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Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
ASOIAF and all of its characters belong to GRRM
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 36: Escape Plan
The cell was comfortable enough. That was the worst part.
Ned Stark sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the walls that had held him for... how long now? A week? More? The days blurred together when the only way to mark them was the quality of light that fell through the high window.
Morning light was pale. Afternoon was stronger, harsher. Evening was gold, then red, then nothing but dark.
He had been given a desk with ink and parchment. A bookshelf stocked with histories and philosophies, as if they expected him to spend the hours in scholarly contemplation. A large bed, soft as any he had slept in since leaving Winterfell. Food that was more than adequate. Wine, even, though he had not touched it. Clean clothes, brought every morning by servants who would not meet his eyes.
He knew these comforts were not the Queen's doing. Cersei would have left him in the black cells, with the rats and the darkness and the gradual forgetting of what sunlight felt like. Someone else had ordered him moved. Someone else had ensured he was treated with the dignity his captors did not feel he deserved.
Joffrey. It could only be Joffrey.
The boy was strange. Ned had thought so from the moment he had knelt in the snow at Winterfell and looked up into eyes that were older than any fifteen-year-old's had right to be.
He had heard the stories of the cruelty, the grumpiness, the casual viciousness of a child who had been given too much power too young. But the prince he had met bore no resemblance to that creature.
This Joffrey was calm, measured, almost... kind. He spoke to servants as if they were people. He listened before he spoke. He had even saved Arya from a bear.
He had come to Ned in his solar and told him, with something that might have been pity, that he had just killed the King.
And now these comforts. These small mercies that Ned did not deserve and could not explain.
He had been a fool. The thought came to him for the thousandth time, and he let it wash over him, let it fill the empty hours. He had trusted where he should have been wary, spoken when he should have been silent, believed in honor when the world had no use for it.
Trust no one, Stark.
The words echoed in his mind, spoken by a boy who was not truly a boy, in a voice that held the weight of time. Joffrey had warned him. Joffrey had tried to tell him, in his way, that the game was not played by northern rules, and that the Capital was a different beast...a den of snakes. But Ned had not listened.
He rose from the bed, pacing the narrow space. Four steps to the wall, turn, four steps back. The window was too high to see anything but sky.
The door was too thick to hear anything but silence. He did not know if his daughters were safe. He did not know if his son had called the banners, if Catelyn had reached out to her father's house, if the North was preparing for war. He did not know anything, and the not-knowing was worse than any cell.
He stopped at the window, pressing his forehead against the cool stone. "What was I thinking?" he whispered, for the thousandth time.
Trust no one, Stark.
He had trusted Littlefinger, and Littlefinger was dead. He had trusted Renly, and Renly had fled. He had trusted Robert, and Robert had left him with a kingdom falling apart and a truth that no one wanted to hear.
The only one who had spoken plainly to him, the only one who had offered advice that was not self-serving. The boy whose mother had thrown Ned into this cell.
"Lannisters," Ned muttered, his fists clenching. "They will pay for this."
"Well." A voice came from the shadows beyond the cell door. "There is at least one Lannister who remains on your side, Lord Stark."
Ned spun around. The cell was dark in this moonless night, the little opening at the top of the door was only big enough for a tray of food to pass, and the corridor beyond was even darker than his cell.
However, he could make something up. There was a shape there, a figure in a cloak, a voice that was familiar in a way that made his skin prickle.
"Who goes there?" He moved to the door, straining to see. "Who is it?"
The figure stepped closer, and the light from a torch caught his face through the small opening of the door...a soft, round face. Bald and with a pair of narrow eyes that held countless secrets.
"Lord Varys." Ned's voice was hoarse with shock. "What are you—"
"Please, Lord Stark." The eunuch pressed a finger to his lips, his eyes darting toward the guard post at the end of the corridor. "I beg you not to raise your voice. There is a guard not far from here, and I would rather he not know I am visiting at this late hour."
Ned stared at him, his mind racing. Of all the people he had expected to see, and he had expected none, the Master of Whispers was the very last. Varys, who served the realm, who served whoever sat on the throne, who had stood silent while Ned was dragged from the throne room in chains. What was he playing now?
Varys reached into his cloak and produced a thin metal tool, long and delicate, that he inserted into the lock of the cell door with practiced ease.
"What are you doing?" Ned's voice came out sharper than he intended.
Varys looked up, and for a moment his face was something other than the bland mask he wore in council meetings. Ned could almost catch a glimpse of fear in his eyes. "I thought it was obvious, Lord Stark. I am getting you out of here."
"Getting me out?" Ned took a step back, then forward again, his instincts warring with each other. "Are you mad? If we are caught—"
"Then we will not be caught." Varys's hands moved with the skill of a locksmith, his fingers finding the tumblers that held the door shut. "But you must listen to me, Lord Stark. You must do exactly as I say, when I say it, without question. Can you do that?"
Trust no one.
Ned's hand went to his side, where his sword should have been. There was nothing there. The Lannisters had taken it, along with his dignity, along with his freedom.
He was unarmed, untrained in the arts of sneaking through shadows, and the man offering him freedom was the one person in King's Landing whose loyalties no one had ever been able to determine.
Click.
The door swung open.
Varys offered a smile that did not reach his eyes. "I have not lost my skill, it seems." He gestured for Ned to follow. "Now, come. Do not speak. Keep your head down. If I tell you to stop, you stop. If I tell you to hide, you hide. And whatever you do, do not draw attention to us. Are we understood?"
"What about my daughters?" The words came out before Ned could stop them. He had to know. He had to—
Varys's expression hardened. "Your daughters are safe. They are waiting for you. I can tell that you dont trust me, and I'm glad to see you are learning, but if you stay here, your fate will be in the Queen's hands. Is that what you want?"
He turned and began to walk, his soft-soled shoes making no sound on the stone floor.
Ned did not hesitate anymore. He stepped out of the cell, leaving behind the comfortable prison cell. Whatever Varys's game was, it could not be worse than what awaited him if he stayed here.
He followed the eunuch into the darkness.
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The corridors of the Red Keep were different at night. The torches burned low, the shadows stretched long, and every sound seemed magnified a hundred times over.
They could hear the distant clank of armor, the distant whispers carried by the wind through a crack in the stone.
Ned moved behind Varys, his legs stiff from disuse, his muscles protesting every step. He had not walked this much in days. He had not walked at all, except from bed to window to desk and back again.
Varys led him through passages Ned did not recognize, past doors that seemed to lead nowhere, through rooms that were empty of everything but dust.
He moved with the confidence of a man who had walked these halls a thousand times, who knew where the guards would be and where they would not, who could read this castle like the palm of his own hand.
They stopped before a door that looked like any other...wood, iron-bound, unremarkable. Varys produced another key from somewhere within his robes, fitted it into the lock, and opened it onto a room full of crates and barrels, the waste of a castle that had been storing things for three hundred years.
"A storage chamber," Ned whispered, looking around. "What are we doing here?"
Varys did not answer. He moved to the far wall, his hands running over the stones, searching. Ned watched, his breath held, his heart pounding.
He could hear voices somewhere, distant, muffled. Guards, perhaps, making their rounds. If they came this way, if they found the door unlocked, if they decided to investigate...it would all be over.
"There." Varys pressed something, a stone, a catch perhaps. Ned could not see what it was, but he did see a section of the wall slide inward.
He stared at the opening. "Secret passages. I had heard rumors, but I did not think—"
"Maegor the Cruel built this castle to withstand siege and destroy those who laid it." Varys was already moving through the opening, his voice a whisper in the darkness. "He did not trust his builders, so he killed them. But secrets have a way of surviving, Lord Stark. Even when the men who built them are dust."
Ned followed him into the wall, and the stone slid shut behind them, sealing them in darkness.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
The passage was narrow, low-ceilinged, built for men smaller than Ned or designed to force anyone who used it to move hunched and slow.
He heeded Varys's lead, his hand on the damp stone wall, his feet finding the uneven floor. The air was thick with dust and the smell of old water.
They walked for what felt like hours, though it was likely only minutes.
Varys knew the way, turning left, then right, then left again, emerging into chambers full of forgotten things, disappearing back into the walls before Ned could get his bearings.
He was lost. Completely, utterly lost. If Varys abandoned him here, he would wander these passages until he starved, and no one would ever find him.
At last, they stopped. Varys pressed his ear to the wall, listening, his eyes closed, his whole body still. Then he turned to Ned, and his voice was barely a breath.
"This is the most dangerous part. I do not know if there will be guards. We must be prepared for anything."
He reached into his cloak and produced a dagger, small, elegant, its blade gleaming with the distinctive rippled pattern of Valyrian steel. He held it out to Ned, hilt first.
"It is not a sword, Lord Stark, but it will serve. If we are captured, our lives are forfeit. You know this."
Ned took the blade, his fingers closing around the hilt. The weight was familiar, the balance perfect. He had held Valyrian steel before...his own sword, Ice, was of that same ancient craft, and he knew its virtues. It would not break, would not dull, would cut through ordinary steel like a knife through butter.
"Where did you get this?" he asked, his voice low. "This is not—"
"A question for another time." Varys's eyes flicked to the wall, then back to Ned. "Prince Joffrey will explain, if you have the chance to ask him that much."
Joffrey. The name echoed in Ned's mind, and suddenly the pieces began to fall into place. The comfortable cell, the small mercies, and now a sudden escape plan.
Varys was a servant of the realm, loyal to no house but his own ambitions. He would not risk his life for a fallen lord unless someone had given him a very good reason.
"Is he—"
"We must move." Varys pressed a lever, and a section of the wall slid open.
Ned stepped through with his dagger drawn. He followed and found himself in a tunnel wider than any they had traveled before. It stretched into darkness in both directions, its walls lined with torches that had burned low or gone out entirely. Varys took one down, struck flint against stone, and coaxed a flame to life.
"This way," he said, and began to walk.
The tunnel was old, older than the passages they had traveled, older perhaps than the castle itself. The stone was rough, the ceiling high, the air cool and dry.
They reached a gate of iron bars, rusted with age, and Varys knelt to work the lock. While he did, Ned peered through the bars at what lay beyond.
Dragon skulls. Row after row of them, lining the walls, their empty eye sockets staring into darkness. The nearest was enormous...large enough, Ned thought, to swallow a horse whole. Its teeth were still sharp, its jaws still gaping, three hundred years dead and still terrible to behold.
"Balerion," he breathed. "The Black Dread." He knew of this place.
Varys glanced up, a smile flickering across his face. "King Robert ordered them hidden here, after the rebellion. He wanted nothing that reminded him of the Targaryens."
Click.
The gate swung open. Varys rose, dusting off his knees, and gestured for Ned to continue. They walked among the skulls, the great and the small, the ancient and the not-so-ancient.
Ned saw the skull of Meraxes, the dragon that had fallen in Dorne, and the skull of Vhagar, who had died in the Dance. He saw smaller skulls, no bigger than a dog's, the last of the dragons, born weak and stunted and dead before they could grow.
Robert had wanted them gone. The King had wanted to forget that dragons had ever existed, and that the Targaryens had ever been more than a bad dream.
But the skulls were still here, and they would be here long after Robert was dust.
They passed into a smaller chamber, half-filled with crates and boxes, the detritus of a dynasty that had fallen. Ned glanced at the boxes, at the faded Targaryen sigils painted on their sides, at the treasures they must contain...clothes, perhaps, or jewels, or letters that could topple houses if they ever saw the light.
He looked down at the dagger in his hand, at the Valyrian steel that had been forged in the fires of Old Valyria, and he could now imagine how it found its way into the hands of the strange prince.
"We are almost there." Varys was moving toward the far wall, his hands finding another catch, another hidden door. "But stay vigilant, Lord Stark. We are not yet safe."
He moved a crate, then a tarp that had been covering something, a recess in the wall.
Ned watched him work, watched him find the hidden catch, watched him push the stone aside.
And then he smelled it. Salt, fish, and...the sea.
"The Blackwater," Ned breathed. "This tunnel leads to the bay."
Varys turned to him, a genuine smile on his face. "You—"
Footsteps. Many of them. Coming closer.
Varys's face went white. He snatched the torch from its bracket, smothered the flame with his cloak, and pushed Ned behind a stack of crates. They crouched there in the darkness, barely breathing, as the footsteps grew louder.
Ned's hand tightened on the dagger. He was so close. So close to freedom, to his daughters, to the North.
He would not be taken again. He would not go back to that cell. If these were guards, if they had been discovered, he would fight. He would kill. He would die if he must, but he would not go back.
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