She awoke all at once, every nerve atingle. For a moment she did
not remember where she was. She had dreamt that she was little,
still sharing a bedchamber with her sister Arya. But it was her
maid she heard tossing in sleep, not her sister, and this was not
Winterfell, but the Eyrie. And I am Alayne Stone, a bastard girl.
The room was cold and black, though she was warm beneath the
blankets. Dawn had not yet come. Sometimes she dreamed of Ser Ilyn
Payne and woke with her heart thumping, but this dream had not been
like that. Home. It was a dream of home.
The Eyrie was no home. It was no bigger than Maegor’s
Holdfast, and outside its sheer white walls was only the mountain
and the long treacherous descent past Sky and Snow and Stone to the
Gates of the Moon on the valley floor. There was no place to go and
little to do. The older servants said these halls rang with
laughter when her father and Robert Baratheon had been Jon
Arryn’s wards, but those days were many years gone. Her aunt
kept a small household, and seldom permitted any guests to ascend
past the Gates of the Moon. Aside from her aged maid, Sansa’s
only companion was the Lord Robert, eight going on three. And Marillion. There is always Marillion. When he played for
them at supper, the young singer often seemed to be singing
directly at her. Her aunt was far from pleased. Lady Lysa doted on
Marillion, and had banished two serving girls and even a page for
telling lies about him.
Lysa was as lonely as she was. Her new husband seemed to spend
more time at the foot of the mountain than he did atop it. He was
gone now, had been gone the past four days, meeting with the
Corbrays. From bits and pieces of overheard conversations Sansa knew that
Jon Arryn’s bannermen resented Lysa’s marriage and
begrudged Petyr his authority as Lord Protector of the Vale. The
senior branch of House Royce was close to open revolt over her
aunt’s failure to aid Robb in his war, and the Waynwoods,
Redforts, Belmores, and Templetons were giving them every support.
The mountain clans were being troublesome as well, and old Lord
Hunter had died so suddenly that his two younger sons were accusing
their elder brother of having murdered him. The Vale of Arryn might
have been spared the worst of the war, but it was hardly the
idyllic place that Lady Lysa had made it out to be. I am not going back to sleep, Sansa realized. My head is all a
tumult. She pushed her pillow away reluctantly, threw back the
blankets, went to her window, and opened the shutters.
Snow was falling on the Eyrie.
Outside the flakes drifted down as soft and silent as memory.
Was this what woke me? Already the snowfall lay thick upon the
garden below, blanketing the grass, dusting the shrubs and statues
with white and weighing down the branches of the trees. The sight
took Sansa back to cold nights long ago, in the long summer of her
childhood.
She had last seen snow the day she’d left Winterfell. That
was a lighter fall than this, she remembered. Robb had melting
flakes in his hair when he hugged me, and the snowball Arya tried
to make kept coming apart in her hands. It hurt to remember how
happy she had been that morning. Hullen had helped her mount, and
she’d ridden out with the snowflakes swirling around her, off
to see the great wide world. I thought my song was beginning that
day, but it was almost done.
Sansa left the shutters open as she dressed. It would be cold,
she knew, though the Eyrie’s towers encircled the garden and
protected it from the worst of the mountain winds. She donned
silken smallclothes and a linen shift, and over that a warm dress
of blue lambswool. Two pairs of hose for her legs, boots that laced
up to her knees, heavy leather gloves, and finally a hooded cloak
of soft white fox fur.
Her maid rolled herself more tightly in her blanket as the snow
began to drift in the window. Sansa eased open the door, and made
her way down the winding stair. When she opened the door to the
garden, it was so lovely that she held her breath, unwilling to
disturb such perfect beauty. The snow drifted down and down, all in
ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. All
color had fled the world outside. It was a place of whites and
blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues,
black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure
world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here.
Yet she stepped out all the same. Her boots tore ankle-deep
holes into the smooth white surface of the snow, yet made no sound.
Sansa drifted past frosted shrubs and thin dark trees, and wondered
if she were still dreaming. Drifting snowflakes brushed her face as
light as lover’s kisses, and melted on her cheeks. At the
center of the garden, beside the statue of the weeping woman that
lay broken and half-buried on the ground, she turned her face up to
the sky and closed her eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes,
taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of
innocence. The taste of dreams.
When Sansa opened her eyes again, she was on her knees. She did
not remember falling. It seemed to her that the sky was a lighter
shade of grey. Dawn, she thought. Another day. Another new day. It
was the old days she hungered for. Prayed for. But who could she
pray to? The garden had been meant for a godswood once, she knew,
but the soil was too thin and stony for a weirwood to take root. A
godswood without gods, as empty as me.
She scooped up a handful of snow and squeezed it between her
fingers. Heavy and wet, the snow packed easily. Sansa began to make
snowballs, shaping and smoothing them until they were round and
white and perfect. She remembered a summer’s snow in
Winterfell when Arya and Bran had ambushed her as she emerged from
the keep one morning. They’d each had a dozen snowballs to
hand, and she’d had none. Bran had been perched on the roof
of the covered bridge, out of reach, but Sansa had chased Arya
through the stables and around the kitchen until both of them were
breathless. She might even have caught her, but she’d slipped
on some ice. Her sister came back to see if she was hurt. When she
said she wasn’t, Arya hit her in the face with another
snowball, but Sansa grabbed her leg and pulled her down and was
rubbing snow in her hair when Jory came along and pulled them
apart, laughing. What do I want with snowballs? She looked at her sad little
arsenal. There’s no one to throw them at. She let the one she
was making drop from her hand. I could build a snow knight instead,
she thought. Or even . . .
She pushed two of her snowballs together, added a third, packed
more snow in around them, and patted the whole thing into the shape
of a cylinder. When it was done, she stood it on end and used the
tip of her little finger to poke holes in it for windows. The
crenellations around the top took a little more care, but when they
were done she had a tower. I need some walls now, Sansa thought,
and then a keep. She set to work.
The snow fell and the castle rose. Two walls ankle-high, the
inner taller than the outer. Towers and turrets, keeps and stairs,
a round kitchen, a square armory, the stables along the inside of
the west wall. It was only a castle when she began, but before very
long Sansa knew it was Winterfell. She found twigs and fallen
branches beneath the snow and broke off the ends to make the trees
for the godswood. For the gravestones in the lichyard she used bits
of bark. Soon her gloves and her boots were crusty white, her hands
were tingling, and her feet were soaked and cold, but she did not
care. The castle was all that mattered. Some things were hard to
remember, but most came back to her easily, as if she had been
there only yesterday. The Library Tower, with the steep stonework
stair twisting about its exterior. The gatehouse, two huge
bulwarks, the arched gate between them, crenellations all along the
top . . .
And all the while the snow kept falling, piling up in drifts
around her buildings as fast as she raised them. She was patting
down the pitched roof of the Great Hall when she heard a voice, and
looked up to see her maid calling from her window. Was my lady
well? Did she wish to break her fast? Sansa shook her head, and
went back to shaping snow, adding a chimney to one end of the Great
Hall, where the hearth would stand inside.
Dawn stole into her garden like a thief. The grey of the sky
grew lighter still, and the trees and shrubs turned a dark green
beneath their stoles of snow. A few servants came out and watched
her for a time, but she paid them no mind and they soon went back
inside where it was warmer. Sansa saw Lady Lysa gazing down from
her balcony, wrapped up in a blue velvet robe trimmed with fox fur,
but when she looked again her aunt was gone. Maester Colemon popped
out of the rookery and peered down for a while, skinny and
shivering but curious.
Her bridges kept falling down. There was a covered bridge
between the armory and the main keep, and another that went from
the fourth floor of the bell tower to the second floor of the
rookery, but no matter how carefully she shaped them, they would
not hold together. The third time one collapsed on her, she cursed
aloud and sat back in helpless frustration.
“Pack the snow around a stick, Sansa.”
She did not know how long he had been watching her, or when he
had returned from the Vale. “A stick?” she asked.
“That will give it strength enough to stand, I’d
think,” Petyr said. “May I come into your castle, my
lady?”
Sansa was wary. “Don’t break it.
Be . . . ”
“ . . . gentle?” He smiled. “Winterfell has
withstood flercer enemies than me. It is Winterfell, is it
not?”
“Yes,” Sansa admitted.
He walked along outside the walls. “I used to dream of it,
in those years after Cat went north with Eddard Stark. In my dreams
it was ever a dark place, and cold.”
“No. It was always warm, even when it snowed. Water from
the hot springs is piped through the walls to warm them, and inside
the glass gardens it was always like the hottest day of
summer.” She stood, towering over the great white castle.
“I can’t think how to do the glass roof over the
gardens.”
Littlefinger stroked his chin, where his beard had been before
Lysa had asked him to shave it off. “The glass was locked in
frames, no? Twigs are your answer. Peel them and cross them and use
bark to tie them together into frames. I’ll show you.”
He moved through the garden, gathering up twigs and sticks and
shaking the snow from them. When he had enough, he stepped over
both walls with a single long stride and squatted on his heels in
the middle of the yard. Sansa came closer to watch what he was
doing. His hands were deft and sure, and before long he had a
crisscrossing latticework of twigs, very like the one that roofed
the glass gardens of Winterfell. “We will need to imagine the
glass, to be sure,” he said when he gave it to her.
“This is just right,” she said.
He touched her face. “And so is that.”
Sansa did not understand. “And so is what?”
“Your smile, my lady. Shall I make another for
you?”
“If you would.”
“Nothing could please me more.”
She raised the walls of the glass gardens while Littlefinger
roofed them over, and when they were done with that he helped her
extend the walls and build the guardshall. When she used sticks for
the covered bridges, they stood, just as he had said they would.
The First Keep was simple enough, an old round drum tower, but
Sansa was stymied again when it came to putting the gargoyles
around the top. Again he had the answer. “It’s been
snowing on your castle, my lady,” he pointed out. “What
do the gargoyles look like when they’re covered with
snow?”
Sansa closed her eyes to see them in memory.
“They’re just white lumps.”
“Well, then. Gargoyles are hard, but white lumps should be
easy.” And they were.
The Broken Tower was easier still. They made a tall tower
together, kneeling side by side to roll it smooth, and when
they’d raised it Sansa stuck her fingers through the top,
grabbed a handful of snow, and flung it full in his face. Petyr
yelped, as the snow slid down under his collar. “That was
unchivalrously done, my lady.”
“As was bringing me here, when you swore to take me
home.”
She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to him
so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the
walls of Winterfell.
His face grew serious. “Yes, I played you false in
that . . . and in one other thing as
well.”
Sansa’s stomach was aflutter. “What other
thing?”
“I told you that nothing could please me more than to help
you with your castle. I fear that was a lie as well. Something else
would please me more.” He stepped closer.
“This.”
Sansa tried to step back, but he pulled her into his arms and
suddenly he was kissing her. Feebly, she tried to squirm, but only
succeeded in pressing herself more tightly against him. His mouth
was on hers, swallowing her words. He tasted of mint. For half a
heartbeat she yielded to his kiss . . . before
she turned her face away and wrenched free. “What are you
doing?”
Petyr straightened his cloak. “Kissing a snow
maid.”
“You’re supposed to kiss her.” Sansa glanced
up at Lysa’s balcony, but it was empty now. “Your lady
wife.”
“I do. Lysa has no cause for complaint.” He smiled.
“I wish you could see yourself, my lady. You are so
beautiful. You’re crusted over with snow like some little
bear cub, but your face is flushed and you can scarcely breathe.
How long have you been out here? You must be very cold. Let me warm
you, Sansa. Take off those gloves, give me your hands.”
“I won’t.” He sounded almost like Marillion,
the night he’d gotten so drunk at the wedding. Only this time
Lothor Brune would not appear to save her; Ser Lothor was
Petyr’s man. “You shouldn’t kiss me. I might have
been your own daughter . . . ”
“Might have been,” he admitted, with a rueful smile.
“But you’re not, are you? You are Eddard Stark’s
daughter, and Cat’s. But I think you might be even more
beautiful than your mother was, when she was your age.”
“Petyr, please.” Her voice sounded so weak.
“Please . . . ”
“A castle!”
The voice was loud, shrill, and childish. Littleflnger turned
away from her. “Lord Robert.” He sketched a bow.
“Should you be out in the snow without your
gloves?”
“Did you make the snow castle, Lord
Littlefinger?”
“Alayne did most of it, my lord.”
Sansa said, “It’s meant to be Winterfell.”
“Winterfell?” Robert was small for eight, a stick of
a boy with splotchy skin and eyes that were always runny. Under one
arm he clutched the threadbare cloth doll he carried
everywhere.
“Winterfell is the seat of House Stark,” Sansa told
her husband-to-be. “The great castle of the north.”
“It’s not so great.” The boy knelt before the
gatehouse. “Look, here comes a giant to knock it down.”
He stood his doll in the snow and moved it jerkily. “Tromp
tromp I’m a giant, I’m a giant,” he chanted.
“Ho ho ho, open your gates or I’ll mash them and smash
them.” Swinging the doll by the legs, he knocked the top off
one gatehouse tower and then the other.
It was more than Sansa could stand. “Robert, stop
that.” Instead he swung the doll again, and a foot of wall
exploded. She grabbed for his hand but she caught the doll instead.
There was a loud ripping sound as the thin cloth tore. Suddenly she
had the doll’s head, Robert had the legs and body, and the
rag-and-sawdust stuffing was spilling in the snow.
Lord Robert’s mouth trembled. “You killlllllllllled
him,” he wailed. Then he began to shake. It started with no
more than a little shivering, but within a few short heartbeats he
had collapsed across the castle, his limbs flailing about
violently. White towers and snowy bridges shattered and fell on all
sides. Sansa stood horrified, but Petyr Baelish seized her
cousin’s wrists and shouted for the maester.
Guards and serving girls arrived within instants to help
restrain the boy, Maester Colemon a short time later. Robert
Arryn’s shaking sickness was nothing new to the people of the
Eyrie, and Lady Lysa had trained them all to come rushing at the
boy’s first cry. The maester held the little lord’s
head and gave him half a cup of dreamwine, murmuring soothing
words. Slowly the violence of the fit seemed to ebb away, till
nothing remained but a small shaking of the hands. “Help him
to my chambers,” Colemon told the guards. “A leeching
will help calm him.”
“It was my fault.” Sansa showed them the
doll’s head. “I ripped his doll in two. I never meant
to, but . . . ”
“His lordship was destroying the castle,” said
Petyr.
“A giant,” the boy whispered, weeping. “It
wasn’t me, it was a giant hurt the castle. She killed him! I
hate her! She’s a bastard and I hate her! I don’t want
to be leeched!”
“My lord, your blood needs thinning,” said Maester
Colemon. “It is the bad blood that makes you angry, and the
rage that brings on the shaking. Come now.”
They led the boy away. My lord husband, Sansa thought, as she
contemplated the ruins of Winterfell. The snow had stopped, and it
was colder than before. She wondered if Lord Robert would shake all
through their wedding. At least Joffrey was sound of body. A mad
rage seized hold of her. She picked up a broken branch and smashed
the torn doll’s head down on top of it, then pushed it down
atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle. The servants
looked aghast, but when Littlefinger saw what she’d done he
laughed. “If the tales be true, that’s not the first
giant to end up with his head on Winterfell’s
walls.”
“Those are only stories,” she said, and left him
there.
Back in her bedchamber, Sansa took off her cloak and her wet
boots and sat beside the fire. She had no doubt that she would be
made to answer for Lord Robert’s fit. Perhaps Lady Lysa will
send me away. Her aunt was quick to banish anyone who displeased
her, and nothing displeased her quite so much as people she
suspected of mistreating her son.
Sansa would have welcomed banishment. The Gates of the Moon was
much larger than the Eyrie, and livelier as well. Lord Nestor Royce
seemed gruff and stern, but his daughter Myranda kept his castle for
him, and everyone said how frolicsome she was. Even Sansa’s
supposed bastardy might not count too much against her below. One
of King Robert’s baseborn daughters was in service to Lord
Nestor, and she and the Lady Myranda were said to be fast friends,
as close as sisters. I will tell my aunt that I don’t want to marry Robert. Not
even the High Septon himself could declare a woman married if she
refused to say the vows. She wasn’t a beggar, no matter what
her aunt said. She was thirteen, a woman flowered and wed, the heir
to Winterfell. Sansa felt sorry for her little cousin sometimes,
but she could not imagine ever wanting to be his wife. I would
sooner be married to Tyrion again. If Lady Lysa knew that, surely
she’d send her away . . . away from
Robert’s pouts and shakes and runny eyes, away from
Marillion’s lingering looks, away from Petyr’s kisses.
I will tell her. I will!
It was late that afternoon when Lady Lysa summoned her. Sansa
had been marshaling her courage all day, but no sooner did
Marillion appear at her door than all her doubts returned.
“Lady Lysa requires your presence in the High Hall.”
The singer’s eyes undressed her as he spoke, but she was used
to that.
Marillion was comely, there was no denying it; boyish and
slender, with smooth skin, sandy hair, a charming smile. But he had
made himself well hated in the Vale, by everyone but her aunt and
little Lord Robert. To hear the servants talk, Sansa was not the
first maid to suffer his advances, and the others had not had
Lothor Brune to defend them. But Lady Lysa would hear no complaints
against him. Since coming to the Eyrie, the singer had become her
favorite. He sang Lord Robert to sleep every night, and tweaked the
noses of Lady Lysa’s suitors with verses that made mock of
their foibles. Her aunt had showered him with gold and gifts;
costly clothes, a gold arm ring, a belt studded with moonstones, a
fine horse. She had even given him her late husband’s
favorite falcon. It all served to make Marillion unfailingly
courteous in Lady Lysa’s presence, and unfailingly arrogant
outside it.
“Thank you,” Sansa told him stiffly. “I know
the way.”
He would not leave. “My lady said to bring you.” Bring me? She did not like the sound of that. “Are you a
guardsman now?” Littlefinger had dismissed the Eyrie’s
captain of guards and put Ser Lothor Brune in his place.
“Do you require guarding?” Marillion said lightly.
“I am composing a new song, you should know. A song so sweet
and sad it will melt even your frozen heart. ‘The Roadside
Rose,’ I mean to call it. About a baseborn girl so beautiful she
bewitched every man who laid eyes upon her.” I am a Stark of Winterfell, she longed to tell him. Instead she
nodded, and let him escort her down the tower steps and along a
bridge. The High Hall had been closed as long as she’d been
at the Eyrie. Sansa wondered why her aunt had opened it. Normally
she preferred the comfort of her solar, or the cozy warmth of Lord
Arryn’s audience chamber with its view of the waterfall.
Two guards in sky-blue cloaks flanked the carved wooden doors of
the High Hall, spears in hand. “No one is to enter so long as
Alayne is with Lady Lysa,” Marillion told them.
“Aye.” The men let them pass, then crossed their
spears. Marillion swung the doors shut and barred them with a third
spear, longer and thicker than those the guards had borne.
Sansa felt a prickle of unease. “Why did you do
that?”
“My lady awaits you.”
She looked about uncertainly. Lady Lysa sat on the dais in a
highbacked chair of carved weirwood, alone. To her right was a
second chair, taller than her own, with a stack of blue cushions
piled on the seat, but Lord Robert was not in it. Sansa hoped
he’d recovered. Marillion was not like to tell her,
though.
Sansa walked down the blue silk carpet between rows of fluted
pillars slim as lances. The floors and walls of the High Hall were
made of milk-white marble veined with blue. Shafts of pale daylight
slanted down through narrow arched windows along the eastern wall.
Between the windows were torches, mounted in high iron sconces, but
none of them was lit. Her footsteps fell softly on the carpet.
Outside the wind blew cold and lonely.
Amidst so much white marble even the sunlight looked chilly,
somehow . . . though not half so chilly as her
aunt. Lady Lysa had dressed in a gown of cream-colored velvet and a
necklace of sapphires and moonstones. Her auburn hair had been done
up in a thick braid, and fell across one shoulder. She sat in the
high seat watching her niece approach, her face red and puffy
beneath the paint and powder. On the wall behind her hung a huge
banner, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn in cream and blue.
Sansa stopped before the dais, and curtsied. “My lady. You
sent for me.” She could still hear the sound of the wind, and
the soft chords Marillion was playing at the foot of the hall.
“I saw what you did,” the Lady Lysa said.
Sansa smoothed down the folds of her skirt. “I trust Lord
Robert is better? I never meant to rip his doll. He was smashing my
snow castle, I only . . . ”
“Will you play the coy deceiver with me?” her aunt
said. “I was not speaking of Robert’s doll. I saw you
kissing him.”
The High Hall seemed to grow a little colder. The walls and
floor and columns might have turned to ice. “He kissed
me.”
Lysa’s nostrils flared. “And why would he do that?
He has a wife who loves him. A woman grown, not a little girl. He
has no need for the likes of you. Confess, child. You threw
yourself at him. That was the way of it.”
Sansa took a step backward. “That’s not
true.”
“Where are you going? Are you afraid? Such wanton behavior
must be punished, but I will not be hard on you. We keep a whipping
boy for Robert, as is the custom in the Free Cities. His health is
too delicate for him to bear the rod himself. I shall find some
common girl to take your whipping, but first you must own up to
what you’ve done. I cannot abide a liar, Alayne.”
“I was building a snow castle,” Sansa said.
“Lord Petyr was helping me, and then he kissed me.
That’s what you saw.”
“Have you no honor?” her aunt said sharply.
“Or do you take me for a fool? You do, don’t you? You
take me for a fool. Yes, I see that now. I am not a fool.
You think you can have any man you want because you’re young
and beautiful. Don’t think I haven’t seen the looks you
give Marillion. I know everything that happens in the Eyrie, little
lady. And I have known your like before, too. But you are mistaken
if you think big eyes and strumpet’s smiles will win you
Petyr. He is mine.” She rose to her feet. “They all
tried to take him from me. My lord father, my husband, your
mother . . . Catelyn most of all. She liked to
kiss my Petyr too, oh yes she did.”
Sansa retreated another step. “My mother?”
“Yes, your mother, your precious mother, my own sweet
sister Catelyn. Don’t you think to play the innocent with me,
you vile little liar. All those years in Riverrun, she played with
Petyr as if he were her little toy. She teased him with smiles and
soft words and wanton looks, and made his nights a
torment.”
“No.” My mother is dead, she wanted to shriek. She
was your own sister, and she’s dead. “She didn’t.
She wouldn’t.”
“How would you know? Were you there?” Lysa descended
from the high seat, her skirts swirling. “Did you come with
Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood, the time they visited to lay their
feud before my father? Lord Bracken’s singer played for us,
and Catelyn danced six dances with Petyr that night, six, I
counted. When the lords began to argue my father took them up to
his audience chamber, so there was no one to stop us drinking.
Edmure got drunk, young as he was . . . and
Petyr tried to kiss your mother, only she pushed him away. She
laughed at him. He looked so wounded I thought my heart would
burst, and afterward he drank until he passed out at the table.
Uncle Brynden carried him up to bed before my father could find him
like that. But you remember none of it, do you?” She looked
down angrily. “Do you?” Is she drunk, or mad? “I was not born, my lady.”
“You were not born. But I was, so do not presume to tell
what is true. I know what is true. You kissed him!”
“He kissed me,” Sansa insisted again. “I never
wanted—”
“Be quiet, I haven’t given you leave to speak. You
enticed him, just as your mother did that night in Riverrun, with
her smiles and her dancing. You think I could forget? That was the
night I stole up to his bed to give him comfort. I bled, but it was
the sweetest hurt. He told me he loved me then, but he called me
Cat, just before he fell back to sleep. Even so, I stayed with him
until the sky began to lighten. Your mother did not deserve him.
She would not even give him her favor to wear when he fought
Brandon Stark. I would have given him my favor. I gave him
everything. He is mine now. Not Catelyn’s and not
yours.”
All of Sansa’s resolve had withered in the face of her
aunt’s onslaught. Lysa Arryn was frightening her as much as
Queen Cersei ever had. “He’s yours, my lady,” she
said, trying to sound meek and contrite. “May I have your
leave to go?”
“You may not.” Her aunt’s breath smelled of
wine. “If you were anyone else, I would banish you. Send you
down to Lord Nestor at the Gates of the Moon, or back to the
Fingers. How would you like to spend your life on that bleak shore,
surrounded by slatterns and sheep pellets? That was what my father
meant for Petyr. Everyone thought it was because of that stupid
duel with Brandon Stark, but that wasn’t so. Father said I
ought to thank the gods that so great a lord as Jon Arryn was
willing to take me soiled, but I knew it was only for the swords. I
had to marry Jon, or my father would have turned me out as he did
his brother, but it was Petyr I was meant for. I am telling you all
this so you will understand how much we love each other, how long
we have suffered and dreamed of one another. We made a baby
together, a precious little baby.” Lysa put her hands flat
against her belly, as if the child was still there. “When
they stole him from me, I made a promise to myself that I would
never let it happen again. Jon wished to send my sweet Robert to
Dragonstone, and that sot of a king would have given him to Cersei
Lannister, but I never let them . . . no more
than I’ll let you steal my Petyr Littlefinger. Do you hear
me, Alayne or Sansa or whatever you call yourself? Do you hear what
I am telling you?”
“Yes. I swear, I won’t ever kiss him again,
or . . . or entice him.” Sansa thought
that was what her aunt wanted to hear.
“So you admit it now? It was you, just as I thought. You
are as wanton as your mother.” Lysa grabbed her by the wrist.
“Come with me now. There is something I want to show
you.”
“You’re hurting me.” Sansa squirmed.
“Please, Aunt Lysa, I haven’t done anything. I swear
it.”
Her aunt ignored her protests. “Marillion!” she
shouted. “I need you, Marillion! I need you!”
The singer had remained discreetly in the rear of the hall, but
at Lady Arryn’s shout he came at once. “My
lady?”
“Play us a song. Play ‘The False and the
Fair.’ ”
Marillions fingers brushed the strings. “The lord he came
a-riding upon a rainy day, hey-nonny, hey-nonny,
hey-nonny-hey . . . ”
Lady Lysa pulled at Sansa’s arm. It was either walk or be
dragged, so she chose to walk, halfway down the hall and between a
pair of pillars, to a white weirwood door set in the marble wall.
The door was firmly closed, with three heavy bronze bars to hold it
in place, but Sansa could hear the wind outside worrying at its
edges. When she saw the crescent moon carved in the wood, she
planted her feet. “The Moon Door.” She tried to yank
free. “Why are you showing me the Moon Door?”
“You squeak like a mouse now, but you were bold enough in
the garden, weren’t you? You were bold enough in the
snow.”
“The lady sat a-sewing upon a rainy day,” Marillion
sang. “Hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.”
“Open the door,” Lysa commanded. “Open it, I
say. You will do it, or I’ll send for my guards.” She
shoved Sansa forward. “Your mother was brave, at least. Lift
off the bars.” If I do as she says, she will let me go. Sansa grabbed one of
the bronze bars, yanked it loose, and tossed it down. The second
bar clattered to the marble, then the third. She had barely touched
the latch when the heavy wooden door flew inward and slammed back
against the wall with a bang. Snow had piled up around the frame,
and it all came blowing in at them, borne on a blast of cold air
that left Sansa shivering. She tried to step backward, but her aunt
was behind her. Lysa seized her by the wrist and put her other hand
between her shoulder blades, propelling her forcefully toward the
open door.
Beyond was white sky, falling snow, and nothing else.
“Look down,” said Lady Lysa. “Look
down.”
She tried to wrench free, but her aunt’s fingers were
digging into her arm like claws. Lysa gave her another shove, and
Sansa shrieked. Her left foot broke through a crust of snow and
knocked it loose. There was nothing in front of her but empty air,
and a waycastle six hundred feet below clinging to the side of the
mountain. “Don’t!” Sansa screamed.
“You’re scaring me! “ Behind her, Marillion was
still playing his woodharp and singing, “Hey-nonny,
hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.”
“Do you still want my leave to go? Do you?”
“No.” Sansa planted her feet and tried to squirm
backward, but her aunt did not budge. “Not this way.
Please . . . ” She put a hand up, her
fingers scrabbling at the doorframe, but she could not get a grip,
and her feet were sliding on the wet marble floor. Lady Lysa
pressed her forward inexorably. Her aunt outweighed her by three
stone. “The lady lay a-kissing, upon a mound of hay,”
Marillion was singing. Sansa twisted sideways, hysterical with
fear, and one foot slipped out over the void. She screamed.
“Hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.” The wind flapped
her skirts up and bit at her bare legs with cold teeth. She could
feel snowflakes melting on her cheeks. Sansa flailed, found
Lysa’s thick auburn braid, and clutched it tight. “My
hair!” her aunt shrieked. “Let go of my hair!”
She was shaking, sobbing. They teetered on the edge. Far off, she
heard the guards pounding on the door with their spears, demanding
to be let in. Marillion broke off his song.
“Lysa! What’s the meaning of this?” The shout
cut through the sobs and heavy breathing. Footsteps echoed down the
High Hall. “Get back from there! Lysa, what are you
doing?” The guards were still beating at the door;
Littlefinger had come in the back way, through the lords’
entrance behind the dais.
As Lysa turned, her grip loosened enough for Sansa to rip free.
She stumbled to her knees, where Petyr Baelish saw her. He stopped
suddenly. “Alayne. What is the trouble here?”
“Her.” Lady Lysa grabbed a handful of Sansa’s
hair. “She’s the trouble. She kissed you.”
“Tell her, “ Sansa begged. “Tell her we were
just building a castle . . . ”
“Be quiet!” her aunt screamed. “I never gave
you leave to speak. No one cares about your castle.”
“She’s a child, Lysa. Cat’s daughter. What did
you think you were doing?”
“I was going to marry her to Robert! She has no gratitude.
No . . . no decency. You are not hers to kiss.
Not hers! I was teaching her a lesson, that was all.”
“I see.” He stroked his chin. “I think she
understands now. Isn’t that so, Alayne?”
“Yes,” sobbed Sansa. “I understand.”
“I don’t want her here.” Her aunt’s eyes
were shiny with tears. “Why did you bring her to the Vale,
Petyr? This isn’t her place. She doesn’t belong
here.”
“We’ll send her away, then. Back to King’s
Landing, if you like.” He took a step toward them. “Let
her up, now. Let her away from the door.”
“NO!” Lysa gave Sansa’s head another wrench.
Snow eddied around them, making their skirts snap noisily.
“You can’t want her. You can’t. She’s a
stupid empty-headed little girl. She doesn’t love you the way
I have. I’ve always loved you. I’ve proved it,
haven’t I?” Tears ran down her aunt’s puffy red
face. “I gave you my maiden’s gift. I would have given
you a son too, but they murdered him with moon tea, with tansy and
mint and wormwood, a spoon of honey and a drop of pennyroyal. It
wasn’t me, I never knew, I only drank what Father gave
me . . . ”
“That’s past and done, Lysa. Lord Hoster’s
dead, and his old maester as well.” Littlefinger moved
closer. “Have you been at the wine again? You ought not to
talk so much. We don’t want Alayne to know more than she
should, do we? Or Marillion?”
Lady Lysa ignored that. “Cat never gave you anything. It
was me who got you your first post, who made Jon bring you to court
so we could be close to one another. You promised me you would
never forget that.”
“Nor have I. We’re together, just as you always
wanted, just as we always planned. Just let go of Sansa’s
hair . . . ”
“I won’t! I saw you kissing in the snow. She’s
just like her mother. Catelyn kissed you in the godswood, but she
never meant it, she never wanted you. Why did you love her best? It
was me, it was always meeee!”
“I know, love.” He took another step. “And I
am here. All you need to do is take my hand, come on.” He
held it out to her. “There’s no cause for all these
tears.”
“Tears, tears, tears,” she sobbed hysterically.
“No need for tears . . . but that’s
not what you said in King’s Landing. You told me to put the
tears in Jon’s wine, and I did. For Robert, and for us! And I
wrote Catelyn and told her the Lannisters had killed my lord
husband, just as you said. That was so
clever . . . you were always clever, I told
Father that, I said Petyr’s so clever, he’ll rise high,
he will, he will, and he’s sweet and gentle and I have his
little baby in my belly . . . Why did you kiss
her? Why? We’re together now, we’re together after so
long, so very long, why would you want to kiss herrrrrr?”
“Lysa,” Petyr sighed, “after all the storms
we’ve suffered, you should trust me better. I swear, I shall
never leave your side again, for as long as we both shall
live.”
“Truly?” she asked, weeping. “Oh,
truly?”
“Truly. Now unhand the girl and come give me a
kiss.”
Lysa threw herself into Littlefinger’s arms, sobbing. As
they hugged, Sansa crawled from the Moon Door on hands and knees
and wrapped her arms around the nearest pillar. She could feel her
heart pounding. There was snow in her hair and her right shoe was
missing. It must have fallen. She shuddered, and hugged the pillar
tighter.
Littlefinger let Lysa sob against his chest for a moment, then
put his hands on her arms and kissed her lightly. “My sweet
silly jealous wife,” he said, chuckling. “I’ve
only loved one woman, I promise you.”
Lysa Arryn smiled tremulously. “Only one? Oh, Petyr, do
you swear it? Only one?”
“Only Cat.” He gave her a short, sharp shove.
Lysa stumbled backward, her feet slipping on the wet marble. And
then she was gone. She never screamed. For the longest time there
was no sound but the wind.
Marillion gasped,
“You . . . you . . . ”
The guards were shouting outside the door, pounding with the
butts of their heavy spears. Lord Petyr pulled Sansa to her feet.
“You’re not hurt?” When she shook her head, he
said, “Run let my guards in, then. Quick now, there’s
no time to lose. This singer’s killed my lady
wife.”
She awoke all at once, every nerve atingle. For a moment she did
not remember where she was. She had dreamt that she was little,
still sharing a bedchamber with her sister Arya. But it was her
maid she heard tossing in sleep, not her sister, and this was not
Winterfell, but the Eyrie. And I am Alayne Stone, a bastard girl.
The room was cold and black, though she was warm beneath the
blankets. Dawn had not yet come. Sometimes she dreamed of Ser Ilyn
Payne and woke with her heart thumping, but this dream had not been
like that. Home. It was a dream of home.
The Eyrie was no home. It was no bigger than Maegor’s
Holdfast, and outside its sheer white walls was only the mountain
and the long treacherous descent past Sky and Snow and Stone to the
Gates of the Moon on the valley floor. There was no place to go and
little to do. The older servants said these halls rang with
laughter when her father and Robert Baratheon had been Jon
Arryn’s wards, but those days were many years gone. Her aunt
kept a small household, and seldom permitted any guests to ascend
past the Gates of the Moon. Aside from her aged maid, Sansa’s
only companion was the Lord Robert, eight going on three. And Marillion. There is always Marillion. When he played for
them at supper, the young singer often seemed to be singing
directly at her. Her aunt was far from pleased. Lady Lysa doted on
Marillion, and had banished two serving girls and even a page for
telling lies about him.
Lysa was as lonely as she was. Her new husband seemed to spend
more time at the foot of the mountain than he did atop it. He was
gone now, had been gone the past four days, meeting with the
Corbrays. From bits and pieces of overheard conversations Sansa knew that
Jon Arryn’s bannermen resented Lysa’s marriage and
begrudged Petyr his authority as Lord Protector of the Vale. The
senior branch of House Royce was close to open revolt over her
aunt’s failure to aid Robb in his war, and the Waynwoods,
Redforts, Belmores, and Templetons were giving them every support.
The mountain clans were being troublesome as well, and old Lord
Hunter had died so suddenly that his two younger sons were accusing
their elder brother of having murdered him. The Vale of Arryn might
have been spared the worst of the war, but it was hardly the
idyllic place that Lady Lysa had made it out to be. I am not going back to sleep, Sansa realized. My head is all a
tumult. She pushed her pillow away reluctantly, threw back the
blankets, went to her window, and opened the shutters.
Snow was falling on the Eyrie.
Outside the flakes drifted down as soft and silent as memory.
Was this what woke me? Already the snowfall lay thick upon the
garden below, blanketing the grass, dusting the shrubs and statues
with white and weighing down the branches of the trees. The sight
took Sansa back to cold nights long ago, in the long summer of her
childhood.
She had last seen snow the day she’d left Winterfell. That
was a lighter fall than this, she remembered. Robb had melting
flakes in his hair when he hugged me, and the snowball Arya tried
to make kept coming apart in her hands. It hurt to remember how
happy she had been that morning. Hullen had helped her mount, and
she’d ridden out with the snowflakes swirling around her, off
to see the great wide world. I thought my song was beginning that
day, but it was almost done.
Sansa left the shutters open as she dressed. It would be cold,
she knew, though the Eyrie’s towers encircled the garden and
protected it from the worst of the mountain winds. She donned
silken smallclothes and a linen shift, and over that a warm dress
of blue lambswool. Two pairs of hose for her legs, boots that laced
up to her knees, heavy leather gloves, and finally a hooded cloak
of soft white fox fur.
Her maid rolled herself more tightly in her blanket as the snow
began to drift in the window. Sansa eased open the door, and made
her way down the winding stair. When she opened the door to the
garden, it was so lovely that she held her breath, unwilling to
disturb such perfect beauty. The snow drifted down and down, all in
ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. All
color had fled the world outside. It was a place of whites and
blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues,
black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure
world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here.
Yet she stepped out all the same. Her boots tore ankle-deep
holes into the smooth white surface of the snow, yet made no sound.
Sansa drifted past frosted shrubs and thin dark trees, and wondered
if she were still dreaming. Drifting snowflakes brushed her face as
light as lover’s kisses, and melted on her cheeks. At the
center of the garden, beside the statue of the weeping woman that
lay broken and half-buried on the ground, she turned her face up to
the sky and closed her eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes,
taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of
innocence. The taste of dreams.
When Sansa opened her eyes again, she was on her knees. She did
not remember falling. It seemed to her that the sky was a lighter
shade of grey. Dawn, she thought. Another day. Another new day. It
was the old days she hungered for. Prayed for. But who could she
pray to? The garden had been meant for a godswood once, she knew,
but the soil was too thin and stony for a weirwood to take root. A
godswood without gods, as empty as me.
She scooped up a handful of snow and squeezed it between her
fingers. Heavy and wet, the snow packed easily. Sansa began to make
snowballs, shaping and smoothing them until they were round and
white and perfect. She remembered a summer’s snow in
Winterfell when Arya and Bran had ambushed her as she emerged from
the keep one morning. They’d each had a dozen snowballs to
hand, and she’d had none. Bran had been perched on the roof
of the covered bridge, out of reach, but Sansa had chased Arya
through the stables and around the kitchen until both of them were
breathless. She might even have caught her, but she’d slipped
on some ice. Her sister came back to see if she was hurt. When she
said she wasn’t, Arya hit her in the face with another
snowball, but Sansa grabbed her leg and pulled her down and was
rubbing snow in her hair when Jory came along and pulled them
apart, laughing. What do I want with snowballs? She looked at her sad little
arsenal. There’s no one to throw them at. She let the one she
was making drop from her hand. I could build a snow knight instead,
she thought. Or even . . .
She pushed two of her snowballs together, added a third, packed
more snow in around them, and patted the whole thing into the shape
of a cylinder. When it was done, she stood it on end and used the
tip of her little finger to poke holes in it for windows. The
crenellations around the top took a little more care, but when they
were done she had a tower. I need some walls now, Sansa thought,
and then a keep. She set to work.
The snow fell and the castle rose. Two walls ankle-high, the
inner taller than the outer. Towers and turrets, keeps and stairs,
a round kitchen, a square armory, the stables along the inside of
the west wall. It was only a castle when she began, but before very
long Sansa knew it was Winterfell. She found twigs and fallen
branches beneath the snow and broke off the ends to make the trees
for the godswood. For the gravestones in the lichyard she used bits
of bark. Soon her gloves and her boots were crusty white, her hands
were tingling, and her feet were soaked and cold, but she did not
care. The castle was all that mattered. Some things were hard to
remember, but most came back to her easily, as if she had been
there only yesterday. The Library Tower, with the steep stonework
stair twisting about its exterior. The gatehouse, two huge
bulwarks, the arched gate between them, crenellations all along the
top . . .
And all the while the snow kept falling, piling up in drifts
around her buildings as fast as she raised them. She was patting
down the pitched roof of the Great Hall when she heard a voice, and
looked up to see her maid calling from her window. Was my lady
well? Did she wish to break her fast? Sansa shook her head, and
went back to shaping snow, adding a chimney to one end of the Great
Hall, where the hearth would stand inside.
Dawn stole into her garden like a thief. The grey of the sky
grew lighter still, and the trees and shrubs turned a dark green
beneath their stoles of snow. A few servants came out and watched
her for a time, but she paid them no mind and they soon went back
inside where it was warmer. Sansa saw Lady Lysa gazing down from
her balcony, wrapped up in a blue velvet robe trimmed with fox fur,
but when she looked again her aunt was gone. Maester Colemon popped
out of the rookery and peered down for a while, skinny and
shivering but curious.
Her bridges kept falling down. There was a covered bridge
between the armory and the main keep, and another that went from
the fourth floor of the bell tower to the second floor of the
rookery, but no matter how carefully she shaped them, they would
not hold together. The third time one collapsed on her, she cursed
aloud and sat back in helpless frustration.
“Pack the snow around a stick, Sansa.”
She did not know how long he had been watching her, or when he
had returned from the Vale. “A stick?” she asked.
“That will give it strength enough to stand, I’d
think,” Petyr said. “May I come into your castle, my
lady?”
Sansa was wary. “Don’t break it.
Be . . . ”
“ . . . gentle?” He smiled. “Winterfell has
withstood flercer enemies than me. It is Winterfell, is it
not?”
“Yes,” Sansa admitted.
He walked along outside the walls. “I used to dream of it,
in those years after Cat went north with Eddard Stark. In my dreams
it was ever a dark place, and cold.”
“No. It was always warm, even when it snowed. Water from
the hot springs is piped through the walls to warm them, and inside
the glass gardens it was always like the hottest day of
summer.” She stood, towering over the great white castle.
“I can’t think how to do the glass roof over the
gardens.”
Littlefinger stroked his chin, where his beard had been before
Lysa had asked him to shave it off. “The glass was locked in
frames, no? Twigs are your answer. Peel them and cross them and use
bark to tie them together into frames. I’ll show you.”
He moved through the garden, gathering up twigs and sticks and
shaking the snow from them. When he had enough, he stepped over
both walls with a single long stride and squatted on his heels in
the middle of the yard. Sansa came closer to watch what he was
doing. His hands were deft and sure, and before long he had a
crisscrossing latticework of twigs, very like the one that roofed
the glass gardens of Winterfell. “We will need to imagine the
glass, to be sure,” he said when he gave it to her.
“This is just right,” she said.
He touched her face. “And so is that.”
Sansa did not understand. “And so is what?”
“Your smile, my lady. Shall I make another for
you?”
“If you would.”
“Nothing could please me more.”
She raised the walls of the glass gardens while Littlefinger
roofed them over, and when they were done with that he helped her
extend the walls and build the guardshall. When she used sticks for
the covered bridges, they stood, just as he had said they would.
The First Keep was simple enough, an old round drum tower, but
Sansa was stymied again when it came to putting the gargoyles
around the top. Again he had the answer. “It’s been
snowing on your castle, my lady,” he pointed out. “What
do the gargoyles look like when they’re covered with
snow?”
Sansa closed her eyes to see them in memory.
“They’re just white lumps.”
“Well, then. Gargoyles are hard, but white lumps should be
easy.” And they were.
The Broken Tower was easier still. They made a tall tower
together, kneeling side by side to roll it smooth, and when
they’d raised it Sansa stuck her fingers through the top,
grabbed a handful of snow, and flung it full in his face. Petyr
yelped, as the snow slid down under his collar. “That was
unchivalrously done, my lady.”
“As was bringing me here, when you swore to take me
home.”
She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to him
so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the
walls of Winterfell.
His face grew serious. “Yes, I played you false in
that . . . and in one other thing as
well.”
Sansa’s stomach was aflutter. “What other
thing?”
“I told you that nothing could please me more than to help
you with your castle. I fear that was a lie as well. Something else
would please me more.” He stepped closer.
“This.”
Sansa tried to step back, but he pulled her into his arms and
suddenly he was kissing her. Feebly, she tried to squirm, but only
succeeded in pressing herself more tightly against him. His mouth
was on hers, swallowing her words. He tasted of mint. For half a
heartbeat she yielded to his kiss . . . before
she turned her face away and wrenched free. “What are you
doing?”
Petyr straightened his cloak. “Kissing a snow
maid.”
“You’re supposed to kiss her.” Sansa glanced
up at Lysa’s balcony, but it was empty now. “Your lady
wife.”
“I do. Lysa has no cause for complaint.” He smiled.
“I wish you could see yourself, my lady. You are so
beautiful. You’re crusted over with snow like some little
bear cub, but your face is flushed and you can scarcely breathe.
How long have you been out here? You must be very cold. Let me warm
you, Sansa. Take off those gloves, give me your hands.”
“I won’t.” He sounded almost like Marillion,
the night he’d gotten so drunk at the wedding. Only this time
Lothor Brune would not appear to save her; Ser Lothor was
Petyr’s man. “You shouldn’t kiss me. I might have
been your own daughter . . . ”
“Might have been,” he admitted, with a rueful smile.
“But you’re not, are you? You are Eddard Stark’s
daughter, and Cat’s. But I think you might be even more
beautiful than your mother was, when she was your age.”
“Petyr, please.” Her voice sounded so weak.
“Please . . . ”
“A castle!”
The voice was loud, shrill, and childish. Littleflnger turned
away from her. “Lord Robert.” He sketched a bow.
“Should you be out in the snow without your
gloves?”
“Did you make the snow castle, Lord
Littlefinger?”
“Alayne did most of it, my lord.”
Sansa said, “It’s meant to be Winterfell.”
“Winterfell?” Robert was small for eight, a stick of
a boy with splotchy skin and eyes that were always runny. Under one
arm he clutched the threadbare cloth doll he carried
everywhere.
“Winterfell is the seat of House Stark,” Sansa told
her husband-to-be. “The great castle of the north.”
“It’s not so great.” The boy knelt before the
gatehouse. “Look, here comes a giant to knock it down.”
He stood his doll in the snow and moved it jerkily. “Tromp
tromp I’m a giant, I’m a giant,” he chanted.
“Ho ho ho, open your gates or I’ll mash them and smash
them.” Swinging the doll by the legs, he knocked the top off
one gatehouse tower and then the other.
It was more than Sansa could stand. “Robert, stop
that.” Instead he swung the doll again, and a foot of wall
exploded. She grabbed for his hand but she caught the doll instead.
There was a loud ripping sound as the thin cloth tore. Suddenly she
had the doll’s head, Robert had the legs and body, and the
rag-and-sawdust stuffing was spilling in the snow.
Lord Robert’s mouth trembled. “You killlllllllllled
him,” he wailed. Then he began to shake. It started with no
more than a little shivering, but within a few short heartbeats he
had collapsed across the castle, his limbs flailing about
violently. White towers and snowy bridges shattered and fell on all
sides. Sansa stood horrified, but Petyr Baelish seized her
cousin’s wrists and shouted for the maester.
Guards and serving girls arrived within instants to help
restrain the boy, Maester Colemon a short time later. Robert
Arryn’s shaking sickness was nothing new to the people of the
Eyrie, and Lady Lysa had trained them all to come rushing at the
boy’s first cry. The maester held the little lord’s
head and gave him half a cup of dreamwine, murmuring soothing
words. Slowly the violence of the fit seemed to ebb away, till
nothing remained but a small shaking of the hands. “Help him
to my chambers,” Colemon told the guards. “A leeching
will help calm him.”
“It was my fault.” Sansa showed them the
doll’s head. “I ripped his doll in two. I never meant
to, but . . . ”
“His lordship was destroying the castle,” said
Petyr.
“A giant,” the boy whispered, weeping. “It
wasn’t me, it was a giant hurt the castle. She killed him! I
hate her! She’s a bastard and I hate her! I don’t want
to be leeched!”
“My lord, your blood needs thinning,” said Maester
Colemon. “It is the bad blood that makes you angry, and the
rage that brings on the shaking. Come now.”
They led the boy away. My lord husband, Sansa thought, as she
contemplated the ruins of Winterfell. The snow had stopped, and it
was colder than before. She wondered if Lord Robert would shake all
through their wedding. At least Joffrey was sound of body. A mad
rage seized hold of her. She picked up a broken branch and smashed
the torn doll’s head down on top of it, then pushed it down
atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle. The servants
looked aghast, but when Littlefinger saw what she’d done he
laughed. “If the tales be true, that’s not the first
giant to end up with his head on Winterfell’s
walls.”
“Those are only stories,” she said, and left him
there.
Back in her bedchamber, Sansa took off her cloak and her wet
boots and sat beside the fire. She had no doubt that she would be
made to answer for Lord Robert’s fit. Perhaps Lady Lysa will
send me away. Her aunt was quick to banish anyone who displeased
her, and nothing displeased her quite so much as people she
suspected of mistreating her son.
Sansa would have welcomed banishment. The Gates of the Moon was
much larger than the Eyrie, and livelier as well. Lord Nestor Royce
seemed gruff and stern, but his daughter Myranda kept his castle for
him, and everyone said how frolicsome she was. Even Sansa’s
supposed bastardy might not count too much against her below. One
of King Robert’s baseborn daughters was in service to Lord
Nestor, and she and the Lady Myranda were said to be fast friends,
as close as sisters. I will tell my aunt that I don’t want to marry Robert. Not
even the High Septon himself could declare a woman married if she
refused to say the vows. She wasn’t a beggar, no matter what
her aunt said. She was thirteen, a woman flowered and wed, the heir
to Winterfell. Sansa felt sorry for her little cousin sometimes,
but she could not imagine ever wanting to be his wife. I would
sooner be married to Tyrion again. If Lady Lysa knew that, surely
she’d send her away . . . away from
Robert’s pouts and shakes and runny eyes, away from
Marillion’s lingering looks, away from Petyr’s kisses.
I will tell her. I will!
It was late that afternoon when Lady Lysa summoned her. Sansa
had been marshaling her courage all day, but no sooner did
Marillion appear at her door than all her doubts returned.
“Lady Lysa requires your presence in the High Hall.”
The singer’s eyes undressed her as he spoke, but she was used
to that.
Marillion was comely, there was no denying it; boyish and
slender, with smooth skin, sandy hair, a charming smile. But he had
made himself well hated in the Vale, by everyone but her aunt and
little Lord Robert. To hear the servants talk, Sansa was not the
first maid to suffer his advances, and the others had not had
Lothor Brune to defend them. But Lady Lysa would hear no complaints
against him. Since coming to the Eyrie, the singer had become her
favorite. He sang Lord Robert to sleep every night, and tweaked the
noses of Lady Lysa’s suitors with verses that made mock of
their foibles. Her aunt had showered him with gold and gifts;
costly clothes, a gold arm ring, a belt studded with moonstones, a
fine horse. She had even given him her late husband’s
favorite falcon. It all served to make Marillion unfailingly
courteous in Lady Lysa’s presence, and unfailingly arrogant
outside it.
“Thank you,” Sansa told him stiffly. “I know
the way.”
He would not leave. “My lady said to bring you.” Bring me? She did not like the sound of that. “Are you a
guardsman now?” Littlefinger had dismissed the Eyrie’s
captain of guards and put Ser Lothor Brune in his place.
“Do you require guarding?” Marillion said lightly.
“I am composing a new song, you should know. A song so sweet
and sad it will melt even your frozen heart. ‘The Roadside
Rose,’ I mean to call it. About a baseborn girl so beautiful she
bewitched every man who laid eyes upon her.” I am a Stark of Winterfell, she longed to tell him. Instead she
nodded, and let him escort her down the tower steps and along a
bridge. The High Hall had been closed as long as she’d been
at the Eyrie. Sansa wondered why her aunt had opened it. Normally
she preferred the comfort of her solar, or the cozy warmth of Lord
Arryn’s audience chamber with its view of the waterfall.
Two guards in sky-blue cloaks flanked the carved wooden doors of
the High Hall, spears in hand. “No one is to enter so long as
Alayne is with Lady Lysa,” Marillion told them.
“Aye.” The men let them pass, then crossed their
spears. Marillion swung the doors shut and barred them with a third
spear, longer and thicker than those the guards had borne.
Sansa felt a prickle of unease. “Why did you do
that?”
“My lady awaits you.”
She looked about uncertainly. Lady Lysa sat on the dais in a
highbacked chair of carved weirwood, alone. To her right was a
second chair, taller than her own, with a stack of blue cushions
piled on the seat, but Lord Robert was not in it. Sansa hoped
he’d recovered. Marillion was not like to tell her,
though.
Sansa walked down the blue silk carpet between rows of fluted
pillars slim as lances. The floors and walls of the High Hall were
made of milk-white marble veined with blue. Shafts of pale daylight
slanted down through narrow arched windows along the eastern wall.
Between the windows were torches, mounted in high iron sconces, but
none of them was lit. Her footsteps fell softly on the carpet.
Outside the wind blew cold and lonely.
Amidst so much white marble even the sunlight looked chilly,
somehow . . . though not half so chilly as her
aunt. Lady Lysa had dressed in a gown of cream-colored velvet and a
necklace of sapphires and moonstones. Her auburn hair had been done
up in a thick braid, and fell across one shoulder. She sat in the
high seat watching her niece approach, her face red and puffy
beneath the paint and powder. On the wall behind her hung a huge
banner, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn in cream and blue.
Sansa stopped before the dais, and curtsied. “My lady. You
sent for me.” She could still hear the sound of the wind, and
the soft chords Marillion was playing at the foot of the hall.
“I saw what you did,” the Lady Lysa said.
Sansa smoothed down the folds of her skirt. “I trust Lord
Robert is better? I never meant to rip his doll. He was smashing my
snow castle, I only . . . ”
“Will you play the coy deceiver with me?” her aunt
said. “I was not speaking of Robert’s doll. I saw you
kissing him.”
The High Hall seemed to grow a little colder. The walls and
floor and columns might have turned to ice. “He kissed
me.”
Lysa’s nostrils flared. “And why would he do that?
He has a wife who loves him. A woman grown, not a little girl. He
has no need for the likes of you. Confess, child. You threw
yourself at him. That was the way of it.”
Sansa took a step backward. “That’s not
true.”
“Where are you going? Are you afraid? Such wanton behavior
must be punished, but I will not be hard on you. We keep a whipping
boy for Robert, as is the custom in the Free Cities. His health is
too delicate for him to bear the rod himself. I shall find some
common girl to take your whipping, but first you must own up to
what you’ve done. I cannot abide a liar, Alayne.”
“I was building a snow castle,” Sansa said.
“Lord Petyr was helping me, and then he kissed me.
That’s what you saw.”
“Have you no honor?” her aunt said sharply.
“Or do you take me for a fool? You do, don’t you? You
take me for a fool. Yes, I see that now. I am not a fool.
You think you can have any man you want because you’re young
and beautiful. Don’t think I haven’t seen the looks you
give Marillion. I know everything that happens in the Eyrie, little
lady. And I have known your like before, too. But you are mistaken
if you think big eyes and strumpet’s smiles will win you
Petyr. He is mine.” She rose to her feet. “They all
tried to take him from me. My lord father, my husband, your
mother . . . Catelyn most of all. She liked to
kiss my Petyr too, oh yes she did.”
Sansa retreated another step. “My mother?”
“Yes, your mother, your precious mother, my own sweet
sister Catelyn. Don’t you think to play the innocent with me,
you vile little liar. All those years in Riverrun, she played with
Petyr as if he were her little toy. She teased him with smiles and
soft words and wanton looks, and made his nights a
torment.”
“No.” My mother is dead, she wanted to shriek. She
was your own sister, and she’s dead. “She didn’t.
She wouldn’t.”
“How would you know? Were you there?” Lysa descended
from the high seat, her skirts swirling. “Did you come with
Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood, the time they visited to lay their
feud before my father? Lord Bracken’s singer played for us,
and Catelyn danced six dances with Petyr that night, six, I
counted. When the lords began to argue my father took them up to
his audience chamber, so there was no one to stop us drinking.
Edmure got drunk, young as he was . . . and
Petyr tried to kiss your mother, only she pushed him away. She
laughed at him. He looked so wounded I thought my heart would
burst, and afterward he drank until he passed out at the table.
Uncle Brynden carried him up to bed before my father could find him
like that. But you remember none of it, do you?” She looked
down angrily. “Do you?” Is she drunk, or mad? “I was not born, my lady.”
“You were not born. But I was, so do not presume to tell
what is true. I know what is true. You kissed him!”
“He kissed me,” Sansa insisted again. “I never
wanted—”
“Be quiet, I haven’t given you leave to speak. You
enticed him, just as your mother did that night in Riverrun, with
her smiles and her dancing. You think I could forget? That was the
night I stole up to his bed to give him comfort. I bled, but it was
the sweetest hurt. He told me he loved me then, but he called me
Cat, just before he fell back to sleep. Even so, I stayed with him
until the sky began to lighten. Your mother did not deserve him.
She would not even give him her favor to wear when he fought
Brandon Stark. I would have given him my favor. I gave him
everything. He is mine now. Not Catelyn’s and not
yours.”
All of Sansa’s resolve had withered in the face of her
aunt’s onslaught. Lysa Arryn was frightening her as much as
Queen Cersei ever had. “He’s yours, my lady,” she
said, trying to sound meek and contrite. “May I have your
leave to go?”
“You may not.” Her aunt’s breath smelled of
wine. “If you were anyone else, I would banish you. Send you
down to Lord Nestor at the Gates of the Moon, or back to the
Fingers. How would you like to spend your life on that bleak shore,
surrounded by slatterns and sheep pellets? That was what my father
meant for Petyr. Everyone thought it was because of that stupid
duel with Brandon Stark, but that wasn’t so. Father said I
ought to thank the gods that so great a lord as Jon Arryn was
willing to take me soiled, but I knew it was only for the swords. I
had to marry Jon, or my father would have turned me out as he did
his brother, but it was Petyr I was meant for. I am telling you all
this so you will understand how much we love each other, how long
we have suffered and dreamed of one another. We made a baby
together, a precious little baby.” Lysa put her hands flat
against her belly, as if the child was still there. “When
they stole him from me, I made a promise to myself that I would
never let it happen again. Jon wished to send my sweet Robert to
Dragonstone, and that sot of a king would have given him to Cersei
Lannister, but I never let them . . . no more
than I’ll let you steal my Petyr Littlefinger. Do you hear
me, Alayne or Sansa or whatever you call yourself? Do you hear what
I am telling you?”
“Yes. I swear, I won’t ever kiss him again,
or . . . or entice him.” Sansa thought
that was what her aunt wanted to hear.
“So you admit it now? It was you, just as I thought. You
are as wanton as your mother.” Lysa grabbed her by the wrist.
“Come with me now. There is something I want to show
you.”
“You’re hurting me.” Sansa squirmed.
“Please, Aunt Lysa, I haven’t done anything. I swear
it.”
Her aunt ignored her protests. “Marillion!” she
shouted. “I need you, Marillion! I need you!”
The singer had remained discreetly in the rear of the hall, but
at Lady Arryn’s shout he came at once. “My
lady?”
“Play us a song. Play ‘The False and the
Fair.’ ”
Marillions fingers brushed the strings. “The lord he came
a-riding upon a rainy day, hey-nonny, hey-nonny,
hey-nonny-hey . . . ”
Lady Lysa pulled at Sansa’s arm. It was either walk or be
dragged, so she chose to walk, halfway down the hall and between a
pair of pillars, to a white weirwood door set in the marble wall.
The door was firmly closed, with three heavy bronze bars to hold it
in place, but Sansa could hear the wind outside worrying at its
edges. When she saw the crescent moon carved in the wood, she
planted her feet. “The Moon Door.” She tried to yank
free. “Why are you showing me the Moon Door?”
“You squeak like a mouse now, but you were bold enough in
the garden, weren’t you? You were bold enough in the
snow.”
“The lady sat a-sewing upon a rainy day,” Marillion
sang. “Hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.”
“Open the door,” Lysa commanded. “Open it, I
say. You will do it, or I’ll send for my guards.” She
shoved Sansa forward. “Your mother was brave, at least. Lift
off the bars.” If I do as she says, she will let me go. Sansa grabbed one of
the bronze bars, yanked it loose, and tossed it down. The second
bar clattered to the marble, then the third. She had barely touched
the latch when the heavy wooden door flew inward and slammed back
against the wall with a bang. Snow had piled up around the frame,
and it all came blowing in at them, borne on a blast of cold air
that left Sansa shivering. She tried to step backward, but her aunt
was behind her. Lysa seized her by the wrist and put her other hand
between her shoulder blades, propelling her forcefully toward the
open door.
Beyond was white sky, falling snow, and nothing else.
“Look down,” said Lady Lysa. “Look
down.”
She tried to wrench free, but her aunt’s fingers were
digging into her arm like claws. Lysa gave her another shove, and
Sansa shrieked. Her left foot broke through a crust of snow and
knocked it loose. There was nothing in front of her but empty air,
and a waycastle six hundred feet below clinging to the side of the
mountain. “Don’t!” Sansa screamed.
“You’re scaring me! “ Behind her, Marillion was
still playing his woodharp and singing, “Hey-nonny,
hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.”
“Do you still want my leave to go? Do you?”
“No.” Sansa planted her feet and tried to squirm
backward, but her aunt did not budge. “Not this way.
Please . . . ” She put a hand up, her
fingers scrabbling at the doorframe, but she could not get a grip,
and her feet were sliding on the wet marble floor. Lady Lysa
pressed her forward inexorably. Her aunt outweighed her by three
stone. “The lady lay a-kissing, upon a mound of hay,”
Marillion was singing. Sansa twisted sideways, hysterical with
fear, and one foot slipped out over the void. She screamed.
“Hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey.” The wind flapped
her skirts up and bit at her bare legs with cold teeth. She could
feel snowflakes melting on her cheeks. Sansa flailed, found
Lysa’s thick auburn braid, and clutched it tight. “My
hair!” her aunt shrieked. “Let go of my hair!”
She was shaking, sobbing. They teetered on the edge. Far off, she
heard the guards pounding on the door with their spears, demanding
to be let in. Marillion broke off his song.
“Lysa! What’s the meaning of this?” The shout
cut through the sobs and heavy breathing. Footsteps echoed down the
High Hall. “Get back from there! Lysa, what are you
doing?” The guards were still beating at the door;
Littlefinger had come in the back way, through the lords’
entrance behind the dais.
As Lysa turned, her grip loosened enough for Sansa to rip free.
She stumbled to her knees, where Petyr Baelish saw her. He stopped
suddenly. “Alayne. What is the trouble here?”
“Her.” Lady Lysa grabbed a handful of Sansa’s
hair. “She’s the trouble. She kissed you.”
“Tell her, “ Sansa begged. “Tell her we were
just building a castle . . . ”
“Be quiet!” her aunt screamed. “I never gave
you leave to speak. No one cares about your castle.”
“She’s a child, Lysa. Cat’s daughter. What did
you think you were doing?”
“I was going to marry her to Robert! She has no gratitude.
No . . . no decency. You are not hers to kiss.
Not hers! I was teaching her a lesson, that was all.”
“I see.” He stroked his chin. “I think she
understands now. Isn’t that so, Alayne?”
“Yes,” sobbed Sansa. “I understand.”
“I don’t want her here.” Her aunt’s eyes
were shiny with tears. “Why did you bring her to the Vale,
Petyr? This isn’t her place. She doesn’t belong
here.”
“We’ll send her away, then. Back to King’s
Landing, if you like.” He took a step toward them. “Let
her up, now. Let her away from the door.”
“NO!” Lysa gave Sansa’s head another wrench.
Snow eddied around them, making their skirts snap noisily.
“You can’t want her. You can’t. She’s a
stupid empty-headed little girl. She doesn’t love you the way
I have. I’ve always loved you. I’ve proved it,
haven’t I?” Tears ran down her aunt’s puffy red
face. “I gave you my maiden’s gift. I would have given
you a son too, but they murdered him with moon tea, with tansy and
mint and wormwood, a spoon of honey and a drop of pennyroyal. It
wasn’t me, I never knew, I only drank what Father gave
me . . . ”
“That’s past and done, Lysa. Lord Hoster’s
dead, and his old maester as well.” Littlefinger moved
closer. “Have you been at the wine again? You ought not to
talk so much. We don’t want Alayne to know more than she
should, do we? Or Marillion?”
Lady Lysa ignored that. “Cat never gave you anything. It
was me who got you your first post, who made Jon bring you to court
so we could be close to one another. You promised me you would
never forget that.”
“Nor have I. We’re together, just as you always
wanted, just as we always planned. Just let go of Sansa’s
hair . . . ”
“I won’t! I saw you kissing in the snow. She’s
just like her mother. Catelyn kissed you in the godswood, but she
never meant it, she never wanted you. Why did you love her best? It
was me, it was always meeee!”
“I know, love.” He took another step. “And I
am here. All you need to do is take my hand, come on.” He
held it out to her. “There’s no cause for all these
tears.”
“Tears, tears, tears,” she sobbed hysterically.
“No need for tears . . . but that’s
not what you said in King’s Landing. You told me to put the
tears in Jon’s wine, and I did. For Robert, and for us! And I
wrote Catelyn and told her the Lannisters had killed my lord
husband, just as you said. That was so
clever . . . you were always clever, I told
Father that, I said Petyr’s so clever, he’ll rise high,
he will, he will, and he’s sweet and gentle and I have his
little baby in my belly . . . Why did you kiss
her? Why? We’re together now, we’re together after so
long, so very long, why would you want to kiss herrrrrr?”
“Lysa,” Petyr sighed, “after all the storms
we’ve suffered, you should trust me better. I swear, I shall
never leave your side again, for as long as we both shall
live.”
“Truly?” she asked, weeping. “Oh,
truly?”
“Truly. Now unhand the girl and come give me a
kiss.”
Lysa threw herself into Littlefinger’s arms, sobbing. As
they hugged, Sansa crawled from the Moon Door on hands and knees
and wrapped her arms around the nearest pillar. She could feel her
heart pounding. There was snow in her hair and her right shoe was
missing. It must have fallen. She shuddered, and hugged the pillar
tighter.
Littlefinger let Lysa sob against his chest for a moment, then
put his hands on her arms and kissed her lightly. “My sweet
silly jealous wife,” he said, chuckling. “I’ve
only loved one woman, I promise you.”
Lysa Arryn smiled tremulously. “Only one? Oh, Petyr, do
you swear it? Only one?”
“Only Cat.” He gave her a short, sharp shove.
Lysa stumbled backward, her feet slipping on the wet marble. And
then she was gone. She never screamed. For the longest time there
was no sound but the wind.
Marillion gasped,
“You . . . you . . . ”
The guards were shouting outside the door, pounding with the
butts of their heavy spears. Lord Petyr pulled Sansa to her feet.
“You’re not hurt?” When she shook her head, he
said, “Run let my guards in, then. Quick now, there’s
no time to lose. This singer’s killed my lady
wife.”