Harrold’s body returned to the Eyrie nearly two moons later, along with a retinue of Vale soldiers swathed in Aryyn blue. Though word of his death had come much sooner, carried on wings of ebon, delivering message most morbid. A freak accident, it was said. To have survived every battle, every brush with armed foe, only to succumb to a horse’s violent kick? So vicious, so strong, that his skull had been crushed, almost as though a heavy rock had connected with the boy’s head rather than a stallion’s hoof; then, Harrold had been known to ride a spirited creature. The Vale mourned for its Young Falcon. In a wooden casket his corpse was sealed, the chill of winter at least providing amiable conservation of frozen flesh, rather than a rotten, fetid pile of stinking guts, abuzz with flies and maggots.
Ravens poured in from near and far, the roost near to bursting with avian messengers. Predictably, support for the Stark heir nearly at once had begun to waver without a strong figurehead present in the field to guide and rally for. Afar, a girl wearing her widow’s weeds, mourning the death of her husband, meant little to those steeped in bloodied plains of war. She would need to make for the North, quickly, and with a promise to unite the North by means of marriage. Rushed though it may be, solace was taken in the fact that theirs had been a short coupling. Barely a marriage at all, some would say. Baelish was inclined to agree.
Hoping to discuss matters of a third match, he sought her out. It was far from intentional that he found her as he did, with swirls of steam surrounding her, a mist clinging to the cold stone of the floors and walls. Perhaps he ought have known better; surely a man of his ilk would have taken a vested interest in Sansa’s whereabouts, in her intimate schedule, the nights when she took to bathing among them. Or else he should have taken note of the maids which had been tasked with carting in buckets of snow, again and again, until enough water was melted and warmed by fire to fill a basin. Baelish could smell the herbs which had been sprinkled in the water: a dried concoction of rose and lavender stolen from sachets bought and delivered at great cost. It would not do for their Queen to smell of turned goat’s milk or pig shit. Nude shoulders were espied, a wet trail of unbound crimson hair weaving down her back like heavy velvet. Like blood. The ivory of her skin seemed to fade in and out with the steam, as though she weren’t alive at all, but something ethereal. Petyr was a man transfixed. Unseen, unheard, unspoken, lingering behind stone shelving carved from the very mountain itself, where an assortment of glass vials containing oils and herbs were collected, not unlike some mad maester’s esoteric hoard.
All manner of business was forgotten in the face of Sansa, partly submerged. A better man would have turned and left her to her privacy. A better man would not have stared in a state of queer awe. For all that Petyr Baelish had touched his little ward, very little of her skin had been swallowed by the eye. A wrist, a neck, the loveliness of her face – all such things deemed ordinary the man had taken in, memorized, worshiped in the quiet darkness, but never so much had he beheld the nakedness of an arm or the glimpse of a thigh. Sansa’s bare back was enough to steal from him his very breath. And so it did. Long enough for the Mockingbird to not even realize he’d been holding it. With a slow, near-silent effort, he released it in a long stream, fingers grazing the chill of stone he perched behind with shameful, brazen immorality.
Sansa grieved. Not just the mummer’s show of ebon silk and forgone rouge. True tears, of remorse for a young man’s life stolen away so quickly, of regret that it came, in part, by her hand. And of disappointment, that even such pain as was felt upon tidings of freakish calamity would not prevent her from choosing similarly again. How like her Harrold seemed, especially in younger, more innocent years: absorbed with the gallantry of knighthood, the waxing power of inheritance and high marriage, the virile delight in gaining so pretty a wife. To the Young Falcon, life must have seemed just as a song.
Until musicians fell silent, every instrument choked to silence by a plot which never accounted for his enduring participation. So Sansa wept, for the boy who would never grow into a man, and for the girl she could never again return to. For two days she avoided Petyr in all things, be they chance encounters or no. Meals were taken in her rooms, visitors limited; whether he interpreted the brief absence as concession to the role of widow, or a less altruistic gesture, Sansa neither knew nor cared. Only after those hours of indulgence had passed did she feel confident enough to reside in his company again, mask securely in place. Even then they spoke of trivialities, alluding to journeys and marriage contracts without ever seeming to commit.
Solitude became her sanctuary, much like the long months passed in a lions’ den. Although wood was fast rendered a luxury as Winter trudged forth, not once did she hear objection to requests for baths warmed to steaming comfort. Knowing of the expense, the labor now involved, Sansa savored each descent into the linen-lined basin with near-criminal glee. Fine oils blossomed in the vaporous fog, mint and lavender and sandalwood and rose twined together into a heady bouquet, underlain with the faint creaminess of milk to soften her water and soothe the skin. For an hour or more she would lounge, stretched across the wooden tub, arms hanging over each side and head angled against its rim. Perhaps she dozed. Perhaps she simply was.
Meditative state dissolved away when Sansa thought to hear the faint scraping of heels along the floor, too heavy for a maid, too light for a lumbering, armored guard. Both knew better than to disturb their lady as she bathed, the girl declaring a strange preference to wash herself unless an occasion demanded otherwise. Joffrey, among others, had left his marks…not all of which she bore on porcelain flesh. Only one other would be so bold as to call on her in such a state – Petyr – although by now pronouncement of his presence ought have already occurred. An imagining, then, or else…
That’s all you ever do, isn’t it? Watch.
Perhaps, after all the liberties taken between the pair, she no longer cared as in the past. Perhaps Sansa truly did believe her ears decieved her, that no visitor lurked on the room’s fringes. Or perhaps some small part of her wished to incite. Silent breath preceded a swift descent into the water, until not a speck of girl showed. Mere moments passed before she emerged, dripping wet, scalp drenched and readied for washing. Tully blue, however, had squeezed shut against the perfumed bath. Craning forward, Sansa stretched to one side, that furthest from the doorway, pawing half-blind for a simple stool upon which several dry linens perched. Though the bath was deep, its sides high, the barest sliver of flesh, a faint curve of bosom, the intimation of slender waist, all arched up and away from clear depths.
A queer attempt at some semblance of modesty, for one so clearly alone.