Chapter 37
It was the last room, furthest from the great hearth, and the worst. Had they a room in the stable, she'd not have offered this. He grinned down after the little crone shuffling from the room, keys banging. She slowed partway down the passage to glance back at him. Outlined and shrunken even further by the glow of the hall, she looked like a bell in her wide skirts; her disfavor of him radiated out, clear as its peal. His grin spread and he turned his back to her to survey the room. It was infused with a cheese-rind must and the floorboards soft with creeping damp, but the girl beside him had no eyes for it. She saw only the tub in the corner, and turned to him. He assented.
"There is that, at least."
"Oh, I didn't expect this. Thank you." Looking at her bath, she put her hand on his forearm and patted absently at him, a pleased gesture that charmed him with its frankness. As he locked the door behind him, he saw her lit by the low hearth. She seemed very small, standing there in the low bare room, undoing her braid and humming, oblivious to him.
Pausing in the end of the dark tilted hallway, he examined his choice again and still saw it foolhardy. Sudden anxiety washed over him in the cramped hall, that tingling, too-familiar apprehension that had been his since he was a child. His stakes were higher now, were they not? In the Lannisters' service he had discovered a basic and valuable truth: a man who fears for his fortune is no match for the man who fears no loss, not even of his own life. He had ridden selfless and laughing to each combat in the string of endless battles, and had always ridden away alive. Now he'd found himself a thorny fortune, prickling but vital. He was needful of it and thus hung in the dark, worrying, even as he knew the damage was done.
Ringing, dissonant song sounded from the hall, wooden cups hitting benches, serving girls cawing. The doorway to the hall glowed flickering gold. He looked at the key in his palm. He could take a second room, sleep, but the anxiety made his fingers numb, and he went instead to the hall. In the archway leading to the kitchen was the little crone with her hand at the serving girl's elbow, speaking intently; the girl's eyes flickered to him, pretty eyes sharply contrasted by the split at her lip. Just beyond was a flurry of laughing young women loading platters, flour on their cheeks and hair, but they did not bother to look at him at all.
The heads at the benches bobbed up at his re-entry to the hall but for one, a thin man in a goatskin tunic, but, seeing that the girl had been stowed away, they turned back to their shouting, disinterested. He didn't mind; he raised his hand and quickly a cup came from over his shoulder and was set before him. The serving girl brought with it the scent of her wrist, stale beer and under that, ginger from the kitchen rubbed on in hope of diversion.
"Our best, ser." Her voice was soft, but the accompanying eye was shrewd.
The benches were still loaded, but the plates had been cleared away for the most part and the men were now drinking. The hearth, shuddering with flame, added a hazy glow to their animation. It was loud. Seated down from him was a young black-haired man speaking in an inimical tone at the man across from him, a pale beaky creature bearing the unmistakable stamp of deep wood.
"You've ruint it, now. Gone and ruint it." Even in the black-haired man's whisper was the clipped cadence of the northern woods, and the touch of windiness only a much-broken nose can give.
"Haven't." Above the beak and below the thatch of fur-brown hair, brash little cuneate eyes glowed with a particular insubordination. The Hound, veteran of command, recognized it for what it was; idly amused, he drank slowly and listened. The hushed argument increased in volume.
"Had to be broke up some, else too easy seen fer what it is. You wouldn' know how things as this is done." Beaky had drawn his hands slowly under the table and the muscles in his arm twitched as he made this pronouncement. "Wantin' to wash your hands of me now; I knew it." A thin shoulder lengthened under the wool as the fingers trailed their way to his boot.
The black-haired man regarded his companion with dispassion. "Hold, there. I'm still along, it's just I say it's ruint now. Think you're clever, but any child could see what it is by just a look. That's why you ruint it by taking it to pieces." He leaned forward and the whisper went sour. "And I know why you did it, anyhow. I wish you'd asked before you went an' chipped away at it." He coughed importantly into his fist. "I know what real gold looks like, and them little lions aren't."
Beaky was unmoved. "Put it back together yourself then, Urs. I know what a real lion looks like and I don't want any asking after me." Nonetheless, he relaxed and the hands withdrew from underneath the table; they were empty. His tone turned rueful. "They looked gold, from the front side."
His companion laughed, smug. "Didn't think about the back side, did you? You'd have fit in nice fighting for Stannis, he didn't either."
The Hound winced into his cup. Clumped at the bottom was a fine silt and each drink dragged some up in a grainy tang. A room beside the sty, the ends of the wine barrel, and my questions answered for me. The tang was odd, a resinous burst of the woods at the back of his throat.
Beaky dismissed the jibe, examining a crusted split at his knuckle. "I'd have fit right where I am and that's more than I can say for you. I don't have to fight for no one."
"I like the big city well enough," his companion said, leaning back, his angular face suddenly bleak. "And there's no point going back North again, now."
"Show that plate to the wrong man and there'll be no point goin' anywhere," Beaky said, darkly, to his knuckle.
"It'll be all right," Urs said, looking at the hearth. "You only think of the bad. Well, everything's bad unless you keep moving. I've kept a step ahead so far."
The Hound stirred, slightly. No point going back North again, now. A possibility began to show, howling raw through the words.
Beaky's craggy smile was a travesty. He turned his empty cup over and the black-haired man looked away from it. "Keep stepping, then, but don't get on too far ahead of me." There was casual warning in the tone and Urs regarded the smaller man thoughtfully.
Beaky, leaning away from his companion, noticed the Hound. The beady gaze darted over him fast as a blink, but thorough, and rested on the pommel at his side. In the stringy throat the knot bobbed; he was swallowing, covetous, preparing his approach.
"Right-made, that." Bright in the almond eyes was, besides the insolence, a dextrous and wholly impersonal cunning. Closer look revealed a curious wide scar tracing his hairline like a scalping. "I don't know much, but I'd say that's rather fine."
The Hound leaned back and closed his palm over the pommel. "Fine enough, for what must needs be done."
"Castle-forged. Come from King's Landing, then?"
The Hound kept silent and stared steadily into his eyes. For all the cunning, there was no recognition. The stare lingered far past what was polite. "Small for a smith, aren't you? And I'd say you come from the away-back end of whatever crossroads this is."
Beaky, deflected, laughed. "Ah, you have me." The laughter was genuine yet horrible to hear, a sound like a fire-grate being pushed in. "Not a smith, no. I worked the fields." Which fields was unspoken, but obvious: the first time the Hound had seen it done, it was a warm silent midday, and a man standing in the field was knocking a gilt helm against his boot, spattering out the brains to the grass. The man straightened and held the wet helm at eye-level to judge the crack. Behind him milled the poorest of the camp-followers, combing through the broken grounds to glean what battered profusion the graverobbers left behind. Watching him, the boy had felt only cold; he swept his eyes back to the loud group of crimson-clad soldiers he followed. He shook the memory away to grin at Beaky, a half- snarl.
Beaky noted it, but returned it with nonchalance and rose easily. "Best be off." To Urs he gave a lazy nod. "I'll just hold it 'til you come across. Maybe you can put it back together some, then." The door creaked as the little woodsman slipped out. Urs turned away from it, jaw clenched, but soon his eyes crept beside him to where the Hound sat waiting.
"May've heard what me an' that other was speaking of."
Silence.
The man's eye lingered at the Hound's fine hauberk, assessing. "It's not what it sounds. I was owed it for something I'd done, that's how I come across it. I'd like to be rid of it, to be honest."
"I heard you. You won't rid yourself of it with me."
Urs lifted his fingers, a brief conciliatory wave, and he went back to his drink. In profile his heritage was clear. His jaw pulled taut the flesh over sharp cheekbones and around the dark eyes as he bent to drink. The Hound leaned in.
"I heard you say something else, too, and now I'll hear the rest. What's so wrong in the North that there's no point going back?"
Urs' face closed. Wary intelligence paled to wary alarm. "If you do come from King's Landing, how's it you don't know?" The eyes narrowed in their heavy black fringe, speculative. "Seat of the North's held. Not only held but the head of the crippled prince tarred and put to a spike; his brother's too, and both just boys. Greyjoy of Pyke is who's done it, him that was raised beside the King in the North all those years."
The Hound's right hand, flat on the table, curled involuntarily beside his cup and Urs, misreading it, shied from the fist and pulled back. A fogged print, shadow of his damp palm, remained on the glassy wood. A cold thread wound high in his chest, but his face stayed blank. I'll have to take her to her mother, then. To the thick of the war. How to tell her, if it's true? A despair caught at him and he sat unspeaking. Urs, discomfited, pushed back his platter and made to rise. Nerves took away his footing; he stumbled back to a glancing fall against the shoulder of the man at the opposite bench and righted himself, struggling.
The seated victim half-turned to his assailant and, cackling, wrapped an arm around the slim waist as he'd done with the serving girl, just before. This met with raucous laughter, the faces at the table bobbing like a line of crows but for the man in the goatskin shirt. Demoralized, Urs shook himself free and strode to the door with lowered head, but he'd lost the Hound's attention. The man in the goatskin shirt had, with his wooden disinterest, caught and kept it.
He was a slight man with fine features and the restrained magnetism of an opportunist. His eyes had the unfocused gloss of a dullard's, but there was a tension in the sharp jaw now pointed just away: artifice, expertly handled. Nothing in his bearing belied it but the jaw. The Hound reflected. That man had watched Sansa as they'd entered as had every other, but he alone hadn't pored over her with the fervent eye of discovery. He hadn't needed to. He'd seen her before, seen them both, had heard, knew; this was plain in his averted face, his quiet patience. Urs was not the only one who had come from King's Landing.
The Hound frowned into the dark of his wine, and thought, and waited.