Mae's cottage stood the same as we left it. Maybe a little more crooked.
She stood at the doorway, arms folded. Jory was just behind her, half-smirking, half-relieved.
"You didn't die," Mae said flatly.
"No," I said, hopping down from the cart.
She stepped aside and let us in with a mutter. The familiar scent of the place, smoke and lizard meat, clung to the air like an old coat. I should've hated it. But I didn't.
That night passed quietly. Jory snored in the corner, and Mae sat by the fire mending something that didn't look mendable. I watched the flames and thought of Winterfell, of the four boys and their uncertain fates, and of Lord Rickard Stark's eyes when he asked me what justice meant.
By morning, Harwin arrived. He'd ridden ahead of the last wagons, just to make sure we made it home.
He sat beside me outside Mae's cottage, nursing a tin cup of watered ale.
"You've seen more in a week than most do in a year," he said. "What happens now?"
I didn't answer immediately.
What now? I had swampberries and mossy stone, barrels of ale, and a few piles of lizard meat. Useless things. Or at least, I thought they were.
"I start small," I said finally.
Harwin gave a faint nod, then added, "That's how most things worth doing begin."
We didn't get to linger long. Two of the caravan guards found us not long after—Thom and Brekk, both familiar faces from the run up North. Their boots were still caked in road mud.
"There's a village near the marsh road," Thom said. "Dilapidated. No real defenses. Just old folk and some young'uns. Haven't eaten right in days."
Brekk crossed his arms. "Cold's creeping in. If no one helps 'em soon, they won't last the season."
I felt that familiar twist in my gut. I wasn't a hero. I wasn't a lord. I didn't even know how to build a fire properly most days. But I had food. Not good food, but food that filled the belly. I had more stone slabs than I'd ever use. I had coins. I had time.
"Let's go," I said.
The village was even worse than described. It sat on the edge of a drying creek, its paths barely more than muck. Roofs sagged under rot, and the eyes that watched us were wide, wary, and hungry.
We didn't announce ourselves. We just passed out food—swampberries, jerky, two casks of ale. Some of the old folk cried. The children didn't speak.
One of them, a boy maybe ten or eleven, followed me as we left the makeshift square. Thin arms, barefoot, a tunic two sizes too big.
"What's your name?" I asked him.
"Wyll," he muttered.
"You live here?"
He nodded.
"Where are the rest?" Harwin asked.
"Gone," Wyll said. "Some to work. Some went looking for food. Some... didn't come back."
He said it without emotion, like the truth was too old to hurt anymore.
Even if I fed them now, what next? The food would run out. The cold would come. They needed more than pity.
"I'll pay for help," I said aloud. "Anyone who can work. We'll build something. A house with a storage room. Might take months, but it's a start."
Wyll looked up at me, eyes cautious. "You mean it?"
"I do."
Back in Bogwater, I went to the small records shed behind Mae's hut. Garlen, the old village head, was tending to a cracked jar of dried herbs.
"You need something?" he asked.
"Ink. Quills. Papyrus if you've got it."
He raised a brow. "Gonna write poetry?"
"Records," I said. "Names. Tasks. Pay. I want to know who's doing what. Keep it all honest."
He handed over what little he had: a small bottle of thick ink, three worn quills, and a few rolls of yellowed papyrus.
I held them like they were gold.
A boy named Wyll. A village with no name. A pile of mossy stone and a crate of swampberries. It wasn't much.
But maybe it was enough to begin.