I own nothing.

Thank you for reading.

Thanks to my reviewer who helps to keep this going.

No gore in this one, or so I hope.

xxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 6

Of a Hair Dye and One Too Many Ravens

Where the ravens start following the mummers, and there is kissing

Elder Brother

A host of men and a large travelling wagon came to the gates of the Raventree Hall late in the afternoon. The first autumn snow was already melting in small ponds of murky brown water, scattered among the patches of the whiteness still untouched.

The men looked as haggard as their horses but there was determination in their eyes. Some were still armoured and some wore the brown robes of the Faith. Some traded their belongings between them so that a brown cloak cold be seen hovering over the metal of a knight's armour, and many a monk wore a piece of steelwork here and there; a single vambrace or an elaborate helm.

"Lord Baelish, if you please," said the Elder Brother towards the wagon, finding his courtesy with utmost difficulty. "You are the overlord of these people. Ask them to allow us to come in." He rubbed his hurting head under the cowl and chewed one of the last carefully rationed pieces of a root called the wolf's grass, a weed that grew in abundance everywhere in the riverlands but it became scarce with the end of summer. It had healing properties to keep the skin clean and smooth.

The Elder Brother used it every day, because the Elder Brother before him insisted he should do it at least until the next winter came, in order to fully heal his naked scalp, injured beyond recognition in the battle of the Trident. It left him conveniently bold ever since, so that he didn't have to shave his head as most of the servants of the Seven were inclined to do. Most except Sandor Clegane to his right side, who kept his long lank black mane with no grey hairs visible, despite approaching his thirtieth name day, a respectable age for a soldier in Westeros. Most of men at arms could be happy if they lived to see twenty name days in times as confused as their time had become. Then again, Sandor never took any vows of the Faith, or any vows at all, the Elder Brother remembered, so he was free to do as he pleased.

I guess I have to get used to it that the skin on my head will hurt from now on, the monk pondered with curiosity, enjoying the bitter familiar taste of the root.

"Might be his lordship would prefer a company of wild beasts for the night. It could cost him his other arm. Or his little finger," Sandor Clegane commented with indifference, idly spurring Driftwood forward. The Stranger will take me before I call that horse Stranger, concluded the Elder Brother, on the matter of the blasphemy the animal's real name represented, while they were passing over the moat and into the castle. Lord Baelish was fortunately convinced by the younger Clegane's parley abilities and addressed Lord Blackwood as his liege lord. The Elder Brother thanked the Seven that rudeness sometimes opened the doors that the courtesy alone would have kept shut.

The travellers were given rooms on the ground floor of the wooden keep inside the castle, overlooking the largest weirwood tree that the Elder Brother had seen in his life, still white and entangled as a work of the most gifted artisan at the king's court could be, when decorating the walls of a new palace for a new queen.

Thr tree was beautiful in its desolation despite having been dead for a thousand years, if one was to believe the legends of old. The monks and the lesser knights settled in, while Lord Baelish, his natural daughter and their squire were taken to the lord's solar on the upper floor for a meal. They were to sleep in rooms up there, as their rank demanded.

"This is it!" said Mance loudly, and the Elder Brother had not seen him that joyful yet. "I didn't know the name of this place and by the will of the old gods we have been brought right to it! We just need to get the lovely lady out after she shares bread and mead with the old lord. Then we can rehearse one of the truly important scenes in my show."

"There is a way, but you won't like it," answered the Elder Brother. "Send word to Lord Baelish that the knights will train in the yard briefly before nightfall, because they couldn't do it earlier, and that his squire is welcome to join. If I know him, he will send the lady to watch over the lad. There are too many eyes in this castle, peasant and not only."

"Why is the lad important?" wondered the singer.

"I don't know, Mance," replied the monk, "but we both know that our lady is not who Baelish says she is. It makes you wonder about the boy."

"How do you know about her? And how do you know that I know?" asked the singer with sincere curiosity.

"You didn't ask Brother Gravedigger why it was important to rescue the girl when he exposed his plan to attack Lord Baelish yesterday. I have a hunch you agreed to it for more than just your play. My instincts about people rarely fail me. And how I know is a confession entrusted to my ears by a man on his dying bed. I will not betray him."

"Do you know her real name?" continued the singer. "For I don't. But I have met her brother, some time ago."

"Now that would surprise me greatly," observed the Elder Brother, "for all her brothers are dead. And if indeed you have known one of them, why don't you ask her to tell you her name?"

"Maybe I will. And you're right about the boy," said Mance with the perspicacity of a natural born leader. "The good knights walk on eggs around him for a reason."

"You, ser," Mance commanded one of the younger knights who had been listening to their conversation, and who seemed eager for his protection ever since the encounter with the dead in the woods. "You heard us. Go tell Baelish just that. Let us train if train we must!"

xxxxxxxx

The Elder Brother stood silently next to the Lady Sansa, pretending to watch the clash of swords in the yard before them from behind the fence of an arched porch of the keep, which flanked the yard from one of its sides. She seemed to have eyes only for the dead weirwood, where black ravens came to nest, one after another, shrieking at moments with the taciturn and lengthy arrival of dusk.

"The red of the sunset is peculiar over here," she said. "It resembles blood, but the wonder before you makes you forget that it is so."

"Aye," he said, now knowing why she spoke to him all of a sudden.

"Brother Gravedigger," she continued after a while, "have you known him for long?"

"Long enough, I would say," he replied, sensing her intent to fish out the knowledge about Clegane. "We found him dying in the woods and I healed him. He stayed with us doing useful work ever since. Also during Saltpans."

"Why are you mentioning Saltpans?" she asked, on her guard at once, very suspicious.

"For nothing. It was just the worst calamity that happened to the neighbouring lands since he has been with us," the Elder Brother hurried to dissipate her doubts. "He helped me cure the wounded and bury the dead in the end."

"Oh. I see. I am sorry for my reaction, brother. Indeed, the grievous tidings of the atrocities in Saltpans have also reached us in the Vale."

"And a tall blond lady knight reached us on the Quiet Isle. She was looking for her sister, a girl with auburn hair who might be almost eight and ten by now. Except that the girl she wanted to find was not her sister but the last living heir of an all but extinct great house from the North," the Elder Brother decided to embark upon a conversation he should have had much earlier. A bit of confidence cannot harm any of us. Maybe in time we could help her. Maybe I could if she doesn't trust Clegane for it or if he never gathers the courage to try. The new High Septon has the highest regard for my labours in favour of the people of the Seven.

"Why should anyone be looking for such girl?" Sansa asked with indifference.

"To honour an oath given by someone else to the girl's mother before her untimely death. But that is not the matter."

"What is?" asked Sansa.

"I am a healer, my lady. I saw you washing your hair in the streams flowing into the Trident with the mixture of the herbs containing wolf's grass root. I can tell it by the smell. I use it to keep my head hairless, but I understand that in combination with other plants it can also change the colour of the hair. Please, believe me when I say that I mean you no harm, and forgive me for my impetuous reactions when I saw you so attached to your father when we first met."

"I will ponder on your words," said Sansa when the training ended, and her eyes searched for the boy squire to take him back in. "I would take my leave now, please, it's getting late."

"Do not go yet, I beg you, my lady," pleaded the singer behind them. "Lord Blackwood still has your father occupied, from what his knights that now follow my lead could tell by spying on the solar. And the ravens will make a wonderful background for our next reading."

Sansa

Sansa stood in front of the dead weirwood tree, populated by several flocks of ravens roosting under the falling sun. More were seen flying towards the tree, from what had to be the north, if she could trust her letters for directions. She noticed that the parchment was pretty long that time, longer than any they had read beforehand, and her heart ran faster at the thought of what it might contain.

She saw the Hound approaching from the porch, his mask already on his face. For the first time he didn't wear his monk's cloak, nor the cowl, and she noticed how his hair was carefully combed to the side of his face where his burns were well hidden by the smooth white surface of the odd disguise the northern singer made them wear. He must be faithful to a long lasting habit of arranging it so, she supposed.

She hadn't seen him close since the direwolf nearly killed him, and that possibility alone had scared her a thousand times more than the dead men attacking them or the unknown terror they had seen coming from the plains.

It was for the best that none of Petyr's party recognised the direwolf for what it was. They took her explanation about a shadowcat all knew existed in the South, murdering a being from the old Nan's tales, at face value. Nymeria did kill that creature, she thought. That much is true.

Words have their use, she smiled inwardly. Maybe they also are a woman's weapon, she thought remembering the teachings of the queen. And Petyr's, she noted bitterly. Sweet words are nothing but deceit. Yet she was painfully eager to hear what words the singer used on that occasion to convey the legend of the unknown couple.

She even had time to think, or to hope, again, against all hope, that Arya was alive and nearby, now that she had known beyond doubt that Nymeria was free and prowling the woods of the riverlands. Or maybe it was only the two of them, Sansa and Nymeria, the only surviving Starks, if Arya just like Lady had died before her time.

Her musings were cut short because now the Hound was only a step away from her, wearing only a pair of light and simple dark brown garments of a brother of the Faith. He won't survive winter in those, she was worried. She had to arch her neck a bit upwards to face him and then she noticed a tiny trickle of sweat on his neck, dripping from under the mask. He trained with the others, she remembered. And he did it hooded as he does everything now: the cloak is now his armour and his helm.

She felt unsafe with him so nearby, and unarmoured for a change. But instead of being afraid of him, or for him, she discovered that she was afraid of herself.

So she turned to the singer for guidance of what they should do.

"Ser," she said, "shall we stand or sit down?"

"You'll be standing for this one, I think," he replied. "You can also walk as you see fit. Let the words guide you in your movements."

Sandor Clegane spat a tiny bit of slime mingled with blood to the ground next to her, and she instinctively made a step backward, repulsed.

"Singer," he rasped immediately, startled by her gesture. "You should ask one of the knights to read with the lady. Someone more gentle and well mannered."

"No," said Mance. "We've been through this before. You'll be fine. Unless the lady truly desires a change."

"No, I'm used to him by now," Sansa said without thinking, and she immediately tried to correct her being way too forward for a lady about the situation. "The mask fits him perfectly. All the other men are smaller, it will slide off their faces."

"The lady has a point," said Mance, his laugh getting lost amidst the insistent chatter of another flock of ravens that had just landed on the dead branches of the white tree. "Please, read. This scene is important."

"Why?" asked Sansa, forcing herself to purposefully make a step closer to the Hound, even if he might spit again.

"You'll see, just do it," Mance urged them when the Blackwood's servants, scrawny and famished as their master, brought torches to illuminate the porch.

The siege they endured must have been truly awful, thought Sansa, remembering a talk during dinner in the Vale of how Lord Blackwood bowed his knee to King Tommen. She was pleased with the light and the warmth of fire while she was waiting for Sandor Clegane to speak.

It was his turn to start.

"So we meet again," he rasped after a long while as naturally as if the words were his own.

"I beg you a pardon, my lord, but so you say. I don't believe that we have ever been properly presented," she read back.

"We have never been properly presented, that much is true," he almost growled. "But we have met. And I want to tell you that I, at least, have never forgotten our meetings even if you did."

"My lord," Sansa asked with shyness she didn't need to fake, thinking how the words read so far could apply to the two of them just as well. She wished to tell him she had never forgotten the Hound, but the singer would be angry if she didn't go on reading the good lines. "The darkness is covering your face. In honesty, I don't know who you are. The old gods have called for me to come out and witness what once was their home. They speak with the voices of the ravens, didn't you know?"

"I have no patience for the trees, my lady," he read in a steady voice. "Born and named as I was in the light of the Seven."

"The old gods speak to all men and it is wise to heed their call. They seemed to have called you out as well. Why else would you be standing here looking at the dead tree if you don't even share our faith?"

"Or elsewise we could say that they called you out to meet me. Again. For which I would be glad."

"Your armour must be black and encrusted with red rubies, but I do not discern your sigil and I still cannot see your face. If you have honour, come and show yourself in the moonlight! Or are you afraid that the ravens will peck your eyes?"

"If I step forward, you would run your lance through me, my lady. And I still value my life, unworthy as it may be."

"Why would I do that?" Sansa asked, puzzled. Who is the lady I am playing? She obviously knew how to handle weapons because a lance was mentioned already for the second time. What the Hound said next made her forget all her curiosity towards the play, and she found that she could barely stand straight on her two feet, too light of weight as a flake of new snow.

"Because if I come any closer, I will kiss you in the sight of the old gods and all their ravens, and a wolf-maid like you will not take that offence lightly. I have no right to you under the sun of the Seven and you would hate me if I revealed my face. Yet I would kiss you now, though it would mean my certain death," the Hound's cruel voice ebbed in a whisper towards the end.

But you did kiss me, Sansa thought, pressing the parchment closer to her chest to hide the trembling of her hands. Do you sometimes remember that as well? Or is it only the stupid girls just flowered who remember a single kiss of a man grown?

"I dare you to do that, if you are brave," she read not believing what she was reading, her cheeks getting very warm from under the mask. The singer surely doesn't mean us to do this! He told Petyr that his play was chaste. "I will close my eyes and no harm will come to you. And I will let you leave not knowing who you are."

"And why now would you allow me to do that, my lady?" asked a deep voice, self-assured, mocking.

"I am a daughter of one of the great houses of Westeros," she started in a frail voice, but the words of the unknown woman gave her strength and she continued bravely. "The second greatest one if I am to believe what our maester and my septa had been teaching me. And I would like to know, before I am wedded, and bedded, and before I do my duty to my husband and uphold the honour of my house, how it is to be kissed by someone who didn't only want me for my claim."

And who wouldn't call me by my mother's name, she added for herself remembering Petyr's last unfatherly kiss in the Vale.

"My lady, that knowledge may not come lightly," he said, sounding uncertain.

"No knowledge ever does," she said closing her eyes because it occurred to her it was a proper thing to do.

They both wore masks so his lips could barely touch hers. Still she felt their warmth and that one corner that was different than the other. A ruin, she knew. Her eyes shut, she reached out with her arms, standing on her toes, and wrapped them around his neck like laces in a bodice tied so hard you could not breathe. A pair of strong arms jealously gripped her waist, lifting her slightly off the ground. He ended their kiss too soon and just leaned his masked forehead to hers.

And then all the ravens cried and started flight, their inhuman voices croaking tirelessly in the air. As black rain they were, in the darkening skies, and Sansa thought she could hear a single word repeated over and over again. The onlookers whistled softly, and clapped, and the ravens kept crying, The King! The King! The King!

Her feet touched the soil again and she heard him pacing away when she remembered to look for her parchment and read the next words.

"Thank you, my lord, for an honest kiss," she read and halted, only so slightly. "I would change our bargain and look upon your face now, and finally know who you are, to tell my children, and my children's children, about a young man who broke my heart."

"I thought you didn't know me," he said, caught by surprise.

"Young maidens can lie too, didn't you know? It was you in the woods of Winterfell, and you again on the battlements of Queensgate. If I didn't know better, I would say that you were following me."

"And if I were?" asked Sandor Clegane.

"I would tell you that tomorrow I shall depart with my father and my brothers to Harrenhal, for the great tourney of Lord Whent."

"My father bids me to go there as well."

"Will you ride in the tournament? My betrothed will take part in the melee."

He was silent, so she continued, "I beg you a pardon, my lord. You may not even be a knight. It is no matter."

"I would ride to seven hells if you asked it of me," he answered in all seriousness.

"I'm not asking you that. All I ask is another kiss," she read, not believing she succeeded to say the words in cold blood.

Maybe I have the wolf-blood in me after all, she thought and he was with her, and around her, and she opened her eyes when his uneven lips touched hers again. His eyes were closed then and it made it easier for her. So she kissed him back that time, as much as the mask allowed, not knowing how it was done, but doing it anyway.

The ravens kept calling for their king. The only other sound to be heard was the flapping of their wings, the viewers too deep immersed in the scene unfolding to make any noise. It appeared to be as real as if Jenny of Oldstones and her Prince of Dragonflies had descended among them.

"You taste like a blood orange from Dorne, my lord," she read her final words when they became separated. "It is a taste of the south, a simple sustenance for the Dornish, but a mortal peril for the children of the North. I have tried it now of my own choosing and I fear that I will never be the same."

Elder Brother

The cheers went on and on, wanting them to play some more. Only the Elder Brother could not take part. He was a bit late for the scene because the Lady Sansa asked him to accompany the squire upstairs. He had to fight off a dozen ravens who thought he was just another gnarled dead weirwood branch to rest upon.

"Begone, you birds," he told them, "this land has no true king and all that is left is the suffering of its people."

"Mance," he called out for the singer, "maybe the ravens in your story should call out for the prince that was promised. Or another unlikely saviour from the songs. Anyone who could give us hope to survive this winter."

But no one listened to the blabbering of an old insipid monk because the mummers stopped playing and the lady could not cross from the tree to the porch without stumbling through the muddy waters of the melting snow.

So her would-be knight offered her his arm and they crossed the short distance together, through the crowd encouraging them and approving of them. They know this to be a mummers' show yet they love them all the same, thought the Elder Brother as he went searching for a good place to sleep. As far as possible from the seven times cursed ravens.