Confirmation Bias Is a Thankless Task (I)

"-. 262 - 273 AC .-"

He'd come prepared for many things when first sent North, but even so he was surprised. Not so much because his expectations weren't met, but more how they were met. Yes, the North proved just as bleak and cold and dreary as he'd expected. Yes, the people were stand-offish and suspicious and disdainful of southrons like him. He'd even anticipated being left adrift and unused during that first year, when he'd been called upon for little else besides sending letters and beginning the long and laborious task of replenishing the rookery from the ravens he brought with him. The old ones all had to be replaced after Lord Stark had ordered every last one of them slaughtered when the wasting sickness passed from man to bird. Much as it had been the right decision at the time, it did strain the maester's sufferance at times, that he could admit. Near as much as the cold that bit and ground at him and seeped all the way into his bones on all but the brightest days of summer. He'd not even been allowed in the birthing chamber when the Lady of the North had her first child. The matter of begetting the heir to the whole North had instead been dumped in the hands of some midwife or other. It had been dangerous and unconscionable and an insult to which few others in his life could have compared. A maester's best and only coin was his competence, how was he to make use of his when denied even the chance to try?

But a wise man knew when to act and when not to. Patience stood him in good stead when everyone around him proved how much less wise they were than he. And time was, as ever, a healing salve unto itself when it came to everything else. Thus he took charge of everything pertinent to happenings in the Maester's Tower. Thus he began carving a larger and larger place in the Lord's household. More so once Lord Rickard's disposition began to thaw with every passing moonturn after his first child's birth. By the time young Eddard began to grow in the Lady's womb, there was no longer a question as to who should deliver him into the world, or any other Stark babes that may follow. Thus did Walys Flowers ascend to his position. Thus did a mere bastard become the healer and scholar and chief advisor of the Stark in Winterfell and wise man of the North.

From there, life was everything his fellows and teachers and his father told him it would be. The servants were obedient and discreet. The Lady was courteous. The men in the Lord's council eventually grew appropriately deferential. The guards were competent and loyal but no more observant or clever than the South. And the Warden of the North himself, Rickard Stark, oh, he was a delight. Young and bitter and already so weary, but competent and driven and just self-aware enough to know how unprepared he was for his position that he literally craved whatever guidance he could grant.

Then the demon came.

It came when things were at their brightest. Stole a life that wasn't its to take. Insinuated itself into the North's highest family through pretense, guile and sympathy pulled out of grief and guilt for the soul it devoured. It all but annihilated the ability of the Warden of the North to think more than one step ahead, all in one great stroke.

"Seven curse me for a fool!" the maester lambasted himself as he paced back and forth at the top of his tower, waiting for the ring of bells that wouldn't come. "All those Septons and maesters, all their writings and sermons and it never occurred to me that when they called the old gods demons, it wasn't all just empty zeal!"

"Zeal! Zeal! Zeal!" Cawed Alban from his perch.

To his shame, he was as taken in by the helpless lackwit act as much as everyone else at the start. He felt nowhere near the panic and despair and vain hopes of the Lady and Lord, but even his small share of it had been plenty. He'd played no part the little lord's coming into the world, but he'd inquired after him and watched over him and cared for him in the years after. He'd even grown fond of the boy. He'd been looking forward to seeing and guiding the child's growth. If the boy inherited just the tiniest lick of sense and grew up to be even half as biddable as his sire…

Instead, Walys Flowers was forced to counsel a father to murder his own child for the sake of his family and the North and the good of the realm. Never mind the mercy it would be for the boy himself.

"I thought the chill and dreariness of this gods-forsaken place would harden me. Instead I've damn up and gone soft!"

"Soft! Soft! Soft!"

Had he realized the truth in time, he'd have strangled the thing with his own hands and damn the consequences.

But he didn't. Despite the thing being a horror straight out of Valyria or Asshai by the Shadow. By the time he did awaken to the terrible truth, it was too late. The demon's moment of vulnerability had passed. Rickard Stark had broken at precisely the worst time. The creature gained enough control over its stolen body to play at a facsimile of life. Rodrik Cassel proved to be as loyal as he was gullible, oh, how quick damnation claimed the noblest knights! And the Lady Lyarra had done as women always did, thought with her heart instead of her mind and unwittingly become the monster's greatest ally.

"So oft the people of the Faith decry northern barbarians as demon worshippers," Walys lamented to his trusted raven, once again the only living thing he could rely on. "I never imagined how rooted it would be in actual fact!"

"Fact! Fact! Fact!"

He didn't want to think how many hours and days he wasted stewing over his failure to do what needed doing. Stewed in his outrage and anger and bitterness and shame.

Oh how life could change! If there was any word that could never before have been used to describe his life, it was shame. There was no shame in his father when he put him into the belly of a Hightower girl while oath-bound to a life of celibacy. There was no shame in his lady mother when she washed her hands of him the moment he popped out of her. There was no shame in the whores of Oldtown either, when they cut him loose with not a copper to his name once he was old enough to want to avail of them himself. And as he grew every bit as quickly as the Seven-Pointed Star warned trueborn to beware, the bastard felt no shame of his own either. As he begged and swindled and thieved and bartered his way into becoming an acolyte of the Citadel, Walys Flowers resolved to rise higher than all others. Vowed that by the time he found out who'd spawned and abandoned him so heedlessly, he'd be so far above them that they would have little way to feel anything other than shame. Then, when he forged his chain and underwent his last test that night in darkness, he emerged an all-new man seized with the absolute certainty that he would never feel shame again.

"To think I felt so proud," Walys muttered as he tied the message around the leg of the white raven. "Such vindication! A whole night spent in total darkness with not a spark or glimmer in the glass candle. How proud I was to think all that time wasted on the higher mysteries proved something about the world rather than myself. What conceit it must have been."

He sat gazing southwards for a long time that night, well after Alban disappeared into the distance with his damning burden.

And so began the grimmest and darkest chain of correspondence the North had likely ever seen. Or not seen, as would have to remain the case. For the sake of his neck. And that of everyone else. To think that his vows to Winterfell would be broken so swiftly! And he couldn't even use it to teach the young lord a lesson. One of so very many he had yet to grasp. But it wasn't the first time Walys Flowers broke an oath and it wouldn't be the last. He'd begged and swindled and thieved and bartered his way into becoming an acolyte of the Citadel, his promise to himself the only thing pushing him forward. Walys Flowers had vowed to rise higher than all others. Swore that, by the time he found out who'd spawned and abandoned him so heedlessly, he'd be so far above them that they would have little to feel other than shame under his gaze. Vowed that he'd then spit in their eye, turn his nose at them like the shit stains they were and walk away. But when he finished his chain, Archmaester Walgrave summoned him to his private chambers and proceeded to teach him life's chief lesson: the grandest and mightiest of oaths weren't worth the shit of the ones who made them.

"What more should I have done for you, boy? I made you. What have you ever done for me, hmm? The world doesn't owe you anything. Let this be your first lesson: you don't make any investment unless you can see what you'll get back. And how. Now, have you ever heard of cyvasse?"

The young lord was lucky to learn this lesson from him instead of anyone else, let alone the thing that now used his heir's bone and body for a second skin. One day Walys might even divulge all secrets, when everyone knew the proper place where they should stand. Then young Rickard would erupt and rage and impugn and have every last shred of righteous anger crushed. Ground out from his heart along with every dream and delusion. As it had been for him, so it would be for him.

The first response from the Citadel was sceptical. The next few increasingly less so with every code word and phrase and cypher used to convey his messages in that way that only scant few at the citadel were taught. He'd thought it a privilege when his father first showed them to him, quietly divulging to him the existence of that exalted circle of minds. He could see the burden in it now though. The amused dismissal conveyed by the archmaesters was turned entirely on its head within a year. First it gave way to alarm, then to unease, then to the sort of grim purpose that Walys had never even bothered hoping he'd somehow escape. If only they'd given him some advice he could actually act on!

"Seven forbid they come up with something actually useful," Walys quietly murmured as he stroked Alban's chest feathers, feeling every ounce of dread weighing him down. "How am I to relish knowing my judgment is considered equal to that of all the archmaesters? When all it tells me is to wait and see?"

"See! See! See!"

He lost count how many plans he devised to use one of his concoctions to bring a swift end to the nightmare. But with the Lady and her children and even its guard completely fooled by its mummery, there was no way. The fiend would likely decide to be doubly cruel and have one of those around it fall prey to the poison in its stead while Walys took the fall for its wickedness. The maester was certain the demon knew it too. Knew that he knew. He could tell from its refusal to accept anything he brewed. He knew it from its brazen intrusions into his quarters when he was away. He saw it in its eyes when it thought it wasn't being observed. There was no way to fully hide that unworldly madness. If only the others could recognize it! Awaken to the infernal nature of the fell speech it growled and grunted when its control lapsed as it so often did. Walys had counted five different tongues that existed nowhere else in the known world, on top of the infernal mockery of common it used for its blandishments. And he did mean infernal. Had he a way to observe it uninterrupted, he had no doubt the count would climb to seven soon enough. Seven fell tongues to go with the seven hells that spat it out.

In his darkest moments, the maester seriously considered lunging at it with a knife to get it over with.

"Knights of the mind, they call us," Walys said bitterly as the raven groomed his hair. "Cassel would cut me down like a scythe through wheat before I made a step."

"Step! Step! Step!"

The last hope for the North, in a mockery that had to spring straight from the Crone, turned out to rest with the Lord Stark himself. Hopeless and bitter as he'd once more become, Rickard Stark's weakness had nonetheless somehow led him to make precisely the right choices to remove himself from the demon's immediate sphere of influence. Father forgive him, as distasteful as Walys found it to take advantage of a young man so broken and wretched, it was the only path left open. He had to bring the young man fully around to his way of thinking as swiftly as possible or everything would be lost. He consoled himself with knowing that reason and sanity would likely have demanded he step up to the plate regardless, sooner or later. Mother help him, someone had to think of the North and its children.

"Break a man's morale and he won't revolt even if he sits on a massive widlfire keg of frustration" Archmaester Walgrave had told him once, after Walys suffered one too many humiliating defeats in that Essosi game his father so loved to school his lessers through. "But credibility counteracts demoralization, and that frustration can be released with immense energy if given a credible cause or leadership."

So the maester harnessed the carefully cultivated mien that all maesters were trained to affect. He'd once disdained the mummery, but he gained an all-new appreciation for it the more he relied on it. He took the initiative in his interactions with the young lord and resolved to never relinquish it. Not even in those rare moments when Rickard Stark seemed close to forgetting his grief and emerging from his despair, however briefly. He also made sure to always have criticism ready whenever the young lord showed self-assurance in his rule or as a father. And if he sometimes had to be harsh on the lad and underhanded in their cyvasse games, well, it wasn't any worse than how his own father taught him life's real lessons once he finished his chain. For Rickard Stark to revert to his previous, brittle self could not be borne. Not for his sake or anyone else's. Who knew which way he'd shatter when he broke again? The demon grew more cunning and skilled in his mummery with every passing day.

The deadlock stretched agonisingly, for sennights, moons and then whole years of fighting the demon's sway with his own, growing influence. On the young lord, his court, his household, and his wife. Even his children, once little Lyanna came along and young Eddard's education under him finally began. The growing self-reliance of the demon itself was becoming something of a boon as well, much as Walys hated to admit it. He only needed to bide his time a while longer. Just wait for the lady to loosen the unwitting leash she had on the monster and perhaps some of the options previously discarded could be reassessed.

Then came Benjen Stark's birthing day and the deadlock was broken in the most catastrophic manner. The demon cast off all pretense when everyone was distracted. Vanished for hours. Went and did the one thing Rickard Stark had unwittingly shown wisdom in, when he forbid it from communing with the rest of its fell kin. Its body's mother was distraught, its guard was forfeit and Rickard Stark was seized by such cold fury that even Walys could find no purchase on his mood or on his time. The demon's helpless act was refreshed against all reason. Its guard was killed without even the barest chance for Walys to uncover whatever he'd heard or seen that he must have for the thing to orchestrate his removal despite Cassel's continued loyalty. As for whatever the demon did in the Godswood – feh! – it eliminated whatever last hurdle was stopping it from perfecting its mummery. Thus did the demon cast Winterfell into chaos unequalled since its first arrival.

The thing even had the gall to then go and snare Cassel's brother as well. As if to warn him that he could and would do everything again unless he stayed out of its way! Then it started to pretend like Walys was the suspicious one!

"Thus does the good liar lose to the better liar," Walys snarled as he paced within his tower like a caged animal. "Seven take the fiend and its infernal skill in bestirring strong feelings even in men with literal ice in their veins instead of blood!"

"Blood! Blood! Blood!"

Feeling outraged, humiliated and seized by utter dread that never went away after, Maester Walys bitterly conceded defeat and turned to his one, final resort short of poison: persuading lord Rickard to have it fostered.

That was how the Seven finally sent him the sign he hadn't realized he so desperately needed. The young lord turned out to already be thinking about it. In fact, he'd been thinking along similar veins for quite some time. If not for his poor and helpless firstborn – may it burn in the deepest fires of the Seven Hells for the rest of time! – lord Rickard had already been considering matches for his other children. Oh, the lost opportunities! Even in this the demon had run circles around him, having him convinced for years upon years that it would be folly to even broach the topic of southron fosterage and marriage alliances.

Thank the Seven it worked, hallowed be their name. Five whole years it cost him, but it worked. All that was left was to confer with his masters at the citadel on whether or not to risk pushing for a southern option. As much as he wanted to get rid of the monster, having the heir to the North – ha! – fall to treachery down south could be a major setback in the mission that Walys was given when dispatched to Winterfell in the first place.

"The flames of chaos sown during the Conquest and the Dance are only now guttering out," the Archmaesters had told him when giving his assignment, what felt like a lifetime ago. "The Citadel's finest minds have long toiled to put the realm in order. We've snuffed out what embers we could, fanned what fires needed burned out fastest, and have done our best to set the groundwork for a better world. You will help us from here on. Perhaps with a bit less madness this time. We already have four of the Seven Kingdoms and the Iron Throne. You will go to Winterfell. Go and get us the North."

When Alban finally came back from their distant home, he carried with him an answer which, though not the one he wanted, was nonetheless the one he'd expected the most. The one he'd most prepared for. So he thought and watched and waited for the right moment to nudge the young lord towards the mindset he wanted before making his case. It was harder than he expected not to be too blatant about his southron aims. The North had so many valid grievances. But he had a duty and he would carry it through.

Then he braced himself as well as he could for the demon's inevitable retaliation.

Only… it never came. Just like the enmity and escalation he'd been on guard against for that entire time never materialised either.

Instead, the demon just… made nice. Played the perfect storybook prince to his mother, the wise elder brother to the surviving Stark children, and the dutiful son to its body's father in whatever rare moments they happened to share breathing space. That wasn't the be-all of its changes in behaviour, but the creature seemed completely disinterested with Walys now, its only real opposition. Instead, it took to wandering the keep grounds and Wintertown, meeting new people, watching tradesmen and buying the occasional trinket. To Walys' renewed shame, even he was almost taken in all over again. Could it be he was wrong? Or perhaps… perhaps little Brandon had never been fully gone? Maybe he'd somehow prevailed against the creature and come back? Had the Seven answered his prayers after all? It was enough to drive a mad man sane, fool the most watchful eye and dispel even the deepest suspicions by dint of sheer persistence. Or it would have been, if not for two things. For one, the thing came up with a torturously labyrinthine game just to indulge its craving to play god. And for the other, it disguised its fell knowledge as a windfall to the great unwashed masses, just so the young lord would change his mind about sending him away and thus destroy Walys' last hope.

"It knows!" Walys hissed to his only confidant as he paced alone in his tower the day of the fair. "What else does it know? What else has it done that was specifically aimed at me, even as I didn't see it? Some days it feels like there are none here he ever sets to vex except myself!" The maester suddenly froze in dawning horror. "Could the thing have been aimed against me from the start?"

Could the only aim of the thing and its kin have always been to thwart the Citadel's noble purpose? Here, in their last stronghold they had in man's world?

"Ware the arts and blandishments of so-called warlocks and witches, for they are a crafty and deceitful lot," his Archmaester father had told him once. "Stomp them out when you can, discredit them when you can't, and teach the truth at every turn. It will be a toilsome task. Even our noble patrons have been taken in by such lies and their empty promises, but you must persevere! The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles."

"But magic was real once," Walys had protested, despite himself. "You need only look at the dragons and everything else the Targaryens brought with them from Dragonstone and Valyria before then."

"And who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around?" Walgrave had scoffed. "Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords? Ah, but I have said too much."

Walys had dismissed it as just another one of his father's ways to test him on how well (or all too often badly) he could spot a lie. Now, though, his mind went back to that exchange and he felt shame all over again. Shame and fury. "Could it be that the only reason it emerged was because of me? It must be! It's the only answer left!"

"Left! Left! Left!"

"By the Seven, it makes perfect sense!" Walys moaned as he redoubled his pacing. "The thing never ceased its machination, it just changed tactics! Rather than throwing chaos at me to set back our aims, it's accelerating them! Could it be I've underestimated the creature? Because it is starting to feel like it has only been set to spite me and me alone!"

"Lone! Lone! Lone!"

Had his coming doomed little Brandon to oblivion?

The more he thought about it, the clearer the thing's plans became. Every one of its inventions were such that chaos would inevitably follow in their footsteps. Paper would devour woods wholesale and devastate every farmer or tradesman that relied on parchment or vellum as a source for coin. Four-field farming would cause unrest by enriching already wealthy landowners and leave behind the small, even if it didn't lengthen the harvest season. To say nothing of what would happen if it caught in the Reach. Double-entry bookkeeping would buy the demon people's favour not once but every time they saved on coin thanks to its use. Carvings and toys were a sure way to charm the next generation – he was already doing it with the Stark children! And the plants and mushrooms, by the Warrior, the creature wasn't even trying to be subtle with those. The only thing missing was the redcap that ancient Ironborn used for their battle madness and the thing would be ready to revert even warfare to the savagery of those dark ages. As if war wasn't already savage enough! But he supposed the blood to feed the trees had to come from somewhere, Walys thought bitterly.

He'd missed it when considered individually, but all of that together? They were practically designed to bring the realm to the verge of schism years before even the rashest time the Citadel ever dreamed up! Always something new. Always something grand. Always something to drive one just that little bit closer to the brink of madness. What next, will it entice men to defy the Seven outright and aim to claim the skies themselves?

When Maester Walys saw the floating fires converge upon Winterfell, he thought he was at the end of his rope. The night passed in a haze of nightmares where the world died in a rain of fire.

Then he woke up to learn that Rickard Stark had fallen completely under the demon's sway within the span of a single night.

Walys Flowers had never felt so alone. He hated the feeling. He cursed the thing that had done this to him. He grieved the man that in another life he might have called a friend.

He didn't know how he kept his mien after that, especially once the thing became a fixture of the lord's routine and Winterfell's daily life. To say nothing of the lord and the demon's frequent time spent in private and secrecy. By the time he watched Rickard Stark ride out in the middle of Winter while committing treason – a crown! A crown bare on his brow! – Walys Flowers though he might go mad.

"Maybe I've already gone mad," the man said darkly as he finished the final brewing step of his concoction the day after the Starks' trip to the Cerwyns. "But if there is any time to go mad, it is now."

The glass candle hadn't lit for him, but that didn't change that his study of the higher mysteries had been extensive. Even if magic had passed him over, alchemy could serve to lay it bare before him, and securing permission to forage the Godswood for ingredients was among the first things he did when he came North in the first place. The visions were a confusing jumble of colours, dead crows, one-eyed ravens and him standing before the heart tree feeling calm and safe as if whatever had been gazing out from it had disappeared. It was a hope long sought but one he didn't trust in the slightest. A feeling justified when he awoke from delirium into that half-state where he still had one foot in the other side. The vision that met his sight when he looked south at the returning sledhouse vindicated every suspicious and ill thought he'd ever held.

The bloodline of the Kings of Winter indeed. There was nothing of winter in that abomination of pitch blackness studded with a thousand and one fiery eyes.

Somehow, the thing didn't notice him pierce its disguise. Or perhaps it did but didn't realize anything different about him. Or pretended as much. Or didn't. It mattered little in the end. His path was set on the only option left: setting everything aside to move against the thing directly.

"I've been trying to do too much at once, haven't I? It stopped me from doing what I should have done from the very start. Or perhaps I simply hadn't the heart for it," Walys murmured in the dark that night as his weary soul filled with terrible purpose. "No more. If working around it won't do anything, the only thing left is to move against it outright."

Alban, for once, had nothing to say.

When their reply came, the Archmaesters didn't have much to say either, save to remind him of the proper order of things. Namely that it was folly to engage an enemy without first sabotaging its support structure. Walys Flowers had never felt so stricken or hopeless. But he had the knowledge, he had a duty, and the Citadel had a vision in which he trusted with his whole heart. And in the end he'd always expected that it would come to this, deep down.

He still wanted to knife the thing whenever he laid eyes on it, if only so it wouldn't claim another innocent. Unfortunately, opportunities remained as rare as water in the desert. He also couldn't go a day without finding a new reason against the direct option. Like on finding out just why Medger Cerwyn came to Winterfell for an extended stay. The obstacle was the maester's own temper.

"You made a language for music? In one night!?"

That the demon was the only one besides lord Rickard who didn't laugh at him was somehow more infuriating than everything it had done and not done up to then.

The winter chill that beset Lady Lyarra was the darkest of all the Seven's sign's he'd lived to see.

"What a world this is, where murderers are wont to mourn their victim as much as their blood!" The maester lamented as he mixed the remedy for the chill that now masked the true illness sapping Lady Stark's life. "Will the Seven curse me for my part in changing it? Or is this their way to show approval?"

Shockingly, the demon was the one who took Lyarra's sudden sickness the worst. If he didn't know better, Walys could have sworn it was genuinely distraught. It certainly acted mad enough for it, even if the maester didn't believe for one second its grief was real. Not beyond losing its greatest enabler at any rate. Even so he might have bought it. But then the thing went and 'invented' a mechanical loom through another one of his damnable contests, ostensibly so the woman wouldn't suffer boredom! Another trade added to the list of those that would be trampled over before winter's end!

It was a mixed blessing that lord Rickard kept it so occupied, if only for the opportunities to gain further insight into the thing's reach without having to converse with it directly.

"What a sight," he mused as he watched Rickard Stark put it through weapon drills. Spears this time. "Until just moons ago you wouldn't have thought the Lord was so fond of Lord Brandon."

"Feh!" Medger Cerwyn scoffed in amusement. "Lord Stark is fond of roasted chicken. He is fond of Ice. He is fond of his bannermen. None of that even begins to compare with what he feels for the Young Lord."

Maester Walys wondered how the young man's eyes could already be failing him. Or if his own did. Even he could rarely tell what Rickard Stark was thinking, let alone feeling. The man's expression barely ever changed, even during the fair. Or the morning after his fall under the sway of the hellish creature. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time heir Cerwyn was failed by his own eyes. Or his own sense at that. The lad was all broken up over having handed out his proud steed to the demon. But he'd never even thought to ask Walys for his expertise in breeding a replacement, as he said he wanted to do. Repeatedly. Animal husbandry had been a field of study at the citadel for thousands of years. There was no one better than a maester to know how to mix, match and cultivate the best traits! But instead, the man was making noises about begging for help from the savages in the mountains. The odds of that doing anything good were about as high as the clans becoming literate before the sky fell down.

That's when he learned the demon had taken to teaching letters and numbers to the youth of Wintertown. Half of whom were the children of those very clans. Somehow, the idea that the Mountain Clans might become the most literate people in the North didn't spark any amusement anymore. Far be it from Walys to advise a demon not to waste its time but how did it even know he was thinking about that? Was it reading his mind somehow? Seven save him!

"I don't understand why you bother," Walys told the thing during its body's name day feast, which even the maester couldn't afford to miss. Lady Lyarra was the only one not in attendance, on account of her illness. "They'll not find any use in it."

The thing shrugged. The motion looked perversely natural. "Teach letters and numbers to people and maybe anatomy and medicine, then let them research history themselves and there you go! Free will. Maybe even wisdom."

"You might be overestimating them a tad."

"Am I? Man's quest to master nature began when a bunch of barbarians stuck their hands into fire and found out that it was bad and shouldn't be done ever again. Then they found that staying a safe distance away from the same fire keeps you warm without burning you, which is good. That tried and true method has continued and evolved in complexity to this very day. All hail science."

Maester Walys was acutely aware of the sheer hypocrisy that had just been uttered. He was even more aware of the knife in his sleeve pocket and the table between him and the monster. "Sometimes I wish I knew what goes on in that head of yours, lad."

"No you don't," the creature said as Walys' heart stuttered. "People who say that are the same ones who'll start complaining about boredom after the first hundred words. At least that's my experience. Look what Rodrik did after prolonged exposure." Walys couldn't… had the mask just slipped? The man's brother was easily within hearing range. "I'm sorry, Martyn I shouldn't make light of it."

"It's alright, my lord," the knight said as if he was at peace with its disrespect. "I'll take it out on you in your next flying run."

"Fair."

Gods, how many noble knights would he have to watch be damned one after another?

Sometimes, during those times when he couldn't avoid its presence – like their lessons, Father grant him patience – he tried tripping it up with pointed questions. Like that new metal that wasn't a metal. Alum. The demon admitted it was actually ash but claimed in the same breath that it was also salt, somehow.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the law of narrative inconvenience uses cryolite to manifest through," the thing said as if that was supposed to make any sense. "Knowing how much of a cunt fate tends to be in this world, odds are the rock is only a natural resource in fuck-you places like Leng or the Thousand Islands. Maybe underwater so it's completely invisible and breaks the keel of every ship that sails by. Failing that, beyond the Wall."

Maester Walys stopped everything he was doing at the sheer audacity he was hearing.

"Oh well," the creature said, looking back down at the High Valyrian test it was taking. Incidentally baring the back of its neck. The desk between them and Martyn Cassel's presence in the corner had never been a heavier burden. "I guess it's just as well. Even if I do manage to harness lightning, good luck getting the fire hot enough to melt that stuff down."

Walys, who was apparently going mad after all, went and asked why it can't just use fire magic or electromancy for whatever it was. He immediately cursed himself for slipping and-

"Do you know any?" the thing wearing Brandon Stark's face asked, seemingly guilelessly.

"… Sadly no." Or he might have already used it for its real purpose by now. "Magic is gone from this world." Oh how the Seven loved their irony!

"Hmm…"

There was just one last thing that didn't mesh with anything else. The recognition of the demon's 'contributions' to the North and its people. Or rather, the shortage thereof. Barring the New Year's Fair, Rickard Stark always made sure to blur the demon's role in the crops and trinkets and inventions and new industries that would turn the realm upside down come spring. But the demon just took it without protest. Even seemed to appreciate it. Or pretended to.

Walys asked about it during cyvasse, the only part of their old routine that remained. The one pillar that stood him in good stead with the young man, even now.

"My son asked me to. He worries about rumors harming our image down south. Far too often down there, bright children who are too smart are feared and thought witches of some kind, granted magical and unholy knowledge by some demons from the Seven Hells." Walys barely managed not to react. "I'll make sure our bannermen know the truth of the matter, but otherwise I'm willing to indulge him this."

That and far too much besides, Walys thought bleakly but didn't say.

"Where does young Brandon come up with his ideas?" Walys instead asked lady Lyarra one evening while he was treating her winter symptoms. Only those, Seven forgive him.

"My son is touched by the gods," the woman told him.

He was touched by something alright. Walys didn't even want to think about the return message the Archmaesters had sent about the printing press. The latest in the demon's 'contests' that eroded professional standards and confidences. An obvious move to erode what little foundation existed for the guilds to make it past White Harbor and finally bring the North in line with the rest of the realm on taxes and trade. Yet another means of stability that was being smothered in its cradle.

"Or so I like to think," Lady Lyarra said. Neither of her sicknesses should have made her drift off mid-speech, but it was a known effect of the mixes he was using. Not much longer now. "He claims otherwise, but he can never give me a straight answer as to why, and it wouldn't be the first thing he's wrong about."

She could tell that much but couldn't see through even its flimsy mask of early on?

"Think of the future. Think of the North and its children," Walys would tell himself in his quarters some evenings, when his silent raven was his only company. "Think of the children. The human ones, not the ones that spring from trees to play with the bodies of small boys."

It was torture to work so slowly, but it was either that or risk being found out and throwing the Starks and the North even further into the arms of the creature manipulating all of them. And losing his neck of course. Walys tried not to let the thing's existence provoke him any further. Unfortunately, it proved easier said than done. Increasingly so the more the lady weakened despite the worst of her symptoms fading thanks to his recipes. The thing was determined to persist in its fretful mummery. The creature even went as far as to start work on a 'cure' made out of mold.

Mold!

In a fit of madness, Walys actually demanded to be brought in whatever project the thing was working on. To his shock, the creature agreed even without the lord having to command it. To his even greater shock, what he found was enough to upturn everything he'd set out to do since the fair. It was enough to make him argue with the creature with lord Rickard right there to witness.

Somehow, he lost neither his head to a sword nor his respect in the lord's eyes. He didn't give himself away either. If anything, it was the opposite. But that only made his unexpected realization all the more frantic.

"It doesn't want to save her, it wants to kill her!" He hissed to Alban that same night. He was a fool, never even considering that the thing might reach a point where the lady's leash was more a hindrance than a help. The containers, the process, the distillery, the need for a myriad steps. "Over half of the poisons I know are made that way!" Could it be he'd overestimated the creature? Was it a simple demon for a simple people? Because he couldn't fathom why it'd let him inspect what it was doing unless it was sure he wouldn't understand it. "The thing even went and explained everything, Seven Hells!"

It was folly to cease the plan without input from his southern masters, but the irony that both he and a demon from the seven hells were out to murder an innocent woman for the exact same aim was not lost on him. He immediately stopped what he was doing to her and set about undoing the damage before it was too late. Then he gathered up whatever substances he had left and distilled a concentrated remedy for the real troubles ailing her. Chamomile to deaden pain and fight the chill and infection, peppermint for the spasms, fennel to relieve her womb cramps and red raspberry leaf to correct her moon cycle. Each could make for a potent tea unto themselves, but he went further. Extracted and mixed the most concentrated essence of each, then mixed them together in the proportions that would best suit her specifically. Days of collecting and pressing and distilling essences. That the process was also similar to what he'd just seen the demon working on was another irony not lost on him.

Smith be praised, it worked. The lady's true symptoms lifted. It wasn't an actual cure for her condition, but there was no such thing for consumption regardless, not even in the Citadel's whole knowledge trove. Even the books and scrolls it never doled out, for obvious reasons. Hearty food and drink were the only things that could bolster the woman, now that she'd be regaining the proper appetite for them. Food, drink, exercise and the mercy of the Gods might just see the Lady Stark still live.

For now.

Perhaps.

The day Lady Lyarra started walking about again, it was all he could do to put the proper act under the praise coming at him from all corners. Much harder was to keep up the guise upon lord Rickard's painfully earnest overture of friendship in the wake of it. The man invited him to sit on one of the demon's games. Which the lord himself chaired while all 'four' of his children played the heroes for the first time together. First Men fighting the early stages of the Andal Invasion, with the demon playing the part of Tristifer Mudd while lord Rickard controlled Armistead Vance.

Maester Walys awoke in his bedchambers the next day, head pounding from a hangover and memories muddled by the Blank Mind he fed himself after retreating to his tower the evening prior, rattled and drunk enough to inflict upon himself even that. He vaguely remembered the laughter of Winterfell's guards and councillors for having taken so long to finally turn into a proper Northman. It made him vomit everything he hadn't already upended the previous night.

He never thought he'd drink his own poison, but the reason why was still clear in his mind, even if the memory had been mercifully purged from his recollections. The little Starks playing hero through toys and numbers. Myriad attempts by them to play and act as a way to avoid the roll of the dice they seemed to shun. Lord Rickard staying faithful to history wherever they failed to make a stand. And worst of all, the speech that the demon held just before the last battle. Walys couldn't remember it anymore, thank Gods. He'd drank the Blank Mind to make himself forget those blandishments above all others. He couldn't afford any cracks in his resolve, not now. But the thing's words, they'd almost gotten him. Even with all his knowledge and insight and suspicions, they'd still almost gotten him. Whatever they'd been. The words. The speech. The dumbfounded silence at the end of it, when everyone stared at the thing as if they'd finally seen through its fell seeming. Even as Walys was on the verge of losing faith in all of his beliefs about its purpose, despite that his conviction as to its nature remained the same. Then little Eddard asked if his 'brother' could write all of that down and the thing mildly said 'I want to roll persuasion,' at which point the man cast from ice known as Rickard Stark burst out into uproarious laughter and embraced the demon along with his three children, tears flowing down his cheeks like a man who'd suddenly had a life-long crisis of faith completely healed.

Turning Rickard Stark to the Seven had been an idle side project compared to everything else. Just another step in finally aligning the North with the good of the realm.

"The difference between brilliance and insanity is success," his father once told him.

Now, even his last and smallest accomplishment had been taken away. All those years of guidance he gave the man, ruined.

Walys spent the morning all through afternoon kneeling in his chambers praying to the Seven with all the fervor he spent all his youth failing to muster. Then he prayed even more, up until the time he'd set aside to play his regular game of cyvasse with Rickard Stark in the lord's solar.

He frowned at Lady Lyarra's presence when he walked in. He glowered at the sight of the demon when he saw it was also there. Young Rickard was amused, thinking Walys was still suffering from a hangover. Somehow, the maester still played his role like he usually did afterwards. But for the first time even here, he found no stability or solace in their ritual.

Then the demon took all leave of its senses and held him at sword point.

"How long must you gaslight my father?"

This was it, Walys thought emptily as his gaze travelled along the sword's blue blade to the dark glare of the fiend holding it to his neck. This was the moment it all came to a head and how long must he what? Gas? Light? What was it talking about?

"Son," Rickard Stark said lowly. "What are you doing?"

"Father," said the creature. "Indulge me in a thought exercise. Picture the young Warden of the North, newly ascended amidst a sea of corpses. Bereft. Isolated. To say nothing of how your fight against the consumption sickness back then messed up your head. Then comes the wise maester, learned on your likes and dislikes thanks to the missives of his predecessor. Knowing just how to connect with you. Suddenly you have a friend. A mentor even! And that mentor has a host of other friends just as learned and wise as him! He teaches you. Heals you. Tends tend to us when we are sick and injured, or distraught over the illness of a parent or a child. Whenever we're weakest and most vulnerable, there he is. Sometimes he heals us, and we are duly grateful. When he fails, he consoles us in our grief, and we are grateful for that too. Out of gratitude we give him a place beneath our roof and make them privy to all our shames and secrets, a part of every council. And before too long, the ruler has become the ruled."

… The thing had the gall to throw stones first even now. It hadn't even mentioned the lady's poisoning but the emptiness in Walys' heart suddenly churned hot and boiling and he was going to-

Rickard Stark rose to his feet, walked around the desk, stopped behind the thing wearing his son's skin and grabbed Ice by the hilt. "Son. You will not break guest right in my halls." The thing twitched in place. Walys swore he felt the edge of the Valyrian steel touching his neck. "The penalty for that is death. Do not ask me to behead you. You know I'd never be able to go through with it. Then the King of Winter will be forsworn and made an oathbreaker not fit for rule or crown, and where would we be?"

That… Walys had no idea what to say to that.

Seemingly, neither did the demon. It surrendered the sword hilt and obediently went back to his seat under the nudge of its body's parent and the aghast gaze of the lady mother watching from nearby.

Then Rickard Stark pointedly didn't remove the blade from Walys' neck. Instead, he sat on the edge of his desk facing the creature.

"I do believe…" The man never turned his eyes away from the thing before him, but Ice moved to rest flat on top of the back of Walys' chair, next to his jugular. "That I'm being underestimated."