A Storm of Swords

Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, her father, her mother, even Septa Mordane. All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now.

Her lord husband was not beside her, but she was used to that. Tyrion was a bad sleeper and often rose before the dawn. Usually she found him in the solar, hunched beside a candle, lost in some old scroll or leatherbound book. Sometimes the smell of the morning bread from the ovens took him to the kitchens, and sometimes he would climb up to the roof garden or wander all alone down Traitor’s Walk.

She threw back the shutters and shivered as gooseprickles rose along her arms. There were clouds massing in the eastern sky, pierced by shafts of sunlight. They look like two huge castles afloat in the morning sky. Sansa could see their walls of tumbled stone, their mighty keeps and barbicans. Wispy banners swirled from atop their towers and reached for the fast-fading stars. The sun was coming up behind them, and she watched them go from black to grey to a thousand shades of rose and gold and crimson. Soon the wind mushed them together, and there was only one castle where there had been two.

She heard the door open as her maids brought the hot water for her bath. They were both new to her service; Tyrion said the women who’d tended to her previously had all been Cersei’s spies, just as Sansa had always suspected. “Come see,” she told them. “There’s a castle in the sky.”

They came to have a look. “It’s made of gold.” Shae had short dark hair and bold eyes. She did all that was asked of her, but sometimes she gave Sansa the most insolent looks. “A castle all of gold, there’s a sight I’d like to see.”

“A castle, is it?” Brella had to squint. “That tower’s tumbling over, looks like. It’s all ruins, that is.”

Sansa did not want to hear about falling towers and ruined castles. She closed the shutters and said, “We are expected at the queen’s breakfast. Is my lord husband in the solar?”

“No, m’lady,” said Brella. “I have not seen him.”

“Might be he went to see his father,” Shae declared. “Might be the King’s Hand had need of his counsel.”

Brella gave a sniff. “Lady Sansa, you’ll be wanting to get into the tub before the water gets too cool.”

Sansa let Shae pull her shift up over her head and climbed into the big wooden tub. She was tempted to ask for a cup of wine, to calm her nerves. The wedding was to be at midday in the Great Sept of Baelor across the city. And come evenfall the feast would be held in the throne room; a thousand guests and seventy-seven courses, with singers and jugglers and mummers. But first came breakfast in the Queen’s Ballroom, for the Lannisters and the Tyrell men — the Tyrell women would be breaking their fast with Margaery — and a hundred odd knights and lordlings. They have made me a Lannister, Sansa thought bitterly.

Brella sent Shae to fetch more hot water while she washed Sansa’s back. “You are trembling, m’lady.”

“The water is not hot enough,” Sansa lied.

Her maids were dressing her when Tyrion appeared, Podrick Payne in tow. “You look lovely, Sansa.” He turned to his squire. “Pod, be so good as to pour me a cup of wine.”

“There will be wine at the breakfast, my lord,” Sansa said.

“There’s wine here. You don’t expect me to face my sister sober, surely? It’s a new century, my lady. The three hundredth year since Aegon’s Conquest.” The dwarf took a cup of red from Podrick and raised it high. “To Aegon. What a fortunate fellow. Two sisters, two wives, and three big dragons, what more could a man ask for?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

The Imp’s clothing was soiled and unkempt, Sansa noticed; it looked as though he’d slept in it. “Will you be changing into fresh garb, my lord? Your new doublet is very handsome.”

“The doublet is handsome, yes.” Tyrion put the cup aside. “Come, Pod, let us see if we can find some garments to make me look less dwarfish. I would not want to shame my lady wife.”

When the Imp returned a short time later, he was presentable enough, and even a little taller. Podrick Payne had changed as well, and looked almost a proper squire for once, although a rather large red pimple in the fold beside his nose spoiled the effect of his splendid purple, white, and gold raiment. He is such a timid boy. Sansa had been wary of Tyrion’s squire at first; he was a Payne, cousin to Ser Ilyn Payne who had taken her father’s head off. However, she’d soon come to realize that Pod was as frightened of her as she was of his cousin. Whenever she spoke to him, he turned the most alarming shade of red.

“Are purple, gold, and white the colors of House Payne, Podrick?” she asked him politely.

“No. I mean, yes.” He blushed. “The colors. Our arms are purple and white chequy, my lady. With gold coins. In the checks. Purple and white. Both.” He studied her feet.

“There’s a tale behind those coins,” said Tyrion. “No doubt Pod will confide it to your toes one day. Just now we are expected at the Queen’s Ballroom, however. Shall we?”

Sansa was tempted to beg off. I could tell him that my tummy was upset, or that my moon’s blood had come. She wanted nothing more than to crawl back in bed and pull the drapes. I must be brave, like Robb, she told herself, as she took her lord husband stiffly by the arm.

In the Queen’s Ballroom they broke their fast on honeycakes baked with blackberries and nuts, gammon steaks, bacon, fingerfish crisped in breadcrumbs, autumn pears, and a Dornish dish of onions, cheese, and chopped eggs cooked up with fiery peppers. “Nothing like a hearty breakfast to whet one’s appetite for the seventy-seven- course feast to follow,” Tyrion commented as their plates were filled. There were flagons of milk and flagons of mead and flagons of a light sweet golden wine to wash it down. Musicians strolled among the tables, piping and fluting and fiddling, while Ser Dontos galloped about on his broomstick horse and Moon Boy made farting sounds with his cheeks and sang rude songs about the guests.

Tyrion scarce touched his food, Sansa noticed, though he drank several cups of the wine. For herself, she tried a little of the Dornish eggs, but the peppers burned her mouth. Otherwise she only nibbled at the fruit and fish and honeycakes. Every time Joffrey looked at her, her tummy got so fluttery that she felt as though she’d swallowed a bat.

When the food had been cleared away, the queen solemnly presented Joff with the wife’s cloak that he would drape over Margaery’s shoulders. “It is the cloak I donned when Robert took me for his queen, the same cloak my mother Lady Joanna wore when wed to my lord father.” Sansa thought it looked threadbare, if truth be told, but perhaps because it was so used.

Then it was time for gifts. It was traditional in the Reach to give presents to bride and groom on the morning of their wedding; on the morrow they would receive more presents as a couple, but today’s tokens were for their separate persons.

From Jalabhar Xho, Joffrey received a great bow of golden wood and quiver of long arrows fletched with green and scarlet feathers; from Lady Tanda a pair of supple riding boots; from Ser Kevan a magnificent red leather jousting saddle; a red gold brooch wrought in the shape of a scorpion from the Dornishman, Prince Oberyn; silver spurs from Ser Addam Marbrand; a red silk tourney pavilion from Lord Mathis Rowan. Lord Paxter Redwyne brought forth a beautiful wooden model of the war galley of two hundred oars being built even now on the Arbor. “If it please Your Grace, she will be called King Joffrey’s Valor,” he said, and Joff allowed that he was very pleased indeed. “I will make it my flagship when I sail to Dragonstone to kill my traitor uncle Stannis,” he said.

He plays the gracious king today. Joffrey could be gallant when it suited him, Sansa knew, but it seemed to suit him less and less. Indeed, all his courtesy vanished at once when Tyrion presented him with their own gift: a huge old book called Lives of Four Kings, bound in leather and gorgeously illuminated. The king leafed through it with no interest. “And what is this, Uncle?”

A book. Sansa wondered if Joffrey moved those fat wormy lips of his when he read.

“Grand Maester Kaeth’s history of the reigns of Daeron the Young Dragon, Baelor the Blessed, Aegon the Unworthy, and Daeron the Good,” her small husband answered.

“A book every king should read, Your Grace,” said Ser Kevan.

“My father had no time for books.” Joffrey shoved the tome across the table. “If you read less, Uncle Imp, perhaps Lady Sansa would have a baby in her belly by now.” He laughed… and when the king laughs, the court laughs with him. “Don’t be sad, Sansa, once I’ve gotten Queen Margaery with child I’ll visit your bedchamber and show my little uncle how it’s done.”

Sansa reddened. She glanced nervously at Tyrion, afraid of what he might say. This could turn as nasty as the