always wanted a brother. So he rode along the Weeping Water looking for his half-brother, even though Lord Roose told him many times not to. Lord Domeric would not listen. He brought the boy back to the Dreadfort." Reek paused. "And then Lord Domeric took sick and died."
"A kinslayer," Qyburn said, and permitted himself a small sigh. Ramsay Snow's capacity for destruction was, in its way, almost impressive. Domeric Bolton had extended a hand in genuine kindness and it had destroyed him.
"I want to understand everything about Lord Ramsay," Qyburn continued. "What does he enjoy?" The lean old ex-maester rested his chin on his interlaced fingers. "Tell me about his pastime."
Reek stared at the floor. When he finally spoke, his voice was almost inaudible.
"Lord Ramsay likes to hunt girls."
The interrogators exchanged a glance.
"He takes them to the forests of the Dreadfort. The Bolton forests are vast and dark. He takes them when they are... when they are not dressed. And then he sets the dogs on them." Reek swallowed. "For the ones who run well and give him a good hunt... the ones who make him feel satisfied... after he is done with them, he lets the dogs finish them quickly. And then he skins them. He keeps their skins. He names his hounds after the ones he liked best."
Qyburn's quill moved steadily across the page. He was a man who had performed experiments upon living criminals in the black cells of Harrenhal, a man stripped of his maester's chain for crimes against the living. He had believed himself beyond the reach of revulsion. He was discovering he had been mistaken.
"And the ones who do not run?" Qyburn asked.
"The ones who beg, the ones who cry, the ones who won't run—they don't get a quick death," Reek said, his voice dropping to a hollow monotone, as though he were reciting from a great distance. "They are... sometimes it is him. Sometimes the dogs. Sometimes both. And then they are skinned alive. Lord Ramsay keeps all the skins. He calls it the Bolton way." Reek paused again, for a long time. "Lord Ramsay says flaying is his greatest pleasure."
The interrogators had gone very still.
"You have a remarkable memory, Reek," Qyburn said carefully. "Now then. Where do you fit into this? What was your role in Lord Ramsay's... entertainments?"
Reek's ruined mouth worked silently for a moment.
"I was always with him," Reek finally said. "I served him. Lord Ramsay allowed me to... to participate. Sometimes with the living women, sometimes with the dead ones, before the skinning."
The largest of the four interrogators turned away and studied the wall with great concentration.
"I want the names," Qyburn said, leaning forward. His small smile was entirely gone. He placed a hand on Reek's jaw, firm but not brutal, and forced the ruined face upward. "Every name you can remember. Every girl. You will tell me every single one."