He finally rose and cleared his throat and brought her pallet to her without speaking, and laid his down beside her, put his arm over his eyes. She laid hers out and sat on it and watched the remains of the fire smoldering out. She scooped loam over the coals and then laid her hands on the warm loam for a while, and then crawled into her pallet, shivering. She could tell from his breathing that he was awake.
"I'm sorry," she said into the dark, although she wasn't, and it had been necessary. Necessary, too, was the apology, she decided.
She felt the Hound stir, his pallet rustling the loam. He moved. She felt his heavy hand pass over the back of her neck, press slightly, trace under her chin, pull away. The touch was coarse without meaning to be and ingenuous without meaning to be, and in it was the distillation of his feeling for her. She felt it there on her neck long after he'd laid his hand back down, long after his breathing slowed with sleep.
I could keep you, he'd said. And she'd be kept forever; just like the swirling knot of dead men that had held her up–they'd held her up, true, but they'd held her all the same. Her father–she'd disobeyed him; but, after all, he'd sold her, to Joffrey. She squirmed a bit in her pallet, and the Hound, cold, shifted closer.
She thought of her sister then. A flash of her face, running, tense and determined. The moss high on the trees on the way to the mill had faced away from her, and when she'd leaned against the horse and watched the stars, her father's voice had been so clear, just as the North star above her, and the way. We've turned. We're heading west. The creek distracted me, it is so beautiful, but it turns and he knows it. She looked at the dark shape beside her. He lied, finally. Do they all? Not North. What is west of us? Her mind tried its best to recall the map she'd never paid much attention to. The banners, the the colors, the correct names and the most courteous addresses, all these she recalled, but the map itself... this far south... Of course. The Twins. Why does he mean to take me there? Were he bringing me to my brother he'd surely have told me. What could he want with the Twins? He has no business with the Freys.
If not the Twins, where? Not the West. What lie in that waste around the Twins, where were they heading? A memory, suddenly, of her mother telling stories. We stayed at the ruined castle. Oldstones. Sansa bit her lip. The beautiful girl from the songs, who came out of the woods to marry a prince. She frowned in the dark. Who lived in the ruins. No one lives there now, of course. I could keep you, he said. Where does he mean to keep me?
For a moment, there was an uncertainty inside her, a sort of hurt. But this is not a song. It is only my life, and mine alone. I need to go home. I never thought he would lie, but we've turned west.
Sansa had, in her brief and glittering near-royalty, been seated once near the stand of musicians, just beside them, as she ate. It was a treat for her. Each note so close to her, and each note a glowing pop like the embers in the cavernous fireplace of Winterfell, but much better. The hands like birds all over the harps and each pop melting into the wave sliding over her, and she'd forgotten to chew for a while, she'd sat with tart in her mouth. But then she'd heard something else–at times, when a bow had slid, there had been a rough dragging, a rasping. A haggard indrawn breath before the notes. Underneath the notes. She could hear it because she was close; the other ladies only heard the high lovely wave. After she was back in her room, it was not the notes but the rasping that had echoed in her ears, and she now, remembering it, felt a curious, weary disappointment that each song needed a second quiet, harsh song to birth it. Things hidden under things. Where could he want to go?
It occurred to her then that she had never asked him that most important question–why he did not, now that he was free, do as he pleased. Her heart slowed in her. His brother. His brother is in the riverlands. He means to find him. He doesn't think he'll survive the north. An arrow in the front, he said. He wants to find his brother first. Before he dies. It was so simple. It was like a knot tying itself, perfectly and completely. I'm so foolish. I listened to him tell me what I wanted to hear, all the while well knowing what he wants most.
Equally simple was her decision. It had been building in her for some time; now it happened in a moment, like pinching out a candle's flame. She rose quietly to stand in her pallet. The moon was bright. Standing beside him, she willed for him to wake–sometimes he got up in the night–but he didn't. She walked very slowly to get her bag, slid her pallet into it silent, and stroked the cold dozing muzzle of the horse, silent, felt the hot breath in her palm. In the brush, she took from the bag bought at the inn half of the remaining bread; with guilt, she hesitated and put four of the lumps back. It could be that this was why he had me make the net; maybe he knew the whole time that I would leave. The net was an awful thing. She would try her best to delay its use. She thought of leaving him the gold brooch for its value, but couldn't make herself take it off; she'd become fond of the little leaf-masked face.
There was nothing else to give, and for a moment that thought shook in her throat. I have nothing, really, but me. She bit through a lock of her hair and tied the soft red threads into a loose knot. Bending to put the knot in his bag she saw the stained white cloak and so, hands shaking, she grabbed it up and bundled it to her. I can wear it under my dark one. In the moonlight, the wool was a pale glow in her hands. He left it for me once, and then he took me. Now I'm taking it and leaving him. The world is upside-down, like he said. I wish so much he hadn't lied. She left the knot where the cloak had been.
At the edge of the clearing she looked for a while at the outline of the sleeping man until she felt a new and singular heaviness in her chest, and turned away. She shouldered her bag and bunched up her skirts and the white cloak high, and took light steps to enter the brush, and because she was careful she made no sound.
The forest opened itself for her to enter, and she was gone.