The wind scattered Sansa Stark's hair as she watched Crackclaw Point recede into the distance, cold damp air washing over her like relief and sorrow and anticipation.
It still stinks like bad eggs, she could not help observing.
Four furtive days of travel had taken them to Maidenpool, along roads on which every rider could only be Ser Lothor and every man afoot could only be a Lannister stooge. There was a new lord in the Vale, they said: news of that had reached the port town ahead of them. Of the old Lord Protector, however, there was great speculation and no word whatsoever. She wondered if he even knew she was missing from the Quiet Isle.
The Hound joined her on the gunwale, hulking and unsteady in a studded jerkin of boiled leather. There was something oddly comforting about the sight of him back in armour. He'd been dressed in a shabby brothers' robe of dun-and-brown roughspun since the day he bumped into her on the banks of the Trident. Which song did that make her think of? Was it Lady Shella, who didn't recognise her knight in disguise? Or was it one of those odd Dornish retellings of Florian and Jonquil with all the details moved around?
"Let me guess," said Sansa over the wind, "Stranger isn't happy below decks?"
"Makes two of us," Sandor grunted.
Sansa was dreading the very thought of going down there. How would she bear this for days on end? The rolling and pitching of the deck brought her to the edge of nausea even now, with the horizons all around her and cool air in her lungs.
She waved a hand airily towards in the direction of the land of their birth. "I thought I would feel something," she admitted. Apart from moderately queasy, that is. "I thought..."
The Hound eyed her, frowning, somehow learning enough from her face to take her meaning without a proper explanation.
"You thought it would be like in the sailors' songs. All that shit about being torn from your homeland like a babe from his mother's teat."
"Not exactly how I would have-"
"And let me guess," he continued, lip curling in a sneer. "All you feel is sick."
"I'm all right for now," grumbled Sansa. "Why, are you?"
"Like a dog, funnily enough," he said happily. "A word of advice on the songs, little bird: if someone writes a verse about the depth of their feelings, assume the reality involved a mess and a mop."
A cascade of agitated Valyrian behind her told Sansa she'd found the wrong spot to loiter in - again.
"I'm sorry," she called brashly in the Common Tongue. "My husband and I were just retiring."
It was the second time since they embarked that Sansa had used that word, and for a second time Sansa caught a sparkle in the Hound's eyes. His face remained stony as ever, but she was learning just how much could be gleaned by watching his eyes - how, from time to time, the stormclouds parted for a flash of silver. No wonder he ducked behind his hair so often. Unhidden, they rendered him an open book.
There had been no twinkle in his eye when she lied their way into a berth on the Maiden's Fancy. The story had flowed from her as natural as breathing. Their captain, a portly Braavosi with a hard mouth and a silver-haired young son accepted their pouch of coin almost dismissively, and bade them return at first light. She was Meera, and her new husband was Dakon; smallfolk had just the one name. They'd seen their village ruined by the Ironborn and were making for Pentos, where they hoped Dakon's uncle still had a wagon business - especially now that they'd spent their whole fortune on the passage. The Maiden's Fancy would stop at Tyrosh and then Pentos, before setting course for Braavos.
They'd sat up all night in the inn's common room, too mistrustful of their fellow travellers to risk sleep. If she read the lurching of Sandor's leg correctly, he was as tired as she felt. Reserving a private cabin had been far beyond their means, of course, so "retiring" gave them a choice: they could go sip wine together in the hold that doubled as a stable, or try to keep a low profile in the communal bunkroom. One look at the hammocks there told Sansa that she'd best get used to smelling of Stranger. 'Dakon' was a full foot too tall to even contemplate comfort in one of them, and she'd invite unwelcome scrutiny if they slept apart.
I can touch him again, if I want to, she remembered. It was another benefit of his shedding the brother's robe, and heat bloomed in her belly to think of what he'd done to her last time they were alone together. The days and nights since had been a succession of muddy roads, crofters' floors and cheap inns, with too many passers-by for the kind of soul-searching and intimacy they had shared on the Quiet Isle.
As of this moment, and for the foreseeable future, she was as free as she dared to be.
Sandor wasn't sure what sort of a mad fairytale he'd blundered into, but he didn't remember any that involved sitting in a hold on straw that stank of horsepiss. The fair lady next to him looked up into his face with the same shining earnestness he'd seen there years ago, when she was a girl watching knights at a tourney.
Her father's tourney. In the songs, it would've been her hand the victor won, not a bag of dragons scrounged up by Littlefinger.
Some good the wealth had done him. The Brotherhood had left him with almost none of it, and then Arya Stark had stolen half when she left him for dead. He'd barely had enough left to pay for passage to Pentos. This shit-heap would not have been his first choice, but beggars didn't get to choose. The little bird had missed the appraising looks she attracted from the sailors of the Maiden's Fancy, even mud-streaked and badly rested as she was; it was clear that some meant to make her earn part of her passage whether she willed it or no, until Sandor drew himself up behind her and almost literally rattled his sword.
If the crew knew enough about Westerosi to wonder why a blacksmith's daughter and her husband had a sword and a warhorse, they were bright enough to keep it to themselves.
"How is your stomach?" asked the girl, gentle as summer.
He thought about it. "It's all right. I don't feel the rocking as much down here."
"Me neither. Maybe we're gaining our sea-legs." Sandor doubted that, but grunted in assent anyway. "I wonder how long we'll be in Tyrosh."
"You won't be in Tyrosh at all. I'll be damned if I squirrel you across the Narrow Sea only to see you carried off by bloody slavers the moment you step foot on the island."
"This is going to be like Maidenpool all over again, isn't it? How was the company at that inn any more reputable than the docks?"
"All right, you may have a point there," he admitted.
She had wound her hand around his arm and was clinging to his shoulder as they spoke; though part of him rejoiced in the contact, another part wished she'd liberate his arm so that he could wrap it around her waist. He'd meant what he'd said, back on the Isle: he wouldn't ask her for anything she wasn't eager to give him of her own accord. It sounded like plenty had been taken from her against her will. When she was ready, he'd be waiting. That wasn't to say he didn't burn with lust every time he looked at her, but patience was one of the few virtues to which he could claim.
She's on the wrong side, he realised with a jolt.
Another spike of alarm to join all the others. They'd been coming thick and fast since the evening he caught sight of her on the Quiet Isle.
It started with the reminders of who this girl was and what she represented to him, but now the shock of having her near was being replaced by something far more painful. All the little traces of fondness that he was learning to recognise. Kindnesses that weren't simply Sansaand her sweet nature, but something shy and tender and just for him. Like right now, as she squeezed his arm and handed back the wineskin, and he noticed that it was his scarred side she smiled up at.
He was about to lean down and kiss her for that when a thought struck him.
"Tyrosh is the one with all the snail creams and other nonsense, isn't it? As well as the dyes, I mean."
"No, the snail creams are Pentos," said Sansa sagely. "Tyrosh is the dyes and the make-ups."
"Make-up. Fine. What you think are the odds that they'll have something to cover..."
With his free hand, Sandor made a circular motion to gesture at his whole face, then felt his brows knit as he watched her for an answer. Something odd happened to Sansa's face, melting through confusion, irritation, sorrow and then comprehension.
"You think you'll be recognised," she breathed.
He shrugged. "Merchants and courtiers from the Free Cities passed through King's Landing often enough. I've been looming around court for-" Near as long as she's been alive? Fuck. "-long enough that someone might recall my ugly face."
He looked her dead in the eye, trepidation building with every breath. "I might need your help."