Sansa
The biggest game of come-into-my-castle ever played, Sansa thought as she heard the castle above fill with the new arrivals. Lady paid the noise no mind, padding unhurriedly up and down the Singers' tunnels. They had grown extensive, Sansa saw, and some ran still further from the grotto than the greatest of the earthen rings. Without First Frost to guard, Sansa had taken to keeping Myranda with her as well, thin red vines knotted fast here and there about her. "It may prevent the Others from moving her, Sansa had explained when she'd asked it of the Singers. They seemed dubious, but the woman among them who'd of late served as Sansa's mouth when it came to the True Tongue did as she asked. "What is your name?" Sansa asked as well, while the red strands were wrapped around Myranda.
"Root, if it please you."
"You seem more…adapting than what the other Singers of the Song of Earth might consider proper."
"I am not so old as they. Branch is wise, even among our race, but he is full of grief. Should this prevent Those Who Walk With Winter from moving this particular corpse, we've learned something. If not…we have also learned something." It may work for one unremarkable among their number, Sansa thought, but I doubt a few red strands would stop Howling Wind's mother from reaching through Myranda's corpse just as she did before. She didn't know the Other-queen's name, but if Howling Wind, if First Frost had one, it stood to reason she must also. Branch came upon them, looking weary.
"Our work is easier now that we have earth to move through instead of stone. Roots as well." he said.
"Room enough to house people if the Winter Town fills up, the castle too?" Sansa asked. Branch frowned.
"No, but there will be if we continue as you asked." Sansa knew well the reason for his reticence. He doesn't want men around gawking at his kind while they go about their green business.
"There are many more crannogmen than we allowed for." Sansa said. "We'll have them fill the tunnels, the hollows and such. No doubt they'd be happier away from prying eyes as well, not to mention they'd be closer to the grotto, the beginning of our long shared history." Branch was more amenable to that, off to tell his fellows that they would soon have company. "Did he tell you what happened? Concerning our recently departed…guest?" Sansa asked Root. Small, even for a Singer.
"He told those of us who needed telling. A sapling is not forewarned of rain by the tall oak, it feels the drops when they come."
"Left in the dark, to snap up what sunlight hits the forest floor. You will stay with me, even when I go above into the castle. The True Tongue is yours as well as Branch's, and I would not have things omitted I might otherwise know." Such as what First Frost said before he walked into the waterfall. Root gulped at the prospect of the company of men.
"The earth is far too cold and hard for anything to grow. I would like to help as I can, but winter is not a mere weapon, a blight loosed upon the world by…"
"Them." Sansa finished for her. Root nodded.
"It is a part of the world. For those of us who sit in our circles and conclaves, singing to the trees…it's easy to forget that. Speaking of, it's time, I think, for you to rejoin your kind. It is not good for you to languish down here as you do, Sansa Stark." Sansa ran her eyes over Myranda's corpse, who but for Maester Wolkan would have been fodder for Ramsay's dogs. Over Ramsay's skull capping her walnut branch, worried at and gnawed by the selfsame dogs with tooth marks very visible even where the bone was thickest. Then she looked to Lady, who seemed at her most present when in the dark. Perhaps I have been down here too long, she thought, though not so faintly as she might have.
Even in the piddling light, Sansa found herself blinking spots out of her eyes. She pulled her hood up, the better to hide her hair, red waterfall that it was. Root had a talent for going unseen among the throng, Sansa saw, all the people too busy with this or that to much notice the Singer in their midst. Lady had still less difficulty. Having left the flesh behind entirely it was no more a trial to fade from view completely than it was to walk through walls, things, people. The branch she'd left behind with Myranda in the grotto, as both were sure to garner stares. Much of the tumult around her was caused by the worthies from the southern kingdoms. Once it would have been impossible to tear myself away, she thought, watching the knights who'd just arrived get their bearings and situate themselves. The Hand's tourney seemed as remote a memory to some of the knights who'd rode in its list as to Sansa. There was no pageantry, there were no exquisite banners or glittering arms born. The knights of the south who'd lived to reach Winterfell looked exhausted, and more than one horse which had clung to life thus far had collapsed once they'd reached the end of the road. What barding Sansa could see was filthy and trimmed in frost. The knights of summer, she thought, come to tilt in winter's tourney. Father had been alive in those far days, and Septa Mordane. And Jeyne Poole, ever at my side. The words had come from Cersei Lannister's own plush lips. She told me Littlefinger would see she was well taken care of. All the gods together only know what became of her. That Sansa had never asked in all the time she was in Littlefinger's company was just another coin in a vault so full its door would not shut. Perhaps it's better they took her from me. Joff would have hurt her, Sweetrobin would have demanded she fly, Ramsay would have set his hounds on her and made me watch. But they were gone, and so was the red-feathered bird made to endure their every ill whim. Show me the sword that can hurt Lady now, she thought. Show me the fall high enough, hard enough to dash her to pieces. Show me the hound that does not quake in fear of her. Sansa Stark had loved knights, songs, and tales of love and beauty. Baelfea walked in the company of Singers of the Song of Earth, made corpses walk, saw through the eyes of a direwolf returned from the hereafter. Scarcely anyone's idea of a princess, she thought. But then, all the other princesses were gone, those made when their fathers put on crowns. Perhaps my sort is not so bad after all. Jon will need help with the Singers, and Bran is too busy with his family to do so. His place is with Meera. Mine… She blinked. A face in the crowd had caught her gaze, a fox-faced youth with an unkempt head of dark hair. I know you. You were part of Walda Frey's train when she came north. When he noticed her staring, he frowned, looking unsure. Then his eyes went wide as serving platters, and he was gone in the throng. She felt Lady come near, doubtless able to find him, whoever he was. Never mind, she thought. Some stableboy from the riverlands. The next face happened to notice was one she would never forget, however. Petyr Baelish had more grey in his hair and his close-trimmed beard than he had when he left Winterfell with Jon a year and more ago, but his face had not aged. I have more important things to attend to just now, Sansa thought. So you do. Shall I follow him? Root's voice echoed in her mind. Sansa gave an almost imperceptible nod. Though Littlefinger laughed often enough at whatever he was being told, Sansa did not fail to notice his grey-green eyes remained humorless as ever.
She stared at herself. Her bedchamber's mirror was naught but glass without Howling Wind on the other side but despite a bath, a gray lace gown and a white mantle trimmed in fur, she could not seem to fully turn the face of Baelfea staring out from the mirror back into Sansa Stark. Put Littlefinger from your thoughts. Him and all the rest who wronged us. Think on Jon, on Bran, on Arya. Think on Mother and Father. The anger in the face before her receded somewhat, though ha deal less than she would have liked. Think on Harry Arryn, the gallant falcon afraid of flying. Think on Sandor Clegane, burned within by hate worse than any fire could without. Slowly the face softened, the wide angry eyes dimming to sad blue pools. The mouth, lips hard-pressed, parted ever so slightly. She breathed slowly, blowing away the pain, the weariness, the desperate loneliness. I am Sansa Stark, Princess of Winterfell, she told herself. Baelfea might well win out in time, when the winter winds rose still higher and the Others finally came in force, but that failed to concern Sansa now. At least I'll be more than a little tweeting bird when I die. Sansa reached out and scratched Lady behind her ears, the direwolf fading from view. The corridors seemed longer than normal, the guards outside the godswood parting reverently as she passed. She saw Nymeria first, the grey she-wolf an adult version of what Lady might have been… Instead, Lady lurked unseen at Sansa's shoulder, Arya's wolf looking over uncertainly. A twin to the first wolf peeked out from behind a tree. As Summer had already met Lady, he showed none of Nymeria's skittishness. Then again, Nymeria has never died. It could be Summer has lost his fear of the unknown. Sansa supposed that made sense, in a way. Bran fell from the tower. I fell from the Red Keep, from the Eyrie, from the peaks of the Frostfangs. In rising again, we rebuilt ourselves. Bran was on her then, his hands slipping over hers.
"No branch?" he asked, half-joking.
"No branch. Not today." She could not help the tears falling. Bran let them, only dabbing at her eyes after the moment had passed.
"You will have to take me to them, Bran. I don't think I could take another step on my own." she whispered. He nodded, guiding her through the trees to the godswood's heart tree. A man who could have only been Robert Baratheon's son was lying back on a small boulder, a girl with Father's face and Father's eyes seated in the low branches of the tree, sticking her tongue out at him. On noticing Sansa, the man sat up, clearing his throat. The girl looked over as well, mouth dropping open. Sansa approached, looking at her nestled in the red leaves overhead. She hopped down into the man's arms, standing a head shorter than Sansa. At last, Sansa knew what her father had meant when he said Arya would become a beauty in the vein of their aunt. The last bright streaks of youth had gone from her hair, leaving a dark glossy curtain. Her face, once long to the eyes of the girl Sansa had been, had become fuller and higher of cheek. A face I know, a small part of Sansa said. The nose alone had not changed, though the face that wore it wore it better than it had in childhood.
"When I was at White Harbor, the Manderlys prettied me up. 'Ooh', I thought. 'A proper princess at last.' Had I known I'd find you looking like you do now, I'd not have done with the bother of getting my hair done up." She gave a small smile, half-exasperating and half-endearing.
"Had you not, the North would have been robbed of a great beauty. I'm sure my lord appreciates it, at least."
Robert's son, realizing he'd been brought up, pursed his lips.
"To be true, I've seen it in most every sort of sorry state. I suppose it falls to me to see it never needs end up so tangled we'd need a team of seamstresses to get it loose again." Arya blushed bright red and punched him on the shoulder, a blow Sansa was certain he nowhere near felt. Is that waited for Rhaegar Targaryen on the shores of the Trident? Robert had been no more than a fat sot with his best years behind him when Sansa saw him last, but she could not help but feel a bit of pity for the prince. He kidnapped Aunt Lyanna, she thought, and the gods fashioned a judgement of black steel and golden silk to be his judgement, hammer in hand. Whoever had so wronged the gods as to earn their making of this man of the same vein, Sansa likewise pitied. Just then he wore only black silk threaded with gold, but his arms gave him dead away as a fighter. He wore no stag device, thought. A black bull pranced across a golden field on his breast, looking rather more impressive than Sansa remembered the Baratheon arms of old looking.
"Sansa," Arya began, "this is Gendry Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End."
"Well met, my lord."
"My princess." Gendry nodded back, steady and sure as Robert never was.
"Forgive my curiosity, but have you wed yet?"
"No. I wanted to wait for…" Arya's blush returned.
"For the right moment." Gendry finished, as if he were made for it. "Better to wait than rush things. Hot Pie said it once, when he was talking about pie crust, but I think it fits weddings as well." Hot Pie? Sansa was so confused she missed the sounds of another approaching. On turning she found herself face to face with someone she could not forget, no matter what was done to her. She wrapped her arms around her lady mother at once- or tried to, coming away as though she'd stepped out of the godswood's pool. Lady Catelyn looked younger than Sansa remembered her, and there was the small matter of water having taken the place of flesh. What? she thought, panicking slightly at the thought that perhaps what stood before her was no more than a working of the Singers as they went about their business in the grotto below. Mother's state seemed lost on her, content to simply look upon her eldest daughter.
"I never knew you'd look so much like me…" Her hand cupped Sansa's cheek, the tear upon it vanishing into the current running deeper within. You ought be with Father now. With Robb. It was all Sansa could think, yet she could not stop from hating herself for it. Mother noticed the doubt on her face. "You have greater need for me just now. I cannot deny, I want fiercely to see your father again…but more I want not to leave you. After all, even if I figure out what's wrong, it would be many years before we met again."
"Would it?" Sansa asked in reply. "Perhaps not so long, not with the Others intent on sending all of us to Father together." A low rumble from out over the pool made her blink, a great pale body flecked in gold slipping above the surface long enough for a breath before submerging again.
"It's bigger than before. Deeper, too." Mother said, sounding shaken. What has she to fear from dragons?
"The pool doesn't freeze. Whether because of the hot springs below the castle, or…other causes, the snows that fall nearly incessantly only add to its size." Sansa told her. I wonder what he's thinking. Probably something like 'they must know I'm here. It's too easy otherwise'.
Meera joined them shortly after and Sansa gratefully let Mother's focus slide off her, blue eyes wide at the sight of Howland. A touch of her trickling finger to his nose had him laughing his baby laugh, heedless of the heaviness that hung in the wood. Where are Meera's parents? They should be here just now. Then again, Lord Howland was scarcely in one part of the castle for more than a few minutes at a time it seemed, so busy was he and Lady Jyana seemed to be feeling under the weather with alarming regularity. How Bran and Meera met, what they'd gone through, who they'd lost, Sansa heard it all a second time as they regaled Mother of their tale. Old blood, Sansa thought. It scarce gets older than Starks and Reeds.
"A long road. A hard road." Mother finally said, sounding as though she were about to cry.
"Most nobody within our walls has had an easy time getting behind them, Mother." Bran replied. She turned to Sansa.
"What about yours? How did you come to escape King's Landing?" At her inquiry, the rest of them got ready to leave. After all, it's a story they know, and not happy one even amongst grave tidings. Sansa started from the beginning. Her confiding in the queen, the letter to Robb, all the way to the Battle of the Bastards.
"I would not be here but for luck, and the help of others. Theon helped me escape the Boltons and make it to Jon at the Wall. Tyrion protected me from Joffrey as well as he could, as did the Hound. I would be dead now, but for him." She looked into her lap. "When Joff made me look at Father's…" she gulped, feeling ever so the girl she'd been that day. "There were no gold cloaks, no Kingsguard. Just an expanse before us, a sheer drop off the parapet. I was ready to shove him, I was ready to hug him 'round and leap…that it would have been an end for me as well meant nothing. Joff was an idiot, he would never have seen it coming…but Sandor Clegane did, and was between us before I could act." Sansa supposed the last of her tears were either long since cried, or her dallying with Howling Wind had frozen them within her. She was wrong on both counts, wet streaks tracing down her face to tickle her lips with saltiness." Mother didn't say anything, didn't even blink all the while Sansa talked.
"You endured horrors Catelyn Tully never could. Catelyn Stark, either. All that matters, my love, is that you're here now." She touched her forehead to Sansa's.
"I'm only here sometimes. The end of House Bolton is only half the tale, Mother." Then came the rest. Howling Wind, Myranda, Lady and Summer, her dealings with Branch. When she told her mother about the Lords of the Long Night, Lady Catelyn's brow furrowed.
"The tall one, bald, with horrible long fingers. I met him outside White Harbor's walls when the cold giants sought to knock them down. Father Frost was the wildlings' name for him, but in his own words, he was Freezing Fog." Sansa committed the name to memory. Names not unlike the Singers of the Song of Earth, after a fashion.
"Do you think Littlefinger knew who Bolton's bastard was, what he was, when he left you alone here?" Mother asked, almost distantly.
"He knows everything about everyone. Or did, before…all this came to be." Before I could make corpses walk.
"What then, could have been his ploy in leaving you in such danger?"
"I suppose he planned to rescue me from Ramsay with the help of the Knights of the Vale. The gallant hero who sweeps in and slays the monster…and claims the maiden. A pity I was no maiden by then…and his valemen quite surplus to requirements."
"How do you mean?" Lady Catelyn looked puzzled.
"Jon beat him to it, with a horde of wildlings, an army proper of true northmen who would have no liege but a Stark of Winterfell…and the small matter of a line of giants riding mammoths." A small smile appeared on Mother's face.
"I suppose it was quite a sight."
"It was breathtaking. The giants knew well how to get around a battlefield after fighting Stannis' knights below the Wall…and mammoths are much smarter than horses. With the knights the anvil and they the hammer, it was over inside an hour." Sansa felt Mother take her hand.
"I want you to put Petyr Baelish out of your mind. He will trouble you no more."
"That's all the better. I would rather Root do more important things than make sure Littlefinger brews no mischief in our midst."
"Root?"
"Oh, uhm…one of the Children of the Forest. They came with Bran, with a few giants who'd missed coming south with Jon."
"Giants, children, and all manner of men in between…" Mother looked rather dazed. "Sansa…from what I hear, it was your idea for Jon Snow to come south to try his hand at courting the dragon queen."
"Jon wanted allies. She was by far the more attractive choice than Cersei, and besides, I didn't want her left adrift amongst southerners."
"Just so, I suppose. You made fast friends out of who might have otherwise been sworn enemies."
"As did Jon, when he brought the Free Folk and northmen together. Even then, it might well have been the threat of the Others more so than the mutual desire to turn the page."
"The night Robb was proclaimed King in the North, the lords had spent all night arguing about what to do when news of your father's murder reached us. I did all I could to make peace then and there, but of course a camp of men hard for war would hear no words of mine. How did you do it, Sansa? How did you bring them together?" Sansa thought about that a moment.
"As I once did needlework alongside Jeyne Poole. A thread at a time." With a very special needle in Jon Snow.
"If I leave, will you still be here when I get back?" Mother asked, as if convinced Sansa would be no more than a memory were she to let her daughter out of her sight.
"I will. But where are you going?"
"I said you would walk free of a certain mockingbird. His days of hearing every song and twisting them into songs of his own are done." She stood. "He is my monster to slay. Speaking of monsters…Tyrion Lannister is among the southern lords who've taken up in Winterfell. He asked after you before we set sail from Dragonstone."
"He did?" Sansa was surprised.
"Is it so remarkable? You are a great beauty, sweetling, with a-"
"-great name. So I've heard, Mother. I don't think that was why he was inquiring after me, though."
"No, perhaps not. Tyrion Lannister is too clever to think simply marrying you would grant him much prestige in the north. He mentioned killing his father…"
"I heard the same tale from Littlefinger."
"The Others aside, he may well be safer in the north than in the west."
"So it would seem." What is she getting at?
"He spent the days after the dragon queen's army landing trying to pull together the lords below the Neck, much in the same vein as you did those above it. Not nearly so seamlessly as you, nor so quickly…but there's something to be said for anyone trying to sort out this mess even before the Others finish making it."
"The War of Five Kings was not the doing of the Others. We needed no help chopping whole family trees down at a time. The Others have found a Westeros of survivors, not lords and peasants."
"If you did all this independent of each other, perhaps it would prove fruitful to have you on the same page. One survivor to another." Sansa didn't much fancy the thought of seeing Tyrion again. He kept me safe as he was able when I was in King's Landing. Another part of her spoke up, the harder part. What of it? Does he so deserve praise for doing the right thing? Lady needed no warg-bond to sense her distress, stepping into view and taking Mother by surprise. She nuzzled Sansa's temple, eyes for once the soft sad rings they had been in life. We were small, once. Content to be, with no ill will toward anyone. Would that we had stayed that way. Instead, Sansa had been embroiled in every scheme and conspiracy from King's Landing to Winterfell, from Highgarden to the Eyrie. To say nothing of the madness I've been wreaking with Howling Wind. At least the petty politicking was over. At least the Others did that much for us. She stood, feeling weary. Tyrion might well have more to fear from me than I from him.
"I'll go see him," she said, Lady disappearing again, "if only to do right by Jon and his efforts to keep us all alive." When her mother stood, Sansa saw that she had overtaken her, if only just, in height.
"Meantime, I'll go see Littlefinger, and put an end to any plots he's brooding on." Mother replied.
They left the godswood together, Sansa faintly wondering if perhaps it would not have been better for Mother to simply wade into the pool and find the grotto below somehow. It would be handy to work out how it all runs together. At the entrance two women waited for them. Sansa had time only to see that one had shared Mother's unknowable state before the other wrapped her 'round in a hug, Sansa too surprised to do anything but reply in kind, a relic of her childhood courtesies. She held back sobs, whoever she was, so Sansa brushed the cold flakes from her hair and shoulders while the newcomer comported herself. At last she let her arms fall, still sniffling. More than she ought. Perhaps she's caught cold. Her brown eyes caught Sansa's breath in her chest. Deep brown pools.
"My princess." Jeyne said in a small voice. Trying not to cry. This time it was Sansa who wrapped Jeyne in a hug, listening to her composure wither. Don't cry, yourself. If you start you won't be able to stop, and just upset Jeyne further. "It was the Tower of the Hand last time, wasn't it? The last time we saw each other?" she asked.
"So it was."
"How did you come to be here? Cersei Lannister told me Littlefinger would look after you…"
"His idea of 'looking after' was putting me in a brothel. Then another, then another, so that I'd never get used to where I was or who I was with. But now I've come back to you, and us back home."
"We have, and there's perilous little reason ever to leave it again. Others or no Others…" Sansa said. She tapped Jeyne on the nose, color filling it and the girl's breaths coming calmer and deeper. The sight of the other woman over Jeyne's shoulder brought Sansa back to the now. "Apologies. It's been…some time since we've seen each other." she offered.
"It's better than never seeing someone again." She curtsied, her smile sad. "Had the gods been kinder I might have been your sister-by-law. I am Talisa Maegyr, of Volantis. I…I was Robb's queen, and our son was on the way. The Freys had other plans."
"Such a pity about our friends the Freys. Stand Together, such striking house words. And how true they ring these days, all the Freys in the company of the gods."
"Or hell." Talisa said, forgoing Sansa's own diplomatic phrasing. I like her, Sansa thought mildly.
"Pardon me, my lady, but my poor friend feels chilled to the bone, even after my little bit. I'd like to take her within Winterfell's walls and get her warmed."
"Of course, Princess Sansa. I'm somewhat of Lady Catelyn's attaché anyway, I should stick with her." Sansa took her leave then, keeping Jeyne close with the intent of getting her a hot bath. Failing that, a rest in the springs. Once that's done, I may pay Tyrion a visit and see what the wide world beyond Westeros has made of him.
