A Clash of Kings — Jon III

At Craster's Keep the Old Bear sups with a man who weds his daughters and gives his sons to the wood; Jon holds his tongue and hates it.

The chapter retold

At Craster’s Keep, the Watch is fed and sheltered by a man whose hospitality comes with a price the rangers have learned not to ask about too loudly: Craster marries his own daughters and gives his infant sons to the wood, offerings to something out past the fence nobody wants named at the supper table. The Old Bear accepts the arrangement with weary pragmatism — Craster’s Keep is the only friendly roof for a hundred miles, and a ranging that questions its host too closely doesn’t eat.

Jon holds his tongue and hates every moment of it, and the chapter uses his silence to needle at exactly the moral compromise the whole Watch survives on: you cannot fight what’s beyond the Wall without allies, and not every ally will pass a decent man’s inspection. The unspoken destination of Craster’s abandoned sons hangs over the scene as one of the book’s quieter, more disturbing mysteries — one the story will eventually answer in the coldest way imaginable.

This movement: Kings in Every Corner

• Stannis besieges Storm's End; the brothers parley with a peach between them and part as dead men.
• Catelyn watches a shadow with Stannis's face open Renly's throat inside his own pavilion.
• Tyrion trades princess Myrcella's hand to Dorne and ships Cersei's spies to the black cells.
• At Winterfell, Bran dreams with wolf's teeth; the Reeds of Greywater come to teach him what it means.