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Chapter Text

The Wyls do not see many visitors.

Lord Wyl is a grumpy, irascible man who inherited the lordship by wedding his uncle’s daughter three years into Robert’s reign. His wife is a sickly, superstitious woman, well known in her youth for her patronage of soothsayers and seers from Essos and Sothoryos. But once she proved barren, Wyl refused to pay for any more such frivolties, and he and his wife have lived in quiet obscurity since then. The next heir to Castle Wyl is Lady Wyl’s sister, who also wedded a cousin and has a brood of five children, though they mostly reside in Sunspear.

And Castle Wyl is quite remote; the only way to approach from the north is through the Boneway, which is itself aptly named: bones litter the bottoms of the ravines of the path in particularly steep terrain. The confluence of the river and the sea near Castle Wyl has left it fertile enough to be mostly self-sufficient, but the rest of the region consists of mountain steppes and desert. It’s self-sufficient, but not prosperous. 

Or so Jon painstakingly explains to her on their eleventh night at Summerhall. 

Sansa rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes. They’ll be very suspicious of us because they don’t tend to have many guests. Thankfully, I spent today coming up with a solution to that problem instead of brooding over it for the fifth day running.”

“This isn’t like what happened with the—” Jon drops his voice, looking around hastily, “—Night’s Queen!”

“Oh, calm down, Jon,” says Sansa impatiently. “There’s nobody here. You know that.”

And once Sansa managed to win over a few ghosts—it took some time, but three nights into their stay, Prince Duncan approached her, offering to guard them—she could be assured that there wouldn’t be any nasty surprises either.

The War of the Five Kings is still ongoing, after all, and Sansa and Jon can be recognized as valuable hostages if someone’s smart enough to connect her red hair with the missing Stark princess. Not that it’s likely. They’re well into Stormland territory, closer to Dorne than the Crownlands, and anyone who sees Sansa will assume she’s a war-displaced urchin. Anyone who sees her with Jon will hopefully think them siblings: they’re both thin and tall enough, even if their coloring’s so drastically different.

Sansa doesn’t care overmuch about it, all told; she’ll leave fighting with the living for others, better suited to it. She’s rather busy herself dealing with all the promises she’s made to her dead. While in Riverrun, Sansa’d even managed to ignore whatever information her family shoved her way regarding the war. But Jon…

Hadn’t.

He’d soaked all of it up like a Hells-bedamned sponge, and then he’d insisted on telling Sansa all about it as they rode south. 

Sansa still hasn’t fully forgiven him for it. 

“We don’t have an army of undead chasing us down,” says Jon flatly. “We can take it slow. Calm down. Make plans.”

“I always make plans,” says Sansa, affronted.

“No,” says Jon. “You make plans that might have a chance of working, if you’re incredibly lucky.”

“Plans that have worked so far,” she points out. 

Jon’s eyes narrow. “And if they don’t?”

“I think it makes more sense to come up with solutions,” says Sansa, voice acidic, “than to reiterate a litany of all the problems. Over and over and over again.”

“I don’t do that!”

“Five days, Jon,” says Sansa. “Five days.”

“It doesn’t make much of a difference. I’m trying to tell you—this week, the next—we should take our time.”

“Unless there’s rain while we’re on the Boneway. And we’re in the Storm lands!”

To which he winces. The stories of the Boneway’s drownings are gruesome and elaborate. Sansa hadn’t skimped on details when describing them two days into their stay here—she’d dug the stories out of various dead still haunting Summerhall. Jon might well be concerned about what they’d do when they arrive at Wyl, but first they have to get there. The rest of it can be handled later.

“It doesn’t rain as much in Dorne,” he says, but it’s a weak counter and Jon knows it.

Sansa smiles at him. Jon scowls back and kicks the ashy wood hanging half out of the campfire: it snaps in half and sparks rise up to his eyes. Sansa doesn’t say anything. Just waits, breathing evenly. Jon has a temper, but he’s still Jon, and she knows him: his pride, his laughter, his annoyance and his rigidity. When he’s right, he’s insistent to the point of pedantry about ensuring she acknowledges it. 

But when he’s wrong, Jon doesn’t hesitate to accept it either.

“Fine,” he says. “We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow.”

Dawn, despite his own reluctance to wake so early, because Sansa prefers early mornings herself. Not half bad, as an apology goes, though Sansa will wait to see if he complains at all on the trek to accept it. She doesn’t let her smile shift one bit, and inclines her head, and then sets about making sure their bedrolls are ready.

…

Morning comes remarkably quick this far south despite the heavy clouds hanging over them. Sansa wakes just before the moment when the sky goes from grey to blue; she can see pieces of the sky above her, like great shards of colored glass obscured by a cloudy cover. Later in the day it’ll likely turn even darker than now, and rain properly as the sun goes down. But as it is, Sansa can revel in the sunlight, and in the chill.

“It’s too warm here,” grumbles Jon, without opening his eyes. 

Sansa snorts and refrains from kicking him. “You preferred the Wall, then,” she comments airily. “With all its murder plots and—dirt.”

“I hate the heat. It’s worse here, I’d say, than even Dorne: it’s wet heat. I didn’t even know it could get like this. I feel like I’m breathing in steam all day.”

“You could teach steel to weep,” says Sansa dryly. “At least we don’t need to boil water here. The rainwater is clean enough.”

The taste of boiled water! A better fate to drink it than to die of dehydration, Sansa had decided eventually, but not by much. She’d been glad when the rivers and streams finally melted and deepened as they traveled further south, but the best sites for gathering water were usually occupied or watched. Rainwater was safe and undetectable, and Sansa’d made much use of it in the eleven—no, twelve—days they’d spent at Summerhall.

With that thought, she rolls out of her bedroll to perform her ablutions. It’s remarkable how quick they go now that she doesn’t have the daily rigmarole of court life. 

And shorter hair, Sansa acknowledges to herself.

She’d stared at herself very often while at Riverrun with her family: constantly catching her own reflection, and being startled anew by it. The trek north had done Sansa no favors in her looks. She’d once been pale and innocent, with large eyes and long hair and the kind of cheeks that treaded the line between charming and childish. But hunger and tension has stripped her of all that in one fell swoop. Now she has the half-starved look of a rangy wolf, and nobody would ever describe her eyes as enchanting; they’re too sharp for that. The ragged cut of her hair has only exacerbated the worst of all of it.

The one good thing about leaving it all behind is the lack of mirrors so far south.

Breakfast is the last of the quail eggs Jon had stumbled over a few days earlier—they won’t survive the grueling trek ahead of them—and a neatly divided pile of blackberries Sansa takes her time in savoring. By the time she’s done, Jon’s up too, and has the bedrolls tucked away. They’ve become quite adept at dividing up their chores over the past months.

“We won’t be able to take the horses,” he comments. “They’ll as like break their legs as not, and even if we get lucky with that, they’ll slow us down.”

Sansa looks them over critically. “We can leave them here,” she says, after a moment. “There’s enough grass to last them a few months, and it’ll be safer than letting them go entirely.”

“Only if someone doesn’t kill them first.”

“The war has not reached so far south, I thought,” says Sansa softly.

Jon frowns. “It will, soon. With Robb and the Riverlands concerned with the North… the Lannisters will want Stannis Baratheon contained. Quickly. Better to let them free, Sansa. They’ll survive if they can.”

Sansa had chosen horses that could survive unpredictable situations when she left Riverrun. Not the delicate, prancing horses she’d once favored, but rather the mostly unbroken stallions from the Karhold: Robb had loved taming horses, once, and the Karstarks had gifted him some of the finer horses from their herds. But Robb’s love for the practice had been at least half Theon’s, and after his betrayal the poor horses had languished, tended only by stablehands and Arya, when the mood took her.

“Lord Karstark told me that they were free horses, once,” says Sansa. She draws a hand down her stallion’s nose, the hair soft and muscles jumping beneath her palm. “They raced around the Karhold—they were wild and free, and untamed as the wind.”

Jon stares at her. He doesn’t say anything. He rarely does, when Sansa gets in these strange moods. Just looks at her oddly and then keeps on doing whatever he wishes.

“They were made for the North,” Sansa continues. “And the memory of the North has not faded from them. If we let them free, they’ll return to the Karhold, or die trying.”

“A little like you,” mutters Jon. “Dying to go south the first chance you get.”

And just like that, the queer spell is shattered. Sansa glares at him.

“I was born in Winterfell,” she snaps. “Unlike you, who’s the one born in Dorne.”

He only rolls his eyes. “So we’ll cut their bridles, then?”

“Yes,” says Sansa. “Now, eat your breakfast. There are the last of the blackberries—I thought we should finish it off.”

“Insufferable,” says Jon archly, but he doesn’t hesitate to dig into the food. “What’re you going to do?”

“I,” says Sansa imperiously, “am going to go thank Prince Duncan for watching over us.”

She walks away before she can hear his response. Duncan isn’t in his usual place—Sansa’s seen him walking the ruined hallways most often, and, rarely, sitting in the courtyard she and Jon set up camp in—but a little exploring shows him tucked into a shadow of a turret, face upturned to the clouds.

“Prince Duncan,” says Sansa, carefully picking her way over to him.

He turns to her, startled. “Princess Sansa!” His dark hair flops over his eyes, and he shoves it out of the way, looking annoyed. “It has been a long time since someone dared to climb Summerhall’s walls so high.”

“Somehow,” she says gently, “I do not believe you to be such a stranger here.”

“I meant—someone living. Someone with a life to lose.”

“It would have been rude of me to leave without bidding you goodbye.” Sansa shrugs. She’d been careful walking up, Bran isn’t the only Stark with light feet, and Sansa learned stealth at Visenya’s own knee. “I wished to thank you for your kindness and courtesy these past days.”

Particularly because none of the stories spoke of Duncan’s love of duty. Sansa wouldn’t have bothered to ask assistance from him—she certainly hadn’t trusted it—but when he’d offered, she’d been hard-pressed to refuse. And there’s something to his demeanor, Sansa thinks, that reminds her of Jon at his most vulnerable, like someone’s stripped him of some foundational truth to his world, and he’s had to figure out how to keep going even after that.

“This was my wife’s favorite part of Summerhall,” says Duncan abruptly. “The turret had two parts to it—you can see the lower level there—and she would dance here under the moonlight, sometimes, when the blasted Stormlands sky was clear. My sister—Shaera—hated Jenny. They never quite got along, you see, not with Shaera’s ambition and Jenny’s carelessness. But the night that Shaera saw Jenny dance here… it was magical, she said to me, what Jenny could do, and it did not matter that I had caused so much trouble or so much death. She is something precious, Shaera said, and you only did as all the Targaryens before you have done: held onto something lovely, and refused to let it go. I cannot fault you for that. And she began calling Jenny Lady Jenny after that.” 

He turns to Sansa. He looks very little like Shaera or any of his siblings; he’s tall and slim, with loose dark hair that curls at the very ends like his mother’s, Betha Blackwood. But there’s some fire in his eyes, colorless though they are as a ghost, that makes Sansa watch him very carefully.

“Rumors have reached even us of what happened at Winterfell,” he says gravely. “The fall of the Wall. The unbinding of the Starks. You have done great things, Princess Sansa.”

“It was not easy,” murmurs Sansa, “but it had to be done.”

“As such things must be. And now you go to fulfill the debt you owe to my ancestor, Visenya.”

“Yes. Bloodraven told me—to release Rhaenys, her dragon’s bone must be burned. It is in Castle Wyl.”

Duncan nods. “And I wish to tell you—releasing Rhaenys shall not only satisfy Visenya’s oath. If you achieve it, House Targaryen itself shall owe you a debt of gratitude.”

Sansa’s eyes narrow. “Why?”

“I do not know much myself.” He shakes his head. “There was a time when people such as you were revered, and then a time when you were vilified; your powers made you easy targets. The Starks survived because they were beloved, and powerful. But many were not. And blood enchantments are dangerous things… entire families have been attainted in the past.” He pauses, then says, very deliberately, “Will matters in these—situations. Very much.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” says Sansa, bewildered.

Duncan closes his eyes and shakes his head again. “There is not much more I can tell you. Only—be careful, and be watchful. Dorne is treacherous.”

“To Targaryens, perhaps,” she says, frustrated. 

“Precisely,” says Duncan. “Safe travels, Princess. The Boneway shall not be your doom. That much I can see. Beyond that… your path grows murky.” His eyes grow distant. “Moonlight shall be your shield and dawn shall be your sword. From the eldest shall come the oldest. And remember this: the only answer for death can never be death.”

By now thoroughly unnerved, Sansa only nods, and leaves as quick as she can without actually running. Jon awaits her at the base of the ruins, impatiently stamping his feet, and Sansa nods at him before grabbing up her own packs.

“Well?” he asks grumpily. “What did little Duncan have to say? He kept you long enough.”

“To be careful,” says Sansa. “And—other things. That made very little sense.”

And hopefully, she thinks grimly, they’ll keep making no sense.

…

The Boneway is narrow and winding; Sansa can see where it could have broken their horses’ legs, if the sandy soil gave way at the wrong moment. And it certainly isn’t somewhere she’d like to bring armies. The pace of even a leisurely march would have resulted in an intolerable number of casualties.

But for just Sansa and Jon?

Her most pressing worry is their rapidly depleting store of water.

…

They reach the river Wyl, and then it’s a simple process of following it to the sea. Sansa gives thanks that she won’t die of thirst. Jon, she’s rather certain, doesn’t give thanks for anything; he’s rather too busy complaining about everything under the merciless sun. But he also looks better in the south, even with his skin an angry, burned pink and his eyes permanent slits from squinting into the sun. The dreadful weight of responsibility and terror has faded from his shoulders, yes, but something even more than that: Sansa thinks it’s shame.

Nobody knows who he is, out in these empty deserts and mountains. For a boy who’s been alternately branded honorless, useless, and worthless, it must be relieving to have nothing to look up to. No burdens to hoist. Just Sansa’s tasks, and the accompanying gift of clarity.

…

They reach the river and pick their way parallel to its banks. It’s a fortnight and more before it widens into the shallows of an estuary, but Sansa doesn’t mind. She’s having fun humming—a couple ghosts taught her different songs on the way south—and it even has the added benefit of irritating Jon to no end. 

…

When River Wyl finally twists enough for them to see where the river meets the sea, Jon comes to a halt. 

“So that’s it, then,” he says.

Sansa’s eyes narrow. “That’s what, then?” she asks. Then she realizes, and feels very stupid indeed. She waves off Jon’s mocking expression to study the shabby little town and shabbier keep crouched over the estuary like a coiled dragon.

Like a miserable, half-dead dragon, more like, thinks Sansa derisively. 

Because Castle Wyl is battered and worn. If Sansa squints, she thinks she can see where it might have one day been a great castle—there are flat angles to the roofs that suggest soaring turrets now well demolished, like a better cared-for version of Summerhall. Those roofs are now thatched with straw and not stone or even wood; the walls of the keep are old wood, rotting in large enough tracts to be visible even from this distance. Even Castle Black, half-frozen and traitorous as it had been, had been better maintained than this.

“They had the pride to name the castle and the river and the harbor and everything their greedy hands could claim in their own honor,” says Sansa freezingly, “and none of the ability to care for any of it.”

“To be fair,” says Jon dryly, “I think the Wyls that named everything died out a few centuries ago. And it only takes a few lords to let everything go into disrepair.”

“Winterfell could never look like— this.”

“No? The Greyjoys are doing their best, still. And Summerhall looked worse than this.”

The jolt of knowing Jon made the same comparison in his head is enough for Sansa to break out of whatever unnameable rage is filling her stomach. She looks at him, startled, and he grins back crookedly.

“Come on. We can comment better on their failings as lords inside those walls—half of them look like they’ll tip over with the right leverage.”

“Most walls will,” says Sansa tartly, but she does deign to follow Jon down the last gasps of the River Wyl into the castle.

…

 Jon had been right.

Sansa wants to curse. She would curse, she thinks, if she knew the words for it: all she has are vague memories of Brandon—her uncle, not the dozens of other Brandons in her family tree she’s gotten the dubious privilege of meeting recently—swearing liberally, but those memories are tinged with hysteria and no small amount of terror. Really, Sansa hadn’t realized how afraid she’d been until she stopped being so afraid, and she has very little desire to study how the fear had shaped her. It won’t show good things, she suspects. Sansa’s always been rather susceptible to cowardice.

Well, she won’t be going back to that blind terror ever again. 

Even if it means she does something monumentally idiotic in its place.

“Master Sergeant,” she cuts in, eyes carrying briefly to where Jon is pressed against the rough wall by a hefty farmer. She ignores his rolling eyes, desperately trying to get her to shut up, in favor of remembering sitting around a fire in Summerhall: Thankfully, I spent today coming up with a solution to that problem instead of brooding over it for the fifth day running, she’d told him, and meant it. It isn’t her fault that Jon never actually bothered to ask her what the plan was. “My brother and I do not wish for trouble. We are—fleeing the war.”

“Fleeing the war,” growls the sergeant. He’s got a thick Dornish accent, which means Sansa loses valuable time in just deciphering what he’s saying. “A likely story! Who’d want urchins like you around?”

“Urchins?” says Sansa sharply. “Do not tell me that a little mud and dust is enough to fool a member of House Wyl.”

The sergeant’s dark eyes narrow on her. Jon struggles the harder, nearly writhing against the farmer’s grip, but he cannot speak with his mouth mashed into the pine. 

“Who do you claim to be?”

“I never knew my own father,” says Sansa coolly. She ignores the man’s flinch of recognition as a bastard, though she indulges briefly in the satisfaction of having recognized it in him. And thank all the gods that Jon has dark hair, and it even curls like a Dornishman’s, when it isn’t either a notable Stark or Targaryen trait. “But my mother was beloved of a great knight once, and lay with him on the eve of his departure from the Red Keep. She birthed my half-brother three-fourths of a year later.”

“A great knight,” says the sergeant mockingly. “Yes, indeed, if you cannot even name him—”

“—Lewyn Martell,” says Sansa abruptly.

Silence spreads across their little pocket like a pebble dropped into still water. Sansa determinedly does not revel in it. Just watches the sergeant coldly, calmly, crisply.

“You claim,” says the sergeant, now half-strangled, “to be Lewyn Martell’s bastard?”

“Not me,” clarifies Sansa. “Just my brother. My mother went on to… have other relations.”

The sergeant’s jaw works furiously. Sansa lets him think, but assesses Jon separately; he’s staring at her as if he’s never seen her before. She only smiles back, smooth as gooseberry oil, and Jon flushes such a vivid scarlet he wouldn’t be out of place of a Dornish fire festival, where people paint their faces in Martell colors and sing songs to honor and praise Nymeria of Ny Sar.

“You’ve got any proof?” asks the sergeant.

Sansa reaches for the sword at her waist, but when they look at her suspiciously she holds up her hands. “Look at our swords,” she says. “Prince Lewyn gifted them to our mother. Valyrian steel, both of them.”

The sergeant gestures, and someone strips Jon of his sword—he growls, more direwolfish than wolfish, which only serves to ratchet the tension up even higher, the idiot— and hands it off to the sergeant, who takes one look at it before he stares at Sansa, uncomprehending.

“And you come to Castle Wyl?” he whispers. 

Sansa resists the urge to smile, or toss her hair. Both are too likely to be girlish gestures, and she cannot have the sergeant thinking they have more secrets. 

“Yes,” she says. “We were born in King’s Landing—our mother raised us to be part of the Seven Kingdoms, not Dorne. But when Prince Oberyn came to the city last year…”

She slants a look at Jon, who still looks furious. When he realizes everyone’s staring at him, his glare only intensifies. 

“I wanted to see my father’s home,” he bites out resentfully. “And I heard how—bastards are—different—in Dorne.”

Which is a better cover story than Sansa’d been able to come up with. Of course the shame of being base-born would have given them cold feet, until Prince Oberyn swanned into King’s Landing with all his grace and finery and dismissed their concerns as nothing more than wind. She nods at Jon, who doesn’t even look at her—just up, into the sky, avoiding everyone’s eyes.

“You’ll have to come with me,” says the sergeant. 

Sansa tilts her head in acknowledgement, though she keeps her tone inflexible. “Once you’ve been returned my brother his sword.”

“If you turn traitorous, we’ll kill you, Martell or not,” growls the sergeant. 

“And I’ve told you—” Sansa lets a touch of asperity into her voice, “—that we do not intend to kill anyone. We are trying to reach Sunspear. We mean no harm to anyone in Castle Wyl.”

“See that you hold to your word.”

He hands the sword back to Jon, who buckles it silently. Then they’re in, guided through the city—which doesn’t even deserve the name, Sansa notes disdainfully. The streets are randomly narrow and dense, and wide and airy. The city is a mixture of poverty and startling opulence, though Sansa can’t help but see how that opulence is peeling and faded, too; Wyl’s glory days have clearly passed them by.

“Lewyn Martell?” hisses Jon into her ear, as they approach the keep. “Have you gone mad?”

“Hush,” Sansa murmurs back. “I had to tell them something, didn’t I?”

“If they shuttle us to Sunspear—”

“Hush,” she says, a little sharper. “We can talk about this—later. Yes?”

Jon subsides, and they step into the great hall. It’s narrow and poorly lit. The rushes on the floor are old; Sansa can smell stale wine and rotting food. The only thing of worth in the entire hall is a golden mantle wrapped lovingly over a wooden chair: it gleams a rich gold even in the dark.

That, and the ghosts.

They circle the room, faint and insubstantial—not ghosts, she realizes, after a moment, but shades. The remnants of violent or forced death. Sansa cannot speak to them, cannot even interact with them; they are not actual remnants of any person. Visenya had once told Sansa that they were the memories of the stone and the wind. But Sansa hadn't seen them; she's dealt with only ghosts. Sansa is hard pressed to keep from reaching for her knife, or her sword. Castle Wyl remembers what House Wyl has willed to forget. Castle Wyl remembers quite a lot.

And then a man stalks into the room. He’s tall and broad, but his features are soft and rounded—nothing like Sansa’s father and Jon, or even the strong brows and firm jaws of the Martells. His eyes are a cold green, and they sweep over Sansa and Jon with all the disdain his ancestors must have had, once, too.

“My brother tells me that you are Lewyn Martell’s sons.”

“I am, my lord,” says Jon. “This is my—half-brother.”

“To prove your heritage, he gifted you Valyrian steel?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Let me see it.”

“We shall have your word of safety first,” says Sansa abruptly, eyes honing in on the shade of one of the girls, wailing as a sword pierces her breast. She wears a set of braids Cersei Lannister made famous through the Seven Kingdoms—she’s been killed recently, then. After Robert became King, at least. She jerks her head back to look at Lord Wyl. This death must have happened during his reign, or at least during his adulthood. And it had been painful: enough for the stones to remember it. 

“My—word of safety,” repeats Wyl. His eyes are dark and thoughtful when he looks at Sansa. “Not bread and salt of my table?”

I have no wish to consume moldy bread, thinks Sansa spitefully, but only arches her brows back at him.

“Bread and salt only invokes guest rights if we wish to remain under your roof,” says Sansa. “We might not yet choose to stay.”

“An educated bastard!” Wyl’s face goes bright and hard, like diamond flashing in the sunlight. “A rarity in the Crownlands, or so I’d thought.”

“Prince Lewyn was very kind to us,” says Sansa tersely. “Shall you give your word, Lord Wyl?”

“You have it.” Wyl waves a hand carelessly. “Now. The swords?”

Sansa hands over Dark Sister. Outwardly, she must look very calm; she moves smoothly, and calmly, and without even a moment’s hesitation. But inside she is shaking. Wyl doesn’t seem to have made a song and dance of Meraxes’ bone-goblet, but it is here. She knows it is here.

Bloodraven wouldn’t have lied to her about that. 

Or would he? Sansa’d trusted in his honor, but Bloodraven had never been very bothered about it; he’d killed Aenys Blackfire despite assuring him safe passage, and never apologized for any of it. Maybe he’d have lied, and never cared, and laughed about Sansa’s naivete to all his Targaryens brethren the moment he died.

“True Valyrian steel indeed,” says Lord Wyl. He looks over at Jon thoughtfully. “Prince Doran shall have to be alerted. If you are his uncle’s children, he will wish to ensure your safety. You will stay beneath my roof until his response.”

With the implication that, if Prince Doran wishes them disposed of silently, Wyl will be pleased to do so.

Sansa bows instead of baring her teeth. Jon does so as well.

“What names shall I write?”

“Jon,” says Jon, after a moment’s pause. 

Sansa straightens, and folds her hands behind her back in the manner she’d seen Petyr Baelish do, sometimes, in court, when Alysanne warned her that he was lying.

“Sandor,” she says. 

Recognition sparks in Wyl’s eyes. “Like the Lannister’s Hound? An interesting claim, for a Martell.”

Jon clasps her arm, seemingly casually; but there is hidden strength there, enough that Sansa bites back whatever harsh words rise on her tongue. Wyl dismisses them when it’s clear they won’t take the bait, and they go quietly to the room that Wyl’s sergeant—and half-brother, and seneschal, apparently—has prepared for them.

“Was all of this part of your plan?” demands Jon, the moment they’re inside.

Sansa lifts her eyebrows. “Was it in your plan to eat pine dust inside of five minutes of arriving here?”

“We’re trapped,” he hisses. “Do you understand what that means? We are trapped. Prisoners. He’ll kill you the second we become troublesome.”

“Me,” says Sansa flatly.

“You,” says Jon. “I’m the baseborn Martell, but what noble blood do you have? Nothing. Or so they think. Gods, this is…”

“—a mess,” finishes Sansa. “Yes. You’re right. But it’s also the best of a bunch of bad options, is it not? We need to find the cup. You can focus on extracting information from Wyl, if he’s interested in you; I can get it from—other means. And we’ll have until Doran wishes to respond to find it.”

“I don’t even know where to begin searching.”

“It’s not a big castle. I’d bet anything that it’ll be stored in the tunnels beneath. Alongside the rest of the treasures they cannot sell and cannot trumpet.”

Jon frowns at her. “You really don’t like them, do you?”

“Pride’s never attractive,” she sniffs. “And they’re stupid about it, too. It’s hurting their people. That’s the unforgivable crime.”

“Be careful not to show it,” cautions Jon.

Sansa nods at him, and settles in to sleep on one of the two narrow cots the sergeant offered to them. She’ll get to work on figuring out how to find the cup made of Meraxes’ bone in the morning.

…

They settle into a sort of rhythm after a few days: Jon makes his excuses for Sansa, claiming her to be exploring the city, and Sansa ensures she’s visibly loitering around the more disreputable parts for a good while before disappearing into the caverns beneath the castle.

She’d wanted to ask the ghosts for help, but there aren’t any in these halls: just empty, echoing stone. And shades, in the corners, in the hallways, crowding the great hall. But no one who can speak to Sansa.

...

The first few alcoves that Sansa stumbles over are utterly empty, but deeper inside she comes across dust-filled rooms full of eclectic and long-abandoned treasures. There are old swathes of silk and linen, well-preserved in cedar trunks, and old, rusting spears amid dull, bloodstained scabbards and armor. 

It’s as Sansa fingers a faded and unfashionable gown that an idea occurs to her.

Everyone here thinks her a boy: she’d chopped her hair even shorter a few nights in, and Sansa’s been lucky enough to inherit her mother’s tall, slim body; even Lyarra had a larger chest, as per Sansa’s memory, than Catelyn, and Cersei Lannister had been even more buxom. It certainly isn’t as easy to disguise herself now as it had been when Sansa fled King’s Landing, nearly two years ago. But it isn’t impossible, either. Sansa’s voice is low for a woman, and her short hair and height—not to mention her skill with a sword—are enough that nobody questions it, even if the ruse can only last for a few more years.

Which means that Wyl’s spies will be looking out for a red-haired, sword-bearing boy with a King’s Landing accent.

It will be a challenge to get these skirts to fit her—and to flatter her; it won’t do to have people asking questions about the awkward young woman showing up from out of nowhere—but Sansa’s fingers are itching to hold a sewing needle once again, after so long without, and it’s been so long since she last wore something pretty, of her own volition.

She grins, and sets to work.

…

It takes some doing, finagling the silk and the skirts back to their rooms, and even more for Sansa to do it without letting Jon know. But Wyl’s sergeant has taken a liking to him, and they often go out riding during the day; Sansa makes use of his absence to set to work. 

The first few attempts ruin more than a few swatches, but eventually Sansa gets the nimbleness of her fingers back, and within a few weeks she’s managed to construct a pretty gown of a stiff, dark silk that shimmers in the moonlight like something made of water. Getting some accessories for it isn’t very difficult, particularly when Sansa isn’t shy about robbing the Wyls blind—she has less patience than she’d ever imagined for people that lock their treasures away—and the day Jon goes out on a night hunt with the sergeant and Lord Wyl, Sansa gets ready.

The silk gown is not actually a gown—it’s two pieces, a bodice of a pale silk shot through with what looks like genuine silver thread, and a heavy skirt of a dark blue with similar silver embroidery in strange sigils along the hem. But Sansa does take care to cut it in the old style, all high necklines and close-cropped, long sleeves, revealing nothing of her skin. The stiff fabric is at least good for giving the illusion of wider hips and larger breasts than Sansa actually has, and for disguising the breadth of her shoulders, too well-muscled for any proper noblewoman. There’s nothing to be done for her hair, but Sansa tucks a pale veil around her hairline in the fashion of the late Targaryens, of a kind of gauzy, liquid metal that falls in obligingly flattering folds around her jaw, and draws charcoal through her brows to darken them. She straps the knife she’d stolen from the Wyl’s stores to cut the cloth to her waist.

Then she goes into the women’s quarters of Castle Wyl.

Sunspear, Elia had once told her, had been delineated quite strictly; the women’s quarters were banned to the men, and any that entered them without approval from a female sponsor would be summarily banished, if not executed. But Castle Wyl has fewer such restrictions, and fewer people, too.

It certainly isn’t impossible to approach Lady Wyl.

The moon slants through the high windows in the corridors, and Sansa walks down the empty halls silently. She still hasn’t seen Lady Wyl in all this time: the woman is either confined to her quarters, or too sickly to leave. But this castle is Lady Wyl’s inheritance first, not her husband’s. It was her father that was Lord Wyl, and the title came to her husband only through her.

Sansa opens the door silently and slips inside. The moon is full tonight, as it had been when Elia rescinded her oath to the Starks, and it paints the stone of Lady Wyl’s bedchamber silver. Inside, the bedchamber is very different from either Winterfell or King’s Landing: the bed is low to the ground, and circular, and made of delicate whorls of wood that cup brocaded cushions.

Lady Wyl is asleep on the bed. She is not very old—halfway between Sansa’s age, and her mother’s, she suspects—but she does not look very healthy either: her hair is long and dark, but tangled, and the rot of sickness hangs about her almost palpably.

“Zara,” says Sansa, very quietly.

Lady Wyl—Zara—stirs, but she only wakes when Sansa touches her shoulder. When she sees Sansa, her eyes nearly double in size.

“Do not scream,” says Sansa sternly. 

Zara presses a hand to her mouth. “Talyah,” she whispers. 

Talyah. Sansa fights not to flinch. Like her sister? 

The story of the Wyls is not well-known, but Jon had unearthed it when Sansa explained where they were going. Sansa isn’t certain how he found out, still, though she suspects he broke into the maester’s rooms at Summerhall. Lord Wyl—Zara’s father—had three daughters, Jon had told her: Talyah, the eldest, and Zara, and Mariah. They’d been beautiful, according to the maester, each more than the next, and very accomplished.

Talyah had been raised as her father’s heir, to take up the reigns of Castle Wyl, until she sickened two weeks before her wedding day and died. There had been rumors that Zara had killed her, but none of them had been substantiated, and Zara herself had proved to be so weak and apathetic to ruling that the rumors died quickly. Mariah had quickly wedded a cousin very soon after Zara’s own wedding, and left, and though her eldest son was Wyl’s heir, she’d never returned for very long.

“So you do remember me,” says Sansa carefully.

Zara swallows and sits up, but does not blink. “You—you’ve returned? To—here?”

“I never left.”

“But I never saw you before.”

“I did not want to,” says Sansa. She reaches out, and touches Zara’s cheek, very gently. “But you are my sister. I could not bear to see you waste away out of grief.”

“I am sick,” whispers Zara.

“Turn around,” says Sansa, a seed of an idea growing in her.

Zara’s eyes fill with tears. “I don’t want to!”

“I am here,” says Sansa. “And I will not leave you so easily. You will not die of this. Turn around.”

Slowly, Zara turns around.

Sansa reaches for the first oil she can find, in a neat vial on a nearby vanity table, and starts brushing Zara’s hair. Zara goes very still at the first touch, and remains stiff through the entire process, though she does not pull away either.

“Do you remember when we were children?” asks Sansa. “How we used to play? You and me and Mariah…”

“Yes,” says Zara, soundless.

“Tell me about it.”

“We would—dance, in the courtyard,” says Zara, words slow until suddenly they’re coming faster and faster. “Play with Father’s cloak, and Mother’s silks, and—Uncle’s knife. Do you remember when Mariah stole it?”

“Tell me more,” whispers Sansa.

The scent of jasmine oil spirals through the air, heavy and muffling. Sansa’s hands move almost thoughtlessly, braiding what she’d just been brushing. The dark hair slips through her fingers like liquid. Sansa ties it off with a loop of silk, bleached white by the moonlight.

“My husband shut it all away,” says Zara. “He did it. He killed you for your insult, and then he forced Father to wed me to him, and then he killed Father, too. He shut away the gold and the silks and my laughter. Mariah fled instead of submitting to him. And I was left here, all alone.”

Sansa circles around the bed, so she’s kneeling before Zara and not behind her. “You are not alone,” she says softly.

“You left me!”

“You are all that is left. But you carry us in your heart.”

“Empty platitudes,” she cries, “for an empty hearth!”

Sansa reaches up to push aside the silk at her throat, revealing the scars she still bears from her duel with the Night’s Queen. The scars are thick and ugly, knotting from her shoulder down to her breast. 

“I am not unharmed,” she says quietly. “But I am still here, am I not? Where has your husband shut these treasures away, Zara?” asks Sansa. “Tell me. For this night, you shall have your vengeance. Not the silks in your caves. Not the brocade he wishes would rot in the dark. Where are the true treasures? I shall strike a blow such that it will rattle him, down to the marrow of his bones.”

“There is a room,” whispers Zara tremulously. “Below his bedchamber. The entrance is—beneath his bed. He thought it would be safest there.”

“Have heart, then,” says Sansa briskly. She covers her breast again, and rises to her feet. “And remember: your kin are never quite so far as you would believe.”

Just as she reaches the balcony Zara says, quietly, “You are not my sister.”

Sansa turns back to her, and it feels like she’s approaching a gallows. She cannot tell the truth. If Zara recognizes her—but Sansa remembers Lyanna, eyes blazing as she tells Sansa to convey her love to the son she’d held for bare days, and Lyarra, who had held Sansa the one time they’d both been capable of touching each other with all of a grandmother’s rage, and Elia, who had not looked very much like Zara, but still held all her grief and fragility, and Sansa cannot keep silent. Not like this.

“No,” she says softly. “I am not.”

Zara rises from her bed and approaches Sansa, but does not touch her: only sinks down, so she is on her knees, hands raised in the manner that Sansa remembers learning to be Rhoynish in nature.

“Grief is a river which carries me along, but I am the river, too,” whispers Zara. “Hate is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger. Rage is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.” She bends forward until her forehead is pressed to the stone in front of Sansa, who can do nothing other than stand, drenched in moonlight and utterly frozen. “I welcome your vengeance, Mother Rhoyne.”

“Have heart,” says Sansa, soft, again, before she throws herself off the balcony.

…

Lord Wyl’s room is empty, but guarded. Sansa has a fantastic time of slipping onto his balcony from the roof—thank the Seven that they haven’t thatched the roof with slippery stone, it’d be even more of a nightmare to traverse than these wood slats in the brewing windstorm—and once she’s inside, she spends precious breaths just trying to soothe her beating heart. Visenya’s insistence that Sansa practice hauling herself up the branches of the wierwood trees in King’s Landing had its place, clearly. Her arms are burning, but they’d held firm. She should probably have changed out of the gown first, but Sansa’d spent too much time in Zara’s bedchamber to justify the further delay, not when this is the only time Sansa can guarantee Lord Wyl will be absent from his bedchamber in the near future.

The entrance below his bed is laughably diabolical: a wooden trapdoor, in the manner Sansa’s heard of in treasure hunting stories from Essos or pirate fables from her great-grandfather, Rodrik. Sansa doesn’t even have to haul the bed off. She’s small enough to slither beneath the bed, and though it takes some shoving and scraping to get the trap door open, she manages to tumble through that without much difficulty as well.

The treasure room is not quite so large as Zara had implied, but it is very crowded. There are no silks or ornamental daggers made of silver: this is cloth-of-gold, and Valyrian steel, and enormous goblets made of gold and encrusted with gems. If Wyl sold even half this, he could ensure the health and wealth of his land for another three generations.

Sansa snarls under her breath. She isn’t here to make everyone’s lives better, no matter how much she wishes it. And it certainly isn’t her place to command Wyl to give up his family’s inheritance. She’s got a job to do, and far too little time to do it in.

There’s only a vague sense of order to the room, but the goblets are at least all stacked in a corner. They’re quite varied, Sansa determines: some old and faded, others so thick and weighted she suspects someone’s diluted the gold with iron or copper. 

And, tucked into a corner, a small, chipped cup.

When Sansa picks it up, the first thing she notes is its weight—almost disconcertingly heavy—but then she jerks, as she’s assaulted with emotion: the sun, beating down hard on her spine, and the wind of a storm so enormous it could have—should have—swallowed Westeros whole, and the way it felt to slice through an enemy’s neck with claws that shone like diamond, and meat, bloody and raw and warm as it sank down her throat—

Sansa drops the cup.

It clatters to the floor, and the shock of sound is enough to startle her out of her trance. 

“What in the hells was that?” she asks, shaken. 

If that cup is a measure of what dragonbones can do…

But no, because Sansa had held dragon skulls when she was in the Red Keep. Balerion’s, and Meraxes’ as well: bones that Sansa held and touched and marveled at without ever feeling this.

“Something’s wrong,” she mutters, still staring at the cup. She can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s akin to a poisonous snake. “How would—”

Visenya swore a vow to remain until the one she loved the most could move on, Bloodraven had told Sansa. Rhaenys was never lesser than her.

Visenya loved Rhaenys most. Rhaenys loved Meraxes most. Visenya swore to stay so long as Rhaenys still existed, unburned. But Rhaenys had bound her life to Meraxes. No: something deeper than that. Rhaenys swore to stay so long as Meraxes still existed.

Bloodraven had told her. He’d told her, and Sansa still hadn’t realized, because she’s a stupid, stupid girl who’d been too caught up in ensuring the Others didn’t kill them all to really interrogate the man. And now he’s dead, and Sansa’s too far from even his dead body to ask his ghost. 

The Ullers killed Meraxes and then dragged Rhaenys into the Hellholt, where they tortured her for years. Not that the Ullers didn’t suffer for it. They took heavy losses—four Lords were assassinated by the Targaryens in as many years—but the Targaryens also never found Rhaenys. 

Rhaenys was never lesser than her sister.

Visenya bound herself to existence as a ghost. If Rhaenys had received similar tutelage as a child—if she’d learned enough to know how to bind her existence as a ghost to her dragon, amid immense torture and agony—then what is to say that was all she did? There have always been people like Sansa in her past. The Starks just made it a family heritage, secrets passed from lord to heir for thousands of years. What if the Targaryens made it a practice?

Think about it later, Sansa tells herself firmly. 

First she’s got to leave this dungeon treasure room. Then Sansa can collapse into uncertainty and half-baked suppositions. 

“Though that will be a problem,” she murmurs, frowning up. 

Her arms are already sore, and there is no ladder here, only a rope. Climbing it will not be easy.

Not yet. She’d promised Zara, hadn’t she? And a little pain has never been something from which Sansa quailed. But soon.

Gritting her teeth, she rolls the cup up in a loose cloth dug up from the Wyl’s stores, before tucking it into her sleeve. Thus secured, she starts climbing the rope. One step after another, hand over hand, ankles crossed tightly. Not easy, but not impossible.

…

And then she’s out, and crawling onto the floor of Lord Wyl’s bedchamber.

A quick look out the window tells her that it’s almost morning.

Dawn is a time of change.

Sansa could sneak out now, with none the wiser for her intrusion. But she’d promised Zara. And when she approaches the balcony, she can see a rider approaching from the south—the horse has a distinctive Dornish gold coat, and though she can’t be certain with the bright sunlight coloring her vision, she thinks the rider bears the Martell red sun and spear. There’s a knot of horses and men slowly padding toward the stables: Lord Wyl, Sansa suspects, and Jon, back from their night hunt.

Perfect.

Sansa is a dreamspeaker. She is not quite so powerful in the art as some of her ancestors, who had cursed their enemies with nightmares for years on end and bewitched entire armies for long enough to slaughter them. But she is quite good at it. She’d held Winterfell under her spell for a fortnight. All of Winterfell. They hadn’t woken, not to the arrival of the Others, not to the destruction of the Night’s Queen. 

Sansa judges angles. Lord Wyl’s bedchamber isn’t very far off the ground. And it looks out onto the city courtyard where the hunting party and the Martell’s messenger must traverse to enter the keep or the stables. She’ll have to time it right. Just right.

She paces the steps back. Stretches out her arms and knees, so she knows them to be limber, and then touches her veil. That will be the most dangerous part of the charade. If it slips…

Well. She’ll deal with it then.

One breath. Two. Three.

Do not hesitate, Visenya had once told her. Once chosen, choose: and act. The time for thoughts is before, and after, not during.

Sansa runs, and does not think at all.

…

The glass doors to Wyl’s balcony shatter under Sansa’s weight. There’s no time, though, because she leaps from there to the top of the balcony railing and then off that railing, to the ground.

The ground of the central courtyard.

The landing wrenches the breath from her lungs, but Sansa rolls, and does not break anything. She lands on her knees, and keeps her head bowed for a breath, long enough to catalog her injuries—bruises, but nothing broken. Thankfully.

Everything is very still and silent. 

And everyone is very surprised.

For a dream to work, there must be one emotion in people’s minds. Sansa had accomplished it at Winterfell by having Jon bring down the Wall, and using the resulting terror. Now, here, she does not need anything quite so strong. This dream will be shorter, and simpler, and more effective for the truth embedded in it.

“Murderer,” she screeches, turning her voice high and piercing. She reaches out, and weaves her voice to be higher, her dress darker, face more skeletal. “Justice without recompense! Cursed and cursed and cursed once more: once by me, once by my son, once by my daughter! Kinslayer, I name you!”

Lord Wyl staggers as he stares at her, face gone pasty white.

“Talyah,” he says. “How—how is this—no— no! ”

“The river rescinds her blessing,” says Sansa loudly. “And you will burn for your crimes, in your life or in your death.”

And now for the hard part.

The dream has seeped into their vision, into their brains. Which means Sansa has seeped into the people’s minds. Now she snaps it off. It can’t quite achieve much in such small doses—Theon Stark, who’d been the strongest dreamspeaker in Sansa’s lineage, had sometimes caused people to go stark raving mad by infiltrating their minds over the course of months, even years. What Sansa attempts now is the barest shadow of that ability. 

The shock is brief but painful, and everyone flinches, most of the ones near to her entirely collapsing. Which gives her just enough time to flee without anyone realizing where she’s gone.

…

In theory. 

…

In practice, they figure it out quicker than Sansa’d expected, and start cordoning off parts of the city to do inspections. She swears under her breath as she throws herself into the abandoned storeroom where she’s been keeping everything she stole from the Wyls. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She could have gotten away without letting anyone know! But of course Sansa couldn’t—

Move quicker! she shouts at herself. 

Sansa’d spent the past weeks—once she’d determined she’d go through with this idea—laying multiple false trails through the city. She’s bought time for herself with that foresight, but it is, nevertheless, running preciously low.

She tears the veil off with a shower of glass shards, and off come the satin slippers she’d plucked out of the Wyl stores with relish. There’s nothing for it—Sansa can either remove her skirt or the bodice, but not both, not before the guards find her. She chooses to strip off the skirt and to flee the storeroom into the safety of her room, where she shrugs on a heavy surcoat, hopefully enough to hide her breasts and the silk bodice from view, and then hunches over the fireplace, liberally streaking the cloth, her forehead, and the pale silk of the bodice with coal. The sweat coating her face from all the sprinting is unfortunate, but Sansa has a trick for that, too: she reaches out, as once her Uncle Brandon had done to her, and envelopes herself in the chill of death. The room’s temperature immediately plunges, and so does Sansa’s sweat, which congeals and then freezes on her scalp.

One breath, and two, and there’s the knock Sansa’s been waiting for. She releases the chill with the ease of a flex of her wrist, and then a number of people barge into the room without pausing.

She whirls around, hand jumping instinctively to her sword.

The sergeant acknowledges the motion but only scowls at Sansa, hard enough to cause some vessels to burst in his eyes, leaving them as red as Robert Baratheon’s had been in the throes of a drinking rampage.

“What in the name of the Seven is going on?” Sansa demands sharply, only remembering at the last moment to lower her voice from a girlish shriek.

Cold sweat trickles down her spine, but she’s fairly certain nobody can see her trepidation on her face. Her fingers ache. But there’s nothing at the end of her corridor except for empty storerooms—the sergeant had meant to insult them, Sansa’d determined, by giving them such distant rooms from the truly diplomatic suites—so if the sergeant turns in the correct direction after searching the room, Sansa can be certain of her own safety.

“Where have you been this morning?” demands the sergeant.

Sansa stares at him. “Here?” she says, hoping to all that’s holy that she sounds quizzical and not half as duplicitous as it sounds to her ears. “I haven’t broken my fast yet.”

“You haven’t left these rooms at all?” he asks sharply.

“I… went to… the privy,” says Sansa slowly. “Whatever for? Has something happened? Where’s Jon?”

The sergeant glares at her. “We’ll be searching your room. Step outside.”

Meekly, Sansa goes. Jon is outside. He looks even more terrified when he sees Sansa, though a quick jerk of her head seems to calm him a little.

“Why’s your face look—like that?” he asks quietly.

“Looks like what?” returns Sansa loudly, so others can hear. “I was just trying to get a fire going, I was so cold—what’s happening, Jon?”

“We were just returning from the hunt,” he explains, quieter, though his eyes are troubled. “And then suddenly there was this vision—or this woman—who said—many things. To Lord Wyl. He thinks it’s someone who’s still in the castle, but—”

“—you think it was a vision?” asks Sansa. If even Jon couldn’t recognize her…

Well. Her chance of escaping with no one the wiser is getting higher by the minute.

He shrugs. “They won’t stop looking, will they?”

The sergeant stomps out, looking apoplectic. “Clean your face before you come down,” he barks at Sansa, and then stalks back the way he’d come, away to the next room on his list. 

Sansa slips back into her rooms and waits for Jon to enter before closing the door. Then she leans on it, eyes closing with pure relief. Her limbs feel like the wet porridge Old Nan would serve sometimes, all sludge and no muscle.

“Sansa?” asks Jon, alarmed. “Sansa, is—are you alright?”

“It wasn’t a vision,” she croaks, before turning to look at him. Jon’s brows are furrowed, but as she continues, they only climb higher and higher, until they look about ready to crawl into his hair. “It was me. I did—you remember what I did at Winterfell? To get the Greyjoys to sleep? Something like that. Along those veins.”

“You did what?”

“I’ve been digging into the Wyls’ stores of precious things—things they didn’t want to use, or show off—they’ve been in those caverns underground. I stole a couple things and dressed up in the old Targaryen style and went to Lady Wyl. Last night.”

Jon sits down, hard, on the bed. 

Sansa forges on. “She told me her husband killed her sister. And her father. I promised her—to avenge that. And so she told me where he kept all his most treasured items—I got the cup.”

“Are you mad?” he asks.

“Did you hear me? I got the cup.”

“I don’t care,” Jon bites out. “The Martell’s in the keep right now, did you know that? He’s waiting to meet me, to greet his cousin! His father—who is the Prince of Dorne— sent him. And he saw your little play! Along with Lord Wyl! They’ll—”

“—know nothing,” insists Sansa, “if you just trust me—”

“—they’re not stupid! Or blind!”

Sansa exhales sharply and forces herself away from the door. “I swore. To her. You of all people should—”

“Me of all people?” he demands furiously. “What does that even mean—”

“—and,” Sansa goes on, louder, “I have other concerns on my mind, Jon. My focus is on fulfilling my vow to Visenya. Which means laying Rhaenys to rest. Which means traveling to Hellholt.”

“Why would you need to travel all the way there?” asks Jon incredulously. “Just burn the damn thing! Here! Now!”

“I can’t. There are—a dozen things I haven’t told you.”

He balks. “And whose fault is that?”

“You never asked either!” Sansa flares right back.

“Because I thought we were on the same page!” Jon snarls. “I was interrogating Wyl. You were talking to the ghosts. I thought you’d tell me before you went off on some harebrained adventure to pretend to be a ghost yourself, but clearly not.”

Sansa pauses. That makes a disturbing amount of sense. And Jon’s dislike of the dead—and his inability to converse with them—would explain why he hasn’t asked her many questions. It rather pulls the wind out of her sails.

“There aren’t many dead here,” she explains tersely. “I don’t know why. I don’t trust the ghosts that are here, too—there are too many shades. And Bloodraven told me that to release Rhaenys I’d have to walk into the home of traitors and oathbreakers and thieves. It’s creepy.”

“And you didn’t think I should know any of this?”

“We were both busy.”

“That’s not an excuse,” he says furiously. 

Sansa sighs. “You’re right. I should have told you. I’d tell you now—but we don’t have time.”

Jon’s face goes taut and unhappy. “Fine. And—get that coaldust off your face. What could have made you think it was a good idea?”

“It distracted them from this silk, didn’t it?” retorts Sansa, pinching the pretty bodice with her fingers. “And nobody even noticed my chest.”

He makes a pained sound.

“Martell’s going to want to speak to you,” Sansa goes on. “I’ll be fine so long as I’m in the background. Don’t—commit to anything, if you can help it.”

“If I can help it,” says Jon darkly.

Sansa feels herself relax, almost unconsciously, at the acerbic tone. “Yes. I know how demanding the highborn can be.”

“So. Clean up now. Deal with the Martells in a few. And then—”

Sansa nods. “I’ll explain. Tonight.”

…

Jon tells her there are still streaks of black dust in her hair, but Sansa’s scrubbed at her face and hands hard enough to leave them pink and raw; she refuses to do any more when nobody will even bother to look at her apart from an eagle-eyed sergeant. She and Jon both strap their swords to their waists, and duck into the great hall as unobtrusively as they can manage.

But it isn’t Quentyn Martell that’s there, as Sansa had prepared for: it’s a short woman, with long dark hair and an expression in her eyes like a wolf looking for its next meal. She wears a much more formal and dust-free ensemble than what Sansa remembers of her from the courtyard. Lord Wyl looks pale and wan, but also furious; there’s a half-dozen men flanking him, all bristling with steel. His eyes hone in on Sansa and Jon when they approach the high dais.

“Princess Arianne,” he says. “May I present to you the bastards from the Crownlands—Jon and Sandor Waters.”

Arianne nods at them. “Welcome.” Then she turns back to Wyl. “Let us speak in private,” she says. “The antechamber should suffice.”

Once they’re all inside, Arianne arches a brow at Lord Wyl, completely ignoring both Jon and Sansa.

“Those were quite serious allegations,” she says mildly. 

Wyl’s eyes blow wide. “As far as I know, this is still Wyl territory, Princess Arianne. You are here to retrieve two bastard Martells. Nothing more.”

“I’ll address them in a moment—you don’t have any plans to leave, do you?—” Arianne spares Jon only the barest flick of her eyes, and certainly doesn’t wait for a response, before she turns back to Wyl, “—but first: a haunting? How long have you had one?”

“It is,” grits out Wyl, “not your problem.”

“If your response to learning of a haunting is to try to hunt the ghost down with your men-at-arms, we’re in much more trouble than I first thought,” she sniffs. “I’ll repeat: how long have you had one?”

Wyl throws up his hands. “I’m not certain!”

Jon’s hand darts out to grab Sansa’s elbow. Sansa herself doesn’t dare to move.

“You’re not—certain,” repeats Arianne flatly. “Why not?”

“Because that was no haunting,” says another voice.

Sansa turns, feeling vaguely like she’s in a dream. Jon’s nails are digging into her skin, hard enough to draw blood.

Lady Zara Wyl floats into the antechamber like something made of froth and ice. She wears Dornish silks in the time-honored fashion—draped gauzily over her hair, flatteringly bold over her chest and stomach, and elaborately embroidered with geometric designs of glass, silver, and diamond down to the hems of her skirts. Her eyes are hard and bright, and she looks like nothing quite so much as the busts Sansa’s seen of Nymeria herself, bold and incandescent and sharp.

She and Arianne are startlingly mirror images of each other.

“Lady Zara,” says Arianne, looking taken aback. Then she spurs into motion: stepping around her husband to capture Zara’s hands, kissing them gladly. “I had no idea you were recovered from your latest bout of illness. Aunt Mariah told me you were bedridden for—months.”

“Grief and guilt,” says Zara. She turns and coughs, hard, into a handkerchief tucked into her palm, before smiling tersely back at Arianne. “For what miscarriage of justice I have allowed to happen under my roof for too long.”

“You’ll have to explain that,” says Arianne, stepping back. “It isn’t a haunting? We all saw it. In broad daylight.”

“And when last did a ghost appear in broad daylight?” retorts Zara. “This was no ghost. This is like nothing we have seen before.”

“The apparition was certainly—physical—enough to break the window.”

“And to come to me,” says Zara.

She reaches up and draws down her veil. 

This time, it’s Sansa that clutches Jon, not the other way around. Jon’s eyes are wide and nearly bugging out of his head; nobody else seems to know what to say.

“Did you do that?” asks Jon, so quietly it’s a rumble in his chest. 

She shakes her head helplessly, but cannot look away from Zara, who’s dropped her veil to reveal that her braid’s been chopped haphazardly off.

“Who did this to you?” asks Arianne sharply, surging forward.

Zara shakes her off. “I did,” she says proudly. “Look at me—no, look at me.” She holds up something dark and shining—Sansa realizes after a beat that it’s a braid. “I slept in my bed, weeping from a wound that touched my soul. And then I woke to see someone with Talyah’s face standing before me, with a knife of silver and wreathed in moonlight. She brushed out my hair. Told me to have heart, and to have courage, and she touched me, with hands as cold and smooth as riverwater. I prayed for the rest of the night once she left, and she came to me no more, but I knew I must remember her presence. Mark her vision. And so—I cut my hair. Do you remember Druselka’s prophecies? I do, sister. I do.”

Arianne reels away, stunned. She looks to Wyl, who has turned the color of chalk, and then back to Zara.

“You claim—”

“Yes,” says Zara, with relish.

“But why?” asks Arianne. “What could drive the first vision of the Mother Rhoyne in—in thousands of years—to you?”

Jon chokes. He at least has the decency to do it quietly. Wyl’s louder protests mask Jon’s sudden fit. Sansa just wants to melt through the flagstones before someone remembers her presence in the room.

Arianne ignores them all. “To have courage,” she says slowly. “To have courage—for what?”

“To right a wrong done many years in the past.” Zara draws herself up. She’s tall and wraith-like, all bone and skin, eyes large and gold-gleaming. “To speak the truth, when it might well kill me: as it killed my sister and my father three-and-twenty years in the past.”

Lord Wyl jerks forward, as if to silence his wife. But Arianne is between them and whirls, putting her back to Zara so they’re both staring at him.

“Will you silence me, my lord?” asks Arianne, deathly quiet. “I am not quite so meek as my father or brothers, you will find. It is to your misfortune that I chose to heed my father’s letter and not Quentyn. You will let the Lady Wyl speak her mind.”

“She is delusional,” he growls. “Mad, and going madder by the day.”

Zara lays the braid down, reverently, on the table. “The Mother Rhoyne stood before me in a gown of silver and blue: she wore it in the old style, Nymeria’s style. Her skirt had sigils of wrath and fury in silver thread. And she knelt before me, and she asked: ‘Where are the true treasures? I shall strike a blow at him that will rattle him, down to the marrow of his bones.’ And then she broke my husband’s window.”

“Zara,” says Arianne, frustration clear on her face. “If it is only your word against his—”

“—you misunderstand,” she says coolly. “The Mother reminded me, because there has been enough silence. I held my silence that day your father came to me because I was afraid, and because there was no proof. But there is proof. That I learned fifteen years ago.” Her eyes lift, and meet her husband’s, and Sansa sees cold, bare hate in them. “In his hidden treasure room is the shipping manifest that details where he bought the Braavosi poison that killed my father and sister.”

Arianne staggers. Lord Wyl has gone, somehow, even paler, and sweat stands out on his brow.

“Why would he keep that?” asks Arianne, stunned.

“Because he needed it,” says Zara, with savage passion, “to keep the Braavosi traitor that smuggled it out quiet. They tolerate pirates, but do you think the Faceless Men would be glad to know a vial of their infamous poisons is held by a Dornish lord?”

Jon has gone very still. Lord Wyl is staring at Zara like he’s never seen her before. So is Arianne, for that matter.

After a moment, Arianne spins to face Lord Wyl.

“I will see your treasure room myself,” she commands. “I will see this letter, and this poison. And then I will pass your sentence.”

“You are not your father, Princess,” says Lord Wyl quietly. “You are a guest under my roof and under my protection. You have no right.”

“A goddess just broke your balcony doors and cursed you thrice over,” says Arianne flatly. “Your wife accuses you of murder, treason, and conspiracy with a Braavosi pirate, and you think I’ll do nothing? You think too highly of yourself.” Something cold and mean plays across her lips. “Lady Zara, your husband's recalcitrance on allowing me into your private chambers alarms me. Do you protest my request that he be confined to private guest chambers?"

"Not at all," says Zara.

“Wonderful,” says Arianne. Then she turns to Jon and Sansa. “Valyrian blades are old and rare. It is what caught my father’s attention in Lord Wyl’s message. You claim to have two swords?”

“Yes, my lady,” says Jon. “Would you—like to see them?”

Arianne’s eyes rake over Jon. “Yes,” she says frankly. “But not now—tonight. Remain in your rooms until you receive word from me.”

Jon nods, and they flee the antechamber as quickly as possible.

…

Back in their own rooms, Jon takes one look at Sansa’s face and flushes darkly.

“The Mother Rhoyne,” he says.

Sansa buries her face in her hands. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t do anything?”

“Knowing you, you didn’t,” says Jon, voice brimming with dark humor. “You just—forgot how it looks. To meet you. Apparently.”

Well, he’d know. Jon had been half-convinced Sansa was an apparition for far too long, in Sansa’s opinion.

“I was aiming to look different,” replies Sansa tiredly. Then she straightens. “We should leave now, Jon. As quick as possible.”

“For Hellholt? Not before you give me an explanation.”

She winces. “Fine. It isn’t—much, I’ll tell you that. You know the difference between ghosts and shades, yes?”

“Ghosts are the memories of a person. Shades are the memories of the land.” Jon folds his arms over his chest. “You can talk to one and not the other. What’s that have to do with anything?”

“There are shades here, but no ghosts.” Sansa twists her fingers together anxiously. “I haven’t seen any ghosts since we left Winterfell—since I sent our family beyond—except for when we were in the Crownlands. I didn’t think much of it, really, until I held the bone-cup.”

“What happened then?”

“It burned.”

Jon’s eyes sharpen. “Where? Your hand—”

“Not like—that,” says Sansa. “Like… like a memory of fire, and claws, and wings. When I touched it I felt like I was Meraxes. But that’s impossible. I touched her skull in the Red Keep, and felt nothing. Rhaenys must have—done something.”

Visenya had told Sansa that the numbers of Targaryens that stayed behind were one of three categories: either they were left unburned all their lives, or they were utterly mad, or they were more terrified of death than the pain of becoming a ghost. But the bone-cup is proof that the Targaryens did more magics than what Visenya had mentioned to her. And how many people had Visenya charged to come south and deal with Rhaenys? Half-a-hundred people have burned Rhaenys’ bones, but stealing a cup from a house isn’t quite as impossible as Bloodraven had made it out to be, and Visenya had been so satisfied when Sansa promised to release Rhaenys in exchange for her training.

“Blood magic,” says Jon slowly.

Sansa nods. “Visenya was skilled in it. What if Rhaenys was as well? What if there’s more to this than just—burning a cup?”

“All this to hold your vow to a madwoman?” Jon grimaces, but doesn’t look wholly put off either. “The ghosts and shades—are they dangerous?”

“No. Not to me. Not here, at least.” Sansa bites her lip. “But what if it’s a Targaryen thing, all these ghosts? So many of the ones up north had some Stark blood. What if it’s a Targaryen thing as well, to stay back, and that’s why I saw so many in the Crownlands, and so few here?”

“You released the Starks.” Jon reaches out, and grips Sansa’s shoulder, hard, over where the scars still go stiff on stormy nights. “But they were your kin. You owe nothing to the Targaryens.”

Sansa stares up at him for a long moment. Then she pulls away and stalks over to the window. There’s no sun that she can feel, but there is warmth, desert-dry and fresh. 

“I saw your face when I told the sergeant you were Lewyn Martell’s bastard,” she says quietly. “You’ve thought about this before, haven’t you?”

She turns around, in time to see Jon looking surprisingly pitying. 

Not pitiable, thinks Sansa, taken aback. Pitying.

“Of course I have,” he says. “I’d wager any bastard in the rest of Westeros has thought about it, too, if they hear how much better bastards have it in Dorne than the rest of the land. And I was born here. Or so you’ve told me.”

Sansa ducks her head, but can’t quite press back the smile that jumps to her lips. “A tall tale come true for you, is it?”

“The stuff of fables and legends.” Jon shrugs. “But that’s what this whole adventure’s been, from beginning to end, hasn’t it? Joramun and the Horn, Children and the Night’s Queen… a dead queen’s ghost is the least of all of it.”

Sansa frowns back. “If you’d like to stay with the Martells—see how all this plays out—I won’t stop you.”

“I’m not quite so curious as you,” says Jon wryly. “Not that it matters much. I promised Robb to watch over you, and I’ve seen how much trouble you get into over things that should be really very simple. We’ll go to Hellholt. But not now: there’s going to be people watching the stables. Better to wait until some of this ruckus dies down.”

“Robb asked you to watch over me?” Sansa asks, blinkingly owlishly. “When? I never told him my plans!”

“Before you decided to leave,” says Jon. “In case you did get in trouble again, and he couldn’t stop you because of his—kingly duties. They do love you, you know. All of them. Even if you’ve grown up without them, and they can’t quite understand you.”

“Mother would’ve stopped me. That’s why I didn’t tell her.”

“And Robb would have too. But he was also smart enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to stop you.”

Sansa swallows. Hard. She hadn’t thought—hadn’t considered—

“Rest,” says Jon gently. “And think about it. We’ll leave as soon as we get a chance.”

…

Sansa doesn’t sleep well, but that isn’t a surprise: she rarely does. Her dreams are plagued with echoes of her mother’s laughter and her father’s hands, warm on her shoulders, sun-warm and sun-large. Lyarra’s eyes gleam out of Arya’s eyes, colorless and harsh. Brandon’s hair looks like Rickon’s in the right light, and the way he collapses into a chair at the end of a long day is all Robb. A thousand ghosts live in Sansa’s history, and too many of them are her kin.

She wakes silently. Jon is napping too, and Sansa doesn’t want to ruin his sleep: she’s never screamed without choosing to scream before, and she doesn’t intend to start now.

…

That night, Arianne Martell visits them in their own chambers. 

“Someone just tried to poison me,” she states bluntly. “And I have no allies in this castle as of yet. I need a bodyguard.”

“A—bodyguard,” repeats Sansa.

Arianne nods impatiently. “You are the latest entrants into Castle Wyl, and are my kin—closer than Lord Wyl and Zara, even.”

“So you believe us to be your grand-uncle’s children?” asks Jon, rising to his feet. He looks blank, but if Sansa focuses, she thinks she can see amusement hidden in his eyes.

“You’ll be named his heirs if you accept. I’ll ensure it.”

Sansa folds her fingers over the pommel of Dark Sister. “What was the poison?”

“Nightshade,” Arianne supplies succinctly. 

“You need a food tester, then,” she comments. “Not a bodyguard.”

“I need both,” says Arianne. “But for now, one shall have to suffice. Lord Wyl was very effusive about your skills with your swords. Do you accept?”

Jon raises his eyebrows to Sansa, who sighs and nods. “Go on, then,” she says. “I was tiring of wandering around the town without anything to do anyhow. We can trade off—a quarter-day each shift?”

“Seven hours,” corrects Jon. “Less easy for outsiders to track.”

Sansa grins. “You have the first shift, then.”

…

Quentyn Martell arrives from Yronwood with a coterie of courtiers. Sansa, guarding Arianne, is given an intimate view into the relationship between the Martell siblings: the tension that sings between them like a plucked harpstring, and Arianne’s flaring hate, matched only by her brother’s blank confusion.

“May we speak in private?” he asks, once the formalities are completed.

Arianne guides him into the antechamber, and Sansa follows—she won’t leave Arianne until dismissed. Once inside, Quentyn looks at Sansa questioningly.

“My personal bodyguard,” says Arianne. “One of our great-uncle’s bastard children.”

Quentyn’s brows raise as he surveys Sansa’s bright red hair and pale skin.

Arianne’s smile turns toothy. “The half-brother of our cousin. They’ve been protecting me tirelessly since I put our other cousin under guard.”

“I heard of that,” says Quentyn. He shakes his head as if to focus, and then glares at Arianne. “Have you gone mad?”

“Don’t dance around the subject, brother,” says Arianne coldly.

Quentyn scowls. “Father’s furious. That letter was addressed to him, not to you—and then you left Sunspear without word to anyone. And then you all but shattered relations with House Wyl for generations—”

“—reacted to a murder charge, you mean—”

“—and now you’re saying you acknowledged Lewyn’s bastards? Without proof?”

Arianne studies him. “I did what I had to do,” she says, tossing her head haughtily, “to hold onto my birthright.”

“Your—birthright?” Quentyn falters. “What are you—”

“As the heir to Dorne and our father.” She surges forward, prowling like a large jungle-cat, all teeth and carefully angled motions. “When he wishes instead for you to be his heir. But I will not be so easily pushed aside. New allies must always be approached with the greatest haste, is it not?”

“You’re talking madness,” says Quentyn, eyes wide. “Father has never once—”

Arianne laughs. “Do not lie to me now, little brother, or I’ll really lose my temper.”

“I’m not lying!”

“I am Dorne’s heir,” says Arianne. “And I know what I shall have to do to consolidate my control.”

“Control—” Quentyn looks like he’s at the end of his rope. “Arianne. I promise you: I am not attempting to become Prince. Father wants me to go to Essos after this.”

“I know,” she hisses. “To drum up support with sellswords.”

“No!” he snaps. “To bring Daenerys Targaryen to Dorne. To wed me.”

“—what?”  

Quentyn stops, staring. Then—“Father never told you?”

Arianne averts her face, so she’s looking in Sansa’s direction and not Quentyn’s. She’s silent for a long moment. Sansa cannot tell at all what she’s thinking, despite Arianne’s usually-expressive face.

“It little matters,” she says finally. “What will you do with the little Targaryen, Quentyn? Wed her? Set her on the Iron Throne and become King of the Seven Kingdoms?”

Quentyn flushes uncomfortably. “Father sent Uncle Oberyn to betroth you to Viserys. But then he died, and Daenerys was married, so he must have wanted to keep it quiet. Once plans changed, I mean.”

“I shall still be our father’s heir, then,” says Arianne. Her hands clench on the back of the wooden chair. “And it changes nothing: I say again, I know what I must do to consolidate my control. Lord Wyl’s flagrant violation of the law led to the first vision of the Mother Rhoyne since Druselka’s prophecies.”

“To Zara?” asks Quentyn, shoulders slumping. “You know the poor woman is sick—she’s been ill since forever. You can’t use her as your only witness.”

“And what of me?” asks Arianne softly. 

“What of you?”

“I saw her too,” she says. “She broke every pane of glass in Lord Wyl’s balcony doors, landed in the entrance courtyard with dawn-light scouring the city, and in broad daylight she named Wyl a kinslayer thrice over. Many people saw her, not just one, and it was the same description Zara gave to me later. This is real. And just because you and our father are content to sit in the Water Gardens and play cyvasse and drink wine instead of reacting to the first true vision of the Mother Rhoyne since Nymeria herself—does not mean that I am not!”

Quentyn looks flabbergasted. 

Arianne smiles thinly. She looks very much like her aunt Elia when she does so.

“I’ve examined the Wyls’ treasure room and saw the shipping manifest that Zara had mentioned to me. The Braavosi pirate who smuggled the poison out will meet warrants in any of the Free Cities he next docks at, and I’ve sent missives to the Faceless Men to retrieve what’s left of their poison.” She nods briskly at Quentyn’s continued silence. “For the prompt notice, they have forgone any blood-claim they had for Lord Wyl; his sentencing shall be at our father’s pleasure. I also sent ravens to Mariah. She and her family are currently on their way from Sunspear to assist Zara in the aftermath and reconstruction of House Wyl.”

The Faceless Men are on their way here. Sansa remembers, barely, and only very distantly, Arya taking lessons from a Braavosi tutor in dueling. And the Faceless Men are supposed to be even more skilled. Not to mention their penchant for disguising themselves. I’ve got to get out of this city.

Jon’s been pushing to wait until they can steal a few horses without making any waves, and then he’d been concerned for Arianne—they’d promised to be her bodyguards, and it wasn’t the best move, he’d insisted, to flee into the night—but they can’t wait any longer. They’ve been delayed for long enough.

Sansa nods to Arianne, bows stiffly in their general direction, and leaves, ostensibly to find Jon.

…

He agrees when she explains the situation to him. They sneak out to the stables that night, their packs strapped to their backs, and take two horses. They’re almost out the gate when—

“Well, well,” says Arianne, stepping out of the darkness, eyes gleaming. “What urgent business do my favorite cousins have tonight?”