Sansa sent Humfrey to hunt out a pair of new breeches for her when Moat Cailan came into sight because the longest pair Lady Alerie sent with her were getting too short in the waist, never mind in the leg. Her boots, too, seemed to be getting small, and as for her tunics - well! Thank the gods that Lady Reed was generous with her wool.
Arya found the whole thing hilarious, so Sansa didn't even mind. Greywater Watch had been in the extreme south of the Neck when they found it, and the slog north through the mire was hellish. Sansa had never been so tired in all her life by the time they finally reached something like a real road again, and she said as much to Lady Brienne.
"Well, my lady," she said, carefully, as if afraid of causing insult. "That's because the Brotherhood has insisted that we avoid the road as much as possible until we're firmly in the territory of a known ally."
"So they plan of forging their own path all the way to White Harbour?" Sansa asked, horrified at the thought of hiking east across the North, in these horrible snows, against these horrible winds. "Lady Brienne, I understand their caution, but-"
"But we are more than capable of defending Lady Sansa from whatever fools would dare to attack us," Humfrey cut in, his serious face somewhat undermined by the array of breeches hanging over his arm. "Your precious Brotherhood is a band of outlaws, my lady, and very much not in charge of this expedition."
"And you are, ser?" Brienne snapped, straightening up to stand fully two inches taller than Humfrey. "I do not remember agreeing to follow your lead-"
"You agreed to such terms when you accepted the bounty of Highgarden in pursuit of your goal, Lady Brienne," Humfrey said. Angry like this, he was even more like Willas than ever, and Sansa's heart ached a little for how much she missed being home - and then she felt guilty, for home no longer seemed to mean only Winterfell. "My goodbrother and my nephew alike were perfectly clear that the safety and wellbeing of the ladies fell under my purview, and that it is my responsibility to see them both safely to White Harbour and to see Lady Sansa safely home again to Highgarden. I will not dishonour myself or the vow I swore to my nephew simply because of that demon your precious Brotherhood follows-"
"Enough," Sansa said. "We cannot afford to fight - wait until we are safe within the walls of White Harbour, under Lord Manderly's protection. Then you may bicker all you please. For now, we must carry on, and we must do so together."
Arya was sitting a little way away on her horse, watching carefully - flanked, as ever, by Lady Mormont and Lord Reed. Lady Mormont had decided not to hate Sansa, but she had cleaved firmly to Arya's side. Humfrey regarded her with utmost suspicion, but Sansa could understand it easily enough. If this boy in White Harbour turned out not to be Rickon, or if something went wrong and they lost him, Arya was a better choice for the North than Sansa because she was not tied to any southron power.
Sansa would not surrender her tie to Highgarden, no matter what Winterfell's bannermen demanded, but she could not blame them for their hatred of House Tyrell. It did make her wonder, of course, how Lady Mormont and her cohort could so easily accept the horses and supplies Sansa's party offered them, but she supposed things were different here, above the Neck, where Humfrey and his men were so out of place. She had half a suspicion that Lady Mormont felt that the bounty of Highgarden was only a fair reparation, a debt to be paid by the Lannisters' one-time allies to those wronged by the crown.
Sansa could not deny that she felt the same, sometimes, and so she said nothing at all. It was easier than letting either Humfrey or Lady Mormont feel that she was picking sides. It was proving harder than she'd ever anticipated to keep the peace, and she had a new respect for Lord Mace, who so ably kept the Reach on an even keel even with the Hightowers and the Redwynes and the Rowans all squabbling and bickering every time anyone else breathed.
"As you say, my lady," Brienne said, gracing Humfrey with a glare so poisonous even Arya startled at it. "I will speak with Lady Stoneheart's men."
Humfrey sidled closer, head hanging low and mouth twisted in shame.
"Well," he said quietly, "I'm showing well for the Reach, aren't I? Forgive me, niece, I will rein myself in better - at least until we reach White Harbour."
"Then you may challenge Lady Brienne to as many duels as it takes for the two of you to work this silliness out of your systems," Sansa agreed. "But until then, we are too small and vulnerable a party to risk internal strife like this - you were the one who warned me of that, remember, before we reached Greywater Watch."
Humfrey's frown turned from shame to annoyance, and in this, Sansa was wholly on his side. She had hated every moment they spent there, no matter how generous Lady Jyanna was with her cloth, and could still feel that filthy, horrible jealousy stirring in her belly whenever she thought of Lord and Lady Reed waving them all off with linked arms - there was no more Lord and Lady Stark to link arms, and the part of Sansa that had lost her whole family in only a few short years feared that she and Willas would never stand as Lord and Lady Tyrell.
"Tell me, niece," Humfrey said, pulling her hood further over her head with the sort of absent-minded care Lady Alerie so often showed, "what do you plan on doing with our most recent acquisitions when we come to White Harbour?"
Sansa's hand went to the wrapped bundle tucked into the inner pocket of her outermost tunic, the bundle that went from her to Humfrey and back to her - some of the squires had slipped it from Master Glover's things and brought it to them while they broke their fast that morning. It was still sealed, and with Robb's own seal at that, but Sansa wasn't the same fool she had been before King's Landing - it was a will. Like as not, it was a will that ruled her out of the succession for the simple fact of her marriage.
Part of her hoped that it made it explicit that she was out of line. At least that way, her eventual plan to return to Willas' side could not be framed as selfishness, even if this boy in White Harbour turned out not to be Rickon at all. Then Winterfell could be Arya's, and Sansa would only have to stay until Arya came of age - just five years, rather than ten, five years and a suitable husband, and then Sansa could go home.
She wasn't sure which made her feel guiltier - having stolen the will from Master Glover's keeping, the doubt she felt at the prospect of Rickon's survival, or the fact that she couldn't quite settle on which castle she meant as home.
"There is a dragon in Oldtown," Willas said. "Please, Ser Barristan, please tell me that there is some way to combat a dragon, some secret you learned in all your years among the Targaryens - something that can help my brother and my mother's family."
"I wish there was, my lord," Ser Barristan said, with genuine remorse on his face. Willas was unsure how he felt about the old man, who had forsworn some of the most sacred vows a layman could take in Westeros for the sake of long-ignored morals, but he was at least an easier alternative to bloody Lannister. "But we had little enough to do with the dragons - Her Grace was always careful to keep them safely away from her people, as best she could."
He'd written to Sunspear, of course, asking that they find the plans for the scorpions that felled long-ago Meraxes and send them along to Oldtown, to give Garlan and the rest their best chance. He'd written letters to anyone he thought might have a chance of helping, any House with a history of dragons, and a few with histories of dragonseeds. Anything at all that might give Garlan an edge, give him a hope.
Ser Barristan had been a last-dash hope, and even that had failed. Lannister had taken to the library, even his fantastic bravado failing in the face of reports of a dragon leading the worst Ironborn reaving in decades across the Shield Islands and further in, and he had found bits and pieces that might explain how a fucking Greyjoy had gotten hold of a dragon in the first place, but nothing that would really help.
Still. Better than nothing. At this stage, Willas only hoped Garlan would live long enough for Queen Daenerys to arrive - from what Lannister had told him she would reach their shores by the new moon, but that might not have been enough.
At least Sansa was safe, away in the North. She had the best hope of any of them of escaping Euron Greyjoy's madness.
"If I may, my lord," Ser Barristan said, cutting across Willas' woolgathering - that was what Mother called it, although Margie preferred to call it quiet panicking - with that particularly measured voice of his. "Your brother might just be best served to retreat."
Willas looked up to Ser Barristan, horrified by all that was implied by his suggestion.
"If my brother retreats," he said, "he will be abandoning Oldtown to its fate - the biggest city in Westeros, outside of King's Landing. Without time to evacuate, it's no better than murder."
"My lord-"
"I cannot ask that my brother abandon innocents to the Crow's Eye, ser," he said sternly. "Even if I did, he would refuse - and rightly so."
Ser Barristan looked down at the map then, and Willas took the chance to leave - he hadn't been out of Father's solar since first light, and between the hunger and the ache in his back, he needed a rest and a solid meal.
He could smell food in Mother's solar, and followed his nose. He hadn't realised it was late enough that the kitchens would've sent up something hot, but he had been preoccupied with Ser Barristan, delayed by Lannister's irregular but lengthy interruptions. The smell of roast lamb made his stomach howl, and he nudged into Mama's rooms without knocking, risking the scolding for his lack of manners.
Margaery and Leo were with her, of course. The three of them were rarely apart, save when Margie was with Grandmother, and it had become something of a comfort to see them like this, silver and gold and chestnut-brown heads bent together over some plot or scheme that would make the running of Highgarden easier for him, leaving him more time to waste with Ser Barristan and Lannister.
Mother waved him in, scowling at his rudeness, but only razor-pretty Nym, who'd remained behind when the Targaryen party left Highgarden to keep an eye on them, otherwise acknowledged his entrance. Margie was stroking Leo's hair, and Leo seemed to be crying. She was doing her best to hide it from him, but he'd known her all their lives and he knew what to look for. He couldn't remember the last time Leo had cried, though, and forgot all about the pain in his back and the rumble of his stomach in the face of her tears.
"What's wrong?" he asked, managing to manoeuvre himself into a chair with minimal fuss. "Leo - what is it?"
"Oh, nothing," Leo insisted. "I'm just being silly."
"It's not nothing," Margaery said sharply. "Leonette, you have to-"
"No, Margaery-"
"Leo-"
"Your brother left his wife with child, my lord," Nym said, this time not even bothering to look up from her book. "They've been keeping it from you for fear that you'll send them away in case of an attack on Highgarden."
"Why would I do that?" he asked, flummoxed so much that he could hardly think. Gargoyle, a father! It seemed absurd, it truly did, but Leonette's hands were fluttering over her belly, her eyes massive in her suddenly pale face, and there was nothing absurd about that. "There is nowhere safer in the Reach than Highgarden, and nowhere safer in Westeros than the Reach."
"Except Dorne," Nym said, smiling a little and casting him a single sidelong glance, "but I cannot imagine that your brother would wish to see his wife sent to Sunspear."
As a hostage, she meant, and Willas would never allow that. He knew how much harm being held as hostage had done to Sansa, and while he did believe that the Martells would be kinder to Leo than the Lannisters had been to Sansa, he still would not ever take that risk. Not with Garlan's wife. Not with his friend, his sister.
"How long…?"
Leonette's smile was a tiny, trembling thing, her hands still fluttering and her eyes still huge, and Willas couldn't help but match it. It was mad, truly it was, but that this tiny shimmer of joy should even exist among all the terror that was surrounding them was something very, very special. It was something good, and Willas couldn't even be jealous of Garlan's happiness, of Leo's terrified smile, because it was a happiness to be shared by their whole family.
"Just shy of six months," she said. "I've been showing for a good month at this stage, but you were so sick when we found out, and then you've been so busy that I didn't want to worry you - it hasn't taken much to hide it from you."
"You've been oblivious to everything that isn't on your war table," Margaery said, rolling her eyes. "But we forgive you, brother, because you have been busy, I suppose."
"I hope you aren't angry, Willas," Leo said, nudging Marg with her sharpest elbow. "I do so hate when we fight."
He took Leonette's trembling hands and kissed them, only barely not laughing - because they did fight, and often, and she always said it did them good to argue, the two of them and Garlan. She preferred to shield Sansa from it all because she thought Sansa was softer than the rest of them, but Sansa had developed a knack for putting Garlan down in every argument, and smiling so sweetly while doing so that Garlan couldn't even fight back.
Gods be kind but he missed her. He missed Garlan as well, but he missed Sansa more.
"Congratulations, Leonette," he said with every ounce of earnestness he could muster. "Will you remain here, or do you wish to visit Cider Hall for the birth?"
"She will remain here," Mother said, speaking for the first time and looking relieved - obviously, she hadn't agreed with keeping this news from Willas. "Every Tyrell for the last three hundred years has been born in Highgarden, despite my and your grandmother's best efforts to oust a cousin or three, and I certainly won't see that tradition broken for something as silly as a war."
"Lord Tyrell!"
Garlan looked up, glad to see his coastal scouts had returned - two of the last four had been burned by that monster the Crow's Eye had stolen from the Dragon Queen, and three of the four before that had been returned tongueless and eyeless and very, very dead.
"Come in, lads, come here," he called, waving them into the command tent and refusing to meet Baelor's eye - he was a little ashamed of how much stock he put in his men's survival, and knew that Brightsmile likely wouldn't understand. Baelor hadn't fought since the Greyjoy Rebellion, and Garlan didn't think he'd ever seen men die in a hail of fire.
But Garlan had watched men die in a green hell on the Blackwater - he had benefited from it, was Lord Garlan only because of the death and agony in King's Landing. Only Leonette knew how tainted Brightwater felt for him, not because he didn't trust Willas with his heart, but because he felt as though it was ungrateful for him not to seize Brightwater with both hands. It was what Father expected of him, what even Mother expected of him, and he could not bear to disappoint any of them.
"What of the dragon, lads?" Baelor asked, clapping a hand to Garlan's shoulder. "Has it come in again, or is he keeping it out on the islands?"
That was the impossible fear - the monster had flown in a handful of times, scorched earth and men alike, and then retreated to the islands beyond the harbor. Garlan dreaded the day the Crow's Eye turned his beast's full wrath on the city, because even with the efforts they'd made so far to empty the lower levels, nearest the harbour, there were too many people who would burn. Garlan couldn't bear it if that happened.
"The thing, my lord," the eldest boy said - he was a Fossoway, a second cousin of Leo's with the same brightly intelligent eyes that had first drawn Garlan to her, and he was the best scout they had. "It's flying southwest, from what we can see, heading down the Dornish coast."
"Away from the city?" Garlan asked, confused. "Does the Crow's Eye fly with it?"
"That we don't know, ser," he said - Donnel, that was his name. "But those other monsters of his, the ones in men's skins, they're still close at hand. We've spied them settling on the smaller islands in the harbour, and they've not moved in two days or more."
The waiting was the worst of it. No matter how many scouts he risked, no matter the spies he sent out, he couldn't know the whole truth of what the Crow's Eye and his demons had planned. At least Leo and the babe were safe at Highgarden - keeping them far inland was his only hope of them staying that way.
Far from the coast, and under Willas' care. There was nowhere safer in all of Westeros than Highgarden, just now.
They found one of those horrible little copses of trees to set up camp within sight of Moat Cailan, with a wind blowing up from over the Bite to freeze every one of them in their furs.
Arya's teeth were chattering as she tried to force down the sour stew her Brotherhood had cooked up, and Sansa's weren't far behind. It was only the heavy woollen blankets Marian had wrapped around her shoulders under her cloak that were keeping her from freezing solid, and she wondered how Arya and Alla were standing it, never mind Marian and the other women in their party - never mind the men, who had only their gambesons under their plate, and their cloaks over.
"The walls in Winterfell are warm," Arya chittered out. "The hot springs flush water through them, and they're always warm. I miss them."
Sansa nodded as hard as she could. She would have laughed, except the wind kept whipping away her breath every time she tried to speak.
"I miss the sun," Alla managed, forcing the words out around her spoon. "I miss being able to feel my toes."
They all laughed at that, laughed enough to make themselves halfway warm. Sansa choked down half a bowl of horrible stew, and she was just rising to go to her and Arya's tent - now shared with Alla and Marian and the two girls who'd been sent to tend Arya and Alla, to try and conserve some little shred of heat when the night fully fell.
And to hide, from the thing that came with truest darkness.
Sometimes the thing came early, trailing sorrow into the light of the fires, and those were the nights Sansa hated most. Those were the nights when Arya clutched tightest to her arm, the nights when Marian hovered closest by her side. Those were the nights when Humfrey ate with his beautiful sword balanced across his knees, and the nights when Lady Mormont ate one-handed, the better to have her heavy mace at the ready.
Those were the nights when Mother came to dinner, and tonight, it seemed, was one such night.
The croaking heralded her arrival, as it always did, cutting under the wind like a nightmare made real. Arya's face went hard at the creep of it, her eyes that same curious blank that they only otherwise seemed to go when she has her narrow sword in hand.
"Sansa," Humfrey said quietly. "Are you certain-"
"No," she admitted. "But we have no choice."
Lem Lemoncloak stood at the thing's shoulder, massive and ugly in a way that had nothing to do with his face, leering down at Sansa and Arya as if he enjoyed the pain this always caused them.
"My lady," Sansa said, as had become their custom. "Would you share our fire tonight?"
Sansa's mother had loved sitting by the fire, brushing out their hair and telling them stories of the rivers. The thing hated the fire, seemed almost to fear it, but tolerated it to stand and stare at Sansa and Arya every third or fourth night.
Sansa wished Lady Brienne had never sworn her sword to Lady Stoneheart. If her vow had been only to Catelyn Stark, then Sansa might have taken it upon herself as her mother's daughter, and set the butchered remnant of Ice that Lady Brienne carried at her hip to work on setting Mother to rest.