After a while longer in the interrogation room, once it was clear that Reek had been wrung of every last drop of useful information, Qyburn gathered the written testimony and carried it upstairs to Gendry's chamber.
Gendry had been waiting in the quiet room for some time.
"Did he tell you everything?" Gendry asked.
"Yes, my lord. Reek was remarkably forthcoming," Qyburn replied, setting the folded pages on the table. "He is not a formal retainer of House Bolton. His loyalty to Ramsay is entirely personal, and therefore, his discretion was entirely personal as well. Once that bond was... tested... he spoke freely."
"And the Bolton household guards?"
"Not worth the effort. They are Roose's men to the bone. They know nothing of the boy's private activities, and they will tell us nothing regardless. Lord Roose selects his men well. They serve the father, not the bastard."
Gendry nodded. These men were Roose Bolton—silent, cold, professional. They had nothing to do with Ramsay's private amusements.
"Tell me about Ramsay's good deeds," Gendry said.
"Kinslaying, murder, rape, and flaying," Qyburn said, with the measured cadence of a man reciting a shopping list. "Each count documented in the testimony." He slid the written pages across the table.
Gendry read them. The contents were genuinely disturbing, even by the brutal standards of a man who had grown up in the alleys of King's Landing. Roose Bolton was a cold, pitiless lord, but his bastard son was something of a different species of cruelty entirely.
Flaying had been the traditional practice of House Bolton for thousands of years. It had been formally outlawed for centuries. Ramsay's obsession with it was rooted not in tradition but in pathology—his desperate, consuming need to assert the Bolton name he had no legal right to carry.
"First night rights, murder, a mill-worker killed for the crime of marrying without his lord's permission," Gendry said quietly. "The Northmen live beyond the reach of law."
He thought of Roose Bolton cutting out a man's tongue to prevent him reaching Winterfell. He thought of the Bolton household's reputation among the smallfolk of the Weeping Water. Lord Stark's honor, it seemed, did not extend to every corner of his domain.
"The North is vast and sparsely populated," Qyburn observed, folding his hands. "The King's justice travels slowly to the far corners of the realm. House Bolton and House Umber likely share similar customs. House Stark looks away, as they must. It is the same in Dorne. Ancient customs resist change."
There was a quiet, uncomfortable truth in that. Centrifugal force was natural in a realm as large as the North. Independence had always been the northern tradition. Without dragons to enforce unity from above, local lords did as they pleased, and the smallfolk paid for it.
"Does a lord's life truly count for more than his servant's?" Gendry murmured, more to himself than to Qyburn. "There should be one king, one law, one standard of justice."
Feudalism was a machine that ground the smallfolk to dust. Lords and high-born commanders—they trampled the rights of those beneath them, and the great wars that reshaped kingdoms always spilled the most blood on those who had the least say in them. Even House Stark, with its celebrated honor, applied that honor selectively. Ned Stark was not a hypocrite, precisely—he was a great lord operating within a great lord's framework—but the framework itself was rotten.
"Have Reek tell his full story clearly one final time. Then ensure he has no reason to continue living," Gendry said. The sentence was delivered without heat or relish; it was simply a logistics problem. A man like Reek, complicit in everything Ramsay had done, had forfeited his claim to the world's patience.
"As you command."
"As for Ramsay—I will visit our guest myself." Gendry rose and walked with Qyburn to Ramsay's chamber. A living Ramsay was a greater liability to House Bolton than a dead one; the boy was a relentless generator of enemies and scandals. Roose Bolton had almost certainly calculated that Gendry would understand this, and had sent the boy across the sea half-hoping the problem would solve itself. But killing him outright was too clean.
Gendry pushed open the door. The Unsullied filed in behind him, bronze-spiked helms catching the afternoon light.
Ramsay looked up. His pale, cold eyes—the one feature that genuinely resembled his father—fixed on Gendry with open, burning hatred.
The Bolton bastard was a physically unimpressive sight. Thick through the body, with sloping shoulders and a soft gut straining against his belt. His lips were heavy, almost grotesque. His black hair hung limp and damp against his blotchy pink skin. He looked like a man assembled from mismatched parts.
"You," Ramsay said. His voice had lost its attempted lordliness. "What do you want now?"
The tall Unsullied. The tall Gendry. In the presence of these men, Ramsay felt very small. His power came from walls and dogs and the terror of the Dreadfort's name. Without those walls, he was a frightened, soft boy in a room he did not control.
"Would you like to hear what your faithful servant had to say?" Gendry asked pleasantly.
Ramsay's thick lips pressed together. His eyes said everything.
"Kinslaying, murder, rape, and flaying. Ramsay Snow." Gendry said each word clearly, letting each one land like a stone dropped into still water. "Any one of those would be sufficient reason to take your head."
"Where is my Reek?" Ramsay asked, his voice hollowed out. He had known the moment the question was asked that it was already too late. He did not care about his own safety; he cared about Reek. And what he hated most—more than the slaps, more than the cold bath, more than all of it—was that his bastard name had been spoken again.
"Reek will be executed by my order," Gendry said.
Ramsay moved without thinking. He snatched the wooden stool from beside the wall and hurled himself forward, swinging it at Gendry's head. He had no training. His fighting style was the brawling of a man who had always had dogs and numbers on his side.
Crack. Gendry stepped aside without urgency and drove his boot into Ramsay's abdomen with devastating efficiency. Ramsay folded and hit the floor hard, the stool clattering away. In strength, in speed, in every measurable quality, Ramsay was simply outclassed.
"I will flay you," Ramsay snarled from the floor, his face purple. "I will flay you alive, bastard."
Two Unsullied placed him face-down on the stone, one boot pressing firmly on each of his hands. Ramsay's scream was something between fury and an animal sound of pain. His pale eyes fixed on Gendry's boots, burning and helpless.
"Here is what will happen," Gendry said, standing over him. "You are free to attempt to escape this courtyard. Any time you like. If my men catch you, you will be punished. Then you will be returned to this room with food and medicine." He paused. "Begin whenever you are ready."
He left. The Unsullied filed out behind him.
In the corridor, Gendry issued his instructions quietly. "Keep the perimeter soft. Let him think he can get out. Every time he tries, beat him—not too badly—and bring him back."
"As you command."
The room fell silent. Even the Unsullied's shadows seemed to have evaporated. Ramsay lay on the floor, breathing hard, staring at the ceiling.
Is this real?
He waited until the pain in his stomach ebbed from blinding to merely terrible. Then he carefully pushed himself to his feet and pressed his ear against the door. Nothing. He pushed it open.
The corridor was empty. The courtyard beyond was quiet in the late afternoon light.
Ramsay's eyes filled with tears he would never have permitted anyone to see. He pushed through the outer door and ran.
He did not make it twenty yards before two Unsullied appeared from the gatehouse entrance, moving with the unhurried efficiency of men who had been waiting for exactly this. They dragged him back across the courtyard by his collar, Ramsay kicking and snarling all the way, and deposited him on the floor of his room.
The beating was methodical. Sword pommel against the shoulders. Shield rim against the ribs. Hard, precise, designed to cause maximum pain with minimum damage. Ramsay was not going to die. He was going to hurt, and then he was going to eat the food they left him and heal, and then he was going to try again.
He tried again.
The second time was worse. He had climbed halfway up the courtyard wall before they pulled him down.
The third time, he attempted to bribe two Unsullied with the last of his gold dragons. They looked at the coins, looked at each other, and broke his nose.
The fourth time he made it to the outer gate, fingers already gripping the iron bar of the bolt, before a shield rim took him in the back of the knees.
Each time, they returned him to the room. Each time, food and Myrish fire-paste were left inside the door. Each time, the cycle began again with the merciless patience of water wearing down stone.
On the second day, Ramsay stopped eating. He pushed the food to the far corner and crouched against the wall, shaking. He was terrified that eating meant accepting this, meant agreeing to survive, meant playing by their rules. He wanted to starve rather than give them that.
By the third day, hunger broke the resolution.
He wept openly by the fourth day, and was ashamed of it, and then too exhausted to be ashamed.
He missed the Dreadfort with an intensity that was almost physical. He missed his dogs by name. He missed his men. He missed the cold, familiar smell of the kennels, and the absolute certainty that in that world he was the most dangerous thing present.
The Unsullied never spoke to him. They did not taunt him or explain themselves or express any satisfaction. They simply arrived, administered the consequence, and left. There was no cruelty in it. That was perhaps the worst part: it was not personal. To them, he was a logistical problem being managed.
I am fish on a hook, Ramsay thought, during the long dark hours of the fifth night. No matter where I swim, the line just pulls me back.
He curled in the corner and stayed there. He did not try the door again. He did not look at the window.
The door opened.
Gendry stepped inside. He looked at the figure huddled in the corner—the lank black hair plastered against the blotchy face, the pale eyes dull and red-rimmed, the thick lips cracked and trembling. The Bolton bastard, stripped of everything that made him dangerous.
"Who are you?" Gendry asked.
"Ramsay." The voice was barely a whisper. "I am Ramsay Snow." His face crumpled entirely. The Bolton eyes, those pieces of dirty ice, filled with tears that ran freely down his blotchy cheeks. "I am Ramsay Snow, and I am no one."
He looked at Gendry the way a drowning man looks at a cliff face—something so far above him it had ceased to be a person and become simply the shape of his own powerlessness.
"Do you still want to run, Ramsay?"
"No." The word came out cracked and absolute. "I will never run again. I will never leave. I swear it. I swear it on whatever gods you want." He pressed himself smaller into the corner, unable to meet Gendry's eyes. "Please. Please stop."
"Power is power, Ramsay," Gendry said quietly. "What I do not give you, you cannot take. That is the only law that matters."
Ramsay actually began to bend toward Gendry's boots. Gendry stepped back, preventing it.
"Write down everything you have done," Gendry said. He placed a quill and several sheets of parchment on the floor, just inside the door. "Every name. Every act. Everything."
"Yes, my lord Gendry." Ramsay crawled forward and took the quill in trembling fingers. He knew what this meant. If the document ever reached Roose Bolton's hands, his father would disown him without a second thought. But he could not stop himself. He was afraid, truly and completely afraid, in a way he had not been since he was a small, ugly child nobody wanted. He simply wanted to live.
"Who am I, Ramsay?" Gendry asked.
"You are the King!" Ramsay cried out, automatic and desperate. Then he caught Gendry's expression and corrected himself instantly, his voice dropping to a fawning, broken murmur. "You are my master. Ramsay is your servant. Ramsay will always be your servant."
He pressed his forehead to the cold stone floor, and his shoulders shook.