CHAPTER 46

SANSA

Harry rode through Winterfell's gate the morning after the new moon, looking every bit the dashing prince Sansa had dreamed of as a girl. True to his word, he brought only a small band of men with him, his strong brown charger muddied up to its knees from the long journey. Confronted with this handsome noble in the vibrant blue and white regalia of his House, Sansa's mind was consumed with one irreverent thought.

Sandor is ugly. Her mind's eye contrasted his brutish image with that of the storybook prince in front of her. He had the gentlemanly good looks of a man who could have spent his life inside reading but had instead chosen to take up the sword; the kind of man who commanded others to fight for him but could also defend himself. His strong, aquiline nose and shaggy straw-colored hair gave him a roguish edge. She could see why Petyr Baelish had arranged for them to marry those few years ago. This is the kind of man meant for me, she told herself. A handsome, dashing prince.

Intent on proving himself gallant, Harry leapt from his horse and planted a wet-lipped kiss on her hand. "Princess Sansa," he said, "I'm honored to be welcomed into your castle."

He is courting me already, she knew. She gave a deep curtsy. "The honor is mine." She wondered what her court would think of their meeting, but everyone around them looked happy. And why not? If Harry is a true friend to the North, this meeting will prove nothing but prosperous.

"It feels good to stretch my legs. Walk with me?" Harry asked, drawing himself up to his full height and level with Sansa. She had to push the image of Sandor, who towered over everyone, from her mind.

"You've had a long journey, to be sure." They strolled past bustling merchants' stalls and craftsmen's wares as Sansa led him to the stables and then the guest quarters. They talked amicably, and she had to admit, she liked that Harry had embraced his position as a lord and not shirked the courtly niceties that Jon and Arya always mocked her for growing up.

They separated so that he could settle in, and later met in the Great Hall for the feast. There were many other lords and visitors present, but Harry took the seat of honor next to Sansa. A surprising amount of fresh food graced the tables, including meats glazed in molasses, chunky stalks of roasted sparrow grass, and a variety of spiced imports. Conversation eased around the high table after the obligatory introductions and Harry spoke low enough for a private conversation.

"Your court wants for nothing except music, which I recall you being fond of. Where is your bard?"

"I have none."

"Hm. I must confess, Baelish told me you did."

"Petyr? How would he know that?"

"He implied that he sent him."

So, Lyrian was a spy. Sansa gave a heavy sigh. Sandor was right. "A bard did come up from the South and play here for a time. But the North is a hard place, especially for those of Southron sentiments. He . . . fell ill."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"It's no great loss," she added after a pause. "He was rude."

"How so?"

Sansa chewed the inside of her cheek as she weighed her answer. "He questioned my chastity."

"Ah. A sensitive topic for any maiden. Well, your version is quite different from Littlefinger's. I had the impression the man was sent to give you news from the South. It seems Baelish had more of a cruel jest in mind."

"Just so," Sansa tilted her head. "Are you still close with him?"

"With Baelish? Of course! He was protector of the Eyrie, after all, and stayed at my court for some time after I became Lord."

"After Sweetrobin's seizure." Sansa had heard about the boy's death and was curious to see Harry's reaction and gauge for herself if he had anything to do with it or if he was aware of Littlefinger's obvious plot. Instead, she was surprised by how pained Harry looked.

"Yes. He had a fit and never recovered. It was worse than any wound I've seen a warrior suffer—the boy's body suddenly, completely betrayed him—and he aged a lifetime in a matter of minutes. Greatly weakened, Little Robert died shortly after."

"How awful . . . I'm sorry."

"Don't be. There's nothing anyone could have done, not even any Maester. And don't trouble yourself over Littlefinger," he said with a quick bat of an eyelash. "He's got too much pride for someone of such low birth."

"He is presumptuous." Sansa realized she was getting along with Harry, and blushed despite herself.

That night she dreamt of a hawk circling over Winterfell. It watched everything, but Sansa, through its eyes, saw even what it did not know to look for—a pack of wolves paced the tree line, a murder of crows hopped on the north wall, a dog wandered alone outside. There were men coming up the Kingsroad, a dragon flying overhead, and little birds twittering, chattering to each other over these strange newcomers.

Sansa woke up with a hole of longing in her chest. She searched her letters in agitation, partially to distract herself, looking for one from Brienne. There wasn't one, so she called for the Maester to send a raven.

The day's court was busy, and when Sansa made it to the feast most of her guests were already seated. Alys flirted openly with Harry, tossing her short black hair and touching him fondly on the wrist as she laughed at some joke. For his part, Harry gloated over her attentions.

"Ser Harry, would you pass Alys the salt?" Sansa said as she took her seat beside him. "I wouldn't want her to strain herself, as it appears just out of her reach."

Alys glared but Sansa pointedly ignored her. Harry transitioned easily to giving Sansa his full focus, and she showed well enough that she enjoyed his company. But inwardly, she mulled over his reputation for promiscuity and the fact that he already had two bastards. Sandor was completely devoted to me.

After the meal Harry and Sansa walked together around the fair, stopping at stalls that offered everything from fine winter furs to carved wood trinkets and foodstuffs from spice packages to syrupy candies. Harry had met all her courtiers and they could go about uninterrupted, but he turned to her to ask about one of them. "You must forgive me, but I heard the Hound kept place at your court."

He wastes no time, Sansa thought, and she struggled to keep her face a mask just as she felt her heart racing and her face growing pale. "He did, for a while. But he left."

"I must admit, it was quite a shock when he stole you from the Eyrie. Since then I have heard every rumor, from him living here to him being sent to the Wall."

"More I stole away with him than he stole me away. I was Littlefinger's prisoner, after all. But Sandor Clegane is his own man. He is welcome at my court, but I don't keep him here."

This answer satisfied Harry, who developed a decidedly chipper mood for the rest of the day. Is this what my whole life with him will be like? she wondered regretfully. All hidden feelings and masked expressions?

The fair drew to a close a few days later on a bright and cold afternoon. When the sun lowered toward the horizon on the other side of Winterfell's walls it was time for the fair's final event, the play. Sansa had spent weeks preparing this presentation with the actors and crew. She knew well the value of the arts and the opportunity she had to communicate a point to so many of Winterfell's visitors. Lords and ladies took their seats along raised benches while everyone else crowded into the gaps around the stage.

The scene was a northern landscape, with fluffy white piles representing snow, leafless potted stick-trees, and a crude painting of Winterfell drawn against the backdrop. A woman, her costume of ragged regalia suggesting she was an impoverished noble, took the center and began to sing. She cooed a lament for all the northern soldiers lost in the War of Five Kings, all those men who had followed Eddard and Robb Stark south but never returned. They had been fathers, brothers, sons, to this woman—and to every woman who still called the North their home.

There was a quick set change, as leafless trees were swapped out for ones with strips of red and yellow paper representing autumn leaves. The image of the castle in the back was rolled over to one divided by a river, suggesting they were now at the Twins. Here, a pair of soldiers told crass jokes and relished in their victory over the Starks. With no one protecting the North, what stopped them from looting and pillaging every village from here 'til Winterfell, taking more booty for themselves?

"Gods!" a witch entered, stage left. "The Gods guard the North in the name of the Starks. Dismay them and you are doomed, doomed!"

"Shut up, old woman!" The soldier made like he sliced her throat and a well-timed splash of blood simulated her death. The audience gasped and murmured, intrigued and delighted, but it was only a prop-sword and clever use of a bag of gelatin. Another soldier entered stage right, announcing that Cersei had given the go-ahead for a northern invasion.

More soldiers joined the group and arranged themselves into lines. They performed a marching dance against the rolling backdrop that subtly became more and more northern. As they danced, showmen dressed as peasants performed leaps and feints against them and were "killed" in more and more elaborate and gruesome ways. The song ended with a small actor that appeared literally impaled on the end of a lance.

Harry shifted uncomfortably next to Sansa. "Don't you like it?" she whispered to him. After a season of so many local love songs, she knew people expected as much from her. But Sansa had no intention of wasting her cultural message. As Harry was the one here with the most ties to the South, she gauged his reaction with considerable interest.

"It's quite gruesome," he answered. Sansa smiled and put her hand on his wrist in a comforting gesture.

"I am sure you have seen much worse in battle." Privately, his answer troubled her because she knew that he had lied. Certainly, the fake blood does not bother him, but the themes. And Sandor would never complain—even in jest—about a little bit of stylized violence.

The soldiers approached Winterfell, surrounded by bodies of the fallen at the edges of the stage. Here a woman prayed beneath the feet of a crudely constructed heart tree. It had a carved face, hallowed eyes, and a gatehouse mouth. She begged the soldiers not to kill her—but of course they did—and there was a thunderclap as the heart tree was illuminated by a fire inside. A vocalist to the side boomed in time with the tree's rising and dropping mouth.

"There must be a Stark in Winterfell," it said to the cowering soldiers. "Winter is coming!" Sansa would have liked this part to be longer, but the crew in back needed to put the fire out right away. The focus turned from the darkened tree to the stirring bodies on the edges of the stage. They had streaked charcoal in the hallows of their eyes to give their faces the appearance of skulls, and they rose with eerie and jerky movements to overrun the cowering soldiers. Then the undead marched south, illustrated by the rotating panel, and here at the Twins the dead soldiers were raised—this time in the gray armor of the Stark bannermen, their lion shields replaced with the tell-tale sigils of her lords. One wore a heavy wolf's head mask.

They danced until a mock castle spire about the height of a horse was brought in. In its center stood a crowned woman in a fabulous red and gold dress. In her crooning voice she lamented all her mistakes as Cersei, queen of the realm, everything she had done wrong to the Starks and to her people, all the warnings she failed to heed, now that her kingdom was overrun by the undead and doomed. The skeleton dancers below swayed in time with the music.

The audience, both smallfolk and lords, cheered mightily. Sansa counted it a good thing since the play did end with the implied devastation of Westeros. And she wanted her lords, many who had paid a small sum to have their shields represented on the northern soldiers and had thus helped finance the play, to enjoy it.

Harry seemed perturbed. "That's how it ends? Everyone died!"

Good. Sansa thought, Let him guess on what will happen if he betrays me. "A vengeance for the Starks."

He said no more about it, which was easy enough as they mingled with the other highborn folk who heaped their praises on Sansa and the production and jostled to meet the lead singer. Most would leave on the morrow, including the merchants who had all deconstructed their tents and packed away their goods.

Harry would leave, too. Sansa had to admit that his visit had been pleasant. He was the type she would have been delighted with . . . if her life had gone another way, closer to the path she was set on at birth. Yet after all she had been through, she doubted that was wise. They walked alone together, wandering until they stopped on the bridge that connected the Great Hall to the armory. From here, they could look through the arched colonnades down to Winterfell's courtyard. Above them, the half-moon swelled bright and pregnant within its foggy halo.

He will ask me to marry him, she knew. Sansa could not say that Harry had made a single misstep towards her these past few days. Everything had been perfect, and the fact left her with a heavy, unsettled heart.

"It is hard to believe that this castle was a ruin just a few years ago," Harry said. "The prosperity you brought is nothing short of amazing. Your father and brothers would be proud." He put an arm around her.

"I did not do it myself." Sansa thought of all her people who had helped her and were counting on her to keep them safe. She had to avoid the wars the men in her family had brought on them a generation ago. But she also thought of Sandor, her sword and shield, who had brought her here and protected her so well.

"And you will never have to." He turned to her and took both of her hands in his. "Winter is over, Sansa. It is a new season. We could meet it together."

Her pulse quickened and she worried he could feel it through her fingers. "Harry . . . How would it even work? You are Lord of the Vale, and I the North. We would be separated even if we were together."

He hesitated. "For a time, yes . . . But I would let you choose where we live. And our children, brought up together, would inherit our kingdoms and forge a generation of peace between them. Think of it! You and I could put an end to these feudal wars that have cost the world so much . . ."

That might actually work. Sansa bit her lip, guiltily reflecting on the two children she already had. There would be no opportunity for them to marry a high lord or a princess. Meanwhile, she and Harry could breed the most powerful house Westeros had seen since the dominance of the Targaryens. It was exactly the sort of thing her parents had attempted when they betrothed her to Joffrey. Still, even she found something naïve in the idea that peace could ever be achieved in this bloody world.

"If I marry you, of equal status, I must give you claim to Winterfell. But if I marry one of my vassals, my strength in the North will be solidified."

"I would become the Lord of Winterfell, that's true . . . but northern independence is a difficult position, neither safe nor wise. You would make an enemy of the crown for life."

"That doesn't matter. I could never bow to Cersei again. Never. Not after what she did to my family."

He met her eyes directly, looking roguish and bold. "Two kingdoms are stronger than one. Cersei could not stand against us both."

Sansa's heart thudded in her chest over his admission. He promises me peace for my people and war for my enemies. He leaned in closer to her, closer. She saw the moment as though looking through another person's head.

"Marry me, Sansa. Make what would have been your destiny your choice instead."

He kissed her. Sansa felt his smooth lips on her own, but her mind immediately went to her hard-mouthed lover. Harry was lightly bearded and Sansa found it awkward to seek his lips inside such plush growth. She realized she was kissing the edges of his mouth, searching for the stubble and odd textures of a rough man who kept his half-burned face clean shaven. Harry caught her head in his hands—his fingers thin and clutching—and Sansa longed for the commanding hold of a man whose strength came from harder muscles in his shoulders, back, and core . . . .

She opened her eyes to see if Harry sensed her hesitation, but his eyes were closed and she wondered, for the first time, how people even kissed with such large noses protruding from their faces. What's wrong with me? Sansa thought, squeezing her eyes shut tight and turning her head to the side in order to force herself to submit to him. Every woman wants to kiss Harry . . . She tried to clear her mind and concentrate on the kiss but was distracted by the fact that he didn't open his mouth enough, he tasted too sweet, his tongue implored her—

She broke away, her eyes downcast. She felt she had somehow dishonored herself.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry. It's just—" Sandor. She could not bring herself to say it. She knew the Hound could not really protect her as well as this prince with his army of men and his political alliances, but the memory of his great big body felt more real than any of Harry's promises of future peace. "It doesn't feel right."

"Why?"

Even if I never see Sandor again, I can't marry the man he stole me away from. "We were engaged when I was Alayne, but I'm Sansa again now. Did I really come all this way and accomplish all these things in order to end up back in the same place I started?"

Harry smirked at her, though he didn't sound angry or bitter. "Maybe you think I was a worthy match for Alayne, but I'm not good enough for Sansa."

"No! No, it isn't that. In truth, you and I are more well-matched than I could have hoped for. Than Alayne or Sansa could hope for. It just . . . it doesn't feel right, does it? We've both raised ourselves so much that we command kingdoms, but in the end, are we just pawns in Littlefinger and Cersei's game?"

Harry nodded sympathetically, but he looked deeply unhappy. Sansa was surprised that she could make out his eyes glistening in the moonlight.

"I'm sorry," she offered quickly, marveled that she'd hurt him. "Maybe I just need time . . ."

"Darling," he gave a bitter laugh. "That is the one thing I cannot give."