Jon woke up in their tent, lying between Mya and Munda. Nora had spent the night with her mother in Craster's Keep. Though the old patriarch had been found dead one morning, and it was no longer his Keep. However, the sounds from outside their tent suggested that she had returned.
He extracted himself from between his two wives, ignoring their latching hands and sleepy protests. The two had been arguing last night. Mya did not like that they were still here two weeks after the incident where Bloodraven had died. But he made it clear to her that he wasn't going to just cause death and destruction and fly away. No, he wanted to make sure that the changes he had caused would only benefit the people whose lives he had appended.
Munda had initially been looking forward to going South and seeing the castles. But ever since they got a dragon, she had been trying to convince him to go see her father and join the Freefolk. She had been rather tempted by the idea that he could become the new King Beyond the Wall and bring down the Wall with dragonfire.
But as cool as the title sounded, it did not benefit him in any way. There was nothing he could gain by becoming the leader of the Freefolk that he could not without it.
Ultimately, before the arguments could get heated, he had let it get heated in a different way and they had talked things out when the three were too exhausted from sex to fight.
Jon exited his tent and found Nora tending to their mounts.
"Nora," he called out as he walked towards her.
"Oh, Jon!" She stood up from where she was giving water to the horses. "You're awake."
"I am." He answered and picked her up in a hug. "Did you sleep well?"
She nodded. "It's warmer back in the keep."
"Oh, am I not warm enough for you?" He teased and nuzzled her neck.
Nora from several months ago would have become flustered and tried to explain how she didn't mean it like that. Now she just blushed and batted at his chest.
"You're always warm enough for me. But if you want your food to be warm as well, you better go to the Keep to break your fast."
"Hmm, alright. You will stay here until I return, won't you?"
She hesitated before explaining, "I'll stay here until the others wake up at least. But I should return to the weirwood, Atla is teaching me some new things. And you might be gone for a while because mother wanted to speak to you."
"Oh?" He removed his face from where it was slowly moving towards her breasts and raised an eyebrow.
"It's about the new village, I think."
With Loaf, the new last Greenseer having moved to the weirwood near the stream, so had several other of Bloodraven's children, including Naerys and Atla. The giantess had taken a liking to Nora and was teaching her about some of her herbs and their effects.
Jon nodded and kissed her before leaving towards the stream to wash himself. Beyond the stream rested Cannibal, and he went and spent a few minutes to mentally speak with it.
He had not told Mya and Munda that another reason he was not jumping straight to joining one side or another was the issue of Cannibal and their twisted dragon-bond. For all he knew Cannibal would simply refuse to attack the Wall and put him in a rather awkward situation.
But he could still use the sheer reputation he now had as a dragonrider to manipulate people.
Bloodraven had only shown up to the treaty personally because he believed that if Jon wanted to kill him, he could just burn down the weirwood alcove he was hiding in. But when he had suggested that idea to Cannibal, the dragon had reacted very adversely.
Kane had only agreed to his plans because he thought he had no chance against the Cannibal's rider, and agreed to limit all his anger to the Greenseer.
The last time he had been at Craster's Keep, he was treated as a guest. Now the women treated him with awe and reverence.
At that reminder, Jon stood up, avoided the remains of Bloodraven's original body and headed towards the Keep.
A corral for the newly gained cattle was being built and so were smaller huts and hovels around the larger Keep.
He arrived at the Keep and found Nella teaching her younger sisters to take care of the aurochs. She saw him and excused herself to walk towards him.
"Jon! Come on in. We have bread and stew for you." She welcomed him and led the way inside.
"I didn't know you knew so much about handling aurochs?"
She smiled over her shoulders, putting some sway to her hips, "I had lived among many tribes during my younger years. Each one needed people with a different skill, and as the newcomer, I needed to learn those skills to make myself useful."
She did not mention why she needed to find a new tribe frequently, but he already knew about the dislike people had for Craster's incest-born daughter-wives.
The inside of the Keep was the only thing unchanged, though it had a lot more kids now, but most of the adults were out. He took a seat at the table and Nella brought him the promised food, then sat next to him, their legs touching each other. Jon started eating and her hand started brushing up and down his thigh.
"I noticed that you didn't take the chair." He asked, chewing the bread.
Nella frowned. "Why did you think I would?"
Jon raised an eyebrow at her cagey answer.
"I've been watching you take more and more responsibility, you know? Very different from the woman who wanted to run away with me. Are you telling me you don't want the chair?"
After the recent incidents, the power structure of the Keep had been turned upside down.
Some of the women were, understandably, apprehensive about the arrival of Kane and the knowledge that there were more men still on Skagos who would be returning to their childhood home.
It had created a lot of tension that Kane had not liked. So the man had buried Genji's corpse, and left to rebuild the other cabin near Highwater that Craster had burned down years ago. Leila, who turned out to be his mother, had gone with him.
It was unclear what his brothers on Skagos would do, or how long it'd take them to return here, but he could tell that the women were hoping they would go with Kane and Leila.
But even without the men, Leila's departure and Craster's death had left a power vacuum among the women. It even had a visible indicator in the form of Craster's empty chair.
She chuckled in reply.
"I had wanted freedom and my daughter's happiness. We are as free as any other tribe now. And you've been making Nora…"
her hand moved to fondle his crotch,
"... very happy."
His dick was already stiffening from her touch, but now it was fully erect. He looked around and while some women were looking at them, they couldn't see where her hands were.
"But to keep that freedom, it seems I will have to take the chair."
"But it's not proving very easy." He ventured.
"I have lived among so many tribes and seen so many ways that the men and women treated each other. Some of the others, they just don't understand that. They have only ever seen men treat women like slaves, or women treat men like slaves.
So they've decided they'd rather become the slavers than the slaves."
"And you want my help to convince them otherwise?"
"There could be something you could do about it."
…
Jon found his quarry entering the Keep just as Nella walked out. He did not miss the tension between Nella and the two women. The descriptions that she had given him of them had sounded familiar, but now he recognised why. These were the same two women he had seen raping Craster that night through his falcon.
Well, he supposed they were being forced by Bloodraven in some ways, so they were not entirely at fault either. And besides, it was Craster.
The older of them, Ellen, had been teaching herself and some others to fight with a sword. Her sister, Sarah, was one of them. The two had some influence among their sisters by virtue of being Leila's daughters, and according to Nella, had been using that influence to spread a rather misandrist approach to their small government.
Their eyes met his and they came to the table just as he finished eating.
"Look who it is." Ellen started.
"Our new lord." Sarah chimed in mockingly.
Jon drank some water and smiled.
"Lord is an exaggeration. All I'm asking for is some herbs."
Nora was learning to use them, so it'd be useful to have a source of those herbs away from the politics of the seven kingdoms.
"For now." Ellen scoffed.
"How long before you start demanding we serve you like kneelers?" Sarah added.
"I gave my word that it's all I'd ask, did I not?" He put enough anger in his word to convey that he'd not accept his oath being questioned.
"Even so, you can decide how much and what herbs we grow." Ellen pointed out, backing away from the earlier question.
"What stops you from demanding that we only grow those herbs and nothing else?"
His brows furrowed. That was not an irrational fear.
"If I did that, you'd starve. And then I won't have anyone to grow my herbs."
He pointed out, though it wasn't entirely honest. Historically, there was this phenomenon where landowners or colonial powers would force the serfs to grow cash-crops and ignore food products, forcing them to import the food.
"You say that, but do you even know the state of our larders?"
He did. He had seen them through his falcon. It was quite well-stocked.
"I don't. Is it lacking?"
"Lacking, he says." Sarah scoffed.
Ellen sighed and offered, "How about you come to the cellars and take a look yourself?"
He still had some bad memories about that place from when his falcon was stuck listening to them rape Craster, but he agreed and went inside.
AN: Okay, one more chapter after this, a smut scene. Then we should move south.