BRIENNE

The morning sky was a blessedly bright shade of blue, a calm ocean of blue that went on endlessly. The sun was coming out from behind the thick grey clouds that had steeped Highgarden in darkness for the past three days. And not a moment too late, Brienne of Tarth thought. My lady would not want it to rain upon her wedding.

She was not sure what Lady Sansa wanted upon her wedding, or even if she wanted the wedding at all. The only thing its impending arrival seemed to have brought to the lady was sadness. Brienne wished that she knew how to comfort her in these difficult times, but she wagered that in delicate matters such as these she'd be of even less help than the Hound. These hands were never made for comfort, her septa had told her once with a sharp rebuke, nor this voice for songs, nor these hips for childbearing.

"Ser? My lady?" Podrick Payne was rising from his bunk, groggily wiping the sleep from his eyes. "Would you like-" He stopped suddenly.

Brienne turned. "Yes, Podrick?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter, my lady. Well, it did. But now it doesn't. Because it isn't."

"It isn't what, Podrick?" Sometimes it was hard to resist the urge to throttle the boy.

"The wedding. I mean, it is the wedding. So you won't be needing breakfast. Well… I suppose you will. But not from me. Not normally. Ser. My lady…"

"Yes." Brienne waved a dismissive hand at him.

He sounded surprised. "Yes, my lady? You do-"

"No… no. Go and change into your garb for the wedding, Podrick."

He understood that plainly enough. "At once, my lady." When he was gone, Brienne went out onto the balcony and leaned against the stone railing. The early winter breeze brushed against her face, soft as the hand of the mother that she had never known. The sun was warm, bearing down golden rays the colour of buttercups or sunflowers or Ser Jaime's smile.

Down in the tourney fields below, a tiltyard had been set up before an array of viewing stands, all decorated in green with golden roses. In every shape and size, the tents of landed knights and lords had caused a second town to grow up beneath the walls of Highgarden. The smallfolk milled about in the courtyard below, a swarm of ants. In a show of generosity from the Tyrells, all of them had been invited to the celebration of the lord's wedding. Today would be a day of rest, merriment and praise.

But there is falsehood among these roses. Brienne was not so blind as not to realise that. She could smell it in the air. Even now, as Lady Sansa prepared to become one of them, she ought to remain wary of the Tyrells. Most days she would have visited the lady in person before breakfast, but today the Tyrells had supplied Sansa with an ample complement of guardsmen and Brienne knew that she would only get in their way. The wedding would start at midday, but before that, she must needs attend to her ladyship's bridal breakfast.

For the wedding and the feast she garbed herself in a simple gown of sober blue - the same colour as Tarth's waters, she thought – and a belt of red leather. It would look untoward for a lady to bring a sword to a wedding, but Oathkeeper was fine Valyrian steel and Brienne was damned if she were to lose it, so she stowed it away in the trunk under her bed and locked the box with a fat golden key, then sat down upon the bed and waited for Podrick to return.

He had changed into a new doublet for the feast, a handsome shade of scarlet that went rather well with the pimple on his nose. "My lady, will you not be wanting your armour?"

"It's a wedding, Podrick."

"Sorry, ser. My lady. I forgot. Well, not really, but…"

She did not bother herself with Podrick's excuses and strode out of the room, obliging him to hurry down the steps after her. "It'll be like King Joffrey's wedding in King's Landing," he said, "though I think the groom… Lord Willas, he won't die. Hopefully. Not this time, my lady."

"Lady Sansa has not been blessed with the best luck when it comes to the matter of weddings," Brienne said sadly. She wed Lord Tyrion the Imp at one, and her mother and brother were murdered by Walder Frey at another. Brienne remembered Catelyn Stark as she had been in life, strong, handsome, prideful, and Lady Stoneheart as she had been in death, her skin greying and decayed, little more than hate in her black eyes. She should have died at the Red Wedding. Mother Merciless, they call her, but it would have been a sweeter mercy for all of us if they had just cut her throat and had done with it.

Her thoughts went away once they reached the garden. Highgarden did not want for outside space, and although the garden was packed with three hundred guests or more, it did not look all that busy. The Tyrells and the male guests were to dine with Ser Willas elsewhere across the castle, but Sansa's retinue and the majority of the female wedding guests had come to the Garden of Thorns to break their fast alongside the bride-to-be, who sat in the midst of it looking thoroughly beautiful in a cream-and-grey silk, and also entirely out of place.

Brienne approached the dais with her head bowed. "My lady," she said, "I wish you good fortune on your wedding day. I fear that I cannot present you with a gift today, but I will give you my blessings, and my oath, and my protection."

Lady Sansa smiled bleakly. "And that is all I could ask for, Lady Brienne. Your friendship is beyond value to me." She leant across the table and kissed Brienne's cheek, then did the same for Podrick as he stumbled over his own half-coherent blessings.

Brienne stepped away from the dais and moved towards one of the empty tables, sneaking glances at the other wedding guests as she went. At the nearest table, she could see Victaria Rowan and Alyce Graceford talking over honeycakes and bacon, and little Lady Bulwer was laughing as the fool Butterbumps juggled a dozen oranges and lemons, dropping almost all of them.

Lady Melessa Tarly was nearby as well, sitting with her three daughters in a demure conversation. In that moment, Brienne could not help but wonder what her own mother would have been like had she survived to have any part in Brienne's upbringing. Lady Valena had been a proper lady in all sense of the word; would she have been ashamed to have given birth to such an ugly, freakish child? Would she have shunned her child, or attempted to hide her shame by dressing Brienne in silks and courtesies? Or would she have relented and handed her mannish daughter over to the caution of Ser Goodwin the master-at-arms, as Lord Selwyn had?

"Woman." The voice behind her was so rough that it could only belong to Sandor Clegane, and the hand on her shoulder was rougher still. He turned her to face him. Clegane would never be anything remotely close to comely, but he looked a good deal less suspicious in his dark leather jerkin than he did in mail and battered plate. He nodded at the dais. "Little bird doesn't look too happy up there, does she?"

"There is nothing we can do," Brienne said sadly.

"Bugger that," the Hound said, "you haven't even tried anything yet, woman. The little bird saw enough horrors when she was with Joffrey in King's Landing." He sniffed the air suspiciously, "and these roses aren't doing her any favours neither. I've half a mind to take her away from all of this."

"And how do you intend to do that?" she asked, a little haughtily. Though the Hound seemed to have convinced Lady Sansa to trust him, Brienne was less certain. He was a Lannister man through and through, and his brother murdered as easily as other men drink.

He breathed in her face, smelling of ale and leather. "You're supposed to be the smart one here, woman, seven hells." His eyes flitted from table to table, searching for a spare flagon. "Bugger me with a spear, woman. If you want me, I'll be well and truly drunk in the back of some hall somewhere-"

A sharp voice cut in suddenly from Brienne's left. "Do you think she appreciates you calling her 'woman?' Her name is Brienne of Tarth, man, and she is a highborn lady, and of a far better sort than you."

The Hound glared at the speaker. "Stay out of this, old woman."

"I am old, yes." Lady Olenna raised a liver-spotted hand. "And I am a woman too. With observational skills like those, I can see why the Lannisters found you so invaluable."

The Hound spat. "Fuck the Lannisters."

"Have you no civility, man?" asked the Queen of Thorns. "Highgarden really has gone to the dogs when we are admitting Cleganes, if you'll pardon the jest." She waved a hand at the Hound. "Away with you. Go find some corner to drink and piss yourself in."

Clegane looked as though he might challenge her. His face darkened with anger, then he set his mouth in a hard line and turned away. Brienne watched him fade into the shadows. "Men like those, dear," Lady Olenna was saying, "are the sort that you needn't associate yourself with." She gestured to the chair opposite her. "Do please sit down, child. We have so much to talk about."

Brienne chanced a look towards Lady Sansa as she seated herself. The Queen of Thorns followed her gaze. "The poor girl does look rather beleaguered and misplaced here," she said. "Hopefully the day's festivities will lift her out of her misery."

"I beg your pardons, my lady," Brienne said, "but shouldn't you be at the breakfast of your grandson?"

"Perhaps I should. But I've no interest in listening to my family singing a thousand praises of my grandson. Oh, yes, I'll be expected to make an appearance to give Willas my blessing before the wedding starts, but I do not mean to be present to see my son and his flock drunk beyond sense. And the guests over here are much more interesting, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh… yes, my lady." She felt almost as awkward as Podrick, whom she seemed to have lost somewhere in the crowd. "What…"

"What do I want with you?" Lady Olenna twiddled her thumbs and leaned across the table. "Well, you just might be the most interesting person here, Lady Brienne."

Brienne did not know if she was being mocked. Most times when people called her interesting they were sniggering behind her back a minute later. "Yes," the old woman continued, "most interesting indeed."

"How so, my lady?"

"The size of you, for a start. I have reached an age where my bones have started to shrink, child, would you believe it? Each passing year leaves me shorter and shorter. But you, you, well, you must be what, six feet? Seven? A giant among men and women alike."

"Six and a half," Brienne told her.

"I suppose you must be mocked awfully for that," the old woman said, "you needn't listen to such cruel words, child. I hear you were responsible for knocking my grandson into the dirt during the tourney at Bitterbridge, and I'd wager that you could beat down most of these men who would make a mockery of you." She sipped her wine. "Tall women can have a certain elegance in their stature too."

Elegant. She called me elegant; she must be mocking me. But she was not really sure of her own thoughts. Don't listen to them, Renly had told her, as his men sniggered behind her back, they're vicious little shits, and you're better than them. It seemed that Lady Olenna was saying something similar. Brienne set her jaw. "I have never concerned myself with beauty, my lady," she said coolly. Brienne the Beauty.

"And why would you? Forgive an old woman's crude thoughts, but you were always fighting a losing battle there." She sniffed her wine cup. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, some bard once told me. It's been fifty years and I still haven't quite figured out what he meant, but I know that some beauty lies within you, Lady Brienne, despite how keen you might be to deny the fact." She raised an eyebrow. "Now, what do you say to that?"

"I… I…"

"Dear gods, girl, are you quite certain that you are your father's daughter? Lord Selwyn never struck me as timid. You have the same eyes, though."

"You knew my father, my lady?"

"Yes, but he was only a boy. He liked to hit things with sticks. Most young idiots do. I knew your grandfather as well, Lord Duncan. He was a good man, but not a patch on his namesake when it came to the matter of fighting." She did not explain herself. "The fates of our two houses may well be linked, Lady Brienne. It was Renly who brought us together, was it not?"

"Yes, my lady. I served in his Rainbow Guard after I… after I beat Ser Loras in the tourney." Brienne the Blue.

"You needn't be so nervous about mentioning how you knocked Loras into the dust. Defeat is healthy, I told him."

And I've seen my fair share of it, Brienne thought, Renly died on my watch, I failed to save Lady Catelyn, and they captured Lady Sansa… "Aye. My father said that too."

"Not too much of it, mind. Victory is generally preferred to defeat, but beggars can't be choosers. I think Renly's campaign was a lesson to us all. Especially to Renly. He should never have been king."

"No," Brienne said sadly. "He shouldn't have." She rose. "Pray excuse me, my lady."

"As you will," replied Lady Olenna, "best move with haste, though, child. The gift-giving will be soon, and you wouldn't want to miss that, now, would you?"

Brienne caught a few moments of it as she was walking across the ward. Lady Taena Merryweather had given Sansa some bolts of Myrish cloth and lacy thread, the sort of things that you were supposed to give a lady. Brienne had always been terrible at that sort of them, cursed with a septa who always looked like she wanted to slap her. And with good reason too. I was never-

Something hit her in the back of the head. Not hard, but she knew at once that it had not fallen. It had been thrown. Nobody else seemed to notice, their eyes fixed upon the festivities at the dais. She would not rise to the bait. It is nothing. Only-

Something else hit her. This time Brienne wheeled round angrily and took a few careful steps towards the grove of apple trees that fringed the garden. There was no one here, she saw, moving away from the crowd and descending deeper into the grove. Never mind, she thought, turning back to the trees. I will not let my pride be hurt by-

Again, something round hit her in the back of the head. Some fool is playing a game with me. The Hound was looking out for Lady Sansa. And I am only too willing to play with them. She ducked down, turning up a withered crabapple between her fingers, and then she saw him.

If he had been attempting to hide, he was poorly dressed for it. That yellow cloak was visible from a mile away. For a moment their eyes met, and then he turned away and hurried down the hill.

I know you, Brienne thought in that instant of recognition. Why are you here? For a long moment, she hesitated. This is a bad idea, something told her, but she followed him all the same. Down the hillside they went, through the cloisters, along the wallwalk and down into the yard and out onto the great fields that lay on one side of the hedge maze. They never rose above a brisk walk. Brienne was rounding a corner following the man when he suddenly ducked inside the commoner's pavilion.

The pavilion was much larger than the other tents, in order to accommodate the large numbers of hedge knights and unlanded sons who had no true pavilion to call their own, but it was drably coloured as well, with no ornament save for the occasional spots of mildew and age upon the plain canvas. The place stunk of metal, blood, sweat, and ale, and the air was noisy and thick with warm bodies, men reeking inside their armour and laughing loudly over drunken japes. Brienne found it akin to a war camp, and she hated the place at once. These men were of the sort who had mocked her for her entire life. Brienne the Beauty, they would hiss, when they thought that she was not listening, and sometimes when they knew that she was, knowing that if she dared to challenge them she would only make herself seem even more freakish and ungainly than she already was.

I am not only freakish and ungainly, though, Brienne of Tarth thought, for I am twice the knight of any of them. And so, with tremendous willpower, she held her head up high, and advanced across the tent.

A burly knight with the arms of House Vyrwel on his breastplate moved to block her path, perhaps unintentionally, but his eyes seemed to follow her wherever she went. Woman, they said, freak. Beast.

Brienne almost felt worried, but only for a moment. But she had never forgotten what Renly Baratheon had told her when she was but a young girl. They will stare, aye. Let them stare. They'll never know your true beauty. And she remembered Lady Olenna's words as well now.

She had almost scoffed at that the night after Renly's departure, at the mere possibility that he thought her beautiful. Then she had cried… but she had never forgotten.

She found the man with the yellow cloak soon enough, leaning against one of the tent poles while sipping from a flagon of ale as if nothing was wrong in the world. Brienne watched him from a distance. And she knew at once that it was him, because she knew that man's face even if she did not know why he was here.

The man with the yellow cloak turned away and left the tent. Brienne paused a moment, casting a wary look around herself, then followed him out of the closeness of the pavilion and out onto the fields below. The grass was still wet and sodden with dew, and the mud squelched underfoot as she walked between the tents.

Brienne followed him down the hillside towards where the Mander river came rushing through the woods, past cookfires and campfires and a dozen smaller tents. The elaborate marquees of the Reacher lords were falling behind them, replaced by the small tents of hedge knights, some with the shield and arms of the resident knight hanging outside displaying his coat of arms, others without device at all. Then they were climbing back towards the castle on the next hill, up into the main square, not too far from the lists where Brienne had set out. It was a curious route, turning back on itself not once but twice, and it made her all the more uncertain. Now they were passing back past Lady Sansa's breakfast itself, where Lady Rowan was presenting her with wedding gifts.

She longs for home, Brienne knew, watching the girl's fake courtesies. As do I. It had been nearly three years since she had last seen her lord father. For a moment she was lost in memories, and when she looked up, the man with the yellow cloak had vanished. She was among the follies and the merchants now, alone and surrounded by amusements. She saw a pair of dwarfs fighting each other on a raised wooden beam with tourney lances made for children, a puppeteer's carnival with a crowd of young children standing round it, merchants from the Free Cities mocking one another's prices in a foreign tongue, a soothsayer's tent, even a menagerie with a dancing bear. "From there to here, from here to there, all black and brown and covered in hair!" a pair of bards sung noisily, "She smelled that bear on the summer air, the bear, the bear, the maiden fair!" And she found herself thinking of the bear pit at Harrenhal, and how-

"Well, isn't this a happy coincidence?" a man's voice said.

Brienne found herself smiling when she recognised him. "There's a dancing bear in a cage next to them. It seems the natural thing to sing a song about."

"Oh, you are so boring, wench," Jaime Lannister told her. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

"Only you, Ser Jaime."

Jaime nodded. He had grown a beard again, matted brown and gold, and his hair was cut short, just as it had been when they had parted for the last time in Fairmarket. "You aren't smart enough to come up with a jest like that off the top of your head, Brienne. I bet you've been thinking that one up for months, that you've spent sleepless nights thinking of a new way to humiliate me, that you've-"

Brienne let out a long sigh. And now it begins. "Why are you here?"

"A good question, but again, a boring one." Jaime scratched his head. "We came for the wedding."

"You and Lem Lemoncloak?"

"Aye. And Greenbeard, and the one who looks like Renly, and about forty more of those outlaws who hate me for my countless crimes against the people of the Riverlands." He sounded uncharacteristically solemn.

"Ser Jaime," she began, "I-

"You found the wench, Kingslayer!" The man with the yellow cloak had returned. She stood up and turned to him.

"At ease, Lady Brienne," he said, waving a hand. "I mean you no harm. I expect you'll be wanting to know our purpose here?"

"Aye."

Lem nodded. "We were supposed to take the Kingslayer to the Targaryens in the capital and trade him for your Lady Sansa, but she is here, not there… isn't she?"

Brienne stared at him for a long moment, trying to work out if there was any maliciousness in those eyes. There was something wrong, she knew, but she did not know what. "Aye," she said at last. "She is."

"Good." Lem nodded. "I presume you understand why we are here?"

She thought about that for a moment. "To return Lady Stark to… do you want to go north?"

Lem Lemoncloak cocked his head, as though debating her answer with himself. "You are not wrong, my lady. I suppose there's no point wasting any time. Will you help us? If you can smuggle Lady Sansa out-

"How did you get in?" she asked him.

"Stole a wagon on the roseroad. Greenbeard here plays the lute, so we were able to pass ourselves off as musicians." He smiled through big yellow teeth. "So what say you?"

"I don't know," Brienne said. "What will you do if I refuse?"

He smiled and said, "I swore a vow, Lady Brienne. I'll have no choice but to kidnap the lady."

She reached for the hilt of Oathkeeper, but found that the blade was not there. I should not have left it, she knew. Even so, she held her head up high and said, "I swore a vow as well. To keep Lady Sansa safe from harm."

Lem shrugged. "We have no cause to hurt the lady," he said. "Nevertheless, I'm sure you'll do your very best to stop me-"

Anguy the Archer appeared beside him. "That she will, I guarantee it," he added.

"But I have forty men with me, and you are but one woman," said Lem. "A damned formidable woman, I'll grant you that, but there's still only one of you."

She shook her head. "There are three of us. My squire Podrick-

"-is a good lad, and a noble one too, I'm sure, but he has sense as well, or so I hope." Lem looked almost sad. "But should he try and stand in our way, then we may have to incapacitate him along with you."

Brienne stood tall and said, "And we have the Hound."

The yellowcloak and the archer exchanged an awkward glance. "Oho," said Lem. "That may be more of a problem." His frown suddenly became a grin. "But we've caught the dog before. How did you do it again, Anguy?"

Anguy grinned. "With a flagon of strongwine and an uncommonly large net, Lem. We have the wine, but no net."

"Try rope instead, it'll serve." He turned to Brienne. "It's not hard to put a muzzle on a dog once you know what you're doing."

"The Tyrells have soldiers too," she reminded him.

Anguy the Archer began to whistle 'Six Maids in A Pool'. Lem Lemoncloak said, "It's a shame you're such a poor liar, my lady. Oh yes, they'll defend their good lady if need be, and if they do, then we'll never get within a mile of her. But not for one second do I believe that you'll snitch on us to good Lord Tyrell. Especially when his reaction to your friend Ser Jaime here may be to shorten him by a head."

"Aye." The archer nodded.

Brienne glanced at Jaime. Only then did she see that bleariness in his eyes, the raggedness of his cloak, the lack of a hand, flesh or gold. "What did you do to him?" she asked.

"…He'll tell you that himself – if he ever feels like it. I pity you, my lady. The Kingslayer makes a surprisingly boring travelling companion, I've found."

"What is there to stop me from telling the Tyrells right now?"

"Oh, nothing." Lem Lemoncloak held his hands up and shrugged. "But would you really like to do that, my lady? We'll be long gone by the time you can come back and find us. Do you really want to thwart what might be your lady's only chance of making it back to the North as a free woman? Do you really want to break the oath you made to Lady Catelyn?"

"You'll not speak to me of the oath I made to Lady Catelyn."

"Why not?" asked Anguy. "You forget, we swore an oath as well."

"No," Brienne said. "You swore to…" She broke off. Stoneheart is not Lady Catelyn. The woman I knew was warm and kind, not cold and vengeful.

"Here is how I see it, Brienne." She was surprised to see that it was Jaime who had spoken. "They want to help Lady Sansa." He pointed to Lem and Anguy. "So do you. We all want to get her away from those who would hurt her-"

"And what of Lady Sansa herself? Perhaps she wants to stay here." Yet even as she said the words she knew that they were untrue.

Jaime shook his head. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

No, Brienne thought, but I'll be damned if I give her up to the Brotherhood without Banners alone. "And suppose we do get her away from Highgarden, what will we do then? You said north, but the north is a big place, and I have no guarantee that you won't just steal her for yourself."

Lem was growing agitated. "Seven hells, what do you want, wench?"

She would have spoken up, but Jaime got there first. "I think what Brienne is trying to say is this: she'll help you get Lady Sansa away from Highgarden and back to her family, but it'll be on her terms." He turned to the rest of them and shrugged. "You wouldn't have thought that she'd be so tactful from the look of her, but my lady is full of surprises."