Ah but our average is well above most other folks'!
I do. Rand is one of the most stubborn, set in his ways fellows I've ever known and we've been the closest of friends since we were wee babes. And as of last time I've seen him, particularly prickly and temperamental. You've nothing I can't handle.
The armor looked like if they could get it to the castle, it could be dangerous to you lot. It was protecting them but they had explosive discs they could toss at people.
They sent us to the mines, which we often stop by anyway to check in on the miners (they have a rough time), so it's barely a punishment. I'd rather be doing something like this than sitting down doing nothing, so.
I agree. Especially when they came so close to the bloody castle with their last one, using one of our own's tech. Assholes. I don't know where this is going, but it's only bad.
Yeah, exactly. They're all nice folks, just trying to keep living. We've done a lot of work with them over the years to improve their way of life so it's more pleasant than jail for certain.
No, I don't think there's going to be any slowing of the wheels. At least as far as anyone in power knows, I'm mostly useless in a war situation. I'm just the silly fellow who sings all the silly songs.
That barely sounds like a punishment, really. When one of us breaks the law over here, they toss us in a cell for a bit.
Well, I was talking to Claire last night. We were talking of what might have been happening where I came from, with me no longer there.
[He is lying back on his bed, in a shirt and loose trousers, hands behind his head, not reading a book.]
When they summoned me here, I was a king. It doesn't matter here, but I was. And I was on a journey to meet a woman. She has three dragons, and obsidian besides -- I needed her aid. The North needs her aid. The dragons to fight the White Walkers, the obsidian to make weapons against them -- it's nearly the only thing that will kill them, and kill the wights.
I left Sansa as regent in the North. She knows nothing of me ever being gone. There's a chance that the woman I was going to meet will ask me to give up my throne to her in exchange for the aid my people need to have a chance to survive. My ancestor bent the knee to hers once, long ago, and hers ruled mine for close to three hundred years. But my people fought hard for their freedom. They bled for it. My brother died for it.
You told me there was a time when you remembered more of your own world than you had when they summoned you. What was that like? Had you just gone on, making decisions without knowing it, until you returned to yourself to find it all already done? Claire said there are some among us who think that's how it must be. But she says she thinks I'll do the right thing, no matter what.
[He sounds as if he finds this prospect dubious, but he also seeks reassurance that this isn't how it would be -- that he will not wake one day to find that he has given away the North to the Targaryen woman behind his own back.]
[Mat simply stares for a moment, then shakes his head.]
Wasn't like that at all. It was like no time had passed at all. I was right back where I'd been taken from.
[Odd as it had been for there to be a seamless flow of memories when there ought not be. But it had been seamless, as though he'd never stepped out of the world. Only he had, and he'd woken up in his bed in Thorne and really the whole thing was a damned headache.]
That's how it was for the others I know, too. That went through it, I mean. So I wouldn't spend time worry about it, you haven't done a thing you don't know about.
[Jon stares back at him, then gives a firm nod, then sighs.]
Thank you. It's a weight off. I can't tell you how completely ridiculous it sounded, but, well -- I couldn't tell Claire that. [Never, in a thousand years, would he ever tell Claire that something she had said to him sounded even a little ridiculous. Not wise words from a man who wants to stay married -- happily, at any rate. And in all honesty, this was the first thing he had ever really doubted. Might be that he had just misunderstood her, because he had been so happy to be showing her all the Starks in their crypt.] And then I began to wonder, what if they were right? It wouldn't be the first thing to happen here that sounded completely mad before I saw it myself.
Nah, magic can be odd. And we are hardly experts in how it works, this hopping between worlds.
[What do any of them know, save what they've experienced? And how many of them talk in any detail about this. Mat knows he hasn't, not to very many people.]
Better to ask than make the assumption. And lucky you, I'm right here to ask. It was damned strange. Left me a bit...off kilter for a day or two. All those new memories.
[Not to mention leaving him with a fear of being locked in rooms.]
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