Lenna LIV

Alarm made her sit straight up in her bed, her pulse accelerating so quickly she felt drunk, the room spinning, flailing like seaweed in storm. At first, she thought it was only a dream, that she had imagined that thunderous knock on her door. She was breathing hard, hand immediately on her abdomen, shifting back against her headboard as she tried to still her heart, still careening in her chest.

She inhaled through her nose, pursing her lips as the air left her lungs in a long stream. Her heartbeat slowed, still thumping violently against her breastbone, but the room itself had thankfully gone still. Then, the clatter sounded again, this time bringing her to her feet, the hair on the back of her neck and arms raised in panic.

"My lady." It was Maester Loren's soft voice at her door. Her vision pulsated with her heart, the darkened room coming into focus between flashes of white and red. She tried to reassure herself that there was no danger, that she was in her own room in the New Castle, but the air in the room seemed to crackle with disquiet.

"My lady, you must come. Quickly." The urgency in his voice propelled her across the flagstones without further thought, only a high choking in her throat as fingers groped for the iron ring to open the door.

Her first thought was of her father, that something had happened and he was ill. The second was that there had been news, perhaps from Sandor. Whatever it was, Maester Loren's voice was not joyful, and she shivered, the floor cold beneath her bare feet as she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, plucked from the chair as she fled from her room. The Maester was in the hallway, in his nightshirt and a cloak, hair mussed with a lamp in his hand.

"My father-" she said, noting the tremble in her own voice.

"Perfectly well, my lady," he replied and she felt the briefest flash of relief. "Waiting, and it cannot be delayed, I'm afraid."

She didn't remember the journey from her rooms to her father's study, the maester trailing behind her with the lamp to light her way. She pushed the heavy door open with both hands, bursting into the familiar room. Her father was seated behind his desk looking haggard, and as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she became keenly aware of two figures in the shadow. One small, hood up and facing the window, the other standing at the hearth, impossibly tall. Her heart gave a painful, hopeful leap.

"Lenna," the cloaked figure said, whirling around at the sound of the door. Lenna herself still wasn't sure who it was until the figure had wrapped its arms around her, and the cloak fell back to reveal hair that flamed in the flickering firelight.

"Sansa?" she whispered, still disbelieving. The tall figure unfolded itself from the mantle, Brienne of Tarth's unwavering blue gaze discernible even in the low light of the dying fire. "Lady Brienne?"

Wyman looked between the Maid of Tarth and his daughter, his face guarded and dark with misgiving.

"Lenna?" Sansa said, pulling away from the impulsive embrace and looking down at her with an expression akin to horror. Lenna noted immediately that her eyes were on the very obvious thickening at her middle. The midwife said she was between five and six months along now. Even sheltered Sansa would have no doubt as to its cause. She was an older sister, had seen her own mother growing with her younger siblings, and the look on her face told Lenna that she suspected she knew exactly who had put the child there, and it repulsed her. Lenna placed her hand on top of the rounding protectively, ruefully, the action pulling the fabric of her nightdress taut against her, making it even more pronounced.

"Did he-" the girl began, then seemed to bite her tongue, pale throat working. To her surprise, Lenna saw guilt in the sweet lines of the girl's face, guilt and hate. "I'm so sorry, Lenna."

Lenna looked at both her father and Brienne with wry amusement. Their respective looks of discomfort made her chortle with humor at complete odds with the situation.

"Don't be," she replied, turning back to her young friend. She laid a hand on Sansa's pale cheek, turning the pinched but lovely face to her own. "I certainly am not."

"What-"

"It is a story for another time," Lenna said softly, knowing that Sansa would not be put off for long. She caught her young friend's hands in both of hers. They were shaking and cold, and the girl's lip was trembling, too. "Sansa, I never thought I'd see you again."

Sansa looked at the floor, her mouth working, then a tear trickled down her cheek, though whether she was pained or happy, Lenna could not tell.

"I never thought-" she began, then she looked up at Lenna earnestly. "I am so happy that you are safe. We all thought- I thought- I saw-"

"I know," Lenna said. "I promise you that we will talk. But for now, we need to know why you are here."

"She's kept us waiting," Wyman said, huffing like a frustrated horse, all warm bluster. "Insisted she couldn't talk before she saw you."

"It's not that," Sansa said defensively. Lenna was well aware that she'd always hated feeling like people were angry with her. She hesitated but a moment, dipping her hand into her cloak. Slim fingers retrieved an envelope, handing it to Lenna. "I was bid not say anything until I had delivered this to you."

Lenna took it from her without reaction, flipping it over to see the seal. Another Tyrell rose.

Ah, she thought, the secrets in Olenna Tyrell's earlier letter beginning to unravel like a sleeve caught on a thorn.

Brienne of Tarth had taken a few steps forward, her own brow furrowed, mouth pulling down dourly. She had evidently not been aware that her young charge was carrying such. Lenna was surprised at that. But, then again, she was surprised that either of them was in White Harbor at all. She eyed Brienne for a moment, the larger woman's face betraying nothing but her customary melancholy befuddlement.

There were so many questions Lenna wanted to ask.

"Lady Olenna," Sansa choked, wrapping her arms around her middle. "She gave it to me when I left. She arranged passage for me, sending Lady Brienne to keep me safe. We left a week ago. The King is to marry...I suppose he is married now…"

There was no time to console Sansa Stark. So, a marriage between House Lannister and House Tyrell would have already taken place, and Sansa sent away beforehand. Wyman was looking at his hands, splayed on the desk, white eyebrows like angry caterpillars on his forehead. With a heavy sigh, Lenna broke the seal and moved closed to the fire to read the spidery hand. The fine script was not an apt messenger for the tidings it conveyed.

My dear niece,

I am entrusting the girl to your keeping, along with her overgrown nursemaid. Your father will know what to do with her when the time comes. She is in no real danger for now. Her tormentor will be dead by the time she reaches you, with little grief felt by you, her, or most of Seven Kingdoms. I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but I prefer abundance of caution to careless mistakes: no one may know that you have her.

I have little time or opportunity for prevarication, girl. I think we may agree that reunification of the realm is in order, and I hope that in short order these asinine provocations will cease. We have more pressing matters to attend to than infighting amongst our own lords. Prepare.

Olenna

Lenna handed the letter to her father, who took it as warily as if it were a snake. Prepare. Olenna Tyrell spoke in riddles so knotted that even her decade amongst the Lannisters could not help her understand the old lady's wishes.

Prepare for what? How? If Olenna was right, then Joffrey was dead and Tommen would take his place on the throne, Cersei again a regent.

Pressing matters. Lenna was sure she did not know what Olenna meant, but her intent was clear and it was Lenna's hope, too: the cessation of warfare in the North and a reestablishment of order.

"What is it?" Sansa asked, her face pinched.

"We will discuss it in the morning," Lenna replied without so much as a pause, frowning and troubled. She shook her head, finding her equilibrium again, relieved when her father took the letter from her hand. It had weighed upon her without her even realizing it, and its removal was a tangible lightening. She turned to Sansa with a breath. "Now, you must be exhausted, my dear. Let's have rooms prepared for you both."

"Lenna-" Sansa said, unwilling to be turned away.

"It will wait until tomorrow," she said tiredly. Sometimes, like this moment, she felt so weary she could sleep standing. "Please, Sansa. Rest." She didn't know who she was pleading for more, herself or the girl.

Sansa gave her a watery smile, and threw her arms around her neck again, pulling Lenna close. The chilly foreboding in her gut warmed a bit as she allowed herself to tighten her own embrace, the girl relaxing against her slightly in such a way that even Lenna could feel her relief. Sansa was thin as ever, but she was there and well, two things Lenna had never allowed herself to even hope for after the Blackwater.

"I am so glad," Sansa murmured, just loud enough for the two of them to hear it. Lenna ran her hand over the girl's head and kissed her cheek.

"Aye," she replied. "Me too."

Lenna saw them both quartered herself, resisting Brienne of Tarth's protests at being housed in the family wing once Sansa had been left sleepy and safe in her room. Lenna had ordered them both installed on the same hall, close to her own rooms. It was in a secluded part of the Keep, away from her father's modest court. She had been steadily decreasing the amount of time she spent visible to their people, knowing that eventually her absence would be explained by a long illness. Keeping Sansa and Brienne out of sight would be a necessary challenge until it was decided what was to be done with them.

At Brienne's door, Lenna paused. The much taller woman hesitated at the threshold.

"I do not wish to keep you from well-deserved rest," she began, feeling uncomfortable under that piercing stare, "but I must ask. Ser Jaime-"

"He is well," Brienne replied quickly, almost as if she had expected the question, turning back to Lenna with an expression on her face that laid the warrior bare. Lenna had long suspected that Brienne of Tarth felt something for Jaime Lannister beyond the requirements of duty or honor, but the awful, tight yearning on her homely face was almost too much for Lenna to witness. Brienne cleared her throat roughly. "And Clegane?"

Lenna's hand went to her belly again. It seemed to have become her constant habit, every little moment comforting herself with the reminder of the child, a bit of him with her.

"I do not know," she replied huskily, shaking her head. How could she explain to this woman, perhaps the only who could understand, that she felt like she was losing a part of herself each day she struggled to remember what he smelled like, or the sound of his voice, or the way he looked at her from behind the curtain of his hair? She bit her lip until she tasted iron, leaving the inside of her mouth swollen but her cheeks dry.

"He is not here?" Brienne asked incredulously, brilliant eyes wide as bucklers in indignation. "You're with child, and he-"

"He does not know," Lenna replied feverishly, at once rising to his defense. "I didn't find out until after he'd gone."

Brienne's face was a field of furrows, deep and shadowed, her mouth drawn downwards.

"He would be here," she replied solemnly. When Lenna was able to meet her eye, Brienne's face conveyed the boundless and somber faith that Lenna had once felt. She envied Tarth that kind of certainty. It was a stranger to her now.

"If he knew, he would be here," Brienne assured her again, looking so stiff that Lenna was sure she was thinking of reaching out to pat her arm, hug her, even.

"Aye," Lenna said sadly, allowing herself to acknowledge the truth in it. Brienne was right. Sandor would never have left her if he had known, consequences be damned. "I believe you are right. But I have not heard from him since the week after our marriage."

Brienne's eyebrows shot up, what Lenna could see of them, so pale as to be almost invisible.

"Marriage." The word was a ghost, wispy with disbelief. It made Lenna want to laugh and cry. There were days when she thought she'd fabricated it herself. It hardly seemed real, and not in a dreamy, maidenly way, but in a mocking, biting way that made her mouth taste bitter at the memory.

"Yes, of course," Lenna said with a wry smile, distancing herself from her wallowing. "It is not so scandalous, you see." She laughed mirthlessly. "He made an honest woman of me."

She'd intended it to make Tarth crack one of her crooked smiles. Her own weak smirk died at the avidity in Brienne's eyes.

"I rather think it was you who made an honest man of him," Brienne answered, and though the words themselves were playful, the tone was not, and Lenna felt her eyes prick.

"We will talk tomorrow," she said, and the other woman nodded. "After breakfast."

But, she missed breakfast, and she was irritated that she wasn't woken sooner. The breakfast room was empty when she went in search of her family, and when she came to her father's study, only Wyman was present.

"Where are the girls? Lady Sansa?" she asked.

"Walking the strand," he replied curtly, going through his morning's correspondence.

"Is that advisable?" Lenna asked in surprise.

"That Tarth woman is with them," he said tersely, not looking up. "I reckon they're safe."

Lenna sat down in the chair opposite him, slouching to relieve the pressure on her lower back even as she wondered why her father was so crotchety.

It didn't take but a moment for him to tell her. He slid a raven born parchment across the desk to her. The first thing she noted was the black border. She scrutinized her father's face, looking for signs of grief, terrified for Wylis.

She saw nothing but her own careworn weariness reflected back at her.

"It was directed to you," he said quietly when she noted the broken seal. A lion. "But I opened it anyway. Forgive me. I feared-"

"I know what you feared," she replied, unrolling it. The message was brief, only six words, the familiar hand of Cersei Lannister seeming to tremble on the parchment, grief and pain making the normally graceful letters jagged.

My boy- your king- is dead.

Lenna inhaled a sharp breath, startled when her eyes pricked. There was no possibility that her father could understand the import of such a message, the almost insurmountable rage and pain in that scattering of words. But Lenna did. She knew Cersei better than anyone, and she knew without any doubts that such a letter was a howling, a roar. What Lenna couldn't have explained was why she herself should feel so desolate in the face of it.

The day they had learned that Ser Jaime was missing, Lenna had seen briefly past the cruel, hard exterior of the queen, had gotten a glimpse of her soft and raw insides when Cersei had walked into her with arms outstretched for comfort. Lenna had been uncomfortable, almost fearful, but also humbled.

As much as she knew she should be rejoicing in such news, she couldn't. She could not even muster relief.

"What now?" she whispered quickly, dashing the tears from her eyes as they spilled. Just two. Just enough, she prayed.

"There will be a new king, of course," Wyman said with a raised eyebrow. "The younger prince."

"Tommen," Lenna said, sniffing and trying to regain her control. She could not ease the strange tightening in her breast, no matter how she tried. "Tommen will be king."

"Aye," her father said tightly, watching her intently.

"He's a good lad," she said, laying the parchment down on the surface of the desk. "He will-"

"He's under her control," Wyman said. "She's to be regent until his sixteenth year, remember?"

"Cersei-" Lenna said, her brow furrowed. Her brain felt gray and muddled. "She-"

"What?" Wyman thundered. "Damn it all, Lenna, I'd almost think-"

"She leaned on me, father, as a friend," Lenna bit out, then the words came tumbling out. "I don't trust her, I don't even like her, but how sad she is, truly. How much she wants to be loved, to love, even, and now- I cannot bear to think of what she must be feeling." She felt herself choke, sitting heavily down in the chair opposite her father, looking at her hands like dead, white pigeons in her lap. "Joffrey was a terrible king, but forgive me, father, I remember him as a little boy. He would climb into my lap and lay against my breast and read to me, and he was sweet then. Am I not permitted just a moment of mourning him as he was then? Just a child."

She burst into tears, then, escaping her father's confused expression, angry as a winter squall. With a hand over her mouth the muffle her crying, she retreated to the window ledge.

To lose a child-

She twisted her head away from the very thought. More than anything, she wanted Sandor. He would understand. He was the only one who could.

Her face was swollen, but when she turned to her father again, he looked chastened.

"I forget sometimes," he said. "I forget how we left you there with them. Of course you would feel for them. You know them, perhaps even better than they know themselves."

Lenna didn't respond right away, instead swallowing the rest of her tears. The child in her belly shifted, and she was grateful for the reminder that it yet lived, that it still quickened in her.

"What is to be done now?" she asked perfunctorily, squeezing her hands together, the fine bones popping. "Lady Sansa is safe here. Tommen on the throne, whatever you think, is a new opportunity. He is very young, I grant you, but he is a good boy. He and Myrcella both. Joffrey got all of the meanness. Neither of the other two have an ounce of malice in them."

"One wonders how they avoided it," Wyman said drily. Lenna darted him a bitter look. "But I do not doubt what you say." He drew out the letter Sansa Stark had borne to them. "What did you make of this? We did not have the opportunity to discuss it last night."

"I would think part of it rather obvious," Lenna said. "The first, at least. Olenna knew Joffrey would be dead before she sent Sansa. That makes some things fairly evident."

"She had him killed."

"More than likely. I'm sure we will hear the greater story before long. Cersei didn't exactly go into detail."

"And the last part," Wyman said, stroking his beard.

Lenna hesitated, her mouth open. She wasn't sure about what she wanted to say, didn't know how complete a truth it was, more a feeling.

"She believes that reuniting the realm is possible," Lenna replied. "I wonder if she knows that Robb Stark yet lives."

"I would wager that woman knows everything and then some," Wyman returned.

"She clearly offers us alliance."

"House Manderly and House Tyrell," her father said wryly. "In all your study of history, Lenna, did you find we ever learned anything from our pasts?"

"Not at all," she replied with a humorless smirk of her own. "We are drawn back and back again into the same petty feuds, able to only go so far in our own rising."

Her father rose and went to the window where she was standing, looking eastward over the sea.

"She is right," he said lowly. "We do have more pressing matters to attend to than our own concerns."

Lenna looked up at him. She saw the shadow of the young man he had been, brash and blustery and full of fight. His face, always kindly in her eyes, had turned to flint as he looked over the Narrow Sea, his eyes narrowed as if he could see all the way to Essos.

"There are reports from the seamen," he said quietly. "Daenerys Targaryen lives."

"She has for a long time," Lenna replied shortly. "We all know the story, how the princess was taken across the sea."

"And now she is no longer a baby," Wyman said. "But the widow of a Dothraki khal, and, they say that she has three dragons."

Lenna was speechless for a moment. Dragons, she thought in wonder, her lips parted. No one had seen dragons in-

"I am not sure of how true the reports of them are," her father continued, "but to be sure she has started to raise an army."

"To what purpose?" Lenna asked, looking back at her father, visions of fire and scales gone.

"What do you think?" her father asked, speaking to her like a silly child. "To take back her throne."

A knock sounded at the door before she could make reply. Lenna went and opened it herself, only to find Sansa Stark standing in the hallway, her nieces and Lady Brienne behind her.

For the second time, Sansa threw her arms around Lenna's neck and held her close. Lenna returned her embrace, surprised when she heard Sansa laugh.

"I'm so glad to be here," she said quietly. "I never imagined-"

"Come in, please," Lenna said, standing aside to usher the family in. Her father had turned from her again, but she saw his agitation in the tight grip of his fingers where they were clasped behind his back. He lifted his head, squaring his shoulders, the breeze from the casement making his white hair to flutter around him like foam, and when he turned to his young guest, his face was once against open and affable, his eyes sparkling.

Lenna had a moment of realization that it was not just her mother who had learned from the Lannisters how to play their games. Her House and its members had much to thank their time in lions' dens for, not least of which was finding sincerity in their masks. There was nothing false in her father's mien when he looked to young Sansa Stark, and she wondered if he saw something of his girls in her young face, still strained by her ordeal.

Sansa came before Wyman a little shyly, dropping a curtsey that made the old lord chortle. His gentleness was not feigned when he bowed, though Lenna could tell he wanted to wrap the poor thing up in a hug. He seemed to understand how important the girl's dignity was to her, and Sansa had developed the air and grace of a real lady in the months since Lenna had last seen her.

"It's a little crowded in here," Wyman said, moving to warm his hands at the hearth, talk of Targaryen princesses and dragons abandoned for the time, "but I would rather not expose you to the Merman's Court, my lady."

Sansa nodded, sinking into the chair that was offered to her. Lenna came to sit beside her while the girls found seats about the room. Brienne of Tarth stood on the opposite side of the mantle from Wyman, her hands clasped behind her back, her mouth drawn downward and drooping.

Sansa slipped her hand into Lenna's, and her fingers were freezing. Lenna chafed them between her own.

"It's gotten quite cold," she said lightly.

"I'd forgotten what it felt like," Sansa said. "I never thought I'd be North again."

Lenna squeezed her hand. "We have much to talk about it seems. Firstly, how did both of you come to be here?" She looked at Brienne, the intense blue gaze shifting away from hers to look at the fire instead.

She felt Sansa take in a deep breath next to her.

"I don't know how much you've heard," Sansa replied. "After you...left," she said, looking at Wylla and Wynna, "I was put aside by the King. I cannot say that the announcement brought me much grief. Joffrey was then betrothed to Margaery Tyrell, and I confess I found a friend in her, and her grandmother, especially once I found myself betrothed to Lord Tyrion."

"We had heard that," Lenna replied, preparing to speak on her old friend's behalf. She would not dissemble to this girl anymore. "Lord Tyrion-"

"Is a good person," Sansa said with difficulty. "At least, as good as he can be."

Lenna smiled tightly. A better judge of character than she seemed, then. "And then what happened?"

"After...the massacre at the Twins…" she continued laboriously. Lenna wished she could ease her burden. "Joffrey told me that Robb was dead. I didn't want to believe him."

"He isn't-"

"I know," Sansa replied quickly. "Lady Olenna told me. Assured me that he wasn't dead."

Lenna looked to her father. Wyman was looking into the flames, the fire casting his rugged old face into a relief of black and gold. One question answered, she thought, a question that only begets more.

"How could she know that?" Lenna asked quietly. "So few people-"

"I don't know," Sansa replied. "Not really. She didn't tell me how she knew, but she had no reason to lie to me." Sweet, summer child, Lenna thought ruefully. "And she arranged for me to leave King's Landing with Lady Brienne."

"I was sworn to her mother," Brienne said for the benefit of all of them save Lenna. Lenna, of course, already knew. "I will keep her safe and return her to her family."

"There is nowhere for her to go," Wyman said. Then he cleared his throat. "At present."

Lenna felt the tangle of incomprehension in her chest tighten. She tilted her head as she looked to her father, all too aware that he was avoiding her scrutiny, keeping his attention focused on the Maid of Tarth.

"What do you mean by that, father?" she asked tightly.

"Robb Stark has recalled his banners," her father replied, still not looking at her. "We will be campaigning to retake Winterfell from the Boltons."

Too many revelations for one day. Lenna might have felt faint if her father's words hadn't instead girded her, like armor was forming beneath her skin and holding her taller. She had the strange impulse to take a pen to paper, to map out these moving, unclosed and incompletely circles: the Freys, the Boltons, the Lannisters, and now, the Targaryen princess.

"What of the Freys?" Lenna asked, that circle spinning undecidedly in her mind. A circle that wasn't quite closed.

"We will contend with them later," Wyman answered. "The hope is to rout out Bolton and scatter his forces. With Ramsay dead-"

"How do you know he's dead?" Lenna asked. "Have you confirmation?"

Wyman nodded once. Lenna nearly groaned. "All of them?"

"Aye," he replied. "Set upon by brigands near Moat Cailin."

Wynna's head turned in Lenna's direction, but she didn't speak. Neither did Wylla, suddenly fascinated with the state of her nail beds. Sansa looked puzzled, but she was too mannerly to demand an explanation. Lenna was glad for once for her pretty manners.

"A pity," Lenna breathed, horrified at the uncoiling of her own relief. A circle closed, and then she saw it for what it was. Not a circle, but a link.

"Wylis has been released," her father continued. "He is on his way to Riverrun, perhaps there already."

"And from there?" Lenna asked, keen to know.

"We will retake Winterfell from the Boltons," her father replied.

"Our forces-"

"Strong enough," her father replied. "The armies were left largely untouched. They retreated quickly enough by all accounts. Scattered to the winds, of course, but intact. Bolton and Frey did not plan on that. Somehow, the camps were emptied before the raiding began."

"Somehow," Lenna replied, looking to Wendel. "We did not fail so completely after all, it seems."

Wendel shook his head. "I am to make for Riverrun again, sister."

"Not through the Twins," she said quickly. "Wendel, you can't-"

"Of course not," he said, laying a hand on her white wrist. "North and around. It will take longer, but it is necessary, I think."

She sat back in her chair, relieved.

"Begging your pardons," Sansa said quietly, drawing all of their eyes back to her. "But when you said I have nowhere to go, that isn't quite true-"

"What do you mean?" Wyman asked, looking at the girl.

"Robb is in Riverrun, and of course you can't send me there, but," she said, "I have another brother."

Wyman's face clouded. "Your brothers, Bran and Rickon, I am afraid they are dead, my lady."

She swallowed back a wave of pain, but cornflower blue eyes rose again rather defiantly.

"No," she said quietly. "Not them. My other brother."

Lenna looked at her sharply. "You can't mean to go to Castle Black."

"Why not?" she replied. "It is safe, fortified, and my brother-"

"Women are not permitted," Wyman said. "You had better stay here. For the time being, at least."

Sansa nodded, then stood quickly. "I would take some air," she said suddenly. Wyman looked to Lenna and nodded.

The women left him sitting behind his desk and staring at some middle distance, his mind far too occupied. Lenna worried for him when he was like that, brooding and dark, but Wendel squeezed her arm and pushed her out the door.

Let the men talk, she thought waspishly, her head spinning. It was not the first time she wished she could go back to that time before the Blackwater, before the King Robert's death, when all she had to worry about was missing her family and whether her enormous guard really did look at her the way she imagined that he did, and if he would ever act on it.

She sighed heavily as she trailed after Sansa, drawing the girl's attention. Wylla and Wynna hung back from them, speaking lowly to each other as Lenna and Brienne haunted Sansa's steps. The girl was so pale she almost glowed, the dark red hair vibrant against the gray skies that it hurt Lenna's eyes to look at it, a redbird in the bracken. She was a true beauty now, though such a sad one.

"You know," Sansa said lowly, pulling even with Lenna and looping her hand through her elbow, just as she had always done in the past. "You know, I was always terrible to Jon. Now I wish that I hadn't been." She paused for a long moment, face sharpened by sorrow. "He's all I have left. He and Robb."

Lenna laid her own hand over the girl's cold fingers. "I'm sure he understands."

"No," Sansa bit out. "Don't say that. I don't deserve-"

"We all make mistakes," Lenna replied softly. "We all say and do things were regret."

Sansa froze at her side. "I should have gone with you that night," Sansa said tightly. "When you left. I didn't understand-"

"Hush."

"I thought he- oh, Lenna. I went to the queen and told her that he-"

"Of course you did," Lenna replied. "You did only as you thought you ought, Sansa."

"That is the trouble," Sansa replied, her voice thick. "I thought I knew, and I had no idea. I mean, I did...but I didn't either."

Lenna looked at her patiently.

"I knew," she whispered. "The way he looked at you, how careful he was, almost gentle-but I never thought that you-"

"I see my nieces have been telling romantic stories," Lenna said without malice. "You saw more than we wished as it is. Do not trouble yourself."

"But you love him and there is a price on his head because of me."

Lenna actually laughed. Of all the revelations that day, intended or not, this one was the least.

"Sansa," she said quietly. "There would have been a bounty on his head one way or another. He abandoned Joffrey, his king." She took the girl's hands in her own. "If anything, you did us a favor. All of us."

"How?"

Lenna wondered how so many of these players, like actors in a play, could not see the extent of their own reach, the ripples of the stones they cast.

"Because in telling the queen that he kidnapped me, you kept me in her grace," Lenna said quietly. "She, like you, believes that I am on her side. She has no reason to think otherwise."

Sansa hesitated. "Are you?"

It was Lenna's turn to pause and the child shifted within her. "I am on our side, dear girl. Take that as you will."

Sandor LIV

Not a single salty word left the child's mouth once she put together where he was taking her. He'd woken her in the barn with a nudge of the toe, getting them on their way before their host and his daughter would be awake. It was still fully dark out, stars still winking in the gradually lightening sky, and they were three leagues away before the faint pinks and golds of dawn even began to tinge the trees at their backs.

It was a rash decision, no doubt about that. He couldn't explain it, why he was turning his back on the Vale and aiming them westward again. There was plenty of time to ruminate on why he was not willing to leave the child to her fate in the Eyrie, but all he could settle on was a vague suspicion that it would be a mistake to do it, something in his gut that coiled and flicked as warily as a cat's tail. It was the same feeling he'd had in the days before the Blackwater, not know what was going to happen and expecting the worst.

She was smart, the Stark girl. He wondered that she could be so different from her frivolous sister, but guessed he shouldn't be that surprised. He wasn't exactly like his brother, either, not even in stature. Where Sandor Clegane might be seen as most as enormous, he was significantly smaller than his monster of a brother, a characteristic that Gregor had exploited for as long as Sandor had been alive. As far as he could remember, there had never been a time when they were brotherly, his elder always vicious and resentful that he'd even been born. Fear had been his companion since he was a toddler, fear and his own indignant rage.

The little wolf was certainly indignant, too, though she had become far more pleasant in the weeks since they'd started ranging westward. Her attitude had shifted, she talked more, which was a mixed blessing, and she didn't argue with every last thing he did. Instead, she had taken to doing what he asked, though each morning she wanted him to dance with her.

He smirked at that. Dance with her. The girl was still reluctant to give up her Braavosi friend's speech, but he humored her. He humored her and he watched as she became adept at close fighting, skinny little blade and skinny little legs dancing circles around him, almost too quick for him to strike.

Almost.

Her only protests these days were the bruises. He was careful, thwacking her with the flat of his blade, and only then when necessary to teach her a lesson. Arya was a Stark, through and through, and there were moments when her perverse honor and noble entitlement made it impossible for him to do anything but discipline her. She was wild and rangy as her family's sigil, and those traits, though they had kept her alive for quite some time, would eventually be her downfall if she didn't learn to control her impulses.

She was sitting before him on the saddlebow, quite happily munching on one of the sour pippin apples he'd pulled down for them earlier, humming in her whiny, tuneless voice. The countryside had become a bit of a blur to him, the dying trees blending into each other in a current of gold and bronze.

He was losing his touch, not noticing the scene they were stumbling into until after it was too late. Sandor slid from Stranger's back, drawing his sword from its scabbard. The sight of Arya Stark copying him so solemnly might have amused him at another time. Now, it just made him weary.

A burnt out croft, still smoldering as the smoke smudged into the trees, winding lazily through the skeleton of charred roofbeams; the body of a woman sprawled face down in the golden grass, a bright patch of scarlet matting her hair, painting the upturned palm of one unnaturally twisted hand; an older man leaning against his wagon, his middle a mass of black.

He sheathed his sword, no other sound but that of the crickets in the deepening twilight. By the time night fell, the man on the ground before him would be dead.

"You shouldn't be sitting out here like this," Arya said, addressing the old man. He was a grizzled old farmer, his hair close cropped and peppered with white and silver. When he looked up, his head lolling with the pain, it wasn't at the girl that he directed his gaze, but at Sandor.

He knew what the man wanted just from the way his mouth drooped open.

"Nowhere else to sit," he rumbled. "Tried to walk back to my hut, but it hurt too much. Then, I remembered they burnt my hut down."

"Who were they?" Sandor demanded as gently as he could.

"I stopped asking a while ago," the farmer replied, staring at the dirt in defeat. Sandor swallowed, standing back up and looking about them. He knew his brother's work when he saw it.

He sighed, crouching down by the man. "That's not going to get better," he said, pointing at the dark spread of blood at the man's middle. The reek of it would have overwhelmed others, but he'd smelled enough gut wounds that he didn't even sniff.

"Doesn't seem so," the man replied quietly, resignation and exhaustion in every line of his body.

"Bad way to go," Sandor said. "Haven't you had enough?"

"Of what?" the man asked, one last attempt to ignore what was going to happen, and soon. He shook his head slightly when Sandor shifted. "I know. Time to go. Take matters into my own hands. Thought has occurred to me."

Sandor sat back on his haunches, lifting his nose as if to scent the air. Death was close, both he and this old man knew it. If he'd been the one with his stomach blackening like pitch, he'd have already gone, let himself slip off like the smoke rising from the smoldering remains of the man's hut was rising up through the trees. There was no hastening a man's decision, though, so he waited.

"So why go on?"

Sandor's brow flicked up in surprise. He'd nearly forgotten about Arya Stark, her puglike little face smoothed in concern, like he imagined his was when he was talking down a skittish horse, or- he thought of Lenna at her casement that night, her eyes fixed on the waters, looking for an escape that he would not let her take.

"Habit," the old man replied with a sigh, like he was chewing over some daily issue with his neighbors and not waiting for the end.

"Nothing can be worse than this," Arya said, voice too still, too calm for the child that she was. She spoke like someone well acquainted with death. Sandor reckoned that she was.

"Maybe nothing is worse than this," the old man replied. Sandor grunted. He'd had that thought a time or two himself.

"Nothing isn't better or worse than anything. Nothing is just nothing."

Painless, empty, dark. It had never frightened Sandor, his end. Since he'd been this girl's age, he had the notion that it was creeping toward him steadily, fended off by this duck or that weave, turning on the man at the other end of his sword by nothing more than a hair. Yet, he'd gone to bed each night with the hot hungering for another dawn.

If he'd been the man with his guts stinking like a latrine, he'd have delayed its coming, too.

"Who are you?" the old man asked.

"My name's Arya. Arya Stark," the girl said, and for a moment, Sandor saw her sister, her mother in her face. Arya wasn't the heathen little wolf girl just then, but a noblewoman, fully aware of her duty to the smallfolk, respectful and kind. She had Catelyn Stark's face for just a flash, though the eyes that looked back at the old man were Lord Eddard's, even and steely and able to see too much.

"You her father?" the old man asked, twisting his neck to look at Sandor. Even crouching, he overshadowed the old farmer.

"Her guard," he replied honestly. Dead rats didn't squeak, and neither did dead men. "Taking her to brother for safe keeping."

"Reward?"

"Probably." The only reward he wanted as a sack of provisions and a northerly road.

"I always held to the notion of a fair exchange in all my dealings," the old man mused, wincing with the effort of staying himself. Sandor wasn't used to dead men who wouldn't admit they were dead. "I give you. You give me. Fair. A balance." Simple, Sandor thought. Simple, and too rare in the world he and Arya Stark lived in. What life could have been if any of them had switched places. "No balance anymore. Can I have a drink? Dying is thirsty work."

Sandor bit off the cap with his own teeth, proffering the waterskin to the man. He held it almost tenderly to his lips, letting the man drink his fill and ignoring the answering gurgle from the wound.

"Wish it were wine," the man said, and Sandor wiped the water from his beard with a wry grin.

"So do I," he replied lowly, sliding the blade he'd taken from his boot through the man's heart, quick and soft as a whispered word. The old man looked up at him in surprise, but also with a faint smile. A service rendered, thanks given.

When the man was dead, Sandor extracted the blade, wiping it on the old man's sleeve. Made no difference to him now, he'd crossed over into the dark.

"That's where the heart is," he said, looking up at Arya from beneath careful still brows. "That's how you kill a man-"

The moment was lost, the strange, gray peace that had fallen in that little clearing to mark the old man's passing, the giving of a lesson.

Death was still in that clearing, it seemed.

He'd never been bitten in a fight before, and it surprised him, irked him, more than it hurt. He threw the man off his shoulders. He was a big brute, but he wasn't a match for Sandor. He put himself between the child and their attackers, three rangy men in clothes little more than rags.

"You looking to die?" he bellowed, the men grinning back at them madly. The one who'd bitten him had blood around his mouth - his- and the other was dancing back and forth on his feet with glee. The third though, little more than a boy with yellow hair like a tomcat's, he was looking at Sandor with a dumb expression on his face but shock and recognition in his dun-colored eyes. He started for a moment like a rabbit, then leapt into the undergrowth, the sound of his leather-soled feet disappearing into the wood.

Fuck.

"I know this man," Arya said, her little blade extended. "He was one of the men Yoren was transporting. He said he'd fuck me bloody with a stick."

Sandor growled.

"I'd have done it, too," the man replied, teeth like crags and hair hanging in a greasy curtain. "Only your Braavosi friend-"

"Shut up," Arya spat. "Shut up before I make you shut up."

The man had the idiocy to laugh.

"Where you coming from?" Sandor asked, hand flexing on his hilt.

"You know where," the man replied. "Been looking for you, he has."

Sandor heaved a great sigh. "He on your list, little wolf?"

Arya darted a glance at him, shifting on her spread feet. "He can't be. I don't know his name."

He almost let fly the dry laugh in his throat.

"What's your name?" he asked the madman.

"Rorge," he answered, confirming Sandor's suspicion that this man was as stupid as he was crazy.

"Thank you," Arya said, her eyes never leaving the other man's face as her mouth twisted up into a grin, the man's mad glint now glittering in her own gaze.

It took one straight thrust, right into the heart like he'd just shown her, and the beast was felled to his knees, hands grappling in shock at the slim blade protruding from his chest. Sandor barely had to lift his sword to kill the other, and it was a lazy kill.

"You're learning," he said, watching as she pulled out her sword and wiped it on the dead man's tunic.

"My second man," she said quietly.

He grunted. "Best not to keep count," he replied acidly. The child smirked, looking content as a barncat full of mice. Sandor almost wanted to return it, a strange kinship stretching between them, but death was still stalking in the footsteps of a dull yellow-haired boy and his master, waiting somewhere in these woods.

"Help me bury the farmer," Sandor said quietly. "We'll leave the rest for the crows."

A/N: Took longer than anticipated. Working on the next bit, hopefully with more Sandor. As always, thanks for reading and reviewing. I can smell the end. Truly, I can.