"Where is she, where is Sansa?"
At the boy king's behest, the lady in question was pushed out of the throng of nobles and onto the space of marble floor immediately before the dais. She curtsied gracefully, spreading the white folds of her skirts about her in a manner reminiscent of some long-necked heron alighting upon a placid river. Unlike a heron, she would find no succor in her gentility.
"Your Grace," she said, keeping her head bowed. A comb of flawed diamonds sparkled from between her intricate nest of russet braids.
The Hound kept his expression implacable, though his horrid face was shielded from view by his dog's-head helmet. She played a dangerous game, doing that— dressing in what could be construed as Stark colors— so blatantly. But then, what more did she have to lose? Besides that pretty head of hers, obviously.
To his side, Joffrey's face was split by a deceptively handsome grin. His jade eyes were gleaming with malicious anticipation. "They say you like music, my lady."
Of course she did. The little bird had performed for them multiple times, accompanying herself more often than not. She was widely regarded as the most accomplished musician the Northern Galaxy had to offer, if not the paramount player in all of the star systems that were contained in the Seven Kingdoms.
"That is true, Your Grace," she replied, the wariness in her voice undisguised to his discriminating ears.
"I have a gift for you."
At his command, a squire brought forth a large, cello-like instrument with a wide black bow of dappled horse hair. She took the instrument from the squire with a numb "Thank you," ever the courteous lady.
More like than not, she found the thing loathsome. It was all goldenwood with stained red and black accents. The six wooden tuning pegs were carved into alternating lion and stag heads, with garnets and topaz set into their eyes respectively. On the curved C-holes set into the instrument's face were the two combatant beasts of Joffrey's arms, etched with exquisite detail, probably by hand rather than the more common laser. There were frets of catgut tied along the instrument's neck. Its strings were also made of gut, a further oddity considering that most of the other instruments he had seen from this family had steel strings.
"A viola da gamba," she stated in a small voice.
"I had it sent over from Norvos. What do you think?" Joff said, though the last thing on his mind was affability.
"It is far too lovely for the daughter of a traitor," she responded automatically.
"Perhaps Lady Sansa could play us a song," Littlefinger suggested from the Small Council's table to the side of the dais, his half-smirk stoking a flame of resentment in the Hound's chest.
Joffrey nodded his head in assent, and the same squire brought forth an ornate carbon fiber stool. The little bird seated herself upon the stool with a short flair of her skirts, and settled the instrument between her knees. She whistled a soft, yet pure note— almost inaudible, but for the discerning filters built into the ears of his helm. Sparks of light flew about the room as bits of the precious stones shimmered from between her fingers. Her digits twisted the wooden beasts until each individual sting was sufficiently plucked into tune.
Her right hand held the bow strangely, given his observations on the cellists that sometimes played at court. But then, perhaps the palm-up style was required when one's bow was convex rather than concave as this one was.
The little bird pondered for a breath before drawing her bow across the strings in a sudden explosion of sound. Her fingers caressed the gaps between the frets and coaxed from the broad-backed instrument an achingly sweet series of notes. She joined her voice to the viol's not long after, piping high and clear above its mellow bass line.
"Une jeune fillette de noble coeur, plaisante et joliette de grand valeur…"
She swayed to the movement of her bow. Her eyes were closed to the look of distaste distorting Joffrey's visage; somehow, he could feel that the only thing that existed for her in that moment was her song. A few of the ladies in the court seemed to be moved, more like than not the ones that could understand the little bird's foreign words.
To his right, Cersei gazed down at her captive. Her fair features were twisted into some queer mix of sympathy and loathing. The Hound allowed a grimace to stretch his marred lips beneath a veil of gritted steel fangs. Both monarchs' expressions did not bode well for the little bird, yet she persisted in averting her eyes from the danger. Stupid girl.
Her final chord resonated throughout the chamber, accompanied by sparse applause. They were all sheep, the whole cowardly lot of them. She had played light and beauty itself, yet the courtiers' fear of Joff's mercurial wrath was enough to stunt their hands. The thought brought an unexpected curl of repugnance to his breast.
Varys broke the silence that had fallen with his usual simpering sycophancy. "Well done, my lady, very wonderfully played," the eunuch cooed. "An appropriate choice of song."
At that comment, Joffrey's frown deepened. "What does it mean?" he hissed.
The little bird's eyes widened with panic. She opened her mouth to reply, but Cersei cut her off. "It's a Lyseni song. A noble maiden is forced to become a septa instead of marrying her true love—" the Queen Regent's eyes glittered viciously. "— and kills herself. Right, sweetling?"
"Yes, Your Grace," the little bird responded.
Joffrey's face lit up at the mention of killing. "They say you Northerners have a dance of death. You should play it for your traitorous brother."
Her back stiffened. "Forgive me, Your Grace, this instrument isn't tuned for that piece—"
"Ser Boros, show my lady what happens when you deny your king."
The Hound resisted the urge to grasp the hilt of his vibrosword as Boros Blount backhanded the little bird with a gauntlet-sheathed hand, and then promptly returned to the king's right-hand side. Fresh blood dripped down the girl's split lip to fall onto her lap. She trembled as she cried, trying her best to stifle any whimpers in her throat.
The Hound tracked the path of tears along her reddened cheeks, as he mentally adjured her. Do something, stupid girl! Chirp some of those pretty words they taught you if you don't want to get beaten again!
But she said nothing.
His disfigured lips twitched, torn as he was between self-loathing and a desire to roar at her until she gained a sense of self-preservation. Having nothing else at hand, the little bird patted away the blood with her sleeve, and reset her mask. "Yes, Your Grace."
Joffrey grinned at his triumph. The Hound's chest clenched painfully as she lifted her bow with shaking hand, positioned her fingers between the gut frets and struck a cacophonous chord. He thought that perhaps it was a fluke, a mistake caused by frayed nerves, a twinge of disharmony from slipping fingers, but then she did it again, and again.
Several ladies and not a few lords in the throng were visibly disturbed. Cersei's lips thinned. Joffrey tolerated a few more seconds of the discord before he held up a hand. "Enough. I thought I told you to play a song."
"That is what the Dance would sound like on this instrument without proper tuning, Your Grace."
"Ser Boros."
This time he was prepared for the shock. Blount struck her again, backhanded and on the same cheek. More blood spewed out of her gaping lip as the shadow of a bruise rose beneath her tender flesh. A loud, keening whine escaped from her mouth. It served as a benefit, however, as the sound stroked the Boy King's ego.
Still, it was not enough to save her from further humiliation.
"I wanted a song and I will have it," the boy snarled.
"Why not something more suitable," Cersei interjected, trying to pull in the reins on her mad son. "'The Rains of Castamere,' perhaps?"
The look in her eye brooked no defiance from Joffrey. "Go on then," Joff sneered.
"And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low? Only a cat of a different coat, that's all the trut I know…" The little bird's voice rang out, dark and low, like heated molasses.
To everyone else in the hall, her song was a sign of submission, a reassuring symbol of a compliant North galaxy. The Hound was not fooled. Her voice was dull; her eyes were shining with barely disguised defiance. Her farce was acted well enough to fool the vulgar herd, but she was no professional mummer. If he, a mere dog, could see her insurgence, then surely a lioness with better sight could as well.
Cersei, however, was satisfied with the display. She would not allow Joffrey to strike the little bird again, not when the Kingslayer's position was still so precarious. He would have to wait to torture her another day. Joff realized this, his expression becoming stormy at the loss of his plaything. "I grow tired of this. Dog, escort my lady back to her rooms."
He nodded at the command and step down from the dais. Joff couldn't harm her any further, so he would send someone else to terrorize her. Pathetic. The boy king would have been better off sending Blount; the Hound would not go out of his way to frighten one small girl.
He said nothing to her as she gathered up her skirts and managed a fairly graceful bow with her hands filled with viol and bow. "I am ready, ser," she whispered.
When he did not offer her his arm, she took the lead out of the automatic doors. They walked through the halls to the Red Keep in near silence. His kevlar-tungsten suit hissed a droning percussion to the intermittent pizzicato of her nails on the viol's gut strings. It was for the best. He wouldn't have anything to say to her that would bring her any comfort, and she had bled enough for one day.
Abruptly, she halted for a step, then made a swift right turn. The little bird placed her hand on a door's entry plate, then turned the handle and entered. "These aren't your chambers," he rasped.
"I apologize, ser. I'd like to put away the king's gift," she said as she activated the hearth. "Would you mind waiting?"
"Fuck your sers," he growled in reply.
The hearth exploded with flames, throwing golden light into the once-dark room. A variety of instruments— from flutes and shawms to marimbas and harpsichords, and instruments he didn't even have names for— occupied the chamber in artfully laid groups.
The little bird crossed the Myrish carpet to what he determined was the string section, and set the instrument and its bow in an ebony wood rack between a cello and another viol. She pulled the latter from the rack. This viol was far less gaudy than Joffrey's gift; its body was a dark, cherry-hued wood with a single winter rose painted on its face by an amateur's hand. There were a multitude of scratches and pits and lighter patches where the finish had been worn off by slim fingers. The gut strings were discolored from age and use.
"Move it, girl."
"Please, just a moment."
The little bird leaned against the rack. She plucked out of the strings a warm tapestry of scales, up and down and up again, simple in melody and yet infinitely more passionate than anything she would have played on that lion-studded monstrosity.
When she raised her eyes from her Northern viol, there was a hint of madness in her visage. She replaced the viol on the rack. "May I ask how you found the dance?"
"Sounded like shit."
She flinched. Her brow furrowed as she took up a violin and bow. "The music can't be faulted if it is played on the wrong instrument."
Her frankness alarmed him. What game was she playing at? Where had she hidden the timidity that normally punctuated their interactions? The rage flared within him. She should not behave in such an unguarded manner after being struck twice, not the least, in front of a mongrel of his caliber. He had saved her from the riots, yes, but she already knew that any kind gestures on her part would be met with— what was the exact word she had used? — hatefulness on his.
She shifted the pitch of the highest string downwards with one of the fine tuners, giving the silvery note an eerie feel. Her bow struck the strings with surprising violence. The chords that she had played in the throne room suddenly made sense to him. To be certain, the song was still macabre, but now there was a clear musical purpose behind its dissonance.
The ghastly chords shifted into a swift, cantering melody. She began to prance about the cleared space before the string section, her steps graceful and measure in the manner that one attained after countless hours of repetition. Her skirts lifted as she made small kicks on the leading beats. He stared with rapt attention when her fingers shivered the strings on the longer notes. The smears of dried blood on her sleeve looked for all the world like peeks of raw earth in an expanse of winter snow.
Joff would not have been mollified with this dance. The boy king had been expecting a vulgar tribute to death. This was something entirely different. It was solemn, yet joyful; a celebration of the departed, and a requiem for the good times that had been. It was less a dance of death and more a dance for the dead. It was light and beauty.
The little bird ended her mad waltz with a flair, and froze in her final position, perhaps lost in memories of her lost North. Despite his appreciation of her prodigious talent, he could not bring himself to applaud her performance. A flash of disappointment crossed her features as she came back to reality.
"Come on. Back to your cage before someone decides they want to rip out more of your feathers."
She replaced the violin to its proper place and deactivated the hearth, leaving the room shrouded in complete darkness. The Hound followed close behind. One day, she would wipe what was left of that fairytale shit from her eyes. But not today.
For Kimberlite8. If you haven't read any of her works yet, do yourself a favor a jump to her page pronto.
The first song Sansa plays is "Une Jeune Fillette." The second is "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens.