The waves of the fire brought out scintillate shades of copper and gold, woven through her hair like a seamstresses fine design. It shone about her as though upon her head rested a bediamond’d crown, glittering in every shade of red wrought from a victory which could only be told as bloody. How those fields of the North must look, bodies warped and twisted, strewn across snowy fields, arrows and axes adorning the dead like strings of fine jewels. Womb quiet; not even the fluttering wings of scavenging carrion to break the haunting silence granted to victory uncelebrated. Whipping falcon flags of robin’s-egg blue, tattered and seared, marked the landscape as one claimed by the Vale, yet no king or queen stood there to make sacrifice and triumph worth more than those lives given. In the name of Hardyng. In the name of Stark.
Would that they could see her as Baelish saw her now. No frozen, soulless mist lurking about their feet, but a radiant, rightful Northern girl, with fire in her hair. Hardyng was a poor replacement but necessary all the same. No horse bearing his Stark prize would be sent until all manner of hostilities were completely erased. To risk losing her, now, after all had been done, would be unfathomable. Yet it would not be long before she would approach on perfect, powder-white palfrey, a long cloak of white and gray trailing behind her, fur rustling beneath a pale chin. To reclaim. To rule.
Petyr watched her.
It did not take much, as he knew it would not. The fluttering array of emotions, from delight to discerning, parading across her lovely face, and it was a procession of all that the girl had once before been, ushered away in the wake of a new woman. A queen, blossomed by bloodied petals. Placid as a winter’s pond as she submerged into waters of acceptance and granted permission. No expression of guilt. Not even a thought of it. Petyr did not move, did not waver in his stare, not even when the missive was passed back, nor words fell from her mouth in praising declaration. A long while was spent simply regarding her, as he had so been unable to do in weeks previous, reduced to passing glances of little relevance. There were no furtive looks spared across the great table at time of meals, nor lingering stares as he watched her, enrobed in thick furs and richly-dyed fleeces, wander across the snow-dusted courtyards of the Eyrie.
It was not that he had not thought of her. There were urges. Evenings, especially, after a cup or two of wine had warmed the blood, and the fire’s glow burned low, spent ruminating on her. At times, he thought he could smell her; the hint of flower oils in her hair, and the soap of her skin. Decidedly more lurid were memories resurfaced of other scents, intimate and rife with scandal, that he imagined coating his fingers as his mind dallied with the idea of creeping into her room and having her. But all such thoughts were imprisoned and forgotten, until, sitting across from him, she said aloud his given name with such conviction that it was easy to forget how calculating she was. How perfect she had become, wings a wide stretch, ready to plummet from the tallest Eyrie tower and glide away into the fog, never to be seen again.
“Then I am gladdened to have provided you some cheer, my lady.” Fingers relaxed from their steeple. A stretch across the table retrieved the wayward missive, and Petyr idly went about the task of stamping, near the bottom, the solid shape of the mockingbird he pressed to every letter so written by him. “It is not often that such widespread death and ruin is met by delight. War is unique in that, is it not? How easy it is to forget the nameless lives of the poor boys who fought and died for the cause of their fathers, and father’s fathers.” Petyr dusted the bird, and let the missive sit. “It is a good lesson for you, I think. There will be far more, sent on your directive. When you are Queen.”
Gray-green flicked up to her, then.
“Once Harrold is dead your presence in the North will be required immediately; those men need a figure to stand for, and especially those of the Vale who will have lost their only reason for fighting.” Petyr spoke candidly, but low. “When you arrive, they will be restless. Some will decry you and your claim. Others will desert. There will be nothing I can do to ensure support for you remains. It will be up to you to inspire them, and it will take a great deal more than a maidencloak emblazoned with the Stark wolf.” It would be sooner than anticipated, far sooner than Petyr let on, that Sansa would be leaving for the North, if what he spoke was true. It was a weight as heavy and cold as the snow.
"Are you confident your charms will hold their sway?” It was difficult, at times, to wonder if Petyr wove words abstractly; the way he looked at her seemed to intimate he spoke not at all to the men awaiting her in the North.
In his pleasure Sansa heard rebuke; a father’s voice, or mother’s perhaps, chastising eldest daughter for a stunning lack of empathy. Doubt immediately crept in, worming between thoughts of home and safety, whispering cruel comparisons to mad kings, madder queens. Men died in war, sometimes many; and was it not a war being fought upon the Northern plains, for peace, for justice, for a return to what once had been? That loss of boys who had never set eyes on Winterfell or its lady weighted on her shoulders, bowing them, straining them as no physical crown ever could. Lord Eddard taught his sons a condemned man was owed the honor of viewing the face of justice before his death, while his daughters learned battle had no place for ladies. What did a queen owe her soldiers, beyond the formless promise of a life better than that they left, beyond the scream of steel and rush of blood?
Swiftly did gaze slant away, fixated on buffed nails, the faint tuft of ermine peeking out from beneath her cuffs. No civil words existed to delineate between her pleasure at a promise delivered – the loss of a husband never truly desired – and her dismay at the cost paid for what was believed to be more than girlish whim. The customary noises of correspondence lost all innocuous subtext, sounding instead like sounds of battle, echoes of the Blackwater conflict that haunted her dreams for so many moons.
Death alone, however, did not turn the soon-to-be queen’s stomach; men served, men died. An inescapable outcome of this game played by all high lords, the loss of souls seemingly inconsequential because of their sheer replaceability. Sansa proved just as disposable once, though she offered no complaint over the Tyrell girl’s usurpation; one small shift to the board, however, minuscule changes to the pieces and their arrangement, and perhaps the Lannisters would not have believed her shoulders in such great need of a head. In that moment, before Petyr’s quiet approval, she swore a private oath to find some proper remembrance of the poor boys – sons, brothers, husbands, fathers – of whom they spoke. This lesson was one she never wanted to learn, yet Sansa choked it down all the same.
“I think you have misunderstood my pleasure, Lord Baelish.” Tully blue, lacking any other call for attention, followed his motions of stamping and sealing the missive. A dangerous observation, one that made her contemplate in turn his hands, his fingers, where they had wandered not so long ago…Blinking, Sansa recovered herself. “The result bring me cheer, true, and what it heralds. Though were it my choosing, I would see Winterfell reclaimed without spillage of blood.” Save that of Boltons or Freys, she mused. Perhaps he would entertain her wish to grant the seat of Harrenhal as macabre gift to one or the other.
“But I know the folly of such hopes.” Spoken softly, just as she caught his stare, as Baelish put plain words upon the news she truly praised.
Though posture rarely left room for criticism, the auburn wolf straightened nigh imperceptibly as his tone dropped to tones more conspiratorial in nature. Petyr, Sansa knew, cared not for moral quandaries: more important matters awaited them. The look of approval, however, faded and then pinched into confusion as he questioned the strength of her claim. I am the only one; no other remains but I. “What argument could they possibly raise against a Stark? In Winterfell? Bolton holds the North only through treachery and the favor of a dynasty failing. I know they must tire, must feel weariness to their bones, but it is right and they shall have their reward.”
Tidings of departure bothered her not at all, the Eyrie never more than a temporary home whose tenure extended well past her own pleasure. If Baelish expected dismay over the journey, he would find none. The implication of her sway, the influence but one girl could hold over her kin and countrymen, however…“Karstark?” Sansa queried, frost creeping into her tone. “Umber? Or perhaps Manderly has captured your fancy?” Her refusal to take another husband had not hung upon a fatal shortcoming specific to Harrold Hardyng: the entire notion frightened her, disgusted Sansa even, and she would not have doomed the poor, brave boy to die were it known Baelish wished to sell her off again afterwards. She refused to trust her person or her happiness to another, not again, not ever. Such things remained in her domain now.
“I don’t want to, Petyr.” I will make them love me; I know I can.
Had he been wearing still his doublet he would have offered her the solace of a silken kerchief to wipe clean her sullied fingers. Resting only in tunic, however, there was nothing. Only the swollen silence of man and woman reconciling the other’s actions. Did Petyr resent the onslaught? Certainly that’s what it was, thought it was neither sword nor quill which had driven forth the impetus for change. Sansa had grown into herself; into her body; into womanhood. No, Petyr did not resent it. Though his inability to anticipate her actions was unsettling, unnerving, perturbing. Never would he have believed her capable; never would he have believed her willing. Yet was it much different than deft hands smearing swine’s blood between a sleeping husband’s legs in superb deception of the vilest sort? Baelish thought himself immune from her plots, thought to be dictating every action the red wolf took. Wrong, he was.
No, it would not happen again. Control would be wrested back, restored, carefully monitored. Beguilement was a perilous path to tread; one could never be certain how closely they veered to the edge of an increasingly-narrow lane.
To her words Petyr tipped his head, genially, bereft entirely of the wry tilt of mouth or pinching of eyes. He shifted barely beneath her to assist her in standing, but no hand was offered, no helpful usher at the small of her back. That would insinuate he had a part in it, that he was complicit in it. Neither engagement nor participation insinuated approval. Not of action, not of intent: the letter Baelish had penned was smeared and sullied, his own seed the ruinous ink of destruction. Fitting, he thought, for a man who let his cock get the best of him. He supposed, in a way, he had manipulated Sansa into manipulating him. At that, a trace of a smile ghosted over his features, watching her consign his missive to the greedy tongues of flame. No words were given to the auburn temptress as she took her leave, diminutive footsteps carrying her up the narrow stone spiral leading to her own chambers. For a long while, Petyr watched the fire.
The passageway granting her untimely entrance was bolted and sealed, locked since the first time he had used it to slink villainously into her room armed with sanguineous treason and ill-intent. Distraction had no place in his architecture.
A new letter was penned. Baelish kept to his end of the deal, though there was nothing preventing him from reneging on the convincing motions of a mollient palm. Nothing save the tenuous threads of trust she had given him. The unspoken understanding of two individuals working in tandem. Were he to take them from her, use them against her in cruel snare, she would be lost to him. A sacrifice he was unwilling to make. Not only for how essential a piece Sansa Stark was to his ambition, but for the lingering surges of a more human sort. Emotions, inclinations, designs. And so to Winterfell the Young Falcon and his soldiers would march. The Northern keep would be claimed in the name of Harrold Hardyng, of Sansa Stark, and a powerful alliance between the Vale and the North would be struck without the meddling influence of the Lannisters or Boltons to foul the waters.
It was done.
Upon first light, the missive was secured to the leg of a raven in tight scroll, and sent with the hope that it would well weather the icy air and reach its destination. At evening, a second raven bearing the same message was released.
For a turn of the moon there was no news of relevance, nothing of import regarding the armies of the Vale marching Northward. Winter slowed each progress to a trickle. Petyr spoke not a word of what had transpired in finest impropriety behind closed doors to Sansa, or even hinted with the barest of insinuation that it had happened at all. Though things had changed, fundamentally, between the Mockingbird and the Wolf. He still broke his fast with her on most mornings, and in the evenings supper as well would be taken. Conversation was had between the pair, gossip shared, theories explored, but never again was Sansa invited to the privacy of his chambers for wisdoms of reality to be imparted. Masks shrouded their interactions. Formalities ruled. Distraction was swept away and tidied.
Until one evening when Sansa received a summons from the Lord Protector. Though it was formal, not to be confused with a winding, spiraled trek down damp stone stairs to steal away behind the richly woven threads of a tapestry, it was the first she had been invited to his chambers since that evening a fateful decision had been unmade. Upon her knock he bid her to enter, to have a seat, to comfort herself on the cushioned chairs carved ornately with designs of falcons and ferns. Wine was offered. Arbor Gold. With little ceremony, the Lord Baelish leaned forward to offer a freshly-dusted letter to her from across the desk. A letter, innocuous enough, speaking of blessings to know the North was won, of needed supplies, and sending certain regards to the Young Falcon. Yet between the lines it said more. Far more. With victory came death, one Sansa had long-known would come. That he wished for her to read the letter, rather than simply hear of the news, meant that he expected something from her. Not only permission. Approval. A concurrence of opinions. What, exactly, was Winterfell worth to her? The life of the man who had helped to secure it for her? The false husband? As she read it, he slowly sunk back into the confines of his own chair, fingers rising to point in delicate steeple, eyes acute and awash over every feature of her face, watching, waiting, discerning.
Not once in the days that passed did Sansa consider doing it again. Oh, many hours were spent in reflective silence, puzzling out motives, teasing apart that starting drive to persuade from those vestiges of pleasure still worming through her veins. She had not thought on it at all, deliberately, until the following night, when with candles and parchment in hand the customary path was trod. Dismayed, frightened in some small way, to find the passage barred, Sansa turned back to at last confront shadows in her room. Long grey beings, whose hands curled about her ankles and teased through her hair, pulling her back, pulling her down. Whispering how easy it had been, what changes could be writ in her life if only she embraced the lioness’ sage advice.
Such would not happen, Sansa promised herself. A foolish vow for one always disinclined to scandal or misconduct; to the man’s enduring draw, it spoke, that she believed a private measure of accountability so needed. One moment gilded with brazen opportunity, taken before due thought could be given, now long swallowed up in the minutiae of a hundred thousand other moments far less profound.
The girl did not test her welcome a second time: Lord Baelish’s secret door remained unaccosted. Yet she wondered, as any maid who shared an intimate touch but once: had she angered him? Unlikely, as the Lord continued with ease their shared meals and bland tidings of smaller progresses. Had she disappointed him? Perhaps, though oversight would demand he correct a foolish track, rather than ignore it. Had Sansa frightened Petyr? A dizzying notion: the auburn-haired waif forever staring backwards at her pursuers, inspiring such wariness in the man charged with her keeping. And time stretched on before her, deprived of further instruction with which to distract her thoughts from the matter of their negotiation. One evening, little more than a fortnight since Petyr’s door first was barred, Sansa swore he was beside her, curled tightly at her flank in the fur-stacked bed, lips a dry tracing along her pulse…until the room, dark and empty, snapped back to painful focus.
A dream. She tried to forget where her fingers had wandered.
Through it all, never did she question his cooperation. Every word turned cordial, each glance carefully trained just askance from grey-green, yet in the minuscule fissures working their way across a ceramic facade, glimpses shone past giving evidence of a man she could trust. Not like one trusted Ned Stark, all honor and vows, but growing predictable in how needs and wants might sway him. What might succeed once - her touch - only revealed a weakness to stopper, never again exploited. With a childhood spent in similar tutelage, Sansa abided by the distance, not a single slippered foot daring to follow after the Lord Protector when mealtimes ended with chaste tidings.
When at last she was bid to see him beyond supper, calling at a door guarded not by woven knights but a pair of very real men, red muscle pounded in frightful anticipation. Were amends made? Did Petyr trust her again? Tentative smile greeted him, before primly she sat before a desk he once invited her to sit behind. How strange it felt, how small she must look, peering across it to where he peddled correspondence as well as the wine turned aside in favor of water. Were Winter not fast encroaching, rich stores dwindling, Sansa might have toyed with a small helping in the interest of amiability; but now, frugality reigned. Appearances, at times, could be done away with. So large was the weirwood monstrosity that the girl had to half-stand again to reach what mysterious missive Baelish held out. Tidings of the North - of home! Won! Hers, as it was never meant to be. She paused in her reading, Tully blue shining with a desperate pleasure when it flashed up to he who had procured it. Not Harrold Hardyng. Petyr Baelish. But such tidings were not why she inspected the reply he had penned, it was plain on Petyr’s face. More awaited her. Provisions, preparations, trivialities withheld from her until now. Further down did eyes drift.
Oh.
Sansa thought only to hear afterward, as uninvolved in the boy’s removal as she had in his acquisition. If he watched still, Petyr would find features sunk not into dismay, but the thoughtful repose often adopted when any new problem presented itself to her. The ramparts, with Joffrey. The godswood, with Ser Dontos. Those long months of waiting, surrounded by those who delighted in her family’s slaughter. Had it taught the girl mercy? Or simply the value of death? The Young Falcon committed no wrong, beyond hoping for what every young knight aspired to: a grand claim, a pretty wife, the sort of honor and glory immortalized in songs. No one would sing of Harrold Hardyng. Before her resolve crumbled, Sansa smoothed the letter over silk-clad knees, looking up with cocked chin.
As one parchment had cleared away a stain between them, now a second besmirched the pair anew.
“The news cheers me, Lord Baelish. Beyond any measure I have ever known.” Thumb and pointer pinched his letter at the corner, a delicate transport from Sansa’s lap to the lord’s desk. “You have made me very happy, Petyr,” she murmured over the rasp of wood pulp. “I can only hope one day to repay it.”
So like a wolf to further invade territory where it so clearly was not wanted. That she elected to step closer to his desk rather than immediately take the excuse to leave he had so kindly offered her surprised him. In a mild way which did not shimmer over hard features or set fingers to curling in on themselves, but one which twitched a single perplexed brow upward. There was no choice but to lean forward, slowly, easily, as though he intended to rest elbows upon the desk. To have snatched away the missive she sought would have been conducive to nothing; the man was more concerned with concealing the scandal of flesh than he was the scandal of ink. For why should it concern him that she know?
“Nothing?” Petyr interjected. “A greedy world the Lady Hardyng inhabits in which all she has learned amounts to nothing.” That he called her Hardyng was contrary to the genial smile barely gracing his features. Should the lady so delight in her rudeness, reciprocation could only be expected.
Petyr Baelish wasn’t the sort of demiurge who would relish the entrails of traitors being spilled for his entertainment on a cold stone altar— deeds better suited for royalty. The ignominy of the Mockingbird was of another sort entirely. Though one should not be so quick to dub his vaunted depths as deceptive shallows. Especially not the wolfish creature standing before him privy to more than anyone else had ever been. You ought know better, sweetling. But there was no time for argument; the Lord Protector was in no mood to bandy particulars or subtleties while in such a state.
Still. Her opprobrium was palpable, even without the unnecessary dramatics of relegating the letter primed with purlicued flourishes and regrettable tidings to the flagstone. Grayish hues followed the journey of the parchment with little enthusiasm. It wasn’t enough to move the Lord Baelish from his state of distracted irritation. These were conversations which could be had on the morrow. Not with his mind entrenched in other acts. The least of which being her immediate removal. As she further rounded the desk, a ring-laden hand slowly shifted, moving to cover any traces of impropriety still ill-concealed.
"Palliation is a daily task, its cure a fervent hope, Sansa.” Petyr’s obliquity could be formidable, though in this case he spoke true to term. Did he mean to mock her? “There is little point in reclaiming a pile of rubble, best to defer elsewhere while Hardyng’s men still have an honorable mind to fight something. Winterfell can, and will, be taken when necessary.” Implying that it no longer was. “I have broken no promise.”
Under any normal circumstance, Petyr would have taken great pleasure at Sansa’s sudden defiance. Not because of the nature of it, but to see simply how she had grown in her tutelage. Every man and woman had a breaking point; was the red wolf so near to hers? Ah! But not for nothing she should grieve; Petyr’s intransigent refusal, found in the grim twist of his mouth, would be difficult for anyone to swallow. “Have you learned nothing of adaptability?” The tone implied the same disgust she directed so pointedly at him. It was a long game that Petyr Baelish played; ofttimes the board would be completely arranged more than once between a scheme’s inception and completion. This was no different. There would be no ruling the North from a smoldering mass of charred rock and flesh. When the time came to depose Hardyng, there would be an immediate need to vacate elsewhere; Harrenhal would serve well as a temporary wellspring for regrouping.
But all were matters that could be discussed at another time.
“Now, if you would not mind,” Petyr inclined his head towards the hanging tapestry concealing the entry she’d used to enter. “Regrettably, I require sleep. We may continue discussion another evening.”
And downward she stared. Where once the girl would have made some vocal objection to what must have just been abandoned, the youngwoman held her tongue. It was the Lord Baelish’s solar in which she stood, the Lord Baelish’s evening that she disturbed, and the Lord Baelish who ought be reprimanding her for bursting in unannounced. Only when wood groaned beneath a shifting body did Sansa dare to look up, relieved at the presentation of a picture relatively wholesome to her sight. “Or his man,” she quipped, unwilling to enter into petty semantic debates as to precisely which fingers guided quill over parchment. “No other would send so hasty a note.” The matter of Winterfellstood paramount; a hundred other issues, large and small, held great importance to the man and his dealings, yet none seemed to her worthy of disturbing a night’s peace. It had to be news of home, it had to be. That silent insistence drove her forward, until weirwood brushed hips swathed in shift and robe. Fingers that reached towards freshly inked reply - not a scroll, for how might she know which one amidst the pile? - paused at a question of his own.
Could he see the drying sweat upon her brow? Did he suspect nightmares and fears, or was it a general quest to rid himself of autumnalnuisance? For a moment, Sansa remembered another day, when thin damp lines tracked own her back as his fingers ——– Staring blue darted away from glazed skin far after propriety had vanished, to look unseeing as parchment was rotated for inspection. “I heard the raven’s wings,” she evaded. That she lay awake to know of their tidings was, of course, the issue to which he spoke, yet the girl had no interest in explaining any facet of her dreams to Petyr. Not the least of which those portions which concerned him. “And I weary of being told nothing.” No news both contemporary and urgent, only a thousand thousand facts of battles long won and men long dead. Such knowledge was notbegrudged - she did not doubt his assertions that power was granted to those in its possession - only seen as woefully incomplete.
No chance was given to him to refuse her perusal, the paper spun and lifted away from lordly desk to be critiqued. From Hardyng the letter had been, or else one of his many retainers, and Sansa did not require the original missive to understand what had sparked the raven’s flight. Winterfell. Burned. A charred heap. Hardly worth the journey, much less the siege to reclaim it. And Petyr…her friend, her ally, her confidant…agreed. Something inside her chest fractured. A girlish hope, trust, an enduring belief that each trial might still preclude a happy ending. He had lied to her. “No.” Every fiber objected to the decision, the non-consultation of his choice so callously tossing aside the North for what? Harrenhal? His cursed gift, not her inheritance. This would not stand, could not stand; Sansa had sacrificed too much for her home to be stolen away by a faintness of heart.
“You will not send this.” The fire that once mesmerized him now reflected back in her eyes, turned fully on reviled author. Beyond the desk’s edge, sagging breeches were barely discerned. Disgusting. Was he so pleased at keeping her close, docile, controlled? Though she knew the first steps taken would be small and slow, still there remained the expectation of independence at their conclusion. A fool. All Sansa amounted to. “You will not send this,” she repeated, back rigid and mouth drawn in a firm line of defiance. Rounding the desk, caring not for what went seen or unseen, the letter was tossed down with a venomous hiss of parchment. “You promised me, Petyr." You promised to take me home. "Make good on it.”
Petyr chuckled, his head tilting forward enough to partially conceal the giving smile. “What did I fail to tell you, sweetling?” Petyr had told her all, simply at a time after which such knowledge would have been prudent. Sansa was already a wavering participant in the wedding to Hardyng; the less she knew, the better. “Certain things must be protected…honorary trifles.” Even now, and perhaps always, it would be difficult to tell if Petyr fed her the truth or simply a well-fashioned facsimile of it. A version that best-suited her interests, that inspired her willingness to follow him and participate in the ruse of his making. To tell Sansa Stark everything would mean to sever all loyalties the girl had to the man sitting behind his weirwood desk. The man who had risked a great deal, risked everything, to shuffle her piece onto the board. Yet to deny her meant alienation. A happy medium could be reached.
“One can not hope to scale a mountain without first learning how to climb a tree. You would hear me speak, but would you understand?” His smile veered nearly condescending, but the man had a point. Much of Petyr’s success hinged on the wealth of knowledge obtained by reading tomes and ledgers, histories of houses, histories of wars. The Eyrie’s library was extensive, and Petyr’s personal solar boasted a rare collection that seemed to swell by the day. Books that he would have delivered to her chambers in secret, books that she could scour and read by firelight and absorb until she bursted with seeming vagueries of little import – the sort of obscure facts that would seem meaningless in the grand scheme of things but would help to set her apart from those who believe they knew better. It was the sort of knowledge that anyone could be taught, were they so inclined. Utilizing it in a meaningful way required a far more clever mind. One Baelish knew the girl had— but did she have the stomach?
“I can teach you. I can show you.” And so he would. His mercurial eyes followed her closely, kind but unsmiling, though his mouth betrayed every pleasure of having enrounded her. There was a calculated pause before Petyr’s hands parted, shifting to the wide arms of his seat. Then his gaze flicked, briefly, to his lap. It was nothing more than a look, a consideration, a choice. One often presented to Sansa under far more dire terms than knowledge.
“All that you wish to know, my lady.” his voice was silky, low, and concise. Unspoken terms for unspoken schemes. A whispered, unacknowledged subtext beneath a nearing crescendo of privilege and latitude.
Stop it, she wanted to say, holding her tongue only for fear of the negotiations crumbling to dust. I am told what serves you best, when it serves you best. Perhaps that understanding was the first step, an ever-present skepticism that would drive Sansa towards greater demands, pointed questions, a self-guided growth stifled for many long months under the guise of Alayne. Baelish could be trusted with her life, proven time and again as he steered his charge from breaking waves along the rocky shore towards clearer, deeper waters of jeweled blue. Yet he could not be trusted with her independence, dangerous as it was to his own success. How much more complex would the game become, if elephants and dragons could move themselves across the cyvasse board? “Yes,” was the simple answer, the emphatic answer when he queried understanding. There were only so many stitches to be pulled, poems memorized, prayers recited; if it was a matter of continued education, then Petyr’s fears were unfounded. To learn for the sake of learning had escaped her as a child. Information must always have a purpose to warrant its retention, and a scope that once spanned hardly a continent, no more than a generation, now widened considerably in the lord’s warm solar. There was a purpose now.
Her father’s faults had been suffered by the children, as Ned had born the fruits of his brother and sire’s ill fates. Sansa’s destiny was that of the thousands who came before, carrying every choice, every shortcoming, every strength in the Northern blood that rushed through veins and pounded against tympana. Just as a sword drew its power not from a single block of steel, but from scores of minute folds, heated, tempered, bent upon themselves again, so too would she reach back through the past and across it, to melt and reshape it into a weapon of deadly efficacy. Courtesy might be a lady’s armor, as a septa from another girl’s life once offered sagely. Knowledge would become the honed blade of offense, to cut down her enemies rather than deflect them.
“Everything, my lord,” she repeated lowly. The stare broke, briefly sweeping over the papers of his office before Sansa turned in a quiet swishing of silk. Her journey began with a migration to the proper side of a desk. Standing at the narrow gateway created by knee and bureau, a pair of slow blinks considered first the proffered seat, second the stage set before it. Hands clasped her gown and gathered it with all the grace of claiming her throne, the girl sinking to a near-weightless angled perch upon his thigh. Shifting once, back curved in a light brace against solicitous armrest, her chin turned to survey again her only deliverance. There were more devilish deals to be made than this. Sansa’s left hand rose and crossed to take up his own at the wrist, bringing it to heavy repose upon the desk, ever watchful of Petyr’s face.
“ —– And begin with Osaze.”
* * * * *
What Sansa had hoped would be nightly visits proved far less frequent when their arrangement first began. She would arrive, admitted to his presence after the same paired triads of knocks as her initial quest, only to be saddled with what tomes or scrolls could be balanced alongside the candelabra required for her journey. For many weeks, the readings would be returned only to be replaced in rapid order, though sometimes Petyr would bid her stay as he led her in conversation clearly meant to ascertain if the tasks had been completed to his satisfaction. Contemporary knowledge, however, remained largely concealed. Perhaps there was none to divulge, or perhaps she was being taken for a fool. That they spoke, that he indulged her curiosity on some level above saccharine condescension, kept Sansa compliant. What morsels were offered kept her hopeful, yet with each raven that cut a path through icy drizzle to an Eyrie perch, that childish notion diminished further.
Some, though not all, of their more involved councils were taken with Sansa upon the familiar bench of his legs. If at times Petyr’s lips brushed her ear in a whisper or fingers trailed along her waist with a steadying grip, the occurrences went unremarked. No greater liberties were taken beyond grazing touches of hands and mouth, all wavering on the line of accident and impropriety well enough to leave the girl in a state of imbalance whenever they drew near. Were he to make more exaggerated gropes, repeat the lesson given by fingers beneath a rucked-up skirt…then she would have known, absolutely, where the man’s motivations lay. As it stood they navigated a lewd chasteness together, Sansa daring him to attempt more whilst he seemed to seek any indication that such conduct would be welcomed.
Her sleep suffered. At first she would awaken from boredom, musty facts crowding out any peace to be found in slumber. What little information she gained on the Dornish assassin fed her nightmares for a time, though even those faded as the girl found other tasks worthy of distraction. Petyr began to enter them, sometimes seen even more clearly than he was in the yellowed light of his chambers, sometimes a dark, shadowy idea flitting at the corners of ill-defined terrors. Some evenings he killed her, others ravished her, all acts thoroughly grounded in his power. Time passed and she could not force him away, the resolve to do so faltering as, every so often, he would instead take her in his arms and fill her ear with soft mutterings of care and safety. Sansa would hold and be held, curl to sleep against him in her dreams with a grazing kiss to his throat. Those visions she could abide, despite making as little sense at the dawn as their more nefarious cousins.
On one of those restless nights, a raven’s oily wings beat her from a doze to sudden alertness. Birds came and went at all hours, though only a select few had ever roosted immediately upon the Lord Protector’s sill in the dead of night. It had not arrived to hers; his was the only other room from which she might hear the avian rustlings and pleas for food. Sansa waited; an hour, perhaps more. He had used the passage once, and if those midnight wings carried such dire news it stood reason he might employ it again. The room remained silent. Frustration welled up alongside a festering entitlement to inclusion, forcing her sheets to crumple at the bed’s foot, her dressing gown to be knotted messily as Sansa strode towards the secret corridor.
She would know the contents of his letter and she would know them tonight. It must be from Harrold. He has raised enough men, marched long enough. He might have taken Winterfell. I could possess my home again.
Without a glance spared for the idle candelabra, Sansa walked with sure footing down the winding path to Baelish’s solar. In her reckless enthusiasm for the demand about to be leveled, any knock of consideration was forgone for a sure push of chilled hands against the door, tapestry brushed back with precision born from the numerous trips beneath it. “ — Does the raven hail from — ?!” Any further words caught, prickled and tarred, in her throat. The room had been kept from her sight, as it always was, while Sansa negotiated her entrance, practiced though it may be. It was not Baelish’s positioning behind his desk that gave her pause. It was not his state of undress, doublet lacking and tunic partly open in a uniform slowly reintroduced to their gatherings. Nor was it his concentration, per se, that forced her eyes to the floor in the only measure of privacy she could afford. It was his posture, his demeanor entire; the slight pant to his breath and the hooded nature of his gaze; the tension which appeared wholly welcome as he sat reclined; the barest gleam of sweat upon his brow, though the room would never be warm enough to his tastes so deep into the wintry night; and most of all his hand, concealed by the rise of weirwood desk, whose lewd pumping had still been evidenced by an arm cocked upon his chair.
“ — My lord, I…” Gods. “I apologize…for my disturbance…” For all her mortification, however, Sansa remained rooted to her flagstone patch, deliberately staring at one carven foot to the lord’s desk as his actions hung plain between them.
The door was shut behind her with a gusty burst of cool corridor air before the tapestry was released to flutter back against stone. Mockingbird eyes watched the wolf stalk into his chambers, his shoulders relaxing at her assurance that nothing was awry. Noting her discomforted gaze averting away from his state of undress, Petyr moved towards his doublet which had earlier been discarded over the back of a chair. Easily shrugging it back on, nimble fingers began working the golden clasps. “They have been told not to.” Petyr reminded. “You ought not be wandering the Eyrie at so late an hour.” Hands smoothed down the thick brocade after the final clasp was hooked. Then his gaze followed hers to the desk strewn with inked pulp.
Her request, her confession, brought a knowing smile to Baelish’s lips. A genial chuckle was soon to follow. Crossing the room back to his desk, he rounded it and took a seat. “You have always been welcome to my depth of knowledge, Sansa. You need but ask.” A lovely statement that wasn’t entirely true, or even mostly true. Sansa was told what she needed to know, and nothing more. To tell Sansa everything would reduce her to the bastard she had so expertly masqueraded as, and reduce Petyr Baelish to something lower still. But it was not only that. Knowledge was dangerous; the game was dangerous. Its unassailable rules could be shattered into dust by the first player who simply refused to abide, and fear of one’s own guards or chambermaids who lived as servile ghosts within the walls was a not uncommon road into paranoid insanity. Sansa had already weathered much; Petyr had to be certain she was ready to handle matters of such great import. For his sake, certainly, but also for hers.
“I scarcely expected Harrold to do even that,” Petyr remarked, not without a caustic edge. “Hardyng is a symbol of all the things the men of the Vale are willing to fight for. More importantly, by blood he is owed their fealty. No one expects little Lord Robert to survive the winter. It bodes well for men to send their sons, and their son’s sons, to assist their Young Falcon before he takes his seat. Favor is favor, Sansa. The Vale is rich with resources but poor in loyalty; there are so many sets of claws reaching to climb the Eyrie that any opportunity to impress upon Hardyng can not be ignored. He will be a young lord. He will need trusted advisors to assist him in his rule. And when he has sons,” Baelish’s gaze flicked to Sansa. “There will be plenty of daughters to offer up for betrothal.”
But Sansa knew all of that. Or else she should have. “While the rest of Westeros is distracted fighting their nonsense war of kings, the Vale will march to seize an already unstable North. Rumor has it that houses are rather disgruntled over Lord Bolton’s treatment of…” there, Petyr Baelish paused. “—his wife. And with the emergence of a new Stark, eldest and therefore of greater legitimacy, it will not be difficult to persuade dissenters. A Bolton rule was never bound to be stable; I’m afraid the Lannisters rather miscalculated that. The North would never forgive such treachery.” Lips curved upward in a wry smile.
Petyr leaned back into his chair, lacing fingers together, pointers coming together in shallow steeple. For a long while he studied her. The hearth popped and crackled as flames licked greedily over recently-placed logs. The room was comfortably warm, notably more so than Sansa’s had been.
"You are welcome to my chambers to speak whenever you wish.” As Alayne, Sansa was free to come and go as she pleased and there was no disapproving or suspicious eye to cast over the pair. As Sansa, that luxury had evaporated. To knowingly, intentionally be alone together was to ask for scandal that neither party could risk. Issues could hardly be spoken about candidly over supper or while breaking their fast, and Sansa was not privy to Eyrie matters as an advisor but rather treated as she needed to be: as the wife of Harrold Hardyng. It was important for Hardyng to appear to hold the power – all of it.
“What would you like to know?” A loaded question that Baelish seemed strangely open to answering. In its entirety.
But everything had a caveat.
His dressing made her even more uncomfortable than the state that necessitated it, an admittance that she was privy to a sight perhaps inadvisable. Her eyes remained politely cast elsewhere until the insectile clicks of hooks and clasps ceased, and Baelish made his way to the rightful seat behind weirwood expanse. Even as she begged for transparency, another veil was pulled down to cloud her view. It wasn’t right. It wasn't fair. Sentiments the girl knew would have her promptly banished back to her rooms and her ignorance, childish demands of a very adult reality. Nonetheless, if she were to keep the demands of equality - or a semblance of it - alive, then accountability must needs flow both ways. Grasping for the rash bravery that had seized her in the castle of snow, when sharp tongue lashed out against false promises, Sansa breathed deep and spoke. “If you spoke true, you would have told me — " About the blood. Despite her conviction, the walls still might listen. And remember. ” — Told me what to expect of my wedding night.“ When next asking for deliverance, she would be certain to demand the adjoining knowledge as well.
Hardyng will have no sons. And I know all of that; I’m no fool. To voice that conviction aloud was to prove it, though, so Sansa wisely held her tongue, despite being rankled over so obvious a lecture. Harrold was a pawn as she was a pawn, yet where he accepted with broad, eager palms the offerings trickled into them by one scheming Baelish, the girl was resolved to pluck them up one by one, examine them, ascertain if their inherent worth equated to that assigned to them by the giver. Already she knew more than before the dark and stumbling journey; that the Bolton’s held Winterfell’s shell was not a new tiding, but a marriage was. As was his choice of term in calling her a new Stark. Arya? There was but the one child remaining to her father’s former bannerman, a son and illegitimate if memory served, meaning it was a daughter given away. Sansa, clearly, stood leagues away, wedded and allegedly bedded. Who else remained?
"I would hear you speak, my lord.” The crux of the matter - Sansa had no information to share. She came as a supplicant in dire need of guidance, inclusion. “So long as your door remains open to me.” These would remain clandestine visits, the risk of wagging tongues in even so deserted a keep as the Eyrie far too dire to arrange a more public relationship. The lingering risk to her life meant that most, when hearing of Baelish’s deception, swallowed it as a necessary one to keep so valuable a girl alive and well. That acceptance, however, hinged on the ruse’s immediate end when hair shimmered from brown to red. He remained an old friend of her mother’s, and a fellow conspirator so far as Alayne was concerned; beyond that, Petyr Baelish was a solicitous lord seeing to Lady Hardyng’s well-being as her husband quested northward. They were not friendly or close.
If only they knew of the liberties he had taken…
Weight shifted almost imperceptibly before the desk, fingers skittering lightly along its edges as Tully eyes fell to consider the swath of correspondence upon it. Of all the plots, all the pieces moving upon the board, which would she choose to study first? What he deemed most important was, on the face of it, a wise answer; who better than Petyr could address the gaps in her understanding? Yet that surrendered any meager foothold back to him, the seemingly impressive work of a few minutes rapidly unraveled. I want to know of Harrold’s progress. I want to know what the Boltons have done to my home. I want to know if my sister bears a sigil as disgusting as the lion once pinned on me. I want to know what hot steel and cold winds forced from that prisoner’s mouth, and if any of it might be believed. A person would say anything to make their pains end.
“Everything, Petyr. I want to know everything,” she declared, gaze flicking up to hold steady on his. One must always take that first step, small and sure. “Did he give more than his name?” A pause. “Can you know any of it is the truth?”
The Lord Baelish wasn’t asleep. Instead he was pouring over letters, his desk scattered with various shades of parchment, correspondence decorated with script and ink, broken wax seals, signatures and sigils of noble houses far and wide. Between two fingers was pinched a quill, darting and bobbing with each elegantly looped whorl as determined fingers were intent to acquire more information about their Dornish invader. There was a strangely pleasant disposition about the man. Where weeks of unknowing had conjured and brewed a sour countenance, even knowledge so seemingly shallow and simple as a name afforded the scheming lord the ability to shuffle pieces back into the game.
But not even a smirking distraction would have been enough to let the muted thud of toe to door go unnoticed or unanswered. At once, gray-green slanted towards the room’s heavy tapestry, used to conceal the passage leading to the Eyrie’s loftiest tower suite. Quill was swiftly discard in favor of a sharper instrument; fingers curled about decorous dagger pommel resting atop the desk, sliding from the belted sheath its gleaming blade.
Waiting long was mercifully unnecessary. Lucky for Sansa her gentle rapping did much to diffuse an otherwise volatile situation. Knaves did not knock. Not once. Certainly not twice. And not with the soft and tentative force of girlish impetus. By the time she had eased the door open, the weapon had already been reconcealed. There Petyr stood, in tunic and breeches. The thick fabric was unlaced near the top, enough for Sansa to glimpse the twisted, pinkish beginnings of his scar.
“Sansa?” The Lord’s brow was creased. “What is the matter?” For only a matter unsettled could bring the Lady Hardyng to his chambers at such an hour— using such a method. Petyr pushed aside the tapestry, took hold of the door, opened it enough to look past her. It was all oily, consuming blackness behind her. “Without a light, my lady? Fortunate you did not fall.” Holding the tapestry aside in silent invitation, he bid her to enter his chambers. He looked at her face, very carefully. “Has something happened?” he inquired again, with a voice low and filled with a mixture of concern and suspicion.
“I walked slowly.” Only when the passage had been partly mapped by blind feet did she remember the guttering candles set aside the evening of her wedding, knowing that if she turned back she may not disturb the tapestry again. Impetus was a rare gift now, one Sansa would not squander in the pursuit of flaming company for her walk. Tully eyes brushed over the patch of skin scandalous in its casual presentation, its mere hint of what else the man’s clothing concealed. True, he had been disturbed unannounced, might have been lounging abed with far less, yet that small glimpse seemed to belie a relaxed intimacy that shunted Sansa’s gaze towards the floor in polite aversion. Ducking beneath the outstretched arm and over the threshold, side steps brought her fully into Baelish’s chambers.
That her guards were unaware, that the presiding lord remained confused as to her presence only furthered the illicit sensation building in her stomach. “Nothing. All is well,” she admitted to the space. All that he asked after, at least. Her person was unharmed, her rooms unassaulted by shadowy plots. Were it not for the gnawing urge to change things, an existence once more built upon the reliable foundations of quiet obedience, Sansa would be as her knights suspected - slumbering peacefully in her own chambers, alone. “I did not think they would allow me to leave.” Hence the passageway, rather than a formal journey from solar to solar, with an announced purpose and a noted length of stay. Looking at last to his face, she advanced deeper into the space, towards a desk whose state might best be described as ordered chaos. The stacks made no discernible sense to the untrained eyes of a girl, yet there was a faint sense of progress wafting from dusted piles of parchment.
“I wanted…” When last Sansa laid out her desires, Petyr rewarded her with a wedding, a feast, and a false bedding. She remained untouched, partly what had been asked, but still bound as she had feared. Pinked lips twitched in a momentary pursing, fear that he would answer a second request with an equally tangled solution. Baelish, however, was her only recourse. The only person presuming to approach the status of friend. “ — I want to know more. What you know. When you are told.” Turning, face open in its earnestness, a palm braced itself on the naturally ragged edge of his work space. “You can’t have expected Harrold to do more than rally his men.” Lord Hardyng would not have ruled his lands in any meaningful capacity, much like the Baratheon king who called northward upon her father. Loyal councilors, men like Petyr, would have eased such a burden for him.
What might not have been accounted for, however, was the deep pull of home threading through Sansa’s ribs, a mossy encasement about her heart. Winterfell was hers to care for, hers to restore, feelings borne not from an urge to conquer and rule, only the duty of being the last wolf remaining. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. It was her duty. Not Harrold’s, not Baelish’s. Hers alone. One that could not be carried out when lacking the fundamental knowledge of the North and all its foes, all those who sought to claim it for their own. An aversion to blithely surrendering that which now rested solely in her care did not eliminate the reality of needing Petyr, though. Without him, her home amounted to nothing more than a pile of rubble, abandoned by its history to the disaster of its present. All her motivation would come to naught without his guiding hand, if only it would be offered. “I want to be a part of this, Petyr. If you think me…incapable, or – or too weakly constitutioned…I want to know. I want to learn.”
Time it was for Baelish to debate truths and a deeper meaning behind words spouted by a girl known to sing songs woven specifically for the audience’s personal preference. Timing most inopportune for probing questions about the fate of her father to resurface. Everything intentional. Everything crafted. The Dornish man spun tales of a certain specificity. It was no accident that truths of Baelish’s knife rushing against the Stark patriarch’s throat had been fed to the heir of the North. Petyr felt an angry heat creeping up the back of his neck.
It didn’t matter if Petyr believed Sansa; it didn’t matter if she didn’t believe him. None of it mattered, so long as it could be contained. Sansa’s fear of the world which laid beyond the cloistered stone towers of the Eyrie should be substantial enough for her to remain compliant. Had the fiendish rogue with the olive skin succeeded in taking her, the gods only know what might have happened. Another marriage? Petyr idly wondered if he would even have to take the matter of the Hardyng boy into his own hands. Sansa’s claim to the North was worthless without a cooperating party to wed her and cement relations. To Dorne, to the Vale, to the Riverlands, to wherever it was the arrangement best suited.
A quiet rustling of thick fabric was the only whisper which preceded the Mockingbird leaving his polished perch. Then it was her cheek which a warm hand touched, caressed. “I am…” a pause, as fingers drifted towards her ear. “—sorry.” Intentionally ambiguous, and she would make of it what she would. A gift, a place to put her anger, to resolve it, to focus it. “So young a woman to have forfeited so much.” Petyr pulled his hand back, away, fingers curling into a loose fist. At times, he saw much of himself in her; cunning, wits, a rare cleverness, strong adaptability. Loss. No more words were spared. Petyr left her, murmuring directives to the sentries posted outside. Instructions to not let her out of their sight, for any cause. At all costs.
For a month the man with the swarthy complexion was whipped. Skin was burned away with frost, tossed soaking wet into a skycell as a blizzard raged. Fingers were smashed under stone mallet. An eye was removed by means of white-hot poker. He never talked. Not a word. Not so much as his name. Foolish loyalty. Look where it got him. As far as Eddard Stark.
The man’s screams echoed faintly even through the dining hall one evening. Petyr and Sansa sat alone over a modest spread of food. Baelish had grown serious about rationing. Brown bread and some sort of dried and stripped meat. Spiced wine. And the warbling cries of pain to serve as disturbing minstrel. The Lord Baelish ignored it in word, but the hard lines of his face spoke loudly enough to the irritation her felt. He scarcely ate, but fell well deep into his cups. Sansa’s ever-present sentries were posted near the doors.
After a time, the screaming stopped. Petyr ripped a piece of meat, chewed it slowly. Like cud. When the great doors opened and a man with a bloodied tunic delivered with gloved hand a missive to the seated lord, Petyr’s first instinct was to chastise the fool for frightening the Lady Hardyng. Mumbled apologies were directed towards Sansa at the opposite end of the table as Baelish unfolded the parchment and read. When finished, he handed it back to the man with a quiet nod. It was only after he had departed that Petyr glanced to a silently questioning Sansa.
“His name is Osaze. He works for the Martells.” It had only take a moon’s turn. Petyr didn’t need to specify whom he spoke of. If there was more, he didn’t say. But with appetite seemingly renewed, another piece of meat was speared and consumed.
"You might have enjoyed the warmth,” Petyr slyed, slanting his gaze towards her. “Pity.” His smirk was clever. “Are you nearly finished, my lady?” I have a series of missives to pen. Already his eyes looked behind her, towards the guards who stood at the farthest threshold in a bid to summon their attention.
Screams, she discovered, were far worse than songs. At Winterfell, criminals were buried beneath the earth in cramped cells, stacks of dirt and mortar devouring any cries that might disturb the sleep of its noble occupants. Sky cells left the prison exposed to whatever elements buffeted the Eyrie, yet they also laid bare their sufferings to any walking its halls. As food was more carefully portioned, far less rich than that of her wedding feast, and the shrieks continued, the girl turned wan with lack of sleep, a near-constant discomfort haunting her. Powder concealed some, but not all, of the signs.
I am sorry, he had said. Was she to forfeit her sanity as well, before the thing ended? A woman crazed and suspicious upon her homecoming? Such fears were woefully unfounded; if anything, the Stark heir was merely exhausted. Where Petyr’s waning patience was found in carved lines, furrowed brows, hers manifested in drooping shoulder, tired blinks of dull blue. If he felt such sorrow, Baelish would end the winding cries and let her sleep. It worried the girl that before praying for their cessation, or the man’s deliverance, she implored the gods to loosen his tongue. That would bring the swiftest end of all.
The messenger’s state was barely noticed, much like his presence. Blood did not inspire queasiness in Sansa Stark. Nonetheless, she offered him a brief nod of absolution before returning to the important charade of shuffling food from one side of the plate to another. Only then did she notice the silence, blessed silence. Her ears rang with it. Parchment garnered her attention, rather than either of its bearers, and when the Lord Baelish finished his reading, sapphire followed his man along the length of the hall with interest vanished for many days.
"We knew that much.” Suspected that much. How disappointingly little, for so long and arduous a questioning. There must be more. “And I prefer the cold.” Rather, she enjoyed the seeking of warmth away from a chill, the sanctuary of furs and fires as snows fell. Clearly a poor conversational partner that evening, Sansa took another brief sampling of wine before making to stand away from her scarcely touched plate. “Quite. I will not keep you from your work, my lord.” Queen Cersei and her son had her well trained in the art of accepting dismissal, though Baelish’s were never so caustic.
She did not even sigh as the two men and their longswords fell into step at her back, though a brief expulsion of relief came when the door to her chambers fell shut, Sansa on one side, guards on the other. Perched so high, with only the one door, her rooms were the only corner of the keep where solitude might be found. Striding to the small table where once a phial of blood made its appearance, gaze fell in thoughtful rumination to the broad tapestry shielding worn stones on the wall opposite.
Not the only door.
Petyr had access, though it had not been sought, to her knowledge, since the night of non-consummation. A jug of Dornish red was fingered, considered, then lifted to pour a scant amount into matching cup. Sansa breathed the wine more than drank it, settling into a chair facing the most skillful disguise. The roar of her fire had reduced itself to a cheerful crackling when the decision was reached, ignored vintage set aside and slippers reclaimed.
The fabric was heavy, a momentary struggle ensuing as she sought to hold it aside long enough to encourage the door to open. Was she that weak - or Petyr that strong? Little matter as she swept it up and away, sliding into a narrow opening before it all fell back behind her. The passageway was inky, no light even from her room penetrating the gloom. Sansa proceeded slowly, one hand always pressed to the wall as a guide, whilst she prayed it led only to Baelish’s chambers. So dark was it, that even when she reached her destination, only blackness stretched before the girl, a sharp, muffled note of surprise escaping her when a toe stubbed upon another oaken door.
What if he was asleep? How much time had passed, between her taking leave of the meal and of her chambers? A knock then, seemed wisest, lest she only prove a troublesome disturbance. Three soft taps sounded on the door. Followed, after a brief quiet, by a murmuring of his name perhaps not even loud enough to penetrate to the room beyond. Finally, another three knocks, slightly louder, before she began to try the door, easing it open to a golden wedge of light.
“ —- Petyr? My lord?”
Gray-green eyes watched her carefully, taking in every shift of flickering emotion, each tilt of her gaze, the way her fingers tightened and then relaxed. Oh, to reconcile such frightful woes! Far harder to swallow than the sizable gulps of Dornish wine. Did it taste like the Dornish fingers who had left bruises over the pale canvas of her skin? Or did it taste like salvation? Petyr wondered what Sansa prayed for when she sat alone in that empty sept, cold and muted dim with a soft layer of dust that seemed more like the snow that made every inch of the Eyrie a frozen tomb. A place where souls and stars alike went to die. So high, the highest point in all of Westeros perhaps, its view of the sky perfectly unobstructed; any who so desired to look on any given night could find a handful of sorrowful streaks gliding through the firmament. Once thought of in terms of wishes, but any forlorn maid locked away in a high tower knew better than that.
There was no attempt to conceal the caustic chuckle at Sansa’s quiet defense. “Indeed he was. Eddard Stark was a benevolent man.” A foolish man. A stubborn man. A blind man. A man who took his ancient Northern principles and brought them to the teeming hive of the Capital, where honor and loyalty was only worth as much as the coin it took to erase it. He had been warned. A shame it was the daughter who was forced to pay for the sins of the father. A shame.
A brow twitched upward. Petyr’s index finger caressed the embossed silver languidly held within his grasp. The measure of the girl before him could not be had in coin, or loyalty, or trust. Petyr’s assurance of her own performance came in the misdeeds he had scattered in her wake. A dead king. A dead aunt. Forced reliance could, under the right circumstance, blossom into a mutual understanding. Petyr had risked much on the red-headed slyph – without her, he stood to lose everything. Sansa hadn’t a choice in the matter, and yet it was the same – without Petyr, her future had a frightening uncertainty. Far more uncertain than the knives lurking in the shadows. One learns to look for those at every turn; it was those not concealed by shadow that ought be heeded.
The question took him by surprise. It was only a brief furrowing of brows which marked the emotion. Then came silence, in careful consideration.
”No,” came the word, stressed by emphasis and voice octaves lower than normal. Petyr turned and set the cup to the desk, fingers brushing the inside of his wrist. Then they lifted to stroke his little beard as he resettled, leaning himself against the wooden edge. “Ned Stark’s death…ignited the realm.” Both his hands spread to his sides, curling about the uneven edges of natural weirwood. “There are some who might argue that the demise of your father afforded me…certain opportunities that I would not otherwise have had.” For a moment, his mouth pursed in thoughtful rumination. “They would not be wrong.” That was no secret to anyone. Petyr Baelish was not the only one to profit from the chaos Ned’s death had set into motion.
“But pleasure? I took no pleasure in his death.” Nor the death of the mother. “I am an opportunist, Sansa. Not a monster.” All spoken from the man who had stood as straight and calm as a knife as the order of execution had been unexpectedly given; as the axe fell to ultimately end a deep, strong, powerful legacy and incite war, chaos, frenzy. A man who thrived under all of those circumstances. Did she believe him? Could she?
It could be a lie. While Sansa possessed no recourse beyond resentment if the truth of the matter revealed itself to be malevolent, he still stood to benefit far more in her complacency. There was, in her sight, no logical cause for Baelish to admit a hatred of her father or a satisfaction in his death. It could be a lie. Yet no matter what else the girl imagined in his words, an undercurrent of respect seemed to wink out between the syllables. Grip tightening on hammered metal, lips turned down at tidings of opportunities created and seized. Death, then, was as politic as acts committed in life, a man’s final impression on the world for others to take and mold as they saw fit.
And had Petyr behaved monstrously? Poor, foolish Ser Dontos, with his face wide and mouth agape as the bolts hit home. And Lysa, more foolish still for entrapping herself within the motivation of love, falling backwards like some great, silken bird whose wings had been so cruelly clipped. It would have been the niece, had the husband not arrived to girlish shrieks for mercy. The wine in her stomach made Sansa feel older then, more capable of the thoughts which must occupy the lord’s mind daily. Dontos might have sold the Stark girl’s whereabouts to another, the late Lady Arryn let them slip in another frenzied rage.
Had he killed for her?
Hardly anything so romantic. Baelish rid himself of troublesome pieces, those unfortunate souls who risked the completion of his own plans. Of which, Sansa now played an integral part. Did that make him a monster —– or simply practical? That she reaped the benefit of his crimes deeply unsettled the girl as she searched for an answer. And what did any of this have to do with the matter of Ned Stark’s demise? Was it building a pattern of behavior, cool detachment from death no matter how it advanced or preserved him? Or merely excuses, to grease the cogs of their relationship into something more palatable?
"I hate them,” Sansa murmured, the next sip of ruby wine held thoughtfully in her mouth before swallowing. I could hate you too. It would be such a simple task. “But…” For a moment she tried, strained over the possibility of despising Petyr Baelish, and failed. But not you. An admittance with an oddly dangerous flavor, so it was kept close, unspoken. “ – I know you are not.” Not some hulking, prowling beast. Only an opportunist, flitting amongst the scattered corpses to carve its own way. Much like herself, in a way, picking out a narrow path along the scarred and pitted landscape of Westeros to Winterfell, to home. The thought calmed her.
Tully eyes deepened, darkening from riverine to oceanic in their blue, a washing over of grief as she stared at Baelish in recline. Standing erect and disheveled, hands curled around a half-empty goblet of Dornish red, Sansa felt the weight of exposure once more, though she was hardly as stripped or battered as that day in Joffrey’s court. “Some things you simply must…know,” she explained with an apologetic lift and fall of shoulder, wondering if it made her a child to have such impulses. Or if he ever felt them as well.
