Robb Stark stared at the columns of numbers, grain stores from the Barrowlands, taxes owed by House Cerwyn, the rising cost of steel from White Harbor, until the lines blurred into one another. Across from him, Maester Luwin's voice was a steady current, low and patient, guiding him through the delicate web of trade and tribute that held the North together. Robb nodded at the right moments, asked the right questions. He listened.
But his mind kept drifting.
It was months ago now. Jon had ridden north to the Wall, and from there, a single letter had arrived, a final, clean cut before he vanished into the east. Since then, a new rhythm had taken hold of Winterfell, as slow and inevitable as the coming winter. The ache of his absence had dulled into something colder, quieter. A hollow, perhaps. Or just a space—one that had to be filled, like any other.
Robb filled it with duty. Mornings were for the yard. The sword no longer felt like a game in his hand, not since Father had started watching with the eyes of a commander rather than a father. Afternoons were for the solar, for these ledgers and lessons, for the slow grind of preparing to be Lord of Winterfell. It wasn't glorious. It wasn't even particularly satisfying. But it was necessary. And Robb Stark had always done what was necessary.
The others in his family had filled the space in their own ways.
Bran had changed first. With Jon gone, the easy closeness between them vanished too, and in its place came something harder. Bran climbed more now, higher and farther, as if trying to glimpse the edge of the world his brother had vanished into. When he fell last week, bruised but grinning, Robb had scolded him. But it hadn't stopped him. Bran was chasing something, even if he didn't know what.
Arya's grief had no such mystery. She wore hers like armor. She trained obsessively in the yard with the ridiculous little sword Jon had given her, driving it into straw men as if each were the one who had taken him away. Her temper was sharper than ever.
Even Rickon felt the difference. He had only just begun to speak in full sentences, but every now and then he would toddle through the halls calling out "Jawn," his voice confused when no one answered.
And Sansa… Sansa was just quieter. She had always kept a polite distance from Jon, but now that he was gone, something in her seemed to have gone hollow. Her talk of gallant knights and southern courts had grown more wistful, tinged with an unease she couldn't quite name.
The memory felt like a story from another life, about another boy. It was the first time Father had taken them down into the crypts. The air was cold and still, smelling of stone and damp earth. Robb had tried to be brave, the future Lord of Winterfell, but even he felt a chill at the sight of the stone kings on their thrones, their direwolves at their feet. Sansa and Arya were terrified, clinging to each other. It was then they realized Jon had vanished.
They had called his name, their small voices echoing in the oppressive dark. Suddenly, a figure had leaped out from behind the tomb of a long-dead Stark, covered from head to toe in white flour from the kitchens, wailing like a lost soul. Sansa had screamed, Arya had shrieked, and even Robb had jumped, his heart leaping into his throat. Jon had stood there, a white ghost in the torchlight, laughing so hard he couldn't stand. Robb had been angry for a moment, and then he had started laughing too, the sound echoing in the darkness, chasing the fear away. It was a simple, childish joy. A memory he held onto, a small, warm stone in the growing cold of his new reality.
For a wild, fleeting moment, a childish thought sparked in his mind: what if he had gone with him? What if he could have shed the weight of Winterfell and just been Robb, a boy on an adventure with his brother, sailing for the strange cities of the east? The thought was a brief, warm flicker of sunlight before the cold reality of his duty extinguished it. He was not just Robb. He was Robb Stark, the heir to Winterfell. His place was here. His adventures would be fought in the courts and on the battlefields of the North, not on the deck of a ship sailing for a foreign shore.
But life went on.
Winterfell was not built on grief. It was built on stone, and duty, and the quiet work of those who endured. That work had taken him and his father on a two-week journey to White Harbor, to treat with Lord Wyman Manderly. It was Robb's first true taste of the politics of the North. The journey itself was a lesson, watching the landscape change from the hard, frozen earth of the heartlands to the damp, salt-tinged air of the coast.
White Harbor was a shock. It was a true city, bustling and loud, a world away from the grim, quiet strength of Winterfell. The air smelled of fish and tar and the strange spices of the east. He had sat at his father's right hand in the Merman's Court, a vast hall that smelled of the sea, and listened to the complex negotiations over trade tariffs and ship-building rights. He watched his father, who was not just a lord, but a diplomat, his words few but heavy with the weight of centuries of Stark rule. He learned that Lord Manderly's jovial, fat exterior was a clever mask for a sharp, cunning mind. He saw the way the Lord of White Harbor would laugh and tell a bawdy story, all while his eyes, sharp and intelligent, assessed his father's every reaction.
"A lord must know his bannermen, Robb," his father had told him one evening as they looked out over the bustling port, the lights of a hundred ships like fallen stars on the black water. "Not just their sigils and their words, but their hearts. Lord Wyman is loyal, but he is also proud. He remembers that his family came to the North as exiles, and he is fiercely protective of the wealth and power they have built here. You must always respect that. The North is an old tree. The roots run deep, but only because they're bound together beneath the earth."
He was learning. He was seeing the North not as a map, but as a living, breathing thing, a complex web of loyalties, grievances, and ambitions. He was learning to be a lord.
Now, back in the solar, he stared at the ledger, the numbers from White Harbor no longer just abstract figures, but a tangible representation of the city he had just left. He straightened, pushing the drifting thoughts of his lost brother aside.
"Maester," Robb said, his voice clearer now, steadier. "Explain the tariffs from White Harbor again. I need to understand them properly."
Maester Luwin nodded, a flicker of approval in his old eyes, and the lesson resumed.
Outside, the wind howled across the battlements. But inside, in the warm quiet of the solar, Robb Stark did what all Starks had done when the snows began to fall.
He stayed. He learned. He led.
And the North moved on.