"Wolf's blood?" Robb asked in a bewildered tone and the massive shadow cat sitting by his side nodded in a humane manner. "You want me to find out about Wolf's blood?"
Robb and Jon were sitting beside the icy pool in the Godswood of Winterfell. Robb was there in person while Jon was there in the mind of Tiger his Shadow Cat.
Now, normally, a conversation between a human and an animal was a mentally exhausting endeavour at best times. And while the animal having a warg inside his head made it a tad bit easier... it was still not a walk in the godswood.
But with years of practice under their belt, Jon and Robb had managed to make this way of communication into something akin to an art... with Jon using Tiger's paws to write in the soil and Robb using his familiarity with his brother to understand what the ugly words crawled into the ground meant.
"That is correct," Jon wrote agonisingly slowly and in a short form that probably only Robb or Sansa could understand, "I want you to search in the library to find any of the old books that mention the Wolf's Blood. It doesn't matter if it just mentions a small incident or even as a joke, I need you to mark those books and those pages so that I can see them when I come back..."
"Did you forget how big our library is?" Robb asked with a raised eyebrow, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, "How am I supposed to search through all of them while trying to look for just a few words... Especially since most of the old books are in Old Tongue which I am still not particularly good at."
"Oh, you don't need to read all the books. You can just start with all the personal accounts you can find in there like if any of our ancestors wrote a journal or if there is a Maester's diary in there..."
"But why... Did something happen out there?" he asked with a note of worry in his voice.
"No, nothing," Jon replied shaking his head, keeping silent about his upcoming adventures with the Pirates that he knew Robb wouldn't be too happy about, "Just curious about it... want to know where all those stories and legends about the so-called 'Wolf's Blood' originated from..."
"Fine," Robb said nodding with a slight frown on his face, "I will see when I can find the time..."
"Oh, you don't have to do it all on your own," Jon added after seeing the somewhat miserable look on his brother's face, "You can get some of the Acolytes to help you select the appropriate books and I am sure Sansa or Emily wouldn't mind helping out either once you mention that it's to help me..."
Even though they were just words scrawled on the ground, Robb could almost feel that Jon was standing in front of him with a smirk on his face, bragging about how he was the favourite sibling.
"That would indeed make things a lot easier for me..." Robb said with a hint of relief in his voice.
"That busy, huh?"
"Oh, You can't even imagine," Robb breathed out with an exhausted smile, "And not only me, Father, Maester Luwin, The Steward and even Mother, every single one of them are busy with work from dusk to dawn." he said before looking at Jon with a fake annoyed look, "And most of the work is kind of your fault,"
"What? What did I do?" Jon asked somehow making an indignant expression using the Shadow Cat's eyes.
"Have you been to Wintertown lately? Do you know how large it has gotten now? Do you know that the number of people that live there now, during the peak of Summer, is almost triple the amount of people that came down to live there during Winter? And not mention the amount of people that just pass through there daily..." Robb just shook his head with a sigh, "It is just mind-boggling..."
"Are you sure you are not exaggerating?" Jon asked with a hint of scepticism in his voice.
He had been quite busy in Essos for the past few months so he had kept both Frost and Tweety beside him and since neither his Shadow Cat nor his Kraken Inky was any good for wandering the streets of Wintertown, it indeed had been quite a while since he was able to scout how Winterfell or rather how North as a whole has been doing... but still, he didn't think it has been so long as to have as big a change as Robb insinuating.
"I am really not exaggerating here. In fact, even though not quite to the level of King Landing, I think our small town is well on its way to becoming a small city like White Harbour in a few decades if it goes on like this,"
"Now you are just making things up..."
"I am really not..." Robb said with a wry smile, "You wouldn't doubt me if you actually saw the number of smallfolk and Merchant who stand in line every single day in front of Winterfell to meet us to get permission to open a shop or build a house or do business or a dozen other thing... And not to mention the Lord's and the other vassals... Oh! How I hate the lot of them,"
"What? Why?" Jon asked with an amused look on his face, "What did they do?"
"Oh, they are just the worst." Robb said as he shook his head, "Every time one of them arrives at Winterfell gates, we just need to drop everything we are doing and meet them and then entertain them for the duration of their stay no matter how long (and it is quite long for some of them) and not to forget the feasts at night... Ah! I tell you, Jon, we would have already been bankrupted by the amount of small and big feasts we had to throw in their honour during the last year if we had not already gotten so much richer... And it would have been fine if it was just once or twice but the frequency of visits has just reached ridiculousness.... And there is no sign that it would stop anytime soon as all of them are dying to get a piece of the prosperity that had suddenly fallen into our hands..."
"But why? It can't be all just because of the factory and the new blacksmith street, can it?"
"Oh, no, no," Robb said as he immediately shook his head, "I mean, sure, they could have played some part in it but the most crucial reason for all this sudden fortune (which had even evaded all of us for a while) was our decision with... the roads,"
"What? But that doesn't seem right, we are not actually making new roads, are we? We are just repairing and improving the already laid Kingsroad to make travel faster around North." Jon asked with a confused look on his face, "If the roads were so pivotal then wouldn't North or Wintertown have already flourished far in the past when they were first laid down?"
"And you are right about that." Robb nodded his head with a small smile as he had asked the exact same question to Maester Luwin when he suggested that Roads were the main reason behind this Windfall, "The roads alone would have never been enough for all this to happen... if they hadn't had the help of the other changes that had been made in the North during the last five or so years..."
"Huh?"
"Let me explain. You know that even before, Wintertown or rather Winterfell was somewhat of a trade centre of the North right? Or at least they had that intention when our ancestors first laid down here but unfortunately, even after years and years, the town could never fulfil its potential as North was just too big and Winterfell was not very accessible to utilize its location from the other parts of the kingdom. But now... now it can finally do that."
"Ah..." The shadow cat abruptly got an enlightened expression in his eyes as if he finally understood what Robb was trying to explain.
"That's right Wintertown is finally a place that is the easiest for the people of the North to get to and trade." Robb nodded with a somewhat excited expression, "Even before all this, Winterfell was already somewhat well-connected with White Harbour and the East part of the North because of the river White Knife, and now... travel had only become easier due to the frequent ships running up and down to transport the Starkhorse shipments from our factories. And more importantly, due to the now far more practical roads, we are also much better connected to the western holdfasts, most significant of which are Bear Island and Deepwood Motte which are at the moment brimming with goods from the Westerlands and the Reach which they can now easily bring to Wintertown and ultimately transport to the rest of the kingdom... The North has gotten much smaller,"
"This is all so... unbelievable,"
"I know," Robb nodded his head, "Who would have thought that North would change so much... Trade is booming all over, and no one is going hungry as food prices have never been lower. In fact, a few days ago I even saw some merchants that came all the way from Riverlands to trade with us, which is just... beyond belief." Robb shook his head with a smile, "And to think that we are not even one-fourth of the way through with the roads,"
"... It seems that the golden age of the North has finally come,"
"You're right about that... And North is more than ready for it."
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