BB 14 : Unreasonable
A round of applause for the gracious LadyCyprus, who bent over backwards to edit this chapter despite a very busy schedule! Thank you so much.
As in the previous chapter, I used lingojam's translator to include a few exchanges in Valyrian.
Warning for violence and for minor character death.
/
She said she didn't want to give herself to him in the open, in the stony hills outside of Tyrosh; she wanted to find a cave, something, anything. His caresses convinced her otherwise apparently.
Her discarded gown billows in the sea breeze before she rolls on her side to grab it. She places a stone on top of her clothes, then turns to him again. They're lying naked under the meagre shadow of an olive tree, Sandor's cloak protecting them from the uneven ground.
"What are you thinking about?" she asks.
"Nothing," he lies, resting on his side to mirror her pose. Since the incident with Girri he can't help thinking about the old servant's words and the more he plays the conversation he overheard in his head, the more he agrees: he's going to hurt Sansa.
He clears his throat and adds: "I'm bloody lucky."
"It could be like this everyday. In a different scenery, obviously, but it could be very similar. You and me, and Winterfell." She innocently traces the scars on his chest and the hope he reads in her blue eyes feels like a stab.
"We already had this conversation, little bird. Your bannermen will kill me the moment I cross the drawbridge of your precious Winterfell."
She protests at that, of course. She keeps saying the houses of the North are not half as resentful as he imagines them. They will let her choose her husband. As if high-born ladies have a say in this… Her delusions about the North and its inhabitants keep fascinating him: only someone who spent long years in exile can idealize their homeland and its people like she does.
"Do you take your moontea?" he inquires.
His question catches her unawares: she almost cringes before boring into his eyes. "I do. I take it everyday. Why? What would you do if I was with child?"
"You can't claim Winterfell and the North if you come back with a bastard in your wake."
"Have you forgotten my brother Jon? My father had a bastard when he came back from Dorne."
"Your father didn't need to claim anything, he was the North. The bloody Boltons knew their place back in those days. Besides… are you naive enough to ignore that men get away with much more than women do? Whatever virtues you ascribe to your people… they would not forgive you."
Tilting her chin up, she stares at him. The sun filtering through the leaves seems to play with the ivory color of her skin; it casts moving shadows on her curves and her skin looks even paler on the places the sun rays hit.
"You didn't answer my question," she insists. "What would you do if I was with child?"
Ill-at-ease, he avoids her gaze and sneers. "I bought moontea so that it doesn't happen."
"That's not an answer and you know it."
Whenever they talk after he's taken her, it's late and the shadows hide his embarrassment. He can always blow out the candles if need be. In the open air, it's impossible to hide and the little bird can see every damn muscle moving on his face.
"I'd be a terrible father," he says but Sansa's narrowed gaze cuts him in midstream of his self-critical discourse. He closes his eyes, as if to erase what he just said and starts again: "I'd do the right thing. Losing my father when I was still a child fucked me up. I can't imagine what it's like to grow up without a father."
A long silence ensues. At first he fears she's going to push her luck and ask more details. If he believed in them, he'd beg the old gods and the new to silence her, to stop tormenting him with her questions and her gentleness. To his great surprise, she remains quiet and traces patterns on his shoulder.
Soon the feather-light touch of her fingers vanishes. She drifts off in his arms and they stay there until she wakes up. The shadows are growing longer and longer.
/
By an unspoken agreement, they delay their ride back to Tyrosh as if staying in the rocky hills outside the harbor city a little longer allowed them to forget about their worries. The moon is already visible, a bright, thin crescent in the purple sky.
'I made you change your mind about today,' she observed before getting into the saddle. 'You'll change your mind about coming to Winterfell with me too. It will be a big change in your life, of course, but soon you will see it's the only reasonable choice.' Sandor didn't answer, and the words he dared not speak at that moment seem to create an insurmountable barrier between them. She swivels her head and opens her mouth as though she was about to say more - he can see it over her shoulder - but she quickly thinks better of it. Does she sense the stiffness in his muscles? If it wasn't dark already, she'd see his fingers contracting on the reins, the knuckles turning white. 'The only reasonable choice'? Who does she think she is, deciding what is reasonable and what is not? Something inside him wants to rear up and to break free from any kind of grip. The air is thick with words left unsaid and their ride back to the small house is a silent one.
The soldiers guarding the city are closing the gates when they arrive: they let them in without a word, without even asking them to dismount. One of them nonetheless spits to show his displeasure. Sandor and Sansa duck their head as they move through the door. Except for the clatter of Stranger's hooves on the cobbles, everything is eerily quiet. Sansa's back stiffens against his chest as they make progress through the streets. Some of the inhabitants are hurrying home because it's dark, others chatting and enjoying the vesperal breeze coming from the sea. In a street lit by torches, well-known by the locals for its taverns, a handful of Tyroshi dare glancing at the young woman wrapped in her veil, but they soon avert their eyes when Sandor glares at them.
On the next day they'll stuff the couple of chests they own with their possessions, and soon they'll head to Collio Cletis' house. The mere evocation of what lays ahead makes him scowl: even though he doesn't think Collio Cletis would betray them he doesn't look forward to living under the same roof as his unctuous employer. How will the merchant and his servants treat Sansa? Is the arrangement with the little bird going to survive their moving to Collio Cletis' mansion? These questions kept tormenting him for the last couple of days, and he finds himself trying to bury his thoughts away once more when Stranger unexpectedly comes to a halt.
What's wrong? What did you sense? He scans his surroundings - a quiet narrow street he strides almost everyday on his way to Cletis' mansion - but he doesn't see any kind of danger. Before Sansa asks what is going on, the familiar contact of his palm against the horse's neck convinces Stranger to move forward. Our street is around the corner, after all…
The second they turn right in their street he understands something's amiss. Fifty yards ahead, a cluster of Tyroshi - men, women and militia carrying the distinctive shield of those who are sworn to the Archon - are standing in front of their house. A muffled cry escapes the little bird's mouth.
Stranger's gait is now agonizingly slow; his muscles tense underneath Sandor. A woman clad in black turns to see who's approaching and she points at them, shouting something in Valyrian.
"She's one of our neighbors," Sansa explains, barely above a whisper. "What happened?"
Ten feet separate them from the onlookers when Stranger stops on his own; from where he is, Sandor sees the door of their house is open, several soldiers moving from the small yard to the kitchen and back. He'd give a lot to be wrong but he thinks he knows what happened. Buggers...
"Girri?" Sansa inquires, looking at the people standing there, mumbling in their gibberish. "Where's Girri?"
As he dismounts, Sansa's hand closes on his forearm.
"Stay here," he commands.
"But Girri-"
He shakes his head. "You can't do anything for Girri now. Ask your gods to help me find the one who did this, if you will." She looks at him in shock, unable to utter a word, and lets go of him. A glance at the roofs on both sides of the street confirms there's no immediate danger. But you never know… "Take the reins," he adds under his breath. "If anyone comes too close to your liking, dig your heels in Stranger's flanks and go to Cletis' mansion. Do you remember how to go there?"
The little bird is still panicked, if the abrupt rise and fall of her chest is any indication, yet she nods and grabs the reins. He walks to the door, stopping mid-stride when she protests: "I should come with you!"
Sandor shakes his head. "You don't need to see what's inside."
There's a lot he wasn't able to protect her from. The loss of her family, first, Joffrey's violence and Cersei's sick little games. Then there were Littlefinger's schemes and these two weddings she never asked for. Making women happy isn't Tyrion fucking Lannister's strong suit, he'd bet his bastard sword on it. His one and only meeting with Harry Hardyng - a brief, bloody meeting leading to Sansa's escape from the Vale - didn't convince the cunt was any better at that game. She's seen enough already and there's no need for her to see another dead body, especially if said body belongs to a woman who was more a confidante than a servant during these last weeks.
On his way to the kitchen, two soldiers try to stop him but he explains with more gestures than words that he lives here and a neighbor seems to back him up. No sign of struggle in the small yard, but the voices coming from the kitchen prove something's worth seeing there. When he enters the room, three men wearing breastplate and greaves scowl at him, ready to use their spears. Once more he laboriously tells them he lives in this house. After their initial hostility subsides, he dares ask what happened. The oldest of the soldiers then gives him a lengthy account of what they observed and learned from the neighbors so far.
Two men were seen running away from the small house right before sunset. Their Westerosi attire drew the attention of the old woman living across the street, especially because one of them was holding his side as if he was wounded. They didn't care to close the door behind them. That was when the old lady realized she had never seen the inner yard of the house since Sandor and Sansa had moved in. After a chat with her closest neighbor she decided to come in and see if everything was alright. It's a nice way to describe the sneaky habits of a woman who likes to pry on others, but Sandor keeps his mouth shut until the man's convoluted explanations make him lose his temper.
"Skoros gōntan gaomis naejot se ābra?" he asks, cutting off the Tyroshi. What did they do to the woman?
"Abra? Abra?" the soldier repeats, giving him a quizzical look.
Abra means 'woman', if he remembers correctly. Suddenly he wonders if he's not confusing words again and making a bloody fool of himself.
"Buzdari?" suggests one of the two others. Sandor heard this word too many times at Collio Cletis' not to know it's the Valyrian for 'slave'.
"Se buzdari iksis morghe," the old one answers with a shrug, as if it was obvious. The slave is dead. "Irosh nektogon. Aōha buzdari iksin uēpa." They cut her throat. Your slave was old.
Girri's death almost sounds like a blessing, in the soldier's mouth, and he tells himself it's a good thing Sansa didn't hear the whole conversation. Losing Girri is hard enough: she doesn't need to hear their disparaging comments about her.
Unaware of the anger building inside him, the oldest soldier tells Sandor the assassins were after him, most likely and thought they'd find him at home after a long day of work. They probably asked Girri where Sandor could be found. The soldier concludes that the servant either didn't know where her master was or refused to tell the Westerosi men so they killed her.
In the end, the soldier leads him to the solar the assassins turned upside down. They knocked over the furniture and left books and scrolls on the floor. One of them, Sansa's map of Westeros, is soaked in blood, the red stain, making the North and the Eastern shore of Westeros ilegible. Sandor takes a step forward to pick it up and that's when he sees Girri, half-seated, her back resting against the wall, the front of her greyish gown turned red. It brings him back to the horrors he saw when he was two-and-ten, during the Sack of King's Landing: women and children butchered along with men, no one caring if they lived or died. Slowly, his fingers curl into fists.
Sandor crouches wordlessly, gazing at Girri's wrinkled face. Her eyes are still open and she looks as if she is watching the ceiling. Next to her, on the floor, there's the knife she used to cut vegetables, except that the blade is red with the blood of the man who attacked her. She stabbed him, that's why he was holding his side when he ran away.
"Aōha buzdari," the soldier says pointlessly, with a flourish. Your slave.
Not a slave, he thinks. A bloody woman who saw right through me, possibly hated me for making the little bird suffer. A woman who died fighting.
Images churn in his head: his mother and his sister on their death beds, the freckles of a maid killed by Gregor, back in Clegane's Keep. The face of an unknown girl raped and strangled during the Sack of King's Landing. He closed their eyes, as tenderly as he could, to fight off the guilt. He either arrived too late or was unable to protect them and closing their eyes carefully, tenderly, was the only thing he could do.
Leaning forward, he reaches out and closes Girri's eyes with his trembling hand. She's done seeing the ugliness of this world.