The next days passed quietly. Sansa kept mostly to the house, making herself as busy as she could, washing clothes and bedsheets, working out how to cook better stews, cleaning. She thought idly of the maidservants who had done this work at Winterfell, at King's Landing, and how much she'd hardly ever noticed that they were there. Now she realised how much work there had always been to do, and how little she'd thought of it. If she ever had maidservants again, she would give them extra coin, more time to themselves, and as many gracious thanks as she could without being embarrassing.

But she didn't mind. If she cleaned – the floors, the walls, the furniture – she could fill the emptiness in her mind with lemon and hot water and oil of pine and suds, not the faces of her family. She hadn't known how they died, only that they had, and by the Freys and Lord Bolton, men who had sworn themselves to her father. It wouldn't have been an easy death for her mother, or Robb, or Arya. If there was such a thing. If she ever got home, she thought, she would kill all of them.

'Sandor, you're not saying it right.'

Occasionally, as she was today, she would sit out in the yard, warming her shoulders. Sandor and Shireen were both with her today, and Shireen was doing her very best to teach Sandor some Myrish.

'I'm not saying it right because it's a stupid bloody language,' he said, folding his arms.

'It's not. It's nice. It's just got more tongue-sounds in it than ours.' Shireen clicked her tongue like a horse. 'It's better than High Valerian. That's all rubbed up the wrong way.' Sandor grunted. 'You have to learn it, then you can talk to people.'

'Why the hells would I want to talk to any of those oily cunts?' he said.

Shireen tilted her face up into the sun and closed her eyes. 'You're very rude.'

'You're very annoying.'

Shireen made a small outward breath of frustration and disappeared inside.

'She's a bloody menace,' Sandor said. 'If she's ever queen I'm moving to the other side of Essos.' He put his hand out onto the bench.

Sansa placed her hand on top. It was walnut-wrinkled from all the washing she'd done. 'How do you think they died?' she said.

Sandor went very still, the curl of his half-smile disappearing. 'Don't think about that.'

'Do you think they were beheaded? Or just stabbed, or –'

'Sansa.'

'Do you think they hurt Arya? I mean, before? Do you think they raped her?'

He clamped his lips shut and she heard a breath crash down inside him like the wave on the prow of a boat. His chin tipped to his chest and up again. 'It's not going to make anything any better, you thinking like that. You have to stop.'

'I can't,' she said, her voice tight.

'Try,' he said.

'I can't. You wouldn't know. How would you know?'

A large black and white bird streaked overhead, the sound making him glance upwards. 'I know plenty.' He removed his hand. 'I'm not saying it's the same, but I do.'

And there, in the sun-dappled yard, he told her about his family, and everything he'd lost.

*S*S*S*S*S*S

It's hard going, these next days. Sansa's bleak with grief. She turns herself inside out with tears, makes herself a bloody housemaid, sits quiet a lot, picking at her nails. I haven't lain with her again, not properly. She seems lifeless, like someone picked a little hole in her and drained the blood out slowly, just enough left in there to keep her going. I've tried, a bit, but I keep thinking she's going to cry again, or bite my bloody balls off.

The little 'un is in my face all the time, shoving Myrish words in my ears, reading to me. Her books about kings and dragons and not too many fair princesses, thank the gods. I make her go over all the Houses and how they link together, and tell her about the battles - some I've been in - putting plenty of gore in there to make her squeal. The reading gives me something to do at least, apart from the training, and the slow learning of walls and streets outside. I don't like it much, being out in the open – feel like I'm a bloody walking sigil flag for us all – but it needs to be done. Davos will talk about moving on when he's back, I'm sure of that, and mayhaps we should, but we've had no more trouble, for now at least.

*S*S*S*S*S*S

'What are you doing?' Sansa said.

The morning light was pooling on the walls, making them the colour of buttercream.

Sandor was making strange clicking sounds with his tongue, and in his throat. 'They help me see, I think,' he said.

Sansa wondered if Sandor had gone slightly mad in the heat. 'See?'

He sniffed. 'They sound different depending on where I am,' he said. 'I can tell how far away things are – walls and that.' He clicked softly twice more.

Sansa put her hand flat on his chest. The streets outside, the Myrish even though he pretended he hated it. Every day he seemed to learning something new, and she felt a small burn of pride in her stomach for him. After he'd told her about his sister, his father, and the mother he hardly remembered, she'd felt terrible. Guilty, and selfish. Everyone suffered loss. Not just her.

'Can you tell how far away I am?' she said.

'Don't need to make any noise for that,' he said, pulling her towards him. He planted a kiss on her forehead.

She was getting better, slowly. She knew she had to go on, had to go on looking after everyone, being a Stark. She also knew that Sandor wanted her again. He would run his hands over her, stop, and sigh very low in her ear, as if he was telling himself off. He was so careful around her, like she was a bit of blown glass, and would smash at any minute.

She did want to try again. Hopefully without crying all over him afterwards. She cared for him more than anything. This was all that was left. Even though it had hurt, there had been something desperately intimate about them lying together. She couldn't imagine being that way with a single other person. If he hadn't taken her away, helped her escape, she would had to have done that with Lord Tyrion. With the Imp. She felt that familiar flood of guilt at everything that had happened since, and of gratitude.

*S*S*S*S*S*S

She comes up to me, the little fish. I've made you something, she says, and something is put in my hand. Big, flat-bottomed, with raised bits, soggy. What the hells is this, then? I say. Her foot kicking the bench. It's a map, she says. Of our house and the streets around it. She grabs my hand, uncurls my forefinger and draws it on top of a little square lump, telling me that here was us, and dragging my hand over over bits of it.

How did you make this? I say, not knowing what else to bloody say. Flour and water and paper, she says. It's probably still a bit wet, but it should dry. Hopefully. It's only the nearest streets, otherwise it would have got too big. But I can make other ones -

She keeps going, but I've stopped listening, tracing the streets – some bigger, some smaller, my finger getting sticky. No one's made me anything before. Not in my life.

Later, she's reading to me. I've got my arms folded, head back against the wall, sun on my face. Hot wind slapping me about. God knows how bloody dark I am now. I'll look like one of these Myrish idiots soon enough. I wonder how many freckles Sansa's got on her nose now. If her shoulders are spice-coloured.

A little cough, from Sansa at the doorway. I hear her fingers scratching at the wood frame. I thought I would go out, she says. She hasn't been outside, not properly, since news of her family. I've probably know more routes through these bloody dusty streets than she does. Probably.

Will you both come? she says.

*S*S*S*S*S*S

It felt good to be out of the house. To smell the herbs on the air, to have people chattering around her. To walk with Sandor, leading him by the arm - or him leading her, she couldn't quite tell - while Shireen bounded on ahead. Sansa tried not to look on every person as a threat, not to interpret their glances as anything other than curiosity at Sandor's size, or his glassy eyes or burns, or Shireen's cowl-covered face.

She wondered if she needed to start thinking about finding allies here, people who really could protect them somehow. It seemed that the messages from Cersei had gone everywhere, and those men might not have sent a message back. But she wasn't to know. Would the magisters look kindly on her and Shireen, support their cause? What was their cause? She didn't know what her purpose in life was any more. Before it had been clear: be a princess, learn to dance, sew, hold yourself like a lady, be married, be queen – all those things seemed ridiculous now. Her whole family had disappeared, crumpled in a fist. Was she supposed to go charging back over to Westeros, claiming Winterfell? She couldn't see it.

After visiting Gendry in the smithy – he was pleased, if a little surprised, to see them, though kept his head down after his master shouted fiercely at him - the three of them went towards the harbour, passing the blown-glass stalls and the sugar-sweet stalls, which had their own bowls of tiny, striped glass.

There was a commotion up ahead. A man was in front of Shireen, shouting at her. She stood stock still, clearly astonished, or terrified. The man had his hands raised up high, and suddenly made a swift movement.

He wrenched Shireen's shawl off her head.

*S*S*S*S*S*S

Noise in front. Sansa grips me tighter, pulls me up to it, and I think, well, I might have been able to kill a man in the house, but most of that was down to pure luck. I've no fucking chance out here, this many people about. But it's not what I think.

The little un's crying a bit, little stab-sobs. Sansa leaves me and bends down to her. What the hells is it, girl? I say. She speaks, but in bits, like her words are being shredded up in front of her. He – he said I was – a – a witch, she says, snivelling. He said I'm – I'm cursed, that I'm going to bring bad luck on everyone. Because of my –

There's a man babbling right in front of me, smallish, his voice coming up at me. I feel a finger bloody jab my in the chest, his words spewing out like vomit. I take a step back. What's he fucking saying? I say. The little fish says, he says you're cursed too, you and your - daughter. He thinks you're my father –

Cursed. I am fucking cursed, but my face is old bloody news. I step forward again, and he doesn't bloody move. Sansa says my name, unsure, and I put my hand out, find the material of his shirt, lift him up. He goes quiet then. You say she's cursed again and I'll fucking bite both your ears off, I say. Translate that, I say to the little one.

She doesn't. The man speaks quietly, high, like someone's wrenching his voice, and I try not to think about headbutting him, or kicking him in the balls, or slicing him in two. Little shit. I take it for an apology and lower him. Fucking get, I say. All of the fucking lot of you, I say, more loudly, my best growl. Feet, scattering. Voices, quieter, murmuring.

Come on, you, I say. A few little sniffs. Shireen, I say, come here. And I put my hand out.

*S*S*S*S*S*S

Sandor had done just enough to dispel the strange, gabbling man and the onlookers. People were so superstitious here. Superstitious, and nosy, and rude. Sansa was proud that he'd not punched anyone, or tried to use his sword. It wouldn't have done any good.

And he had taken Shireen's hand – and called her by name, which she was sure that she had never heard before – and strode off, looking almost as if he could see, though she knew Shireen was leading him, really. Sansa's heart had clunked just a little, then, seeing the two of them.

They sat at the harbour, eating curious, twisted sugar-breads and watching Sandor next to Davos' boat as he talked to Averey and Mendrel. Averey had turned as brown as burnt parchment, and Mendrel seemed to have lost another tooth or two. They had returned with Ser Davos from Tyrosh, bringing back precious stones and brandy. Kelvin had stayed on Tyrosh for the meanwhile, on a whaler's ship.

Ser Davos had dashed over to them after Sandor had filled him in on the attack in the house.

'My ladies,' he'd said, after hoisting Shireen up onto his shoulder and whirling her about. 'Are you both well?' His look at Sansa had said much more. A deep understanding of what it was to lose your kin. A concern.

'We're well enough,' Sansa had replied, with a careful smile. 'We've all looked after each other.' Ser Davos had kissed her gently on the cheek and gone back to the ship, getting Sandor to help lift boxes and barrels down.

Sansa squinted into the sun to watch Sandor. He stood tall, partly-armoured in some mail that Gendry had found for him, his sword glinting in the sun. If someone took a quick glance, they certainly wouldn't know he was blind, and he cut the same imposing figure that he used to back at King's Landing. His shoulders were so broad. His back was -

'Are you and Sandor married now?'

Sansa almost fell off the wall. She hardly knew what to say. She opened her mouth, and shut it again.

Shireen was staring at her with one eye shut, kicking her legs against the stone. 'I mean, I know you're not, but – you sort of are, aren't you? With – at night-time?'

Flames had suddenly appeared from behind Sansa and engulfed her head. It was the only way to explain the crippling burn she had on both cheeks. She glanced over to him again. 'I don't know. We're not, but –'

We should be. They were sleeping together, sharing a bed, right next door to Shireen, who was a highborn princess and should be taught the right ways of everything. Sansa should be like a septa to her, not just a sister, or a friend. And septas didn't sleep with men at all.