A confused chapter. Don't hate me.
A huge thanks to magnus374, veri01 and soren for reviewing.
xx
Sandor – day 4/night 4
He almost got drunk on Dornish red. Almost but not quite.
He never knew that the stuff was so potent or so vile. The European wines he was used to could not compare.
"My brother's house is now yours as much as it is mine," Oberyn had announced. And so was the wine cellar, it seemed, if he had been interested.
He wasn't.
He only wanted to find Sansa.
The Hound passed Varys in the never-ending, long, straight corridors of the Martell manor several times. The vaguely powdered lips of his powerful boss tittered. "Tsk, tsk," he said, scowling at his best agent's apparent condition. "Ah, these
youngsters of today, they only care for parties and drinks, wouldn't you agree, Mr Baelish?"
Baelish looked offended because he had not been included in the category of the young. He was on Varys's arm more often than not, or more often than Aemon, who posed as his wife and trotted behind them as fast as he could. Given his advanced age, it was not going very well with the brilliant old spy. Aemon was left puffing and panting from exertion, green snake purse waving around Baelish in all possible angles. Even so, he would not relent. This told the Hound all he needed to know. Both his bosses were keeping more than an eye on Baelish. The weak looking moron must be more dangerous than he looks. They were mercilessly tailing him since the duel, which was both good and bad. Good because it incapacitated Baelish, and bad because the Hound could not talk freely to either Aemon or Varys. He had to figure out the shitty details they already knew all by himself. In such moments he would have wished for a partner to work with even if it were Joffrey Baratheon.
But discussing things with Sansa would be so much better.
"I'm so sorry for your loss," Baelish said to Sandor with genuine emotion. Apparently kidnapping women put him in an affectionate mood. He even offered the Hound his help in locating Sansa. Then he whispered to Aemon, but the dog had heard it all, as usual. "It's no wonder. Poor girl. It must not go easy on her to be married to such a difficult man. Imagine all the traumas he must have been through at such young age! What was he, twelve, when he killed his evil brother? It might be she came to her senses and left him while she could."
"Poor sod, I should say," Varys murmured complacently, nodding knowingly towards the Hound. "Losing her won't go easy on him either." Aemon gave Sandor a look which begged him to keep calm. It was a good thing that Sandor had known and trusted his boss for more than twenty years or he would have broken his perfumed jaw then and there and thought about the consequences later.
He was getting in a mood to slice Baelish with every passing moment. The curved sabre would do a fine job for him. In his guts, he had no doubt that the ugly skinny man was responsible for Sansa's disappearance. He had seen him whisper some poison in his wife's ears way before the duel went out of hand, with the Hound's tearful admission of things he had sworn never to tell anyone. She's not really your wife, the little voice said. No, he thought, she's the Little Bird, the Hound's partner in this mess.
The rationalization didn't make him love her any less.
Aemon and Varys never left Baelish alone since the duel so he couldn't have done anything in person. And Sansa had allegedly told her mother's false friend that she could not watch the fighting any more before she left. Such a sensitive young woman, Baelish drooled as the kindest person on earth. I imagined she would return to her room to wait for her dearest husband. The Little Bird's kidnapper shrugged as if he didn't know more. His grey-green eyes twinkled, laughing at Sandor. The story stank of a lie. But the dog's gut feelings were never a proof of anything. And as strong as they might have been, they would not bring Sansa back.
Varys frowned some more at Sandor's drinking, but the Hound did not care. The bottle in his hands was empty, but he didn't let it show. He had drunk enough, and the rest was farce. Doran Martell's real killer and Baelish's helper or helpers were on the loose. It might be useful to look a bit less like a bloody murderer he was. It could give him an advantage if he had to kill someone tonight.
Walking around the palace was nasty business. Sandor Clegane politely declined all company of curious guests inquiring about his beautiful wife or patting his back for being unjustly imprisoned in his youth. The gossip spread faster than the fire which burned him, and grew out of all proportions. The people who had witnessed the duel started behaving as if he were some bloody hero.
He wasn't a hero.
A hero would have found Sansa.
The Hound had walked through every corridor and every room of the mansion, sniffing. He mercilessly pried on guests in their rooms, finding them in all kinds of activities, from innocuous to unsavoury, varying from board games to happy snoring, and to all imaginable and unimaginable forms of intimacy. An elderly lady slept peacefully with her cat, not minding the mop of hair in her mouth, while her husband was fishing in one of the fountains. That's what thirty years of marriage would do to you, he thought, slightly disgusted. But you would fish in that pond too, wouldn't you, if that was what Sansa required to stay with you. You'd even offer her a cat, and pay for cat food.
He squatted and crawled through the labyrinth in-between the floors with one of the Martells child servants as a guide. He checked around the many fountains and niches in the garden. He harassed Oberyn to take him through the private parts of the mansion belonging to his family and searched the servants quarters and the kitchens on the ground floor. Nothing worked.
He would make another round, in hope he had missed something.
An then another, and then another. For as long as it took. This was about Sansa, the job be damned.
The child-spouse, Ermesande, begged him to look for Tyrek when he checked their room the second time. "Maybe he liked your wife better, she's so beautiful," the girl said, "I am small and you are..." Don't tell me. I'm ugly, the Hound thought, I know.
"You are fearsome," the girl said instead.
Professionalism somehow made its way through the very mild alcohol haze in his mind and a wild jumble of chaotic feelings in his heart. "When did you last see your husband?" he asked.
"Yesterday evening before my tummy hurt," Ermesande said, "he went to look at some flowers. He said that they opened in the night and he was tugging at his face."
The alarm bell rang in Sandor's head, shrill and ominous as a siren announcing an air strike. "Tugging at his face? Are you certain? Did he do that more often?"
"Sometimes," the child said. "When he would put me to sleep at our home. I have lovely pink curtains around my bed to dream better. But I like some TV shows for big people, the funny ones, so I peek under the curtain to watch them with Tyrek. He doesn't know. He thinks I'm such a child." And he's right, Sandor thought, keeping his thoughts for himself.
"Did his face change?" Sandor inquired, striving not to show his growing apprehension. He didn't want to scare the girl more than his frightening figure already did. So now we know exactly who killed Prince Doran, he thought, and he may have looked as Robert Baratheon at that moment. But we have no idea who has offered Doran's name for the gift of mercy...
"I think so," Ermesande scratched her little head. Her arms squeezed a teddy bear she sleept with. "His eyes sometimes changed from green to hazel and his hair from gold to ember. I thought it was the light..."
"I will look for your husband," Sandor promised, without any intention to do so. He didn't think the girl would ever see Tyrek again. And it was probably for a better.
Half way down some corridor, which looked exactly the same as a dozen other corridors he had passed with no trace of Sansa, he bumped into Oberyn and Anders Yronwood.
"Mr Clegane," the prince said, "please, come with us."
Come with us was a cold room with no more wine, a very sober looking prince and a defeated giant of Yronwood.
"Someone sent out pictures of the bird exposition as it should have been placed," Oberyn said, terribly embarrassed, "from my personal email account, somehow," he added. His English was failing him and his voice was hoarse. "And trust me that the stuff is not in my sent items. The false messages went out to all Dornish couples here, as well as to Cersei Lannister and some of her friends my brother had invited. It seems every targeted couple got an image of one room, not the entire exposition. I was asking them to make sure that everything stayed as it looked on pictures. For the honour of Dornistan, or for the sake of our friendship in case of the non-Dornish... I also asked my compatriots to support me in succession of my brother against his daughter, Arianne, who is his legitimate heir. I'd never do a thing like that. I am replacing Doran only for this event because Arianne is not here. There was one other person in a hidden copy of my supposed e-mail. My friend Anders decrypted it somehow. I have no idea who he is. His name is Janos Slynt."
Janos Slynt was the idiot in charge of constructing the experimental anti-missile shield to be deployed in Europe. Fortunately, he only supervised the works, and didn't actually work on the project. The man was convinced that the west was too mild towards the threats in the big wide world, and that the right way forward was to annihilate any country suspected to harbour terrorists. Dornistan was not such country. But it was a foreign country and Slynt was cruel and stupid. Someone probably paid him well to sell out the shield research, and still convinced Slynt he was giving away state secrets for the good of the country. Varys was going to be thrilled with that little piece of information. He had been trying to tell the old General Selmy that Colonel Slynt was a moron for years.
The Hound believed that the shield was being constructed in a base in Azores, but the necessary research was conducted in some places in England and France as well. He wondered which of the three locations would have been targeted by the belligerent groups in the neighbourhood of Dornistan if he didn't ruin the little exhibition of birds containing the coordinates. Hopefully the one where Janos Slynt was. No, he thought, probably the most inhabited one. The terrorists like people in their own special way.
"Thank you," Sandor said simply.
But which one of the guests was the buyer of the data about the shield to transmit them further? Many of the couples present took pictures of everything. And how was the code to decipher the data presented in the exposition going to be delivered? And there was another possibility...
"When was this email sent?" the Hound asked.
"The night before my arrival to Italy," Oberyn said. "After we missed the first plane."
Faster than a snake, the Hound spun and grabbed Anders Yronwood by his throat. "Before we continue our little discussion, you might want to tell us why you tried to kill the prince's daughter."
Oberyn's eyes darkened. "Anders? What is he saying?"
"A misunderstanding," the tall man stuttered. "I thought... I thought..."
Nymeria joined them out of nowhere. "Father," she said, "Anders thought you ordered Dorans' death. He wouldn't believe me you'd never do such a thing."
"Anders, how could you?" Oberyn's eyes accused his compatriot, who only had the grace to bow his enormous blond head, as if he expected a swift execution. He looked like an irregular block of pale yellow stone with nose and ears, speechless.
"It's not his fault he's smarter than the rest of your people. He figured half of the truth when your brother died," the Hound said. "Someone did order Doran's death to stir trouble in your country. It wasn't you. But I believe that it could have been done in your name. The order was placed with the society called the Faceless Man. We have to find out who did that. And for that we need my wife."
Sandor Clegane finally understood why Varys contracted a person with Sansa's qualifications. It was not for her looks nor to provide him a wife as a cover. Sansa would probably never believe him, and he didn't intend to tell her, but the Hound did read her cv which was in Varys's paperwork that first day in Venice after they had met. For one thing, it proved to be a more interesting reading than the plans of the palace. He only regretted there were no more photographs of her to go with the text. I can look, he had thought back then, never expecting he would be allowed to touch.
It was not an easy thing to log in the portal of the Faceless Men if you were not a member or an honest customer. It was actually deemed impossible. Nobody working in the service has ever succeeded. Not even Brienne, a computer whiz in her own right. Somehow, they always knew who was not visiting their website to give names to the god of death, but rather to pry in their illicit activities. The way they worked was full of odd superstitions, old religious beliefs and poetic language. Sandor did not give a damn about poetry, but a gun with a verse written on it could kill as good as any other. And the Faceless Men were nothing if not precise.
"Forgive me, Oberyn," Yronwood begged, "I knew it could not be you when I saw your grief at the letting of the lanterns...I should have immediately come to you... But Faceless Men? They don't exist, they're the stuff of legend. Nowadays it's only a website for idle teenagers..."
"A very real legend, I'd say," the Hound said. Oberyn and Nymeria exchanged dark glances. Did you consider offering my name to them? Was Dornistan too greedy to match their price? "If I were you, Oberyn, I wouldn't sleep tonight," he told Elia's brother. "If a name was given by someone who tricked them into being you, they will expect payment. It's possible that you would have paid them with the set of coordinates you know nothing about. If Sansa and I did not meddle with your fancy exposition of birds. And if they do not receive their pay... well.. Even if you would want to pay them now to save your skin, the system will not let you log in and you'll have no access to their account number because it was not you who ordered your brother's murder..."
"I see," Oberyn said timidly for a change, his fire gone out for the moment. "Ellaria will cry. Nym, Anders, please see to it that no one tells her. Mr Clegane, you have to understand, if I too perish in Europe as Doran did, our military might choose to retaliate on their own. There will be no need for someone to invade our command and control systems as your wife had suspected would happen."
"What target do your people have in mind for such an event?"
Oberyn shrugged. "Any of our neighbours has enough weapons and ideas to give them a suggestion or to perform an attack from our soil if we ask them nicely. What are we going to do?"
"You keep the man with the axe close to you," Sandor advised, "and I'm going to find my wife."
As long as Oberyn lived they could still finish the job.
If he died, it would be too late. Varys would do his best to sort out the political damage when the explosion would occur god knows where in the west. The offended party would most likely still retaliate against Dornistan, with hopefully less deadly results for the small country because almost any military asset known to the outside world would be of less importance than the new shielding technology. It would be Sandor's first failure as an agent in almost ten years. He didn't want to imagine the consequences. The number of victims in the west as well as in the east. He wondered how many dead would be children.
Sandor left the Dornish to themselves and continued walking.
The more he walked, the more he was certain: nothing in the entire bloody house smelled like Sansa except their room and their bathroom, both empty. The only thing left of the little bird were her clothes, and the bed linen they had shared. Before the duel, he had considered stealing the sheets. The scent would fade, but he'd still have something to remember her by when she would be gone.
There had been a faint trace of her smell in the room where the weapons exposition began. But only because it was on the inside, in the middle of the bloody house. It was windowless, and it still smelled on half a hundred other people since the inauguration.
There was only one certainty: no one had left the palace, not even the servants. Varys was in the field and it meant he had arranged his own little birds to watch over the exits, the logical and the less logical ones, such as climbing down the walls on any of the four sides of the place. Sandor trusted him on that.
It left one possibility: the roof. I haven't been to the roof yet. And he saw no logical access to it from the topmost floor. It meant that whoever abducted Sansa for Baelish would have difficulties finding it as well. I have to ask the damn prince about it. If he's still alive.
He went to the bathroom and splashed his head with water to wash out the last residues of Dornish red. The alcohol leaving his veins was slowly being replaced by despair. He stared at his ugly face in the mirror above the water tap.
Where are you? he thought. See how I was no good for you. I could not even keep you from harm... He felt tears in the corner of his eyes and he was too embarrassed to let them fall.
The only way out was anger.
In helpless rage the Hound punched the mirror. The blue three headed dog depicted on the tiles next to it laughed at him like Baelish had done. The glass shattered in pieces and the bleeding on his knuckles gentled his rage. A little bit.
His eyes widened.
The wall behind the mirror was not solid. Their room was the last one in that wing. The logical place. There was no need for guests to access the roof.
He had found a shortcut to go up.
Rapidly, he picked the shards of glass from his left hand, and wrapped it in one of his dirty shirts the best he could. No matter how angry, he'd not use the hand he needed for shooting in an outburst of bad temper. Carefully, he removed the rest of the mirror from the wall. He probed the surface behind, touched it, squeezed it, caressed it, as if it were a body of a woman. In his impatience it seemed that he wasted hours but it must have been mere minutes. Behind the wall panel there was a long shaft leading down to the ground floor and up to the roof two levels above him. He remembered closed doors on the ground floor, at the end of each wing. He took them for side exits, but they were also emergency exits, of sorts. There was a tiny stair built in the wall behind the mirror, too tiny for him, perhaps, but he wouldn't know until he tried it.
He returned to the room and looked for Sansa's computer the first time since she disappeared. When I find her, she'll need it to figure things out pretty soon. Oberyn had a decency to love his sister, just like Sandor did. So perhaps he did not deserve to die.
The laptop was gone. She must have taken it with her in the morning. Do they know? Tyrek or Baelish's catspawn? Do they
know who you are, Sansa? What you can do?
Sansa, I'm coming, he thought.
The climb was not long, but it was slow. The lid on top was heavy and he was grateful for not being a small man. Shoulder on the hatch, he could open it. Arms crawled out and felt grass under the fingertips. No cement or tiles. The green roof, he realized. A modern energy saving solution hidden behind the ancient looking façade with its row of statues on high pedestals. In one long, final pull through the hatch, his feet touched the ground as well.
The stars were out and the sculpted men with spears looked as if they were attacking the sky.
There was a faint scratch on stone in the middle of the roof, near the edge, right above the main entrance. The Hound bathed in the familiar smell. Maybe he could be a hero after all. He did find her.
"Sansa," he called softly.
"Stay away from me!" she screamed. He could not see her clearly.
She squatted on the high central pedestal between the sculptures of Lord Mors and Nymeria the warrior queen, the founders of Dornish principality. Strands of her long hair swayed gently in the night breeze.
Her words hurt him more than the shards of the mirror or a knife in his leg ever could.
A terrible suspicion crossed his mind. I gave her my phone. He grabbed it from the back pocket of his trousers and checked the date and time when the video with Elia was last accessed. He swallowed.
Sansa had seen it.
She believes the worst of me, then. And Oberyn confirmed her doubts when he accused me of raping his sister. "I'll not touch you again," he said. "I promise I won't, just let me come to you, please! Let me talk to you!"
It hadn't been Baelish at all. Sansa ran away from him... All of a sudden, he was afraid she would jump. He imagined her body lying lifeless on the monumental entrance stairs below. The thought was unbearable. He made a leap forward and she must have heard it.
"No!" she shrieked. "Stay where you are! Please!"
The courtesy made him freeze in his steps and squint his eyes to see better. In front of where Sansa was hiding there was a hollow in the ground. He could not see the contents clearly but the shape was familiar. A crater. And then, he knew. Mines, he thought. He stood still, afraid of a misstep. He was heavy enough to cause another blast.
"Sansa," the Hound said slowly, not moving. "Do you have your bloody computer with you?"
The silence between the two warrior statues nodded, he thought.
"Google the search term Faceless Men, go to their page, register and say you have a name to offer. If you can do that, don't give them a name. Trace the petitioner called Oberyn Martell in their list of clients."
"And then?" the darkness asked, sounding like Sansa, frightened, but intent on doing her job. He was so proud of her at that moment.
"Find out the identity of that petitioner if you can. It's not Oberyn. I'll go back and pick up some gear to get to you."
"I think I can do it," she said quickly, "but I have to offer a name."
"Give mine," he said, not thinking. He hoped the Hound could defend himself against a Faceless Man if it came to that. He had always been smarter and faster than Gregor.
He lowered himself into the passage to go back down when the darkness screeched for him to come back. He immediately pushed his head back up. "What?" he asked, somewhat annoyed. I told her I needed equipment.
"Please," his wife said. "You have to do something for me first." Her voice trembled.
"Whatever you want, love," he said and he wondered if she knew how he felt about her.
"I will give you a phone number," she said.
I'm not your baby any more, am I? He chuckled, suffering from the cold politeness of her treatment of him.
"Please, don't laugh," she said, "listen." He retained the number with no difficulty and wondered what she wanted of him that could not wait..
The truth was worse than he thought, and not for the first time in his life.
"It's my mother's number," she explained. "The man who took me here took my phone. He... he blew himself up with it. And my father will not answer his phone if he doesn't know the number. He never does. I pray that she will. You have to tell them. They should be getting off the plane in Alaska now. You have to call them. You have to tell them to sail out on one of my father's fishing boats. And to throw my mother's computer overboard far away from the coast. Please call now.
Sandor... I think... I think I know what the new target is, if the birds didn't work... It must be a small military base next my father's factory. And I believe that my mother's computer emits a signal to mark its location. She received an email yesterday, after we tampered with the exposition... "
She didn't have to tell him whose email it had been. Pity it would be blown up with her mother's computer, more like than not. So they would have no proof against Baelish just like he always intended.
"It'll be okay," the Hound said harshly. He hoped his crude voice sounded at least a little bit reassuring. "We still have time." Oberyn was alive half an hour ago. "Nothing will happen to your family."
He fumbled for his phone and hoped that the device was as good as Brienne had told him it was. The mobile network signal was weak in the area. He managed to get a connection and he had to let it ring many, many times. Finally, a lady's voice answered, rich and worried.
"Who is it?" she said.
The Hound made a mental note to thank Brienne. He briefly considered asking the woman out when she had joined the service. She was almost as tall as him although she was way less ugly. Maybe it would have worked. Except that she fell for his handsome colleague, Jaime. The affair made the Hound wonder if a good looking woman could care about him, as much as Jaime seemed to care about his unconventional girlfriend.
"Madam, I call on behalf of your daughter, Sansa," the Hound said politely.
"Who are you?" the man's voice said, impatiently. Sansa's father must have grabbed his wife's phone.
"Your son in law," the Hound chose to say. They obviously didn't approve of Sansa's sudden marriage, but he hoped that the shock of his statement might provoke them to listen.
"Yes?" the voice was there, waiting, dangerous in the dark. They saw my bloody picture on Facebook. They'll be thinking I kidnapped her or something. I would if I were them.
Sandor Clegane had never been so eloquent before. Varys will be proud. Palms sweaty, he explained everything, bit by bit, with uncharacteristic patience.
They listened.
"It's okay," he told Sansa when he hung up the phone, "they'll take your word for it even if they don't think much of me."
"Baby," she called him that again, "don't you worry. They'll love you when they meet you in person."
His world stopped. She doesn't mean that, does she? "Don't say that," he muttered. "Oh," she said, "I'm sorry," she added. "I thought you may have wanted us to stay togeth-" "-I did! I do!" he reacted. "Oh," she repeated. He wished he could see her face, certain that she was blushing.
Blessedly, she forgot to apologise.
"I do as well," she whispered.
The Hound's head spun. The shock of their mutual confession refilled the emptiness left by Dornish wine in his veins.
"I have to think straight now," he barked, failing to be gentle. It was still a bit better than saying, shut up, or, shut up, please. "I'll be with you in a minute," he made it sound as a promise, as the necessary calm slowly spread through his veins by the sheer force of his will.
Italy used to be the largest producer and exporter of anti-personnel mines before they were forbidden by the international treaties and national law. Companies were left with stocks they could not get rid of. What better use for those than to sell them to a crazy Dornish prince to secure his roof? The authorities would not bother to check his palace anyway.
When he started his training with the service, Sandor discovered he inherited the gift for demining from his father. His parents were immigrants in England, just like Elia. They came from somewhere in eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. It didn't prevent Gregor from hating foreigners and siding with Tywin Lannister on that count. Their parents were so ashamed of their origin, whatever it was, that they never told their children where they were from. They never spoke to them in any other language but English. They changed their last name into Clegane upon arrival to the west. Years later, as an adult, Sandor googled his given name, and those of his siblings, Gregor and Elena. His best guess was that one of his parents may have been Hungarian, and another Slovak or maybe Czech.
He was going to die not knowing.
His father was a very versatile weapons specialist, with experience in both mining and demining, and his mother just looked pretty as far as the Hound could remember her. The rare profession made it possible for his father to leave whatever country he came from, when the eastern bloc still existed, and get a good job in England.
Sandor scrambled down to their room and back up again. Detector, pick-prod, shears. Protective suit. Find, dig in, cut some wires. He handled the tools in the correct order, until it was time to pull the first device out of the ground.
He widened the opening with the two-handed excavator. He carefully attached the hook of the pulling set on the mine the best he could.
The sky was pressing on him, heavily blue.
One, two, three... It was out. It's now or never, he thought, handling the device
His heart went very still.
No boom came so the deactivation must have been successful. The second one would be easier, he knew.
He thought he could hear Sansa's breathing.
"See, I'm almost there, love," he smiled under the mask of the demining visor. Doggedly, he continued working.