Note: Chapter One now has an audio commentary! This site won't let me post links, but you can google Quotev and then search that site for "The Price She Paid" to listen to it.
"You think you know someone who can help us, or you do?" demanded Yara. "Who is it?"
Sansa side-eyed Walder Frey, who was watching keenly.
"Right." Yara's leg came down off the windowsill. "Can you tell me how many guards were on the landing when you came in?"
"Two."
She whistled low. "Master Frey really does feel safe in his fortress. Still, it will arouse suspicion if you leave alone. Even more if I'm with you. Then one shout could send more running. The safest way to deal with them would be a rear assault."
"You need to sneak up on them," Sansa translated.
Yara ignored the interruption. "Princess, I bet you can handle a distraction." Her eyes swept the room before coming to rest on their captive. "I'll need the knives too."
Sansa visibly hesitated.
"I know you had plans for them, but if you-"
"It's not that." She shakes her head. "It's just... You're going to kill them?"
"How else are we going to keep them from raising the alarm?"
"They're just doing their duty."
Yara's eyes narrowed, her tone hardened. "Which is to spill our guts over the cobblestones if we make trouble. Or are you saying you'd rather give up after all?"
Indeed, what choice did she have? She had promised her family vengeance on the night she'd put a not-dissimilar knife into the neck of Roose Bolton's only son. She had promised the Greyjoys and her other allies that she could do whatever was necessary. She grinned mischievously. "Does this mean you'll help me?"
Her partner in crime leaned out the window and surveyed the area. "Let's get this rope up before someone sees it," returned the response.
They retrieved the knives and bound Walder with sections cut from the rope. It was now too short for them to retreat that way. Point of no return.
From their landing point on the shoreline, it would only have been a brief dash to the trees, where Podrick and Brienne and Yara's reinforcements were waiting. A highly mobile force of thirty men had retrieved their horses and forded the river just downstream while business at the Twins was being conducted.
As small a group as it was, each and every one had been handpicked for his loyalty and elite battlefield prowess. Together with Brienne's human battering ram, they were likely a match for any pursuers the fortress could muster on short notice. Hopefully, the women and their rescued Tully wouldn't need to test that assumption.
Sansa left the door open a crack as she swept out and past the guards.
"Milady."
She ignored the implicit command and continued across the landing.
"Milady!" This one was directly behind her and more menacing.
She turned and smiled wide. "Yes?"
"Where is Lord Frey?"
Her smile didn't budge by the smallest fraction. "Lord Frey? He'll live, but I'm afraid I had to tie him up."
"Wha-"
She watched placidly as both men fell at her feet, bone handles protruding from the backs of their necks, to reveal Yara behind them. "What are you doing?" asked Sansa as Yara's hand closed around the hilt of one guard's sword.
"I'm not doing this unarmed."
"Are you crazy? You can't walk around the castle with that!"
Yara settled into a sulk, but the point couldn't be argued.
They dragged the bodies into their master's chambers. With difficulty, Sansa was able to extract her blades from their spinal columns, clean them and get them back into blond sheaths, once again nothing more than pretty, feminine accessories.
Hand on the heavy iron door latch, she looked over her shoulder at Walder. "Keep an eye on your eldest. He must be tired of waiting for his birthright. Maybe enough to seek an arrangement of his own with the Lannisters."
The pair placed their feet carefully as they descended steep, perspiring stone steps, Yara gathering up a white-trimmed cloak she carried draped over one arm. Selected from one of many oversized wardrobes upstairs, it was a prop that would allow her to pose as a lady's maid tending to the comfort of her mistress.
"Congratulations, by the way," she said.
"On what?"
"On having such a badass mother. I can see where you got your affinity for the knife."
Sansa paused, bracing herself against the wall as she looked up at Yara. "If she really killed an innocent woman, she wasn't the mother I knew anymore. And I don't have an affinity for weapons or fighting. Never did." She turned to hide the misting of her eyes and resumed her trek down the stairs. "Still, I suppose Walder Frey can have that effect on a person."
"Are you talking about her or you?"
When she didn't get a reply, Yara forged ahead. "Life can have that effect on a person, princess. Give yourself some fucking credit. I've never seen any coddled ladies spin a set of blades like that."
"It's because I sew. Gives you nimble fingers. That's what Mo- well, it does." She added, more softly "But thank you." The heat in her cheeks gave her another reason to be glad her back was turned.
"Truth is," the other woman confessed, "I'm jealous. I don't remember my mother. I wonder what she'd she say if she knew I was helping a Stark rescue a Tully?"
Her voice took on a brisker tone as they reached the lowermost landing. "All right, no prying ears here. Who's your friend?"
"Not a friend. Do you remember seeing a pregnant girl, pretty but exhausted-looking?"
"No."
"She's Walder Frey's daughter, Roslin. Roslin married my uncle on the night he was captured and the rest of the family murdered."
Yara's fists clenched in a wave of panic. "And you think she's going to help us rescue a husband she knew all of one day?"
"Have you met her father?"
"Fair point."
"But she won't help us because she's miserable. Believe me, it takes more than that to pull people away from what they know. She'll help us because she's scared."
They proceeded down the hall at a sedate pace, trying to appear engaged in the most banal of chatter. "Perhaps because of the baby," Sansa tossed back over her shoulder.
"Very well. But you understand that if she says no, I'll have to kill her."
"Let's worry about that after we find her," she hissed through a vacuous smile.
"This uncle of yours, what's he like?"
"Nice, I guess. I only met him two or three times. Riverrun is a long way from Winterfell."
"I hope he's worth all this. My uncle wasn't worth the effort it took his mother to squeeze him out."
"Oh, I'm sure that's not true."
"He murdered my father and tried to steal his throne."
"I, um. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. He got what was coming to him, just like old Frey will."
"I'm glad I chose to do this today."
"Today's as good as any other day."
"It isn't. Today is my sixteenth birthday. This was supposed to be my gift to myself, but-" she flashed a grin back at Yara, "you're giving me two."
Yara's eyebrow arched. "Don't say I never did anything for you, Alayne."
They lingered discreetly outside the ogival archway of the family's common room, where a wide range of ages was present. Most were gathered around the enormous fireplace, but the entire room was easily visible from their position.
Almost immediately, Sansa muttered, "She's not here."
"You barely looked," Yara muttered back.
"She's a bit hard to miss."
They drifted off toward the Great Hall, on the theory that Roslin might simply have stayed there. "I hope I'm not imposing too much on your code of honor," teased Sansa, "with all this subterfuge. I know you'd rather charge in and dismember everyone in your path."
"I've done my share of sneaking and subversion. Though it would be nice to get in a good dismemberment today." When she didn't get a laugh, she added, "This isn't like what my brother did, you know."
The taller woman stopped. "Of course it's not."
"I mean Theon only fought battles he knew he could win, and win easily. I was always taught that wasn't the true meaning of the iron price. If it comes too easy, no price was paid. No strength was shown. That's why I changed my mind in the tower."
Sansa turned and began to walk again.
"Kraken's tentacles, Father was so furious when he heard! Not only was his son a bad general and an oathbreaker, but in trying to prove he was one of us, he proved just the opposite."
"It doesn't matter," came the terse reply. "It's in the past."
"But this isn't. And nothing will stop me from proving I'm the true heir to my father's throne."
The teenager adopted a habitual hands folded pose and picked up the pace slightly. She knew her companion had meant this confession to be reassuring, a show of comittment to the cause. She hadn't meant to imply that if it had been a bit more difficult, she would gladly have sacked Sansa's home. There probably had been no intention to remind her that their alliance would last for as long as it was mutually beneficial. Besides, the success of their alliance so far was in no doubt. They both needed to focus on the task at hand if they wanted it to stay that way.
The Great Hall turned out to be completely, depressingly devoid of human life. The co-conspirators stood inside the door, staring at the empty space as if they might see their quarry in the smoky ambience.
"Maybe she's in her chamber," Yara proposed.
There was no reply. Sansa's head was bowed and her folded hands grappled with each other. The peace of the sept-like space suggested something to her. She'd first noticed Roslin Frey because the girl had reminded her so much of herself, and when she had a lot to think about, there was a pattern she had found herself repeating in King's Landing, the Vale and occupied Winterfell.
"I know what I said before, but I think it's time to admit-"
Sansa spun to look at her. "Where in this place would you go if you wanted to be alone? Even more so than in your chamber?"
"One of the turrets, I expect. Nice view of-"
"The turret over their quarters! Why didn't I see it?" Yara gawped in amazement. "I'm an idiot; you're a genius!"
/
The hatch was heavy, but clearly well-used. It rose with a whine so faint, they could hear the rustle of someone turning sharply over it.
Sansa whispered, "Let me do the talking."
The frigid air slipped under their cloaks and inflated their outlines, giving them a slightly imposing look as they climbed onto the roof of the turret.
"What are you doing here?" Roslin stammered. "Where is Father?"
"I apologize for disturbing you," said Sansa. "I know how much you must value your moments of solitude. There used to be a place a lot like this where I would go to be alone."
Roslin backed up. "Yes. That's right. I would like to be alone, please."
"I have to ask something very important of you first. Edmure needs your help." The small figure started. "He needs mine too. I'm his niece." She held out her hands as Roslin stepped toward her. "Don't worry, we're not here to hurt you. All we need you to do is get us into the dungeons. You can say-"
The girl clutched at her arms. "If I help you, will you take me with you?"
"Well, that was easy," Yara injected, a gust of wind snatching at the last word as if it didn't like the interruption.
"What?" Sansa asked blankly. The carefully lined up arguments in her head were having trouble falling away quickly.
"If I can get you to his cell, will you take me back to Riverrun with him?"
Her chest constricted at the mixture of hope and terror swimming around in those eyes. It was like looking into a mirror, six monthes ago. "Of course. You're Edmure's wife, and the mother of his child. You'll be welcome there."
"Then we have to move quickly. If my father... Wait, where is he?"
"We tied him up," Yara cheerfully replied.
A forbidding smile spread across Roslin's face. "Good."
/
They made an odd sight, marching single file across the bridge. The Frey daughter was in the lead, one arm supporting her cloak-wrapped belly. Behind her was a regal lady, hands folded in front of her. Trailing was a much shorter maidservant, lank hair occasionally blowing over her face.
Roslin had explained that the "dungeons" weren't actually dungeons, but cells built into the underside of the bridge. The main entrance was a barely visible hatch in the surface.
"They only let me see him when my father decided I should produce an heir," she confided. "Maybe two or three times. I'm glad you came when you did, because I fear he's only keeping Edmure alive in case I birth a daughter."
She threw back the hatch, releasing a cloud of stagnant, smoky vapor. As the three began to descend, four guards clattered to their feet.
"Sorry, milady, but you're not allowed down here," the captain announced in a bored tone.
Roslin sunk her chin to her chest and half-turned to Sansa. "Father is negotiating for a new wife. He asked me to show her the Twins, and she would very much like to see our famous Floating Cells."
"Even across the Narrow Sea, they're known as architectural marvels," Sansa flattered. "I've been looking forward to seeing them for weeks."
"And I'll be happy to let you see them, once I hear permission from Lord Frey."
"If my father had wanted to do this himself," Roslin came back in a slightly stronger voice, "he would have done so. But he gave the task to me. Do you really want to roust him from his bed to make him repeat himself?"
The captain exchanged uncertain glances with the other guards. Just as Sansa felt he was about to relent, he shook his head. "I have my orders. The rest of the castle may be open to our guest, but the cells are not."
The girl looked hopelessly back at her. At the same moment, she felt the warning pressure of Yara's hand on her back. If they couldn't talk their way through these guards, they would have no choice but to turn back. It would be impossible for Yara to silently dispose of them, as she had outside Walder's chambers.
Bureaucratic rigidity was normally considered a virtue in a prison guard. Would he become suspicious if she pressed? What would Littlefinger say? Littlefinger wouldn't be in this situation. He would never risk himself for anyone.
As her internal battle raged, Roslin's jaw tightened. She met the captain's eyes for the first time, and her gaze was pleading. "What if one of you goes with us, to make sure I stay away from him?" The last word was spoken in a lowered, confidential tone.
The man looked startled.
Ingrained timidity crept back in as she attempted to explain. "I know you've served my father for a long time. I remember you. So you know he doesn't tolerate excuses."
Sansa picked up on the new tack. "It's all right. I'll just go get Lord Frey and ask him-"
"That won't be necessary." Roslin's voice quaked with very real desperation. "Will it? After all, how much trouble can three women cause?"
He whistled a resigned breath through pursed lips. "I suppose a few minutes can't hurt. Only a few."
'Thank you," Roslin tearfully whispered. "I won't forget your kindness."
Their unwitting new benefactor opened the door and barked a few orders. As the three rescuers stepped into the darkness beyond, it enveloped them in sooty smoke and other, far more fetid smells. Sansa let out a small cough.
From what a single torch could reveal, they seemed to be in a small stone antechamber with a grated slit in the floor, from which a whirling column of light rises. Little of it spilled into the antechamber. Condensation glistened and oozed like mucous on the wall behind the torch. It was a place that instantly wore out its welcome.
Their escort flipped idly through his key ring as Roslin explained that a latrine, a dressing room and various storage areas had been cleverly slotted in above, below and to either side of this room.
Her spiel came to a sudden halt when a key went into the door to the cells. She looked expectantly at Sansa, who passed it to Yara.
The counterfeit lady's maid stepped forward and grabbed the hilt of the guard's sword. With shocking speed, his mailed fist knocked her aside.
Sansa snatched both blades from her hair, crouched and swept them across her most recently learned Vulnerable Target, the Achilles tendons. The guard hit the floor before he could even grunt.
Yara stomped his jaw, snapping the man's neck with a wet crack that turned Roslin green and forced a flinch even from Sansa. She hefted the sword like a prize. "I assume there are no objections to keeping this one?"
The taller woman lifted her chin, eyes cast down and composure restored. She shook her head a single time.
The Frey girl was now bent over a rough-hewn table, retching. "You said getting us in here would be easy," Yara accused.
"I thought it would be. Threats of Father's wrath usually aren't questioned."
"And I assume there are more like him ahead of us?"
She nodded. "But only one between us and Edmure."
"Well, you made it this far, so obviously you must have permission to be here. If we're lucky, we can take care of him without bringing the whole castle down on us. Where's that armory you were talking about?"
Still not looking up, she gestured to a side door. Yara unlocked it and soon emerged with three loaded crossbows.
Two of them were deposited on the table, then she lifted Sansa's hands and placed the third in them. "You're guarding the door. If anyone shows their face, point this at it, pull the trigger, get another one."
"Wait! What if I run out of arrows?"
"Bolts."
"What if I run out of bolts?"
"Then run, because you don't have time to learn reloading."
She tucked the sword away under her cloak and tugged at their guide's hand. "Try to hold onto your breakfast."
As she waited, Sansa bounced anxiously on her toes, feeling much younger than her sixteen years. The crossbow was heavier than it looked and kept drifting down. Finally, she just let it hang at the ends of her arms.
Joffrey had once held a very similar weapon on her, for the sadistic entertainment of himself and his court. Now that power was literally in her own hands. Could she enjoy it as much as he had?
Slowly, she raised the crossbow and pictured Joffrey's face appearing in the doorway. Then Ramsay's. Then Roose Bolton's. Her fingertip lightly tested the bolt's sharpness. Yes, she decided. This was a feeling she could grow to like very much.
She spun with a gasp as the door behind her flew open.
"We have a problem," Yara forced out through gritted teeth. "Your uncle won't come out of his cell."
"What?"
"He seems to think this is some kind of trick. If he sees you, maybe he'll-" Her partner was already pushing past her.
The chamber opened out into a surprisingly large catwalk with more floor slits offering a view down into the river at regular intervals. The floor was strewn with musty straw, dampening footsteps, and a lonely set of manacles swung from the wall.
Sansa heedlessly pulled her skirt up to her knees as her long legs carried her down the catwalk with impressive speed. Roslin Frey's form could be seen leaning cumbersomely over an open hatchway, torch lowered into it.
At the bottom of this "floating" cell, Edmure Tully, Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Riverlands, sat with his arms wrapped around his knees.
"Uncle Edmure," Sansa called down softly. "It's your niece, Sansa. I'm here to take you home, but you must hurry."
He peered up at her with suspiciously narrowed eyes. "Sansa is a ginger. If they wanted to see if I would take the bait, they should have paid more attention to detail."
Yara threw up her hands. "We're trying to rescue you, you dimwit."
"You're just a maid," he pointed out. "How are you going to rescue anyone?"
"If he doesn't want to go," she advised, "you can't make him. Trust me."
Roslin cradled her overhanging belly and the action seemed to remind her why she was doing this in the first place. Silent up to now, she leaned farther forward to give him a look at her pregnant body. "If you don't get me to Riverrun, our baby'll be used as a weapon by my father and the Lannisters for the rest of its life. Neither of us have a choice. Our lives are not our own anymore."
Edmure lowered his face into his knees. After a few suspenseful moments, he rose and climbed the ladder to the catwalk. He blinked at Sansa, his eyes unaccustomed even to the light level provided by the torches. "It really is you." A curious mix of wonder, nostalgia and shame underlaid his voice. "You were eleven the last time I saw you, but I still can't believe I..."
He shook his head and turned to Roslin. "I'd hug you, but I must smell awful."
"Reunions later," Yara broke in. "How are we getting out of here?"
"You have all the experience with this sort of thing," answered Sansa.
Edmure's face took on a pained expression. "I know a way out." He looked from one eager face to the next. "The floors in the cells open onto the river. A prisoner can then be lowered into the water as a... a method of torture."
"But we can't do that!" Sansa cried. "We'll freeze to death!"
Roslin seemed even more opposed to the idea. "We can use the servants' doors. They're not as heavily guarded."
"The reason they're not is that we'd still have to get through the stronghold," Yara countered.
"There has to be another way," insisted Sansa. "We have the crossbows. You have a sword." Even as she said it, she knew how pointless it was.
"If we made it to the bridge, the only way out would still be the river. We'll be fine. I've been in colder water than this."
Edmure spoke up again. "We can use that bench to keep us afloat as our limbs stiffen." It sounded like he spoke from experience.
Throughout the brief debate, he had been worrying at something around his neck. Now, as he tried to clean it with a filthy scrap of what was likely his wedding garb, Sansa recognized it. An idea was born.
"I need this," she proclaimed, lifting it over its owner's befuddled head. "Move the bench while I'm gone." And with that, she headed for the entrance, oblivious to the sticky pull of the blood-soaked spot where a guard had met his end at the point of Yara's sword.
In the antechamber, she placed Edmure's Riverlands Lord's Seal around the still-warm neck of their chapperone. She had helped kill this man. She wasn't proud of that, exactly, but with her plan to leave a message in Frey's chamber upended, this more public symbol of rebellion seemed fitting.
Sansa jumped at the clang of a bolt being thrown, elation turning to quicksilver terror faster than she ever would have thought possible. She flew from the room and saw the other three setting the bench down in front of the cell nearest the entrance, the better to shorten the distance they would have to swim. "They're here!" she stage whispered, back pressed to the door.
Yara ran to lock it. It would only buy them a few seconds and Sansa berated herself for not bringing the crossbows with her. Instead, she frantically stuffed straw into the keyhole, hoping to jam the lock, as Edmure released a wall-mounted wheel. It spun, unwound a chain as thick around as a horse's ankle, and let the two halves of the cell floor drop open with a boom that surely must have been audible all up and down the bridge.
They lined up behind the bench, gripping its back. "Don't think about it," Yara advised. "Just-" Her words were lost in the whipping of wind as Roslin dragged them all over the edge.
A detached part of Sansa's brain noted how odd it was that her own spluttering screams didn't drown out those of her comrades. Waves and pillars swirled around her as everyone kicked in a different direction. "STOP!" she shrieked.
She pointed at the muddy brown of the shore. "That way." They unclasped their cloaks and let them spread out behind like squid ink as they paddled furiously toward land.
A current caught the group as they intersected it and nudged them out of the shadow of the bridge. Sansa could already feel needles of ice trying to lock her muscles into place, and the weight of eight yards of waterlogged brocade was not helping matters. When she wriggled out of the dress, it didn't even float. The sunset fabric merely disappeared into the depths, making one last effort to take her with it as it tangled around her feet.
They slowed, each stroke bringing groans of pain. She turned her head and saw that Roslin and Yara had each looped an arm under one of Edmure's to anchor their precious cargo, so precious they'd risked everything for it. Yara hissed at all and no one "Faster."
Shouts fell down on them from the surface of the bridge, sounding much further away than they must have been, and something splashed behind them.
Praying it wasn't an arrow, Sansa focused on making the shore approach faster. So focused was she that she didn't notice the running figures until Brienne was feet away from the waterline. Her anxious liegewoman plunged waist deep into water and began to pull them ashore. Just behind her was a man in Iron Islands garb.
Sansa dug numb toes in the mud and tried to push off, but with little success. Her fingers, by contrast, seemed permanently attached to the bench's stained lip.
As they lay gasping on the ground, she fixed bloodshot eyes on Edmure and Roslin, trying to communicate through her gaze how important they were. Finally, she managed to croak, "Help them."