- watch -
Shae watches. She watches Sansa sleep, sleep until late in the afternoon, until the sunlight pours through the windows, orange as marmalade. She watches her eat, eat in spite of her lack of appetite, fight against her rising gorge to swallow. She watches her at her needlework, holding the hoop in her lap and the needle in her hand, stitching X after X in ruby, crimson, vermilion. The colours spread across the muslin like billows of blood, like all of the thoughts she dares not speak out loud, even to Shae herself.
Long ago, Sansa stitched ladies on balconies, tossing their silken scarves at knights at tourney below. Not any longer.
"Shall I braid your hair, milady?" Shae asks her one day.
"What's the point?" Sansa wants to know.
"To look pretty?"
"Pretty?" Shae has never heard the word spoken so coldly before. "For whom?"
Shae chooses a different line. "Do you wish to take a walk today?"
"I'd rather not," Sansa answers. She has grown chary of appearing in public since King Joffrey announced his engagement to Margaery Tyrell.
Shae understands. She also dreads the day when the king remembers there is still a Stark in King's Landing.
"You can wear a veil," she says, undeterred. "We can walk along the pier. Look at the sea, the ships in the harbor. Something that is not this chamber. These four walls. Each other."
"If you've grown tired of me, you may leave," Sansa says in a voice that would be imperious, if it weren't trembling.
Shae crosses the room. Squats before Sansa, clasps her hands in her own. "I will never leave you, milady."
This earns her a weak smile.
"Come," Shae says in her most charming voice, pulling Sansa upwards by the hands. "Let's go stroll in the sunlight."
- watch out for her -
Shae takes Sansa by the arm, helps her sidestep pools of stagnant water, potholes in the cobblestones. She guides her through the city alleyways, far from any courtiers who might recognize her through the scalloped veil she wears over her face. She leads her away from soldiers who stare at them with hard eyes, away from the street vendors roasting animals spitted on sticks, out of reach of the pickpockets and beggars and crones.
A minstrel straddling a bench drunkenly pitches and sings:
In the city King's Landing the morning breaks bright.
Out the taverns come gold-cloaks and whore-sons and knights.
On the top of the dung-heap, a cockerel's crowing.
Through the slum of Flea-bottom, a putrid wind's blowing
Up to the palace, where eight days a week
Spies and backbiters and liars and thieves
Swarm about, thicker than bees in a hive
'Round the king, the king's nobles, the noblemen's wives.
Crooks, whores and scoundrels! Nothing you do
Might rival the mischief these men plot to do.
Raise a glass to the minstrel! Go on, chew your bread,
Drink your wine, sing your songs, for we'll all soon be dead.
"At least the commoners' spirits are high," Sansa says under her breath, as the small crowd around the minstrel jeers.
Shae does not answer. She knows that women like herself thrive in corrupted cities like King's Landing, grow fat like ticks on its underbelly.
Girls like Sansa die of broken hearts, or bitterness.
- watch out for her with him -
Shae looks down the pier to where Sansa stands at Petyr Baelish's side. The sound of the sea washes over their words; they face the water as they speak.
It is well done. There are many in King's Landing with the gift of lip-reading.
"He makes her nervous," Shae offers, noting how stiffly Sansa holds her spine.
"He ought to."
"Should I fear for her maidenhead?"
Ros laughs. "If only his desires were so innocent."
Shae turns and looks at her, an unspoken question in her eyes.
Ros explains. "When Lord Baelish looks upon a woman, he has but one thought, and it has nothing to do with what lies between her legs. No, he's thinking of how he might use her to his own advantage. And the advantage of Lord Baelish is little consolation to the pieces he imperils on his chessboard."
"They say he loved her mother."
Ros raises her eyebrows, acknowledging this as true. "He still bears the scar from the duel he fought for her, and lost," she says. "I saw it once, when he was in his dressing chamber. It's a wonder that he lived."
"Might he bear my lady some affection for her mother's sake?"
"Perhaps," Ros says, unconvinced. "But I wouldn't bet on it, if I were you."
Shae turns her face to the sea.
"I never bet on anything," she lies.
- watch out -
"What are you doing here?" Tyrion hisses through the metal grate in his door. "Have you gone mad?"
"Are you going to let me in or what?" Shae asks, cocking a hand on her hip.
Tyrion breathes out through his nose, exasperated, and disappears from the grate. A moment later, the thick wooden door opens, and he jerks her inside.
"I cannot believe you. The Hound is gone, which means that there are precisely two people in King's Landing who stand between Sansa Stark and those who would just as soon kill her as look at her."
"She is sleeping. The door to her chamber is locked." Shae looks at him searchingly. "You care for her," she realizes.
"Don't be absurd," Tyrion says, scowling, over-enunciating the sibilant S.
"I am not the one who's being absurd. Admit it. You care for her."
"Because I would not see her dead, or maimed, or raped?" He snorts. "Your idea of 'care' is, quite honestly, fucked."
"I did not know my lord had such a tender heart," she teases him, and lays her hand on his chest through the neck of his shirt.
"And now you are the only one who does," Tyrion says, his voice gruff, but slightly less querulous. "Guard my secret well."
"I guard all your secrets well, my lord." She bends down and kisses him.
He kisses her back, then breaks away.
"You should not have come," he says. Both chastising and forgiving her at once.
"Then why did you let me in?"
He shrugs. "A man does foolish things for love."
He lets his eyes linger on her face a moment longer, then pulls himself away from her. Crosses the room to pour himself a flagon of wine.
"When I was a boy, I used to creep down to the castle's kitchens and trip all the mousetraps at night," he says, and raises the cup to his lips. "Because I could not bear to see the little mice with their backs broken."
Shae sits down on the edge of the bed. "Are you saying my lady Sansa's a mouse?"
"In a den of hungry cats."
"Then send her away from here." Her voice is harder now.
"How?" Tyrion demands. "I am the Hand of the King no longer. I have neither the power nor the authority to spirit her out of the city. I can barely afford to pay Bronn to keep my own head on my neck!"
"You know she cannot stay."
He shakes his head. "I cannot help her."
Shae just looks at him and doesn't say a word.
"If I were caught, I would be executed for treason. And the only Lannister who'd deign to visit my grave lies in chains up North." He pauses. "I admit it - I care more for my life than my conscience."
"'In the game of thrones, you win or you die,'" Shae repeats. She has heard him say it many times since the Battle of Blackwater.
Tyrion toasts to this, his expression grim as ever. "And my odds at winning grow slimmer each day."
"Maybe we should change the game," she says.
"To what?"
Her eyes are thoughtful. "One where everyone wins."
- for her -
Shae and Sansa are sitting on her window seat, their legs tucked underneath them, their bodies cradled by silken cushions. Their laughter rings out in the chamber like choral music – Shae's the earthy contralto; Sansa, the sweet soprano.
"It does give you a lovely warm feeling," Sansa admits as she holds out her cup for more of the rose-colored wine.
"I told you," Shae says merrily, refilling Sansa's goblet. "Two or three glasses won't make you a fat old drunk like the dead king."
"Or a cruel one, like Queen Cersei." Sansa seems suddenly soberer. "I would have made a good queen," she says after a pause. "And a kind."
"Even with Joffrey as your king?"
The girl loses all expression at the mention of this name. "Let us not speak of Joffrey," she decides.
"Fine with me." Shae shifts her position, props her head up with her hand. "Tell me of the newest man to delight your eyes."
Sansa laughs - carefully, demurely. "I don't know."
"I think you do," Shae says, playfully nudging her.
"Well. I did find Ser Loras quite handsome. You know…the Knight of the Flowers?" Her mouth twists. "But he is a cheat at tourney, and inconstant in his fealty. And they say he cares not for women, anyhow."
"And what of Petyr Baelish?
Sansa looks up, startled.
"Do you like him?" Shae persists.
Sansa is quiet for a long moment. "He frightens me, a little," she says at last. "My heart knocks against my chest when I must speak to him."
Shae smiles. "So you do like him."
"Shae!" she protests. "He's old enough to be my father."
"He has the body of a much younger man," Shae says.
When Sansa's cheeks flush, she laughs.
"You're awful," Sansa says through an abashed smile. "The absolute worst."
"And he is knowing in the ways of love," Shae continues in a breathy, sing-song voice. "I hear the women in his brothels are the best lovers in the Seven Kingdoms, that he taught them how to fulfill any man's desires."
She gives Sansa's thigh a playful squeeze, and Sansa squeals and giggles and pulls it away.
"And he fascinates you," Shae finishes.
"Only because he's not a hypocrite. All other men in King's Landing are either hypocrites or brutes." Sansa pauses, as though she's mulling over a secret. "But he is not to be trusted," she says, as though she's made a firm decision. "He told me so himself."
"They do say he's a dangerous man," Shae says, knowing this is hardly a disincentive to lust.
Sansa twists a braid of her hair in her hand. It is the gesture of a girl struggling against her own ambivalence.
Shae's eyes narrow thoughtfully. "I know a game we can play," she says, setting down her glass.
She reaches out and trails a finger down the center of Sansa's bodice.
"Pretend I'm him," she says, a wild gleam in her eyes.
Sansa grins. "You're mad," she says.
"You want to know if you like him or not? This is the best way. Close your eyes, think of him and see how it makes you feel." Shae rises. "I'll put out the candle."
The candle flame expires with a hiss between her moistened fingertips.
"But I don't know what to do," Sansa whispers, flummoxed, as she leans back and Shae leans forward. "Where do I put my hands?"
"Here." Shae guides them to her shoulders, strokes Sansa's face and hair. "Remember what I said. Think of him."
Sansa does. And in the darkness, she yields again and again to Petyr Baelish's mouth upon her neck. His hands, sliding up her thighs.
Afterwards, they lie on Sansa's bed. Side by side, holding hands, their fingers intertwined.
"I know you want him to take you away," Shae whispers into the darkness.
"Do you think he will?" Sansa's voice is small, but not lacking in hope.
"Men have done far more foolish things for love."
There is a silence as Sansa considers her words.
"But I do not think Lord Baelish loves me," she finally says, as though this is something she should apologize for.
"He nearly died for the love of your mother long ago, and she cannot have been more beautiful in her youth than you are now." Shae pauses. "And there is something else that I daresay might move him to love you the more."
"What?"
"You need him."
Sansa is silent again.
"Men like it when you need them," Shae explains.
"I know that already," Sansa says in a way that makes Shae doubt she does.
"And you like him," Shae says. "It's enough to like him."
"But…I don't know if it's the kind of like that turns to love."
"Just pretend you do. Sometimes, love comes after."
"Did that ever happen to you?"
Shae thinks of her Tyrion, and smiles.
- with him -
After two days of waiting, Shae catches sight of Baelish's silhouette in the castle corridors. She slows her steps to catch him at the crossing.
"Lord Baelish," she greets him, and curtseys with a straight back, as Queen Cersei mock-taught her during the Battle of Blackwater.
Baelish stops, scrutinizes her face. "You're the Stark girl's handmaiden, aren't you? I don't believe I caught your name."
"Shae."
"Shae." He draws out the name, caresses it in his rounded mouth. "How pretty. It's…?"
"Foreign."
"Yet oddly familiar to me," Baelish finishes, with a look she isn't sure she likes. He smiles and gives her a perfunctory nod, and makes a motion to walk around her.
Shae opens her mouth as though she would say something of great importance, and falters, as though she is lacking in nerve. A performance she has practiced countless times in Sansa's looking-glass over the last two days.
Littlefinger, sensing weakness, lingers.
"Say what you will," he says, not unkindly.
Shae hesitates. "I do not know what you spoke of with my lady, my lord, and I do not need to know. But…since she saw you last…"
She drops her voice. "She dreams of you at night, my lord. She calls out your name in her sleep."
All the while she speaks, she is searching his face, searching for a sign that his heart might quicken at the thought of her young mistress, yearning for a man's touch in the darkness.
Baelish stares at her a full five seconds before he remembers himself.
"Why are you telling me this?" he whispers, and glances down the corridors. There is accusation in his voice, and a hint of fear. But it is too late. She has seen his face. Seen the hope in his eyes.
"I want my lady to sing again," she says. "But you know what they say about little birds in cages..."
Voices echo towards them down the corridor. Shae curtseys again to Baelish before she hurries back the way that she came.
- watch -
"Shae."
She looks up from the granate-apples in the fruitier's stand before her. Yellowjackets buzz around them, attracted by the sweet nectar oozing from their pores.
It is Ros, her face tentative. "Shae…is your name?" she asks, squinting in the brightness of the sun.
Shae bends an inch at the knees.
Ros smiles without showing her teeth. "The sweetest granate-apples are down Grocer's Way," she confides, and takes her by the arm. "Shall we go there together?"
As they walk along the parapets, Ros leans in close and says, "These past three nights my lord wakes till dawn. Shuffling through the codices of the coin of the realm. Making music with his abaci.
"I asked him, 'What are you figuring, my lord?' He said, 'My worth in King's Landing.' I asked what that was. Do you know what he answered?"
Shae glances at her sideways. Waits.
"More than the Lannisters can afford to lose,'" Ros recites.
"Why are you telling me this?" Shae says, feigning impatience.
"I want to know what gamble he's about to take."
"I know nothing of your lord's intentions."
"Don't you?" Ros drops her arm when they reach the first gate of the Hanging Gardens. "He wants to see her again. Bring her here tomorrow before sunset, and send her to stroll through the gardens."
"Alone?"
"Alone," Ros confirms. "She may wish to wear a veil. And pack a reticule."
Shae nods and turns to leave.
"And Shae."
She looks back over her shoulder.
"If you should suddenly find yourself without friends in King's Landing, don't you dare come running to me."
- out for her -
Over the harbor, the sky bleeds orange and red. It is the next day, nigh to sunset, and Sansa is pacing round her chamber in a panic.
"If they catch me, they'll cut off my head!" she cries, wringing her hands.
"They will not catch you." Shae's voice is adamant. "Lord Baelish holds King's Landing in the palm of his hand. Anyone who sees you will forget that he has seen you. Anyone who speaks of you will have his tongue cut from his throat."
"The Lannisters hold King's Landing, you idiot," Sansa babbles. Bringing her hands to her face, she collapses onto the window seat.
"They rule in name," Shae tells her. "But all the middlemen between the palace and pier belong to him. The City Watch is his. The Lords of Custom are his. The Port-Masters are his. And they will gladly look the other way when his ship sails you from this gods-forsaken place."
She plucks Sansa's hands away from Sansa's face. "Don't you want to go home, my lady?" she pleads.
"Of course I do," Sansa sputters. Her eyes are shining with tears. "I just…I can't believe he would take such a risk. For me."
She looks up at Shae. "Do you think he means to betray me?"
It is not a stupid question. But Shae cannot allow such speculations now.
"Now is not the time to be afraid," she snaps.
"But I am afraid," Sansa sobs.
Shae lifts Sansa's chin with her hand, looks her in the eyes. "Stop. You are a Stark of Winterfell, not a chamber maid."
Sansa stops crying.
"My father was a Stark," she says, holding the other woman's gaze. "And he was the bravest of men, and they cut off his head, and he died." Her eyelashes are still wet with tears. "What if we're making a mistake?"
Shae swallows. "It may well be," she admits. "But staying here is too dangerous. And who knows when you may have another chance to flee?"
There is silence in the room, a silence that is broken when Sansa lets out a sharp sigh. It is the sound of a girl yielding to an ineluctable truth.
"You're right," she finally says. "I have to try, don't I?"
Shae wishes she could clasp her in her arms. Instead she pulls her by the hands to her feet.
"Pack your bag, Sansa," she says. "We must be gone."
Sansa packs only one keepsake. A doll.
- with him -
One of the Targaryens planted the Hanging Gardens centuries ago, in the southern-most quarter of King's Landing, where the sun battens the earth over the sea. Until there came a king who cared more for hunting than horticulture, it was one of the most beautiful places in Westeros. But Robert Baratheon let the Hanging Gardens go. Now, vines snake upwards, and strangle their wooden supports; overripe fruit rots on the ground. Its paths are crisscross with brambles, and its many secret passageways forgotten.
In the gardens' westward keeping, underneath a bower where fluted flowers hang low, Lord Petyr Baelish paces to and fro, and frets.
Once, long ago, a woman from across the Shining Sea told him that he meddled in black arts by renting out the bodies of women, for love was a blood magick, the most potent thereof.
He wasn't sure what she had meant, till now. For the girl had crept into his blood and spread through his veins like poison. Now, every time his heart beats, it beats out her name. San-sa. San-sa. San-sa.
Was he a fool to believe the words of Tyrion Lannister's whore? Probably. Did that disincline him to this reckless plan? Not in the slightest.
There! There she is. He can see her through the knotted, nesting vines. He sweeps them aside with his hand – he'd cut a curtain through them, earlier – and holds out his hand.
"My lady," he says, trying not to sound too eager. "Come."
- watch -
Shae lingers by the parapets, pretends to watch the setting sun. Swallows past the thorn that is lodged in her throat.
She longs to run into the Hanging Gardens, to call Sansa back. But another part of her simply wants her gone, gone from King's Landing, no matter the devils' pact to which she must sign her name.
She will not run after her, she decides. She will let her go with Littlefinger. He is powerful, and sly, and he will keep her safe.
Unless there is a profit in the opposite…
No! She will go after Sansa. She must make sure that she's done the right thing.
Feet pounding the cobblestones, arms pumping, heart racing, Shae runs.
- out -
"Won't a ship leaving at sunset be suspect, my lord?" Sansa asks, all wide eyes and innocence.
"It would be, my lady," Baelish tells her, smiling at her cleverness. "If the men of the piers had not been informed that my brothels were open to them all evening, and without charge."
He beckons for her hand, and she gives it him.
"And - " he begins.
He leads her towards the far corner of the bower, pulls the vinery free. There is a passage the width of a strong man's shoulders, and beneath it, a staircase cut into the rock, descending, invisible from the sea.
It is so cunning, it seems almost magical.
Baelish points downwards. Scarce a half-league hence, a fine, jaunty vessel sails towards them.
"There's a crag beneath that's a natural harbor," he explains, and turns his face to Sansa. She is so close he can feel the warmth from her face and neck. "In the golden hour, when the sun sinks beneath the horizon and its light still lingers, we'll steal down onto the ship, and be away."
"It's perfect," Sansa whispers, and looks up at him. "My lord – I don't – "
"You don't have to thank me," he assures her, and lets the curtain of vines drop. And jasmine blossoms float down from the bower overhead, to fall and catch in Sansa's auburn hair.
"I must," she insists, as strongly as courtesy allows. "For – I know well that my lord can bear me no affection…" (she hesitates) "…that could possibly warrant the risk."
Roselight is stealing through the bowery, illuming her eyes and lips and cheeks. And Baelish is powerless as he looks on her face - so beautiful, so familiar, yet so strange.
"No," he says, and "Yes," the second afterwards, and reaches for her waist, and pulls her body into his.
It is the sort of kiss that maidens dream of, alone in their chambers at night, sitting by their windows, gazing out towards a horizon that remains forever out of reach. That Sansa still dreams of, in unguarded moments, when she allows herself to hope for a life that is neither terrible nor boring.
The man who kisses her is not a knight or prince or king, but his arms are strong and his hold on her is sure. She half-swoons. Her body bends in his arms like a reed.
He breaks away, and, as soon as her feet are again on the ground, he reaches up to touch her face with both his hands. He traces his fingertips down her cheeks.
She looks at him, rapt.
"Sansa. Would you trust yourself to me?" he asks.
"Yes," she both says and decides at once.
He nods at her. "Then let's get you home."
He turns towards the vines again and wrenches the curtain open. He proffers his hand so that she might descend the stony stairs.
"My lord," she says, with a note of pardon, as though she's remembered something she should have not forgotten. "What will happen when we get there?"
Baelish blows out a breath through his lips. "Many things can happen. Who can know?" He laughs. "If we play our cards right, we may even hasten a peace."
"I do like to play cards, my lord," Sansa says, and takes his hand, and lifts her skirts so that she might not step on them. And for the first time in moons there is again a slyness in her eyes.
- for her with him -
As the ship sails from its secret harbor, Shae watches it, and smiles. As soon as she spied the lovers through the bowery, she was well assured.
And there it goes! Disappearing, over the horizon. Sailing towards yet another corner of the world.
Shae knows the first half of its story, and its entr'acte begins sweetly. Still. She cannot help but pray to the Gods it has a happy ending.