AN - Apologies for the delay, I'm afraid there were some delays due to a promotion at work cutting down on some of my writing time.

Valar Morghulis

Cersei

She didn't know what she was going to do.

In the safety and privacy of her own mind she could admit that to herself. It was strange but she felt that, perhaps, saying the truth aloud might make it even harder for her to actually deal with the situation she found herself trapped in. And there was always the possibility that someone would be listening to her, even here in her chambers.

Security of information was paramount and constantly challenged, even when she had long ago sent her handmaidens away and her only guard was stationed outside the room, leaving her clutching her wine goblet alone.

She supposed she was going to have to harden her heart further still and become accustomed to being alone. Certainly, she still had her children but Jaime was gone. Her golden Jaime… he had gone away to war with the Targaryen pretender and she had been so supremely confident that he would come back, just as he always had, with that confident smirk still in place and a twinkle in his eye that he reserved only for her.

And the people in the streets believed she wore mourning clothes for that fat lump of shit that had been her husband. Truly a laughable belief if you asked her.

But nevertheless, she was in mourning. Mourning the loss of the other half of her, her beautiful Jaime. And yet another type of mourning as well, one that only a mother whose child was rejecting them could possibly hope to understand. Added to the grief she was already feeling at the loss of her love, Cersei was brittle in the face of this new attack upon her soul.

Her beloved boy, Joffrey, was now King of the Seven Kingdoms.

It should have been a wonderful time for the both of them but it was so different to how she had imagined it. Already her son was ignoring her, making decisions that he desired with no thought as to her mind on the matter - he was beginning to frighten her as well. Some of the decisions that he wanted to make were rather… polarising. Though she was his mother and would always support him, she found it hard to support some of the decrees.

Having both Eddard Stark and his whore of a daughter, Sansa, locked up in the Black Cells? That was something that she could approve of. The Black Cells were famous of being able to drive men to the brink of madness, capable of bringing even the proudest of lords to their knees. And when they were so broken down… they would say anything to free themselves from their suffering.

And all Cersei wanted Eddard Stark to say was that he had been lying. That Joffrey was indeed the son of Robert Baratheon, even though the very thought of Joffrey being related to that oaf offended her on a deep level. But she would not let the up jumped Northman steal her son's crown from him, even if he was entirely Lannister. In her mind that actually made him much more worthy of the throne - the Gods knew that the Lannister's were far worthier of the Crown than the Baratheon's, brutes and degenerates as they were.

That Sansa was in a cell was more of a personal pleasure than politically useful.

She was certain that some would see Sansa's imprisonment as unjustified, perhaps even cruel. If she was to be a hostage, since she was of noble birth, most would expect her to be confined to her quarters under guard. Cersei would happily admit to herself that the reason she had the Stark girl in the dungeons instead was because of how Joffrey had been looking at her.

Stark had brought his daughter with him, as he said, to enquire about a match at court. Sansa had shown no interest in Joffrey, something that had bristled at the time, and had instead focused on Willas Tyrell when his family had visited court. Later though, Cersei would have been happy if Sansa had continued to never look at Joffrey but her son had seemed interested in the Northern girl, like he had never been interested in any girl before.

Sansa had returned some of the attention, though Cersei's interrogation of the girl's friend after the arrest had revealed she had only been doing it to be polite to the crown prince. It didn't matter to Cersei however - Joffrey was aiming far too low and if she had to starve the Stark girl to prove it? So be it.

It wasn't like the Starks were ever going to see her again to complain about her conditions after all.

Eddard Stark and his daughter would be hostages of the crown to keep their family in line and ensure their continued loyalty to the crown. At least… that was what was supposed to happen. That was the most sensible option and the path that gave them the most leverage over their potential foes.

It was not the path that Joffrey had chosen to take.

Despite her advice, despite the advice of the entirety of the small council as well, Joffrey had declared that he would have Eddard Stark's head, leaving Sansa as their only hostage and The North seething in anger with only a little girl to keep them loyal.

It wasn't going to work as beautifully as Joffrey believed it would because of the way the world worked - the same part of the world that she hated honestly. Because Sansa was not born with a cock, she was nowhere near as useful as her father. On top of that, Eddard Stark was someone The North respected and Sansa was respected merely by proxy - even a fool with a limited knowledge of The North could tell that.

Joffrey knew that but he didn't care. The way he explained it, he wanted to insult The North for the insult their liege Lord had paid him by questioning his parentage. If it had been subtle, or if it had been worked in such a way as to avoid retaliation, then Cersei might have approved. Who was the wolf to question the word of the lion after all? But it was neither and all it would do in the end was invite the wolves to their doors.

If this backfired as badly as she suspected it might then they could face a divide in the Kingdoms, with The North, The Riverlands and The Vale aligned against them. Lord Baelish assured her that Lysa Arryn would not allow The Vale to ride to the aid of The North and The Riverlands should it come to war but she didn't believe him. Even a mad woman such as Lysa Arryn would mobilise her forces when her family was threatened - and the Stark children were half-Tully and Edmure her brother.

This had the potential to backfire terribly but she would ensure that it didn't come to that. She was his mother so Cersei would ensure that any decision Joffrey made, it would be upheld. Regardless of how little she agreed with said decision. He was the King after all - he reserved the right to make any decision he so desired and to have it obeyed to the letter.

A thundering upon her chamber door startled her, causing some of her wine to spill out onto the hem of her dress. She scowled at the stain, knowing that this dress probably cost more than what the person knocking made in half a year! Setting her glass down, she opened the door with a rather aloof look, marred only slightly by a small scowl when she saw that it was her guard, Ser Preston Greenfield.

"Speak, ser."

It was a command and there could be no doubt that it was to be obeyed,

"It's the Lady Sansa, my queen! Something terrible has happened!"

Robb

Sometimes Robb hated being the eldest brother. Sometimes he really did wish that Bran was older than him - his little brother was smarter than him and seemed to have a way of making people understand complicated ideas with just a little bit of discussion. Robb had never had that gift and neither had Jon - they were men of war, not discussion, no matter how much Robb had tried to get the hang of it.

Although, somehow he doubted that Bran would be able to reason through the barely organised chaos that was the assembly of Lords he was currently seated with, situated inside the rebuilt hall of Moat Cailin. Since their father's departure, Robb and Bran had made the reconstruction of Moat Cailin their project, pulling funds from the vaults of Winterfell to shore up the defence of The North from Southern invaders.

He had doubted, at the time, that the South would be a direct threat to them but it seemed that time had proven Bran's caution correct and his own beliefs false.

The Lannister Queen and her son had seized their father and Sansa, using them to try and force them to be obedient to the crown. Why they would possibly do that became clear when two ravens came from Winterfell. The first was from King Joffrey, demanding that he personally come to King's Landing to swear loyalty to him after his father's failed coup attempt. It was utter shite and that much was clear from the first reading - his father would never commit to a coup that would replace his best friend's son.

The second raven had clarified.

Stannis Baratheon had sent a raven declaring that Lord Eddard Stark had uncovered that which he had suspected for some time - which the children of Cersei Lannister were actually her incestuous bastard children. Results of her coupling with her twin brother Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. If his father had uncovered evidence to suggest such, Robb had no doubt that he would have made an attempt to seat Stannis Baratheon on the throne, as the next in line for the crown.

But the attempt had failed, his father had been captured along with Sansa. And a decision needed to be made as to what The North would do with this knowledge. Hence why the bickering lords of the North were seated in the hall with him, roaring their opinions left and right while he sat at the head of the table, steadfastly ignoring the food that had been placed in front of him at the beginning of the discussion.

He didn't feel like eating when his father and sister were at the mercy of liars and murderers in King's Landing. Everyone knew that Elia Martell had been the glorified hostage of King Aerys and yet the Lannister's had set there mad dog on her. Quite a number of people here questioned if the Lannister's actually knew what the purpose of a hostage actually was. It didn't bode well for his father or for Sansa.

He closed his eyes, finding the cold calm that he had often felt when he had been commanding men under the watchful eyes of his father. Some people, he knew, found themselves better suited to war when their anger was running hot but he didn't. He didn't let his anger get away from him, he controlled it and made it work for him, finding a cold sense of calm even when he had been in the thick of the fighting before.

Holding onto the feeling, Robb stood.

A hush descended over the assembled lords of The North as both Ghost to his left and Grey Wind to his right, stood with him. They didn't growl and Robb didn't need to raise his voice, they just stood and waited. The Lords grumbled a few more things to each other before falling silent as they waited for him to speak.

This was the level of respect that the Stark family commanded. It was the respect his father commanded and it was respect he had begun to command since he had fought, led and bled with these men on the field of battle. He might be young but he was no green boy and they all knew it.

"Queen Cersei Lannister and her children have taken my father and my eldest sister hostage." he declared, pausing for the insults to the Lannister's and Southerners in general to die down before he continued, "For attempting to remove the bastard of Incest that sits upon the Throne of Westeros. That abomination seeks to cow us into submission, to have me present myself at King's Landing and pledge my loyalty to him."

The general roar of disapproval and more arguments that sprung up at this was not something that Robb was able to stop easily so he let it continue instead. No need to rail against the storm and make a fool of himself when he failed to be heard over the sound of the lords shouting at each other.

"The next time a Stark sets foot in King's Landing, it will be to burn that cursed city to the ground!"

That was Lord Karstark.

Usually such a venomous and loud shout would have come from the Greatjon but Lord Karstark had become a much more vocal supporter of the Stark family in recent years. Robb honestly believed it might have had something to do with how his son had been returned to him at great risk to Jon himself, all to honour the man's memory and family.

At least that's what Bran reasoned was why the normally prickly Lord had decided that he was going to be a firm supporter of the Stark family.

"I say we march down there and give those southerners a fucking thrashing!"

Now that was the Greatjon.

There was a general roar of agreement but Robb didn't voice his own opinion just yet. Instead he let the agreement and arguments die down again when the Lords began to realise that he had neither agreed nor had he sat back down. Robb looked around the room for a long few moments,

"We will prepare for war." he rushed to continue before the roar could deafen him, "But we shall not march off to war like Green boys!"

That cut some of them off short so Robb pushed forwards,

"Begin marshalling your forces but know this - we shall not march yet!" he thundered, shouting down any dissenters before they began, "We shall not march blindly into the fray - We shall muster our combined forces to better combat the greater numbers of the South. And when we march we shall not only defeat them on the field of battle… WE WILL SHATTER THEIR KINGDOMS!"

Roars of approval from almost all,

"Send riders to your people! Raise the men! Gather the horses! Let the blacksmiths work through night and day!" he declared, drawing Ice and raising it high in salute, being joined by several of the other Lords, "We will prepare and when we are ready we will rescue our people and teach those soft Lords and Ladies that bastards born of incest do not make demands of The North!"

The Lords roared their approval and many mugs of ale were raised but all Robb could do was sink back into his seat as his thoughts went to his family. And gods have mercy on anyone who harmed them in anyway because Robb knew they would have none from him.

Tyrion

"My royal nephew is a royal buffoon."

Most men who were uncles of royalty would probably do their best to stay in the good graces of said royalty. Not so much for one Tyrion Lannister. Of course he might have entertained the idea of keeping himself in the new King's good graces, had his efforts not been poisoned (perhaps even in the womb) by his dearest sister Cersei long ago. Not only that, but their interests had never really aligned, never giving him a chance to bond with the boy over anything during his formative years.

Or perhaps it was because his nephew was a complete and utter fool?

Considering the only patience he had for fools was to laugh at them for his own amusement, he could see why his relationship with his nephew had never been stellar. But it seemed that as the years had gone by, his nephew had gone out of his way to grow into the complete opposite of Tyrion's personal view of a 'good King'.

With all the bad Kings that Westeros had had, he had foolishly believed that perhaps some of them would have learned from the past, from all the other Kings of Westeros. They had had cruel Kings and foolish Kings but in Joffrey Baratheon the kingdoms were going to face the wrath of a King who seemed to be both in equal measure. He wouldn't be at all surprised if Joffrey managed to take the Seven Kingdoms, a kingdom that had stood for near 300 years, and shatter it before his next nameday.

Of course some of that was his fault and some of it wasn't. Tyrion, of all people, knew that a man was not responsible for the way he came into the world but people would not see it that way. Tyrion had been born a dwarf and had managed to tear his mother apart in his entry to the world – souring his father's love for him and causing his sister to hate for him all their lives no doubt. He didn't blame Joffrey for being a bastard of incest and he honestly didn't think that was why he was the way he was.

Honestly, the boy was a terrible little shit more because of how his sister had raised him than any other possible reason.

Oh and yes, he did believe the 'vile lies' that both Eddard Stark and Stannis Baratheon had been talking about. About how Cersei and Jaime were far too close to merely be brother and sister and how every single one of their children had managed to come out looking exactly like Lannister's, without a single trace of any Baratheon features. That, combined with his sister's complete distain for Robert Baratheon, led him to believe the Lord Paramount of The North and Prince Stannis over his own family.

He was just glad that he hadn't been in King's Landing when Eddard Stark had tried his ill-fated attempt to 'right the balance of power' by throwing his support behind Stannis, the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, if not the right one the kingdoms needed. Mainly because he was absolutely certain that if he had been there at the time, his beloved sister would doubtlessly have used it as an excuse to do away with him.

Some lies about him being attacked by Stark loyalists in the night perhaps? No, far too subtle for Cersei. Perhaps she would have him brought up on charges as a co-conspirator? That sounded much more like his sister – much more pomp and circumstance behind the public execution of a criminal 'guilty' of attempted regicide after all!

But that was all just from receiving the raven from his father, outlining the entire situation. If he actually thought about the situation more he was certain that he could help his sister and her children but he honestly didn't care right now. He, equally, didn't care about his father's command for him to take command of the forces that were marshalling under the watchful eye of his uncle Kevin.

No, all he cared about was what he had been caring about for days now, since the news had reached the Westerlands. His father had taken the news like a blow to the heart… and had immediately thrown himself into his duties as the Warden of the West, not content to deal with his grief like an ordinary human being. For Tyrion, it was a much simpler thing.

He missed Jaime.

He might have been a sister-fucker whose incestuous love child was bound to doom the kingdoms in some way but he had still been his brother. Sometimes it felt like Jaime was the only person in the Seven Kingdoms who actually cared for him, genuinely cared. And yet now his brother was gone, killed in some field in the southern Stormlands after chasing the stunted dragon that had been Viserys.

Of course he had heard the stories that people were telling about his brother now but that didn't much matter to him. He appreciated the attempts of others to speak about his brother in such glowing terms but he wanted to leave his own mark before he left – hence why he was currently receiving minstrels in the great hall of Casterly Rock rather than helping his uncle prepare the men for the march ahead of them towards the Neck. He waved off their odd looks,

"Ignore me." He pointed to the lead minstrel, "You there. From the top."

The minstrel took a breath and began again.

Through t' Reach, over fen and field where the long grass grows

The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.

'What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?

Have you seen Jaime the Golden Knight, by moon or by starlight?

'I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey,

I saw him walk in empty lands until he passed away

Into the shadows of the Storm, I saw him then no more.

The South Wind may have heard the horn of the son of The Old Lion,

'O Kingslayer! From the high walls westward I looked afar,

But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.

Tyrion took a moment to realise that a stray tear had escaped him at the touching song for his brother. It would be a fitting tribute to his brother for now – until such a time as their father was able to commission great statues in his honour at least. He wiped his tear away and, with a careless toss of a leather purse, paid the minstrel,

"Spread the song across Westeros. Add verses as you will." He commanded the minstrel as he strode from the room, "I'm afraid I have an army to lead… pray our armies fare better amongst the bogs of the Neck than the Andal armies of old or you shall all find yourself without patrons!"

Lancel

What was he to make of these letters from his uncle and from his cousin?

His cousin was demanding that he use the control he had over the Order to have them raid and pillage the countryside around them, all to hurt the Starks for Lord Stark's apparent participation in a coup attempt. Completely putting aside how much it rankled that his cousin thought so little of his honour and his duty to his Order, Lancel was hard pressed to truly believe that Lord Stark would ever be involved in such a thing.

One of the benefits of Johnstown being quite close to Winterfell was that Lancel had gotten the chance to meet Lord Stark and, on several occasions, share a table with the man. If there was even a deceitful or ambitious bone in the man's body then it was buried so deep beneath honour, loyalty and duty that it would take cutting the man to pieces to find even a speck of it. It wasn't that the idea of a Lord Paramount leading a coup attempt was ridiculous, it was the fact that his cousin was arguing that the Lord least likely to be behind such an attempt had done so.

If it had been a letter telling him that the Tyrell's or Martell's had attempted a coup? Lancel would have believed it in a heartbeat and would have gathered those knights from the Westerlands that were here to ride south in defence of their families. Seven Hells, it was more believable to him that his own uncle, Lord Tywin Lannister, would be behind a coup than it was that Eddard Stark would carry out such a plot.

He doubted that many of the men would believe it either to be honest, even some of the knights who had come from the Westerlands with him. To say nothing of the fact that the majority of the men were either from the North, where a Stark's word was valued more than gold, or from the Riverlands, where Lord Stark was still greatly respected from his marriage to the Tully woman, so it was more likely they would string him up for suggesting such slander against Lord Stark than believe the tale.

Which meant that he was going to ignore his cousin's mad calls to begin pillaging at once. Even if the Starks were now enemies of his family, something he had yet to be convinced of, he wouldn't take the pain out on the smallfolk. They hadn't done anything and he had developed a new appreciation for the smallfolk and their protection, ever since the small town had sprung up around the keep and he been forced to have more interactions with their kind than he ever had before.

Being a Lannister of Casterly Rock meant that Lancel hadn't really had many dealings with the smallfolk until he was a knight.

And now his cousin, now the King, was demanding that he cause those pathetic people pain all because he believed the Starks, the family known for loyalty in recent years, were his enemies? Lancel had already made up his mind as to the contents of his return raven to his cousin. Hells, the raven would be sent via Winterfell and the Stark's own maester would be the one to send it back. They hadn't read his mail on its way in and that was not the actions of an enemy as far as he was aware.

The subtler forms of warfare had always been something that his Bolton friend stressed, but it had never appealed to Lancel himself. Even he knew that you starved an enemy of information if you could - though that was one of those lessons he had learnt from his father before he had made the journey north.

But in the end it came back to the same issue - King Robert was dead. That wasn't a story and it wasn't open to interpretation, the man was dead and Joffrey was his heir, meaning that Joffrey was now King of the Seven Kingdoms. Which meant to disobey his command was to disobey the order of the King of the land.

The Lords of Winter may be sworn to defend the North, but they were all still subjects of the King on the Iron Throne and were accountable to him, the Lord Paramount of the North and the Gods alone. Sitting alone in the room that had been Jon's before his exile, but that now served as his own quarters, Lancel took the raven's scroll his cousin had sent him and set it alight with the lone candle upon the writing desk.

Once the fire had caught he dropped the paper to the stone window ledge, letting it burn itself out as he stared at the last message he had received.

Some might find it odd that he saw this message as the more important of the two, considering he had just burnt a letter from the King himself. But when Tywin Lannister wrote to you, you tended to think of it as somewhat more important than pretty much anything else that was in your life at the time because the Gods help you if you left Tywin Lannister waiting for your response. He paused at the knock upon the door,

"Enter."

Lancel hid the letter with his hand until he noticed that the knight entering was none other than Ser Humfrey Swyft, his second cousin on his mother's side and a loyal knight of both House Lannister and the Lords of Winter. Perhaps one of the only men here who could truly understand the kind of bind he was in right now. His cousin closed the door behind him,

"I read the scroll from Lord Tywin when I brought it to you. What will you do?"

He wasn't surprised - a raven scroll from Tywin Lannister was something that any man from the Westerlands would have been interested in. Lancel clicked his tongue once in acknowledgement, just looking down at the incredibly brief message that his uncle had written to him.

Hear me roar.

A not so subtle reminder of which family Lancel belonged to and a rather blatant push for his duty to his family to override his duty to the North and to the Order. Lancel set the scroll alit as he had done with the message from King Joffrey, though this time he held the paper in his hand long enough to hurt as he just watched it burn, his mind and heart at war.

Dropping the burning scroll, Lancel looked up at his second cousin,

"I will do as any true knight should - I will do my duty."

Sansa

This was wrong.

She had been rather intrigued with the idea of Princes, Kings and Queens when she was younger. Her mother had read her all the stories from the oldest of them to the newest - the songs of beautiful Princesses being rescued from some danger by their heroic knights, marrying and then ruling justly and fairly for the rest of their days.

The happily ever after.

Which was the farthest thing from what King's Landing; with its royals and their sordid affairs and lives, actually was when she had arrived. She hadn't been a little girl in a long time but she had, somewhat foolishly, held out hope that maybe the capital of the Seven Kingdoms would be as splendid as all the songs said it would be.

The Gods knew she had been disappointed upon meeting the royals themselves back at the tournament of Harrenhall.

King Robert Baratheon, a fat shadow of his former self if her father's tales rang true. His Queen, Cersei, who was as pretty as the gold her father's workers dragged from the land and about as cold to be honest. Tommen and Myrcella were nice enough in their own ways but they were constantly afraid. At first, Sansa hadn't really understood why they were afraid. Of course she knew that Joffrey had a darker side - he had shown it clearly against the enemies of the Realm after all. But Jon had a darker side as well and Sansa had never feared him, secure in the knowledge that her brother, while a monster to those that threatened them, was nothing short of lovely and caring towards his loved ones.

Surely Joffrey would be the same?

Of course she had been proven wrong. Even with her father taking the position of Hand of the King and making moves to seek out a husband for her, Prince Joffrey had followed her with lust in his eyes and a certain cruelty that he seemed to think would impress her. Punishing a fool for, well, being a fool. And threatening to kill Prince Tommen's little cat, Ser Pounce! As if the little creature had ever done anything wrong in its life.

Sansa had helped to raise her brother Bran so she knew that sometimes boys were rougher and meaner than they really meant to be. Bran had lorded his high-born status over the butcher's boy for almost half a year before he grew out of the phase and actually apologised for some of the crueller pranks he had pulled on the boy. Sansa had been very proud of her little brother for his growth, just as she imagined that their mother would have been.

Perhaps it wasn't so strange then that she found her thoughts drifting away from the royal family and focusing on her own and their plight.

Her father… she supposed he was in a cell of his own. He had shared his belief with her that Joffrey and his siblings were actually born of incest between the Queen and her brother Jaime… and the evidence that she had managed to push her father to reveal to her tended to suggest that her father was right. To many of the men she had met while at court, it would have been the perfect chance for their House to seize the power of the throne by using one of the 'Baratheon' children as a puppet. But rather than taking the throne's power for himself, her father had sought to conduct a bloodless coup to install Stannis Baratheon as King - the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms.

Though what support had Stannis shown her father's loyalty? Nothing. He had apparently withdrawn to Dragonstone and had just sat there while her father had messaged him time and time again requesting he come to court. In the end her father didn't have any choice but to go ahead with the plan without the physical support of either of the Baratheon brothers, relying on Littlefinger's aid as an old friend of her mother's.

Apparently it had not been enough.

The Stark men who had been stationed outside her chambers to protect her in case of trouble had been killed to a man by red-cloaked Lannister men, who had dragged her through the halls of the Red Keep before throwing her in one of the red cells, where she had remained ever since. She hadn't seen anyone else and she didn't 'know' that her father was captured as well but she found the idea of him remaining free unlikely.

The sheer number of red-cloaks who had killed her father's men to abduct her? There was no way that the Lannister's weren't aware of the plan before it had gone ahead, which meant either someone had been forced to talk or had willingly betrayed them. Sansa might not be a leader of men like Robb, might not have been quite as smart as Bran, or have the determination of Arya, but she was rivalled only by Jon in her love for their family. As she sat there in the filth and cold of the black cell, Sansa swore by her father's gods and her departed mother's as well - she would make sure whomever had betrayed her family would suffer before they died.

They had imprisoned her with their actions, endangered her family and had either imprisoned or, gods forbid, killed her father.

This was all so wrong - her father had done nothing wrong. All he had done was uphold the laws of the land and the King, Joffrey the bastard of incest, was going to punish her entire family. This was so far removed from the songs and the stories that she remembered her mother telling her that she could almost feel the exact moment when what little innocence of her childhood remained just snapped under the pressure.

She had been taking on the responsibilities of the Lady of Winterfell for years now, meaning she hadn't really had time to be a young woman. Her duty to her family had come first after all. But throughout it all she had kept a core of her childhood secure, her father making sure that she still had time with her friends around Winterfell so that she didn't assume the role completely and lose what little joy of childhood she had left.

But what good would that slither of childhood do her now? None. She needed to harden herself in the same way she had seen happen to others in the court and she would need to learn how to play their game. Winterfell, the North, had its own version of the infamous "Game of Thrones" but it had a very different set of rules, including honour and duty. Of course the game here in King's Landing was without rules, meaning it could be boiled down rather easily to one rule alone.

The strong ate the weak.

And Sansa couldn't afford to be weak anymore. She resolved, even as she shivered, knees against her chest, in the cell, that she would be free before long and she would make sure that the royal family knew that she was not going to be a meek hostage to their whims.

So focused was she on her new resolve that she didn't hear the cell door opening.

Varys

Varys had done some truly distasteful things in his life.

He had sold his body for years and he had taken both money and secrets for such a service. From there he had ascended, using the money to discover more secrets and those secrets, in turn, to gain more money. And each and every transaction had been built on a basis of shattered trust, to begin with. But as the secrets grew darker and the amounts of money larger, blood became the concrete of his empire of subterfuge and lies.

Using either the money or the secrets he pressed people into his service as spies, as messengers and, on occasion, as assassins. Through them he had changed the course of many events - recent history was as it was today because of his little birds, all carefully directed from his place in the centre of the 'web' as it were.

The spider who grew fat on the strife of the Realm; that was what some people called him. Of course they were right in one way - he had a web. He was connected to so many people, had control over so many people, that it was almost impossible to name a House he had not infiltrated. The Realm may have all bowed to the King on the Iron Throne but a few moons ago, but it was much more connected to the Spider.

Though the rumours that almost every bit of foul play in the Realm could be placed at his feet were just that - rumours - there was some truth hidden away within those stories. After all, in most of the important instances of terrible things happening to influential people, the Spider was either the one to spin the web or he was aware of the plan as it was formed, while it was executed and when, or if, it came undone.

With all this information, all those plots whirling around… it was rather difficult for Varys to find something distasteful and it was practically unheard of that he would feel either an ounce of guilt. After all, no matter how horrible an action, what he did was a service to the Realm and had to be conducted with the utmost professionalism, decorum and discretion.

Though, in this case, the discretion would be more of a safety feature for himself than it had been for many years.

After all - Ser Jon Whitewolf was a man well known for slaughtering those who had done harm to his family. And for all the good Varys had done the man's family by absconding with Lord Eddard from the Black cells, he doubted the young knight would forgive him for the way he had had his men deal with Sansa Stark.

Varys had forced himself to watch as the two thugs he had hired tore the Lady Sansa's clothes from her body before violating her, over and over again. Through the bile that threatened to escape up his throat, Varys had ordered the men to complete the task they had been paid to accomplish.

And he had watched as the two cut-throats from Flea Bottom actually looked a little apprehensive before carrying out his order… and smashed Sansa Stark's skull apart against the stone floor of her cell.

The timing was right after all.

Ser Gregor Clegane had recently entered the city with more Lannister men, to aid King Joffrey in keeping order within the capital while Lord Tywin was making certain that the Riverlands did not rise to defend their family and Lord Tyrion went to check the Northern advance at the Neck.

A Lannister knight with a history of murder within the Red Keep on the orders of Tywin Lannister, specifically a history of committing an atrocity exactly like this one? The smallfolk would talk and his little birds would spread the story far and wide - Tywin Lannister had ordered Gregor Clegane to rape and murder Sansa Stark as an example to Lord Eddard, the rest of the Starks and the realm as a whole.

A warning against threatening the Lannister's in anyway.

Of course, Varys reflected as he watched Ser Jon howl with unrestrained fury and grief in the secret tunnels beneath the keep, the message wouldn't be heeded. He had absolutely no doubt that Ser Jon was going to make sure to get some measure of revenge from the Lannister's before he passed from this world. A man of passions and skill like Ser Jon Whitewolf was very unlikely to forget.

Even Lord Eddard Stark, a man praised for his honour and sense of duty, was thinking dark thoughts. He wasn't as animated as his baseborn son however, he just fixed a point on the opposite wall with the darkest look that Varys could ever recall seeing on a man's face. And this was quite some feat, considering the Kings that he had served.

No doubt the rest of the Stark family would be just as incensed as their patriarch and baseborn brother. The conflict that would follow this would be less about honour and duty, as it would have been had Eddard Stark simply followed Stannis Baratheon to war. This conflict would be a bloody war waged with the fate of the Lions and Wolves in the balance. Even if the Riverlands and the Vale did not join with the North, as he suspected they might not, this conflict would tear the realm apart.

Some might say that went against his goal, of a united and strong Realm.

Those people would be short-sighted fools.

The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros could only be ruled by the right kind of ruler with the right family name to back them. Of course the world was quickly running out of people with the right family behind them - young Aegon had been betrayed by his uncle, the mad-dog Viserys had had to be put down and the bastard had proven himself ill-suited to the throne. But there was still one more, one more Targaryen out there in the world who could unite the Seven Kingdoms again and rule justly.

And despite the small measure of guilt he felt at the measures he had taken, Varys knew that having a just, wise and sane Targaryen on the Iron Throne was worth any number of rapes and murders of innocent young women. With the Realm splintered by civil war, it would be that much easier for the rightful Queen to sweep in with her dragons and her armies, taking the kingdoms by surprise and fire.

And when Daenerys Targaryen sat atop the Iron Throne, Varys knew that the guilt he felt over the fate of Sansa Stark would be worth it because the Realm would again, finally, know true peace.