A new gown?” she said, as wary as she was
astonished.
“More lovely than any you have worn, my lady,” the
old woman promised. She measured Sansa’s hips with a length
of knotted string. “All silk and Myrish lace, with satin
linings. You will be very beautiful. The queen herself has
commanded it.”
“Which queen?” Margaery was not yet Joff’s
queen, but she had been Renly’s. Or did she mean the Queen of
Thorns? Or . . .
“The Queen Regent, to be sure.”
“Queen Cersei?”
“None other. She has honored me with her custom for many a
year.” The old woman laid her string along the inside of
Sansa’s leg. “Her Grace said to me that you are a woman
now, and should not dress like a little girl. Hold out your
arm.”
Sansa lifted her arm. She needed a new gown, that was true. She
had grown three inches in the past year, and most of her old
wardrobe had been ruined by the smoke when she’d tried to burn
her mattress on the day of her first flowering
“Your bosom will be as lovely as the queen’s,”
the old woman said as she looped her string around Sansa’s
chest. “You should not hide it so.”
The comment made her blush. Yet the last time she’d gone
riding, she could not lace her jerkin all the way to the top, and
the stableboy gaped at her as he helped her mount. Sometimes she
caught grown men looking at her chest as well, and some of her
tunics were so tight she could scarce breathe in them.
“What color will it be?” she asked the
seamstress.
“Leave the colors to me, my lady. You will be pleased, I
know you will. You shall have smallclothes and hose as well,
kirtles and mantles and cloaks, and all else befitting
a . . . a lovely young lady of noble
birth.”
“Will they be ready in time for the king’s
wedding?”
“Oh, sooner, much sooner, Her Grace insists. I have six
seamstresses and twelve apprentice girls, and we have set all our
other work aside for this. Many ladies will be cross with us, but
it was the queen’s command.”
“Thank Her Grace kindly for her thoughtfulness,”
Sansa said politely. “She is too good to me.”
“Her Grace is most generous,” the seamstress agreed,
as she gathered up her things and took her leave. But why? Sansa wondered when she was alone. It made her uneasy.
I’ll wager this gown is Margaery’s doing somehow, or
her grandmother’s.
Margaery’s kindness had been unfailing, and her presence
changed everything. Her ladies welcomed Sansa as well. It had been
so long since she had enjoyed the company of other women, she had
almost forgotten how pleasant it could be. Lady Leonette gave her
lessons on the high harp, and Lady Janna shared all the choice
gossip. Merry Crane always had an amusing story, and little Lady
Bulwer reminded her of Arya, though not so fierce.
Closest to Sansa’s own age were the cousins Elinor, Alla,
and Megga, Tyrells from junior branches of the House. “Roses
from lower on the bush,” quipped Elinor, who was witty and
willowy. Megga was round and loud, Alla shy and pretty, but Elinor
ruled the three by right of womanhood; she was a maiden flowered,
whereas Megga and Alla were mere girls.
The cousins took Sansa into their company as if they had known
her all their lives. They spent long afternoons doing needlework
and talking over lemon cakes and honeyed wine, played at tiles of
an evening, sang together in the castle
sept . . . and often one or two of them would
be chosen to share Margaery’s bed, where they would whisper
half the night away. Alla had a lovely voice, and when coaxed would
play the woodharp and sing songs of chivalry and lost loves. Megga
couldn’t sing, but she was mad to be kissed. She and Alla
played a kissing game sometimes, she confessed, but it wasn’t
the same as kissing a man, much less a king. Sansa wondered what
Megga would think about kissing the Hound, as she had. He’d
come to her the night of the battle stinking of wine and blood. He
kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a
song.
“King Joffrey has such beautiful lips,” Megga
gushed, oblivious, “oh, poor Sansa, how your heart must have
broken when you lost him. Oh, how you must have wept!” Joffrey made me weep more often than you know, she wanted to
say, but Butterbumps was not on hand to drown out her voice, so she
pressed her lips together and held her tongue.
As for Elinor, she was promised to a young squire, a son of Lord
Ambrose; they would be wed as soon as he won his spurs. He had worn
her favor in the Battle of the Blackwater, where he’d slain a
Myrish crossbowman and a Mullendore man-at-arms. “Alyn said
her favor made him fearless,” said Megga. “He says he
shouted her name for his battle cry, isn’t that ever so
gallant? Someday I want some champion to wear my favor, and kill a
hundred men.” Elinor told her to hush, but looked pleased all
the same. They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls,
even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never
seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs
and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her
father’s head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.
Margaery was different, though. Sweet and gentle, yet there was
a little of her grandmother in her, too. The day before last
she’d taken Sansa hawking. It was the first time she had been
outside the city since the battle. The dead had been burned or
buried, but the Mud Gate was scarred and splintered where Lord
Stannis’s rams had battered it, and the hulls of smashed
ships could be seen along both sides of the Blackwater, charred
masts poking from the shallows like gaunt black fingers. The only
traffic was the flat-bottomed ferry that took them across the
river, and when they reached the kingswood they found a wilderness
of ash and charcoal and dead trees. But the waterfowl teemed in the
marshes along the bay, and Sansa’s merlin brought down three
ducks while Margaery’s peregrine took a heron in full
flight.
“Willas has the best birds in the Seven Kingdoms,”
Margaery said when the two of them were briefly alone. “He
flies an eagle sometimes. You will see, Sansa.” She took her
by the hand and gave it a squeeze. “Sister.”
Sister. Sansa had once dreamt of having a sister like Margaery;
beautiful and gentle, with all the world’s graces at her
command. Arya had been entirely unsatisfactory as sisters went. How
can I let my sister marry Joffrey? she thought, and suddenly her
eyes were full of tears. “Margaery, please,” she said,
“you mustn’t.” It was hard to get the words out.
“You mustn’t marry him. He’s not like he seems,
he’s not. He’ll hurt you.”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Margaery smiled
confidently. “It’s brave of you to warn me, but you
need not fear. Joff’s spoiled and vain and I don’t
doubt that he’s as cruel as you say, but Father forced him to
name Loras to his Kingsguard before he would agree to the match. I
shall have the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms protecting me
night and day, as Prince Aemon protected Naerys. So our little lion
had best behave, hadn’t he?” She laughed, and said,
“Come, sweet sister, let’s race back to the river. It
will drive our guards quite mad.” And without waiting for an
answer, she put her heels into her horse and flew. She is so brave, Sansa thought, galloping after
her . . . and yet, her doubts still gnawed at
her. Ser Loras was a great knight, all agreed. But Joffrey had
other Kingsguard, and gold cloaks and red cloaks besides, and when
he was older he would command armies of his own. Aegon the Unworthy
had never harmed Queen Naerys, perhaps for fear of their brother
the Dragonknight . . . but when another of his
Kingsguard fell in love with one of his mistresses, the king had
taken both their heads. Ser Loras is a Tyrell, Sansa reminded herself. That other knight
was only a Toyne. His brothers had no armies, no way to avenge him
but with swords. Yet the more she thought about it all, the more
she wondered. Joff might restrain himself for a few turns, perhaps
as long as a year, but soon or late he will show his claws, and
when he does . . . the realm might have a
second Kingslayer, and there would be war inside the city, as the
men of the lion and the men of the rose made the gutters run
red.
Sansa was surprised that Margaery did not see it too. She is
older than me, she must be wiser. And her father, Lord Tyrell, he
knows what he is doing, surely. I am just being silly.
When she told Ser Dontos that she was going to Highgarden to
marry Willas Tyrell, she thought he would be relieved and pleased
for her. Instead he had grabbed her arm and said, “You
cannot!” in a voice as thick with horror as with wine.
“I tell you, these Tyrells are only Lannisters with flowers.
I beg of you, forget this folly, give your Florian a kiss, and
promise you’ll go ahead as we have planned. The night of
Joffrey’s wedding, that’s not so long, wear the silver
hair net and do as I told you, and afterward we make our
escape.” He tried to plant a kiss on her cheek.
Sansa slipped from his grasp and stepped away from him. “I
won’t. I can’t. Something would go wrong. When I wanted
to escape you wouldn’t take me, and now I don’t need
to.”
Dontos stared at her stupidly. “But the arrangements are
made, sweetling. The ship to take you home, the boat to take you to
the ship, your Florian did it all for his sweet Jonquil.”
“I am sorry for all the trouble I put you to,” she
said, “but I have no need of boats and ships now.”
“But it’s all to see you safe.”
“I will be safe in Highgarden. Willas will keep me
safe.”
“But he does not know you,” Dontos insisted,
“and he will not love you. Jonquil, Jonquil, open your sweet
eyes, these Tyrells care nothing for you. It’s your claim
they mean to wed.”
“My claim?” She was lost for a moment.
“Sweetling,” he told her, “you are heir to
Winterfell.” He grabbed her again, pleading that she must not
do this thing, and Sansa wrenched free and left him swaying beneath
the heart tree. She had not visited the godswood since.
But she had not forgotten his words, either. The heir to
Winterfell, she would think as she lay abed at night. It’s
your claim they mean to wed. Sansa had grown up with three
brothers. She never thought to have a claim, but with Bran and
Rickon dead . . . It doesn’t matter,
there’s still Robb, he’s a man grown now, and soon
he’ll wed and have a son. Anyway, Willas Tyrell will have
Highgarden, what would he want with Winterfell?
Sometimes she would whisper his name into her pillow just to
hear the sound of it. “Willas, Willas, Willas.” Willas
was as good a name as Loras, she supposed. They even sounded the
same, a little. What did it matter about his leg? Willas would be
Lord of Highgarden and she would be his lady.
She pictured the two of them sitting together in a garden with
puppies in their laps, or listening to a singer strum upon a lute
while they floated down the Mander on a pleasure barge. If I give
him sons, he may come to love me. She would name them Eddard and
Brandon and Rickon, and raise them all to be as valiant as Ser
Loras. And to hate Lannisters, too. In Sansa’s dreams, her
children looked just like the brothers she had lost. Sometimes
there was even a girl who looked like Arya.
She could never hold a picture of Willas long in her head,
though; her imaginings kept turning him back into Ser Loras, young
and graceful and beautiful. You must not think of him like that,
she told herself. Or else he may see the disappointment in your
eyes when you meet, and how could he marry you then, knowing it was
his brother you loved? Willas Tyrell was twice her age, she
reminded herself constantly, and lame as well, and perhaps even
plump and red-faced like his father. But comely or no, he might be
the only champion she would ever have.
Once she dreamed it was still her marrying Joff, not Margaery,
and on their wedding night he turned into the headsman Ilyn Payne.
She woke trembling. She did not want Margaery to suffer as she had,
but she dreaded the thought that the Tyrells might refuse to go
ahead with the wedding. I warned her, I did, I told her the truth
of him. Perhaps Margaery did not believe her. Joff always played
the perfect knight with her, as once he had with Sansa. She will
see his true nature soon enough. After the wedding if not before.
Sansa decided that she would light a candle to the Mother Above the
next time she visited the sept, and ask her to protect Margaery
from Joffrey’s cruelty. And perhaps a candle to the Warrior
as well, for Loras.
She would wear her new gown for the ceremony at the Great Sept
of Baelor, she decided as the seamstress took her last measurement.
That must be why Cersei is having it made for me, so I will not
look shabby at the wedding. She really ought to have a different
gown for the feast afterward but she supposed one of her old ones
would do. She did not want to risk getting food or wine on the new
one. I must take it with me to Highgarden. She wanted to look
beautiful for Willas Tyrell. Even if Dontos was right, and it is
Winterfell he wants and not me, he still may come to love me for
myself. Sansa hugged herself tightly, wondering how long it would
be before the gown was ready. She could scarcely wait to wear
it.
A new gown?” she said, as wary as she was
astonished.
“More lovely than any you have worn, my lady,” the
old woman promised. She measured Sansa’s hips with a length
of knotted string. “All silk and Myrish lace, with satin
linings. You will be very beautiful. The queen herself has
commanded it.”
“Which queen?” Margaery was not yet Joff’s
queen, but she had been Renly’s. Or did she mean the Queen of
Thorns? Or . . .
“The Queen Regent, to be sure.”
“Queen Cersei?”
“None other. She has honored me with her custom for many a
year.” The old woman laid her string along the inside of
Sansa’s leg. “Her Grace said to me that you are a woman
now, and should not dress like a little girl. Hold out your
arm.”
Sansa lifted her arm. She needed a new gown, that was true. She
had grown three inches in the past year, and most of her old
wardrobe had been ruined by the smoke when she’d tried to burn
her mattress on the day of her first flowering
“Your bosom will be as lovely as the queen’s,”
the old woman said as she looped her string around Sansa’s
chest. “You should not hide it so.”
The comment made her blush. Yet the last time she’d gone
riding, she could not lace her jerkin all the way to the top, and
the stableboy gaped at her as he helped her mount. Sometimes she
caught grown men looking at her chest as well, and some of her
tunics were so tight she could scarce breathe in them.
“What color will it be?” she asked the
seamstress.
“Leave the colors to me, my lady. You will be pleased, I
know you will. You shall have smallclothes and hose as well,
kirtles and mantles and cloaks, and all else befitting
a . . . a lovely young lady of noble
birth.”
“Will they be ready in time for the king’s
wedding?”
“Oh, sooner, much sooner, Her Grace insists. I have six
seamstresses and twelve apprentice girls, and we have set all our
other work aside for this. Many ladies will be cross with us, but
it was the queen’s command.”
“Thank Her Grace kindly for her thoughtfulness,”
Sansa said politely. “She is too good to me.”
“Her Grace is most generous,” the seamstress agreed,
as she gathered up her things and took her leave. But why? Sansa wondered when she was alone. It made her uneasy.
I’ll wager this gown is Margaery’s doing somehow, or
her grandmother’s.
Margaery’s kindness had been unfailing, and her presence
changed everything. Her ladies welcomed Sansa as well. It had been
so long since she had enjoyed the company of other women, she had
almost forgotten how pleasant it could be. Lady Leonette gave her
lessons on the high harp, and Lady Janna shared all the choice
gossip. Merry Crane always had an amusing story, and little Lady
Bulwer reminded her of Arya, though not so fierce.
Closest to Sansa’s own age were the cousins Elinor, Alla,
and Megga, Tyrells from junior branches of the House. “Roses
from lower on the bush,” quipped Elinor, who was witty and
willowy. Megga was round and loud, Alla shy and pretty, but Elinor
ruled the three by right of womanhood; she was a maiden flowered,
whereas Megga and Alla were mere girls.
The cousins took Sansa into their company as if they had known
her all their lives. They spent long afternoons doing needlework
and talking over lemon cakes and honeyed wine, played at tiles of
an evening, sang together in the castle
sept . . . and often one or two of them would
be chosen to share Margaery’s bed, where they would whisper
half the night away. Alla had a lovely voice, and when coaxed would
play the woodharp and sing songs of chivalry and lost loves. Megga
couldn’t sing, but she was mad to be kissed. She and Alla
played a kissing game sometimes, she confessed, but it wasn’t
the same as kissing a man, much less a king. Sansa wondered what
Megga would think about kissing the Hound, as she had. He’d
come to her the night of the battle stinking of wine and blood. He
kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a
song.
“King Joffrey has such beautiful lips,” Megga
gushed, oblivious, “oh, poor Sansa, how your heart must have
broken when you lost him. Oh, how you must have wept!” Joffrey made me weep more often than you know, she wanted to
say, but Butterbumps was not on hand to drown out her voice, so she
pressed her lips together and held her tongue.
As for Elinor, she was promised to a young squire, a son of Lord
Ambrose; they would be wed as soon as he won his spurs. He had worn
her favor in the Battle of the Blackwater, where he’d slain a
Myrish crossbowman and a Mullendore man-at-arms. “Alyn said
her favor made him fearless,” said Megga. “He says he
shouted her name for his battle cry, isn’t that ever so
gallant? Someday I want some champion to wear my favor, and kill a
hundred men.” Elinor told her to hush, but looked pleased all
the same. They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls,
even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never
seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs
and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her
father’s head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.
Margaery was different, though. Sweet and gentle, yet there was
a little of her grandmother in her, too. The day before last
she’d taken Sansa hawking. It was the first time she had been
outside the city since the battle. The dead had been burned or
buried, but the Mud Gate was scarred and splintered where Lord
Stannis’s rams had battered it, and the hulls of smashed
ships could be seen along both sides of the Blackwater, charred
masts poking from the shallows like gaunt black fingers. The only
traffic was the flat-bottomed ferry that took them across the
river, and when they reached the kingswood they found a wilderness
of ash and charcoal and dead trees. But the waterfowl teemed in the
marshes along the bay, and Sansa’s merlin brought down three
ducks while Margaery’s peregrine took a heron in full
flight.
“Willas has the best birds in the Seven Kingdoms,”
Margaery said when the two of them were briefly alone. “He
flies an eagle sometimes. You will see, Sansa.” She took her
by the hand and gave it a squeeze. “Sister.” Sister. Sansa had once dreamt of having a sister like Margaery;
beautiful and gentle, with all the world’s graces at her
command. Arya had been entirely unsatisfactory as sisters went. How
can I let my sister marry Joffrey? she thought, and suddenly her
eyes were full of tears. “Margaery, please,” she said,
“you mustn’t.” It was hard to get the words out.
“You mustn’t marry him. He’s not like he seems,
he’s not. He’ll hurt you.”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Margaery smiled
confidently. “It’s brave of you to warn me, but you
need not fear. Joff’s spoiled and vain and I don’t
doubt that he’s as cruel as you say, but Father forced him to
name Loras to his Kingsguard before he would agree to the match. I
shall have the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms protecting me
night and day, as Prince Aemon protected Naerys. So our little lion
had best behave, hadn’t he?” She laughed, and said,
“Come, sweet sister, let’s race back to the river. It
will drive our guards quite mad.” And without waiting for an
answer, she put her heels into her horse and flew. She is so brave, Sansa thought, galloping after
her . . . and yet, her doubts still gnawed at
her. Ser Loras was a great knight, all agreed. But Joffrey had
other Kingsguard, and gold cloaks and red cloaks besides, and when
he was older he would command armies of his own. Aegon the Unworthy
had never harmed Queen Naerys, perhaps for fear of their brother
the Dragonknight . . . but when another of his
Kingsguard fell in love with one of his mistresses, the king had
taken both their heads. Ser Loras is a Tyrell, Sansa reminded herself. That other knight
was only a Toyne. His brothers had no armies, no way to avenge him
but with swords. Yet the more she thought about it all, the more
she wondered. Joff might restrain himself for a few turns, perhaps
as long as a year, but soon or late he will show his claws, and
when he does . . . the realm might have a
second Kingslayer, and there would be war inside the city, as the
men of the lion and the men of the rose made the gutters run
red.
Sansa was surprised that Margaery did not see it too. She is
older than me, she must be wiser. And her father, Lord Tyrell, he
knows what he is doing, surely. I am just being silly.
When she told Ser Dontos that she was going to Highgarden to
marry Willas Tyrell, she thought he would be relieved and pleased
for her. Instead he had grabbed her arm and said, “You
cannot!” in a voice as thick with horror as with wine.
“I tell you, these Tyrells are only Lannisters with flowers.
I beg of you, forget this folly, give your Florian a kiss, and
promise you’ll go ahead as we have planned. The night of
Joffrey’s wedding, that’s not so long, wear the silver
hair net and do as I told you, and afterward we make our
escape.” He tried to plant a kiss on her cheek.
Sansa slipped from his grasp and stepped away from him. “I
won’t. I can’t. Something would go wrong. When I wanted
to escape you wouldn’t take me, and now I don’t need
to.”
Dontos stared at her stupidly. “But the arrangements are
made, sweetling. The ship to take you home, the boat to take you to
the ship, your Florian did it all for his sweet Jonquil.”
“I am sorry for all the trouble I put you to,” she
said, “but I have no need of boats and ships now.”
“But it’s all to see you safe.”
“I will be safe in Highgarden. Willas will keep me
safe.”
“But he does not know you,” Dontos insisted,
“and he will not love you. Jonquil, Jonquil, open your sweet
eyes, these Tyrells care nothing for you. It’s your claim
they mean to wed.”
“My claim?” She was lost for a moment.
“Sweetling,” he told her, “you are heir to
Winterfell.” He grabbed her again, pleading that she must not
do this thing, and Sansa wrenched free and left him swaying beneath
the heart tree. She had not visited the godswood since.
But she had not forgotten his words, either. The heir to
Winterfell, she would think as she lay abed at night. It’s
your claim they mean to wed. Sansa had grown up with three
brothers. She never thought to have a claim, but with Bran and
Rickon dead . . . It doesn’t matter,
there’s still Robb, he’s a man grown now, and soon
he’ll wed and have a son. Anyway, Willas Tyrell will have
Highgarden, what would he want with Winterfell?
Sometimes she would whisper his name into her pillow just to
hear the sound of it. “Willas, Willas, Willas.” Willas
was as good a name as Loras, she supposed. They even sounded the
same, a little. What did it matter about his leg? Willas would be
Lord of Highgarden and she would be his lady.
She pictured the two of them sitting together in a garden with
puppies in their laps, or listening to a singer strum upon a lute
while they floated down the Mander on a pleasure barge. If I give
him sons, he may come to love me. She would name them Eddard and
Brandon and Rickon, and raise them all to be as valiant as Ser
Loras. And to hate Lannisters, too. In Sansa’s dreams, her
children looked just like the brothers she had lost. Sometimes
there was even a girl who looked like Arya.
She could never hold a picture of Willas long in her head,
though; her imaginings kept turning him back into Ser Loras, young
and graceful and beautiful. You must not think of him like that,
she told herself. Or else he may see the disappointment in your
eyes when you meet, and how could he marry you then, knowing it was
his brother you loved? Willas Tyrell was twice her age, she
reminded herself constantly, and lame as well, and perhaps even
plump and red-faced like his father. But comely or no, he might be
the only champion she would ever have.
Once she dreamed it was still her marrying Joff, not Margaery,
and on their wedding night he turned into the headsman Ilyn Payne.
She woke trembling. She did not want Margaery to suffer as she had,
but she dreaded the thought that the Tyrells might refuse to go
ahead with the wedding. I warned her, I did, I told her the truth
of him. Perhaps Margaery did not believe her. Joff always played
the perfect knight with her, as once he had with Sansa. She will
see his true nature soon enough. After the wedding if not before.
Sansa decided that she would light a candle to the Mother Above the
next time she visited the sept, and ask her to protect Margaery
from Joffrey’s cruelty. And perhaps a candle to the Warrior
as well, for Loras.
She would wear her new gown for the ceremony at the Great Sept
of Baelor, she decided as the seamstress took her last measurement.
That must be why Cersei is having it made for me, so I will not
look shabby at the wedding. She really ought to have a different
gown for the feast afterward but she supposed one of her old ones
would do. She did not want to risk getting food or wine on the new
one. I must take it with me to Highgarden. She wanted to look
beautiful for Willas Tyrell. Even if Dontos was right, and it is
Winterfell he wants and not me, he still may come to love me for
myself. Sansa hugged herself tightly, wondering how long it would
be before the gown was ready. She could scarcely wait to wear
it.