Sansa realized that Oberyn had not been lightly jesting when he was talking about the experiences... provided at the pleasure houses of Lys. They had taken up residence at the Red Lotus, which was one of the... upper class establishments. It was not as luxurious as the one Lord Baelish had, according to Oberyn, but it was clean and free from disease, and was utterly notorious for the various prostitutes available for sale.
She had never entered such a place before. Although she knew enough to know how a pleasure house was supposed to function, she had no idea that it would have such... varied ranges of services. For those who only wanted sex, there were the booths that were cordoned off by heavy satin curtains, whereas for those that wanted a more... comfortable experience would rent out rooms with a presentable selection of food. The most peculiar service of all, were the prostitutes that were not prostitutes at all. They were called singing-maidens, but they all did more than just singing. They played strategy gems, were proficient in caligraphy, poetry in various languages. In short, they provided everything but bedsport.
Brienne had descended the Evening Star with them, but entered the pleasure house with a soured expression. She did not know what to think about women who opened their legs for coins, when they could have done so many things to help themselves. However, it was not her place to judge. All she would do there is to stand guard at the door and come to Sansa's aid if necessary.
"Ah, Prince Oberyn, it is a pleasure to see you again," said the Madam. She was a portly woman, but Sansa could see that she once had very good looks. Her eyes were a dark, but bright blue and she had high cheekbones, her skin the color of burnished copper. Every movement of hers exuded experience. "This must be your..."
"This is Princess Sansa Stark of House Martell," Oberyn introduced Sansa to the Madam, who gave her a very appropriate curtsy. "She is my... blushing bride." Sansa gave the Madam a polite nod. "Sansa, the Madam here is a descendant of the infamous Irogenia of Lys, and she has inherited much of her ancestor's charms."
"Oh, Prince Oberyn, you sly dog!" the Madam chirped. "Your forked tongue is good for nothing but flattery, these days!" Even that little bit of flirtation was practiced and perfected, Sansa deemed. "Now come, how shall I help you today? It's not every day that we have real princes visit us."
Oberyn looked towards Sansa, and she looked back towards him. She did not know what to do, or even what to say. She could not believe that Oberyn had the audacity to put the decision upon her. She knew that he was jesting, though, and swatted him on the shoulder. He chuckled, and said, "My wife is shy. Bring up a selection, Madam."
Sansa's eyes widened when the Madam brought them to the room they were staying. It had a view of the sea, or one of their ship at the docks, more precisely. She now saw why Oberyn liked to frequent the Red Lotus. The Madam understood the needs of her clients, and was able to provide them with impeccable detail.
"A selection?" Sansa asked Oberyn. "Just how many would you want?"
"As many as you would allow us to have," Oberyn answered plainly. "Boys... girls... you name it." He then whispered in his wife's ear, "Perhaps we should... experiment, having you being pleasured by another man as I take him..."
"I'll leave you to that," Sansa said. She had hoped that she would easily become libertines like Ellaria and Oberyn, but deep down in her heart, she knew that the two of them would be the furthest that she would go for the time being. She was not a warrior with honed senses like Oberyn. Although she had mediocre aptitude in defending herself now, thanks to her husband's thorough training, she still felt that being... intimate with others meant that she would be vulnerable for that time being. She would not be able to jump to her senses should anyone wish her harm.
Oberyn pouted. "You will not join me?" he asked her.
Sansa shook her head. "Perhaps in the future," she said. Oberyn pressed a kiss onto her forehead. Her inexperience notwithstanding, he understood Sansa's concern. It was in her nature to be so guarded. "But... am I allowed to watch?" she asked him. She did not know why she had wanted to do such a thing, but she had decided that if Oberyn was going to go through a line of prostitutes, she would watch him go at it, just for the sake of it.
"Oh, my love," Oberyn said, pulling her down onto the bed. "I am yours to command. You will watch, and if you wish to join in, you must." She must be curious, his little minx of a wife. "Would you not at least help me choose the ones that you would watch me with?"
"I could do that," Sansa said. She had wanted to see what... kinds of people Oberyn desired. She wanted to know his tastes and his fancies. They could have a thousand conversations about him, but she knew that she would not learn unless she saw him in action.
When the Madam returned, she had brought a vast... selection. There were girls from the Summer Isles, their skins so dark that they seemed to gleam under the sunlight, Lysene girls with their sparkling sapphire eyes and dark hair. She had never seen such exotic beauty in her life before. Then, there were the boys, beautiful sculpted, the ridges of their abdomens even more defined than that of her husband's. Oberyn had took her hand when they walked from one to the other, and she had felt... strange. She had been educated that prostitution was a degrading practice, one based upon lust. But they were healthy, and looked as if they were having a good time. With Oberyn's guiding hand, she sampled the texture of their skins, saw the gleam of their eyes. But there was one of the boys that did not sit well with her.
He had Shae's accent, so Sansa had guessed that he would be from Lorath. He wore a woman's necklace on his brow, as if it was a headdress, his hair worn long, touching his shoulders. He had seemed to be even more effeminate than Olyvar from Lord Baelish's pleasure house, but there was something within him that boded her with a sense of unease. The gleam in his eye was not teasing. It was filled with intent. Oberyn noted Sansa's long gaze on the Lorathi and nodded to the Madam, who told everyone but the two girls from the Summer Isles and the Lorathi to remain.
"Are you sure?" she asked her husband. Oberyn saw the trail of her eyes and he told the Madam to wait. He returned the Lorathi boy to her and took the Lyseni boy instead. She was glad that he had come to trust her gut instinct, which had proved highly valuable to her survival thus far. The two girls started to undress themselves, while the boy only looked squarely Sansa, as if waiting for her to make a move.
"At me," Oberyn told the boy, even as he wrapped his arms around the girls' waists. "We shall put on a show for my beautiful wife to watch, shall we not?"
And what a show it was. Oberyn's eyes had never left hers even if the where three others all over him. They had sucked and licked, while he had thrust and withdrawn... Her husband was tireless, and he had eyes only for her. He had put on a show, and he was showing her what he would do to her, if it was her that was in his arms. Sansa could have sworn that the prostitutes had forgotten everything that they had been known to do in their occupation, that they had truly been enjoying whatever he was doing to them.
Sansa could feel that familiar, winding sensation that would take her entirely coming. Her eyes had remained upon Oberyn. He was now penetrating the boy, who in turn had pleasured one of the girls with his mouth and the other girl would suck his manhood.
Her hand was reaching for her womanhood, she had gotten so hot, seeing Oberyn doing what he did best that she felt that she needed some sort of release. His sly smile grew wider, and he was just seconds away from going to where she was sitting and dragging her towards him.
The boy had jerked himself up, and suddenly Oberyn was brought away from her view and she could look into his deep, blue eyes. Something stirred within her. The world around her had suddenly changed colour, and she realized that when she looked towards the boy, she saw no face at all.
She blinked. She did not believe what she was seeing. In the veil of green before her eyes, she could see every other face. That of Oberyn's and the two girls with him. The boy, however, had no face at all.
"Oberyn, watch out!" she shouted towards her husband. Brienne quickly came by her side, unsheathing her sword and ushering Sansa behind her, ready to aid Oberyn in any eventuality.
Oberyn pushed them all away and reached for his spear. He did not know which one of them Sansa had warned him of. However, even before Sansa could indicate which one he should attack, one of the Summer Island girls took out one of the bejeweled pins in her hair, revealing a sharp, silver stake.
The girl had roared at him like as if she was possessed by demons. For one of petite build she carried a lot of strength, but she was easily overcome. After a few rounds, Oberyn was able to pierce the girl directly in her stomach, killing her instantly.
"An assassin... it would seem that we have been betrayed," Oberyn said, holding out his hand to Sansa, beckoning her towards him. He kissed her fervently, thanking her again for saving his life, but for whatever reason, Sansa was looking at the boy in utter confusion when her face. "Who are you?" he asked the boy.
"A man has no name," the boy answered. "A man knows that a prince and a princess are being pursued by their enemies. A man did not know that a princess possesses gifts beyond imagination."
At his words, Oberyn whipped his head towards Sansa. "He... does not have a face," she murmured, her words merely a whisper. It was not fear that muffled her voice, but rather confusion and fascination. In an instant, the boy disappeared and in his place was a man full grown, in the height of his prime. He was tall, his hair reddish with streaks of white. There was a scar on his face.
"A Princess has the gift of the Greensight," the man said. "A princess can see what others cannot. A man has once come into contact a princess's sister, Arya, many months ago, who saved a man from burning. The wide world is small, it seems."
"You are not here to kill my wife then," Oberyn said.
"A man serves a different purpose. A man cannot predict what he sees and what he encounters along the way. A man is... humbled by this meeting," he added. "However, a man must ask a princess and a prince to keep it a secret and never speak of it, even to a princess's sister."
Sansa nodded. "Not a word," she promised him.
"A man will watch two princesses with great interest," he said before leaving the room, but not before mysteriously changing his face.
The Madam was summoned immediately. The dead girl was quickly removed from the scene, but the Madam was not as she had been when they had first entered the pleasure house. She was now drenched in sweat. Her sapphire eyes bloodshot and she was stuttering and mumbling. She had not dared to meet Oberyn's eyes when she came in.
Oberyn in his rage was something that Sansa had never seen before. His expression was dark, but his lips curled into a snarl that she could not comprehend. If the Madam was a man he would have attacked already, but as she stood shaking before him, he was playing with the dagger that he wore at his waist at all times, twirling it around his hand expertly. Sansa could feel how fast his heart had been beating, veins upon his brow that she had never seen before.
"Why did you wish to kill us?" he asked the Madam, who had already started sobbing. "What was the promised price?"
"I... I cannot say," the Madam pleaded. "Please... I have many children to feed..."
It could be she who facilitated it, but it was not she who orchestrated it. In his anger, Oberyn wanted to have the Madam killed, but Sansa stilled his hand. "We might not know who was behind this, but we can't put those who are mere pawns to blame," she reasoned with her husband, wrapping her arms around him. "Let's just leave this place and head straight to Volantis."
Oberyn nodded. "Thank the Gods that my wife is merciful," he told the Madam. "For I swear that I am not." He turned around to leave, but not before leaving some coin as payment for the services rendered before they were attacked.
"Cersei Lannister was behind this," Brienne said as they exited the pleasure house, marching back to their ship. "It has her dirty work written all over it."
"No, it wasn't Cersei," Sansa said. "If Cersei wanted us dead, she would have wanted to be here to watch us die. She would look right at us as the assassins kill us, blow for blow." She had imagined that if that day would come, Cersei would be the one who would twist the knife in her ribs. "It wasn't anyone of the Lannisters, for that matter."
"Then who, princess?" Brienne asked. "No one in the world wants you dead more than the Lannisters."
"Even if it was the Lannisters, they must have instructed someone else to do it," Sansa said. "I know Cersei, and this was not her work." Cersei would not be so foolish as to repeat the same mistake twice, she reasoned to herself, hoping that she would be right.
Oberyn agreed with Sansa. "If they wanted to kill us, they would not even tried to hide it," he reasoned, carefully helping Sansa walk up the gangplank of their ship.
It was then when they started to hear screams from behind them. Dark smoke suddenly appeared, and the sound of falling timber filled the air. It was the Red Lotus, and was already burning to the ground. "Whoever it is, they don't want us to know who they are," Sansa concluded. "Let's get out of here."
"I will talk to the captain immediately," Oberyn agreed. "The sooner we reach Volantis, the sooner we can return to Dorne."
That slap was the hardest that Cersei had ever felt upon her cheek. She had never felt such a sting before in her life.
"You once thought that you were clever, but you were undermined because you are a woman," Tywin told her coldly. "Have you ever thought that you are not as clever as you think yourself to be?"
Twice. Cersei had failed twice, failed to kill a little dove. Sansa Stark had escaped death once by sheer luck. She should not have the same luck again. "She should not be left alive," Cersei replied. "As long as she is alive, the Martells will have a reason to rally with the Starks..."
"If Sansa Stark dies, the Martells will have a reason to rally with the Starks!" Tywin bellowed. "What has become of you? Can you see no sense at all?"
Tyrion was silent as he stood next to their father. He had to give her credit for trying to assassinate Sansa again, although she was held under constant surveillance. He had pitied his sister, just a little bit, though. No matter how... abrasive she had been, their father had never been moved to strike her at all. "Sansa has nothing against you," he told his sister after their father had left. "How is it that you feel so much hatred for a little girl married to a viper?"
"You don't see her as I do," Cersei said. "Those big, blue eyes of hers hold a malice that all of us could not have expected. I saw them when Joff lay dying, and I saw them when that snake husband of hers butchered the Mountain. She is planning our deaths."
"So you would get rid of her before she starts doing anything?" Tyrion asked. "Father married her to Dorne so that she could not threaten you or your children, have you ever figured that one out?"
"Myrcella is in Dorne!" Cersei shouted, throwing her goblet at Tyrion. "That little bitch would have my daughter murdered in her sleep if I didn't do anything!"
Tyrion shook his head. "I'm sure that Prince Doran is astute enough not to let his sister-in-law lay a finger on his future daughter-in-law," he reasoned. "I hope you do get back to your senses, dear sister. I would very much like to see you walk about freely again."
Cersei could no longer take his condescending smugness. "Get out!" she cried.
Tyrion left Cersei's room only to find his father still standing at her door. "She's... slipping, isn't she?" Tyrion asked Tywin.
Tywin sighed. "It would seem so," he said. "I fear that if Cersei goes unchecked, she would even reinstate the Faith Militant just to have some of her old clout back."
Guffawing, Tyrion could hardly believe Tywin's words. "Cersei wouldn't do such a thing, wouldn't she?"
"I know my children well," Tywin boasted. "I know what all of you are planning even before you have conceived the plan. Have Cersei's guard doubled. She is not to have any contact with anyone without my permission, not even Jaime. Am I understood?"
"Crystal, Father," Tyrion replied.
HAN: I have to admit, that I am not used to guy-on-guy action at all, so you will have to bear with me fumbling through that little bit of smut.
Yes, that's Jacqen H'gar in his little cameo.
I wanted Cersei to have a slight... misstep, to show her downward spiral would exist even if Tywin's not yet dead. She's not in control of herself as she thinks she is, no?
Enjoy!