CHAPTER XIV

Sansa's Journal

I have a beautiful house near the sea.

While it is not on the scale of the castles that I've lived in all my life, it is big enough for Sandor, I and our household. Apart from its size, this house is so different from western architecture. It is build for the heat, with thick walls, arched windows covered with blinds to tame the sun and keep the large, airy rooms cool. The floors are made of marble, the walls dark blue. All the other rooms radiate from the round common room: the chambers on the left wing, kitchen; storage and servants rooms on the right wing. The privy itself is incredible with mirrors, colourful ceramics and a big marble tub. All this cold marble would have been unthinkable where I was born, in the north part of Westeros; the last castle before the ice wall that spanned the width of the continent.

The house itself is in shades of blue and green, with an interior courtyard with high walls to keep from prying eyes. There's a locked gate that opens to the sand and the sea. We have a shaded balcony that gives us full view of the sea, the sunrises and sunsets. There's always a cooling breeze on the evenings. Being born in the North, I had though of myself before as being a northern girl; but my lady mother came from the south, and since I had come to King's Landing, I had found the climate more suited to my temperament. I'm more like my lady mother in this.

I have noticed that all the houses in this city are built similarly; no windows on the front part and these enclosed courtyards. People here prefer to shelter their private lives from the outside world, and only by being invited in their homes can we become part of their lives. And as Sandor mentioned, it makes it quite hard for thieves to get into a house.

We do not know any people yet, as our settling here in this house has been quite recent. Sandor had brought Booka and the Unsullied from the ship with us, hired a cook and a maid to take care of the household duties.

After Volantis, we sailed around Valyria, the fabled peninsula that was once home to the dragons, the Targaryen. Sandor had told me that some mysterious, unknown catastrophe had shattered it in many pieces, all black and smoking still, where it was impossible to go. We crossed the Bay of Grief, to stop next at Astapor in Slavers Bay, docking there for three days. Sandor had bought a slave, and then set him free to work for him. I had been awed and scared of the eunuch appearance: muscled with amber skin and a shaved head. There was never any expression neither in his almond eyes nor his face. Sandor told me that they were gelded young and trained from their childhoods to become the ultimate warriors, with no feelings or emotions to get in the way of their vocations. They we called the Unsullied, and it seemed that the custom in the Slaver's Cities was to change their names every day.

Our own Unsullied had settled like a shadow on the freighter. He slept on the floor near our door in the sitting room, did work on the ship like any other sailor, and after a week of sailing from Astapor, chose a name for himself. When Sandor had told him of his horse and what his name had represented, he chose Stranger for his own. How fitting for a killing machine. While he was very courteous and deferent, his emotionless face always made me uneasy.

While I had found the city of Astapor beautiful, even I had sensed its deathly ambience, with its trading of slaves, where a human life didn't count for much except as a commodity. When I had made short visits to the city, I had been escorted by both Booka and Stranger, because I was told that a beautiful northern girl like me was prized and would fetch a very high price as a bed slave. Sandor had been too busy with the ship's business to be able to accompany me. While I was starting to get tired of being confined on the ship, I didn't complain when we finally left Astapor.

We had sailed on to Quarth, one of the biggest ports in the world and a forbidding, closed off culture and people, to cross the gates of the Jade Sea and ended up at Yin, a smaller city between the islands of Great Morak and Leng.

We had been wearied of being on the ship for months, and had stayed there at an inn with Booka and Stranger, while the captain made his last two dockings: Jinqi and Asshai. When he had sailed back, he had come directly from Asshai, and we had told him of our decision to settle there; the house had already been purchased. We both liked it there, each for our different reasons: Sandor thought that while it was not big as some other cities that we had visited, it was big enough for opportunities, contacts and news from Westeros; I loved its nearness to the sea, beautiful houses and wonderful market, which was called here a souk. The people here look like a breed between darker skinned persons like Booka and the amber almond eyed ones like Stranger. The men dress in embroidered long tunics and pants and the women too, with often a dress of fitted bodices with big sleeves and skirts. Most of them have either black or very dark brown hair with a mix of curly or straight.

I had grown attached to the captain. Upon his return, he had married us on the ship, and that had been a most scary and wonderful moment too; being tied for life to another; something that would have been impossible in Westeros. While Sandor was not a commoner, he was of minor nobility; a rank no high enough to be able to marry a highborn girl like me. What I remember most about the brief ceremony was his eyes; smoldering and possessive, both our joined hands shaking. I was happy about the simplicity of a wedding at sea: no lewd guests cheering us on, no one to carry both of us to our chamber for the bedding.

I had felt very sad when we had watched the freighter sailing away from the harbor, although he had said that he would come back next year to stop and visit us. But having learned how precarious and uncertain the fates could be, that nothing could be taken for granted, I had felt a pinch in my heart.

While time has passed - making things easier between Sandor and me - we are still very shy of each other. I am young, and it is my first time with a man; I have no experience of the intricacies of an intimate bond; my nature is naturally reserved. Although Sandor, being older, having had experience with women, they were only about the physical part; in this, he as young as I.

In the morning, getting up earlier than I, Sandor, Booka and Stranger practice with their weapons in the courtyard, and I often drink my first cup of tea watching them from the balcony. I practice new songs, write in the mornings too and deal with the cook and the maid for what's to be done for the day. After the noon meal, we take a nap, as is the custom here; the sun being too hot in the afternoons. I often go visit the city and the market escorted by either one of them; I have to admit that we have purchased a lot of things, and sometimes I feel guilty and apprehensive about it. Sometimes Sandor goes out either in the afternoon or at night at watering holes to listen, meet people.

As for the physical part between us, I had been surprised, as from the first, how pleasant it could be, so different from the dark side that had been my first introduction to men's desires, and how much I enjoyed it. But it didn't happen as often as I had expected it would. Although I had no knowledge of these things, I thought sometimes that Sandor was restraining himself as not to bother me, both in his demands and expression, and that he yielded to his desires only when he couldn't hold himself anymore. I often saw him from the corner of my eye looking at me intensely, with a heavy hooded stare, but when I caught him at it he would look away immediately. However much I questioned myself sometimes, I had no female to confide in, and was much too shy to broach the subject with him. We often spent evenings lounging on the padded bench on the balcony, with his arms around my shoulder, often kissing the top of my head; sometimes we would just gaze at the sea, sometimes talking long in the night.

My nightmares were coming less frequently now in this new life and I had thought that everything was enfolding nicely and slowly, until Sandor came to me one night with news about Westeros, and my world was destroyed once again.