Sansa Stark sniffed and surreptitiously wiped her nose with her sleeve. She was riding double again, this time behind Roslin Frey- Roslin Tully now, she had to remember. They were safely ensconced in the middle of Yara Greyjoy's team, but she could hear the woman herself sniffle up front, as if on Sansa's cue.
By contrast, Roslin seemed totally unaffected by her frigid swim.
"I have the Frey constitution," she had told them. "It's the reason Father didn't inherit his title until he was fifty-three."
"How old is your eldest brother now?" Sansa had asked her.
"Stevron? Fifty-four. Why?"
"Just making conversation." The suggestion of a smug grin on her lips had said otherwise.
Edmure had not been nearly so lucky. His body was weakened by everything he had endured as a guest of Lord Frey. Now he lay strapped to a crude pallet that was being pulled behind a horse, babbling in delirium.
Brienne had wrapped Sansa in her own cloak and slung her in undignified fashion over her horse's withers. For what had felt like days, but had since blurred into a vague, timeless impression in her mind, she had watched the ground speed past. With the clack of her teeth accompanying each stride, it had developed a hypnotic rhythm.
Every so often, a sound would penetrate the thunder of hooves. (Had hooves always been that loud?) A shout. A crash. As heat from the horse's steaming flesh had returned sensation to her limbs, she had tried to lift her head and nearly fallen off.
After that, she'd kept her head down and her hands wrapped securely around the girth.
When at last it had all come to a stop, it had only been long enough for the escapees to change into dry clothing. Sansa and Roslin had retired to the privacy of a clump of underbrush, but Yara had been perfectly happy to strip and towel down in full view of everyone. Her men had seemed equally unperturbed, as if this was something they saw all the time.
Sansa had envied her confidence and her air of total ownership over her own body. Still, she had stayed behind the protection of the makeshift dressing screen.
They smelled the river before they saw it. The earthy odor of silt came first, followed by the crisp snap of water as they got closer. When the broad rust sweep of the Red Fork appeared, they watered the horses as briefly as they dared and released their relieved captive.
They had pushed forward hard that first day, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the Twins as possible before nightfall. Edmure had weathered the trail well enough and showed signs of returning vigor as he'd cheered Yara's (heavily embellished) campfire account of his rescue.
But in the middle of the night, the fever had come. The soldiers had constructed the same sort of pallet they used to move wounded comrades, and before daybreak, the party was in search of a meister.
That search would take them dangerously close to the main road, but Roslin had succeeded in convincing one to ride out to help her ailing husband. To Yara's astonishment, everyone had immediately agreed to her suggestion that he should come along and continue tending to his patient.
Downstream, they bought one of the many rowboats travelling the Red Fork, some lazily, others with a distinct sense of purpose. As Podrick helped Brienne squeeze the pallet into the boat, Yara sidled up to Sansa.
"Look on the bright side. At least he doesn't weight much." A glassy stare, as if just coming out of a reverie, was her response. She cleared her throat. "Good luck."
"I don't need luck. Not anymore."
She nodded to Edmure. "But he does. I hope you get your happy little family reunion, I really do. Just don't forget what you're fighting for. Whatever happens."
She had pulled back on the reins until Sansa caught up with her. "Don't get me wrong. Hearing that I took on the Twins basically alone-"
Sansa peered darkly from the corner of her eye.
"-or with the aid of two noblewomen, will certainly improve my chances of holding on to my crown. I'm still not going into another fight without a real plan. As in a plan with a beginning, middle and end and an escape route. From now on-"
"I agree." With her uncle safe and the rush of rescue fading, the newborn leader had found herself shaking so violently, she had had to hold her legs away from her horse's flanks. The shaking was subsiding, as was the swell of nausea that came with it, but the memory of the risk she had taken had still appalled her.
Yara had ridden alongside her in silence for a moment, studying her face. "This must be my lucky week. Everyone's agreeing with me all of a sudden."
"There's something I've been meaning to ask you," Sansa had deflected. "When my uncle refused to come with us, you said we couldn't make him. What made you so sure?"
"I just… It's just that in my experience, people do what they want." An uneasy laugh caught in her throat. "Guess he showed me up, didn't he?"
Sansa had not mentioned that the way Yara had said "Trust me" had implied a far more personal experience. She had let her have her reciprocal parry. She hadn't forgotten, though. It had changed her opinion of her partner, if only a bit.
"How many do you think you'll be bringing back?" Sansa asked.
Yara's coterie was departing for a cove roughly a day's ride from Riverrun, long used by the ironborn as a safe haven on a hostile coast. This was where they would rendezvous with the piecemeal reinforcements she had sent for.
"Two hundred should be there already. By the time I get there, it will be three hundred. That's all for a while. We don't normally stage raids so close together."
"That will be enough for now." Sansa looked the other woman firmly in the eye. "Make sure they don't forget what they're fighting for."
The dust of their passing settled as the rowboat pushed off. Roslin had seated herself behind the pallet, where her pregnant condition was hidden from view, and occasionally dipped a cloth into the chilly water of the river, perfect for pressing to Edmure's forehead to leech away fever. When it wasn't her turn to row, Brienne stood at the bow, legs braced, letting the whole world know that her charges were to be avoided. Her head rotated endlessly back and forth as she kept watch through the narrow eye-slit in the helmet she had once again been forced to don.
For her part, Sansa had seen plenty of brown and green from horseback, the colors turning to blotches of black and white against her closed eyelids. The sprays of red, orange and yellow that could still be seen on a few trees this far south couldn't distract from her favorite method of killing time – needlework.
As she tucked her latest project away to take up the oars, Pod plopped down across from her. "How'd you find out about this secret entrance, anyway?"
"When Bran would climb where he wasn't supposed to, or Arya explored the tunnels, or Robb went off into the forest by himself, Mother would tell them about how she almost died in the secret dock at Riverrun. She never told me this story, of course." She flashed a exaggeratedly prim smile. "I was a very obedient child."
"That's one thing we have in common."
"I heard it, though, many, many times. She and her sister weren't even supposed to know about the dock, but they found it anyway. Lysa dared her to jump the canal. She fell in and nearly drowned." Her leather-clad palms slid effortlessly across wood as she brought the oars forward.
"Sounds like they were very naughty children."
"My mother grew out of it. Aunt Lysa didn't." The dripping oars swung forward again, droplets glowing in the dusk. "Do you know a lot of these old cities are supposed to have hidden escape routes for their noble houses?"
Pod's eyebrows rose, giving his round face a naïve quality that would look disingenuous on most.
Basking in the novel feeling of superior knowledge, Sansa continued, "The rumor was that Winterfell's was a tunnel leading under the wall. If it ever existed, though, it's been forgotten for hundreds of years."
Their guardian's voice echoed tinnily inside her helmet. "There was a windowless room at Evenfall Hall that Renly told me used to be a hidden room. I'm not sure he wasn't just teasing me, but I always did fancy that room."
By the time they reached the home stretch to Riverrun, night had fully fallen. Brienne abandoned her impression of a ship's figurehead and slouched low against the bow, but it was hardly neccessary. It was so dark they could barely make out shapes in the dense shields of growth on the banks. To the right, slashes of light from an army's fires occasionally rent the fabric.
The five glided silently up to the black behemoth that loomed over them and Podrick lit a candle. Sansa played its trembling illumination over the wall, pulling them hand over hand along the vines bursting through the cracks, until she found the leaf-clogged grate that covered the entrance.
The sides of Edmure's pallet scraped the walls as it ascended a thin ribbon of steps to the exit, and he woke with a groan. Sansa led the way through the door at the top.
"Halt." The outline of a sword appeared, limned in a glow thrown off by a single torch. There was a lengthy pause, as if the person behind the sword was trying to make sense of seeing a soignée young lady here.
Sansa stepped into the breach. "I need to speak to Brynden Tully."
"Who are you?"
"His grandniece. And they-" she stepped aside and held her candle out to the doorway, revealing the pallet in Roslin's grip, "are your Lord and your Lady." A ripple of sighs as shadows moved behind the molten sword. "The others helped rescue them. Now may I speak to my uncle?"
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
"Uncle!" she cried, rushing forward to crush the old man in her encircling arms.
"By the Seven, you've grown," he wheezed. "You're taller than me! And maybe my memory is going, but weren't you a ginger?"
Sansa looped a golden ringlet around her finger. "Too ginger. I had to change it so I could hide."
The Blackfish watched as she peeled her gloves off one finger at a time. "What?" she asked.
"You reminded me of Cat for a moment," he grinned.
"Hmmm. You're not the only one." She ran the bundled gloves over her palm. The hide was soft as kid leather from countless hours of friction against reins. "But I suppose without Petyr Baelish's help, I would have been executed as a kingslayer."
"Did you slay Joffrey?"
"No. If only I had."
She lowered herself slowly into a chair by the oversized fireplace, an involuntary groan escaping as she sank into the cushion. The Blackfish took the chair opposite.
"Ah, well. I can think of worse things to take credit for. What about Roose Bolton?"
"What about him?"
"Do I owe you credit for ridding the world of his wretched hide?"
"You're thinking of Ramsay, his bastard." She leaned in mock-seriously. "But I promise you I had no choice."
"I'm thinking of the traitor himself. Everyone's saying it was you, come back to-" He spread his hands grandiosely. "-avenge the betrayal of the North."
Her expression was pure befuddlement.
"You really didn't know he was dead?"
Finally, she managed a "How?"
"Took an arrow to the heart during a hunting expedition, that's the word. The funny part is that his hounds couldn't catch the assassin."
A queasy rumble formed in the pit of Sansa's stomach. It should have been welcome news, but her stomach and the itch deep in her brain were telling her otherwise. She turned to the fire, frowning, and fumbled with the clasp of her cloak.
"I didn't know Bolton well, but I fought beside him for monthes. Hell, I fought beside him in Robert's war! If I'd seen him for the disloyal scoundrel he was then, maybe I could have stopped him. Maybe Cat..." He trailed off, rubbing his beard.
"Speaking of disloyal scoundrels," his great-niece began. She dropped her gloves onto the side table between them and slid a blood-spattered scroll across it. "One part of the rumor is true. I've been thinking about justice for the North quite a bit."
"Quite a bit," she repeated as he stretched out the crinkled parchment.
His eyes skimmed down to Walder Frey's signature, then lifted with a question in them. Sansa told him the entire story of how she came to be sitting across from him, starting with her unexpected departure from King's Landing and ending with her rescue of Edmure.
As she moved from highlight to highlight, the Blackfish's expression shifted from inscrutability to anger to escalating amazement to horror to something suspiciously resembling respect.
"Between you and me, I always hoped I'd live long enough to see the Fortress breached."
"I didn't conquer them, Uncle Brynden. I got in and I got out."
"And freed my sorry nephew in between." The silver in his eyebrows glinted as they rose. "I can't say I think it was worth the risk, but the Riverlands thank you. This plan to beat the schemers and connivers at their own game, though, it's mad."
"Should I be flattered or insulted?"
"It all depends on this letter being accepted as the Late Lord Frey's. It might. You got his scrawl on it."
Sansa was already shaking her head. She reached into the bag hanging heavy from her belt and produced a small knob of clay. It was the fruit of a second skill that her septa would have been pleased to see proving useful- sculpture. She had meticulously recreated the Frey Lord's Seal from her own correspondence with Walder.
The Blackfish held a candle up to the replica, turning and tilting it. Sansa took the candle from him and poured liquid wax onto the folded edge of the incriminating letter. Then she pressed the counterfeit seal into it.
"Is it good enough to convince the Crown?" she asked.
"It's perfect. You are a girl of many talents. Must be the Tully side coming out."
"I recommend you send it tonight. A raven against a black sky will be invisible." She stood, ignoring a popping joint. "It's late. I'm sure my friends would appreciate a bed as much as I would."
"Of course. You'll all be welcome in Riverrun for as long as you'd like."
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Sansa examined her face in the foggy mirror. She had lost weight in the monthes on the road and it had altered her face. She now had a narrower, sharper look, with distinct cheekbones and eyes looking out alertly from the angles.
A rosy bloom showed at her hairline. She rubbed at the wet film on the glass with her skirt and put her face as close as she could without blocking her own view.
Her hair had always grown fast, so fast that she was the only person in her faimily who had needed regular haircuts. Ginger roots were already showing. It triggered such an unexpected surge of nostalgia that she decided to let it grow out. Soon enough, she would have an army to protect her. Why bother with a disguise?
Sansa laid Robb's seal on the warm planks and cut a lock of hair. The thin golden rope wove through the links of the chain, both keepsake and reminder of the need to do whatever it took to survive.
She slipped out of her gown and shift and tested the bath with one foot. It was unbelievably, blissfully perfect. She felt as if muscles that had been tightly clenched for weeks were finally releasing as she lowered her body into the water.
The bath was big enough for several people and lined with clay tiles to hold heat. Uncle Brynden had told her the water was pulled directly from the river through pipes and heated in a special furnace before being piped to the bathouse. Sansa closed her eyes and sagged beneath the surface. Why hadn't her mother had one of these built at Winterfell? When she got her home back, that was the first thing she would do.
Bubbles burst violently from her mouth as the thought of Winterfell dredged up the memory that had left her uneasy since she'd heard the story of Roose Bolton's assassination. She sat up.
A tall, dark-haired woman in a leather-jerkined dress that made her look like a huntress. She had been hard to miss, surrounded by armored men as Sansa had passed the archery range. She had actually stopped to watch- yes, she remembered that- as the woman had drawn back her bow, her arms forming a precise triangle. Then her arrow had blurred down the full length of the range and stopped, quivering, in the red bullseye of a target.
Sansa went back under the water and listened to the pounding of blood in her ears. The same woman had gleefully told of hunting humans with her love, Ramsay Bolton. And she worked at the castle kennel.
Myranda.