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Chapter 39: Seeking Retribution
When the kitchen cat was murdered, she had had questions about death. And her sweet Septa Bryda had told her that death was the natural conclusion of life and that all met their ends when the gods called them homeward.
Still curious and a touch afraid, Sylvia had asked Robert, who had said that death was a common thing, boring and something anyone—man, woman or babe—could do. What a notion for a little girl, one barely out of her nursery.
But Robert was a drunkard and so his life's lessons were always tinged with impropriety and slurred declarations, and notions that he thought so simple that even a babe could understand. To Robert, to live and be extraordinary, to have lived and done something remarkable and live on in the songs and stories of mortals…well, to Robert, that was the only true way to leave the world. Anyway else was a waste, a tiny spec in the dust of time.
Leave them wanting, panting, dreaming of more. Of the secrets, of the glory, the man beneath the legend. Robert had not even dreamed of a crown, truth be told. He had only dreamed of a life so well lived, that a legacy had been borne from it.
It was for that reason that Sylvia recalled (with striking detail), the day her father said in a drunken mumble that he wanted to honor the traditions of the Storm Lords of ages past, and let his body be dispatched into the writhing waves of the sea, overtaken and dragged down into the cold depths, like so many Baratheons before. Like a true Storm Lord, so the only way to know he had existed were from the words of a song.
Robert never spoke of it again, but Sylvia remembered it because she adored Baratheon legends. And, of course, all the heroes eventually die, so she knew well what a Storm Lord's burial was like.
Shipbreakers Bay was only named that after the Conquest, but before then, it had been a grave yard for the men and women formed by storm and sea, where they returned to rest and be reborn as mermaids and deadly tides to shape the next generation. For hardship was the only way to form strong, hearty children, and what was more harsh and honest than the sea?
Sylvia remembered the sea as calm, and gentle—a cradle, really, to soothe and comfort. The only times her mother let her out on the water was when it was warm and steady. She had never known the summer storms, and she wondered now if her father was disgusted for it. She, a Baratheon, so comfortable with soft waters and gentle breezes.
Even still, Sylvia found herself missing the scent of the sea. The smell of saltwater, the beautiful sounds of waves crashing against each other…gods above she missed watching the waves churning, writhing into whitecaps like quarrelling siblings. It was a beautiful thing she had not known she would miss so dearly once she moved northward, where the sea was replaced with writhing moors.
But also, Sylvia loved history—it was one big story that everyone believed and so she had been drawn to Robert's tales of their family's ancestral seat so quickly that Robert had barely been sober when he started recounting the origin of House Baratheon. She remembered each detail, and told them time and time again to her brother and sister, even though Joffrey lost interest quickly enough.
Now, these tales left her fearful, because while the Baratheon's returned as servants to the sea, the Tully's remained in the river—contained and shackled in a narrowed flow of water, forever feeding the hungry inhabitants of those surviving along their streams. To Sylvia, having grown up on tales of mermaids and entire oceans to explore, it sounded a grim fate.
And so, as she, and the others in her company, rocked down the river towards the sea, she thought of her father and the tales of Storms End. And she prayed that if the boat tipped over, she not wake again to find herself a trout.
She doubted her mother would honor her father's final wishes, truly, and the thought made her sad. It was only when Robert died that Sylvia gave any real thought of what a death meant, and the weight of what a burial meant.
To be thrown into the ground and have more dirt thrown upon you, left alone to rot, marked by some stone that would be overcome with time—it sounded so cold to her, so distant. The Starks and their monuments, the Lannisters and their shrines and tombs. The only thing that sounded the least cruel to Sylvia was to be burned and cast into the waves of the sea. It sounded like freedom, for those who had perished and those left behind to grieve, for she did not find comfort in thinking of her father's final resting place.
Since her father had died, she thought of death far too often, and after the attack that took her second child…as the blood came, each pulse bringing with it more of her child, she thought of death. Of the proper way to bury things. But there was no proper way to bury a child who had never been born. They were just simply gone. Never to be seen, heard or spoken of again. Women whispered it was a thing better left forgotten, and Sylvia wondered how many of them did.
Really, she doubted anyone even knew of it. Robert was a man who lived for the now, and she doubted he ever really thought of his future. And she doubted he would ever understand the pain and the fury that still simmered inside her to think of the children who had been stolen from her.
Damn them all. Damn all those who counted her child as a spec of dust in the timeline of things. It had been real. There, for a time, to make her dream and hope and then it had gone—and it had been under rough, murderous, hateful hands, no less.
The one comfort she had now was that Minisa was alive still—she was only lost for the moment. When I die, I will see her again in the next life when she is a grandmother, she thought. She had faith in that promise. Her sweet little girl would live, and grow and become a mother in her own time. Minisa would live and live long and Sylvia felt her fear for the child subside. She thanked the gods for that dream, now because what use would she have been if she were laid up in bed, soaking in her grief and fear?
It was strange, what one thinks of as they rock down the river. Life, death, the past, the present. Sylvia thought of all of it.
And, when they were through and she stepped back onto land, Sylvia emerged angry, invigorated.
None would harm her daughter, she was certain. She clung to the dream and the promise contained within it. To hurt Minisa would incur the wrath of the North. But still, Sylvia had her own wrath to deal out for those who had hurt her family, her babies.
They came upon her like a pack of wolves. A dozen of them, all on horseback, dark colours against white hills, rough and sharp and angry.
Elane hardly remembered the first few words she said, but she knew her knees met the snowy earth and suspected she had continued her frantic begging. She knew the babe had been yanked away, knew the shackles felt far too tight around her wrists. The ache in her ribs told her they'd slung her carelessly over the horse and the rawness of her throat said she had been howling her words.
If they listened to her, Elane did not know. She lost sight of the baby once someone slung her over their horse. From there, it was a nauseating, painful blur.
Time was…time was slow and yet too fast, because before she knew it, Winterfell sat before them, and then she was within her walls, and then she was in her dungeons, sore and aching and afraid.
Idly, Elane thought she should lie, tell them she had escaped her captors with the baby in tow and really, she should be praised for her bravery and courage in saving the littlest heir to the throne of Winterfell. But all she asked was "Is she alright? Minisa, is she alright?" But no answer came, and Elane remained alone in the darkness, a torch and the occasional rat her only company.
It was three days of silent agony before her answer, which came in the form of crippled little boy and his massive servant.
"The baby, please m'lord, is she alright?" she'd begged upon seeing his form, carried aloft by the giant. He had never been much else to her but a boy—her lady's goodbrother, only a few short years from his nursemaid's milk. But in only a few months, his blood was tainted with that of a rebel and a traitor, and then he was the brother of a king, the acting ruler of Winterfell in Robb Stark's absence. Yet still, he had still been a child, soft and pliant and likely acting on the whims of his maester. For that, Elane had little to fear of him.
But now this child had her life in his little hands. Children were messy little creatures, taken by flights of fancy, and could hold as much wrath in their little bodies as a man grown, but had not the wit to control it.
"Yes," the little prince spoke after a beat, eying her carefully. When the guards first saw the babe, he was told, they had feared the child dead. Her eyes had closed, and what little they could see of her face appeared blue. In horror, the guardsman who had yanked Minisa from Elane's arms had flipped her all around, studied her face, loosened her wrappings, and suddenly the baby's face had screwed up in irritation and let out an annoyed coo.
"It was Sweet Sleep, my prince." The maester had told him. "A few drops in a cup of tea before bed will give you the sweetest rest you've ever known. Too much, however, is known to slow the breathing. Even stop it, if the one taking it is slight enough. I imagine that is why little Minisa still sleeps."
Mini slept another day and a half before she woke up, screaming and ravenously hungry. Bran had never been so relieved.
When the girl in the cell sighed a noise of relief, Bran frowned.
He knew Elane only as his brother's wife's maid, the woman his goodsister had entrusted the baby's care to. Bran, although he had not the kindest friendship with Sylvia, had not really had reason to doubt her judgement of her own maids. Afterall, that was really a woman's business wasn't it?
But since Sylvia had been gone, he had seen more of the maidservant than before, and found her not uncaring of his niece. She had taken issue with Osha like Sylvia had, and if the two were matched in their dislike of the wildling, how far off was it to assume the maid cared for the baby?
The hours after Minisa had gone missing had been wrought with fear and pain, both so tangible that it made Bran shiver. As the eldest Stark in Winterfell, he had men in his ear every waking hour speculating on who had taken his niece, on what it meant, what might happen if the babe was never found, or worse, placed into greedy Lannister hands.
Bran had had little thought on what it meant for Robb's rule, only fearful that no one knew where the babe could be.
Maester Luwin spent hours scribbling out messages on scrolls and dispatching ravens from the rookery. Guards went out in every direction, whispers flew wondering what had happened, and Luwin advised Bran to bind the washerwomen and cooks to secrecy, for they would know by the lack of washing and food left untouched, that something was amiss.
"Minisa's safety is in secrecy," the old maester had said.
"But if no one knows she's missing, how can anyone know to look for her?" he had asked back.
"We know to look for her. If anyone else finds her, they may not want to return her to us without paying an impossible price." The old man had left it at that, but Bran still heard the urge for silence. Secrecy kept Mini safe, and so Bran breathed not a word of his niece to anyone for the entire two days she was missing.
In all that time, Bran felt anxious. He wanted to run, to search for the babe himself—teeth tearing, heart hammering, eyes shut tight. He could not escape the fact that this was the heir to the throne of winter, but before all of that, before she became essential, she was had only been his niece. His brother's child, well loved and wanted.
Even the wolves were off. They howled each night, singing their low, sad lament into the dark sky above. Ever since the babe had been returned, it was near impossible to get Shaggy or Summer to leave the cradle side. Not that Bran really minded that much. It was Rickon who minded, wanting Shaggy's company each hour of the day now that their family was gone.
Bran stated longer at the woman before him, cast down in chains and left in filth where she had once had a place at their table. She had been Sylvia's companion for so long now, at her side through pregnancy and afterword, laughing together at feasts, and Sylvia, who was so fiercely protective of Mini, had left Elane to care for her.
In his heart, Bran knew he did not want to believe it had been this woman to dare steal his niece away, like some wildling monster from childhood stories. But no one could fathom another, and she had been found alone.
"Why did you take Minisa?" he asked directly, brows narrowed. The girl cast her eyes towards him, wild and darting. "She was your charge, you were sworn to protect her and shield her and guard her with your life. Why did you steal her?"
"I-I didn't."
"Lies!" Hodor shifted him uncomfortably in his arms. The giant had always been gentle.
"I swear it, my prince!" she cried desperately, her hands clapping together, her body bending at the middle to press her face into the filthy stone beneath them. "I-I swear!" her voice came in a sob. "I swear I only did what he made me!"
"Who?" he barked, hoping to summon some of his brother's ferocity.
"He-he gave me no name. He wore a cloak black as night, he-he left us to die in the cold, my prince!" The girl began to cry, and Bran looked away, belly squirming. But he wanted to ask why a brigand would leave his captives to die, rather than cutting their throats himself? Why take them so far from Winterfell if he meant to kill them, rather than hold them captive in some secret place? Perhaps the idea of killing a defenseless woman and a babe repulsed him, and he would rather the cold take them rather than his blade? It struck him strange to think a man willing to take the risk of stealing the heir to the North, would be willing to let the cold finish the job for him.
"You lie." He accused. Maester Luwin had advised to question the woman extensively before declaring her guilty. But Ser Frederik Ravenback, as spitting angry as Bran had ever seen him, called that the girl be treated as guilty until they found the phantom culprit she claimed of.
The girl's snivelling stopped for a heartbeat, wild, fearful, panicked eyes flashing up to his. For a moment, Bran was reminded of his dreams of hunting in the godswood, of how the hares he ensnared between his jaws would thrash and scream for freedom. With one quick crunch, they would be still.
"No-n-no no, please, I am loyal to my Lady Sylvia, to House Stark!" she screeched.
"The only reason you are still alive to tell me this, is because Mini was returned to us in one piece. Sylvia can dole out justice to you whenever she returns." He said it in a voice he hoped sounded just like his father and brother's did when they were giving a command, when they were stern and angry and their words can cut as sharp as steel.
He hoped he sounded like a man of House Stark, because in that moment, watching this woman who had been sheltered in Winterfell's walls weep into the filthy stone floor, all Bran felt was shame. And pity. He did not want to hurt her at all, but honour and justice demanded retribution. Perhaps it made him a craven to give her over to Sylvia, but it had been Sylvia this woman offended most of all, since she had been her handmaiden.
Another moment passed, Bran listening to the sad cries of the woman before him, Hodor shifting from foot to foot, the torches burning and crackling. She kept pleading, promising her loyalty and once or twice she asked again if the baby was in good health.
Bran had Hodor take him back up through the dungeons and back into Winterfell's yard a moment later.
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