Ragnar woke before the room did, and for the first few breaths he remained completely still beneath the unfamiliar blanket, allowing his eyes to open only as far as they needed to. His mouth was dry, his body felt as though every joint had been packed with sand, and there was an ache behind his eyes that came from too little water and too many days beneath an uncaring sky, yet none of that mattered once he realized the ceiling above him was made of dressed stone rather than timber. Memory returned unevenly after that: the storm, men collapsing at the oars, a coastline none of them knew, strange soldiers climbing aboard, and finally the black-haired youth on the quay who had made carts rise into the air as easily as another man might lift a cup.
His hand moved beneath the blanket before he consciously decided to search for a weapon, found nothing, and then moved toward his belt only to discover that had been taken as well. There was no sword within reach, no axe tucked beside the bed, and no round shield leaning nearby where a man with any sense would have left it, while across the chamber his brother Rollo remained deeply unconscious on another cot with one thick arm hanging over the side. The rest of the crew lay scattered beyond him in various states of sleep, bruised and bandaged but breathing, and seeing them alive eased one part of Ragnar while sharpening another; whoever had taken them had possessed enough mercy to tend their wounds, but mercy had never prevented men from wanting something afterward.
A faint rasp of cloth against metal drew his attention toward the far side of the chamber.
Jinx sat near one of the narrow windows with one leg folded beneath the chair, a strip of dark cloth moving slowly along the length of Dark Sister. Morning light caught strangely against the Valyrian steel, finding ripples in the blade without ever quite settling on them, and Ragnar watched the young man turn the sword a fraction at a time as though the room contained nothing more dangerous than a stubborn blemish near the edge. He did not look toward the bed, did not ask whether Ragnar understood him, and did not acknowledge that his prisoner had awakened at all.
That silence bothered Ragnar more than shouting would have.
He pushed himself upright carefully, ignoring the pull in his ribs, and the movement stirred one of the sleeping men nearby enough to make him mutter before settling again. Jinx continued polishing the blade, removed the cloth after another pass, and held Dark Sister toward the window to inspect the edge with the sort of patient attention Ragnar had seen smiths give work they valued more than most people. Nothing in his posture suggested fear, but nothing suggested carelessness either, and Ragnar found himself watching the young man's hands as closely as he watched the sword.
Only after Ragnar's feet touched the floor did something finally happen.
Jinx snapped his fingers once and spoke a single unfamiliar word under his breath. "Accio."
A heavy wooden chair tore away from the corner of the room so suddenly that Ragnar's shoulders tightened, but it did not tumble or scrape across the floor as it should have; it flew through the air, turned neatly before reaching Jinx, and settled directly opposite him with all four legs touching stone at once. Ragnar stared at it for half a heartbeat before looking back at the youth, just in time to see Jinx extend an empty hand toward him without lifting his eyes from Dark Sister.
Ragnar felt his weight leave the bed.
The surprise escaped him before pride could stop it, a rough yelp torn out of his throat as something invisible caught him around the body and pulled him forward. His hands seized at empty air, his legs kicked once without finding the floor, and then Jinx curled two fingers toward himself and Ragnar crossed the room much faster than he would have preferred before dropping heavily into the waiting chair. The impact jarred his bruised ribs, though not badly enough to injure him further, and by the time he had recovered enough to glare across the small space between them, Jinx was still studying the sword as if throwing a grown man through the air had required less thought than checking its edge.
Ragnar stayed where he was.
There were moments when courage meant standing, moments when it meant reaching for the nearest object that could be used to break a skull, and moments when a man possessed enough intelligence to remain seated until he understood what sort of creature had just moved him without touching him. Ragnar had survived by learning the difference, and the memory of three carts hanging over the quay the previous day made the decision easier.
Jinx ran his thumb carefully near the flat of Dark Sister, seemed satisfied with whatever he found, and finally slid the blade into its sheath. The soft sound of steel disappearing into leather eased something in Ragnar despite himself, not because he trusted the youth any more than he had before, but because a sheathed sword was still preferable to an unsheathed one in the hands of somebody who apparently did not require it to kill him.
Jinx reached for a small pitcher on the table beside him and filled two goblets.
He passed one across.
Ragnar did not take it immediately.
Jinx offered no reassurance and apparently saw no need to persuade him, instead raising his own goblet and taking a slow swallow while Ragnar watched his mouth, throat, and breathing for any hint that the drink carried something besides wine. When nothing happened, Jinx set his goblet down, opened the hand that had held it, and turned his palm upward in a plain enough gesture for a man who shared none of his language.
Ragnar understood.
He accepted the second goblet cautiously, smelled it first, and found fruit, spice, and something richer than the sour ales men sometimes carried too long at sea. He took only enough to wet his tongue before swallowing, then drank a little more when his body failed to object.
His eyebrows rose despite himself.
Whatever these people were, they knew how to make wine.
It was smoother than anything Ragnar had tasted at home, cleaner and finer than most drink that passed through Kattegat, though it lacked the strength he expected from a proper feast. Strong mead could settle warmly into a man's limbs after a few generous horns, and some of the better ales carried enough weight to make foolish men louder before the fire had burned halfway down; this wine tasted almost delicate by comparison, rich enough to enjoy but too gentle to deserve suspicion merely for its strength.
Ragnar looked into the goblet again before taking another swallow.
Across from him, Jinx had reclaimed the rag and was wiping the smallest trace of oil from Dark Sister's guard.
Neither of them had yet spoken a word the other could understand, but Ragnar was beginning to suspect that the silence was not because the strange young man lacked questions.
It felt much more like he was waiting to see what Ragnar would do first.
Neither man seemed in any hurry to break the silence after that first drink, and Ragnar was content to let it remain between them while he learned what he could without asking. The boy across from him sat with Dark Sister sheathed beside his leg and his goblet loose between his fingers, looking far too comfortable for someone alone in a room with a stranger who had already searched twice for an axe that was no longer there. There was something about Jinx's stillness Ragnar disliked more than the magic; men who wished to frighten him usually watched to see whether they had succeeded, while this one appeared only mildly interested in whether Ragnar feared him at all.
When Jinx finally spoke, the language caught Ragnar more sharply than the voice did. It was his tongue and yet not quite his tongue, the words carrying turns and sounds that felt old in places and wrong in others, like hearing a song his grandfather had known played by a man who had learned it from marks scratched into wood. Jinx spoke it carefully, without the confidence of someone born to it, though there was enough command beneath the mistakes that Ragnar stopped wondering whether understanding one another would be possible.
"I should apologize for leaving you sitting there while I polished my sword," Jinx said, his expression carrying so little regret that Ragnar almost smiled. "You woke without your weapons, surrounded by strangers, after nearly dying at sea; I thought it kinder to let you discover that nobody intended to murder you before I started making the morning worse."
That earned him a longer look, because the words were courteous while the tone suggested Jinx regarded waking in an unknown kingdom as an inconvenience only slightly greater than rain. Ragnar could not decide whether he was being mocked, and the uncertainty interested him enough that some of the stiffness left his shoulders.
Jinx took another swallow of wine before continuing, as though introductions were something that had to be endured before reaching a more interesting subject. "Jinx Stark, third son of Rickard Stark, who rules the North for the dragon kings sitting in this castle. There are more titles involved, but you don't know what any of them mean and I dislike saying them, so that will do."
Ragnar's mouth twitched despite himself.
The stranger was either very secure in his position or had remarkably little reverence for it.
"The useful part," Jinx continued, turning the goblet lazily between his fingers, "is that I know yours."
Ragnar's amusement vanished.
Jinx looked at him properly then, and there was no triumph in his face when he spoke the next words, only that same distant calm that made the knowledge worse. "Ragnar Lothbrok. Farmer from Kattegat. Lagertha's husband. Bjorn's father. You built a ship with Floki because you believe there is rich land somewhere west, and you meant to find a place called England."
Ragnar did not move for several breaths.
His hand tightened slowly around the goblet until the metal pressed into his fingers, while the other dropped without thought toward the empty place at his waist where his axe should have hung. Finding nothing there did not make him panic, but it reminded him exactly how little power he possessed in this room, and his gaze slipped toward Rollo before he could prevent it. His brother still slept several beds away, broad chest rising beneath the blanket, while the others remained equally helpless.
Jinx watched none of them.
He took another drink.
That was the part Ragnar liked least.
A trader might have heard his name. A man from another settlement might know Lagertha, and there were enough mouths around Kattegat that even Bjorn's name could travel farther than Ragnar expected, but England was different. Floki's ship was different. The journey west had been something Earl Haraldson had mocked, something men had doubted until Ragnar found enough fools willing to row with him, and this impossibly young stranger had spoken of it as casually as if he had been standing on the beach when the sail went up.
Ragnar set his wine down before his grip damaged the cup and leaned forward, studying Jinx's face for whatever pleasure a liar might take in watching his lie work. He found boredom there, perhaps some private amusement, and beneath both something harder to name, an exhaustion that did not belong easily on someone who looked only a few years older than Bjorn.
"You know my wife," Ragnar said at last, letting the statement sit rather than wasting breath asking whether Jinx had misspoken. "You know my son, and you know the place I was trying to find, but yesterday your soldiers stared at my ship as if they had never seen one built like it."
Jinx inclined his head slightly.
Ragnar waited for an explanation and received none.
A strange little smile touched his mouth, gone almost as soon as it appeared. "Good. Then you understand why I think something is wrong."
"Several things are wrong," Jinx replied. "You are merely the newest one."
That should have sounded insulting, but Jinx said it with such effortless indifference that Ragnar found himself uncertain whether he had just been dismissed or welcomed into some larger collection of troubles. He watched him for another moment, then asked the question that mattered. "Who told you?"
"No one."
Ragnar's eyes narrowed.
Jinx did not rush to fill the silence.
"Then how?"
Jinx glanced toward the window, almost as if the answer bored him before it had been given. "That is more troublesome."
Ragnar waited again, and this time he caught something faint beneath Jinx's detachment: not fear, exactly, but reluctance, which made him more interested than any mysterious declaration would have. Men lied differently when they feared their own answers.
Jinx finally looked back at him. "I saw pieces of your life before you arrived here."
Ragnar leaned back by a fraction, not because he relaxed but because he wanted enough distance to watch all of Jinx at once. "Saw."
"In a vision, dream, warning from the gods, punishment for something I did in another life; choose whichever makes you happiest. I stopped pretending I understood why these things happen a long time ago."
The answer was strange enough that Ragnar believed at least part of it.
He studied Jinx for a while, then asked, "What did you see?"
Jinx's expression changed so little that another man might have missed the calculation behind it. "Enough."
Ragnar gave a quiet breath that was almost a laugh. "That is not an answer."
"It is the one you're getting."
There was no challenge in Jinx's voice, which somehow made challenging him feel more foolish. Ragnar let the refusal stand for the moment and changed the test instead.
"If you saw me before I came here, tell me something you could not have bought from a merchant."
Jinx's gaze drifted across the sleeping room until it settled several beds away. "Before you sailed, you took Bjorn to see the man who built your ship."
Ragnar's body went still again.
Jinx lifted two fingers and pointed toward Floki without looking particularly impressed by the effect his words had produced. "Thin one. Looks as though a tree insulted his mother."
Ragnar followed the gesture automatically.
Floki lay twisted beneath his blanket with one hand near his face, asleep deeply enough that even Ragnar's earlier movement had not woken him. The sight of him did something peculiar to Ragnar's chest, because that journey to Floki had happened before the voyage, before the crew had assembled, in a place this boy could not possibly have reached without Ragnar knowing.
His gaze returned to Jinx.
"How much?"
The question emerged quieter than he intended.
Jinx understood immediately.
Ragnar hated that too.
"How much did you see?" he asked again, and this time there was no humor anywhere in his face. His thoughts had already gone to Lagertha, to Bjorn, to the farm he had left behind, and then farther ahead to things he did not want named by a stranger who claimed the gods had let him watch what had not happened yet.
Jinx's detachment softened by something so small Ragnar might have imagined it.
"Not everything," he said. "Not even close."
Ragnar continued watching him.
"No death waiting at the end of the sentence?" he asked.
Jinx's eyes remained on his. "Everyone has one of those."
The answer might have sounded cruel from another man, but Jinx said it as though he were commenting on winter eventually coming, and Ragnar found that oddly preferable to false comfort. Jinx took another drink before adding, more quietly, "I am not going to sit here and tell you every grave I might have seen, Ragnar. You still have to live before you reach them."
Something in Ragnar loosened.
Not trust.
Certainly not that.
But enough.
He reached for the goblet again, took another drink, and let the sweetness sit on his tongue while he thought. The wine remained too weak for his liking; good mead would have put warmth into his belly by now, while this seemed made for men who preferred drinking for half the day without falling beneath the table.
"You said the gods showed you."
"I said you could call it that."
Ragnar tilted his head. "Which god?"
For the first time, Jinx looked genuinely caught by a question.
The pause lasted long enough for Ragnar's mouth to curl.
Jinx eventually leaned back in his chair and regarded the ceiling as though perhaps an answer had been written there by someone inconsiderate enough not to make it obvious. "If I knew which god was responsible for most of my life, I would have found a way to complain to them personally."
Ragnar laughed then, quietly enough not to wake the room but without forcing it down.
Jinx's mouth moved at the corner.
That was the first moment Ragnar felt he had learned anything useful about him.
Not his titles, not his magic, and certainly not why he knew Ragnar's family, but the boy did not speak of gods like a priest. He spoke like a man who had already argued with them and found the conversation unsatisfying.
Ragnar picked up his wine again, more comfortable now that Jinx had finally shown him something imperfect. "Then perhaps your gods are like mine."
"Cruel, vague, and annoyingly fond of making mortals do all the work?"
Ragnar considered that, then lifted the goblet in a small acknowledgment. "Yes."
Jinx drank with him, and for a time neither of them needed to say anything else.
The silence that followed was easier than the one before it, though Ragnar did not mistake ease for safety. He drank again, slower this time, and watched Jinx over the rim of the goblet while the young Stark seemed content to let him think, which Ragnar appreciated more than he would have admitted. Men who wanted something usually rushed toward it once they believed they had an advantage; Jinx behaved as though time itself had never managed to inconvenience him enough to deserve respect.
Ragnar eventually glanced toward Floki, then Rollo, making certain neither had stirred before settling his attention back on Jinx. "You said you saw pieces, not everything," he said, and there was less suspicion in the question now than calculation. "Then what did you see that matters to me?"
Jinx turned the cup between his fingers while considering how much of Ragnar's future he was willing to disturb. The temptation to say far too much came and went, because it would only produce another question, and he had already spent more of the morning explaining himself than he preferred. "Enough to know you were meant to keep sailing west," he said instead. "Enough to know England wasn't some drunken story whispered to you by a man who had never seen it."
Ragnar's expression changed at that, and for a moment the curiosity in him sharpened into something younger, closer to the farmer who had looked across an unknown sea and become convinced there had to be more beyond it. Jinx recognized that part of him from another life, although seeing it without music, editing, or distance made it feel less like ambition and more like hunger.
"You know it exists."
"Yes."
Ragnar leaned forward slightly. "And you have seen it?"
"Not with these eyes."
The answer made Ragnar's mouth bend in that peculiar way he had when something pleased him without yet earning trust. "You enjoy answering questions badly."
"I enjoy not answering more than I have to."
"That sounds tiring."
"Other people are tiring."
Ragnar let out a quiet laugh, and Jinx found himself liking the sound more than he wanted to. It was easier dealing with men who were curious than men who were frightened, because fear made people stupid while curiosity at least encouraged them to wait until they understood what they were looking at.
Jinx set his goblet aside and stood, stretching one shoulder where the lingering ache from his spar with Arthur and Barristan had settled overnight. "Come with me," he said, and when Ragnar's eyes dropped briefly toward Dark Sister, Jinx added with faint amusement, "If I meant to kill you, making you walk to the balcony first would be unnecessarily theatrical."
Ragnar looked at him for another moment, then pushed himself out of the chair. His legs were still weak enough that the first step betrayed him with a slight hitch, though he ignored the nearby bedpost rather than use it for support, and Jinx pretended not to notice because there were kinds of pride that cost nothing to indulge.
The balcony overlooked the western half of the city, where King's Landing sprawled downward in a confusion of slate, red tile, smoke, towers and crooked streets until the walls interrupted it. Beyond them the land stretched farther than Ragnar could properly judge from this height, while behind the castle the Blackwater gleamed beneath the morning sun with ships moving along it like scattered insects. The city had already begun its daily noise below, though distance softened it enough that the balcony felt almost private.
Ragnar rested both hands on the stone rail and looked for a long time.
Jinx watched him rather than the city.
There was no awe in Ragnar exactly, not the wide-eyed wonder of a man overwhelmed by walls larger than anything he had known; his attention moved too deliberately for that. He was counting towers, measuring roads, following the harbor, noticing the size of the walls and how many roofs filled the space inside them, and Jinx had to suppress a small smile because even half-starved and stranded beyond every map he knew, Ragnar was already deciding what all of it meant.
"If you are thinking about raiding it," Jinx said, "I would recommend against it."
Ragnar glanced sideways, caught, though not embarrassed. "I was wondering how many men live here."
"Far more than you currently have."
"That was not what I asked."
"No, but it was what you were thinking."
Ragnar's smile returned, faint and unrepentant.
Jinx leaned back against the rail and looked west. "If I were you, I imagine I would already be thinking about going home. Tell everyone there is a land across the sea with cities larger than anything in Kattegat, fields they haven't worked yet, weak villages somewhere beyond these walls, and enough wealth to make ambitious men stop sleeping."
Ragnar's expression lost some of its amusement.
That was close enough.
Jinx had expected it would be.
"You are a farmer before you are anything else," he continued. "A farmer notices good soil even while looking at a city, and a man who spent years being told the west held nothing will want to return with proof that everyone who laughed was wrong. You'll think about bringing your people here eventually, even if you haven't decided what that means yet."
Ragnar did not deny it, which Jinx respected more than denial would have deserved. He looked beyond the walls again before speaking, his voice quieter now that the subject had become something real rather than a game between strangers. "Would you blame me?"
"No."
Jinx answered so easily that Ragnar turned toward him.
"I would probably do the same," he said. "That doesn't make it wise."
There was no threat in his tone and no possessiveness over Westeros, because Jinx had very little sentimental attachment to borders drawn by dead kings. If Ragnar had arrived with ten thousand men and somehow carved out a patch of land without involving anyone Jinx cared about, part of him might have found the whole thing entertaining. Unfortunately, history had a habit of becoming tedious once enough corpses accumulated.
"You were not meant to find this place," Jinx continued, and this time the detachment left just enough room for seriousness that Ragnar stopped scanning the city. "Whatever I saw of your path, it went west to England. You reached another shore, but not this one. You met people there who had never heard your gods' names spoken the way you speak them, and you brought knowledge home that changed what came after."
Ragnar's face had gone still.
Jinx looked toward him. "Yet here you are."
"That troubles you."
"Everything eventually troubles me. I've learned not to give it too much satisfaction."
Ragnar's eyes narrowed in amusement, but the humor did not last. "You think the gods changed my road."
"I think something did."
That answer mattered more to Ragnar than Jinx expected. He turned fully toward the west, his fingers tightening on the stone as though the horizon might yield something if he stared at it long enough.
Jinx continued before Ragnar could mistake uncertainty for dismissal. "Storms happen. Ships lose their course. Men sail east while swearing they went west because the sea enjoys reminding them how small they are. None of that would surprise me. You appearing here does."
Ragnar looked at him. "Why?"
"Because I know where you were supposed to go."
The bluntness silenced him.
Jinx let it.
For once Ragnar did not immediately test the statement with another question. His gaze settled somewhere beyond the city, and when he finally spoke the playfulness had gone from his voice. "The storm began after sunset."
Jinx turned his head.
Ragnar's eyes remained on the distance. "The sky had been bad all day, but not enough to turn us back. Floki said the ship could take it, and I believed him because Floki believes his ships are better made than most children."
That sounded believable enough that Jinx could picture Floki saying something similar.
"The wind changed first," Ragnar continued, speaking slowly as memory supplied details. "Then the waves stopped coming from one direction. They struck us from everywhere. Thor was beating his hammer against the sky hard enough that every blow lit the sea white, and men could not hear one another even when we shouted into each other's faces."
Jinx's amusement faded.
Ragnar raised one hand from the rail and traced a loose circle in the air. "Then the water began to turn."
"A whirlpool."
Ragnar looked at him with the faint irritation of a man whose story had just been named before he finished telling it. "Not one I had ever seen."
Jinx inclined his head for him to continue.
"It grew too quickly," Ragnar said. "One moment we were fighting waves, and the next the whole sea seemed to lean toward one place. We turned the sail, took the oars, cut what we could loose, and it did nothing. The ship went around once, then faster, and after that men stopped pretending strength would matter."
He paused, and Jinx could hear something beneath his voice that had not been there when Ragnar spoke of the gods earlier. It was not embarrassment at fear; Ragnar did not seem the sort of man ashamed of being afraid when fear was sensible. It sounded more like someone trying to decide how much of an impossible memory he trusted.
"I thought Ægir had opened his hall beneath us," Ragnar said eventually. "Or Rán had thrown her net over the ship. Perhaps Njörðr had turned his face away. I remember Floki laughing once, though I could not hear what he said, and Rollo trying to hold a rope that had already torn half the skin from his hands."
Jinx glanced through the open doors toward the sleeping beds, where Rollo lay unaware that he had become part of his brother's proof.
"Then?"
"Darkness."
Jinx waited.
Ragnar shook his head. "Not night. Darkness."
That interested him.
"When I woke again, the storm was gone," Ragnar continued. "The sea was calm enough that I thought I had died. The stars were wrong."
Jinx's head turned sharply enough that Ragnar noticed.
"Wrong how?"
Ragnar's mouth curled faintly. "Now you ask questions."
Jinx ignored that. "The stars."
"I know the stars that guide us. Not all of them, but enough." Ragnar's expression had become more intent as he remembered. "Some were where they should be. Others were not. Floki saw it too."
That was worse.
Much worse.
A storm could move a ship farther than the men aboard realized. Currents could carry them. Exhaustion could distort memory. Even a whirlpool, however impossible the scale Ragnar described, could perhaps be dismissed as some freak piece of this world's already magical geography.
Stars were less accommodating.
Jinx looked west again, but now the city below him seemed considerably less interesting.
"After that we kept sailing because we had little choice," Ragnar said. "The sun still rose where it should. The sea still tasted like sea. We found no land until yours."
Jinx folded his arms.
The first comparison that came to mind was Odysseus, because his old world had been fond of stories where gods threw men across oceans for lessons nobody asked to learn. The comparison was irritatingly appropriate, though Odysseus had at least remained inside his own mythology.
"This is not good," Jinx murmured.
Ragnar's eyes brightened with curiosity. "You looked less worried when you threw me across the room."
"I knew where you were then."
"You know where I am now."
"That is unfortunately the problem."
Ragnar stared at him for a moment, then laughed, not loudly but with enough genuine amusement that Jinx gave him an annoyed look.
"You are very strange, Jinx Stark."
"I've been told."
"By many?"
"Usually immediately before they ask me for something."
Ragnar leaned against the stone rail again, though his attention had shifted almost entirely from the city to Jinx. "Then tell me what you think happened."
Jinx considered lying and decided the effort would be wasted. "I think you crossed more than water."
Ragnar's expression did not change at once.
That was one of the things Jinx was beginning to appreciate about him: he did not reject an idea merely because it offended what he already knew. He let it sit, turned it over, tested it against the things he had seen, and only afterward decided whether it deserved laughter.
"More than water," Ragnar repeated.
"Your stars changed. You entered a storm that behaved like no storm you knew. A whirlpool swallowed you, and you woke near a continent your people apparently have never heard of, speaking a language that resembles one my ancestors brought here thousands of years ago." Jinx gave a small shrug, because saying it aloud did nothing to make the situation more sensible. "Either the world is much stranger than both of us were taught, or the gods have a truly excessive sense of humor."
Ragnar thought about that, then looked toward the sea as though somewhere beyond the horizon Odin might be grinning back at him. "Floki would prefer the second answer."
"I suspected he might."
"He will say the gods chose us."
"Of course he will."
"You do not believe they did?"
Jinx was quiet long enough that Ragnar glanced toward him.
Belief had never been Jinx's difficulty. He knew too many impossible things to dismiss gods merely because the idea made other people uncomfortable, and he had personally done enough with magic that atheism would have required a degree of stubbornness he could not be bothered to maintain. What he distrusted was purpose.
"I believe powerful things exist," he said. "I am less convinced they deserve worship merely because they are powerful."
Ragnar's head tilted.
Jinx looked back at him with the faint, almost pleasant smile that tended to make priests uncomfortable. "If a god saves a village, people build him a shrine. If a king saves one, they build him a statue. If either burns the village the next year, apparently everyone suddenly discovers there were mysterious reasons involved. I find the distinction tedious."
Ragnar stared at him, and then, unexpectedly, grinned.
"You would make Floki angry."
"Most religious people eventually become angry with me."
"I think I would like to see it."
"I'm sure you will."
The certainty in that answer made Ragnar's smile diminish slightly.
Jinx let his gaze settle on the city once more before returning to what mattered. "You asked how I knew you. I told you enough for now. What I haven't told you is why I think any of this concerns me."
Ragnar's attention sharpened immediately.
Jinx had considered this conclusion since the quay, hated it for most of the night, and found no better one by morning. Ragnar's future had been diverted, perhaps deliberately, and he had landed in a kingdom whose ancient people appeared connected to Ragnar's own in ways no maester knew. Jinx happened to be standing at the center of both mysteries while already possessing knowledge he should never have had.
Coincidences stopped being coincidences when they began travelling in packs.
"I think we need one another," Jinx said.
Ragnar regarded him with open skepticism now. "You know me, you have magic, you have this city, and apparently kings listen when you speak loudly enough. What do you need from me?"
"That," Jinx said, pointing west.
Ragnar followed the gesture toward the horizon.
"You know there is something beyond it because you came from there. I know there is something beyond it because I saw pieces I should never have been able to see. Neither of us knows why your people share blood, language and old customs with mine after being separated for thousands of years, and neither of us knows what dragged your ship here instead of England."
Ragnar remained still.
Jinx's expression softened into something darker than amusement. "I dislike mysteries that know more about me than I know about them."
That Ragnar understood.
Jinx could see it in the way his eyes changed.
"And what do I receive?" Ragnar asked.
There was no offense in the question. It was simply the farmer, explorer and ambitious man inside him refusing to enter a bargain before hearing the other side.
Jinx appreciated that too.
"Food. Your weapons returned once I'm confident none of your men are going to bury an axe in a servant because someone reaches for the wrong cup. Repairs to your ship if it can be repaired, another if it cannot, maps as far west as our maps actually go, and enough provisions to keep you from repeating yesterday." Jinx paused, watching Ragnar absorb each piece rather than flooding him with promises. "More importantly, I can help you reach England."
That got him.
Ragnar's face remained controlled, but the hunger returned to his eyes.
Jinx continued before it could become agreement. "Not today, and not by pointing in a direction and wishing you luck. First I need to know what happened to your ship, where your people came from, and whether whatever moved you can do it again."
Ragnar studied him for several breaths. "And if I decide I would rather return home?"
"Then return home."
The answer came so easily that Ragnar frowned.
Jinx gave him a tired little smile. "Did you expect chains?"
"I expected you to want something badly enough to use them."
"I rarely want anything badly enough for chains. They require guards, keys, food, complaints. Very inefficient."
Ragnar laughed again, though he kept watching him.
"And if I bring my people here?" he asked.
That was the question Jinx had been waiting for.
His expression lost what little amusement remained. "Then you stop being interesting strangers and become an invading people standing on land already claimed by several hundred lords who have spent thousands of years perfecting reasons to kill each other. They will briefly discover unity when given someone new to kill."
Ragnar's eyes narrowed, but Jinx did not soften it.
"You could raid the coasts," he continued. "Probably quite successfully at first. Villages are villages everywhere, and most peasants do not sleep expecting men from an unknown continent to row out of the sunrise. Then ravens fly, castles close their gates, mounted men arrive faster than you can move on foot, and eventually someone decides burning your ships is easier than fighting you."
Ragnar listened without offense, because Jinx was not insulting his people; he was describing numbers.
"You could win battles," Jinx said. "You would lose the arithmetic."
Ragnar looked west again.
Jinx let that remain with him rather than trying to force the lesson deeper.
After a while Ragnar asked, "England is weaker?"
Jinx smiled faintly.
There was the man he remembered.
"Different," he said. "And if you want to know more, you'll have to earn the rest after breakfast."
Ragnar gave him an incredulous look. "Breakfast."
"You nearly starved to death yesterday. I'm not explaining geopolitics to a man whose stomach is trying to eat his spine."
That earned a quiet snort, and Ragnar pushed away from the rail as though reminded that the smell of food somewhere deeper in the castle had been tormenting him for several minutes. He took two steps toward the doors before stopping and looking back over his shoulder.
"Jinx Stark."
Jinx raised an eyebrow.
"When Floki wakes, do not throw him into a chair."
Jinx considered the unconscious shipbuilder visible through the doorway, then looked back at Ragnar with the same detached calm he had worn through most of the morning. "That depends entirely on Floki."
Ragnar's grin widened as he turned toward the infirmary.
Somewhere behind them, one of the sleeping men began to stir.