Sandor LV
It had been three days since he and the Stark girl had buried the farmer in the shadow of his ruined croft. Three days since he had continued warily westward, his ears more alert than his eyes, listening for the birds, for the crackle of twigs.
There were several times he thought he heard laughter, shaking his head at his own foolishness.
All he wanted was five days. Just five days and he'd have the girl back to her brother and he could face the demon stalking the wood by himself.
Not wishing to alarm the girl, Sandor had told her nothing of his suspicions. He had recognized the work of his brother that day in the clearing, the croft burned to cinders, the old man left to stew in his own innards, a slow and painful death. Sandor wondered if he had interrupted the party. Surely his brother would have wanted to stay and watch the old man bleed out like a stuck pig, the smells of his own entrails wafting up to make him retch.
But he said nothing to the girl, not even when the fucking bite on his shoulder started to ache. It turned bright red and smelled foul, and he tried to hide his careful cleaning of it each time they reached fresh water.
She was a smart girl, for a Stark.
"That will fester," she said glumly. Since they'd put the old man in the ground, Arya Stark had gone between almost insane high spirits and sullen drooping, even more so than usual. One minute she'd be purely giggling with glee, the next spiteful and full of spleen. Her tone at the moment was merely flat, as if she was commenting on the weather.
"I'm fine," he replied. He was cleaning it as best he could, wincing each time he moved, the wound between his shoulder and neck pulling every time he tried to wipe it clean.
"You won't be," she retorted sharply. "Let me clean it."
"Said I'm fine," he growled. "I'll take care of it myself."
The girl huffed. "You're doing it wrong. You need to burn it away."
Sandor shut his eyes tightly. As much as he rued to admit it, he knew the girl was right. It was already blackening at the edges, from what he could see, the rest of it an angry bright red. The flesh felt tight, engorged, and it made him nervous.
"I know you don't like fire-"
"Get on with it," he bit out. The girl's surprise hung in the air, then he heard her move toward the fire, the metallic scrape of her blade as she drew it from the sheath.
After long minutes, the girl laid her hand on his shoulder, a tiny pressure that reminded him of how little she was, how young, and the heat of the knife's blade licked at his skin. With a quick movement, she put the flat to the wound and Sandor hissed at the pain.
Strange how that pain made him want to run, to swoon, the lay on the ground and writhe, him, a man who had once seen his own guts and not batted an eye, who had been cut and bruised, hacked and chopped beyond his own remembering. But one little lick of flame-
"There," she said. "I'll bind it."
He kept himself still while the child lay a bit of clean cloth over the burn she'd made. He imagined it in his mind's eye, thin and sharp-edged, just like her, and definitely going to a leave a scar. She was too small to run the bandage around him and he helped her, but he let her tie the clumsy knot. He could retie it later when she wouldn't see it.
"Enough," he said, shrugging her off as she patted his shoulder. It was such a childish gesture, almost fond.
She huffed, moving back to the opposite side of the fire, just as glum as she had been before.
"How much longer?" she asked after a time. The pain his shoulder was ebbing, but it was still white hot whenever he shifted.
"A few days," he replied, doing his best to imbue his voice with more confidence than he felt. How could he explain? "Look. That man back there."
"The old farmer?" she asked. When he glanced her way, the large gray eyes were burning like coals.
"Aye," he replied. "The men that did it-"
"Rorge," she supplied. "The Biter."
"Would you shut up and let me finish?" he snapped. "The men that did that were my brother's men. They're nearby. If we were to meet them, you must promise," he continued, a finger waving in her face now. He'd gotten up and taken three strides toward the girl. She sat looking up at him like some damned pup with her wounded eyes. "You must promise," he rasped, "that you will hide. You will not try to fight, you will not try to help me. You must hide and run and the first chance you get."
"I'm good with a sword-"
"I didn't say you weren't, little wolf," he said. Her face filled with something like pleasure, but it disappeared. "But you cannot help against him."
Instead of protesting, she continued to listen.
"What should I do if-"
"Run," he replied, not needing her to finish the thought. "You run as fast and as a far as you can go. If anything happens to me, you know how to take care of yourself."
For a long moment, the child looked stricken, as if she had just woken up from a nightmare only to find it was real.
"You've been teaching me," she mumbled. "You knew this could happen."
"Aye," he grunted. From the minute he'd turned tail with Arya Stark silent across his saddlebow, he'd known it was a good possibility that both of them would not make it to safety. Heading back into the territory that lay between the Starks and the Lannisters had always been a risk, but he'd sworn that stupid oath and the stupid King had given him the order. Made no difference now that he'd broken it. He'd persisted in trying to fulfill it long enough that it might still kill them both.
He rather hoped the girl would make it.
Her little face contorted into a scowl fit to frighten the gods. "You'd leave me alone."
"Don't want to, little wolf," he said truthfully. "I know what it is to be alone myself."
"My brother."
"Riverrun," he growled. "You could go there."
"My aunt."
"You wouldn't go to her."
"My sister."
He often wondered where she was. If she was alive. A waste if she wasn't, for what Lenna had paid for her. "If you know where she is, then, aye, by all means."
She went silent. "What if I don't want to go to any of them?"
He let out a rough breath. "I should have taken you to Maidenpool and been done with it," he rasped, and it was the truth. "Aye, go to Braavos for all I care."
"You'll be dead," she said drily, goadingly, questioningly.
"Probably," he replied flatly. He felt it coming and it made him melancholy.
"And if we don't meet him?" Her little voice was hopeful, and he couldn't bring himself to squash it, hopeless as he knew it was.
"Then all this foolish talking will have been worthless," he said. "Already was. What will happen will happen."
He woke up that morning feeling something off in the air, whether it was that strange death specter that had dogged them in the long string of days since they'd stumbled upon the blackened farm or just his own strange sense of doom. The air seemed thinner and thicker at the same time, the colors of the autumn trees brazen and sharp against gray skies. The air was thinner, but it was sweet.
Even going overland did not confound his brother, and by the time Sandor scented the fire and saw the smoke rising from the ridge it was too late.
"Run," Sandor whispered. "Take the horse and run."
He slid from the saddle, turning and slapping Stranger's rear as the Stark girl reached for him, little face full of distress. Underwater. He felt like he was underwater, watching her ride away and thinking she was going to slow, despite the clods of earth heaved up by the stallion's massive hooves, dark spots against the sky like crows.
And he felt he was underwater as he drew his sword and resheathed it through Lannister armor, blood coating his hand as the man, a big burly fellow with a strong yellow beard and eyes that looked like the inflated pig bladders children played with, slid the length of his blade as though spitted like a rabbit for supper. He sputtered and went gray, blood scarlet on his lips, and then he slumped, Sandor trying to flip him off the sword, reeling from the blow landed across his back.
He went to a knee, managing to extract the sword from the dead man just in time to pierce the next man, their bloods mixing on the blade, on his hands.
He lost count, picking them off as they came at him in a steady onslaught. It wasn't particularly hard, except for the dull, hot ache in his shoulder. He fought them and he killed them, and the entire time he saw him, waiting at the edge of the clearing like some horror from a children's story, hands held easily at his sides and his teeth flashing in the sunlight.
Sandor was covered in blood and winded by the time the last of his brother's men lay dead. They were scattered around him like a strange flock of sheep, insides turned outside, glistening in the morning light. Rubies in the grass. He leaned on his sword and waited.
The Mountain waited a long time, and Sandor wondered if he was giving him time to recover or trying to goad him into an ill-advised attack. He knew better than the make the first move. His brother was stupid in many ways, but he could see the outcome of a parry and thrust more accurately than a chess-master could a game.
So, he waited.
To his surprise, there was no fear. Only hate and bile. As his brother walked across the little distance, stepping over the corpses of the men he'd supped with, camped with, and led, there was not a trace of hesitation or sorrow in him. They were just things, puppets, weak little worms that he'd played with a while and now didn't mind seeing broken and ruined. They were worthless to him, dead or alive.
It had always been that way, Gregor's cold cruelty. He doubted if Gregor had loved in his life, not even their mother and father, the two who had coddled and praised and excused him infraction after injury.
"About time, little brother," Gregor said. Sandor didn't shudder, though that voice was to him like iron scraping against stone. He hadn't heard it in years.
"You can fucking say that again."
Gregor laughed, shaking his head just so, teeth flashing. He might have been handsome if he hadn't been so monstrous. Handsome in the beefy way King Robert had been before he went to seed.
Gregor Clegane was the ugliest fuck in the Seven Kingdoms, though, beady eyes under beetled brows. His face was rough with sun and wind and something else not caused by nature. His lips were straight, unused to smiling, and when he smirked they looked broken, jagged.
"Come to find me, then? Well, you have," Gregor rumbled. "But you're too late, little brother, to save your woman."
Sandor didn't reply. Lies, he said to himself, still struggling to even his breathing.
"Don't worry," Gregor went on. "She's safe from me. Married to a Frey from what I heard. Her own father sold her to them, along with his other women. Spineless old fatarse."
No, Sandor thought, his hand on his pommel, tempering himself.
"Don't believe me?" Gregor asked, his laugh cracking like a rockslide. "Doesn't fucking matter. She's lucky. Who'd want your whore, anyway? Better than she deserved. If I'd gotten my hands on her-"
Sandor stopped thinking, stopped caring about anything but making Gregor shut his damn mouth. He lunged forward clumsily, lashing out. The Mountain chuckled.
"You don't want to hear, little brother? How I'd crush her and bloody her? What a sight she would be." Sandor took a step forward and Gregor sidled back. "Come on, runt. You can do better than that. Been waiting your whole life for this haven't you? Pathetic fuck."
Sandor felt it, the battle rage as it burned hot and white. When next he brought his sword down, it clashed against his brother's steel. The collision was enough to make his bones vibrate, the marrow itself shifting in its hollows. He let out a growl as Gregor pressed him back.
It went on and on, Gregor leading him here, pushing him there, swords ringing through the autumn air, the sounds rising like sparks from a flint. Their cries and grunts rang off the stones, the terrain rocky and uneven. Sandor was only tangentially aware of where he was, too intent on his brother's sweating face, his own eyes hot and animal as they bore into his across the flashing of the blades.
The both landed blows, the pain only serving to sharpen them, reminding them both that this was real, this was sweet. They'd both yearned for it, Sandor realized, wanting nothing so much as the other's destruction, to stand above each other's bleeding, mangled corpse with a brother's blood in their mouths and on their hands.
He felt himself weakening, his brother still going strong, still hurling insults and provocations. Sandor closed his ears to them, focusing on the fight as much as he can, feeling the tide turning. It wasn't in his favor, and he felt death step between them.
He nearly stumbled at the ravine's edge, his foot sliding and Sandor rocking to keep himself from falling. He didn't dare glance back to see how deep it was. He didn't want to know, nor did he think he could take his eye from Gregor for a second. It would take one small thrust, and he'd over and gone.
Then there was a flash, a grey bolt of brightness around Gregor's legs, a cry like a wounded boar as Gregor's legs buckled under him, and then they were falling together.
Gregor had dropped his sword, and he grappled toward Sandor, seizing him around the hips as they tumbled. Somehow, Sandor kept his grip on the hilt of his blade, even though his wrist and fingers were bashed against the rocks again and again. It was a deep ravine, and Sandor screamed when his left leg snapped beneath the knee, and again when he came to rest on the gully's floor as Gregor's massive body hit his right shin and sent an ungodly flood of pain through him. He heard it break, but barely felt it, though he almost retched.
Fuck, he thought blindly. Gregor rolled up on his side, only to go down again, a little hand with a wicked little blade bringing a slender hilt down upon the back of his massive head. He shook it off, his face that of a stunned ox, leaning back and giving Sandor just the time he needed. With the last bit of his strength, he thrust his sword through his brother's chest, beneath the breastbone, and saw the look of surprise and then anger on Gregor's face as he leaned into the blow, muscles tensing and then going slack as he slumped to the side.
Sandor looked at him through the haze of pain, his stupid eyes dulled in death, and felt inexplicably cheated. It hadn't been as glorious as he had imagined, killing the Mountain. He'd dreamt of this moment most of his life, but looking at the body of his brother, he felt both tremendous relief and completely unmoored.
Arya Stark was there, her little face in his. Anger simmered, anger that she'd disobeyed him, anger that she had put herself at risk.
"I told you to run," he said dully, trying to move and finding that he could not. The Stark girl crouched beside him, her blade ruddy with his brother's blood. His shoulder hurt him more than tongue could tell. He had broken ribs, and he was breathing so irregularly, with such burning pain, that he was she he'd punctured a rib. Not to mention his legs. He glanced down and could see the bright white of bone winking in the dappled light. He regarded them detachment, but he could not feel them, though his blood was still pulsing lazily from the whole in leg.
He looked at the Stark girl. She was covered in filth, but the gray eyes looked back at him, clear and bright.
"What did you do to him?" he asked, already suspecting the answer.
"I hobbled him," she replied. "Heels and knees." She looked down at his legs and her little face went white.
"You know what they do to horses when they break a leg," he rasped, following her gaze. He still couldn't feel them, and he knew what it meant.
She nodded.
"I won't walk out of here, little wolf," he said quietly. Gods, it hurt to speak. "But you will."
"No."
"My dagger," he said calmly, ignoring her refusal. "It's in my boot. But you know that already." He tasted blood when he coughed. "Do for me what I did for that farmer. You know where the heart is."
She didn't move. He looked around, head swinging gracelessly, a drunken ox, and he managed to reach for his brother's knife. He must have managed to extract it on the fall. It was fitting that they should die by each other's blades. A terrible justice.
He held it out to the girl. She recoiled as if it were a burning brand.
"I can't," she whispered back, shrilled and panicked. "I can't do it."
"Why not?" he roared, trying to pull her close, turning the dagger and pushing it against his own breast. He knew he couldn't do it, not to himself. He tried to seize her hand, but she eluded him, slipping back on her heels with a look of such betrayal. He fought to breathe, to talk, to plead. "Just do it, girl. It's mercy."
"No," she whispered, flinging herself backward again, striking out with her arm and sending the knife flying, hitting the rocks with a clatter than made his head vibrate.
Fuck if he was going to die arguing with a stupid Stark.
"Please," he said, the last of his breath a wheeze. It took all of his strength to keep his head up and his eyes open. "Arya. Please."
She shook her head. "I took you off my list," she whispered, as if that explained everything. "Weeks ago. You aren't on my list, so I can't do it."
He grunted, feeling dark creeping in, the edges of his vision going hazy. He felt the little parcel on his breast light as a pressed palm, and he wanted to see it. He wanted to feel the hair against his fingers.
"Lenna," he said weakly.
"You can't die," she said, her voice shrill. "You can't leave me. You can't leave her."
You're shit at dying, dog, he thought weakly. He tried to smirk, but it hurt too much.
"Lenna," he repeated again, trying to find the handkerchief, willing the girl to understand what he wanted. If he was going, he wanted it to be with what little he had left of her.
He was unsuccessful, and he wanted to weep. His fingers had gone stubby and clumsy, uncontrollable, and he grunted with frustration. She was lost to him and he was dead. He had failed, oh gods, he had finally failed.
What little strength he had left ebbed and his hands fell slack. Nothing mattered, he was going to die next to his brother in the middle of this wilderness, his corpse was going to be eaten by wild animals, and this child wouldn't even give him the comfort of a swift death. She was forcing him to slip away, didn't she knew how hard it was? Didn't she know that he didn't want to die? Dying meant it was over, and that was so final. The image of her standing on the walls of Riverrun, a dark shape against the gray sky, flitted across his wavering vision. Gods, he hadn't wanted that to be the last time he saw her.
He'd known even then that it would be.
He felt the black coming from him, the same simpering shadow that had dogged his heels for months. Probably years, if he was being honest. The only thing that kept Sandor Clegane alive this long was a refusal to die. The worst of it was, he was still refusing, but his body was no longer listening to him.
He sucked in a breath. To his dim surprise, a little hand dug into his breastplate, rooting around until it found what it sought. The Stark girl brought his arm across his belly and pressed the handkerchief to his palm. It was almost black with blood and filth, but he managed to insert one finger into its folds, stopping when he felt the silk of hair against the rough pad of his finger.
Speech was gone, but so was most of the pain now. His chest felt heavy, full, and the girl stared steadily back at him, gray eyes welling with tears. Her shoulders were shaking, and he didn't know if she was sobbing or not. He couldn't hear very well anymore. There was a strange humming in his ears that sounded suspiciously like singing, a familiar voice, but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it.
I wad do- what wad I no? For the sake o' Somebody...
Then Arya Stark surprised him. She sidled up next to him and laid a head on his shoulder.
"Not alone," she murmured, and Sandor sank into the dark like singing into a feather bed. It was warmer than he expected, and soft, and far too soon.
The voice came again, a breathless keening, and there was nothing.
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.
Lenna LV
Their daughter was born the day the first snows came. Lenna was walking the ramparts with Sansa when the pains came upon her, not particularly strong, but alarming enough that she reached out and seized Sansa's slim hand in her own fingers.
"Lenna?" the girl said, concern marring her young face.
"It's coming," Lenna replied, smiling despite her discomfort in breathless delight. "I think it's time."
She was both right and wrong. It was time, and the baby was coming, but not for many hours yet. Her labor was not something she hoped to remember later, seeming to last forever, such cycles of pain and exertion that left her feeling ancient and boneless. It lasted throughout the night, the stout little midwife coming to tut over her by candlelight, shaking her head every time her father stuck his head in to check on her 'progress' as he called it.
Adalyn came the next morning, before noon, the room having become so stuffy that Wynna had thrown open the windows to let in the chill air despite the midwife's protests, her own hair plastered to her forehead just as Lenna's was. The wind rushed in, and at that moment the child came into the world. Lenna could vividly remember the silhouette of niece through the haze of pain and relief, the strange bareness of her body once the child had slipped free. Wynna's slim figure transfixed at the window, snowflakes eddying through the billowing curtains as the child let out a robust cry that was more an announcement than a wail.
The midwife cleaned the babe off and laid it on Lenna's breast, and when she looked into her child's face, gray eyes like the winter sky looked back at her, so familiar that she nearly stopped breathing. The child's impossibly small hands worked in the air, but they lay looking at each other, fascinated.
"A girl, my lady," the midwife said quietly. "You have a daughter."
Lenna hadn't held a baby in years, not since Myrcella was a wee thing, and never had holding once brought on such an overwhelming surge of feeling. The rest of the room seemed to fade away, and she reached out a finger, tracing it across the baby's palm. His daughter grasped at her with a unsurprisingly strong grip.
"Her name?" Wynna asked, having drifted back toward the bed.
"Adalyn," Lenna replied without hesitation. "Adalyn Clegane."
"A good time to tell your family," the midwife said to Wynna with a smile. "We still have some business here."
Wynna ducked out into the hall with the baby, and Lenna was later grateful for the privacy. It was a messy business, birthing, and she shuddered and shook for quite a while after, but she felt much more herself when Wynna returned with the infant. Lenna took her back, only vaguely aware of her father and Wendel, of Wylla and Sansa Stark and Brienne Tarth.
She felt selfish for wanting to keep her to herself, regretfully handing the baby back over to her clearly adoring family. Sansa Stark reached for Adalyn eagerly, and Lenna saw her face untroubled for the first time in years, cooing at the child and exclaiming as Addy, for that's what she would be called, burbled and yawned and bobbed in and out of sleep. Sansa taught Wylla how to hold her, supporting her neck, and even Brienne Tarth took a turn. She looked so uncomfortable and awkward that Lenna almost laughed, putting her in mind of Sandor when Myrcella had been a babe, bracing the child against a long forearm, her forehead wrinkled in concern and perhaps befuddlement. They stared at each other dubiously, but the warrior's face softened when the babe reached toward her, and somehow one overlarge fingertip made its way into a diminutive fist, just as it would had her father have been standing there instead of Brienne.
Sandor. Her bright smile dimmed a little bit, wishing he was there. He would have been so pleased to see this little girl. For all his brusqueness, Sandor had always been good with the royal children. In the beginning, it was his care for Myrcella and Tommen, even Joffrey, that had made her more open to the idea that he was more than his reputation. She'd seen his hand ghost over the princess' curls more than a few times, that little lopsided smirk on his lip, affection in his eyes. He'd played with both the boys, even if his face had stayed neutral, in on their little pranks.
If he'd been able, if he'd known, he'd have been there, proudly toting that child around just as her father now was, the babe nearly disappearing in her portly grandfather's embrace.
It took her longer than she expected to feel herself, weeks longer, and even when she was physically able to move around as freely and comfortably as she had before the baby, there were odd moments when her world seemed to stop. She wanted to take joy in the child, and she did, an immense satisfaction and incomparable pleasure, but it was always just a little diminished, a bit gray and torn around the edges.
And the child grew rapidly from her perspective. Lenna found herself intensely jealous of sharing Addy, wanting to hold onto their intimacy a while longer, the feeling of them being together for the nine months of her pregnancy. She insisted on nursing the child herself, much to the midwife's consternation. It wasn't done, she was told, noblewomen didn't feed their own babies.
Lenna did.
Addy went wherever she did in the New Castle, but Lenna kept herself confined for long months after the birth. Her arrival had been such news in the city, of course, so her disappearance from public life was explained away as grief over the death of her fiance. Perwyn Frey's body had been found along the road past Moat Cailin, and it was an easy lie. Lenna wondered how many of her father's people actually believed it, but there were few rumors in the city itself, the ones further afield working in her favor, she would assume.
She'd taken to heart Olenna Tyrell's imperative: prepare. So she did her best, despite having little idea what she was preparing for. It gave her a purpose beyond caring for the child, beyond worrying about Sandor. As a result, Wyman Manderly's study had become hers as much as her fathers. There was a cradle beside her desk where Addy stayed beside her, and Lenna lost herself in their work: ravens back and forth to Riverrun and the King, books and ledgers related to the running of the city, the news reports from her father's allies. She read them all, took copious notes, and fretted.
The wind from the open casement became more and more frigid, the sky going that pale, crystalline blue of winter, but Lenna kept them open, the curtains fluttering in the breeze. There were times when she felt like she would burst from her own skin, feeling so hot and swollen from frustration that she had to take long breaths of the chill air to remind herself of where and who she was, her blood thinning to bubbles and her heart hammering irregularly against her ribs.
If only she knew where he was.
"It's cold as a witch's tit in here, girl, how do you stand it?"
Lenna stood abruptly from the desk and turned. She had been so singularly focused on her work, on her own heartbeat, that she hadn't heard the footsteps in the corridor or the heavy door as it swung open.
A woman stood in the open door, her father behind her looking sullen and resigned. She was tall, as tall as Lenna herself, and only a little stooped around the shoulders, though her heavy brocaded garments disguised the fact. She was old but the face framed by its wimple was still winsome, the eyes cracking with energy as she looked at Lenna.
"They told me you'd look like her," she said, voice reedy and strangely musical, "but I have never seen a ghost before now."
"My lady," Lenna murmured, bobbing a curtsy. When she rose, the woman was standing directly before her, a wizened hand under her chin, turning her face this way and then that, like a child being examined, or a horse.
"Extraordinary," she murmured.
"Lenna, this is-"
"She knows who I am, Wyman," Olenna replied, drawing gnarled fingers away and sinking heavily into Wyman's own chair, her eyes not leaving Lenna's face. "Now sit down and don't speak unless you're spoken to. Your daughter and I have business to discuss."
Lenna almost smiled to see her father reprimanded like a child, to watch as he did as he was bid, sitting stiffly in a too-small chair on the side, thoroughly deposed in his own castle.
"Please sit, my dear," Olenna said, indicating Lenna's own chair with a bony finger. "I hear that it wasn't too long ago since you gave birth. It is an unpleasant burden. I don't recommend doing it more than once if you can help it."
On impulse, Lenna reached into the cradle and lifted Addy out, placing her in Olenna Tyrell's lap.
"What is it?" Olenna asked, hefting the baby up to look at her.
"A girl," Lenna replied softly. Her throat went tight. "Adalyn."
Olenna smiled, and Lenna thought how changeable she was, going from formidable to doting in the blink of an eye. The old woman's face softened as she pulled a face at the child, and Addy let out a chortle.
"Your mother would be pleased she was named for her," she replied, passing Addy back. "I was never one for babies myself, but she seems a fine one."
Lenna laid Addy back in her cradle, patting her chest and watching as she slipped asleep again.
"Now," Olenna said abruptly, "enough of the pleasantries, girl. We have far more important matters to discuss."
Lenna sat primly at her desk and waited. Olenna rolled her eyes and tsked.
"I'm to do all of the work then? Fine." She shifted and wove her fingers across her midsection. "The time for letting things in King's Landing work themselves out has come to an end."
"Joffrey is dead and your granddaughter is queen," Lenna said blandly. "I would think you are quite pleased."
"The realm is still at war," Olenna said. "The King is a good boy, but he's still listening to his mother. To Tywin. My attempts have not worked, and there is a further complication."
"Daenerys Targaryen?" Lenna asked.
"I wish," Olenna huffed. "I can't worry about a usurper right now. There are snakes in our own bed that have to be dealt with first."
"I don't understand you," Lenna replied. "What snakes?"
"Meddlesome priests," Olenna spat. "Faith Militant, or haven't you heard?"
Lenna shook her head, looking to her father. Wyman had leaned forward in his chair, hands on his knees.
"They've convinced the King and my own granddaughter that they wish to root out the corruption in the Faith," Olenna said drily. "But I know what they are. What he is."
"Who?"
"Calls himself the High Sparrow," Olenna replied. "Little man armored with self-righteousness. He thinks he's purging the world. All he's doing is shifting the power. And we cannot let him."
"If he's a man of faith-"
"I didn't take you for a fool," Olenna said sharply. "I'd heard you were pious, and I'd expect nothing less of a Manderly, but this is not the time to add a religious war to a political one. The Kingdoms would not survive it. He is gaining strength in the capital, he has far too much hold over the King. He must be stopped, hobbled."
"How?" Lenna replied. "The King-"
"The Throne is debt," Olenna replied. "The Sparrow has attempted to purchase it."
"But you've already said he's a priest-"
"A priest with deep coffers, it would seem," Olenna fired back. "But mine are deeper. And so are yours."
Lenna took a deep breath and leaned back. Addy mewled and Lenna instinctively reached down to place a hand on her little chest.
"What exactly do you have in mind?" Lenna asked, thinking about the missives that had passed her father's desk in the recent months, the fighting between the Northern lords and the Lannister armies. "Isn't the debt to the Lannisters?"
"Tywin wishes me to believe so," Olenna said wryly, a smile creating ripples in her parchment-like face. "But I know better. The Lannisters are bankrupt. They have been drawing on the Iron Bank for years to give the appearance of wealth, but their mines are no longer producing. Tywin is used to literally making money," Olenna went on, "but he's out of the raw materials."
Lenna felt the breath leave her body. "When? When did he run out?"
"Four, five years ago perhaps."
Lenna looked to her father briefly, thinking of that visit to Casterly Rock, of Tywin's strange behavior, like he was assessing her, priming her. He had been so very solicitous, and Lenna was almost sure that he'd wanted Tyrion to make her an offer. She strongly suspected that he would have had he not guessed what it was between her and Sandor that night.
And after- Lenna swallowed and tried not to think too hard about how Tywin's mind worked. It was a convoluted and dark place.
"He bid for her," Wyman said softly. "For Ser Jaime."
Lenna looked at her father. He had never spoken of such, though Jaime had. Wyman shrugged, haggard and weary. As far as he was concerned, it was Lenna's first hearing of it.
"That's surprising," Olenna replied. "Ser Jaime is a Kingsguard. I had rather predicted he'd want her married to the Imp."
"Tyrion tried," she replied hollowly, "but not for such mercenary reasons."
"Make no mistake, girl," Olenna said sharply. "He might even care for you, but Tyrion Lannister is still one of them. He does nothing without thinking of his own gain."
Lenna's heart cracked, the little piece that still loved them all shrinking.
"So what am I to do?" Lenna asked. "You certainly didn't come all this way to expose them to me."
"No," Olenna replied. "I came to bring you back to them. With me."
Lenna shook her head defiantly. "No. I cannot do that."
"Not forever, girl," Olenna replied. "But once I set these wheels in motion, I need someone that they will listen to. And you are perhaps the only other person in the Seven Kingdoms that they still trust other than themselves. It broke Cersei Lannister's heart when you were absconded with, and she listens to no one. I have reason to believe that she would still listen to you."
"How?"
"She has written, has she not?" Olenna asked, thin eyebrows flicking so coyly that Lenna felt for a moment that her face had gone smooth again, a glimpse of a conniving and young Olenna Redwyne in her father's study.
"She did," Lenna owned. It had rocked her, Cersei's notes. Her grief. And Lenna knew that she had revealed that to no one else, save perhaps her twin. She took a deep breath, ready to accept.
"It is too dangerous," Wyman declared. "The child-"
"It is far more dangerous if she does not come," Olenna replied. She turned her ferocious regard back to Lenna alone. "You and I will buy this debt from the Iron Bank. Once we have our leverage, you will go with me and we will inform the Lannisters that their game is over. They will agree to my terms."
"What do you have in mind?" Lenna asked tightly, wondering how the Queen of Thorns could possibly make such a humbling palatable to the Lannisters.
"The North will be brought back into the Realm," Olenna said finally. "With Robb Stark named King in the North. A vassal state, but independent. The Northern lords will accept no less, I think."
Wyman nodded deeply, his eyes grave.
"The Faith Militant will be put down," she said. "They begin to sniff around Cersei and her brother, and she knows it. She wants them gone, so that Tommen and Margaery will not kneel to him as he wishes. I will not allow it, either. We will make her our ally even if she doesn't want to be."
"How can you convince her to trust you? Even from my mouth, she would not take to such easily."
"She has little choice," Olenna replied. "We all know Tommen is a bastard, and I can prove it if need be."
"How?" Lenna asked, flummoxed.
"There's an old book she's been looking for. Years of searching. I have it."
Lenna took a quick breath.
"You know the one I'm speaking of," Olenna said quietly. "I thought you might."
Lenna colored and looked down. "So you will humiliate Tommen." As wrong as it was that he sat the throne a Baratheon, Lenna felt for the boy. He had always been an innocent, sweet and forgiving and good.
"No." Lenna looked up in surprise. "If I do that, Margaery will lose her crown. Leave the boy on the throne. I don't care who his father is. I only care that we restore our Realm."
"What else?" Lenna asked, brow furrowing. "There must be more. What is in it for you? I do not believe you to be entirely altruistic, aunt."
Olenna smiled, at her gumption or the moniker she didn't know. "Shrewd young woman. Sansa Stark will marry my grandson."
"Ser Loras?" Lenna asked lightly. "I thought-"
"No," Olenna replied evenly. "My own Willas. She will be the Lady of Highgarden in time. We will unite the North and the Reach."
"We have a long memory," Lenna said, knowing the Northern lords would not like such a match.
"I do wish you Northerners would get over what happened a thousand bloody years ago," Olenna said. "It will be your death if you don't."
Lenna looked at her hands. Reunification. Selling Sansa to a stranger in the South. An independent North.
"What do we need to do?" Lenna asked, drawing a piece of parchment towards her, dipping her quill in her inkwell. "There isn't any time to waste, is there?"
A/N: Life is hard. I'll have the next bit up as soon as I may, but I'm swamped with it right now. Thanks for reading and reviewing. Remember, I believe in happy endings.