"Here is a little secret. I know what's important to us. Lost things. Lost notes. Lost photographs. Lost books. Lost memories. All things lost will forever retain perfection. They never rusted, they never broke. Because something lost only exists in the mind. It has no flaws. It has no mistakes. It is perfect. Only the things you no longer have, and will never have, can be perfect."

"When the sun has set, no candle can replace it."
"Is that from a song?" Tyrion cocked his head, smiling. "Yes, you are seventeen, I see that now."
Ser Loras tensed. "Do you mock me?" A prickly lad. "No. If I've given offense, forgive me. I had my own love once, and we had a song as well." I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair. He bid Ser Loras a good evening and went on his way.

- A Storm of Swords

Casterly Rock

"I loved a maid as red as autumn with sunset in her hair..."

She had been braiding love-knots into her hair, looping scarlet ribbons through the long, dark strands. For a moment she paused. Then-

"A silken voice," Lady Genna Frey, her aunt by marriage, declared. Bawdily and loud enough for the blushing young boy who sang for them to hear, she added, "And silken fingers to go with it, no doubt."

By the time Lady Genna turned to her again, Sansa was plaiting the ribbons again as though she had never stopped. "You keep a passing fine court of singers, Sansa."

"Music is my delight," Sansa replied calmly. "I confess that I am most partial to my singers."

"Why so am I," Lady Genna said, chuckling. She seemed on the tip of a ribald jest. "Ah, you blush most prettily. One might think you still a maid. That is," she said, eying Sansa's belly, "if they saw only your face. I suppose it runs in the blood, your... fancy."

"We rarely had singers willing to come so far north as Winterfell when I was a child," Sansa said cautiously. "My lord father and lady mother were not so passionate about music as to keep their own court."

"I meant your mother's sister," Lady Genna retorted. "Lysa Arryn. She kept a great many singers for her pleasure in King's Landing, though old Lord Arryn never seemed to like those arrangements. That was before her feeble-witted boy was born. She poured all her love in him."

Sansa had heard it said many a time that her cousin, Robert Arryn, was feeble-witted. And yet he was still hale and hearty, still he reigned as Lord of Mountain and Vale, after so many in the flower of their health had been struck down.

"Lord Arryn was an old man and frail when he sired a son on your aunt. The seed was weak." Lady Genna patted Sansa's hand in a motherly fashion and continued, "But you need not have any fears about your babe, Sansa, no matter what his father is. The maesters say that Tyrion's condition does not run in the blood... no matter what Tyrion fears. He'll be a true lion of the Rock in his strength, just as Tyrion is in his heart."

"It might be a girl," Sansa said perversely.

"Best hope that it's not. My brother promised you the North if you could bear a son to take it."

It was not his to promise, Sansa thought resentfully but she only said mildly, "Lord Tywin has given us permission to leave for the North after my confinement." His permission and an army to back it.

"Well he meant a boy. Eddard Stark's grandson, to be named for him. A girl's no good."

"Neither is a boy if he can't be put to use," Sansa observed dryly. "A girl is just as good as a boy when they are both tools to be put to a task."

Lady Genna threw her a sharp look. "Quite so, child."

The women were sitting in the long gallery, sewing and gossiping through the long hours of a winter afternoon before supper. As the chatelaine of the castle, Sansa was seated beneath a canopy of cloth-of-gold on the raised dais from which she could look down the length of the hall. Lady Genna had come visiting to the Rock with her younger sons some two days past.

"A woman should have her kin to help her when she is with child," Lady Genna had announced officiously. She'd patted Sansa's head as though she was a lapdog and added, "I intend to do my part for you, poor child, for you have no one else to help."

Sansa wished Tyrion was there to help her deal with her good-aunt's rather unwarranted attentions, but he had taken himself to Lannisport. Or to be more specific, to a certain manse in Lannisport.

"Roslin's little lass seems to be growing well."

Sansa's eye flew to her other aunt by marriage, Lady Roslin Tully, her Uncle Edmure's widow and a Lannister hostage. She was playing a clapping game with her little girl. The child was not quite two but already wed to Lady Genna's eldest grandson Tywin, the stripling heir to Riverrun

"Yes it was fortunate for Roslin that she popped out a girl," Lady Genna said conversationally. "The Tullys will still hold Riverrun... through the female line. Roslin's a pretty little thing isn't she - though her face always puts me in mind of a mouse, so meek and frightened-like. Still, better a mouse than a chinless weasel like some of the other Frey girls, I suppose. Too pretty to be a widow she is, there's talk of settling her on one of Tywin's pet sellswords."

"As a reward?" Sansa asked in horror.

Lady Genna shrugged as though to say that it was the way of the world. "She's used goods to be sure, but she's young and fertile and pretty to boot. A lord's daughter too, now that's a step up for your common sellsword. A tool as you said. Shame though that she'll have to leave her little girl. After she's married, we'll take the child to Riverrun with us."

I was no less, Sansa thought. I was given away in marriage as a reward too.

"Two years are almost up," Lady Genna continued. "Time for the Westerling girls to be married too. Tywin'd give 'em away to his pets if he could but that wrangling weasly mother of theirs put in her conditions - she'll have lords for Jeyne and Elenya and lords'll have to be sweetened with gold before they'll take a traitor's widow."

Elenya Westerling was fourteen, about Sansa's age. She was sitting among a cluster of young girls who were embroidering a tapestry together, giggling as they worked. What do they dream of? Sansa wondered. Silver-tongued singers or strong knights to champion them? Once upon a time she had had her dreams too, but she had been much younger than they. Jeyne was not in the gallery - Sansa supposed that she was in her stillroom.

Lady Genna was still chattering. "...hasn't kept her looks like Roslin. Jeyne's as haggard as her mother, though she's not yet nine-and-ten. Looks like a witch, if you ask me."

"A corpse," Sansa supplied.

Genna nodded. "Just so."

Yes, because her heart's in the grave. Jeyne had truly loved Sansa's brother. It had been some solace to them both in the early weeks, to talk of Robb's last days. But that had been before Jeyne had gone... queer. Not mad, though the castle folk called her that. Just queer. Sansa wondered how much gold a lord would demand to take in such a wife.

The singer had finished his song and was just about to begin another one when Lady Genna said officiously, "No, no, play that one again. I like it."

"No," Sansa said automatically and then blushed as Lady Genna looked enquiringly at her. "I mean... oh very well. Play on."

Lady Genna closed her eyes and tipped her head back, seemingly well-pleased with herself.

"I loved a maid as red as autumn with sunset in her hair..."

Sansa fiddled with the stem of her wineglass and took a draught to calm herself.

With her eyes still closed, Lady Genna remarked innocently, "Its your lord husband's favorite song, you know."

Sansa didn't.

"Oh I know all sorts of odd little things about people," Lady Genna said, when Sansa did not reply. "Comes of... mingling with all sorts. I lived at the Rock then and Tyrion was only a boy, about a year younger than you are now. He had his own sweet summer love and they sang and played together for a fortnight. Has he ever told you, child?"

"Yes." Sansa turned her face away. It was a sordid story and the last person she wanted to discuss it was Genna Frey.

The snub seemed to amuse the Lady of Riverrun. With the bluntness of a woman completely sure of her place in the world she said smugly, "I hear he takes his pleasure in Lannisport. Considerate of him to keep his mistress far from the Rock, that's as it should be done, of course. Not that your father of sainted memory would know."

Shae. "My father is long dead, my lady," Sansa said softly. "And what he did, he always did for good. We all loved Jon just as much as if he were trueborn." I didn't. But the others did, at any rate. The lie came easily to her lips.

"Hmph! He shamed Catelyn Tully by forcing her to raise his bastard."

"It was no shame, for my lady mother loved my father too well and knew how highly he honored her to be shamed," Sansa lied coolly. "I would do no less, should my lord husband ask the same of me."

Lady Genna chuckled. "But not for love of him, I suppose, child. You'd do it to spite me, wouldn't you? Prideful, like all the Starks." She studied her for a moment then said suddenly, "He loves you dearly."

Why should he not? Sansa wondered. He owns my body and my claim. Men have loved for less.

"And so do I with all my heart." The words rose numbly to her lips and she was reminded once again of those dark days in Joffrey's court where he would force her to swear her love for him in front of all.

Whatever Lady Genna's private feelings, she kept them to herself for after a pause, she changed the subject.

"Roslin's little girl has the Tully look," Lady Genna remarked. "Strong blood. All of you children took after your mother, didn't you? Coppery hair and bluebell eyes. Except for you."

"I took after the Starks, yes," Sansa agreed. Like a horse-faced commoner. Like the bastard.

"They told me you were bright and biddable, but your sister was the pretty one and that my great-nephew was... fascinated by her," Lady Genna said. "How old would she be now?"

"Twelve," Sansa said.

"Cersei was that age when she flowered. She'll be a beauty now."

If she's still alive.

Lady Genna was plainly intent on the subject. "Cersei told me she was as wild as a she-wolf. Is it true that she set her direwolf on Joffrey?"

"To defend herself," Sansa insisted. "She was only nine."

Genna snorted. "Did Catelyn Tully teach you girls nothing at Winterfell? You were wet with love for Joffrey, Cersei tells me, while he was hot as the seven hells for your sister. A stupid little thing and she was always doing something to set him off, it seems. That's not a woman's way and why you two weren't taught any sense I can't..."

"Arya never wanted to be a lady." When the Queen's soldiers had come to take her away she'd managed to vanish into King's Landing and pass herself off as a street urchin for a few days. But then she'd gone to the dockside to see the ship and the guards there recognized her through the grime and tatters. It would have been hard not to, Arya's coloring was so distinctive, her beauty so straight and direct.

"Did Joffrey really have her whipped before the whole court?" Lady Genna demanded, her curiosity avid. Her face said that she knew the whole story but she wanted Sansa to tell her.

"Almost," Sansa said briefly. But it was me they stripped. She rose to her feet, the skirts of her crimson silk gown flaring about her. "You will excuse me, my lady. I have duties to attend to, before the feast."

Lady Genna smiled triumphantly. For her it was just a game, it always was for the Lannisters. She was as round as a pumpkin where Queen Cersei was as slender as a willow, but they had the same eyes - a predator's eyes.

"I would advise you to rest," Lady Genna said. "Considering your condition."

"I will take your kind words to heart, lady aunt," Sansa said courteously. "I know you only have my best interests at heart."

She left the gallery and headed purposely towards the stillroom. Jeyne would be there. As she passed a window and looked down into the courtyard, she saw riders in Lannister livery. Tyrion? she thought, wondering what had happened to curtail his visit to Shae. She walked across the covered bridge that led to the stillroom and a girl hurried out, her hood drawn over her face.

Jeyne's stillroom was awash in wintery-white sunlight, all the windows thrown open. A young woman stood watching by one of them, her greying hair knotted into a rat's tail and thrown carelessly over the shoulder of her shabby brown cloak. She was slightly built, with long-fingered hands, the nails stained and cracked. The windows all faced the sea, the young woman who hardly looked young could have been dreaming as she watched.

Jeyne did not even turn when Sansa entered, only said dryly, "Ah its you, is it?"

Sansa clucked and instead of answering said, much as her mother might have done, "You'll catch your death of cold. Its as cold as the Wall here and you haven't even troubled to light a proper fire." Kneeling before the hearth, she busied herself kindling the embers into a blazing fire. "Shutter the windows, there's a good girl."

Indifferently Jeyne began to do so, only commenting, "You nag like a scold with a dozen children of her own."

Sansa drew a stool close to the fire and warmed her hands over the flames. Her face was flushed from the exertion and the heat and Jeyne said, "Though childbearing seems to suit you well." She drifted over to Sansa, her movements loose-limbed and languid as always. There was something about the way Jeyne walked that reminded Sansa of a wolf, a wolf barely contained in a woman's body.

"I saw a girl come out," Sansa observed. "Hooded and cloaked. What have you been doing, Jeyne?" Soon after arriving at Casterly Rock, Jeyne had begun to take lessons from the castle midwives and healing women... and from the old books in the great library as well.

Jeyne plucked a bone cup from the table and began to stir its contents with a little spoon. "Aye. She wanted a tincture to flush a babe from her womb. She'll be sick as a dog tonight."

Sansa winced at the crudeness of her language. "Will she live?"

Jeyne shrugged as though it did not matter. "The child won't, for sure. The mother... she's five months gone. I cannot say. I warned her though." She drifted over to the fire and offered the cup to Sansa. "Want a sip?"

Sansa put a protective hand over her belly and Jeyne chuckled. "Times change," she said cruelly. "It wasn't too long ago that you were swilling moon tea and dousing yourself with tansy."

"That was only once." I only took tansy once. I was too young to bear a child. It might have killed me. I never wanted to kill it, but I had to.

"Why's this one different?" Jeyne asked. "Have you come to fancy your dwarf so well?"

"I fancy him as much as I did on my wedding day." Sansa clasped her hands together in her lap. "Lord Tywin has promised me that I shall never see the North until I bear his son an heir. And Lord Tywin keeps his promises."

Jeyne nodded and after a moment tossed the contents of the cup into the fire. Her face was witchlike even by the rosy firelight, hollow-cheeked and sharp-boned, and there was a yellowish tinge to her eyes. Jeyne noticed Sansa looking at her eyes and shrugged. "They say my grandmother's were as yellow as pus."

Sansa knew all about her grandmother, the Eastern witch they called Maggy. It was castle gossip.

"They say she could see futures," Sansa said wistfully.

"She had a gift that's so," Jeyne agreed. "The second sight."

"It might have been in her blood."

"Mayhap," Jeyne said indifferently and Sansa knew that she would not tell her a jot more. Though Sansa might think of Jeyne as a sister - indeed as the only family she still had left - but it was not so for Jeyne. She trusted no one.

"I've been having the wolf dreams again," Sansa confessed suddenly. She did not know whether she said it out of fear or loneliness or only the desire for Jeyne's sympathy. She wanted to stay and talk and the only way she could pay for her presence was through a confession. By bartering a secret.

Jeyne's eyes brightened but she said nothing. She was good at waiting, Jeyne was. Sometimes Sansa thought she was always in a perpetual state of watchfulness, waiting for someone that only she could see. They say witches dance with the dead.

"Last night I dreamed that I was hunting with my pack by a river. We passed close enough to a castle to see people and we killed two but we were gone before they could attack us." Sansa swallowed. "I recognized the castle. It was the Twins."

"They say there's a she-wolf, as big as a horse, with a fearsome pack loose in the Riverlands," Jeyne said. "Mankillers, they are. Might be a direwolf. Didn't you say your little sister set hers loose near the Trident?"

"She had to. Cersei would have had both our wolves skinned together if she could. She feared them and rightly so."

"Might be you dreamed you were her," Jeyne said. "Might be you were her."

Sansa stared at her.

"Oh don't be giving me those looks," Jeyne said crossly. "They called the Starks skinchangers and wargs in the old days. Might be you know a thing or two about those from those great big books that you like to read. Might be," she added slyly, "you'd like to ask your dwarf if he has any ideas."

Tyrion might know, Sansa thought. Or if he didn't, he wouldn't stop until he found an answer. But she was unwilling to relinquish the information to him. Knowledge was power. It was one of the only powers Sansa had.

Ever since she was a child, she had been called the clever one. At first it had only been out of pity - her little sister, born two years after her, had been the pretty one. Later she had turned it into her own weapon. She did not need anyone's charity.

"Do you dream at night?" Sansa asked Jeyne suddenly, hardly expecting her to answer.

Jeyne smiled dreamily. "Oh yes," she said. "Sweet they are, too. I dream of my husband and the children that we never had. I dream that we live in a castle by the shore, just as I did when I was a girl. A shore by a sea so far off that no evil could touch us. Its only when I wake up that my dreaming turns to sourness. Go now, Sansa. I am sick of the sight of you."

A dark mood had taken hold of her, as it sometimes did when she was driven too far. Her face was tight and pinched, her voice strangely hoarse.

"Goodbye," Sansa said unwillingly and left. She made for the long gallery again but when she arrived, Lady Genna was not there. She asked Roslin where she had gone.

"To Lord Tyrion's study," the girl said timidly. "He sent for her not ten minutes ago. Some news he had from the Capital, I believe."

"And he did not send for me? Nor have a messenger sent to summon me?" Sansa could feel her temper mounting at this insult but she forced herself to be calm.

Roslin cast her a frightened look and muttered something under her breath. Sansa stalked off to her husband's study. She swept past the guards at the antechamber and past Podrick who barred the door to the study itself. He tried half-heartedly to stop her but ever since she had been twelve she had been able to rule over him.

Her husband and his aunt looked as thick as thieves when she entered. They were bent over a letter on the table, Lady Genna scowling fiercely and Tyrion slumped in his chair, looking exhausted. He started up in surprise when he saw Sansa.

"Sweetling," he said, his eyes drifting to her belly on cue. He stood to pull out a chair for her, as though she were an invalid. "Shouldn't you be abed?"

"I am only five months along in my time," she reminded him softly, though she wanted to snap. Honey attracts more flies than vinegar. "What is it?"

Tyrion hesitated before smiling cheerily. "Nothing," he said, "nothing to worry yourself about."

Lady Genna gave a derisive laugh. "Oh tell her," she said scornfully, plucking the letter. "After all, it should be her concern as well, shouldn't it? Or don't you trust your wife, Tyrion?"

"It is not about trust-"

"I'm not a child, Tyrion," Sansa said quietly. "I think I should be told."

Before Tyrion could answer, Lady Genna replied for him. "Its that sister of yours, girl," she said.

"Arya?" Sansa whispered, her heart hammering. Her legs gave way beneath her and she collapsed into a chair. "She's alive? Has she been found?"

"In Dorne-" Tyrion began.

"Its not us did the finding. She's plain shouted it to the world where she is," Lady Genna snapped. "She's gone and gotten married to the last dragon."