Six weeks before Jon's fifth nameday, Ethan Glover's broken seal showed beneath a sheaf of hearth pleas. Jon drew the letter free and climbed into Luwin's chair. His feet hung above the floor.
The maester found him there before breakfast, moving one finger beneath the cramped lines.
"Have the accounts begun reading themselves?" Fine creases gathered beside Luwin's grey eyes as he put down a pot of vinegar and a bundle of clean quills.
"Only badly. Is this a mast or a master?"
Luwin came round the desk. "A mast. Show me the sentence."
Jon began at the heading. Before he reached the third line, the maester had drawn up another chair.
The common letters had returned more easily than speech or walking. Once Luwin showed him their shapes, habits older than his body took hold. Yet Westerosi hands varied from upright Citadel script to cramped scratches that seemed written by a spider being dragged from ink. He missed print more than he had expected. A page of identical letters had once been so ordinary that he scarcely noticed it; now a clerk's flourish could cost him a morning. He turned Ethan's letter towards the window and began again.
Jon put one finger beneath the first line. "The east boats landed less cod than last moon. Two crews stayed ashore because the Gull's Daughter split her mast. The reeve asks for timber from the castle store. Ethan refuses because the sound lengths are set aside for roof beams. The reeve says fish will cost two pennies more on the shore basket if the boat is not mended."
"Which shore basket?"
"The clerk has not given its size."
Luwin brought over the three baskets set out for the afternoon's counting lesson: a lidded creel, a broad shallow basket and a long one carried between two men. "Which do you suppose he means?"
Jon looked at the three. "I would be guessing. Are the harbour measures different?"
"Very different." Luwin tapped the middle basket. "That is near the size they use at Eastcove."
"And at White Harbor?"
"More like this one." The maester touched the long rim. "In Gulltown a shore basket is a weight, whatever vessel the fish are carried in."
"Then Ethan's clerk must give us the measure with the price. Otherwise we cannot compare them."
"I will put that in the answer," Luwin said. He wrote four words in different hands. Jon read the first as mole, the second as meal, the third as mill. The last defeated him.
"Mule," Luwin said. "A White Harbor copyist wrote it so for thirty years, and his lord praised the beauty of the hand."
"I should have read it as mill again."
"The last stroke is the tail of the e." Luwin marked it with his quill. "Once you know this man's hand, it is less troublesome."
"Have Ethan send a page in his clerk's hand. I can learn it while we wait for the next account."
Luwin's quill stopped above the ink. "You mean to read the accounts as they come?"
Jon remembered a stores return that had claimed drinking water nobody had actually checked. The figures had been neat enough. He had learned to ask who had opened the tank. He kept his finger beneath Ethan's line.
"They concern my island."
The maester looked at him over the parchment. "You have read farther than the lessons I set you."
"There were other pages."
"I shall have to find harder ones." Luwin turned the account over and pointed to a crowded line on the back. "Try that."
The door opened hard enough to shake the latch. Robb entered backwards, dragging the wooden horse by one hind leg. Its single mended wheel thumped over the threshold.
"You promised to help with the runnel," Robb said. "Come before it fills."
"It is raining," Jon said. "The runnel has more water than it knows what to do with."
"That is why we need the dam." Robb noticed Ethan's letter. "Have you started without me?"
"Sit beside Jon. We have only begun," Luwin said.
Robb took the stool, horse tucked beneath one arm. He sounded out the heading. "East...cove."
Then he looked at Jon. "You read all of it?"
"Not quite. Luwin helped with this bit." Jon pointed to the crowded line.
"You never said you could read a whole letter," Robb said, holding the wooden horse tight against his ribs. The hurt came before accusation. Jon had expected demands for stories, not the look of a brother discovering a door opened while he slept.
"I only found the letter this morning. Come and look."
"We are meant to learn together."
"Then bring your stool closer," Luwin said.
Robb dragged the stool beside Jon's. "Have you read the Rat Cook?"
"No. Old Nan tells it better."
Robb's shoulders loosened. "Then you do not know everything."
"There is plenty I have not read."
"Then save some for me."
Luwin sent for bread, white cheese, three apples and a sack of counting beans. Rain filled the runnel without its dam.
* * *
Eddard's answer to Jon's request for island accounts was a morning on horseback. Moth waited in the lower yard beneath a child's saddle. The shaggy pony had a brown coat everywhere except his muzzle, which age had dusted grey, and a habit of swelling his belly while Hullen tightened the girth.
"He is doing it now," Jon said.
Hullen paused. "Doing what, my lord?"
"Holding his breath. Uncle Arthur says loosen the strap, walk him, and try again." Moth rolled one black eye towards Jon.
"Ser Arthur has been telling stable secrets," Hullen said. He loosened the girth, led the pony six paces and tightened it by another hole. Moth breathed out in disgust. "There. Betrayed by his own lungs."
Robb rode a red pony called Apple, chosen less for colour than for her passion for stolen fruit. Eddard mounted his grey courser beside them. He wore a plain brown cloak with a small silver direwolf at the shoulder; Hullen and three guards followed far enough back to leave father and sons room to speak.
They passed out through the outer gate at a walk. The morning was cold but clear. Rain had polished every roof in the winter town, and puddles held pieces of blue sky. Smoke from turf fires lay low between the houses. Moth's saddle moved beneath Jon with each short stride, warming the inside of his legs and reminding him that understanding a gait did not spare the body from soreness.
"Why are we riding to the mill?" Robb asked.
"Because Luwin says both of you can count carts," Eddard said.
"I can count those," Robb said.
"Then you can help me," Eddard said.
At the mill field, six wagons stood axle-deep in soft ground. Two carried sacks of barley, one oats and three split firewood. The miller claimed the barley sacks were the same measure used at Winterfell. Vayon Poole's clerk claimed the barley sacks were light.
"How do we learn which man has the right of it?" Eddard asked. His grey courser stood fetlock-deep in mud while the two accused men waited beside the wagons.
"Open several sacks, some from each barley cart," Jon said. "If your steward chooses only one, he may choose the shortest and call it proof."
Robb shook his head. "Make them put the sacks down first. We can choose the ones at the bottom too."
The miller looked offended. "My lord, I have never—"
Eddard lifted one hand from the reins. He waited until the miller's protest had ceased and Poole's man had lowered his eyes. "My son is not accusing you. He is learning how an accusation might be tested. Continue, Robb."
Robb slid from Apple before Hullen could help and pointed at the lower sacks. "Those as well."
"Did they get wet on the road?" Jon asked. He pressed a hand against a sack near the wheel.
"Does that make them weigh more?" Robb asked.
"Aye, young lord. And spoil, if you leave them." The miller undid a sack and let Jon feel the dry grain beneath its folds. "These travelled covered."
Jon dismounted more carefully. Both thighs protested when his boots met earth. "Weigh them, then. And let us see the weights you both used."
"Against whose measure?" Eddard asked. "They disagree about that already."
Jon looked at the man. Flour sat white in the lines beside his nose. His wool coat had been patched with green cloth at one elbow. He watched Eddard, not the boys.
"Yours. Bring the standard from Winterfell and try both sets against it, here where they can watch."
The miller nodded slowly. "That would show true, my lord."
Eddard had Mikken's standard iron brought from Winterfell. One of the miller's weights proved light, worn smooth along its base through years of use rather than filed for fraud. Three sacks were short. Two were over. The clerk had entered the three short sacks but given no credit for the two that were heavy.
"Who lied?" Eddard asked while men repacked the opened barley and stamped the spilled kernels deeper into the mud.
"He did not count the heavy ones," Robb said, pointing at the clerk. The man's face reddened.
Jon rubbed barley dust between his fingers. "The miller's weight is worn. That need not be theft. But the whole delivery must be counted, not only the short sacks."
"And the difference?" Eddard asked. "Someone must bear it."
Jon considered making the miller replace every short handful, then looked at the worn iron again. The next delivery would be easier to judge with a true weight. Beside them grain was trickling through a torn seam. Robb caught the sack with both hands. "It is spilling."
Eddard called a carter to take the sack. "Winterfell takes this delivery as it stands. The miller will replace the worn weight before the next, and Poole's clerk will enter the whole count. We will use the same measure at both ends."
The miller nodded. Poole's clerk bent over his tablet. While they repacked the sacks, Mikken's apprentice took the worn weight to have it checked against the standard.
"You asked to see the weights," Eddard said to Jon as they went back to the horses. "That was well done." Jon looked up at him, warmed by the praise.
"I want to see Ethan's next account," Jon said. "The ships as well as the grain."
"Read it with Luwin. Bring me what you do not understand."
"Does that include me?" Robb asked. "Or may I have the ships without the barley?"
"Ask the sailors," Eddard said. "I doubt they sail far without breakfast."
Jon watched his father's hands upon the reins. Eddard rode without display, hips easy in the saddle, giving the grey horse room to choose firmer ground. He smelled of leather and pine smoke. When Apple stole a withered crabapple from a cart he laughed, then reached down to steady Moth as the pony shied from a flapping blue cloth.
Jon watched the gloved hand return to the reins. He could remember this man kneeling in King's Landing, confessing to save his daughter, and a sword falling while the crowd watched. Ned must have thought he was protecting his family then too.
He urged Moth closer. "If Robert calls you south again, will you go?"
Eddard looked down. "Has someone told you he means to?"
"No." Jon watched his father's hands upon the reins. "I would rather you stayed here."
Eddard rode a little way without answering. "So would Lady Catelyn. But if the king has need of me, I must hear him."
"Take your own men."
"I always do."
Eddard reached across the narrow space and rested one gloved hand on his hood. "Hold the reins lower. Moth has been carrying himself while you think."
At supper, Luwin placed a heel of bread between the boys and gave Robb twelve white beans, Jon twelve black. Sansa sat upon a blanket near the fire attempting to eat a carved wolf's tail.
"Lord Manderly sends eight barley carts," Luwin said. "Lord Cerwyn sends five. Three Manderly carts are delayed. A Cerwyn wheel breaks and another wagon loses its axle. How many reach Winterfell?"
Jon moved eight beans. Robb moved nine, then returned one. "Eight," Jon said, at the same instant Robb declared nine. "You have only eight beans before you."
Robb took one from Jon's black row and put it beside his eight. "We can mend this one."
"How?" Luwin asked.
"Take a wheel from the cart with the broken axle." Robb put two beans together. "That one still has wheels."
"It must fit the other axle," Jon said.
"They both came from Lord Cerwyn." Robb looked at Luwin. "Do they fit?"
"Let us say they do," Luwin answered. "Move the repaired cart. What remains behind?"
"One cart and its barley." Robb moved the ninth bean. Jon gathered the beans for the delayed wagons into another row. The maester made them count both rows before he allowed the bear into the lesson.
Robb grinned and fed the stolen black bean to the wooden bear he had added to the count. Later, he told Catelyn how he saved the grain, fought three raiders and fed a bear with Jon's army. Sansa chose that moment to fling mashed turnip across the table. It struck Uncle Arthur's black sleeve. Everyone stopped. Arthur studied the pale smear, wiped it up with bread and ate it. Robb added a giant to his battle before anyone could object.
* * *
After breakfast the next morning, Luwin brought Ethan's account to the solar. Robb trailed him with the counting beans. He had lost two beneath the table and was trying to make the remaining handful sound like a full sack.
Jon read while Eddard listened. The cramped word that had defeated him the day before came easily now. When he finished, his father asked what Ethan ought to do about the mast.
"Buy one," Jon said. "He cannot mend the roofs if he gives away the timber set aside for them. Ask White Harbor what a sound mast costs and send the price to Ethan."
"With the cost of carrying it," Catelyn said from her chair by the fire.
Jon nodded. "With the freight."
Eddard looked at Luwin. "Give him the common accounts. I will hear his questions after lessons."
Robb set down his beans. "Both of us."
Catelyn reached to smooth the hair out of Robb's eyes. In the firelight its red-brown was almost the colour of the braid over her shoulder, and the blue eyes lifted to hers without hesitation. "You have your own letters to learn. Do not skip them because Jon reads quickly."
"We can read together."
"When yours are finished." She drew him beside her to look at the page Luwin had brought. Jon stood with Ethan's letter in both hands, waiting. Eddard was already asking the maester about another raven.
Arthur touched Jon's shoulder. "Come. Read the ship part to me."
In the gallery Jon opened the sheet again. He wanted to ask whether Ethan had enough ships to protect the fishing boats. Arthur waited while he found the heading, making no attempt to hurry him.
"You know how badly I read those merchants' hands," the knight said.
"You read letters from kings."
"Some. This man appears to have written with a crab."
Jon bent over the page and began. By the time they reached the stair, Robb had escaped the solar and come running after them with the last of the beans.
Within a moon Luwin's low shelf held histories, harbour customs, a bestiary and a household remedy book crossed through wherever it prescribed dung. Ethan's copied accounts joined them. The boys learned the island through cod baskets, roof beams, a quay ladder torn loose by the sea and soldiers asking for arrears. The two hundred Northmen Eddard had given Ethan to guard Jon's island needed beds apart from the old garrison, whose men had already claimed the driest rooms. Robb preferred any page with an armed boat. Jon kept going back to the quay ladder; a fisherman had broken his leg there before the answer from Winterfell arrived.
In the latest account, Ethan had also asked what name the island should put upon its lord.
* * *
Luwin had five small shield-shaped boards painted for the boys to examine. Three sticks of sealing wax and a piece of black sailcloth lay beside them. Ethan's letter was short. Old store tags bore dragons, crowned stags, direwolves or no mark at all. Men swearing to Jon needed a name that belonged to him and a badge they could cut into wood, stamp in wax and sew upon a cloak without borrowing another house. Robb claimed the painted shields before Luwin finished reading.
"This one," Robb said, holding up a black wolf upon red stone. "Give it blue eyes and no one will mistake it for mine."
Jon pushed it aside. "It still looks like Winterfell. I want arms of my own."
Robb thought about that. "Then take Dawn." The second shield showed a white sword beneath a falling star. Arthur stood beyond the table in a dark blue tunic, hands clasped behind him.
"Would Starfall allow it?" Jon asked.
"Lord Ulrick might allow it," Arthur said.
"Because it makes people look at my mother?"
Arthur's face held still. "People would mistake your men for his. Better that they know you at once."
Jon looked at the white sword. Ashara's name was the one the household gave him, yet everything he remembered of his beginning pointed towards another woman. He had been helpless then, scarcely able to separate a voice from a face. He would not force Arthur to choose between telling him and lying here, with Catelyn sewing beside the fire.
"Not the star," he said. Robb offered a dragon-headed ship next. Eddard and Catelyn refused before Luwin had turned it upright.
"You did not even look," Robb complained. "It has a ship for the island and a dragon because the island is called Dragonstone."
"His Grace might look too closely," Catelyn said.
Robb tried a black stag, Blackfish, Blackstone and Blackwolf in quick succession. Eddard said the stag would amuse Robert only until the wine left him; Catelyn raised one brow for her uncle; Arthur rejected anything that sounded near Blackfyre.
"And no wolf," Jon repeated, before Robb could begin again with Blackdragon.
Robb sighed at a realm that had squandered every good name before he was born. The fifth shield had been quartered into black, red, white and purple, with a crown, a star, a wolf and a little grey castle fighting for room. It looked like a pie dropped face-down upon a painted board. Jon turned it over. Lampblack from the unfinished back stained his thumb.
The bare black asked nothing from Winterfell, Starfall or old Valyria. It was cliff after rain, coal beneath ash, Uncle Arthur's night cloak, Benjen riding through the gate, and the sea around an island Jon had never seen.
"Black," he said. "Jon Black. Nothing after it."
Robb frowned at the empty reverse. "Black what?"
Luwin spoke it aloud. The name did not sing. Jon liked it better for that. "And what arms will this plain name bear when Ethan must stamp a chest or put men beneath a banner?" Eddard asked.
Jon held up the unpainted back. "A plain black field."
"There is nothing on it," Robb said. "Not even a ship?"
"I want it black," Jon said.
Arthur studied the plain board. "Sable, uncharged."
Jon rubbed the lampblack from his thumb onto his apron and nodded.
Catelyn set down her needle. "His Grace must grant the name."
"Then send him this."
"As a suggestion," Catelyn said.
"I will send Black to Robert," Eddard said. "Until his answer comes, you are still Jon Snow."
Jon looked at the empty field once more before handing it to Luwin.
Robb dragged one damp finger through the lampblack and drew a crooked wolf on the plain field. "You may borrow half of mine."
Jon caught his wrist before the beast gained a tail. "No."
Robert's answer came four days before the nameday. His clerk used half a page to make Jon Black without making him lawful, Stark or royal. Beneath the seal, Robert added in his own broad hand: A black name for the black rock. Better than Snow.
"I can scarcely read his hand," Jon said, tracing Robert's broad letters.
"He has clerks to spare us that most days," Luwin said.
Wylla read Robert's line twice before handing it back to Luwin. She sewed a square of plain black wool upon Jon's best tunic and edged it in smoke-grey so it did not vanish into the cloth.
"It will show every speck of flour in the castle," she complained.
"Bakers wear white."
"Bakers begin white. Visit one after dusk."
Before dawn on the fifth nameday, Robb dropped a carved dragon upon Jon's stomach. One wing was black, the other red, and its four legs were too short to let it stand.
"It is also a horse," Robb explained.
Jon turned it over. "It is bad at both."
"You can pretend," Robb said.
That was better than the carving. Jon placed it beside the bed, where its thick head pulled it forward. Breakfast was oatcakes browned in bacon fat, soft eggs, smoked trout and one small honey tart with five hazelnuts pressed into the crust. Sansa stole a nut before anyone counted. Robb accused her of treason. Catelyn made Jon divide his tart with the offender.
"Does a lord lose his breakfast on the day he is named?" Jon asked.
"A lord with a sister does," Eddard said. "It is among the oldest laws."
After the meal the household gathered in the small hall. No new hangings disguised Winterfell's grey walls. Robert had founded a house, not sent a coronation north. Vayon Poole stood with the household keys at his belt. Rodrik Cassel, Jory, Hullen, Mikken and the senior servants formed a half circle before the dais. Wylla held Sansa. Arthur waited behind Jon's right shoulder with Dawn sheathed and a deep violet cloak over black wool.
Eddard placed the king's sheet upon the board. "The king gave my son Dragonstone before the boy could hold up his own head. Today the king has given him a name to bear there."
He looked down at Jon. Not at the paper. "Speak it."
Jon's feet did not reach the floor. He braced them upon the chair rung. "Jon Black of House Black, Lord of Dragonstone."
"And what will you do with that name?" Eddard asked.
This was no line Luwin had taught him. Jon looked at the faces below: men and women belonging to Winterfell, not him; people upon a black island known only through letters; children not yet born who might carry the name after him.
"Keep Dragonstone. See that the people there have food and protection."
Eddard's eyes warmed. "A beginning."
Luwin read what the hall needed to hear: Robert confirmed Jon's new house, left him natural-born, and continued Eddard's keeping of Dragonstone until Jon came of age. The parchment lay open beneath Robert's seal while the household listened.
Vayon Poole bowed first. "Lord Black."
Rodrik and Jory followed. Hullen bent his head. Mikken looked as if a title mattered less than whether its owner returned borrowed tools. Arthur came last. He passed the royal letter and went to one knee. Before the hall he was Ashara Dayne's brother, Jon's uncle and sworn shield. To Eddard and Wylla, the words recalled the oath he had made beside Lyanna's bed.
"I am Arthur Dayne," he said. "Your mother's brother, and your sword so long as I draw breath. I will guard your life, teach you what I know, and tell you when your courage outruns your sense."
Robb whispered, "Often," and earned Catelyn's look.
Jon met Arthur's pale eyes. The man had held him at Lyanna's deathbed. Whether the words were sworn to Jon or Aemon, Arthur had already kept them for five years. "Rise, Uncle Arthur."
Arthur stood. His hand rested for one heartbeat over his heart rather than Dawn's hilt. Eddard gave Jon a little bronze matrix cut in King's Landing. Letters circled a plain centre. The handle had been made for a grown man's fist. Jon pressed it into warm black wax and rocked, leaving half the name shallow.
"Again," he said.
Mikken stepped forward. "Bear down with both hands, my lord. I will make a wider grip for it."
He steadied the handle while Jon pressed it squarely into fresh wax. Robb asked whether he might use it next.
"When you have borrowed the island too," Jon said.
"Only until dinner."
Eddard examined the sound impression and laid it beside Ethan's letter. "Send this with our answer."
When the witnesses were gone, Eddard led Jon to the stable. Moth stood there wearing a new saddle blanket of plain black wool.
"Is the pony mine as well as the blanket?" Jon asked, already knowing Hullen would object from half the castle away.
"The blanket. Hullen informs me the pony still belongs to Winterfell, whatever Robb claims."
Jon ran his palm over the thick weave. "It looks strange without a wolf."
"You chose your own arms." Eddard watched him smooth the cloth. "Does that trouble you?"
Jon did not answer at once. Eddard knelt in the straw beside him. "The name does not put you outside this house. You remain my son and Robb's brother."
"But I shall have to leave."
"Not yet. And you will always have a place here."
"Uncle Arthur says a lord must live among his people."
Eddard looked towards the door. "He is right about that."
"Then will you come and see me?"
"Of course I will."
Jon touched the unmarked cloth again. "Ride with me now?"
"Twice around the yard. It is your nameday, so I may be persuaded into a third if Robb counts loudly enough."
They rode until Moth's breath smoked and Jon's thighs ached. Robb followed upon Apple, shouting that two circuits meant three because lords counted differently on namedays. Eddard let him have the third.
* * *
House Black's first summons came from a jammed bell rope. Rain returned the morning after the nameday. It darkened roofs, filled wheel ruts and swelled oak doors in their frames. The hour bell hung beneath a little peaked roof above the east gate. It was not the great bronze voice used for attack, only an old green bell whose strokes divided watches, meals and labour. Pate the bellman had rung it longer than this body had lived. Robb claimed Pate began before the Wall went up. Pate claimed the Wall's bellman had once been his apprentice.
The wet rope stuck in its iron guide. Pate braced one foot against the parapet and hauled. The hemp released all at once. He fell backwards, sent two uneven strokes across the yard and dropped the sandglass hidden beneath his coat. It burst on the stair. Pale sand ran with rainwater between the stones. Jon and Robb heard the second stroke from the covered bridge.
"Dinner," Robb said.
A shout came from the stair. Jon turned towards it.
Two guards ran up and found Pate on the stair. They brought him down with blood over one brow and his left elbow swelling. A scullion hurrying to fetch the maester collided with a porter; his pot survived, but the onions rolled across the yard. Dinner waited while the kitchen boys helped gather them. By the time Luwin had washed Pate's cut, Jon and Robb were standing near the brazier, and the broken glass lay on a cloth beside him.
"A matched pair from Oldtown," Pate mourned. "Seven years I have used them. Now I have one left, and I can scarcely turn it with this arm."
"Your apprentice can do that while your arm mends," Luwin said, settling the sling.
Jon examined the surviving glass. Sand fell through the narrow waist in a pale, steady thread. "Who turns the glass at every emptying, while you eat or sleep or nurse that arm?" Jon asked.
"I turn it when I am here, my lord. The watch sends a man when I am not." Pate shifted his bound arm. "Sometimes they forget, and we ring late."
Robb bit into an onion rescued from the floor. His nose wrinkled, tears sprang to his eyes, and he kept chewing while Jon watched, unwilling to surrender the prize he had rescued.
"A weight could turn a wheel for us," Jon said. "Then the wheel could work the bell."
Pate looked from the glass to the rope. "Would the stone not fall all at once, my lord?"
Robb looked up from his onion. "It would hit him."
"Not if it hangs inside a case," Jon said. "No one should stand beneath it."
"And who pulls it up again?" Pate asked.
"It must be wound up," Jon said. "But not at every stroke."
Jon could almost see the missing machine. A hanging stone turned a toothed wheel. A catch released one tooth, then another, keeping the fall slow. He could recall the motion, though not the dimensions. The work was clear enough: the weight must descend slowly, the teeth must be released one at a time, and a broken catch must not let stone or iron strike a man.
He held the glass beside the rope. "If the stone turns a wheel slowly, the wheel can let the hammer fall."
"How do you keep it slow?" Luwin asked.
"Two catches on a rocking bar. One holds while the other lets a tooth pass." Jon traced the motion in the air.
"And what rocks the bar?"
"The teeth push it each way. Weights on the bar resist them." Jon put down the glass. "I need to draw it. A small one first, on a bench."
Pate eased back against his chair while Luwin tucked the loose end of the bandage.
"Have you seen such a thing at the Citadel?" Jon asked Luwin.
"No. Water clocks and sandglasses, but nothing worked by a weight in that manner."
Jon took a piece of charcoal from beside the brazier.
"Then I shall need Woods and Mikken."
Luwin drew a sheet of parchment towards him. "Show them the drawing. They will tell you what they can make."
They went first to the kitchens. The roasting jack used a hanging stone to turn a spit above the coals. Its cord unwound from a wooden drum. A catch held the drum still while the kitchen boy unhooked the weight for winding. Grease shone on the teeth; heat had warped two. Jon halted beyond the reach of spit and flame.
Tobben caught him looking and stepped aside so he could see. "The catch is behind the drum, my lord. I can show you better when dinner is off the spit."
Jon crouched where he could see the drum without approaching the fire. "Show me how you stop it for winding."
Tobben used the long fork as a pointer. "That catch drops into the teeth. We lift it clear when the weight is hooked back on. Mind the grease—it spits."
In the smithy, Mikken showed them the treadle driving his grindstone. At the eastern portcullis, men, rope and counterweight lifted a wall of oak, but nothing measured how quickly. Beyond the gate the mill wheel turned so long as water ran. The miller judged its labour by meal under the stones, not by counting teeth. Back in Luwin's room, Robb stacked old writing boards into a fort while Jon drew.
Luwin watched the charcoal travel across the parchment. "Is this the bar?"
"Aye. These two pieces catch the teeth." Jon drew them on opposite sides of the wheel.
Robb put the bent tooth Tobben had given him beside the drawing. "Like this?"
"Smaller. And not bent."
Robb tried to straighten it with his thumb until Luwin took it away.
Jon called for Luwin's copper dividers and a straight rule. His hand was too small to hold the hinge steady while opening the legs, so Luwin set the width at Jon's direction. Jon fixed one point in the board, turned the other around it and divided the rim first into quarters, then into twenty-four equal places.
Robb leaned over the board. "It is round. Where are the teeth?"
"Here." Jon darkened a mark, then another. "Master Woods can cut them."
"Will he let me help?" Robb asked.
"Ask him. First move your fingers." Jon moved his hand, kept the dividers steady while Luwin held the hinge, and marked the next space.
Robb moved his hand and watched the next space take shape.
Outside, Pate's apprentice rang the next hour by hand. One bronze note crossed the rain-dark yard, late enough that the kitchens had already begun serving. Jon counted until the sound died. Lampblack from House Black's first seal and charcoal from its first design marked the same sleeve.