Chapter 7: Visitors
Life settled into what counted for normalcy at Riverrun.
Sansa had quickly found out that her mother was still under some form of arrest for having freed the Kingslayer and thus not free to come and go where she pleased. Her mother mostly spent her time attending Hoster Tully on his sickbed, a duty Sansa was glad she was not expected to help with.
She knew the old man to be her grandfather, but could not muster any feelings for him. Even worse, his feverish ramblings about her aunt Lysa gave her nightmares, so her mother didn't press the point beyond the first few visits.
Robb mostly spent his time in meetings and councils, but still made some time for her in the evenings. He had taken to tell her about almost everything that had been discussed that day, as if glad to have someone who just listened instead of telling him what to do.
He told her that he had given orders to keep her reappearance a secret. There was no telling if an information of this magnitude could be concealed for long, especially with so many people already knowing, but he was convinced it would be better for her if the Frey's especially wouldn't learn of it before he had attempted to mend fences with them.
As Robb had predicted, a delegation from the Twins, with Lothar Frey leading it, arrived one day. Per her agreement with Robb, Sansa kept to her chambers, trying to busy herself with needlework.
When finally he came to her late that evening, Robb looked exhausted but somewhat hopeful.
"They've driven a hard bargain," he told her. "Uncle Edmure will wed one of Walder Frey's daughters, but the Freys will not suffer any delays when it comes to the wedding. We are to depart for the Twins as soon as possible and the wedding will take place the very day we will arrive."
Sansa felt insulted on her brother's behalf.
"Does he really think you will break this agreement?"
Robb smiled ruefully.
"I broke one before."
"You had no choice," she exclaimed. "Surely he has to understand that! You could not have left poor Jeyne dishonoured."
In the few days she had had to acquaint herself with her brother's wife, she had come to like the woman who was not that much older than herself, with whom she shared a lot of interests. They had already started to plan the weaving and embroidering of a tapestry depicting all of Robb's victories and heroics and discussed where it should be displayed once they'd be back at Winterfell.
A red flush washed over her brother's cheeks and his smile seemed to turn inward, to a memory most likely.
"I could have chosen not to dishonour her in the first place," he said.
Now it was Sansa's turn to blush.
She had seen the looks her brother gave his wife when he thought no one was watching, had seen the want, the hunger. And while Sansa was sure of her claim that she was still a maiden, she knew she had received a similar look herself not too long ago and had felt powerless against its pull.
Would she already be considered dishonoured by that one kiss? A kiss that had not been taken from her, but given of her free will? Would her honour be already considered to be besmirched by how willingly she had come into the Hound's arms? Would it matter to anyone beside herself that the kiss had felt as if she would have forever regretted not giving it and the embrace as if it had been as vital to her as the air she was breathing?
Had Robb felt the same way about Jeyne when he had taken her maidenhead?
"Did you really have a choice about that?" she asked quietly.
Her brother's gaze snapped towards her and he looked at her sharply, a question in his eyes.
She squirmed under his gaze, but kept her eyes on his. He did not voice what surely had to be on his mind, but she knew for a fact that her question had given away much more than she had intended.
"No," he finally said. "No, I think I didn't."
Then he sighed deeply and ran a hand through his hair.
"I will leave Jeyne here at Riverrun," he said then, deftly changing the topic. "I am sure Walder Frey would not stop needling if I bring her with me and while I could suffer slights against myself, I'm not so sure I could stand by idly if he embarrasses Jeyne."
Sansa nodded, thinking this a sensible decision, even though she knew for a fact that Jeyne would not be at all happy about it. She seemed as taken with her brother as he was with her and surely it would make them suffer to be apart. A fraction of this sort of pain she thought she knew about, because every time she thought of the Hound, an achingly empty hollow opened inside her chest. She could only imagine how much worse it would be for those two.
"You can choose to remain with her, if you wish," Robb continued, "We'll be off to the Neck after the wedding, trying to take the North back from the Ironborn with Lord Reed's help. If you decide to come to the wedding, you'll stay with mother at Seagard afterwards, as guests of Lord Mallister."
Sansa tried to picture all that lay ahead of them. The wedding, the fight for the North which would once again put her brother's life at risk. And she would be secluded in yet another unfamiliar castle, this time with only her mother for company.
A mother around which Sansa felt not quite at ease anymore. She'd grieved and prayed for her father, for her dead brothers, for her lost sister, but she knew her own grief couldn't hold up to what her mother must be feeling and she knew she alone could never make up for what her mother had lost. She would only ever be Sansa, she could neither replace Arya's daring or Bran's bravery or little Rickon's sweetness. Sometimes, unbidden and ugly, the question entered her thoughts if her mother would have preferred another of her children being returned to her in Sansa's stead.
It didn't help that she often found her mother watching her with narrowed eyes, as if she was waiting for something to appear that Sansa had so far managed to hide from her. She had no idea what it was exactly that her mother suspected, but her scrutiny troubled her. Just as much as it troubled her that for a second time since her arrival, she had been forced to save Clegane's cloak from the flames her mother wanted to consign it to.
Her mother had insisted it was unseemly that an unmarried maiden would keep a man's cloak in such high regard, especially a cloak belonging to an enemy. Even after Sansa had argued that the man who had saved her from captivity hardly deserved to be called the enemy, her mother impressed on her how much damage it could do to her reputation should servants choose to talk about her attachment to that cloak.
After some loud words from her mother and a few tears on her side, they had compromised on Sansa having to hide the cloak from prying eyes at the bottom of the chest in which she kept her linens. Every night, she took the object of that discussion out of the chest to sleep with it wrapped around herself, and then carefully put it back every morning, hoping her mother would forget about it entirely at some point.
Still, despite all those misgivings, she knew what her decision regarding the wedding would be.
"I want to be close to my family," Sansa said, trying to sound determined. "If you and mother go, I'll go, too. And I'll go to Seagard as well if that is your wish."
Relief was on Robb's face as he nodded, as if he had expected her to argue against his decision.
"The Frey's seem to have already heard that you disappeared from King's Landing," he told her. "It has caused quite a stir, they say. The court is ripe with speculation about who has taken you away and why and some even say there was magic involved."
He looked at her as if expecting her to deny or confirm those rumours and she very nearly did, but ended up only biting her lip with a feeling of guilt.
"Joffrey has declared you a traitor and thereby ended your betrothal," Robb continued.
At seeing one corner of her brother's mouth twitch, she couldn't help the delighted laughter that bubbled up inside of her.
Not that she had expected to still be betrothed to Joffrey after she had vanished, but it was a relief nonetheless that he wouldn't let the betrothal stand out of sheer spite.
Robb smiled at her amusement, but something seemed to still weigh on his mind.
"Tywin Lannister has sent ravens everywhere, promising to give your weight in gold to anyone who'd bring you back to King's Landing alive and unharmed."
The sudden spark of lightness died in her.
Her weight in gold. The price for the North. A fortune so staggering, every man in Westeros would want to get his hands on her to deliver her back to the Lannisters. Maybe even some of Robb's own men might be tempted and surely it was this Tywin Lannister had counted on. There were deserters on both sides of the fence.
I was right not to feel safe here, she thought.
"It's because they still think to kill you and it's me who is next in line to inherit, right?"
Robb closed his eyes and then nodded.
"They did not want to make you queen, but they surely meant to make you marry one of theirs to install in Winterfell."
Sansa stared at where she was bunching the fabric of her dress in her tightly clenched fists.
"I'd rather die," she said impulsively, but knew herself well enough to know that if she was still back in King's Landing, she would have meekly submitted to any marriage they would have forced her to consent to.
"When he bade me farewell, he said he expects you to take good care of me, to protect me," she said unhappily.
Her brother looked puzzled for a moment, apparently not clear on who "he" might be. When it occurred to him, his lips pressed into a thin line.
"I will protect you whatever it takes," he said, "I do not need a Lannister dog to tell me how to keep my sister safe."
"Do not call him that," she admonished, but with no heat to her words. She didn't want to argue with Robb, their newly won trust still seemed too fragile for that.
He rubbed a hand over his face.
"While we're at the topic of Clegane," Robb said as if he hadn't heard her. "It seems he's fallen from favour with the Lannisters, Cersei especially. From what we heard, she convinced Joffrey that he was somehow to blame for your disappearance, despite there being no proof."
Pain, deep and wrenching, took hold of her heart as she imagined what that would mean for him and she pressed both her hands to her mouth in horror as the pictures flashed through her mind. The black cells, torture and pain, her father's sword severing his neck from his broad shoulders.
Another strong man fallen to Ilyn Payne's blade for no other reason than having cared for her.
"No," she mumbled faintly, as if the word of protest could somehow undo what had probably already happened. Still, she could not imagine him being dead. She did not feel as if he was dead, wherever that feeling was coming from.
He was a creature forged from fire, pain and steel, surely he could not be felled by something puny like Cersei's scheming and Joffrey's cruelty?
Then again, she had thought the same thing about her father.
"He's fine… I think," Robb said, putting a hand over hers. "They discharged him dishonourably from the Kingsguard and tasked him with finding you and bringing you back… or die trying. He is to be beheaded should he come back without you."
A quick wave of tremendous relief washed through her, but was immediately smothered when guilt and worry came to the fore again.
Sandor Clegane was an outcast now, kicked out by the masters he had served so faithfully on grounds of a claim they certainly couldn't prove. He had no allegiance now and no allies. No place where he would be safe.
She had no idea why Cersei of all people would turn against the Hound, when before it always seemed that she trusted him explicitly. She had given her firstborn into his protection and never looked as if she doubted her decision. What had changed between them? He surely could not have been so careless as to confide the truth about her disappearance to Joffrey's mother, could he?
Still, as much as she told herself that Cersei was to blame for the Hound's fate, she knew it was ultimately due to his kindness to her that he had lost his position and livelihood. She would never, ever be able to recompense him for any of that and that knowledge felt like a weight around her neck.
"Do I need to worry on that account?" Robb asked, cutting her anguished musings short.
"No," she said, without having to think about it. "He won't come after me."
The latter part came with a desolate feeling of sadness, one she knew her brother would not want to know about, so she banished it to the back of her mind.
Robb nodded and she felt a little proud that he listened to her judgement, despite her being so young.
"Looks like your speed of travel was truly marvellous," Robb continued after a while. "By the Freys' estimation, there is no way you already made it here. So for now, there are no additional demands that you are to wed one of theirs."
A gasp died in Sansa's throat as an invisible fist clamped around it. She had not even thought to consider this. Should she be handed to another this soon after the end of her betrothal to Joffrey? This time on command of her own brother?
Her right hand flew to her throat as if this would help with the constriction, but it didn't. She couldn't breathe and her vision started to wobble and swim while her ears felt as if stuffed with wool. Her chest expanded and heaved, desperately trying to get air into her lungs, but the only result was a thin, wheezing sound escaping from her mouth.
Robb's brow furled and then he hastily closed the distance between them, taking her face between his warm hands.
"Look at me, Sansa, look at me," he said to her, a mixture of a command and a desperate entreaty. "Breathe, please!"
She couldn't, she wanted to, but couldn't. The thought of once again going through all she had gone through; hopes burned to ashes, humiliation and the bleak outlook of being tied forever to someone who would turn into a monster in front of her eyes…
"Sansa, please," her brother said again, his eyes wide with fear. "I won't allow this; you hear me?"
Finally, her lungs started working again and she took a deep breath, sounding as if she had come up from staying too long under water.
"Do you hear me?" Robb demanded.
She nodded weakly.
Then her brother sunk to his knees in front of her and took both her hands in his. A king kneeling before her, she thought, disoriented.
"I swear on our dead father's honour that I will not see you wed against your will. I cannot promise I won't suggest matches to you that I would find favourable, but I will not command you."
It felt as if his words had lifted the rock that had tried to squash her chest and the sudden feeling of lightness brought tears to her eyes. She threw her arms around her brother's neck and quietly sobbed against his shoulder.
"Thank you, Robb," she whispered. "Thank you so much."
…
The day of their departure dawned grey and wet.
Sansa's belongings, including the Hound's cloak, had already been packed into traveling chests and taken down to the bailey to be loaded onto one of the many wagons that would travel behind the main host.
Her mother and Sansa would accompany Robb on horseback, a prospect Sansa wasn't looking forward to but was determined not to complain about.
At the moment, Robb was probably saying farewell to his wife. Jeyne had been inconsolable about being left behind and while she had said nothing with everyone present, Sansa was sure she had begged Robb to be taken with him when they were alone.
Waiting for the signal that the journey was to begin, she stood at the window of the chamber she had lived in for the past weeks, looking out onto the river that appeared like a stream of lead crawling through a landscape of wet greys and greens. Her mood was as grey as the weather.
Her grandfather had passed two days before and despite her lack of attachment to him, her mother's grief and tears had burdened her heart.
Black tidings had come from King's Landing as well. Stannis Baratheon had lost most of his army while trying to take King's Landing, going against not only the Lannisters but against the Tyrells as well who had decided to side with them after Renly's death.
Joffrey had a new bride in Margery Tyrell and Sansa found herself feeling sorry for the girl, despite the fact that she would not be alone and without protection like she herself had been.
The only part of this she took some comfort from was the fact that the Hound had already left King's Landing well before the battle at the Blackwater had started. They had heard that the Blackwater had burned green with wildfire that day, more men dying in the fire than died to swords and arrows. She could scarcely imagine the horrors it must have brought to anyone else, let alone someone who had already been burned.
Thoughts of her uncles upcoming wedding should have cheered her. There would be music and bards and people in nice dresses and she knew she would have looked forward to the occasion not too long ago, but she could feel nothing but unease and she had been plagued with frightful dreams during more than one night.
Despite her brother's and mother's frequent assurances, she didn't think that guest right was as holy a custom as they made it out to be. She'd seen first-hand that cruelty and hatred didn't keep to rules of civility and conduct; had seen how men who thought themselves slighted could turn into conscienceless monsters. The memory of Lady's and Mycah's death was still too fresh in her mind to have illusions about that, as were the events of the riots in King's Landing.
An age-old custom seemed a feeble protection against men's viciousness.
Knights are meant for killing, the Hound had said, and killing is the sweetest thing there is. Nothing in her experience suggested that he had lied.
There would be many a knight at this wedding.
She shook her head to dispel her worries. Yes, there would be many knights at the wedding, but most of them would be under her brother's command. They would meet up with Lord Bolton's forces coming up from Harrenhall and be about seven thousand strong by then. Even if Lord Frey should try for mischief, he'd be outnumbered ten to one.
Somewhat reassured again, her thoughts turned back to the Hound. She tried to imagine how he was faring now, especially in this weather. Would he be slogging through mud and rain, wet and exhausted, the once shiny black coat of his horse brown with dirt? Or had he found a place to hide, warm and safe, content with a life of loneliness? Or had someone given him shelter and a home, maybe even a female someone? What with the way he looked now, he surely would find more than one women recently widowed who would not object to having an able-bodied man with two strong arms in her house.
Musings of that nature tended to leave her unaccountably displeased. Surely she should be happy for him should he find a place to live where he'd be cherished and welcomed? Surely it cast an unfavourable light on her character that she found the thought far more to her liking that he would be somewhere miserable and alone, regretting that he hadn't come with her?
Her attention was captured when she noticed a ray of sunshine from the window, so out of place with the rain still loudly clattering against the glass panes, only to realize that it wasn't sunshine, but a puff of golden dust.
The same sort of golden dust she remembered from when she had been whisked away from King's Landing.
"You came back!" she exclaimed when she finally recognized the apparition.
The puff of dust materialized into a little flying golden girl that settled onto the windowsill in front of her.
"Technically speaking, I was never really anywhere else," she said haughtily, which made Sansa smile. From what she had gotten from Clegane, fairies were not at all easy to converse with.
"My greetings," Sansa said, giving a short curtsey. "To what do I owe the honour?"
"I am to grant you three wishes," the fairy said matter-of-factly, as if this was an ordinary occurrence.
Quite suddenly, Sansa sympathized with the Hound and his apparent inability to believe in what he'd seen with his own eyes. As his mind probably had as well, her own simply refused to believe that his was real. It could not be.
"Three wishes?" she echoed, sounding disturbingly dim-witted, even to her own ears.
The fairy nodded.
"There are, however, some rules."
"I know," Sansa said, glad she had at least some knowledge about this, even if it was just second-hand.
"The rules are I cannot change the past, I cannot wish for someone to die and I cannot wish for more wishes."
"Correct," the fairy said, beaming at her. "Although I think wishing for someone to fall in love with you should be forbidden as well. Sandor Clegane made a very compelling argument for that."
Hearing his name mentioned in the tinkling, bell-like voice of the little creature gave Sansa's heart a painful jolt. Or maybe it was the fact that he had spoken to the fairy about falling in love.
Swallowing the obstruction that had formed in her throat, she resolved to ask what was on her mind.
"Would he have wished for someone to fall in love with him?"
Her nails bit into the skin of her hand as she wrung her hands together, not daring to pray for a negative answer, steeling herself for whatever answer she would get.
On the fairy's golden face, a secretive, wide smile appeared.
"I am sure that line of questioning falls under the rules of fairy-client privilege." Then she hopped up, fluttered around and finally settled on Sansa's shoulder. "Besides, I believe you have more important things to worry about at this moment."
The admonition had her face turning red with shame. Of course.
Here she stood, waiting to go into war at her brother's side and all she could think about was whether or not Sandor Clegane was secretly in love with some woman.
"Can you keep them safe?" she asked quietly. "My family, all those who are…," her breath hitched as she remembered her dead brothers, her father. Her brave little sister, probably lost as well. "… all of those still living. Can you keep them safe to live out their life as they should?"
"Granted," the fairy said softly. "Anything else?"
Sansa thought of the road ahead, of the war that was to fight, of reclaiming Winterfell. Surely there would be enough need for miracles on this journey.
And she thought of him, of the Hound. Of the one who had so selflessly given her his last wish and it occurred to her that now she had the means to ease the burden of guilt she felt. She would keep her last wish for him, return what she owed him.
The resolve to do so was already enough to make her feel lighter, happier than she had been ever since she arrived at Riverrun.
"Not yet," she said, turning her head.
On her shoulder, the fairy dissolved into a puff of dust and Sansa watched, still smiling, as the golden motes slowly became invisible.
Sandor Clegane, she thought happily. You gave me comfort when no one else did, gave me a kiss and your cloak and your last wish. And finally I can reward you for your kindness.
...
tbc
