George Martin - A Storm of Swords

“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 high-backed 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 moon-stones. 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.’”

Marillion’s 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?”