The moon was a sliver. Their clearing was dark and close, hung with a familiarity lent by the fire, by the shared meal and by the trickiness of the wood itself.
She sat across from him. Her shock had turned to resignation and then that, too, had turned in the nimble resilience of her youth; or perhaps it was her character. She appraised him now, cocooned in her cloak, and he waited for her to speak.
"Joff would never have let you go. Did he know?"
It wasn't the question he'd expected; he laid the blade down and looked at her.
"He does now." If he lives.
"You just left? I think he'll be so angry, though." The shadow of the fire gave her mouth's edge the faintest tilt.
"I left, no matter. I would again."
"No one told me what he is, and he looked–well, he looked so–" The tilt flickered and dipped down: chagrin. Looked well, yes, that's the pity. And caught you, poor little bird; you were caged before you knew it. I saw the home you came from, a song in itself; no wonder you were so unaware. Not like some, who run to their traps and count themselves lucky. It was humid on the day his liege called for him to be handed over to his daughter. He'd combed his hair and put on the neat red doublet, and sweated under it. A wet heavy pall sat over the courtyard and the stable flies, agitated by the storm, had swarmed up in a whirl, biting at them as they passed. He'd walked behind the men, and thought of Gerion's face on hearing the command–the laughing eyes gone narrow, the thin iced-gold face speculative for a moment.
He'd waited outside the heavy door of the bedchamber for a long time, and then it opened silently on its hammered brass disc; it was cool inside and smelt of orange flowers. She'd looked at his hands first, at the split in his right knuckle, then brought her head up, looking full in his face, and held the look, unblinking. There was an assuredness to her gaze, and if he were honest with himself, beauty girded with regality. He'd averted his eye, disconcerted by that imperious green. Later he'd averted his eye again and again, and obeyed, earning his title. It had taken a long time for the green facade to drop, and then he understood her better. Imperious and filthy.
One morning, some time after the wedding, Robert had come blaring back from wherever he'd been, trailing laughing men and a haze of stink–rut and vitality. He himself had remained vigilant for this on instruction; so, hearing the roar, he'd knocked after Cersei. A bout of busy handmaids came first and then the Queen, radiant in her own haze. She'd powdered heavily all the way to the hollow of her throat, and he'd looked down at the soft mask as she swept past. She had her toothsome grin and on her unpowdered shoulder, a spot she'd missed, a pale bruise blooming from the grip; perfect fingerprints, plum shadows. He'd looked away. In the dining hall, she'd pressed the chilled rim of her glass to her lips and watched, past Robert's head, the man who entered the hall, all easy grace and grin; her mirror. Then the first child came, a boy like a golden torch, and she held him up proud and shining, and no one had said a word.
"Did you care for him at all?" Sharp, that. You're asking yourself, now, as well as me. Did you care for him at all, or was it only that you'd heard a song once?
The girl's quiet company was a welcome thing. They talked for some time, her soft voice meshing with the calls from the canopy, and then the talking wound down into silence. The girl, lost in her thoughts, traced around in the dirt. Her lowered eyelids shone in the firelight above her matted lashes. The fire's thin spear of smoke wavered between the two of them on its way to the canopy. He stretched himself out. When he opened his eyes again, the pit had gone to coals and the girl was asleep in her little cocoon, her cheek dragging on her knee. She stumbled as he walked her to her blankets. He waited for the sound of her breath slowing and fell into his sleep like a tunnel.
Then it was dawn, white-blue and fresh. A trio of starlings swept over the clearing, cackling and trilling; he packed the horse, and the girl piped at him and ate her bread, her little face tilted away as he lifted her, and they rode.
"You saw my brother Robb, do you remember? Yes. He's brave, he was always the bravest of us. There was a rat once in my trunk, in with all of my things. No, listen. And Robb, he…" and the morning went on in its blur of sundappled green.
"And I knew that my mother wouldn't mind all too much, but I asked anyway, and she said…"
The thicket became more dense, and streams broke through the brush, heading out to the sea. A worn path started up before them, a little furrow, not a game trail–the unmistakable regularity of man. He followed it, guarded, and before them was a turf hut like a mushroom rising up out of the loam, dark and earthen-smelling. Domestic, with its heavy black thatch and its little briar gate; and its log trough, with the trough empty, the yard empty, the door open; a dusty cup lying in the open doorway, a hollow blackness in that open door. The girl tensed. It didn't take long to decide; he would know what would be following after them.
The doorway was low, he had to stoop.
As he entered he heard the rattling breath, and he stood 'til his eyes accustomed to the dark. In the sloping corner was the bed with the man and his wife twisted together on it, naked in their fever, her head on the man's chest, dry mouths open, the eyes bright on him, but past caring, the breathing wet with drowning lungs. He stepped back, and then saw the cot at the foot of the bed and a child lying in it gone hard, its mouth in rictus.
In the summer of his ninth year, loathful of his home and of the stilted conversation of his father, he had taken to prowling around into the shaggy thicket outlaying the village. One afternoon, a column of smoke and a great cry of voices had come from the brush as he neared it. Closer, he'd seen the cause: a thatch house, sun-bright and shuddering with flame, and outside of it a woman screaming, held back by two men, and all the common people standing round with their hands over their mouths. His legs had gone shaky as he ran from there, and his throat was dry. Later, listening from behind the door to the cook, he'd learned that this is what is done when the sickness begins.
He went out quick back to the girl, and was grateful for the solidity of his horse under him as he carried them away from there, and, less consciously, for the smell of her unwashed hair warmed by the sun, and of all the world of living things, to which he still belonged.