“Sam?” Jon called softly.  The air smelled of paper and dust and years. Before him, tall wooden shelves rose up into dimness, crammed¹ with leather-bound books and bins² of ancient scrolls⁴. A faint yellow glow filtered through the stacks from some hidden lamp. Jon blew out the taper⁶ he carried, preferring not to risk an open flame amidst so much old dry paper. Instead he followed the light, wending his way down the narrow aisles⁷ beneath barrel-vaulted ceilings. All in black, he was a shadow among shadows, dark of hair, long of face, grey of eye. Black moleskin gloves covered his hands; the right because it was burned, the left because a man felt half a fool wearing only one glove.  Samwell Tarly sat hunched⁸ over a table in a niche⁹ carved into the stone of the wall. The glow came from the lamp hung over his head. He looked up at the sound of Jon’s steps.  “Have you been here all night?”  “Have I?” Sam looked startled.  “You didn’t break your fast with us, and your bed hadn’t been slept in.” Rast suggested that maybe Sam had deserted¹⁰, but Jon never believed it. Desertion required its own sort of courage, and Sam had little enough of that.  “Is it morning? Down here there’s no way to know.”  “Sam, you’re a sweet fool,” Jon said. “You’ll miss that bed when we’re sleeping on the cold hard ground, I promise you.”  Sam yawned. “Maester Aemon sent me to find maps for the Lord Commander. I never thought... Jon, the books, have you ever seen their like? There are thousands!”  He gazed about him. “The library at Winterfell has more than a hundred. Did you find the maps?”  “Oh, yes.” Sam’s hand swept over the table, fingers plump as sausages indicating the

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