"Would you just please, please do me the great honor and privilege of at least reading the thing before you dismiss me out of hand?" Tyrion's eyes burned into Baelish's. The manager thrust the opened envelope into his employer's hand.
It was just after lunchtime, the cast hurrying to prepare themselves for the evening performance. Tonight was Cersei's grand return to the stage.
Tyrion had just spent the last ten minutes competing with telegrams and expense accounts for Petyr's attention. A letter had arrived in the managers' office signed O.G.: Opera Ghost. When Tyrion turned to inform Varys, he found his fellow manager gone.
Temper up, Tyrion marched to Baelish's office instead.
Baelish had barely looked up when Tyrion came into his office, brandishing the note. Sneeringly, Baelish accepted it now. He registered the dark red skull that served as the seal, then he removed the letter.
He murmured aloud, "Sansa Stark will continue her role as Jonquil tonight, or a disaster beyond imagination shall occur. Remember, there are worse things than a boy hanged in a closet. Your obedient servant, O.G."
The only reaction from Petyr was a slight twitch of his mustache.
"Well?" Tyrion prompted.
"Well, what?" Petyr responded with a curt laugh, flinging the letter on his desk. "This is nothing."
"Nothing!" Tyrion couldn't believe it. "You call a threat like that nothing?"
"I do," Petyr said sharply. "And furthermore, I'm surprised you don't. Surely you are aware that there are pranksters out there?"
"Pranksters?" The usually silver-tongued Tyrion found himself reduced to parroting Baelish today. "The seal! It's the same on all the other letters we've received over the years! You can't be serious!"
"I am. Obviously Miss Stark has an admirer who's put out she will no longer be performing the lead, and thinks to strike the fear of the gods in us by mentioning Joffrey. Anyone could have heard about this silly skull seal and replicated it."
Tyrion shook his head. "Did it never occur to you that Joffrey was in fact murdered, and the murderer never actually found? Doesn't that concern you at all?"
"Of course it does."
"Well, maybe we should take this just a bit more seriously, then? Call me hysterical if you like, but I have a wild notion a threat of worse things to come than a murdered boy is maybe something one should take to the police."
Petyr's eyes flashed like lightning and he stood, towering over Tyrion. "You will not inform the police, Tyrion."
Tyrion opened his mouth to speak, but Petyr barked, "That is an order."
Tyrion felt himself go red. If there was one thing he hated, it was when this slimy snake pulled rank on him. "Look here, Littlefinger, we both know who's really in charge here. If he found out" –
Baelish's smile dripped with mockery. "You mean, what would happen if you ran to your daddy?" Tyrion was about to explode in fury, but Baelish continued. "I'll tell you what would happen. He'd tell you to mind your own damn business and heed me. In effect, what I just told you." More ingratiatingly, he added, "I have everything under control here. I promise you, no disaster beyond imagination will occur under my watch."
Tyrion stared at him stonily.
"Do I make myself clear?"
"Oh, crystal clear."
"You will not take this to the police?"
Tyrion was resigned. "No, I will not go to the police."
Petyr visibly relaxed. Turning to leave, Tyrion shot over his shoulder, "But already more disasters have gone down under your watch than I should have allowed. You and I are on thin ice, Littlefinger."
He slammed the door behind him.
All traces of salesmanship left Petyr's expression. His face was hard and violent. He stared up to the ceiling. "You wouldn't dare after everything I've done for you," he hissed to the air.
"…So then Gendry told me that he once made a custom set of horseshoes for a really sick horse, that was shaped more like a heart instead of a 'U'. He said that gave it more stability or something. All the horses here are too healthy for that, but he knows what to do if they get lame or sick."
Arya halted her chatter and looked at her sister. The younger Stark shivered.
Sansa was staring even more vacantly than usual into her vanity mirror.
It was an hour before curtain went up. Although Sansa was back in the role of Jonquil's sister, she still used Cersei's old dressing room; understandably, Cersei refused to return to the scene of her trauma and heartbreak.
Arya had come to hate this room. Whenever her already distant sister entered this dressing room, whatever was left of her soul seemed to vanish.
She looked more dead than alive right now.
Arya coughed and busied herself tying her shoe, trying to look casual as she asked, "You all right?"
Silence as Sansa stared and stared at herself.
There was a new insistent note in Arya's voice now. "Sansa? Are you all right?"
Expression unchanging, Sansa spoke at last. "Arya, do you remember Old Nan telling us about the Angel of Music?"
Arya frowned. "Uh, only a little. That was your favorite story. I didn't pay much attention."
In a faraway speculative voice, Sansa asked, "Did you ever wonder if stories like that could be true?"
Arya's nose wrinkled. "About a musical angel? Gods, no. Dragons and Others, sure." She studied her sister warily. "Why?"
Sansa suddenly looked sadder. "No reason."
There was a knock on the door. "Places in thirty minutes," a voice called.
Arya hopped up. "I'd better go and see how Gendry's doing. We like to check on the horses before the show to make sure they don't get spooked by the music."
"All right," Sansa said in the same monotone. Her eyes never left the mirror.
Arya fidgeted awkwardly for a moment, then said, "Well, good luck." She stood a moment more, and when her sister said nothing in reply, Arya sighed and left.
Sansa closed her eyes.
Such a sweet, strange feeling was engulfing her heart. She swayed as if tipsy.
She opened her eyes again. As she stared at her reflection, the image wavered, and then she heard his voice.
"Sansa, come to the mirror."
Sansa knew which mirror he meant. She approached the wall-mounted mirror as if floating. She did not feel the ground beneath her feet.
Her reflection was little more than a blur through the thick fog in her eyes.
"You look beautiful tonight, my love."
Ecstasy made Sansa smile brilliantly at the blurred reflection. The Angel loved her, took care of her.
These thoughts were hers but they weren't hers, floating above her.
The Angel continued. "Mark well where you stand, my dear. Something will happen tonight. A disturbance. You will know when it does. When it occurs, come back here, to this very spot. Tell no one and stop for no one. Wait for me here. I will come for you at last."
As Gendry replenished the horses' hay, Arya paced back and forth, airing her concerns.
"You don't get it, Gendry! She never used to be like this! Whenever she'd talk about singing back home, she'd look so happy! It made me sick how dewy-eyed she'd get, but still, she was happy! She loved singing so much! All she ever dreamed of was singing for an audience."
"And now you think she's not enjoying herself?"
"That's just it!" Arya was red in the face, gesticulating violently. ""She doesn't seem to be enjoying it or hating it! She doesn't seem to feel…anything about it, one way or the other!" She huffed and sat on an upturned water pail, resting her sullen face in her hands. Her eyes were glumly contemplative. "What could it be?"
Gendry sniffed, shrugging. "Don't know. She hasn't given you any idea?"
Arya squirmed a bit. "No. Except – she just mentioned the Angel of Music to me, of all things."
"Angel of Music? What's that?"
"Oh, some stupid fairy story Old Nan used to tell us. She was our governess, sort of. It was just the kind of sappy tale Sansa always lapped up, instead of much better stories about battles and dragons. The Angel is supposed to look after all the great musicians and make sure they do everything right, or something dumb like that."
Gendry smirked, patting down a horse. "Sort of like the good version of the Phantom, then?"
Arya blinked. "What?"
"Come on, you've heard of the Phantom. Hells, I think you're the one who told me about him!"
Arya suddenly had that wolf look to her again that always caught Gendry's attention. "Yes, I know. I know about the Phantom." Arya ate up all the stories about the grotesque figure. A disfigured ghost who murdered people? Here in the opera house? Arya was always all ears for that.
But something else was preying on her mind now. "What do you mean, though, him being the bad version of the Angel?"
Gendry had no clue why Arya was latching onto this. "I…I don't know! But I hear he left a note with the managers about how he wants your sister to sing Jonquil or else something terrible will happen. So, you know. Sort of like that Angel fellow, looking out for the singer but in a, well, violent way."
Arya nodded slowly, chewing her bottom lip. She was deep in thought. "The Phantom…."
She stood suddenly. "We should find him."
Gendry straightened from where he'd been inspecting a horse's hoof, a trifle lost. "Find who?"
"The Phantom!"
His eyebrows flew up to his hairline. "Why would we do that?"
Arya looked at him as if he were the slowest boy in the world. "Because if we find the Phantom, I bet we find out who's making Sansa this way! Plus, we'll find the murderer of Cersei's son and that stagehand!"
Gendry looked at her as if she were the craziest girl in the world. "Um, you do realize the Phantom's just talk, don't you? He's obviously not real."
Arya reddened. "Well, someone's going around killing people and bugging my sister. You'll admit that, won't you?"
"I, I guess."
"So, maybe it's not a ghost, but a real man! I've heard there are endless cellars downstairs, full of hiding places! Apparently back in the Middle Ages this used to be some sort of citadel where they'd bring people below to torture them and experiment on them. There are all kinds of dungeons and cells where a person could hide if he wanted to. I'll bet whoever the madman is lives down there, and since we're so close to the cellars, we could easily go look for – what is it?"
Gendry's eyes had widened and he backed into the pail, knocking it over.
Arya looked behind him and couldn't help squeaking in fear.
A large black silhouette loomed over them in the shadows.
After a tense moment of silence, the figure emerged.
They relaxed only a little when they saw the scarred face of Sandor Clegane.
The Hound leaned down and gruffly took Arya by the shoulder. "I heard that, little she-wolf. Now you listen to me: if I get wind you've gone exploring where you shouldn't, I'll take a crop to you. And you, blacksmith boy, same for you. Do you want to get your sister in trouble, wolf girl? Stay in your damn place."
His deep voice reverberated throughout the stable in spite of its low volume.
He stared at her hard with his serious, violent eyes.
He let her go and retreated into the darkness.
Arya stared after him with mouth open. Gendry was much the same.
He whistled. "Remind me not to piss him off anytime soon." He returned to watering the horses.
"What if it's him?"
Gendry glanced at her. She was still staring at the shadows.
"What now?"
"The Phantom! What if the Hound is the Phantom?"
Gendry snorted. "Well, that's a stretch, isn't it?"
"Is it?" With the excited determination of a puppy, she trailed after Gendry as he made his way down the stalls. "He's big, he's disfigured, and he knows this opera house like the back of his hand. Also, he and Sansa…." She stopped short, blushing. She wasn't as tactful as her sister, but still Arya knew it wasn't right to talk about Sansa's feelings for Sandor, even to Gendry.
She tried backtracking. "Um…he's got some fix on her, I can tell. She…she did something to hurt his feelings, and now he's always watching her."
"So?"
"So, he also is an angry sort of rotter, isn't he? Broods all the time and is nasty. He fits the bill completely!"
"If you say so," Gendry said dubiously.
She hit him with her jacket sleeve. "Come on! You have to admit it makes sense!"
"Do I?"
"Yes!" She stamped her foot. "I'd like to hear one of your theories."
Instead of supplying one, his mouth went slack again as he entered the last stall, Stranger's stall. "What the" -
"What is it?"
"Stranger! He's gone!"
"What?"
She looked. The stall was empty. There was no trace of the large, tempestuous stallion.
"Where could he have gone?" She asked bewildered.
"Did the Hound take him out or anything?"
"No, he would have told us! Wouldn't he?"
Gendry ran his hand through his hair. "I guess somebody just stole him."
Arya ground her teeth in thought, then: "The Phantom!"
Gendry felt at the end of his tether. "What now about the Phantom?"
"Who else could have stolen him but the Phantom? Any of us would have seen him if he tried smuggling Stranger out above. He had to take him down below."
Arya grabbed Gendry by his vest and pulled him closer. "What's more, who besides Sansa does Stranger follow easily?" Through clenched teeth she hissed, "Sandor Clegane."
Gendry stared gob-smacked into those gray eyes alive with righteous purpose. They only faintly heard the orchestra start the overture above.
A/N: Sorry there's not been much direct SanSan action in the last couple chapters, but that's because there are Big Doings coming in the next chapters! Hate to leave you hanging, so I'll try to update soon! :D