It was snowing gently as a slim figure cut through the East Gate of Winterfell and rushed along the Kingsroad to Wintertown.
Sansa Stark was going to a brothel.
No! she quickly thought. Well, yes, actually, but not to work there! Just to see what the fuss is about-after all, shouldn't a lady know how ALL her people live?
She that knew Septa Mordane, her lady mother, and nearly every highborn woman in Westeros would disagree with her, but Sansa Stark, after seventeen years of obedience and listening to her twin and his companions boast about the fine wenches they'd had, was curious beyond all belief.
(It didn't help that Jeyne Poole had taken to undressing for bed in front of her, either).
Oh, it had taken ages (and many 'uncharacteristically poor' embroidered roses) to figure out a plan, but when her father announced the King was coming to Winterfell, she felt as though her prayers had been answered (prayers to who? she wondered, shivering). Now, with less than a fortnight until His Grace's arrival, the entire castle was in a perpetual uproar. She'd easily been able to "go for a walk" to the laundry and filch the clothes that no amount of excuses or pleading to Robb or Jon or Theon would have gotten.
And that is how now, in her father's old cloak, Robb's practice yard doublet, and a pair of Theon's outgrown britches (for luck, Sansa thought and giggled, slightly horrified), drunk with her own daring, she had managed to reach what she assumed was the brothel (really, where else in the North would women willingly wear sheer gowns outside, with not even a muff for their hands?). Pushing aside her desire to cuddle the women warm, Sansa shoved her way past several hulking bodies (Gods, was that Jory Cassel?) and slipped through the open door.