“I wanted him to stay here with me,” Lady Stark said softly.

Jon watched her, wary. She was not even looking at him. She was talking to him, but for a part of her, it was as though he were not even in the room.

“I prayed for it,” she said dully. “He was my special boy.

“I went to the sept and prayed seven times to the seven faces of god that Ned would change his mind and leave him here with me.

“Sometimes prayers are answered.”

A Disarming Conversation, page 1

“Robb, close the door.”

He looked at her strangely, but did as she told him.

“What I am about to tell you must not leave this room,” she told them. “I want your oaths on that.

“If even part of what I suspect is true, Ned and my girls have ridden into deadly danger, and a word in the wrong ears could mean their lives.”

“Lord Eddard is a second father to me,” said Theon Greyjoy. “I do so swear.”

“You have my oath,” Maester Luwin said.

“And mine, my lady,” echoed Ser Rodrik.

She looked at her son. “And you, Robb?”

He nodded his consent.

“My sister Lysa believes the Lannisters murdered her husband, Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King,” Catelyn told them.

“It comes to me that Jaime Lannister did not join the hunt the day Bran fell. He remained here in the castle.”

The room was deathly quiet.

“Mother, what are you doing?”

Catelyn had always thought Robb looked like her; like Bran and Rickon and Sansa, he had the Tully coloring, the auburn hair, the blue eyes.

Yet now for the first time she saw something of Eddard Stark in his face, something as stern and hard as the north.

“What am I doing?” she echoed, puzzled.

“How can you ask that? What do you imagine I’m doing? I am taking care of your brother. I am taking care of Bran.”

“Is that what you call it? You haven’t left this room since Bran was hurt. You didn’t even come to the gate when Father and the girls went south.”

“I said my farewells to them here, and watched them ride out from that window.”

“He’d been hiding in your stables,” Greyjoy said. “You could smell it on him.”

“And how could he go unnoticed?” she said sharply.

Hallis Mollen looked abashed. “Between the horses Lord Eddard took south and them we sent north to the Night’s Watch, the stalls were half-empty.

Then silence fell, until Catelyn found her courage and asked the question whose answer she most dreaded. “What of the other children?”

Ned stood, and took her in his arms, and held her face close to his. “Rickon is very young,” he said gently. “He should stay here with you and Robb. The others I would take with me.”

“I could not bear it,” Catelyn said, trembling.

“You must,” he said. “Sansa must wed Joffrey, that is clear now, we must give them no grounds to suspect our devotion. And it is past time that Arya learned the ways of a southron court. In a few years she will be of an age to marry too.”

Sansa would shine in the south, Catelyn thought to herself, and the gods knew that Arya needed refinement. Reluctantly, she let go of them in her heart.