After what seemed a long time riding in silence the girl reached down and with two fingertips tapped gently on the back of his hand as though she were ringing a bell. He scowled down at her.
"Let me down, please," she said.
He snorted at her tone and brought her off the horse with exaggerated care. She pointed her toes before they hit the dirt, he noticed. Also she kept her chin raised all the way through the brush; and then, he supposed, long past, even after he couldn't see her anymore.
While she was gone he stretched, and peeled his tunic away from the cut on his chest to brush away the flakes, and rolled his hair up in a knot, and whistled to himself, and kicked at a stub of root that looked like a witch's finger, and stood around and worried.
Finally a cacophony in the brush; she was returning. But instead of coming to him she stood still at the edge of the break and looked directly at him in the unsettling way she had.
"There will be no arrow," she told him.
He laughed shortly. "As you command."
She shook her head. "There won't. I'll explain to them. There will be no arrow."
"Be sure to rest up, then, for all the explaining you'll have to do." He shrugged his good shoulder. "Myself, I'm not certain of anything anymore but the arrow at the end."
She opened her mouth but her words faltered, and he set his teeth together, emitted a thin whistle, coughed, slapped his chest with a palm, mimed agony, closed his eyes; opened one, and looked at her.
"Stop," she hissed, face red.
He grinned. "Come and get on the horse. I want to be away from here. There was a hoofprint in the mud, earlier."
He beckoned impatiently, laid one palm against the broad black neck to steady him, put his other hand out, but she folded her arms across her chest and took a step back against the brush.
"You could just drop it now," she said, evenly.
"What?"
"That inscription you told me of. Above the door. It's only words that some Lannister wrote. You could just- drop the sword."
His incredulous laughter sounded loud even to himself. They stared at one another. With a quick hand he flicked the clasp and his belt dropped in a clatter to the dirt, his eyes steady at hers.
"And?"
"That's it," she said, "that's all." She came forward and toed the sweat-stained edge of the strap with her ragged slipper. "I've already lost my ribbon, so you might as well." She watched him.
"You believe that?" He stooped for his belt, grunting. "You think it's that simple?" The buckle slid into place under his thumb. "Little idiot. You can't lose your fucking ribbon. You are what you are. You're worth what you're worth. That's not something that anyone takes away. You think that Joffrey can change what you are?"
She stared at him, owlishly, and he was struck with the thought that Joffrey had believed just that. A second thought, one in relation to himself, edged in his mind and he pushed it down before it could speak itself.
"And if I do drop this sword," he continued, grimacing, shifting the strap back to its furrow, "someone else picks it up. Never forget that."
She shook her head at him again and said nothing. Her ribcage under his hands fluttered fast with her breath as he lifted her. But it wasn't until they were riding steadily again that she said what she was thinking, and then it was in a very soft voice.
"I heard my father tell Robb something when I was little."
"Ah," he said, and exhaled into her hair. "Let's have it."
"He said," she murmured, "that it's always weak men who love their swords most."
The tops of her cheekbones raised toward him, a small smile, and her eye at his was infuriating. He felt his throat tighten and pull into itself, the words and the heat filling his chest.
Sunlight opened all around them; they didn't notice; that was how, still fighting, they rode straight into the ring of men around the fire.