Lenna LIII
A month ago, the very thought that she would be waiting impatiently for the arrival of the Freys would have been ridiculous. Now, they could not get to White Harbor fast enough to suit her. Her gowns were beginning to grow tight in the waist, and she reckoned she had about a month, maybe two, before it would become difficult to explain away the changes. For now, rest and a steady diet could explain her ripening figure and the roses in her cheeks. Her face was fuller than it had been perhaps in a year or more, her ribs no longer standing out against her skin, and before long it would be impossible to disguise her condition.
The Freys arrived on a gray day, the sky as sallow as their skin, and Lenna forced herself to smile and take Perwyn Frey's arm in the yard, walking with him into the Merman's Court. He was solicitous to her father, soft-spoken and considerate with the girls, and Lenna couldn't help but judge him decent. As decent as Freys could be, that was.
She was not permitted into the negotiations, of course. In fact, she could hardly bring herself to care about them at all. They meant nothing, she knew they meant nothing, but there was the matter of schooling her nieces in how to behave, what to say. Wynna she wasn't worried about, but Wylla was another case entirely.
Wyman called all three of them into his study. Lenna knew what he was going to say as soon as she took stock of his hangdog expression and stooped shoulders. She took her customary seat at the little desk by the window while she waited, her father not in a mood to talk. He was sitting with his elbows braced on the arms of his chair, fingers steepled in front of his mouth and his brows drawn up together like fat, white caterpillars.
Wynna entered next in her quiet manner, and Wylla was on her heels, hands already balled at her sides and flames in her eyes.
"Is it done?" she spat, her tone flinty.
"It is," Wyman replied. "The contracts have not been signed, but they will be once our maester and Walder Frey's have looked them over. It will be some weeks until it is official, but there will be a feast tonight."
"So we've been sold," Wylla said, standing up haughtily as she tossed the long tail of green hair down her back.
Wyman closed his eyes as if in pain, then looked to Lenna.
"Don't be so dramatic, dear," she said quietly. "We haven't been sold. What else would you have grandfather do?"
"I won't go to a feast," Wylla said impudently. "I will not sup with him."
Lenna couldn't blame her. Little Walder Frey was the most repugnant of the three by far. A pimply faced boy who breathed through his mouth, a little thread of spittle often trailing from his lip, Wylla was well within her rights to be repulsed.
"You must control your temper," Wynna said lowly. Lenna was surprised to hear her voice shaking. Her niece had gone white, down to her lips, and she had her arms wrapped about herself as she looked out of the window and toward the sea. She was not looking at her sister or her aunt, her gaze instead fixed on some unknown point on the horizon. Lenna shuddered to realize what it was about her aspect that seemed so strange and familiar. She looked like herself.
Her niece's words stirred something, and Lenna sat back in her chair. Her palm found its way absently to the growing round of her belly. She was small still, but she knew what was causing that plumpness in her middle, and she often discovered herself running her fingers over it, though whether she was unconsciously soothing the child or herself she wasn't sure.
"No," she said quietly, the idea still half formed, like fog in autumn when it crept from both the harbor and the moors. "Don't."
"What?" Wylla asked, shock in her voice. Lenna was well aware that half of Wylla's peevishness came from some inborn desire to shock them all. Thus the stubborn set of her chin, the insistence on dying her hair that virulent shade of green. The youngest of the three, Lenna realized that Wylla must feel much left behind by herself and her sister. Wynna had been born a lady, garnering praise for her sweet ways and prudence, and none of them could compete with Lenna herself, at least in the menfolk's estimation. This was exacerbated by Lenna's prolonged absence, the guilt they all undoubtedly felt at her being stolen from them and the lot of them unable to do anything about it.
Wynna had coped by becoming a version of her aunt, and Lenna was bitterly aware of this. She was still herself, aye, but Lenna wondered if she would have been half so somber or a sight more cheerful if Lenna had never been called to the capital. She had quietly stepped into a woman's role far before her time, and it had both pigeon-holed and liberated her younger sister.
Where Wynna was soft-spoken, practical, and ladylike, Wylla had instead run a bit wild. She did as was expected of her, of course, she knew her duties and respected them like a Manderly should, but it was done on her terms. She was the beloved prodigal, the oddman, the one whose whims were consistently and lovingly indulged. She had a reputation for a sharp tongue, a saucy attitude and a complete dismissal of other people's opinions. Lenna couldn't imagine refusing her father's orders, but Wylla was born recalcitrant and contrary and perfect. She was, in a word, a minx. Lenna admired her for it.
"Come to the feast," Lenna said at last. "But don't try and pretend to be happy about it. You aren't happy."
"None of us are happy," Wynna broke in.
"No," Lenna replied slowly, looking to her father, "but if we were to all act pleased, it wouldn't look right. Wendel was King Robb's Master of Ships and Coin, father his bannerman. This is something of a humiliation, and they know it. They think me to support their cause. I will act my part, just as I always have. Your father is held captive by the Lannisters, and these Boltons and Freys are their allies. Wynna, you are the eldest, a lady-"
"Thank you very much," Wylla muttered.
"A lady," Lenna continued with pursing of her lips, "and known to be well-bred. But everyone knows that Wylla is her own person. So, let her be herself. She will do us a favor in it."
"I don't see how this will benefit us," Wyman said. "They expect me to bend the knee to the Iron Throne."
"Of course," Lenna replied. "And you will. I will send a jubilant letter to Cersei, informing her that, at last, White Harbor has come around and we are in full alliance with the crown, that I am to finally be married, so long as I have her blessing. She will think I am recovered, that White Harbor is again in her sights."
"Why?"
"Because she wants to," Lenna replied simply. "And it is the only course of action that makes any sense. And we will bend the knee. At least, we will make it appear that we have done so. Our hearts don't have to be in it."
"We'll be liars," Wylla spat.
"Live ones," Lenna replied. "But if it was me and I knew that Lord Manderly's youngest granddaughter had a mind of her own, it would make me wonder if the lady was thrilled with the prospect of her marriage to Little Walder. That wouldn't make sense. So, I think Wylla should say whatever she wants."
"Within reason," Wyman said.
"Don't think of it as lying," Lenna said. "You needn't lie. None of us will, not really. Father will not go to King's Landing and bend the knee in person, but he will seem to be supporting the Boltons and the Freys, the Lannisters. We know that he is not."
"How can he seem to without actually aiding them?" Wylla demanded.
"For now," Lenna said, "all he must do is continue to say yes to whatever they say. He can hem and haw all he likes, but ultimately, he will agree to their terms."
Wyman nodded.
"And we will continue to act our parts," Lenna said, crossing to her father's desk and taking a plum from the bowl there. "And the better we act them, the sooner they will leave."
The feast was as grand an affair as could be thrown together at the last moment. The ale flowed freely, there were bountiful platters of shellfish, roast potatoes, and good brown bread with yellow butter. There was music and laughter and the carefully constructed semblance of peace, of reconciliation between House Manderly and House Frey.
The women sat with their intendeds, Wynna wooing Ramsay Bolton with her soft fingertips on his wrist and large blue eyes, Wylla sitting rigid beside Little Walder, her back straight as a rail and refusing to look at him.
"I've thought of this since the day we met," Perwyn Frey said, speaking from the side of his mouth as he watched the crowded hall. "The night we danced at the Red Keep, I knew this day would come."
Lenna's mouth quirked up in the way she knew made a dimple appear in her cheek. "You have a gift then, Ser," she said in reply. "What many of us would give to see the future as you have."
He laughed and his eyes shone, and Lenna felt almost sorry for him. Almost.
The party stayed the remainder of the week, and it was on the fourth day that they were all startled by the doors to the Merman's Court being flung open, the guards dragging in a man by the elbows.
Seated by her father with a quill in hand, Lenna looked up from the notes she was scribing to see what the fuss was about. Her father liked her presence when he heard arbitration, and she remembered how her mother used to sit beside him when she was a child. So, she listened and took notes while Maester Loren wrote minutes, the two of them seated together at a long desk to the side of the dais. Loren saw the man and jabbed his quill into his parchment so harshly that the ink spewed across it like skittering spiders.
The guards were being none too gentle with their man, though he was doing his best to keep up with them. He was dressed in rough wool, a tunic and trousers, a dark brown cape with a simple clasp. He could have been any seaman in those clothes, even a prosperous one. His hands were gloved, and she immediately noticed that the fingers of his right hand were shorter than they should have been.
A smuggler.
Not just any smuggler. When the guards came to a halt, roughly pushing their prisoner forward, Lenna felt a flicker of recognition.
The man did not fall, though no doubt the guards meant for him to fall to his knees on the floorboards, but he kept himself upright. He scowled as he righted his cloak, shook back his shoulders. Wyman Manderly had already been standing, listening to petitions as he paced back and forth before his throne, the girls behind him. Wynna was sewing, Wylla looking out the window with a book forgotten in her lap. They both looked up at the racket, faces carefully blank. Wyman was staring hard at the man before him, and Lenna noted immediately that the interloper looked right back.
"Who is this?" Wyman demanded, looking to the captain of his guard.
"Ser Davos Seaworth," Lenna replied, butting the man off as he opened his mouth to speak. She had stood without realizing it, leaning over the table slightly.
"My lady," the man rasped. "I had not thought to see you here. You are a most welcome sight."
"Ser Davos is a knight in service to Stannis Baratheon," Lenna told her father, hoping he could see the caution in her glance. "At least, he was when last we met."
"A tourney," Davos said, looking to Lenna as if she could cast him a rope.
"Yes," she agreed with a slight smile, conscientiously not looking at Perwyn Frey. He and his kinsmen were standing to the side. Wyman didn't like them being there, felt they were spying. He was right, and Lenna felt a trembling in her muscles at the situation in which they now found themselves.
"Why have you come here, Ser Davos?" Wyman asked, stepping forward.
The man seemed to loosen under their eyes. His face went slack with relief, but instead of making him appear more at ease, it only made him seemed more tired.
"I have been sent to treat with you on behalf of my king," Davos said. He reached into his cloak and one of the guards took a step forward. Wyman raised his hand. Davos withdrew a letter, and when Manderly nodded, he brought it forward and offered it to him.
Wyman cleared his throat as he slid his finger beneath the seal. Lenna watched as his eyes darted across the words, then he quickly folded it up and handed it to her. She took it carefully, reading through it briefly.
It was nothing surprising. Renewed claims about Joffrey's illegitimacy, an entreaty to pledge service to Stannis' claims and fight against House Lannister.
"I fear, Ser Davos," Wyman said, his hands behind his back, "that I cannot help your lord in his endeavor."
"We could help you-"
"Help with what?" Lenna asked. Her father's brow shot up at her, but he did nothing more than purse his lips. "As you can see, Ser Davos, White Harbor continues to prosper. We have no cause to enter into this war and stand against our allies."
"Your allies," Davos boomed. "Freys and Boltons who have turned hide on their kinsfolk-"
"Freys and Boltons who have ever been our friends," Lenna replied with a smirk, "and who will be our husbands before long."
"Husbands?"
"A triple marriage, Ser Davos," she replied. "I am to wed Ser Perwyn Frey, my nieces Ramsay Bolton and Little Walder Frey. A very happy arrangement, I assure you."
Davos looked at her steadily, and she was sure that he saw through the ruse. His face shuttered momentarily, the woebegone brown eyes flickering with understanding.
"And what does Stannis offer us? Can it compare?" Wyman asked. "Does he have a trio of fine lordlings to offer my girls?"
"What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance."
"Yes. They killed Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn and King Robb." Even Lenna's head turned at the thin voice that threaded through the Merman's Court with the precision of a needle. "He was our King. He was brave and good and the Frey's murdered him. If Lord Stannis will avenge him, we should join him."
"You forget yourself," Wyman warned, heat in his cheeks and lightning in his glance.
"Oathbreaker," she whispered, but it was loud enough to echo off the chamber walls.
"I will take your tongue from its root, my lady," her spluttered, and Lenna was worried for him. He was shaking with a rage that she could not help but believe herself, his face nearly purple and veins bulging out of his forehead.
"We made a promise," Wylla replied, and Lenna saw her as a woman grown for the first time. Her shoulders were thrown back, her hair in that long, green braid and crackling with its own energy. Her eyes were blazing, but her voice was steady. "Before the Conquest. A promise was made and oaths were sworn in the Wolf's Den before the old gods and the new. When we were sore beset and friendless, hounded from our homes and in peril of our lives, the wolves took us in and nourished us and protected us against our enemies. The city is built on the land they gave us, and in return we swore always to be their men. Stark men."
There was a murmur in the gathered crowd, one of assent. Lenna's heart expanded. She had been worried, and foolishly so, to think that the people of their city could be so defeated as to wish to bow to the Lannisters and their ilk. She had to carefully keep her pride off her face, pride in them, and pride in her niece.
"Out," Wyman said lowly. "Get her out!"
Wynna and Lenna both stood at the same time, taking her gently by the arms and pulling her out through the door in the wall, Lenna's gaze flickering to the kraken and his green tentacles and then to her niece and her green hair.
Once on the other side of the door, Lenna barred it in place. The three women made their way swiftly to Manderly's study, waiting in anxious silence for what felt like hours. At last the door opened, and Wyman Manderly took three great strides across the room, gathering Wylla in his embrace.
"Well done," he said. "Well done. It couldn't have gone better if we'd been able to plan it."
Wylla's eyes had gone wide, but she nodded. Her nerves had caught up with her after her initial courage had worn off. She was trembling now. Lenna took her hand and pressed it.
"Stay here," he said quietly. "Go about your business. Wylla, you will need to seem contrite. I am to treat with the Boltons and Freys this afternoon. Whatever you hear, I beg you to trust me."
"What are you planning-"
"I'll not tell you," he said, drawing the back of a stubby finger over Lenna's cheek. "I won't tell you now, girl. Maybe later."
Lenna felt little, but she had no other recourse but to do as he said. Wyman shooed them out before their guests arrived to speak with him, the women keeping to the private gardens in hopes of not meeting with the Freys.
Dinner that evening was rather stilted, conditions especially frosty between Wylla and the members of the envoy. Little Walder wasn't terribly put out if the pile of food he consumed was any indication.
"Your niece-" Perwyn began, his voice slinking over Lenna's shoulder.
"Is a girl," Lenna replied. "An impetuous one, at that."
"Aye," he said. "She would benefit from listening to her elders."
"Did anyone listen to their elders at that age?"
"I would think you did," he said blandly. Lenna took a sip from her goblet.
"I know the value of circumspection," she said quietly. "Listening to all sides, and making decisions based on good sense rather than feeling."
He smiled softly at her. "Feeling can't help but influence decisions, though. I would want you to know that my wishes-"
"You needn't say anything else," Lenna said. She made herself return his smiles, but more than anything, she just wanted him to stop talking.
Perwyn looked down, satisfaction written in the long lines of his face. "We will leave in the morning."
"So soon?" Lenna asked, honestly surprised. Her father had stayed locked in his study with them all afternoon.
"We have concluded our talks most satisfactorily," he replied. "We must go back and take what we've agreed upon to my father and Lord Roose."
"I wish you a speedy journey, then," Lenna said, only a little chagrined at the honesty in her words.
"The sooner we depart, the sooner we may come back again." He raised his goblet in salute and she returned the gesture, averting her eyes from the intensity of his own over the rim of the vessel.
In the morning, all of the Manderlys gathered to wish them farewell in the courtyard, each of their intendeds astride the horses her father had given them as gifts. Her stomach roiled a bit in understanding. Such a gift discharged a lord's responsibility for the protection of his guests. Lenna was feeling rather green before , but she managed to stay upright and composed even when Perwyn Frey took her hand in his and pressed it to his mouth. A tight smile seemed to satisfy him, and she was not at all upset to watch them ride away through the gates of the New Castle. They all looked up as they passed under the arch, and Lenna wondered what they were looking at, shocked and disgusted to see a head and a pair of hands above her father's gate.
Wyman Manderly was not one to execute criminals and then display their bodies. She was sure he had done the job more times than she knew, he certainly never spoke of it, but it was his duty as the Lord of White Harbor. However, they'd never been dipped in pitch and mounted on the battlements before, not like they had in King's Landing.
She couldn't help but remember the day on the ramparts, when pretty Sansa Stark had shown true steel as she was forced to look at her own father's severed head and those of people she had known. Now, she found her knees shaking as she looked up at the grisly relics, her stomach dropping to the floor when she recognized their former owner. The fingers of the right hand were all cut at the first knuckle.
"Steady, girl," her father said, slipping a hand around her waist. "I'll explain all."
Her nieces were equally troubled, fluttering their handkerchiefs as their enemies rode out of their city. Wyman kept a firm grip on his daughter, turning her once they had gone out of sight and leading the whole troupe back into the castle, to his private study.
"Has he been brought?" he asked, pausing to enquire with the guard. To Lenna's surprise, it was the red-headed captain.
"Aye, my lord," he replied, gray eyes serious. "He's waiting."
The door swung open to reveal Davos Seaworth standing at the casement, his fingers playing in the graying beard. His face was drawn with care, his aspect that of some sad dog, all sagging skin and hollowed eyes.
"But-" Lenna spluttered.
"The deal has been struck, Ser," Wyman said, sitting behind his desk. "I cannot give you what you ask for, not at this moment. But you will leave White Harbor in safety, and I pray that you tell your lord that you were treated with kindness by the Manderlys in the North."
"They are gone?" Davos said.
"They are," Wyman responded. "And they will not be returning here again."
"What do you mean," Lenna asked, taking a step into the room. Her father gestured for her to sit. She was grateful once she had sat down. The lightheadedness was making her heart flutter.
"It is an ugly thing to tell my women," her father continued. "But that group of men will not have an easy time on the road, I fear."
"Papa-" Lenna objected.
"Would you have me risk being unable to get you out of these betrothals? Men go missing on the road all the time," her father continued. "You know all about that yourself, don't you, daughter?"
Lenna colored. She had never confided in her father about the Boltons on the road, only Wendel. Her brother had the grace to look apologetic.
"I had to tell him," Wendel said. "I had to, Lenna."
She took a deep breath. "The man, the head and hands mounted on the battlements-"
"Another convict, slated for execution. His time came last night, I'm afraid."
"But why-"
"The Lannisters knew that Ser Davos here was en route to us. I was sent a letter demanding that he be delivered to them."
"And I thank you for not doing just that," Davos said, his hands still clasped behind him. "I do not understand your reasoning, my lord-"
"We are in a precarious position, Ser," Wyman said. "We have Freys and Boltons nipping at our ankles here, the Lannisters behind them. I cannot support them, but I must seem to."
"You do not support them?" Davos' face seemed to crumple in on itself, a wad of old parchment.
"Of course not," Wyman blustered. "We are Northerners, Ser. We will support the Northern cause, and our memory is long."
"There is no Northern cause," Davos said.
"We'll see," Wyman replied with faint and enigmatic smile. It grew until he was beaming at the three women. "Have you ever seen anything as magnificent as these women? Wylla. Did you see how brave she was? Even when I threatened to have her tongue out, she stood her ground, reminded me of the debt of White Harbor to the Starks in Winterfell. Not that I had forgotten, mind. Wylla spoke from the heart. Not every woman can be as brave as our Wylla. And Wynna, so composed even in the face of Ramsay Bolton."
"He's mad, grandpapa," she said quietly. "He was saying the most alarming things."
"And she kept her head, you'd never have known anything was wrong. Did you find out what I wanted to know?"
"Aye," she replied. "He was more than happy to tell me." Lenna looked at her niece in surprise. Wynna colored, a splash of pink across her nose. "I know where he is."
"Where who is?"
"Theon Greyjoy," her father replied. "And Winterfell?"
"Secured by the Boltons."
Her father nodded, chewing on his cheek. "And we cannot forget dear Lenna. She is angry with me, I wager." Lenna did not contradict him. "Thinks I should have told her all of this, and perhaps I should have. But she-"
"She has done enough," Davos said.
"It will never be enough," Lenna replied, unsure whether the clinching in her lungs was from despair or determination.
"For now," her father replied, "it is. I do believe we are in the eye again. At least for a time. Just for a time."
Lenna felt deflated, weary and tired. Wynna and Wylla withdrew at Wyman's suggestion, leaving Lenna and Wendel to stay and listen. The interview with Ser Davos continued, and she listened, half-attending, as they spoke of ships and battle-plans. The Onion Knight was far more open and candid than she would have perhaps expected, concealing nothing from her father.
Ser Davos sailed that day with the tide. He was to be smuggled back down to the harbor through the Wolf's Den before he was packed onto his ship and sent back to his king. When the time came for him to go, he approached Lenna slowly and took her hand.
"I wish you joy, my lady," he said somberly. "I am glad to have seen you again, and hope that we shall meet again."
"Under happier circumstances," she said quietly. He nodded, bowing quickly over her hand.
Lenna walked the ramparts for a time. She was feeling quite wan and gray, but from time to time, she'd feel the fluttering in her belly and it would ease her care for a while.
"Papa is coming home." Wynna appeared behind her, slipping silently across the stones on her soft slippers.
"How?" Lenna asked, turning and pulling her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
"It was part of the bargain for Ser Davos," her niece replied, eyes shining in her strained face. "Tywin offered to free him if we dealt with Seaworth."
"That is wonderful news," Lenna said genuinely, reaching for her niece's hand. The girl squeezed her fingers, but still she hung back rather than seeking an embrace.
"Are you angry with me?" she asked quietly.
"No," Lenna answered truthfully. "I wish I had known. I do not like you two being involved in these matters."
"We can help-"
"You don't know what you're dealing in," Lenna said, biting her tongue. "You think you do, but you truly, truly don't."
"Then teach me," Wynna pleaded. "Let me help."
"Absolutely not," Lenna replied, but there was no bite in it. "I cannot do this, Wynna. I cannot bring you into it. Not for anything in the world."
"Your husband's return?"
"Not even for that," she said, her stomach sickening. "Nothing we do here will speed him back. He is on the king's business. He will take care of himself."
"He should be here with you."
"We do not belong to ourselves," Lenna replied. "But you still do, for now at least. Please, do not ask me again to strip you of that. I cannot do it."
Her cheeks were cold, she realized, chilled by the tears that had made their way out her eyes without her noticing. Wynna, almost as tall as her, wrapped her arms around Lenna's back and Lenna rested her forehead on her niece's shoulder. The wind was whipping around them, the cold sharp as a little paring knife, a rapier blade of winter chill sighing over the ramparts, the last breath of summer.
Sandor LIII
He was growing tired of the fucking litany every night as the fire died. Petulant that he'd refused to take her straight to the nearest port, the child had soured again. Funny, he kind of regretted it. He saw something of himself in the girl, pitiful as that was, and the anger in her spoke to him. She was a fighter, just as he was, but she had not yet learned how to control herself.
"...Joffrey...Cersei...Walder Frey...Meryn Trant...Tywin Lannister...The Red Woman...Beric Dondarrion…" she said. She didn't bother to whisper, her little voice rising over the hum of the crickets and frogs. "Thoros of Myr...Ilyn Payne..The Mountain…"
"Are you going to kill every fucking person in Westeros, little wolf? Who will be left when you're done, I wonder? Hate is as good a thing as any to keep a person going," he replied, his eyes still shut. Hate. Strange how its opposite could hone that rage, make it sharper and more dangerous. He felt it bubbling up twice as hot every time he thought of Lenna, remembered why he was a thousand miles away in this fucking backwater with this surly child and not with her, where he belonged. "Better than most. You're not the only one with a list, only if you were smart, you wouldn't share it."
"Who's on yours?"
It was the first time in a few weeks that Arya's voice had lost its poison when she spoke to him.
"We'll just say that if we happen to come across my brother, maybe we can both cross him off our lists."
"If he were here right now, what would you do?" The child had rolled up onto her elbow, large eyes glinting in the darkness, but the night too thick to see their color.
Sandor took a breath. "I'd kill him. Same as you."
"Your own kin?" she prodded.
"Blood doesn't make kin. He's no brother to me," he said. "Go to sleep."
"I can't sleep until I say them all."
He sighed. "Go on. Get it over with then. Your fucking list of doomed men."
"There's only one name left," she taunted. He knew what was coming next. "The Hound."
He humphed, shutting his eyes again, but it was almost as if he could feel the child thinking, his own buzzing thoughts joining in the whirr of the night until he drifted off, the girl's soft snuffling assuring him he wouldn't die that night. No, he was still too useful, and though his sleep would be troubled, it would not be because of Arya Stark.
He woke abruptly in the gray light before dawn. The fire was cold and the grass was wet with dew. He nearly slipped as he scrambled to his feet, the girl gone. She had a frustrating tendency to wander off, but he knew what she was doing.
It took him a quarter hour to find her, but when he did, she was engaged exactly as he expected, little feet skipping and sliding over the ground, the thin blade cutting through the air neatly, elegantly, the way a lady's hands might in a dance.
They had left five men dead at that inn over a week before. They'd killed the lot of them, Lannisters drifting too far afield, and they'd taken their prizes. Her little blade, thin and keen, and his sack full of chickens. They'd just finished polishing them off, though they'd stopped tasting good after a few days. Still, it had been nice to have a full stomach for once.
His shock at her viciousness had worn off, and he'd been half-impressed by her talent, green as it was. More than half. She was about the age he'd been when he'd found his calling, perhaps eleven. He'd never asked, and he didn't know for sure, but she had the same thirst he'd had, just not the same developed judgment. The practice.
His annoyance in the aftermath of the Twins when he'd unexpectedly had to kill that group of Frey bannermen had been real battle lust when he found himself facing a better equipped band of Lannister fighting men. He'd known how it would end as soon that one fool cunt had recognized him and been stupid enough to say so. There was no way he could leave that place without slaughtering the witnesses, but he'd found her a far better fighter than he had expected, especially after the hack-job she'd done of her first Frey.
They'd gone into the inn on some business about a sword, that thin blade she was now drawing through the air, one hand behind her back. Needle, she called it. He'd laughed. Naming swords had always seemed damn idiotic to him. Steel was steel and not your friend, just another tool. A sword with a name didn't work any better than one without, not in his experience. Not that he was lacking in affection for his own, it had hung on his hip for many years, but he appreciated it for what he could do with it, not for what it was. It was his skill, his ability, that transformed it from a hunk of metal into something more.
She was so engrossed in her fancy footwork that she didn't hear him coming. His lips pursed in disapproval and he made a sound of dismay. She had talent aplenty, but no skill. Not yet, at least.
"What are you doing, girl?"
She barely hesitated, but it was there, a slight stumble in the foot, the flaring of the nostrils.
"I'm practicing."
"What, ways to die?" he chortled. It was a common foible in those starting out. Her focus was too singular. He bet that if she blinked her eyes would water. If she wasn't aware of everything going on around her, she would find a sword through her kidneys in short order, and it would be her blood on the dirt and not her fancy bladework that would stun her foes.
"No one's going to kill me," she replied, and it wasn't defiance. He barked a dry laugh. The girl actually believed it.
"They will if you mince around like that," he said, hooking his finger in his sword belt and chewing on his tongue. "You didn't even hear me."
"Yes, I did," she retorted, the familiar poison in her babyish voice, but her petulance had the same note as any guilty child caught in a lie and digging their heels in deeper. "I'm ignoring you."
He snorted. Tenacity, he thought absently, and it felt like a dagger in the lung.
"That's no way to fight." She had talent, maybe even enough discipline to turn it into something more than talent, but her damn frivolous-
"It's not fighting," she said, her tone whiny as a brat's. She is one. "It's water dancing."
He laughed at that. Fucking ridiculous notion.
"Dancing. You ought to put on a dress. Who taught you that shite?" It was a bloody waste of both their time.
She turned on her heel, levelling the sword at him. "The greatest swordsman who ever lived. The first sword to the Sea-Lord of Braavos, Syrio Forel."
Braavos. There it was again. "That the friend you wouldn't shut up about? The one you want to go see. Bet he was greasy, they all are."
"He was not."
"Was? Dead, then," he crowed. She was looking at him sullenly, her mouth twisted up like a mouse turd. He felt a faint twinge of guilt. "How?"
"He was killed."
"Who by?" he prodded.
"Meryn Trant. That's why Ser Meryn's on my list." The girl was spewing now, spit flying from her lips and flames from her eyes.
"Meryn Trant?" Disbelief and surprise squeezed it out of him. "The greatest swordsman who ever lived killed by Meryn Fucking Trant?" Trant was always too busy with drinking and diddling little girls to be found in the training yards. Sandor knew what he looked like without his damned Kingsguard armor on, too, had seen his pale, doughy flesh more than he'd ever want to in the bathhouse. His flabby belly and his limp little pecker.
"He was outnumbered." Her face was going red and she wouldn't look at him. He thought for a moment that she was crying.
"Have to be to fall to Trant," Sandor replied. "Any boy holding a sword could beat three Meryn Trants. Or just one girl, I'd think."
The girl didn't hear the compliment, too wrapped up in her own anger and sorrow. "He didn't have a sword, or armor, just a stick-"
"The greatest swordsman who ever lived didn't have a sword?" He chortled at the ridiculousness of it, of her. Mossy eyes flickering with disdain flashed in his mind unbidden, and he pushed the derision back down again. The child was clearly pained by the memory. He'd often wondered where she'd gotten to that day they'd raided the Tower of the Hand. She'd disappeared handily, most thinking her dead, her broken little body thrown into some pit she wouldn't be discovered. He'd never bought it. She was too scrappy. Too like him.
"Go on then," he said flatly. "Let's see what he taught you. Do it for your Braavosi friend."
Her movement was agile but too showy, fueled by anger and unfocused. When the little blade was thrust toward his midsection, he didn't bother to move. It wedged in his armor, and he barely felt it through the layers of his hauberk and mail. It lodged there twanging, the child unable to remove it.
With a quick tug, he took it out as easily as if it was a toothpick, holding the slender blade in his hand as he examined the hilt. It was castle-forged steel, a well-wrought little sword and wickedly sharp, not at all unlike its owner. Far too costly and too deadly to have ever been intended as a toy. He wondered how she'd come by it.
"Not shabby," he said, "the sword or the fighter, but you've got it wrong, little wolf. Your friend might have been the best swordsman in the world, all that fancy footwork, but he's dead. Like most of your friends. Why? Because Meryn Trant had armor, and a big fucking sword. And Meryn Trant didn't give a fuck about what he was doing. He was just following orders."
"He wanted to kill him-" the girl protested hotly.
"Aye," Sandor replied. "But not because he was angry. He wanted to kill him because he enjoyed it. It was his job. Just as it was my job. Just as it is my job, still."
He twirled her little needle and offered it back to her. Little fingers wrapped themselves carefully in place, but her Stark eyes looked up at him seriously.
"You've got your list, wolf-girl," he said quietly. "You've got a lot of anger in there, but what will you do when all the people you want to kill are dead, I wonder?"
It was a question he often asked himself, what he would actually do once the fighting and the killing were over. There was a good chance, one that he almost relied on, that it would never be done, that she would never be completely safe and there would always be someone else for him to hunt down and kill, just a hound on the hunt for his mistress, dragging back his quarry and laying it at her feet. Even if she didn't want him to do it, he'd do it anyway.
The irony of his questioning of this hateful child wasn't completely lost on him. He was deterring her from just the sort of thing that kept him putting one foot in front of the other. Rage had been his best friend for many years, had seen him through the vast majority of his bitter existence, but he rememberer what it was like to be happy, just as he wagered this girl did. It did nothing to quell that anger, rather it did the opposite. The memory only further enraged him, reminded him of what he'd lost. This child was no different, and far too young to know that the pain far exceeded the pleasure. For her, he imagined, it had been the other way around, and she was howling for it.
He knew better than most that you couldn't unspin time.
"You're friend is dead, little wolf," he growled. "Just don't forget that you are not. Keep it that way."
The days started to bleed together until he wasn't sure how long it had been since they'd left the Twins. A month at least, if he was guessing. That meant it had been three months, maybe closer to four, since he'd left Riverrun. By the time he got the child to the Eyrie and safe into her aunt's keeping, it would be nearly six months. Then he'd go back to Riverrun, and maybe even turn North thereafter- gods, it would be a year before he made it to White Harbor. A whole bloody year.
"It's going to rain soon."
They'd stopped to piss and water the horse, and he looked up at the sky with annoyance, his dark thoughts becoming even darker at the girl's insistence that he was as stupid as he was ugly. Of course it was going to fucking rain. He'd been watching the clouds all day, scuttling and blending and the color of slate.
"Where are we?"
He sighed, almost a huff, returning to where Stranger was drinking from the stream at his leisure. Worse to worst, they could hunker down here for the storm. They'd stopped at a bridge, clambering down the streambank. He knelt down to start refilling the water skins.
"Near Fairmarket, I think," he said after a while, squinting at where the sun was hiding behind the clouds, only able to tell its position because the sky was a little lighter in that spot.
"You think? You don't have a map?"
Memory hit him like a stone in the sternum, Lenna's voice asking so similar a question, and when the pain subsided, he grimaced.
"No, I don't have a map." Lenna's reaction had once made him grin, the same disbelief that he could find their way without a damn piece of parchment with pictures drawn on it by some man who'd never been where they were standing. She'd always been too reliant on words in books, not understanding the limits of that kind of knowledge. Her Myrish poetry had done them an immense amount of good in the wilds.
"Don't you think we should get one?" the child prodded, eyebrow cocked haughtily.
He barked dryly. "Aye. Next map shop you see, point it out and I'll buy you one."
"How far is it to the Eyrie?"
"Far," he said shortly, wiping the water from his hands, his patience thinning. She would have peppered him with questions from daybreak to sunset if he let her. Every last one made his frustration rise until he wanted to kick something.
"And you're sure we're going the right way?"
"Believe me, girl," he replied with a grinding of teeth. "I want you there as soon as I can. Be on my way."
"White Harbor?"
He let out a long breath through his nose. He hated how smart she was. Arya Stark was nothing at all like her dainty elder sister. The child saw through bullshit and found the weaknesses in his armor more quickly than any he'd met before. Or, at least, she prodded him more than anyone he'd known before, even Lenna. She was always gently teasing, but Arya Stark wanted a good spar. It was both refreshing and infuriating that she wasn't afraid of him. Sansa Stark had been terrified of him, and he preferred it that way. This one pushed and prodded, and he found he barely had any bark for her, let alone bite.
Especially when she brought up Lenna, which was more than he liked.
"No," he replied shortly, pushing the notion away. It had tempted him far too often. Sometimes he was just a breath, a contraction of muscle away from turning the horses north and damning the Starks and their cause.
"I thought-"
"There is more work to be done," he said, wiping his hands. "I'll do as I've been bid, then I'll return to your brother at Riverrun. See what is needed from there."
The child had fallen silent, and when he glanced at her, she looked almost as desolate as he felt. Her brow was dark, two little dashes carved into her forehead, and she had opened her mouth as if to speak.
"Seven blessings."
They both looked up. A man and a child were looking down on them from the seat of their cart, laden with hay. The man's face was wary.
"What do you want?" Sandor asked quickly.
"You're on my land," the man replied succinctly.
"I'm standing-"
"We were just watering the horses. We'll be on our way," Arya said quickly, her tone unusually placating. The man seemed satisfied, and Sandor successfully repressed the urge to say something biting. Instead, he moved to untangle Stranger's bridle from the branch that had served as his hitching post.
"Forgive my father." He paused, slowly looking at the child. She had adapted a humble stance, and he saw it for the farce it was. "He was wounded in the war. Our cottage burned down while he was away, and my mother with it."
What in the seven hells-
"He's never been the same."
Sandor looked at the man askance, trying to keep his agitation off his face.
"What house did he fight for?" the man asked, directing the question to Arya rather than Sandor. Arya looked at him for a long moment. It could be a costly answer and he would let her know how stupid she had been. Later.
"The Tullys of Riverrun," she answered. The man's face lightened and he cleared his throat.
"There's a storm coming," the man said, his voice now kindly. "You'll be wanting a roof tonight. There's fresh hay in the barn. And Sally here makes rabbit stew just like her mum used to do." He turned his attention to Sandor. "We don't have much, but any man who has bled for House Tully is welcome to it."
Sandor's gave a piteous rumble at the idea of stew, and Arya's gray eyes were looking at him imploringly. She was as much a hound as he was at time, her face long and pleading as a pup's. He nodded, and she smiled. A real, genuine smile. His lip twitched to return it against his will.
The man's croft was humble, just the one room. They entered through a low door, the man lifting the leather coverings at the windows to let light filter into the shadowed place like dirty dishwater. There was a rough table with two benches near the hearth, a straw-filled mattress against one whitewashed wall. Save for the barrels of apples and onions, it was otherwise bare but clean.
"My wife died a little over a year ago," the man said. "We aren't much by way of housekeepers. Sally does her best, though." He reached out and laid his hand on the child's head and Sandor felt badly for him.
"Sorry to hear that," Arya said, his feeling in her words. "My mother died, too."
The mask she had been wearing, that of his daughter, slipped a little. The girl hadn't permitted herself to cry since the night of the massacre. He wondered how she held all of it in, that grief and anger. His mother had died when he was a lad, he thought he was eight or nine, and he'd cried for days, alone in his room and out in fields chasing after the dogs. They'd licked the salt off his face, and it was the only comfort he'd been offered, comfort he had wanted. When he reached for his father, he'd been turned away, and then the grief had turned to more anger, layered on top of the rage over…
He pressed his lips together and looked uncomfortably at the farmer. He never knew what to say.
"Please, sit," the man said, gesturing to the benches. They were sturdy enough to hold even him. "Sally will just heat up our supper."
Water was brought, and Arya sat next to him, quiet as a woodland creature, thinking very hard by the pleating on her brow.
Stew was brought and placed before them in large crocks. Sandor was never one for manners, and it took much of his remaining control not to gulp the hot stew down in one bolt. Instead, he waited until it was proper, the heat of the bowl warming his hands. He hadn't even noticed they were cold, but the welcome heat made him realize that winter was indeed on the wing.
"Did you fight at the Twins?" the man asked, startling him enough to draw his attention.
"Not much of a fight, more like a slaughter," he replied darkly, putting his bowl down and cutting a remorseful look in the child's direction. Her eyes were on her stew.
"The Red Wedding, they're calling it," the man said. In past days, Sandor might have humphed at such a name. But he couldn't think of a better way to describe what had happened. It was a wedding, and it had run red with blood.
"Walder Frey committed sacrilege that day," the man continued frostily. "He shared bread and salt with the Starks. He offered them guest right."
"Guest right don't mean much these days," Sandor growled.
"It means something to me," the farmer said sternly, looking around as if to remind Sandor that he was enjoying it at that moment. "The gods will have their vengeance. Frey will burn in the seventh hell for what he did. Things were different when Hoster Tully ruled the Riverlands. We had good years and bad years, same as anyone, but we were safe. Now the Freys raiders come plundering, steal our food, steal our silver. I was going to send Sally north to stay with my brother, but the north is no better. Greyjoys and then Boltons in Winterfell, and now Manderly-"
"What of Manderly?"
Something both hot rose from his gut and collided with cold dread rushing down from his throat. The impact was enough to make him glad he was sitting, praying that his face wasn't showing the violence in his chest at hearing that name.
"He's allied himself with the Freys and Boltons," the farmer spat. "Heard about it at the market yesterday. Sold his daughter and his nieces in marriage."
"His daughter?" Sandor said quietly, dread like a snake slithering through his gut and slowly squeezing.
"Aye," he replied. "Sure she had something to do with Manderly turning his back on his lord, too. Spent too long in the south, she did. The one that was kidnapped during the Blackwater, ransomed north, but still in the Lannisters' pockets, I'd wager."
"No," Sandor said without thinking. The man looked at him sharply. "I mean to say, why would Manderly listen to his daughter?"
"Lots in it for him," the man replied. "His daughter married to Frey's son, one of his nieces, too. And then the other, she'll be Lady of Winterfell, now."
Arya's eyes were burning a hole in the table, her knuckles white on crock of stew.
"How?" she asked, her tone light but her eyes murderous.
"To be married to Ramsay Bolton. Lord Roose's son."
"Lord Roose doesn't have a son," Arya said, and the clipped tones of a high-born made an appearance that made his hackles rise.
"His bastard," the farmer said, clearing his throat as if the word made him uncomfortable. "Legitimized him. Made him his heir and gave him Winterfell after he won it back from the Greyjoys."
"The Greyjoys had Winterfell?" Arya asked, her fingertips pressed into her bowl so tightly they'd turned white. Sandor wondered how much the girl had missed, and he kicked himself for not trying to find out sooner.
"Enough," Sandor growled, and Arya slammed her mouth shut, looking away with trouble in her eyes.
"You look like you could really swing that sword," the man continued, looking between them hesitantly. "A real warrior, with proper training. Those raiders wouldn't stand a chance against you. Freys or the others."
"Others?" Arya asked. Sandor nearly rolled his eyes. It was her damn ruse that had landed them at this man's table, and she was going to out them. Too many fucking questions. "What others?"
"The Mountain and his men," the farmer replied. "They haven't let up, just joined forces with the Freys. Been a few weeks since they've been seen around here, but-"
"How long?" Sandor demanded, peeved that he was grateful to the girl for her persistent interrogations.
"A few weeks," the man repeated. "Not a month, I don't think." He took a bit of his stew, looking thoughtful. "How about if you stayed until the new moon. I could use a man to help with-"
"We'll be leaving at first light," Sandor said, putting his bowl down. The man nodded, with faint disappointment.
"Very well," the man replied. "It was just a thought."
Conversation was rather stilted after that, the man leading them into his barn and showing them where they could bed down. Sandor was curt and snarling by the time the man left with the lantern, unable to enjoy the hay as he lay and looked up into the darkness of the barn.
"She won't do it."
"Hm?" he grunted. He heard the girl turn in her pile of hay. He knew exactly what she was talking about, he'd been thinking about it all night, but he sure as hell didn't want to discuss it with her. It was bad enough she could read him well enough to know what he was bothering him.
"If Lady Helenna did what you said, if she married you," Arya said. "She won't do it."
He felt an unwelcome surge of affection for the child, and he turned his head. If he could see her eyes glittering in the dark, he was sure that she saw his.
"I know, little wolf," he replied. "She won't do it. She's got something else planned."
"What do you mean?" she asked quietly.
"Lenna is smart," he said, staring once again into the dark above him. "She'll find a way out of it. She has before."
"The Mountain?" she asked, and he heard a note of eagerness in the question, like a child asking for a bedtime story.
He grunted. "Aye. It didn't work out how we'd planned, but it worked out all the same. Just as this will."
"And if it doesn't?"
He closed his eyes. "Remember, little wolf. You aren't the only one with a list."
A/N: hope everyone had a good week. Onwards we go.