Chapter Text
Alayne stood in her father`s solar in the Gates of Moon, going through a report on the tax income from Gull Town, frowning slightly. Something irked her about the figures, but everything seemed in balance.
One of the nice things about being Petyr’s daughter was the way her father encouraged her to set her mind to use. Maester Colemon clearly enjoyed teaching her every subject she set her mind to. And to her own wonderment, she found the broadening knowledge of how the world worked — from small households to kingdoms — to be amazingly interesting.
In an earlier life of another girl, she had been septa trained. Tutored in the womanly activities expected of a lady of high birth, prepared for a life as a wife and a mother, for at some point handling a household and executing the lords bidding whenever her lord husband would be away. She had been drilled in the names of the great houses and their arms and history. She knew the songs, the stories and myths of Westeros.
Maester Luwin had taught all the siblings of that earlier life. Educating them to read and write, to know their numbers and how nature worked, but that was a long time ago now. A lifetime, it felt like. Now, she marvelled at the political aspects taught her, at the human structures that laid in all men, at the greater mathematics involved when running kingdoms instead of households, and the internal structures in everything from flow of information to trade.
When she couldn’t sleep, late at night in her own bed, she sometimes allowed herself to reflect that in some ways, this was a second chance. She marvelled at how hard the Gods had needed to try her, before the shallow shell had shattered around her, making her see the world as it was. She could almost hear the Hound’s hoarse laughter at the jokes her life had played on her. For at what cost had she finally learned?
In her dreams—nightmares—she saw the little girl that she’d once been, running to the queen again and again and again, telling her the plans her real sire had made for the Seven Kingdoms, unable to stop her. How much would have been different if someone had just locked her up in her rooms that night? How much pain would she have been spared?
But the never-ending terror and fear of her former life were behind her. She was older now, her body and mind more mature, her hard-earned lessons the basis for a quite different point of view from that giggling child with her head in a rainbow.
By all means, she still loved the songs and the stories, still enjoyed beauty and lemon cakes, it was just that she interpreted the songs in a different way, read the histories of Westeros and the lands beyond the Narrow Sea in addition to the stories of her childhood — and beauty was a whole new concept to her. She sometimes thought that the only thing she experienced equally, now as then, was the lemon cakes.
She had tried to suppress her former identity for a long time, going into the role of Alayne until she thought of herself only as Alayne, never Sansa. But these last months Sansa had been creeping towards the surface of her mind again.
Sometimes she wondered if that was a good thing at all. Her father’s subtle advances had begun to include fondling her breasts and touching her hips and thighs far too close to her private parts. As long as it was her father doing it, she could allow herself to feel a real rising of nausea. Feel the wrongness in the otherwise charming man.
But with her mind slowly changing back into Sansa, she was forced to face the harsh reality of a broken world; a violent world where women always lost. Petyr Baelish had gotten her out of the nightmare of King’s Landing first and foremost for political reasons, but with the Mad Whore Queen as regent he had clearly saved her life.
He could have done much worse than squeezing her breasts, really. Pillow talks with Randa had taught her that there were lots of ways to have a woman without taking her maidenhead. With gossip from the North seeping in about the Bolton brides… Sansa could not believe that Arya was that second bride. Arya would have wrecked absolute havoc and likely gotten herself killed in the act, but would never, never have stood for that treatment. Not a chance in the seven hells.
Yet like it or not, Westeros was not a civil part of the world anymore, and all Littlefinger had done was touch her indecently while she sat in his lap, breathing her dead mother’s name in her ear. Wasn’t that a cheap price to pay for her life? Shouldn’t she just grit her teeth and endure it?
And yet… the Hound had saved her life once, during the riot and he had not expected anything in return. He had only been doing what he was paid for she supposed — strangely, that thought annoyed her — but then, of course, when he had shown up a broken man in her room, in her bed, during the Battle of the Blackwater… He had taken a song… And a kiss… It was just that, as with the tax figures from Gull Town, something irked her about that kiss, too. Still, he could just as well have raped her and slit her throat… Why hadn`t he? That was another thing that kept surfacing: her mind’s private puzzle of the Hound.
Being a bastard had its clear benefits. Even if Petyr always had one of his many eyes on her, she was allowed a liberating amount of freedom. Playing the role of a bastard daughter also meant doing what bastard daughters were supposed to do, saying what they were supposed to say. The Lady Myranda taking the quite… liberal… lead in what young women could do with dignity made life at the Gates of Moon quite entertaining.
Sansa didn’t needed to be told to preserve her maidenhead, but innocent kisses, flirting, and indecent pillow talks were part of the bastard bargain. Off course, it was fun to play, but the more she learned and understood of the mysteries of love and passion, the more the Hound kept puzzling her.
She was starting to see his actions on her behalf in a different light. The first time she remembered that he had disobeyed Joffrey’s direct command to hit her, she actually had to sit down. Ser Dontos had intervened, yes, Tyrion as well, but Joffrey had been cruel enough to demand the Hound’s head for such an offense or find some horrible way to punish him… With fire probably... But the Hound had kept protecting her. And he had offered to take her away, protect her, let no one hurt her… 'Or I’d kill them.'
She had only been a little girl, but so had Arya — and her savage little sister hadn’t been afraid of anything. How could Sansa have let her overwhelming terror make her lose the only person in King’s Landing trying to take care of her? Even if he had done it in his own rough way? The Tyrells had only wanted to frame her for murder, and regicide at that! It was all utterly confusing.
She had cried the first time she heard that Joffrey’s former dog was dead. Snuck away to her room, bolted the door, and cried silently into her pillow. She’d even spent hours in the Godswood, thinking and praying that his bitter, ravaged soul would find peace. More time, she was ashamed to admit, than she had spent praying for Sweetrobin, who lay sleeping all the time now, unable to wake.
The Hound kept resurfacing, though, Saltpans being the worst of it. Then again, she hadn’t believed him still alive when she heard that story, because Sandor Clegane simply would not burn a city to the ground around his head. Yet, the man seemed impossible to kill, gossip seeping into the Vale from the world beyond. Now she grinned inwardly at the thought of him continuing to roam free in spite of everything. After all, nobody could say that the younger Clegane wasn’t a survivor.
Which thought brought Sansa right back to her puzzle again. There were many pretty knights and even comely squires, lords who would try to tumble her, and singers with beautiful voices. But not one of them had the Hound’s ferocity, his harsh truth, dark humour, or, unnecessary to say, his physical strength and fighting skills.
Which a normal young woman would survive pretty nicely without, actually… but, to Sansa, it dulled all the men she flirted with. It was really hard trying to make impressed sounds, listening to some knight brag of his supposed victories in the joust, when thinking that the Hound would have beaten him to a pulp without breaking a sweat. Summer knights she thought, thinking of her mother's phrase.
Perhaps that was the reason she had placed him in her marriage bed in that dream? The strong relief of him not being Tyrion had quickly turned into something else, hadn't it? Deep in her dreams, he came to her bed again and again, doing all the things Randa whispered to her about during their pillow talks. It made her wake up, blushing and aching, wanting the dream to have lasted just a moment longer. Finding her release on her own was nothing to the few times the dream continued on.
She was disturbed out of her thoughts when she heard footsteps approaching the door to the office. Concentrating once more on the figures in front of her, she presented the perfect picture of Petyr’s perfect protege when the man himself entered the room.
Sansa smiled pleasantly at him while he crossed the floor. “My beautiful daughter,” he murmured, pursing his lips for a kiss. She kissed him, like she always did, good girl that she was, feeling his lips move over hers and bile rise in the back of her throat.
She broke the kiss as if she suddenly remembered something. “Father, something annoys me about this report, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
Petyr looked amused and cast a glance at the parchment in her hands. “Ah, that one, yes. I put it there to test you.” Eyes twinkling, he leaned in over the paper, cheek against cheek. Too close! “Now, where do the accounts… annoy you most?”
Trying to control her body from jerking away from her supposed father, she answered, “Well, all the figures are in balance, and they seem correct, the report is neatly done. But somehow, the tax income from the pepper trade seems a bit… high… But why would any merchant pay too much tax, let alone a full town?”
Petyr laughed out loud and laid an arm around her back, stroking her arm. Her skin crawled, and Sansa noticed anew how she was already taller than him. “My clever, clever Alayne. Why, indeed. Why would a town pay too much tax when winter is coming and the Seven Kingdoms lie in ruins?”
He smiled at her appraisingly. “The answer is simple, the enlarged income of the pepper trade... It does not exist! But everyone knows there is money in pepper, so they can safely alter the numbers there believing their betters will not realize it, and then conceal the real issue.”
Despite herself, Sansa felt intrigued. “The real issue being…?”
Petyr chuckled, “My dear daughter, what does a land always need in wartime besides fighting men, weapons, and willing wenches?”
“Food,” she answered promptly and wonderingly. “They’re concealing a black-marked in food supplies! Trying to lull us into contentment by paying us thrice the tax on pepper.”
“Good girl!” Petyr exclaimed, sliding his hand down to her waist, pulling her even closer to him. “Such suspicions need to be confirmed of course, but as a matter of fact I’ve already received ravens with messages that state that our thoughts are quite correct.”
His minty breath was making Sansa nauseous, so she turned around as an excuse to look directly at him. “What will your actions be towards Gull Town’s Merchants’ Guilds, then?”
“Nothing, for now,” Petyr smiled, his expression steely. “This will be the hot poker that breaks them to my will later.” Sansa swallowed. “But, my dear, I have another matter to discuss with you,” he continued, not quite concealing the hungry gleam in his eyes. “We have a troublesome guest who presented himself at the gates not two hours ago, half-starved and all alone. I need to hear your clever view on what to do with him.” He smiled warmly at her, giving her upper arm a squeeze of fatherly affection, but something about his tone disturbed her.
Not letting her true worry show, she furrowed her brow in mock puzzlement. “Well, why would you need my opinion, when you have an excellent mind of your own?”
Petyr smiled as he stroked his pointed beard. “Firstly, because I love to watch you drawing the right conclusions,” he smiled. “Secondly, because it’s Brynden Tully, the Blackfish.”
My uncle! Careful not to let her excitement show, Sansa deepened her puzzled expression. “Why would the Blackfish’s reappearance be a matter that you needed to discuss with me?” she asked. “After all, your baseborn daughter should have no say in the treatment of highborn nobility.”
Petyr, her father, looked level-eyed at her. “And if the correct treatment of highborn nobility should demand guest right and the sharing of our bread and salt?”
Sansa looked straight into his green-grey eyes. “Then your bastard daughter doing her chores should not interest him. After all, this being a formal occasion welcoming the former Knight of the Gate home, I will sit below the salt where I belong.”
Littlefinger’s face cracked up in a proud grin. “This is what I mean by watching you draw the right conclusions!”
*
The Blackfish
Brynden Tully was greeted with courtesy and respect by a smiling Littlefinger. He was fed and bathed and found new clothes prepared in his old apartment. The rest of the day he used trying to get an overall view of what had happened in the Vale since his departure so many months before. Despite the power struggle between Petyr Baelish and the grand Lords of the Vale, it became clear that Littlefinger had gotten an iron grip over this part of the Seven Kingdoms surprisingly quickly. But of course, Brynden had known beforehand that the former ward of Riverrun was frighteningly capable.
“No surprise there,” he muttered to himself, descending the steps to the great hall where a feast for his return had been quickly arranged. The mood was good, Lady Myranda, Horton Redfort, and Yohn Royce were attending, and wine and talk flowed freely.
Littlefinger was nothing if not a good host, toasting to Brynden’s amazing journey, praising his ability to twist himself out of tricky situations and survive. Despite his inner uneasiness about the Lord Protector of the Vale, Brynden found a surprising feeling of having returned home to friends. It`s just family I lack, then.” But for half his life Nestor Royce had felt more a brother than Hoster Tully ever had.
Servants were bustling between the seated guests with a course of mountain goat roasted with salt, garlic, and rosemary. Big trenchers with baked potatoes and long red peppers followed suit. Soon, most of the guests were well into their cups, serving girls were beginning to slap away unwanted attention, Bronze Yohn was giving a rather heated speech about the blasted Lannister bastards, and a couple was kissing most thoroughly at the back of the hall.
And that was when he saw her. At first, he couldn’t understand the jump his heart did. Surely he was too old to let a beautiful face dazzle him, especially a female one, but then the resemblance to Catelyn hit him. Poor Catelyn’s fate still made him wake up at night, but there was more to the girl than a physical likeness to his dead niece. It was in the way she held her head and used her hands to gesticulate as she spoke to Mya Stone. If her hair had been auburn instead of brown, she would have been the spick image of Catelyn when she was still engaged to Brandon Stark… and… that was just too much of a coincidence. Petyr Baelish had been head over heels in love with Catelyn at that time, there was no chance in the seven hells he would miss seeing the likeness… and still, he didn’t cast a single glance in the girl’s direction.
Excusing himself for a visit to the privy, he stopped a soldier staggering in the same direction. “The new wench talking to Mya; would she be offended if a man asks her for a tumble with some gold tossed in?”
The man turned bleary eyes in the direction of the hall, making out the lower part of the long table. “Oh, Alayne she’s called, Lord Protector’s bastard. Guards her cunt, that one. Supposed to be a Septa. She’s all in for a kiss, but nothing more.” The man reeled a bit.
“My thanks, always good to know,” Brynden replied with a grin and a slap on the soldiers’ back. “Anyone else to recommend?”
As it was, the man had several, and Brynden ended up going with a lively blonde serving wench to her chambers not long after, to cover up if Littlefinger came sniffing. On the way down the stairs, he tried to figure out if the best solution would be to pretend to be too drunk or maybe just struggling with an old man’s softness. The sure thing, though, was that unless Petyr Baelish had managed to put his little finger into Catelyn Stark and produced a secret twin to the daughter in her womb... the girl in the hall was Sansa Stark.