The Chamber Below the Dreadfort
Chapter Three: The Game
The next day, Sansa scours the Dreadfort as if she has lost the kingdom's most valuable earring. The servants ignore her beyond her needs; she supposes some households desire quiet workers. By late afternoon she has explored the stables and training yard, peeked into the kitchens, flitted through a dozen rooms, and watched the sun through her bedchamber's large window. The window offers a view of the road for miles. The Weeping Water continues its sad murmur, but she does not wish to discover its secrets.
By happenstance, or perhaps not, her travels bring her to a door near in the west-most corridor, the key to which she has sworn never to use. Sansa studies the sharp little thing. She has also sworn to herself she will learn more about her husband, as a good wife should.
Strangely, her mind goes to Ser Jaime, who accompanied them to the city gates. He and Lady Brienne could almost be enemies for all they spar, but Sansa could see the warmth behind it. When Brienne asked what his father might do, the Kingslayer gave a cavalier shrug. "To keep one vow you must break another. Though, I cannot recall ever going to one knee before my father and swearing not to return Lady Sansa." With nothing else to do on the path to Robb's camp, Brienne told her Jaime's side of the Sack of Kings Landing, a story Sansa's father never knew, or perhaps never believed.
She will keep her vow to herself. Guiltily so, as her curiosity and boredom drive her decision. But Ramsay will never know. Mind settled, she unlocks the forbidden door and slips inside.
Indeed, it is dark, and there is a staircase, but she sees no cobwebs and feels no fear. A brazier burns low at the bottom of the stairs, throwing enough light and shadow that she does not trip. Each step grows colder, her gown trailing the stone behind her, but Sansa's dark excitement only grows. If she finds his true face, all the better.
A railing is barely visible in the darkness. After she descends the final steps, Sansa's hand trails absently along the wood—
She jerks her hand back, stifling a cry. Her skin touched something cold and wet. She cannot see what it is; the wood is blackened and shadowed.
At the end of the short corridor is another door, unlocked. The next room gives her pause. A window allows a small shaft of light, turned amber by the sunset. Display cases dot the walls. The light is not perfect, but Sansa looks eagerly, expecting some interesting antiquity. What she finds is…leather?
The first glass case has a folded piece of ruddy-brown hide. The light is too dim to see a placard. The second case makes her stop. Inside is another piece of leather, but also something black. No, something burned into the hide. Sansa squints. And flinches. The brand is the direwolf of her family's sigil.
Sansa has never forgotten her stories, even if there are some she would rather forget. Perhaps the leather is some heirloom, commemorating a peace between their houses. The branded hide looks ancient, and the Starks and Boltons have a bloody past. But Old Nan's reedy voice returns unbidden, unwanted.
"They say the Dreadfort has a special room, where the Boltons hang the skins of Stark kings. Whole swaths, cut away on a battlefield. None flays so keen as a Bolton, nor has the stomach for it. Others say this is a myth, started by House Bolton to scare their enemies, but I am only a superstitious old woman."
All stories are true in the dark. She hears her own breath and for the first time realizes the Weeping Water is silent. Or the room somehow muffles all outside sound. She smells something old and molding. The hide refusing to let anyone forget it belonged to a king? Sansa almost laughs at her overexcited conclusions. Don't be childish, history is oft written in blood. If it is true, then the Boltons who drew Stark blood are long dead. Families keep hold of strange things.
A glow soon distracts her. There is a latticework door at the end of the room, light blooming behind it. His secret den? For a preposterous moment she wonders if he is waiting there, testing her loyalty. But those are silly girl thoughts, and she is a woman grown and deflowered.
The door opens with a creak. The light is murky, the window on the wrong side of the sunset. It resembles candlelight, painting the room in swaths of shadow and blood, aided by several low-burning sconces. It makes the large cross in the chamber's center look caked in gore. She stares, mind working to put together its meaning. Margaery winks in her memory—"There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer. Do not dismiss all pain as bereft of pleasure, sweetling." How the girl think of such things?—but Sansa quells her unwinding thoughts.
Around her are other odd instruments. Closest, on a nearby table, is a leather sheath holding half a dozen small blades. These are the bastards from the armory above, ugly, dim things that still look like they can slice to the bone. Beside the sheath is an old horn. She stands in Roose Bolton's dungeon. His interrogation room.
So this is why Ramsay said not to come here. He does not want her stumbling across a torture chamber, though she has likely seen worse in the throne room of King's Landing. This answer nips at her until she realizes the smell has gotten stronger. The chamber darkens the further back it goes, but she sees something behind the cross. Sansa is uneasy, but it takes more than a dungeon to scare her.
Behind the cross rests a…a catafalque of some kind, covered in a mottled sheet. Sana knows something lies under it, just as she recognizes the mottled spots. Fear, too long hypnotized and languorous, sinks its fangs to the bone. She licks her lips, mouth dry as Dorne. Lord Bolton has not been at the Dreadfort in months; this cannot be his work. Something in the chamber still has her transfixed. A cracking, crumbling hope she is wrong.
She creeps up to the catafalque, half-expecting it to move. It takes a yank to remove the sheet—it sticks from congealed blood. When she looks down, she wishes her heart were made of stone.
Two women lie there, naked apart from…no, they are naked, but both have flesh peeled off their backs, leaving festering red wounds. Her stomach churns, prodded by the rotting smell. Their faces and necks are green and blue. Just behind them, on a narrow shelf, are several skulls. Remembering her mother's words, she wants to cry. She knows one is sweet Lady Hornwood.
"Sansa?"
She screams and clamps a hand over mouth until her lips hurt. But it is not Ramsay's whisper. The voice is dry and dead. Peering through the gloom, Sansa sees bars, and a shadow behind them.
"What are you—where is he?"
"Theon?"
She flings herself at the iron bars. A cage or a cell? She can barely make out his shape, she barely recognizes his corpse-thin voice. The light glints over a red-rimmed blue eye, a hollow cheek. Sansa knows this man, who escaped Winterfell under the Bastard's nose.
Fear, desperation, and shattered hope make an odd coupling. Her hands jangle through the key ring; Theon rasps something she does not hear. Every key, her husband said. She chooses the one closest to the forbidden key and rams it into the lock. It works, the shadows recede, and nothing keeps her from him.
"You murderer!" Sansa strikes him, clips his cheek, she who has never hit anyone besides Arya. "You killed my brothers!" She's choking, sobbing without tears. He crouches or kneels or something that puts his height below hers. When she shoves him he sprawls.
"Didn't—" he croaks from the floor. Sansa has lost her balance and scrabbles at the wall to stay upright, or else her shoes would have found his ribs, before he chokes out something that stops her cold. "They are alive. I wouldn't—"
"What? You destroyed Winterfell!"
A ragged breath comes from the dark. She has stolen the light and can see nothing but a suggestion of space. A space that answers. "I t-took it, I didn't burn it. He caught me, t-told me he'd razed it. The boys escaped." He says more in a rush but Sansa is retreating to the light. A voice so broken cannot belong to anyone not just as ruined.
Whatever her fury, he shocks her. Out of the light's path, she can see him almost clearly. Gods…
She saw broken, bloody men after Blackwater, but blood hides the worst of wounds. Theon is on the ground, propped against the dank wall. She used to consider him decently handsome, if grating and uncouth. Now, his cheeks and ribs are bones etched with skin. His fingers…he has only seven of them. His feet rest awkwardly and Sansa suspects he has fewer than ten toes. He has ducked his head, as if the light stings his eyes. Without thinking, she steps into the brightest light to block it.
"Why are you here?" he asks, voice cracked. He knows, but like her he still has a delusion of hope.
"Ramsay. When I returned to Robb, Lord Bolton proposed his son. I was…not supposed to find this room." Like Theon, she can still have a scrap of delusion.
He starts to sob quietly. "Of course you were…You were always supposed to find it. He told me he was going to f—marry you but…but I knew Robb wouldn't."
"I agreed to it. I'm still a fool. But Ramsay has gone to kill bandits." She steps closer and sinks to her knees. He cringes away, but there is little else to move. "We can escape." He is already shaking his head.
"He has his father's soldiers, and a few of his boys. They will stop you. And he will come back."
It isn't that Sansa is calmer—she is ready to leap from her skin—but she reacts to those around her. His own shaking horror compels her to be the calmer head. She takes a long breath to steady her voice. "Then help me, what do I do?"
Tears trail down his cheeks but when he opens his eyes they are steady and sad. "Take a hot bath and cut your wrists."
She almost retorts something cruel but bites it back at the last moment. "Theon," she says, trying to sound reasonable. "He can't kill me. Robb rides with his father. My mother has returned to Winterfell."
But Theon blinks hard and his voice breaks in agony. "No, he won't kill you. Did he give you a pair of gloves?" She nods, and his face jerks her back to her morbid thoughts with the Stark skins, and the women's missing flesh. He sucks in a shuddering breath, voice distant. "They were his toys, until his father mentioned you. He hunted them, brought them back here alive, and...cut them. He left for you, leaving them alive in case he needed more. Until yesterday."
Her stomach clenches and her fingers are clammy; she would have retched had she eaten since late-morning. Yesterday. He left her to attend the Dreadfort. Then he found her, kissed her, took her. His thumb had stroked her throat, his skin still warm from murder.
When her father died, Sansa keened until she fainted. When Lord Tyrion informed her of their engagement, she cried until her eyes and throat felt like sand. This time, her eyes are watering, tears trailing, but she stays quiet. Gods, Theon. She does not forgive or understand him, but at that moment what he was matters less than what he is. She scrapes closer. Her foster-brother is as filthy as the floor and seems as scared of her as pitying, but he keeps still when she sits close enough for their legs to brush.
"Where are my brothers?" she asks softly.
His breath rattles. "The Wall. Maybe White Harbor. I thought his soldiers were going to kill me. I didn't doubt my own. The boys were gone, and my men traded me for freedom." He snorts but soon winces. Sansa sees a blue-black bruise on his side, a broken rib. "When I woke here. I thought I was dead."
A key to his hell…a hell where he reigns. Her hands shake but her tears have slowed and her mind is clear.
"Theon, will you help me? Can you walk?"
The crumpled boy is already wriggling away from her, red-rimmed eyes wide with panic. "No, no, he'll take a hand. I can't lose a hand. I'm…sorry. He'll know, whatever you tell him. He'll know."
"I did not think you were craven."
But she understands, despite herself. Only once was she set on killing Joffrey and even if it meant her death. The Hound stopped her. Without a wolf, without a dog, she has no fangs. With a blank calm, Sansa closes his cell, leaving it unlocked. The sheet settles back on the dead servant girls.
She leaves without speaking, her feet scuffling up the steps, dragging like iron bars.
Once back from her husband's self-made hell, she writes more letters. The steward is a quiet man, courteous, but Sansa watches as he sends the birds, just in case he tries to read them. Later, looking out a window, she sees Theon is correct. At least two non-guardsmen men still prowl the grounds, and smoke rises from the barracks. She can imagine asking to go for a ride and being told she must have an escort. A mad gallop to Winterfell crosses her mind, but the Bastard of Bolton is a hunter, with hounds and good horses. He would catch her. Remembering Theon, she shudders.
She is numb at heart as she crawls into bed, shivering in a simple shift until she squirms under the covers. Tomorrow she must escape; her mother must know Bran and Rickon are alive.
When the door explodes open, Sansa jolts awake and fears Ramsay will drag her from her bed and down to the dungeon. He was playing when he pulled her from the bath but he can carry her twice over.
"Sansa!" He had kicked the door open, and now strides in like he won the Battle of the Trident. His face tilts. "Still sleeping?"
Sansa's fear for her life cannot defeat the dawn. From the sun in the large window, she guesses it mid-morning. She sketches a smile, forces a bit of youthful sleepiness into her voice, and ignores the hollow ache in her stomach.
"My lord has made the forest safe again?"
He leaps onto the bed, trapping her legs between his own. Ramsay does not return in armor, but looks like he just galloped through a wet wood. "Ten now crown the Dreadfort. My men are tracking down the rest. I missed my pretty wife."
"And I missed my dear husband." Summoning every scrap of tenderness in her, she reaches out and strokes his cheek.
His eyes gleam and she quails. He leans closer, claiming her with a kiss more teeth than tongue. One hand sinks into her hair, the other holds her wrist. He pulls back just enough to breathe. "My pretty, dutiful, obedient wife."
Sansa's heart freezes. He smirks as she pales, eyes widening in mock surprise as his hand squeezes hers, hard enough to grind bones.
"Was there a battle while I was gone? Why else would you have blood under your wrist and nails?"
And she can see it now, in the daylight, in the three fingers that extend past his grip, flushed from the pressure. Blood, wedged under like half-moons. Her skin now against his, she feels the flaking rust of blood she never saw.
The cruel little key, still on its ring, is an arm's length from her.
"Ramsay—" She whines as the hand in her hair tightens.
His voice is low, noble airs turned to mumbling. "You do not wring chickens, you do not dress stags, you don't even saw peoples' legs off like that Volantene slut. You – don't – do – anything that would soak your sleeves in blood. Except go where you promised not to." His mouth curls in grief that would make a mummer proud. "One door, Sansa. I gave you my home except for one door."
Sansa knows he tricked her into her own betrayal, to those curious secrets that called to her in his absence. She lost the game as he knew she would. Lost, as her father lost to the executioner.
Courtesy will not protect her. She quells her shaking, at least some of it. "Forgive me, Ramsay. I only missed you."
She forces herself to be a pale, pliant bird that begs for clipped wings. Offering her ravishment to whatever made him throw himself at her in the knife-strewn chamber. She sees him consider, sees him almost fail to resist an open call to her corruption. He lets go, sits back, his eyes lazing like a cat tracking a floundering dove. In the end, his smile is biting.
"Stupid girl, a clever man realizes he can take what he wants, whenever he wants."
"Your king would not—"
His grin and savage eyes stop her cold. He laughs, but there is naught but scorn. "Why in hell would I marry a claim I wouldn't press? I never let a brother have what I wanted."
Domeric. Lord Bolton's trueborn son, his only heir until he was in enough need to legitimize a bastard. Kinslayer. Ramsay grabs the key ring, unhooking the one he baited her with.
His hand once more slides around her throat and his voice is as docile as that day atop the sepulcher. "Fear not, I won't kill you for your disobedience—I can't fuck a son into a dead girl."
He lashes out and she braces like she is once more kneeling before the Iron Throne. But Ramsay's fingers pass a hair's breadth too short for a slap—until fire streaks across her brow. She cries out, and blood drips into her eyelashes. He cut her with the key. His thumb trails the small gash. Carelessly he licks it off, the sound squelching in her ears.
"Hardly tastes like the soul of the North," he says with a petulant scowl. Ramsay finally slides off her, only to yank her to her feet. "This game is boring." He grabs her jaw, grinning again in his venomous joy. "You offered to accompany me on a hunt. I won't deny my lady wife, but you'd probably break your neck down a ravine. And my girls get so jealous. A small hunt then. If you can get outside the Dreadfort, you win. If I catch you, you lose. If you haven't left this room by sundown, I return and you forfeit." His voice lowers, scarce a whisper. "You do not want to forfeit, for that will be no sport."
He leaves as abruptly as the day they arrived. Sansa stands there an eternity, rubbing her bruised wrist, ice and ache filling her from throat to belly. Perhaps he lurks just outside the door. But she would not stand there wondering. Fear gave her a measure of strength. She has returned to the North and wolves do not cower. Sansa flings open the door, astonished her hands no longer shake.
The hall is empty. Likely he has gone below to while away the time before he has his sport. Her breath is too loud for the corridor. She turns, neck prickling, just as a hand clamps over her mouth faster than she can scream. But she smells no leather, only blood and sweat. A voice hisses in her ear and pulls her back into her chambers.
Wrenching away, she rounds on the corpse that somehow knew his way up here. The shadows hid the weals, the scars, the bruised and swollen joints. They softened the starved jut of his hips above bloodstained, threadbare rags. Theon stands askance, close to wheezing. How long did it take him to get here? She did not lock his cell—possibly she did not lock the forbidden door either.
"What would you have of me?" he asks hoarsely.
Sansa cannot help herself. A decanter sits on a corner table and she pours him a cup of wine. Water would be better but she has none. He still gulps the offered glass like it's the last drink in Dorne. She pours him more.
"You said you wouldn't help me." It is not an accusation.
He cannot meet her eyes so he stares at the cup. "I can die helping you, or when he runs out of things to cut off. You don't deserve this."
Did I deserve any of it? Even now, her fear stands on a precipice. She can lose herself in it, or she can find her balance and turn away.
Pouring herself her own cup, she describes her husband's concocted game.
"He's a liar," Theon breathes, lost and wandering, as if he wants nothing more than to return to the dark.
Were he not hurt she would order him to be her champion. He and Robb were always competing, always more or less equal with swords. Robb was the better rider, Theon better with a bow and throwing knives. Now he looks like he can barely hold a sword or draw back an arrow.
"I chose wrong," she says with a sigh. Not just this. Theon's face shows the same.
She wishes the Hound were here. He would carve Ramsay shoulder to kidney and leave him alive just long enough to know he was hurtling off the battlements. But such thoughts do nothing. She could wish an army here, her father here, it makes no difference.
Sinking to the bed, she tucks her knees to her chest. Her foster-brother shifts from foot to foot, his feet scabbed and horrid. She points her chin at the foot of the bed, to where he limps in unspoken gratitude. Letting Theon anywhere near her bed would have once scandalized her, but that was long ago.
Sansa was used to being a battered toy in the Red Keep. Fists and sword-flats bloodied her skin and shamed her before a hundred onlookers, but here, she is a Stark. She is a wolf, perhaps the most docile and lost wolf there is, but she is no one's meat.
But if she does escape, then she is three-hundred miles from Winterfell without a horse or food. She twines her hair through her fingers.
A game, it is a game in which every move is ruled by a destiny as oppressive and twisted as her bastard husband. She will not play, she tells her foster-sib. Her brother will be here after he receives her raven. Her hurts will be avenged. Theon thinks her a fool—she has no idea what Ramsay can do in the span of several days. He will give her a door ringed in fire and leading to hell, and she will leap through because it offers the slightest chance of escape. And yet, she has little recourse.
Theon will not leave her though. If there is an opportunity to kill Bolton's bastard, he will take it. Not that he believes he can; she sees that in his eyes, but she appreciates the sentiment. More so, she appreciates having someone who remembers when they were happy.
With little else to do until sunset, they sup on bread with cheese and remember Winterfell from years ago. Their foolishness and stupid behavior—when she and Jeyne tricked Arya into putting wax in her hair and earned her mother's wrath. Sansa and Theon were never close, but he once taught her how to make a wreath of flowers for her hair, and she taught him songs to flatter the girls he liked. She knows he hurts, that his mind is a punctured, bloody thing lost in its own regrets, but he tries to be kind. He knows her fear, even if she stays mostly calm.
By late-afternoon, Sansa has almost fallen asleep in his lap as he runs his fingers through her hair. The soothing touch has always made her eyes heavy. Fighting back her drowsiness, she sits up, her sib flinching from the sudden movement. She goes to the window, the glass cool under her palm. The road winds west, a cinnamon trail in the reddening light. Suddenly she squints.
"Theon—" He shuffles beside her, resting against the frame. "Are those riders?"
He leans closer, arm above his brow. She tries not to look at the jagged pink bolt that snakes along his ribs. "Aye…"
She knows he sees it too. At least twenty riders, cantering down the road. Their colors are not Bolton but Stark. Almost as if they see her, the banners lower out of sight, and the riders are just another band racing through the wild. Hiding their colors. Her wounded heart pounds.
"It's Robb!" A small, desperate laugh bubbles in disbelief. "He's come to rescue me. When will he get here?"
Theon considers the distance. Considers not telling her. "Not before sunset."
Hope is treacherous. She once thought to marry Ser Loras, and the Lannisters showed her how scathing hope can be. But she lets herself be a traitor, albeit a cautious one.
"Where would Ramsay be?"
He answers without a thought, looking at the sinking sun like it is the last he will see. "Where he can hurt you the most. Outside the Dreadfort's door."
Sansa has little knowledge of warfare or sieges, but it does not take study to know twenty riders cannot take a castle. If the gates close, Robb will be Ramsay's archery practice. And then Ramsay will be married to the Lady of Winterfell. The Queen of Winterfell. If it is Robb, she realizes. He would be coming from the Riverlands. Robb is her older brother, of course he comes to her rescue. When she looks at Theon he seems to have come to the same bloody conclusion.
She opens her trunk. Searching its sparse contents, she settles on a dove gray dress, accented in white. A silly thing, to dress for one's possible death, but Sansa wants her family's colors. The sleeves have no draping, and the skirts were never lengthened when she grew. They will not trip her.
Coaxing her fear into a dark corner, she sketches a plan with her sib. A flimsy, holey plan, but she is out of time. Breathing deep, she opens the door.