"I had a dream that Joffrey would be the one to take the white hart," she said. It had been more of a wish, actually, but it sounded better to call it a dream. Everyone knew that dreams were prophetic.
- A Game of Thrones
Sansa curled up in the furs and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to savor her dream for a little while longer. It had been so sweet...
But it was too late.
"The very idea of a young lady traipsing to the stables at this hour!" she could hear Septa Mordane roaring. "Without a proper escort, like a... a gutter-spawn! For shame, Arya, are you not old enough to know better?"
Arya. Of course it was Arya. It was always Arya.
Groaning, Sansa threw back the coverlets, knowing that it would be impossible to get any sleep with such a storm brewing. She slipped her feet into the warm doeskin slippers that her maid had left toasting before the fire and pattered to the bedroom door. As she had expected, her septa and her sister were going at it. Septa Mordane was almost purple with fury and Arya's mud-streaked face was as dark and sullen as a stormcloud. Her little sister was clutching a stick, almost as long as herself and Sansa supposed that she had been playing at swords again with the stable boys.
Seeing her at the doorway, Septa Mordane turned on her with a fury. "And you, Sansa! How could you not wake up when your sister slipped out? It is your responsibility as her elder to instruct her in her duties, not to aid and abate her!"
"I did not," Sansa said, wounded. "I was asleep. " She glared at Arya. It was just like her to get Sansa into trouble too. "Gods Arya, there's no need to trot to the stables and the horses at the crack of dawn everyday. If all you want is to see your face, you're quite welcome to borrow my looking glass."
Without a word, Arya stormed into the bedroom and banged the door shut like a child. Sansa raised her eyes heavenward.
"What was she doing with that great big stick?" Septa Mordane wanted to know.a.
"Playing at being knights with a butcher's boy or stablehand no doubt," Sansa said, disinterested. "Will we be breaking our fast with my lady mother today?"
"No, she is busy enough today," Septa Mordane said with a significant look. "But she will come in to your chambers at noon to see you two properly dressed. Today is a very special day, you know."
Sansa knew too well. She had been looking forward to today for weeks, ever since they had the news that the king and his court were coming to Winterfell. Even now she could feel that queer, funny feeling fluttering in the pit of her stomach - like butterflies.
"Its harder to wash Arya than it is Nymeria," Sansa observed. "But she will need to take a bath. I hope she does nothing to spoil today." But that was hardly in Arya's nature. She had the unique and awe-inspiring ability to spoil anything.
"Right you are, Sansa," Septa Mordane said, thinking that her life was one trial after another. She was Riverlands born and bred but Lord Tully had sent her to Lady Catelyn when his granddaughters were toddlers. Sansa was a sweet child but Arya was a holy terror. Winterfell might be more luxurious than the parish sept where she had taken her vows and she would have been very happy... but for Arya. If I were her mother I would have sent her to the Silent Sisters long ago.
Sansa broke her fast that morning with Jeyne. They were shooed out of the kitchens where preparations were already underway for the night's great feast. So they took their bread and honeycombs up to the loggia, from where they could keep an eye on the archery yard. Jeyne had insisted - she was more than passing fond of Theon Greyjoy and it was her delight to watch him at his marksmanship.
Sansa did not think much of him but Jeyne was her best friend. Sometimes she wished Jeyne was her sister, not Arya. But Theon Greyjoy was not in the yard so Sansa had time to tell Jeyne about her dream.
"It was another of those flying dreams," she told her solemnly. "It was so very lovely, for I was flying high in the air and I could hear the cheers of a thousand people beneath me. I wore a cape of red and gold, sewn with a lion and I was on a quest for a golden ball. Sometimes I could see it but I never caught it, it would always fly away from me no matter how I pursued it. What do you think that means?"
Jeyne, who had heard enough of her flying dreams was not interested. "Red and gold, you say?" she said. "And a lion? It must have something to do with Lannisters. Mayhap you were unsettled and overstrung because they are coming today."
Sansa didn't think it had anything at all to do with the Lannisters but she had to admit that it sounded like it did. "Perhaps," she said cautiously.
"Dreams come true," Jeyne told her solemnly.
Sansa nodded and agreed.
"Perhaps," Jeyne said slyly, "Perhaps your dream means that you are to be wed to a Lannister!" She burst out giggling, as though she had said a very clever thing.
"That is for my lord father to decide," Sansa said primly. She turned away, not liking the way Jeyne had mangled her dream. It had had nothing to do with marriage, it had been so pure and perfect, like a piece of her life that she had forgotten for too long and had just now remembered... ever since she could remember she had had dreams like these. Special dreams, but she took care never to tell anyone but Mother or Jeyne. The others would only laugh at her.
Sensing that she had someone hurt her friend's feelings, Jeyne laid a contrite hand on Sansa's shoulder. "Is that all you remember of your dream? It sounds fascinating."
"I would have," Sansa said resentfully, "if Arya hadn't woken me up quite so suddenly, fussing like that with Septa Mordane. She's such a little beast sometimes." She chewed her lip and tried to remember. "There was a castle," she said at last. "A great castle, quite as big as Winterfell, and it was snowing. Owls, there were owls too..."
She didn't remember how the owls had come in but they had. She shook her head to clear it. It was only a dream, she must not let it disturb her so. Today was a very exciting day.
"Come on," she told Jeyne, "I don't think Theon will be coming in to practice today. We might as well look through our gowns and see what we should wear tonight."
"But-" Jeyne hesitated, clearly torn.
"I'll let you wear my enameled brooch," Sansa said persuasively. "Come now, Jeyne."
"Gods be good, girl, it'd be easier to brush your hair with a hoe than a comb!"
Septa Mordane and Arya. Again. Sansa sighed and snapped an earring on. The earring was a Tully trout of pure silver, with scales enameled in red and blue and tiny sapphire eyes.
Lady Catelyn had summoned her daughters to her chambers to see to their dressing herself, just before the feast. She had a bronzed mirror from the Free Cities in her room, as tall as a man, and when Sansa looked into it she could see all of herself.
Her slippers were of silk with high scarlet heels that added at least three inches to her height. She wore one of her mother's grand gowns, cut down to her size. It was of cloth-of-silver sewn in gold thread with all manner of flowers and birds, the petals and feathers broidered with seed pearls. The sleeves were long and when she lowered her arms brushed her hem - they were lined with scarlet satin and trimmed with vair.
On her wrist she wore a bangle that her father had given her on her last nameday. It was of entwining roses, carved from sapphires, their leaves wrought of diamonds. It had been her Aunt Lyanna's when she was a girl, had been intended for her trousseau in fact. It gave Sansa a queer feeling to think that had her Aunt Lyanna not died, maybe she would have had a daughter, a Baratheon girl who might have worn the bracelet to balls and banquets. But then everything would be different, she thought. King Robert would never have been king, he would still be only Lord Baratheon.
At her side, Jeyne gushed over her earrings. "The sapphires match your eyes so well. How beautiful you look, Sansa."
"Mother brought them from Riverrun when she was married," Sansa told her friend, basking complaisantly. She cast her eyes quickly over Jeyne who looked pretty enough in her gown of rose-pink and ivory wool, with blush-roses in her soft curls. Flowers and lambswool would serve well enough for a steward's daughter. A great lord's daughter would be expected to don silk and jewels.
Jeyne leaned forward and Sansa, sensing that she had fresh gossip to share, turned so that her mother and septa would not hear. "Prince Harrold seemed most taken by you," she murmured, "when you were introduced. I saw how he looked at your hair! And I heard mother saying to father something about you flowering in a year or two, being old enough for a betrothal and the princes here..."
Sansa forced herself to take shallower breaths though her heart was racing. "That is not for me to say," she said carefully. She turned to her mother to ask her how she looked but Lady Catelyn had turned her attention to her younger daughter.
"I'll brush her hair, Septa Mordane," Lady Catelyn said. "Sit still a moment, Arya, and I will do it as quickly as I can."
Arya was in her prettiest gown, a grey velvet with a girdle of moonstones at her narrow hips and a chain of silver at her throat. She had openly rebelled when Septa Mordane had tried to squeeze her feet into a fashionable but tight pair of slippers and Lady Catelyn had finally permitted her to wear her old leather shoes.
"No one will notice her feet if we let the hem down," Lady Catelyn said practically. "As it is, they will scarcely look at the child at all."
Sansa loved it when her mother brushed her hair, she often dismissed the maid so she could do it herself. She looked on enviously while Lady Catelyn brushed through the tangles of Arya's hair, murmuring soothingly when Arya winced.
"You'd have such lovely hair, child," Lady Catelyn said gently, "if you didn't do your best to dirty it, riding and roughhousing with your brothers. And you must let it grow."
"Its ugly," Arya said rebelliously and Sansa had to agree. "Its plain and drab. Its not a nice color, not like Sansa's."
"Like a horse's mane," Jeyne whispered and Sansa stifled a giggle.
"No," Lady Catelyn said, "it brings to mind your Aunt Lyanna's. Your father says so too, indeed you look very like her when she was your age."
"Lyanna was beautiful," Arya said, just as startled as Sansa. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.
"She was beautiful," Lady Catelyn agreed, "and so will you be when you are a woman grown. Give yourself a few years and you will be just as lovely as your sister."
Sansa did not like where this was going. "Mother," she interrupted, "how do I look, please?"
As ever, Lady Catelyn's face burst into a radiant smile as she observed her elder daughter. "Magnificent, as always. Twirl for me, sweetling."
So Sansa did, giggling as she twirled on the points of her dainty slippers, her skirts flaring around her. Arya screwed up her face. "You'll probably trip and fall on your face wearing those heels," she said triumphantly. "Probably when you're dancing with the prince. And then he'll laugh fit to kill at you."
"I will not," Sansa said indignantly. "You would but then I am ever so much more graceful than you."
"Girls, don't fight."
"You would because you'd be nervous dancing with him. You're sweet on the prince, I saw the way you looked at him when we were introduced-"
"You will say anything, won't you, Arya? Mother, tell her to-"
"Hush, both of you," Lady Catelyn said irritably. She turned to Arya. "And which prince did you think your sister was 'sweet on', as you call it? There are three of them."
"The oldest one," Arya said triumphantly. "Prince Harrold. You think I have mashed lard for brains but I see a lot more than you do, Sansa."
Sansa could feel a betraying blush rising on her face and she turned quickly away - but not quickly enough to escape her mother's notice. "I'm not sweet on anyone," Sansa wailed. "Its not true, Mother-"
Lady Catelyn heaved a sigh and looked at Septa Mordane. But her voice was not cross at all, only amused, when she said, "Daughters. How quickly they grow."
She felt as though she had been dancing only a moment, that she could dance a thousand years more and never tire when her lady mother called her to her side.
"Goodness child, how flushed you are," she said, putting her hand to Sansa's hot forehead and beckoning her to sit next to her.
"Oh mother, please do let me dance," Sansa pleaded.
"Certainly not!" Lady Catelyn said, laughing even as she pretended to scold her. "You've been dancing this past hour, you haven't missed a single one yet. It will do you no harm to sit a while with me and Her Grace." She turned to the Queen with a sigh of mock exasperation, "I fear she will wear out her slippers in this one night, just as the twelve princesses in the fable did."
Queen Cersei inclined her head a fraction of an inch. She was beautiful to look at, but cold Sansa thought. More like an ice sculpture than a lioness. "What a hardy girl you are," she said coolly, somehow contriving to make Sansa's healthy enjoyment and vigor seem common and vulgar. "A true northman's daughter."
Lady Catelyn's polite smile never wavered. "Indeed, I should hope that she is hardy," she said smoothly. "She will bear children more easily because of it. I have had five myself and I expect to have at least five more, for Lord Eddard and I are young as yet." She sighed softly. "How terribly it must have cut Your Grace when you were too... damaged to carry a living child to term, after Prince Tommem's birth. Four heirs is not nearly enough for a king and for such a vigorous man as His Grace..."
She stroked Sansa's hair gently. "Have you danced with the whole court, sweetling?" she teased her. "You have ensnared all of Her Grace's sons I am sure and that Cerwyn boy and the King's squires..."
"What a pretty child you are," Queen Cersei murmured. "My Joff and Harry seemed most taken by your... charms, sweetling. Which do you favor more?"
Lady Catelyn's hand on Sansa's hair clenched painfully. It was a loaded question, Sansa could sense, though she did not know why. So she answered very carefully, casting her eyes demurely down to the ground. "I cannot say, Your Grace, for they both seemed most gallant and handsome to me." They had at that - Prince Joffrey was his mother's golden lion cub while Prince Harrold was cast in the mold of the Baratheons, dark and comely.
She cast a quick glance at her mother. The satisfied smile, almost threatening to turn into a smirk, on Lady Catelyn's face assured her that she had. A lady may be known by her courtesy, discretion and grace even in the face of odds. Sansa's slippered foot tapped restlessly to the beat of the music. "Pardon me, but might I have leave to take a breath of fresh air?" she asked.
Before her mother could reply, Queen Cersei smiled and said sweetly, "Yes child, run along now. You might catch up with Harry outside - he stepped out but a moment ago for the same purpose."
"Take Jeyne with you," Lady Catelyn told her but she let her go all the same.
Heart dancing, Sansa sped to call her friend. Jeyne, who had just finished dancing with Torrhen Karstark, was pouting petulantly. "Theon never thought to ask me," she wailed, obviously deeply hurt. "He's danced with every girl in the room but me and he danced with that dreadful Swyft girl, one of the Queen's ladies, twice and she looks like a pig."
"I'm sure he thought you were too busy to care for a dance with him," Sansa tried to console her. No its not that, he just didn't want to entangle himself with a moonstruck little girl. "You've hardly stopped dancing all evening and I've seen my Cousin Karstark casting sheep's eyes at you. A breath of fresh air will do you good."
The girls threw on their cloaks - serviceable broadcloth for Jeyne, forest-green velvet edged with vair for Sansa - and slipped outside. The yard was cold and still, flecks of snow falling like feathers. Inside there was meat and mead for all, warmth and women, why should anyone care to leave it except the poor sentries on guard?
"Her Grace told me that Prince Harrold had stepped out," Sansa told Jeyne. "Perhaps we might ask a sentry where he went?"
But that did not prove necessary. Sansa caught sight of her bastard half-brother. "Jon," she called out and Jon Snow turned around. He had been talking with the Imp, Tyrion Lannister, she saw. Remembering her courtesies, Sansa dipped into a small curtsey for Tyrion Lannister was the Queen's own brother and heir by law to Casterly Rock. Though whether he will ever be lord is another matter, she thought, remembering some dinner-table conversations that she had overheard. Lord Lannister loathes him passionately.
"Pardon me, but have either of you seen Prince Harrold?" she asked.
A smile crawled up the Imp's brutish face, a smile that made her uncomfortable. "My gallant nephew passed by just a moment ago," he said dryly. "For a breath of fresh air. A private one, I do believe." He waved a hand airily to the right and smiled at Jon Snow. "Remember what I said, bastard. Now perhaps I should take my leave - it is not often that I am permitted the chance to escort two such lovely maidens. My ladies?"
Sansa took a quick decision. "Jeyne will go with you," she said, "I have something to say to my brother."
Tyrion Lannister hesitated for a moment and then shrugged as though it was none of his business. "As you wish, Lady Sansa. My lady?"
Jeyne had no choice but to take the Imp's arm and allow him to waddle inside with her. Sansa made sure that they had left before turning to Jon.
"Did Father send you?" Jon asked eagerly.
Sansa shook her head. "No one sent me," she said evenly. "I knew he was lying though I don't know why he would. But you must've seen Prince Harrold pass this way, haven't you? Please tell me where he went, I... I would just like a word with him." She could feel herself blushing as she said this but hoped the darkness masked her face.
"He's too clever by half," Jon Snow said, eyes narrowing. "I saw the prince go by to the right, up along those stairs. He seemed in a hurry, I don't know whether he would have time to have a word with you. Perhaps you might wait inside for him? He'll come inside by and by."
"I'll just take a walk on the battlements," Sansa said quickly, "I need a breath of fresh air."
Jon didn't look as though he believed her. "Should I wait for you?" he offered.
Sansa shook her head. "Oh no," she said, "its too cold. You ought to go in, really." She hesitated a moment and then decided to sweeten her words. "You could ask Jeyne for a dance," she suggested. "She's shy but she thinks you very handsome, really ever so much better-looking than Theon or Robb."
As she had hoped, Jon's chest swelled with pride. "Did she say so to you?"
"Yes, a great many times," Sansa said, the lie falling easily. "Whenever you fence with Robb, you're so much more skilled than him."
Jon smiled, shy and eager at once. "I'll ask her. Tell me again what I should say to her, Sansa?"
Sansa had coached him carefully many times on what to say to please a lady. "Tell her that her eyes are beautiful and that you think she has the sweetest name you ever heard, that its like music on your lips to call her by her name," she said. "Now go and ask her quickly before someone else does - before that beastly Imp."
Jon chuckled and left. It would be a lovely match, Sansa thought, climbing up the stairs to where she thought the prince was. Poor Jeyne's only dowry was her pretty face and Jon, though he was baseborn, was Lord Stark's bastard. He would be lord of a holdfast in his own right by and by, Father would see to that, and really Jeyne could never hope to be the lady of a castle in her own right unless she married Jon. The best she might hope for elsewise might be a well-to-do merchant who wished to marry up, a landed knight or a third or fourth son from a minor noble house.
Smiling as she imagined how she might help Jeyne dress on her wedding day, what their babies would be named, Sansa was quite lost in her own fantasies. Voices cut through the cold air, clear and sharp. She had not meant to eavesdrop, but she could not help hearing.
"...it was one of those dreams. The old one in the hall with the shards of glass strewn on the floor and the voices beyond the veil." That was the prince's voice. Sansa hesitated, torn between whether to flee or boldly announce herself. Before she could make up her mind, she heard another voice she could not identify, hoarse and smoky.
"R'hllor's token by which you may know that He has chosen you. The night is dark and full of terrors but you are the prince that the Lord of Light has promised to the world."
Silence fell and the minutes ticked by. Sansa stood awkwardly where she was. He has finished talking, she thought finally, full of hope. The prince had sounded as though he had had a most terrible dream. Perhaps Sansa could tell him of her own dreams, dark and bright by turns. Those dreams. They had plagued her ever since she could remember, alternately leaving her sickened or exultant.
She stepped forwards and then stopped abruptly. She caught a flicker of red, a woman's cloak and flaming hair. The tall woman had her back to her, her arms were wrapped around the prince in his cloth-of-gold cloak and they were, why they were kissing! They were as close as lovers, his hand in her hair and at the curve of her waist, she murmuring in his ear, he moaning softly in pleasure. He began to suck on her neck and she arched her back with a soft cry of desire.
"Oh my love, my sweet love..."
Sansa felt as though she might throw up, violently sick, she felt such a fool, a child...
Pressing her hand to her mouth to muffle her sobs, she slipped away, the tears streaming silently down her cold cheeks.
Sansa was as silent as a sheep being dressed for slaughter, as her mother brushed her hair.
"Soon you'll be pinning it in the southron styles like the queen," Lady Catelyn said fondly, "or perhaps you will set your own fashions at King's Landing now that you are to be the second lady at court."
Sansa bit her lip and nodded. She had not the heart to say anything and her mother, lost in her own dreams of her daughter's glory, prattled on blithely. The betrothal had been announced at the banquet, of Harrold Baratheon and Sansa Stark.
"I was a year older than you when I was betrothed," she said, "to your father's elder brother as you know, at first. We were to be wed when I was six-and-ten. Brandon wooed me most tenderly with flowers and stories whenever he came to Riverrun and his letters brought him alive to me when we were parted. How happy you two will be, my sweet, you like him and he adores you, I saw it in his eyes."
"Did you like my Uncle Brandon?" Sansa whispered. "When you first saw him?"
Her mother set down the hairbrush thoughtfully. "Truth be told I was frightened of him," she admitted. "He was a man grown and I was only twelve, still a child. But I knew my duty and if my lord father had given my hand to Aerys the Mad himself, I would not have failed in my duty." She smiled and kissed Sansa's forehead. "But your father and I wish a different future for our children, we wish to see you happy above all. And you will be happy in the prince and he in you, I can see it."
"And you like Prince Harrold too," Sansa said slowly, "and it is a very great match for me."
"The very greatest," Lady Catelyn said and then she frowned slightly. "What ails you, child? You seem... unsettled."
"Oh no," Sansa assured her quickly, "no I am very, very happy. I was just thinking of father and... my bastard brother. Do you think it possible that Prince Harrold, well he seems most honorable, but might he..."
Lady Catelyn began to plait her hair. "He's half a boy still," she said practically. "He might be Robert Baratheon's heir but I do not believe that the sins of the father are visited on the son. Men might have their dalliances but that is nothing for their lady wives to concern themselves with. And I do not believe for a moment that your betrothed would forget his promise to sire a bastard and bring shame to you. He loves you, that is plain to be seen. Now off to bed and may you have the sweetest dreams that ever visited a pure-hearted child for tonight should be one of the happiest in your life."
Her smile indicated that she assumed her daughter would dream of her betrothed that night.
He might change, Sansa thought as she took a candle to her bedchamber. She slipped into the furs, beside Arya who was snoring lightly in her sleep. I will make him change, for love of me.
She closed her eyes hoping to have one of her flying dreams but that night she had a terrible dream of books and basilisks and a boy who's blood was black ink.