Sansa – early morning of day 5

Sansa's heart had been in her shoes when Sandor cleared the first mine out of the field. Slowly, it climbed back up to her chest, with every device he removed which didn't explode. It was cold on the roof, but her tense body completely ignored the chill.

When he was two steps away from her, he carefully set most of his tools on the ground. After several, strangely elegant moves of the instrument he used to detect the mines, he spoke.

"Just like I thought. There is a clear path to that hatch," he pointed to the nearest opening in the roof, which was not the one he came from. "Is that the way our friend here used?" he gestured at the hollow in the ground in front of her, and the sneering face of a dead man within.

Sansa nodded. When her mind processed the information, she was terrified. "If you suspected there was a safe path, why didn't you use it?"

"And risk that Baelish came to collect his prize while I was walking to the other end of the bloody house? Tell you what, I had enough sightseeing for a while. From the roof I had a clean line of shot to anyone who-"

"You could have gotten yourself killed," Sansa accused him. She wished to slap him. She didn't.

"Not bloody likely," he said, coming closer. "I was always good at this shit. I was wondering why Varys packed this gear. I thought it was in case we had to fly to Dornistan. You never know what Varys has in stock for you when he gives you only half of the facts for some reason. They have old minefields from some old wars over there."

Sansa removed the protective helmet Sandor had been wearing to see him better. With his marred face nested safely between her hands, a peaceful sensation invaded a place in her chest where her anxiousness had been. His figure blessedly obstructed the view of the hollow in the green roof with human remains.

Without the helm, Sandor was all cold sweat and big grey eyes. It reminded her of a dog she had as a little girl, whose name was Lady. Sandor was no lady but she started loving him all the same.

It wasn't an affection built upon over the years which she had always admired in the case of her parents. It was something fresh and potent, something that could grow, given a chance.

"I'm sorry," she couldn't resist the urge to apologise, although he didn't seem to like it when she did so. "I should have stayed at the duel."

He gazed at her lips.

Sansa resisted the urge to kiss him. She ran out of words in his presence. Why should they talk at all? And just before she would give in to all her urges, all explanations be damned, he asked, his voice a whisper. "Why didn't you stay?"

Baby, I never intended to leave you. I was going to come back.

"Mr Baelish told me how Prince Oberyn fought with poisoned spear. I... I..." Will you believe me? "There was an exhibit, a rifle. It's the only firearm I know how to use. I thought that if I took it, I could threaten someone. Make the prince stop and leave you alone. You... you didn't rape anyone no matter what he thinks."

"How can you be so sure?" his eyes narrowed and turned dull, like thick, uneven ice on a frozen lake in winter. "And it's not exactly polite to go through someone's private stuff on his or her phone. Your mother must have taught you that." He was treating her like a child again. She hated it.

Sansa straightened her head, looked at the dead man in the hole no matter how horrible it was, and told him in her father's voice, the one he used when he frightened the shareholders with bad business results. "You have a video in your phone and you think it proves something. Well, it's a fake. And a badly made one. The man on it looks like you but he has no scars. You told me yourself you got them when you were six."

There was a genuine expression of shock on Sandor's face. "I see," he said, trying to fake indifference. "You sure?" he asked, hesitantly.

He truly doesn't know. Sansa couldn't believe it.

"Yes," Sansa said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. "Stop hiding it in your phone and give it to some expert for video files working with you. They will tell you the same thing."

"Oh," he said again, very thoughtful all of a sudden. "But then... then, I don't have to do this shit any more. Not at all."

"Which shit?" Sansa asked.

"This. Varys. You"

"So I am some shit to you. How lovely." His statement hurt.

"I meant putting you in trouble. I should've told them to send you back home on that first day in Venice."

"So why didn't you?" She should fly back home, she should forget about this man, she really should.

"The paperwork I received ordered me not to. Your presence was crucial for the success of this task, it said." It was not what Sansa wanted to hear. Her jaw dropped and he must have noticed it.

"But that was all before you supported me in front of Prince Doran at the entrance to that ball. You didn't even know me. You were afraid of me. You had every reason not to believe me. And yet you stood up for me, in your own polite way. Then we danced and I- I-" he couldn't finish. "I would have killed anyone for you from that moment on."

It was not exactly a declaration of love that Sansa wanted to hear, But it was something. The hurt disappeared. She looked down on him with expectation. She didn't know of what.

His arms circled her waist. He studied her face intently from very close by. She was still waiting.

But then he just grinned like an idiot and gazed at something behind her. The broad smile made him look so ugly that she almost closed her eyes.

"Look," he said, all secretive all at once, "there are strange things under the sun..."

Sansa slowly turned her head. There was a carved compartment right under the stone sun held high by the warrior Princess Nymeria. And in it, carefully stuck, was an USB stick.

Sansa breathed out: "That's why Mr Baelish ordered Prince Doran's murder!"

"Right, because he did tell us where the key to this entire mess was. It's just that we were both morons and we didn't figure it out." Sandor reached over Sansa to liberate the small item from its hiding place. He held it against her breasts. Then he noticed the unarmed figure of Lord Mors. "Where is his spear?" he asked. Sansa looked guiltily at the hollow in front of her. "He... he... he bent over me! Probably to retrieve the stick. I thought he was going to do something to me-"

"You took the spear from the statue and sent him flying back," Sandor said in a happy rasp. "That's my girl."

"I should very much like to have whatever you had found over there, Mr Clegane," Prince Oberyn Martell requested. He surged out of the hatch closest to them behind a barrel of a gun. He was followed by Mr Yronwood, similarly armed. Both men navigated through the minefield on a broad path that Sansa's dead kidnapper had crossed.

"No need to get nervous," Sandor said. He stood right in front of Sansa, painfully close. The prince and his companion could not see through his back. With utmost care, he slipped their finding under the left strap of Sansa's bra. Very gently, he readjusted her blouse over it. The skin on her shoulder tingled. Then, he turned around and showed two empty hands to Prince Oberyn. "There isn't anything here, Your Excellency. Only my wife."

"My brother died for something," Oberyn said stubbornly. "It's only right that Dornistan gets the merchandise he paid for with his life. "Anders, go search them," he ordered.

A voice old as a world spoke from under the open hatch. "I'd leave them alone if I were you, Your Excellency"

Will all the guests come to the roof this morning? Sansa wondered.

A green purse made its way out, held by a pair of emaciated, spotted hands dressed in black wool. Old or not, they were not trembling. Prince Oberyn hesitated. Sansa recognised the purse of snake skin she had admired, property of old Mrs Blackfyre. Now it looked like a large green flower with soft petals turned inside out.

It was ticking.

"Sansa," Sandor said gleefully, "allow me to present you Aemon Targaryen, former head of service I have been working for."

The name worked miracles with the prince. "Aemon... Targaryen?" he said. "I thought you were dead."

Targaryens were a supposedly extinct dynasty from one of the countries near Dornistan according to Sansa's education.

"I am a last living son of a very old family," Aemon said with immense sadness, "but I am not dead yet. Even if I sometimes wish I were."

Mr Varys made his way through the roof after him, panting. "So many stairs," he complained. "Where has the Dornish hospitality disappeared? It's breakfast time!"

"It's a good point," Sandor said. "I'm starving."

If she thought about it, Sansa was hungry too.

Prince Oberyn shrugged and casually walked the remaining five steps to Sansa and Sandor. "Walk very closely after me, both of you," he said. "Leave the tools. My men will collect them later. I wouldn't wish you to end as poor Mr Kettleblack."

"Kettleblack?" Sandor didn't sound convinced. "I thought I killed him in Venice."

"A brother. There were apparently three of them. They all work for Mr Petyr Baelish. I have a hunch I should go and murder the third one myself, for sport," Oberyn said. "It could prove more interesting than hawking on a Sunday afternoon."

Sansa got hold of Sandor's back. Together, they followed the prince. She was glad when they finally left the roof. After two flights of stairs they reached the part of the second floor containing weaponry.

"This way," Prince Oberyn led them further. "It's still too early to disturb the rest of my guests."

Right above the main entrance to the palace, on the second floor, there was a set of rooms which were not used for any of the exhibitions. It consisted of three chambers, one larger central one, and two smaller lateral ones, all three with a door to the corridor. The central space was decorated in tender pink and golden hues. There was a large rounded table with eight chairs in the middle, near two square windows. Prince Oberyn spoke with melancholy, like an unwilling tourist guide forced to do his duty. "These rooms belonged to Mellario, my brother's wife. They've been separated for years. He... he always kept the rooms ready for her... "

Sansa suffered an attack of courage. She stepped in front of Sandor and patted the prince on his back. "His death was not your doing."

"If I didn't call Hotah to me when I did-"

"-the Faceless Men would have found another window of opportunity," Sandor concluded matter-of-factly. "They're known to fulfil their contracts."

"The Faceless Man who came for me is no longer faceless," Prince Oberyn said with malice. "Headless would be a better description."

With that, he pushed open the door leading to one of the side rooms. In it, the pink and the gold were conquered by barbaric splendour. There was no way to tell where the carpets ended and the bed of silks began. There were soft cushions in red, yellow and orange. The room had no window. The air smelled sweet, on citrus fruits and roses.

"I thought I'd sleep somewhere else last night, to be more difficult to find," Oberyn said.

In the middle of the smaller room, Captain Hotah stood over a headless corpse, cleaning his axe. Sansa put a hand in front of her mouth, happy she hadn't eaten for a while.

The body belonged to Mr Tyrek Lannister.

Sandor patted Captain Hotah on his back. "Good job," he said enthusiastically. The floor turned into sea waves under Sansa's feet. She fought the weakness in her legs. She had almost forgotten. This is what Sandor does as well. Killing. Sansa had accidentally pushed a man into the minefield. Anyone can kill under certain circumstances, she realized. It didn't make her feel any less queasy.

"He was trained by the barbed priests," Oberyn praised Captain Hotah. "If the Faceless Men are the best assassins, the barbed priests are the best bodyguards."

"What of Mr Baelish?" Sansa said. "Shouldn't we, I don't know, arrest him? He's responsible for everything, isn't he?"

"Well, yes, of course, my dear," Varys said as if he were tutoring a five year old.

"But we still have no tangible proof," Aemon Targaryen sighed. "Let's take a seat. My legs are so weak that I could drop this purse in the middle of this lovely palace. And we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?"

Prince Oberyn mercifully closed the door to the unpleasantness they had witnessed.

Sansa and Aemon were awarded the best places on the table, near the windows. The old man deftly pressed a few selected places on his floral purse. The ticking stopped. "There," he told the prince, "as a sign of our good will."

"Nice gadget," Sandor told Varys. "One of my latest designs," Varys said. His voice sounded bored. "Pity we didn't get to test its effects..."

"I was tempted to," Aemon said. "But I have learned something from Mr Baelish during our short and memorable acquaintance. It's better to have clean hands."

Sandor had been the last one to take a seat, as close to Sansa as the chairs allowed. He lifted his long legs on the fragile table and wrapped his left arm around Sansa's shoulders.

Varys sighed, "Ah, the youth of today!" Sandor gave a defiant look to Prince Oberyn. To Sansa's surprise, His Excellency imitated the gesture as if he were learning a new cultural thing. Fortunately, the table did not collapse under the weight of four legs on it. "Varys, you old creep," Sandor said. "You owe us all here an explanation or I'll be thrilled to shoot you again. You choose where."

The legs were lowered when the servants arrived. They cleaned the table and they brought coffee, tea, milk, cream, fresh bread, butter and jam, finely cut slices of ham and cheese, a tray full of Dornish spreads, and another one with strange looking cakes. Sansa hoped they were not too spicy. The table looked like Sansa's ideas about the luxury of spying before coming to Italy. This is all wrong, her mind rebelled. We should not be having coffee now. "But Mr Baelish-" she said.

Mr Varys looked almost asleep.

"Don't worry, love," Sandor said lazily, "if Varys and Aemon are being this casual, the job is over. Without us, it seems. And for once I don't mind not being involved in cleaning up the mess."

"Well, it's almost done," Varys said cryptically, "we will see by the end of today. Plenty of time to have a cup of tea I'd say. A question, my dear Sansa, if I may call you so... Have you by any chance found the video recording to help exonerate my best agent from his unfortunate childhood conviction?"

"He has it in his phone," Sansa rattled. His best agent? Of course, you stupid, Arya's voice said in her head. Joffrey is a young man who was only driving and pretending to be important.

"In our phone, you mean," Varys continued. "How clever," Aemon added.

"It's a fake," Sansa said. "The recording, it's made to look as if it were Sandor. But I'd say it's probably Sandor's brother raping a girl." Prince Oberyn frowned. "I'm sorry, Your Excellency, but there is no nicer word to describe it," she said shyly. "The camera shows a young man looking like my husband, but he's older than 12, taller than Sandor if you can believe it, and if you look very carefully you can see that he has no facial scars. I'd say that Sandor somehow made a digital version of an old video tape, and chose to hide it in his phone."

She stiffened, expecting Sandor's reaction. His arm never left her shoulder. Sansa imagined him lying on a pile of yellow cushions where the dead man had been, as she slowly lowered herself to him. Prince Oberyn and Mr Yronwood were all ears, pretending to sip their tea.

"Sandor, do you have anything to say to all of us?" Mr Targaryen said.

All eyes were on Sandor. Struck by a sudden inspiration, Sansa used the moment to insert the USB stick they had found in her laptop.

Slowly, painfully, Sandor said, "I might have the original tape back home. What of it?"

Sansa frowned as she was studying the contents of the USB stick.

"You will give it to Brienne first thing when you're back in England," Aemon commanded. "The service will make sure that your process is reopened in the light of new, substantial evidence. You will provide testimony as to everything that has happened that day. Your forced community work will end. You can quit working for us."

"Good," Sandor said. "I might do just that."

Sansa beamed at the software she uncovered. This explained Mr Baelish's mode of working. It was more awful than she thought.

"Or you can choose to work for us as an innocent man," Varys said in a sly tone. "Your Excellency," he addressed Prince Oberyn abruptly. "What did you do with my dear friend who posed as a priest? Was it Mr Baelish who brought him to you? Of course he was."

The prince looked embarrassed. "I didn't do anything," he said quickly. "I gave him a room and told him to enjoy the party."

"He's obviously not a priest. His patients call him Elder Brother and he happens to be a most competent shrink," Varys said, "much better than Dr Pycelle who is treating your sister. In case you do want her to remember what has happened to her and confirm Sandor's story."

"How the hell did Baelish know about your priest?" Sandor asked.

"Because I told him all about it, of course," Varys said as if it were the most logical thing in the world. "I do owe both of you an apology. Mr Clegane, Miss Stark-"

"Mrs Clegane," Sansa interrupted. She closed her laptop in a wild motion, as Arya would have done. Sandor opened his mouth to say something, but then he opted to stay quiet. Sansa smiled at him.

"Oh," Varys stuttered, "just as I thought, just as I thought. Just so."

"What Varys is trying to say," Aemon helped, "is that he had to send you in the field with only half of the necessary information, not to increase the risks."

"Because Mr Baelish doesn't produce dog food any more. He designs spyware," Sansa stated as arrogantly as she could, "as well as programmes which protect companies and state organizations from that same spyware. He infected the system of your service as well."

"Someone did," Aemon admitted, "we didn't know it was him until very recently. Baelish offered to sell us a perfect programme to eliminate his own spyware at a very unfriendly price."

"We agreed to meet in Venice. I offered him a fair deal for his software solution," Varys said, "but he made a special demand."

"What did he want?" Sandor blurted. Varys's eyes narrowed on Sansa and Sandor's fist connected with the soft jaw of his boss across the table. "No!" Sandor said. "Damn you, Blackfyre!"

"I won't say I didn't deserve it," Varys said, rubbing his face. "In my defence, I sent you, Clegane, to watch over her. If it was not about protecting a woman, I would have used Bronn Stokeworth. I promised Baelish he could have Sansa after Prince Doran's party, to gain time. Sansa's mother had been his obsession when he was a teenager, but much to his dislike, she married Sansa's father. And after seeing her daughter at the ball that old flame rekindled. He asked for immediate payment or he was going to sell his software to Russia and China. You see, Mr Baelish is a very adaptive individual, one of the few I have met who are probably more intelligent than myself."

"And a most accomplished liar," Mr Targaryen added in a grim voice.

Varys talked and slurped his tea. "Sansa, my dear, I had no choice in the matter. I joined Mr Brune to help secure your early delivery to Mr Baelish, with all intention to secure its failure, but in such a way that Baelish would still wish to do business with me. We left you in Petyr's car. I knew Sandor would find you there because he has some special abilities and he absolutely hates people who harass women.

There was only one development during this task which could have been our undoing. I didn't expect that-"

"That I would fall for Sandor," Sansa said. She leaned backward, finding a broad chest instead of the back of the chair.

"Or that he would fall for you," Aemon offered. "Women may not like Sandor's face, but he's also not a man who's interested in just any pretty girl. We hoped you would find out sooner about the illicit cybernetic activities of Mr Baelish.

"Which I did not..." Sansa admitted.

"-because you were performing extensive checks on my large friend and former employee next to you," Varys drooled. "That was by the way a special side job I had in mind for you, my dear. You did excellent in making the truth about his past resurface. You see, Sandor has eluded me for many years. It didn't take me long to understand that he didn't fit the profile of a brother killer and rapist as they warned me in juvenile prison. When I recruited him, I expected a thug, who was to die after a few years of service. He surprised us all by being smart, brave, willing to learn and most reliable. So much that we wanted to help him become a free man."

Prince Oberyn coughed indiscreetly. "Hum, are your agents something you should discuss in front of the representatives of a foreign, albeit very small regional power?"

"In this instance, I believe it to be our duty," Varys said seriously. "Because of what happened to your sister in the past due to xenophobic individuals who forget we all come from somewhere, and because we could not stop one of our citizens on time, before he... Sansa, am I right that Petyr Baelish ordered the murder of Prince Doran in the name of his brother Prince Oberyn from the terrorist group called the Faceless Men?"

"Yes," Sansa , "but I informed them of what he did."

"Excellent, my dear," Varys went on. "I wouldn't expect any less of you. Any theories why he did that?"

Sansa hurried to explain as if Varys were a teacher and she his best student. "He must have tried to sell his software to Prince Doran, claiming it would help against the terrorists who announced that they would organize an attack on Europe or North America from his country. Mr Baelish failed to inform the prince that the same programme would first allow the terrorists to infiltrate Dornistan."

"My brother was a cautious man," Prince Oberyn observed. "He said he needed time to study the product. That was what Baelish told me when he offered to sell it to me when I arrived. Later he blamed my brother's murder on the terrorists groups and on Doran's hesitation to work with Baelish to help our country. And I would have arrived a day earlier if a computer virus didn't mess up the system of reservations of the company we were flying with. I thought it was a coincidence. Now I know it was not. Baelish wanted my brother to be isolated and alone."

Sansa nested against Sandor. "Do we tell them?"

"I think so," he blew his response in her neck, ever so gently.

Sansa removed the innocuous USB stick from her laptop and placed it on the middle of the table. "This is the product. Prince Doran seemed to have taken it for his examination quite literally. He gave us a hint where it was the day when we all arrived here. We assume that Mr Baelish took it as a betrayal of their business agreement. I wish we had understood sooner what Prince Doran had meant. "

"It was not always easy to understand my brother," Oberyn said with sadness to no-one in particular, "and now it's too late."

The unspeakable gloominess descended on the pink and golden furniture of Doran's widow, mourning for the things that could have been.

"Look!" Aemon said all of a sudden. The liveliness in his voice could wake the dead. He was now standing at the window and his pale blue eyes gleamed violet in the morning sun. "Mr Baelish is about to leave. I'd say he believes Sansa Stark is again in his trunk."

"How can he possibly believe that?" Sansa was flabbergasted.

"Because a man wearing a face of Osmund Kettleblack, whom I noticed to be quite dead up on the roof, has just come to pick him up. And I trust that while we were chit-chatting and nibbling on our wonderful breakfast here, the corpse in Prince Oberyn's bedroom was taken and placed in the trunk instead of you, my dear," Aemon explained gaily. "The Faceless Men are nothing but professional. They never leave any trace behind."

Oberyn rushed to where Tyrek Lannister had been. He returned with a single red flower on a golden cushion, and a simple white card attached to it. Valar morghulis, it read.

"Valar dohaeris," Sansa whispered. Sandor coughed loudly, spitting some coffee through his teeth. The sound muted her voice. The sudden attack of cough seemed forced and rather unnatural.

"What did you say, my dear?" Varys was tremendously curious.

"I said it was such a beautiful flower," Sansa said. "Isn't it?"

"It most certainly is," Prince Oberyn said, smelling it.

It would not do to admit to Mr Blackfyre and Mr Targaryen that Sansa's wild little sister, Arya, did an internship with the Faceless Man when she was only sixteen years old. Sansa believed it was a rock band at the time. Now she knew better. Her sister taught her a password to their site. "If you ever need it," Arya had muttered. And without her help Sansa wouldn't have been able to exchange messages online with the kindest man she had ever known and show him how Petyr Baelish abused the identity of Prince Oberyn Martell. Or maybe she would, but it would have taken her much more time.

"It's the closest thing coming to an apology that you will ever receive from them for the misplaced attack on your life," Varys told Oberyn while giving Sansa a look of disappointment. "It says that all men must die in their secret language. It's a greeting, I heard. I was hoping that Sansa was able to decipher the response to it, but apparently she wasn't. No one has been able so far."

All men must serve, Sansa knew the answer, but she wasn't going to tell it to them.

She resisted the temptation to lower her eyes. She kept staring at Varys. You're just a silly girl, she was telling herself, repeatedly. Just a stupid girl. Look at him as if you were one. Sandor's arm abandoned her shoulder. It sneaked around her waist like a snake of sorts. It was most disconcerting. She wasn't afraid of it, despite hating snakes and spiders. And Mr Varys suddenly looked like a giant black widow in Sansa's eyes.

"Somehow I do not believe Mr Baelish can count on an apology from the Faceless Men," Aemon said.

The wizened old man didn't move from the window, hiding himself from the outside world behind the velvety pink curtain. "There," he said, "Baelish checked that there was a body bag in his trunk and then they left."

"Aemon, what did you exactly tell him to make him leave in such a hurry when he accompanied you to the little girl's room?" Varys had to know.

"Oh, nothing special," Aemon grinned and he looked thirty years younger. "I may have offered him your job as a Master of Whisperers. Of course, provided that he delivered us the latest edition of his new revolutionary software in person by the end of today. In London, of course. Take it or leave it, I told him, it's our final offer. I may have spoken of a nobility title as well. If he ever arrives there, Jaime and Brienne will know what to do."

"You nasty old man!" Varys exclaimed.

"The age will do that to you," Aemon said, very satisfied. "Shall we now discuss our confidential business proposal to Dornistan, dear ex husband?"

"What a a lovely day it is, my friends!" Varys squeaked and wiped the cream from his chin. "The party will end after lunch today. But if I were you, Sansa, I would to take your husband to see a real doctor, not a grandson of a barber who presents himself as a doctor, but who's actually a mechanic."

"Sandor, how is your leg?" she asked and for the first time since he had come for her in the night she noticed that his left hand was bandaged as well. Why didn't I see it before? "What happened to your hand?"

"I will live," Sandor said curtly, "but Varys may have a point."

"We'll be leaving right now," Sansa said, "if that's okay with everyone."

"It has been a pleasure meeting you both," Prince Oberyn said. "Should you choose Dornistan for your honeymoon you would be most welcome."

"Not so sure about that," Sandor muttered. "Of course," the prince noted with some regret, Sansa thought.

"It's not about you," Sandor retorted. "That's now over. It's just that the damn climate is too hot for my liking."

Prince Oberyn grinned sheepishly. "In that case, farewell," he said, "and may the sands of your home protect you. I'll have your car brought to you and all your possessions loaded."

"Thank you all," Sansa said. "Good-bye." She took Sandor's good hand and pulled him out of the room.

She made him stop under the old moose killing rifle with which she had wanted to defend him.

"Do you still want us to stay together?" she asked.

Her only reply was a kiss like she had never received in her lifetime. Not even from him until now.

"Okay," she said, catching breath when it ended. She realized she didn't mind if Sandor was only after her father's money. As long as he would go on kissing her like he just did. It made her forget his scars. It made her forget everything. "My family owns a fishing industry, you know. We can live of that. You don't have to work for Varys or for anyone if you don't want to. You don't have to kill for a living."

Sandor laughed. "What do you think they gave me for my service until now? A subsidy in rice like in some poor countries? I'm 35. I've worked long enough. And I didn't have that much of a private life in all that time as you can imagine, so I invested in various businesses. I can buy you new shoes for the rest of my life."

"Oh," Sansa said. He didn't want her money. But she had to hear him say it. She just had to. "So you want me for myself?"

Sandor appeared confused. "Has anyone ever wanted you for anything else?"

The face of Ramsay Bolton in Sansa's mind screeched in shock. My ex is a moron, she thought. And I'm an idiot who believed his words years after I had the good sense to dump him.

Sandor chuckled. "Silly little bird," he said, fighting to contain his mirth.

It was Sansa's turn to kiss him.

Just to make him shut up.

At first.

After all, there was no-one visiting the weapons exposition at that moment, and it was only polite to give Prince Oberyn's people some time to collect their belongings.