Note: Now that Yara is officially bisexual on the show, that will be reflected here. Frees me up, really.
Myranda looked at the structure squatting in her path, its corpus even more bleached than usual in the greyish dawn light. Somewhere in the surrounding rooftops, a single hardy bird sang to the new sun. She knew she was more fortunate than most. As kennelmaster to a powerful family, her father was granted the use of a real house, rather than a few small cubicles secreted away behind an ocean of mud and timber.
She hated this one even more than she had hated the one at the Dreadfort. She was always meant for so much more than the modest dreams of smallfolks' small minds, and now she finally had the means to prove it. Lady Walda had just greatly simplified her life by birthing a trueborn son and heir. Eyes still glassy from an elixir given to her for pain, she had cradled the freshly bathed newborn in one arm while signing the order with the other hand. Myranda smiled and barged through her slumbering family's door.
Her half-sister pulled up the covers as she threw open the curtains in their bedchamber. That graduated to soft grumbles and sullen retreat as she yanked her drawers from their slats and dropped them on her bed for an overview of the contents.
"I knew it would happen one day." It was her father's voice.
She refused to look back at him. "Proud papa?"
"I knew you would find a way to fuck me over."
"Well, at least that makes you more perceptive than most." She began stuffing the chosen items in her saddlebag.
"Where am I supposed to find another trainer in the next few hours? Hmm? I treated you like my own trueborn. I gave you a place at my table, I gave you work that didn't involve spreading your thighs, and all this mad-"
"I have new work."
"Yes, I heard." A contemptuous snort. "However you crawled inside that poor woman's head, I'm sure she doesn't deserve to have you there. But I'm not surprised. You always were a wrong one, even when you were little."
"Oh dear. Was I such a burden to you, Father?"
"You tried to sell your brother to traveling minstrels when you were eight."
"Half-brother. And I got a good price for him. That reminds me, though." She pushed past him and strode down the hall to a room where two boys, one teenaged, the other a few years younger, blinked muzzily at her from their beds.
"You can take your time finding a new slave." She pulled a pair of pants from the dresser. "I'm taking the hounds with me. All of them."
Her father called after her as she walked away. "Where were you when Lord Bolton was killed?" The question stopped her in her tracks. "No one seems to remember seeing you."
Myranda looked over her shoulder, not bothering to turn. "I was right where I should be. You were the one at his side."
The ground had turned to hard black furrows, normally a graphic contrast to the snow blanketing every raised surface within sight. This morning, though, the courtyard was filled to capacity with row upon row of soldiers. Myranda rode up to the facing archway, wearing the pants. In a still-necessary nod to conventional propriety, she had left her skirt over it, slit thigh-high into three panels. As she gazed across the sea of faded black leather, her pack fanned out around her, paws and nostrils jittery with excitement.
Her voice rang out. "Loyal servants of Winterfell! Remember the greatest day in the history of your house. Remember the pride that burned in every man, woman and child's belly when your lord smashed the Stark conquerors and restored House Bolton to its proper place in the North. It was a wrong that took thousands of years to right. We were the favored generation that lived to see it. But also remember the day the surviving Stark, her nature as scarlet as her hair, accepted your lord's generous offer to make her a part of his family."
A subaural rumble began to vibrate across the courtyard. She glanced up at the smallfolk crowded along every walk, still and pale as statues, and hoisted her bow aloft.
"She accepted his generosity, only to murder first his only son, then him! Just as she did her previous fiancè. Her own king! This is another proud day for your house. Today you vow to crack open the shells of every castle still loyal to the traitor, until she is exposed and your newborn lord's future is secure. You vow to show the world that House Bolton will never forget!"
The rhythmic thump of the butt-ends of staffs against frost answered. Those who were mounted slapped their boots, tack jingling as their confused horses danced. She waited for the noise to subside.
"You are, of course, still under the command of your general," she nodded to Wyldewych, mounted in the front row, "but as the Warden Regent's proxy in this matter, I command the mission. Therefore, it falls to me to make you understand this: only I kill Sansa Stark. Any man who delivers her to me alive and in one piece will be rewarded with fifty silver. Any man who kills her will be rewarded by being flayed in front of his comrades." Myranda looked from one end of the assembly to the other. "Have I made myself understood?"
A sleepy nicker broke the silence.
"Outstanding. Then we begin with Cerwyn." She hooked the bow over her shoulder and signaled the gate.
As they slowed to allow the supply carts to fall into the rear, General Wyldewych drifted to a position next to her. "If I may still be so bold as to ask, why search the castles?" His voice still scratched slightly. "It certainly won't help our lady's standing with the lords."
"Because that's where she'll be."
"Doubtful. If the girl isn't at The Wall by now, she would be safest in the wilderness."
Myranda turned her head and smirked. "You don't know her like I do. She's never wanted for comfort a day in her life. Sansa Stark is spoiled, arrogant, incapable of existing outside of the life to which she is accustomed. Wherever she can recreate that life is where you'll find her. Trust me."
He stared back, his expression unreadable. Behind them, a column of ravens swirled up and starburst over the city, each beak pointed at a different destination. It neither knew nor cared what the scroll tied to its leg contained, but it would complete its errand faithfully nonetheless.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Sansa rested back on the heels of her palms, ankles demurely crossed. Brienne sat splayed on an adjacent stump. Their campsite had begun life as a natural clearing, but logging had enlarged it while providing convenient built-in seating. Theirs offered a good overlook of the rapidly materializing camp.
Sansa smiled as Yara Greyjoy approached from a thicket of sprouting tents. The other woman's return smile was more restrained as her eyes performed a once-over. "You can't dig in that. I'll have to find you some clothes among the men's stores."
Sansa only looked puzzled.
"You're going to be digging the latrine." That earned her a saucer-eyed stare. "Everyone sings for their supper here, princess. That includes you."
Brienne slowly rose. "This is an insult. You can't possibly expect Lady Sansa to degrade herself this way."
"Nothing degrading about honest work, is there?"
Sansa stood and placed a hand on her shadow's arm. "I don't mind doing my share. Of course not. But surely there must be something else I can do? Mend the men's clothes or... or-"
"They mend their own clothes. This is what I'm telling you do."
She felt the muscles under her hand flex. "You don't have to take orders from her," said Brienne softly. "You don't."
Trapped in helpless hesitation, she looked past Yara at all the sober faces now watching her. Watching them. In the space of a breath, she understood what her ally was trying to do. Yes. She would give her this, at least for now.
The exhalation of that revelatory breath carried the words, " I want to do it."
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Sansa held the shovel out in front of her as if to inspect it, then jabbed it into the forest floor. It penetrated no more than half an inch. "Ugh," she grunted. "The ground is frozen." She levered a small, semi-solid chunk loose and deposited it at her side.
After a repeat of this performance, Brienne intervened with characteristic bluntness. "At that rate, you'll never finish. Let me do it."
"No. Just show me how. I don't think I've ever even touched one of these things before."
"I know there a lot of things you've had to learn in a very short time. Believe it or not, I've been where you are. But seeing you with a shovel won't make them respect you."
"It's not for my benefit."
Brienne showed her how to grip the handle, then drove the blade into the ground with her heel and flung the accumulated soil away with a small, quick movement. Sansa copied her technique, first carefully, then with increasing speed. Her braid, now too short to snake down her back, kept dangling over her right shoulder and having to be flipped back. She discarded her cloak as her body heated up, her rhythm eventually interrupted by a firm "That'll do."
It dawned on her that Yara was watching from the side of the pit.
"Congratulations," Yara told her. "You just dug your first shit pit. It doesn't have to be very big."
Sansa grinned triumphantly up at her, wiping sweat away with her sleeve.
"Now dig the other three."
The grin collapsed.
"What? You didn't think all these men could do with one latrine?"
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
She dug her toes into the soft, warm ash that had been raked out to the perimeter of the campfire. Her borrowed trousers were slightly too short and ash flakes wafted lazily up them to warm and caress her calves. The menswear that had felt so alien and uncomfortable when she'd first put it on was now a capacious second skin.
"I think he's still sore about being ordered to come with us," she proclaimed to Yara, waving her mug at the huddle of riverborn that the Blackfish had joined. He glanced her way, then leaned in to talk to Brienne. Discreetly, perhaps? Had she spoken too loudly?
Her face felt hot, normally a sign of too much drink's influence, but that could just be the manual labor and the fire. She stared down into the dregs lingering at the bottom of her mug. Sansa had yet to develop a taste for the harder indulgences favored by soldiers and adventurers, but she had discovered an extreme passion for mulled cider. Already, her second mugful was almost gone. The dregs glimmered the rich gold of a fresh-cast Lannister Lion in the firelight.
"What's wrong?" Yara asked.
"Oh. Nothing. It's just a bit stronger than I'm used to."
"What were they giving you before? Watered-down Vale Plum?"
"My parents only let me drink on special occasions. No one would have cared in King's Landing, but I never saw Cersei without a full goblet. It never seemed to make her any happier." She knew she was talking too much. Her thoughts normally didn't spill out so easily. Still, she drained the last of the cider, tilting her head back to let the sweet-spicy-sharp drops flow off the lip of the mug and down her throat, before adding, "It does have its uses, though."
"Now you're speaking my language." Yara began dealing a new round of cards. "One more and you might even lose your virginity tonight. Maybe to him." She pointed a card pincered between two fingertips. "The rumor is, he has a magic cock."
It took Sansa a few moments to realize she meant Podrick. Unlike the rest of her companions, he had chosen to sit with the ironborn and was currently taking in a (probably tall) tale with slightly open-mouthed concentration. "You must be joking."
"I hate to tell you this, but everyone knows. Everything about you screams virgin."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what are you waiting for? We're living on borrowed time, you and I. Sooner or later, we're going to be expected to marry some stuffed silk shirt we may not even like and gift him with sons. One for posterity, then maybe one or two for safety. Nothing wrong with having a little fun while we can."
She looked down at the hand Yara had dealt her. Each card was a work of art, the stylized characters sketched in several colors of ink by a distinguished craftsman. Each one was also much used and abused, as if it alone couldn't feed a smallfolk family for a week. "That's just not- I couldn't-" She shook her head and settled on the most practical of her objections. Maybe that would be understood. "I need my maidenhead to find a suitable match." If her face was warm before, now it was inflamed. Hopefully, the half-light hid her condition.
Yara gave her a look she couldn't interpret. "That's all they really care about, isn't it?" Quite quickly, she leaned forward and placed a hand on Sansa's belly. It lay there, cold and heavy. "That and this."
She fell back onto her rump and tossed a card into play. "But, you know... there are other ways to have fun in a man's company. Ways that will leave your maidenhead intact."
"And I'm sure you're going to tell me what they are, aren't you?"
Yara made a show of looking slyly around, then leaned forward again and whispered into Sansa's ear. Beyond her field of view, Sansa's expression went from confusion to shock to horror. "That- that's disgusting! Who would ever put their mouth there?!"
"I hear your boy's good at that too." Yara giggled. The urge to join her suddenly became overpowering and Sansa dipped her quaking mug into the jar of cider, nesting in a cozy of coals. When she caught her breath, she said, "I don't think that's for me," before neatly placing a card on top of Yara's, eliminating both.
"Lucky draw."
"What about you? I've only known you for a few weeks, but I bet you have a boy in every port."
"A boy. A girl. Depends on the port."
Well. Just like that, another mythical creature. Somehow, it didn't seem quite as fantastic the second time. Sansa lingered over a draught as she considered both her hand and her reply. She tried to toss a card down as casually as her opponent.
"Did you enjoy last night, then?"
"I don't do that. Never have." A tight grin. "Between us, it's more fun when they want it."
"Really? Your men seemed to be looking forward to claiming their prize."
"Then ask them why."
A tension had blinked into existence between them. Sansa held her tongue for the remainder of the game. She lost again. That no longer bothered her: she knew now that one day, she would find a path to victory.
Yara was back in high spirits after her own victory. Sansa asked, "What was it like, growing up like this? I can't even imagine."
"It wasn't the glory and glamor of heroic tales, I can tell you that. There were times I went weeks without so much as a sponge bath."
"At least you can fight your own battles."
"I can now. The boys I trained with made it a fairly painful education." She waved off nascent concern. "Oh, no. That was one thing I never had to worry about. Everyone knew what would happen if they touched Balon Greyjoy's daughter that way. He never stopped them from pushing me, though. Or punching. Or kicking."
"All right. I don't envy that part." Sansa expelled a long breath through pursed lips. "Still, to be able to cut down your enemies... I like the sound of that."
"If I were like most Islands princesses, I'd be cutting my enemies down exactly the same way you do. No complaints, but it might not be so bad, fighting in parlors and gardens and great halls instead of cold mud. What's so funny?"
"I just keep forgetting. You call me 'princess', but you actually are one. I'll have you know my life hasn't been so easy."
Yara raised one eyebrow, shooting her a dubious look.
"I mean it. Joffrey Baratheon forced me to look at my father's head on a pike. If I could have, I would have killed him where he stood. But I couldn't."
She had spoken heedlessly again. Or maybe it was something about the way she had said it. Regardless, she saw Yara look away. Her companion's gaze fell on the circle of men who had broken into impromptu dance during the tail end of their game. She leaped up and said, too brightly, "May I have this dance, milady?"
"I don't even have my boots on!"
She grabbed Sansa by the arm and pulled her up. "Then put them on."
Sansa joined hands with Yara and a man she vaguely recognized, as they danced first one way, then the other. She could barely hear the lute that was supposedly guiding them over the raised voices and drumming feet. The scout had chosen this spot to make camp because their fires couldn't be seen from the River Road, but it seemed that they could most certainly be heard.
It awakened something in her. She began to feel curiously buoyant, as if her head was filling with air and could lift her away at any moment. The faces spinning past on the opposite side of this human wheel blurred, until they became every face.