Chapter 27

A Night-time Parley

Where a septa questions the meaning of life

xx

Sandor

Walking down the Street of Silk, Sandor's inside was churning, acid like milk gone sour in the heat of the long summer.

He was on his way back for the bloody reading, more on edge than when he left the Elder Brother. They hadn't done it in awhile. He had already glimpsed a parchment with the flowery title Rhaegar on top of it in the early morning hours before Cersei's trial, resting in calloused hands of Mance Rayder, thickly populated with letters resembling an army of minuscule black flies. How the wildling could write verses in earnest and remain a killer on all other counts was hard to comprehend. And by the quantity of ink wasted, Rhaegar would have to say quite a bit. Knowing Mance and the story, it would be words most unimaginable and humiliating in the deformed mouth of the former king's dog.

And after the reading, what? that was the worst of it, Sandor knew. Drinking was not appealing. It was getting too much like Gregor and his milk of the poppy with the passing of time. Sandor knew the wine would kill him, but until his last brush with death on the Trident he didn't find in him to care. And now, now, now... he uncovered that he did not know. The sickness in his soul ran too deep to be numbered and understood.

A dragon prince, he snorted in his thoughts. The wolf girl brought him his death. We might have that in common, one day. But admitting such a thing would mean confessing that not all the tales were lies. And on that path lay a peril greater than a thousand swords.

Of losing himself.

The winesink at the end of the street, almost at the Mud Gate, was bursting with the Golden Company sellswords, gambling. The Hound's instincts rejoiced at the sight of them. When he deserted Joffrey, for a few days he entertained the thought of crossing the narrow sea and enlisting with the company. Until he recalled the lessons of his maester in Clegane Keep; they sided with the Blackfyre rebellion. And the Blackfyres were still Targaryen bastards. No Targaryen supporter, bastard or not, would take in the man whose brother raped Rhaegar's wife and butchered his children. Except that one child had miraculously survived, if one trusted Varys.

Sandor Clegane didn't.

As if the sellswords could sense his thirst for a good fight, a better armoured one among them called out to him: "You, there! We are hiring new hands. Are you in need of employment?"

"Already have one," the Hound rasped as peacefully as he could, having second thoughts about his initial impulses. "With the Faith." It was a truth, of a kind. The Elder Brother did swear monk's vows, and Sandor had been moved to protect him ever since he knew the man. Just like the little bird, there were people in the world who needed protection from themselves. And he discovered that service to be much more pleasing than walking two steps after or before spoiled crown princes and boy bastard kings.

The earth moved under his feet then, and he hadn't been drinking since... Well.. He'd rather forget. The ground was hollow where it should not be, all sand, and pores, and mud. An entrance to a sewer, he realized.

The sellsword didn't give up on him. "Hey, His Grace King Aegon VI will pay you better than the Seven ever will. Weren't you the one fighting the dead evil spirit of Gregor Clegane today in the fields before the Dragon Gate?"

"Makes no matter," the Hound said, "find someone else. I don't much care for serving any king." It was a wrong thing to say, but the little patience he had for conversation started running thin.

A dirty tangled golden curl as only one man could have protruded from the soil under his feet when the offended sellsword launched himself at the Hound, naked steel in his pathetic hands. Sandor Clegane managed to step on the blond head with his boot, hoping it was strong enough to push the lion down, but not to break his neck. He would have to check later.

Opening the fool who attacked him from his neck to the bowels was everything he needed at that moment. Until he remembered Sansa, and a dreadful desire to go reading grew heavy on his soul.

A blood lust for words, Sandor Clegane gave a barking laugh at himself and at the fresh body at his huge feet.

She took a sword this morning to defend me, he reconstructed the moment in bewilderment after the fight, too occupied with Gregor to take full note of it at the time. Not that she would know how, but she still tried.

Fellow sellswords removed their fallen comrade and patted Sandor on his back, the enmity forgotten after a challenge of equals where blood was spilled. The Hound bent to put his greatsword back into the scabbard he normally carried on his large back, much slower than he normally would. He grumbled indistinctly to the yellow sand, yellower than the field of tall grass depicted on the sigil he never held in much esteem, but which was his nonetheless.

"Wait there!" he commanded briskly, in hope he would not be taken lightly.

With that he left Jaime with the intention to return for him later, when the soldiers would be too drunk to fight, and walked back to the fisherman's house he almost started to consider his home.

Septa Lemore

Septa Lemore didn't dream of seeing the Elder Brother's naked chest when she ran, swifter than a wolverine, to the place where he chose to dwell in King's Landing. The sight of the full extent of damage she only glimpsed when she treated him in front of the Dragon Gate felt like salt being poured on an old wound of her own, reopened many times under the bright stars of the Old Valyria, in nights of peaceful solitude.

Those were other stars than those bathing Westeros in their celestial light, but equally indifferent to the suffering of the living. Let it all go, Lemore, she ordered herself. It would never do to run after an illusion. Her life was different now. She was of a respectable age and the wild years of her youth were comfortably forgotten. Lives ended, sooner or later, and so did the affections that followed them.

There was no eternity.

Despite her dark thoughts, she found herself seated high up on the wall again, next to the monk much taller than herself, observing the mummers' play, and she was so very pleased although he ignored her at first. The sun set behind the dark blue clouds, bringing heavy autumn rain, tomorrow, or in a few days, they would see soon enough.

"You know your duty well, Septa Lemore," the Elder Brother gestured in a friendly curious manner at the bandage he wore. "I wouldn't do it better myself, and especially not in haste."

"It's nothing," she said, distracted. She was not supposed to listen to his voice and imagine things in her life had gone differently.

"Oh, but it is," he insisted. "I would like to thank you."

"Shhh! Listen!" she said not to hear his voice. "A tale can do us all good after today."

But the scene below made her even sadder than the confusion in her mind ever did. The only good thing was that Tyene didn't know where she went. The High Septon called for a council of the Faith, or more likely, of his loyal servants. Oberyn's daughter, loyal to the cause of her house, had to be there.

Sandor

"Is that how you wake up?" Mance was angry at Sandor Clegane. "You nearly pushed her to the ground. Be more natural!"

"If I was natural, I would hold a knife to her throat!" Sandor said, and, horrified, noticed Sansa wincing. Little bird, he thought, see, this dog could never be your kin. "Is that what you want your public to see?" Sandor spoke as brutally as possible.

In his childhood home he would wake up restless every morning before dawn and run out into the woods and low fields between them to hide from Gregor. The habit stuck also in Casterly Rock until they started mocking him for it. He had beaten up many good men in the training yard because he couldn't sleep properly most of the time.

Am I ever going to stop hurting her? he thought. He remembered all too well what he told her when drunk, and the worst thing was, he desired to throw all those things in her face all over again, sober. She was now a woman like any other, not an ignorant high lord's get. The desire to insult her over losing her innocence was too strong and overwhelming. She should have remained pure only for him. He should have done it first, before the others had a chance. He hated himself, and he hated his thoughts even more, but they would not abandon his sick mind.

"I'll be a bit less natural," he told Mance to stop thinking. "Maybe it will serve your purpose."

So the next time Rhaegar awoke, he remained half-lying, propped on his thick elbows, staring at the woman he wanted more than anything, through the thin piece of weirwood hiding his ugly face. And hopefully also the envy and the jealousy he had no right to feel.

"When were you going to tell me?" Lyanna asked tenderly, pulling strands of Rhaegar's long hair, and the Hound wondered if that instruction came from the parchment or not.

"Later," he read his lines, "when I would return you to your family, or your betrothed. Maybe never. It would be easier that way."

"You saved me from the king, your father," Lyanna stated the truth of things as Mance imagined they had happened.

"The kingdoms believe I took you and raped you. There is rumour of rebellion in the realm. The last raven I received from the capital spoke of your father and your brother Brandon riding hard to Red Keep to honour an invitation from my father. They are demanding that I give you back. We may know more when we reach Starfall. Arthur and Ashara won't betray me. You will be safe there."

"They still might betray me. It is clear that your father fears the strength of my family so he made a move against the House Stark."

"The Daynes would both die for me or for anyone under my protection."

"Am I under your protection now? You have given your cloak to another," there was a hint of reproach in Lyanna's voice as if Rhaegar could have chosen whom he would wed. As if Sansa could have done anything but to wed the Imp, thought the Hound plunging into his next line with the force he would normally use to kill.

"If I were one of my ancestors, the dragonlords, I would wrap you in a cloak with a three-headed dragon on its back, and fly you over the narrow sea," Rhaegar and the Hound spoke in one voice, as if in a dream.

"So you would kidnap me?" Lyanna asked with a hint of mocking in her voice, soft like summer rain.

"Would that I could. More than anything, I wish that I found you on time. Before my father's men did. Did they...?" the words may have belonged to Rhaegar, but it was Sandor Clegane's pain over a little bird bedded against her will that borrowed the life blood to the dead prince.

"No," Sansa answered sharply, and the Hound wished she was saying the truth. "You came before that came to pass."

"Excellent!" Mance encouraged them. "We are almost done for tonight."

"I wish... I wish..." Lyanna whispered.

The Hound's unforgiving eyesight, trained in more battles than he could remember, saw a wetness on the piece of parchment where Sansa was trying hard to read further. He turned to spying on her face like a predator, but the white wooden mask obscured her features.

The eerie rim of the bloody weirwood tree sap reddening what might have been her tears.

"I wish..." she stumbled on her words again, and a heart of a dog flapped the wings it forgot it had. "I wish I had gone with you willingly before the others had a chance to take me."

Sandor looked at his parchment, not to look at her, but it was empty and untouched as Sansa used to be. Before he abandoned her to her fate and left the capital.

"Not exactly as I wrote it, Sansa," Mance said, "but it is fitting. We'll keep it that way. Well done!"

Septa Lemore

"Prince Rhaegar would have told Lady Lyanna a bit more about his life by the time they reached Dorne," the Elder Brother said from the wall to the players and the singer below. "About the real life of the royal heir, much less glamorous than the tourneys and the feasts. That's how I always imagined it since I started listening to your story. I never supposed that he would be so embarrassed about everything that he and his father did, that he wouldn't even dare revealing himself to her. An interesting interpretation, Mance."

Up on the city wall, Septa Lemore stole a look at the Elder Brother, puzzled about his comment and the studious way he'd been watching the mummers' farce. Maybe she didn't have all the answers as she believed. Maybe something was escaping her. Or him. She flushed a daring smile she didn't allow herself in ages to a monk towering above her, enjoying the look of confusion painting itself over the wrinkles on his dry battered face, the same expression she had worn before the latest reading of the play.

Words she had never heard in Essos came unbidden to her mind, although all the people who would speak them to her in the past, had died.

Winter is coming.

In an age where dragons hatched, the white walkers woke, and butchered infants came back to life, anything was possible.

Sansa

The Hound found Sansa hiding next to the hearth, and unsuccessfully at that.

"Come," he said, not knowing where he stole the necessary calm. "It is not dark yet. Let's go for a walk."

She thought he was mocking her so she was surprised when he stressed his point. "If we walk, I won't have time to go drinking and remember my usual courtesies towards you, those of a boar. Dogs are more tolerable."

She laughed and pressed her hand on her mouth to choke it. He gave her a sharp look, but then he let go. Hopefully she was fast enough for him to believe he only imagined her laughing. She feared he would not like her to laugh at him. Even if she had no intention to mock him, and he was just being funny.

She should have refused him because the hour of the owl would not wait, and she promised Mance she would go with him to see Daenerys Stormborn. Yet somehow they started walking, Sansa's legs moving away on their own volition. They didn't go very far. She enjoyed the long strides they made together, taking them out of the city through the Mud Gate.

The guards made no question of a large man going out in private with a woman. They ended up on the brink of Blackwater Rush, kissed by the sea in the distance to their left, no wall between them and the blue of the waters getting dark. The water was unfriendly, unlike the stream not too far from the Trident she populated with pebbles when the long summer finished its reign. The protracted damp evening of King's Landing no longer belonged to it. It was getting cold, but they did not notice it, carrying the warmth within them, one they didn't yet discover in the riverlands.

She wondered if he knew that her last words in the mummer's play were meant for him. He must have known. Or he would not come after her. Or he would come after her no matter what. This way, or that way, he would always return to her. As she suspected she might do the same for him.

Sansa sighed and looked away from her companion.

He didn't seem to see her at all, squatting all of a sudden, just like he did after the Hand's Tourney when he told her the truth about his scars.

"Their bodies were strewn all over this place," he said, gazing all around them. "They were dying. They were burning. I led the sortie three times and then I couldn't do it. I couldn't. It was the first time, like that. I still don't know why I went to your chamber. To hide, probably. I had no plans with you. I had no plans for myself. None at all."

Sansa moved to stand behind him and hugged his large head, pressing it to her stomach, something she never dared to do before.

"Sansa," he rasped, "I don't know what this is. Buggering ladies and their wishes."

It would be easier if I were the woman you believe me to be, Sansa thought, the woman I might have become if Petyr had it his way.

But to her misfortune she was quite unable to explain to the impossible man she was holding in a language he would understand that she simply didn't know how to give him what he sought.

The sight of Tyrion's arousal on their wedding night, the slobbering kisses and the non-fatherly explorations of her body she endured from Petyr in the Vale, or Miranda Royce's stories of her many lovers, none of it prepared Sansa for wanting to bed a man. And if she tried to tell him, he would probably not believe a single word, making the matters between them more charged with all the things said and unsaid than they already were.

She hated as much as she adored her newly discovered ability to sense his desires.

So she only asked: "Is it... is it a bad thing? This? Us?"

Sansa noticed, or felt, a softening in his demeanour, inviting, weak, a crack in the armour wrought by fire on once living skin. Next thing she knew, she was kneeling against him, brushing the scarred part of his jaw with her lips. Until he took her in his arms, and showed her, again, in the twilight, how it was to be well kissed by a man, and to long for it as soon as he would be gone.

"I should go now," he said after a time with a new something in his ruined voice, looking at the rising moon as if he was trying to discern what hour it was. "I hope to find you resting when I return."

She didn't know what that meant, and she had to go as well to descend the city walls with Mance. But the unspoken promise in his words walked with her all the time when they headed back.

xxxxx

"No," Sansa said staring down the city wall near the Iron Gate, "we're not taking this way."

She walked with Mance for almost an hour until the place he deemed fit to scramble down the wall. Her sister's direwolf howled restlessly at her feet. "Nymeria will not make it, and neither will I."

"Come," she told him, finding courage.

And just like it was with her and Sandor, the guards did not care for a couple, or a large animal, leaving the city in the dead of the night.

The walk alongside the Blackwater Bay was even more tenuous than through the city streets for the path was a ruin of mud and water, and Sansa had to lift her skirts up high to keep on going. It was only good that the guards of Daenerys Stormborn were more vigilant than Aegon's: they caught them well before they could approach the largest ship of her fleet any closer.

"A pretty little thing," one of them told Sansa who considered that maybe she should not have accompanied the singer. A trusting fool you will remain, she told herself, and she could see Petyr laughing at her. A pawn.

But the wolf and the wildling growled at the guard who stepped back, uncertain.

"Take me to Daenerys Stormborn," Mance said with his battle voice. "I am a messenger from her nephew, Aegon, or maybe an assassin he had sent to murder her. Either way I have important news for her."

"You would be the fifth messenger and the third assassin, depending on who's doing the count," the sellsword jested. "The queen will not receive you. The rest of you sorry lot is in chains under the deck of the flagship."

"In sign of good will," Sansa said, "I offer myself as a hostage to the queen. My name is Sansa Stark and I am the last living heir of the House Stark. Her Grace could use me to secure the North for her cause."

"We also have a wife of late Lord Stark, her mellow-voiced singer, and her false priest, chained with the assassins," the sellsword scratched his head. "The quantity of visitors has been high of late. I'll ask the Lord Commander where to put you."

They never found out who the Lord Commander was because the most beautiful woman Sansa has ever seen walked out before them from the belly of the big ship, unguarded, in a thin silvery night gown floating in the air of the night. Her hair was of brighter silver than her dress, and the darkness in her eyes reminded Sansa of another pair of eyes in the flickering light of the torches from the fleet. But the remembrance escaped her and she could not match the other eyes with a face or even less a name.

"Your Grace," Sansa went to her knees thinking it could not hurt to do so with kings, queens, or pretenders alike.

Mance, for his part, remained standing, and Sansa wondered if he would ever bow to anyone. Nymeria howled at the moon, fully risen by the hour of the owl, and the Silver Queen smiled.

"A direwolf," she said, knowingly. And than to Mance, coldly. "State your errand, King-beyond-the-Wall?"

Instead of speaking, the wildling looked defiantly at the guards, still encircling them.

"Bring the other prisoners!" the queen commanded them. "The one who claims to be Lady Stark, and the one that the so-called lady styles the Kingslayer's Whore. Leave the rest for the time being."

"My queen," the guard who leered at Sansa tried to say, but a gaze from Daenerys' darkened eyes left him mutilated and scurrying to obey.

"Speak now! What do you want?" Daenerys commanded Mance when the guards left. She would not take it kindly if he didn't comply, Sansa was certain. A flutter of wings could be overheard above the dense night clouds and she wondered if that was where her dragon, or dragons, slept, high up in the air. Rumours in the city differed on whether Rhaegar's sister had brought only one, or five living dragons with her from over the water. Daenerys did not come out to meet them as alone as she appeared to be.

"I've come to offer you to take you to Aegon. I strongly believe you should talk to him in person, without his councillors, or yours, nearby. You should see him before you make your move, and he you. Or you might regret it, one day," Mance hurried to supply an answer.

"You would do me a service," Daenerys said rearranging her gown in a quaint gesture of a fragile girl. "And what favour would you ask of me in exchange? A lock of my hair?"

"I wished myself a bard before they called me king," Mance said with humility, in contrast with his posture of a tall sentinel tree of the north, not young, not old, unbent, unbound, unbroken. A man from farther North than North who can best be described by the words belonging to a great house from as far south as the lands of Westeros go, Sansa mused.

"I would ask both of you and of Aegon, after your conversation, if it pleases you, to honour my insignificant services, such as they might prove to you, by attending a mummers' show I intend to present in the capital a fortnight hence. A small favour, not worthy of a single hair from your precious head, more lovely than that of any woman I have had the pleasure to look upon in my not so short a life."

Daenerys hesitated, seemingly flattered, and Sansa, still on her knees, dared to look up. Only to notice two hooded figures walking among the guards towards the queen. Lady Brienne, on the other hand, was being carried to her presence on a litter covered in foreign silks of blue and green, from a different opening in one of the smaller ships.

A familiar gurgle came from under the hood from Sansa's right. She chose to ignore it and went to the Lady Brienne instead. A black flower blossomed over her pale wide forehead where something heavy must have hit her. The eyes of the lady knight were closed. "My lady," she called her. When Sansa's brother Bran fell from the tower of the First Men in Winterfell, Maester Luwyn advised all who loved him to talk to him because he might be able to hear them, and wake. Sansa barely knew Brienne but she still felt she should at least try. "Gendry was most worried about you. He went looking for you. I am glad to have found you. I hope that on the inside you are…unharmed."

"My lady," Sansa realised that Daenerys suddenly addressed her. "Lady Catelyn Stark brought me this woman she claims to be the Kingslayer's Whore. She says that the Kingslayer had sent her to assassinate me. Above all she insists that through her I can capture the Kingslayer himself and make him pay for stabbing my father in his back when he was sworn to protect him."

"Lady Catelyn Stark?" Sansa said with sudden anger. "Who would that be? This woman here? Have you seen her face?"

She walked back to the cruel person claiming to be her mother and pulled her cowl down by force.

"My mother was beautiful and merciful even in her losses," Sansa said, disregarding the pained look in once blue eyes of a dark shadow of a woman who birthed her. "This, if this is a woman still, has somehow kept the memories of my lady mother, and none of her kind soul."

Daenerys paled in shock and her dark eyes narrowed at the sight of the dead skin of the Lady Stoneheart, and the deep gash across her throat. "I have seen a creature like this, once, not long ago. I should have suspected…" she said. "What do you say, King-beyond-the-Wall? Will the Kingslayer come forward to offer his life in exchange for the life of his whore?"

"Her name is Lady Brienne of Tarth," Sansa had to say. "She is nobody's whore. She plays the role of the Lady Ashara Dayne in our show."

"Your show?" the Dragon Queen asked, mildly surprised. "What role are you playing?"

"My Aunt Lyanna's," Sansa replied. "I have none of her strength or her courage, but I nevertheless find her life to be worthy of a song."

"I cannot speak for the Kingslayer. You would have to ask him. He also has a role in my play," Mance added. "Which brings me to another favour I would have to ask of you, Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of Aerys II. Not to judge any of my players until all the mummery is over."

"You ask for much," Daenerys said, and first a tumult, and than a majestic screech emphasised her words from the blackness of the clouded sky above. "One word from my mouth, and all of you will burn to pay for your insolence. Bend to Daenerys Stormborn, First of Her Name, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Mother of Dragons!"

"I only do what I must," Mance said and remained standing. "As will you, of that I have no doubt."

The silence was uneasy and empty, the night even colder.

"An assassin would have attempted to strike at me by now," Daenerys said thoughtfully.

"Or I am a very good liar," the wildling said, unflinching. "Burn me, and you will never know. It is a precious gift these days, to make sure that a man burns in his death. You would make sure that I die and never become a wight serving the real enemies of the realm of men. And for that, Daenerys Stormborn, I thank you."

The priest accompanying Sansa's mother thought of the moment opportune to speak and interpret the commands of his lady. "Her ladyship insists that her daughter is mistaken in her views. They married her to a Lannister so she is now a traitor to her own house."

Sansa laughed bitterly and refused to look at her would be mother and her gaunt companion. "Ser Jaime Lannister was a captive of my mother and my brother Robb for all I know in the time that I was made to share a marriage bed with his little brother, Lord Tyrion," she said. "This Lady Stoneheart here should recall more of Ser Jaime as he truly was than I can. I barely knew him when I was a girl of eleven. I have no particular love for him, but I know by the confession of his cousin Ser Daven that he still did order the men under his command to spare me and save me from the malice of another man who would have only used me for his ends. And that other man, that man, claimed to be a friend of my mother, once. With such friends, I know not which one of us is a traitor to the House Stark, my mother or I."

The gurgle of protests from Lady Stoneheart's turned louder, and Sansa wondered if black blood would drip from her dead mother's throat if she had a blade and the bravery to pierce it with hard steel.

"Sansa," the priest said, "your mother begs you to remember your father and the loyalty you owe him."

Behind Sansa's eyes, her Lord Father's head rolled one more time down the imposing steps of the Great Sept of Baelor. Wounded beyond measure by the force of her memory, she covered her ears with her hands to mute the thudding sound of it. She would be able to hear it for the rest of her life. Warm living sobs wrenched her for the third time since she woke up that morning. Will there ever be a time for anything more than tears? she wondered.

"Enough," Danerys said, the woman she pretended to be ceding a place fully to the queen. Dangerous and armoured in her scarce words, well protected by the invisible wings in the sky.

"The gods work in your favour, Mance Rayder," Daenerys addressed the surprised wildling by his name. "I was in Harrenhal too. I know of your cloak. And I know what it is to seek justice. Or revenge."

"Take the Kingslayer's Whore with you, for now," the Dragon Queen told him, "and look for me at the Mud Gate tomorrow at noon."

With that, she was gone.

The guards dragged Lady Stoneheart and the priest away. Sansa and Mance were left alone with the litter, lucky that Nymeria was with them to help pull it back to the city walls. Soon a merry party, a tall dark haired man supporting a younger blond one who completely passed out from drinking and collided with some tree, a good looking red headed wench, and an oversized grey dog, were all safely back between the city walls.

Aegon's guards being none the wiser of what had transpired and of what it could mean for their king.