We are outlaws. So what? We are everywhere and nowhere.We are like shadows on the roads, we are circles on the water...
(c) Chancellor Gi
Unexpectedly, as if by magic, Serovodye appeared before the three horsemen, unusual for such a quiet castle shrouded in fog. In the courtyard, the king and his daughters were greeted by Howland Reed and his son, followed by his retinue, and there was not a single woman in the entire courtyard, as if instead of Serowodye, Lionel, Sansa and Arya had arrived at the Moat Cailin, occupied by a garrison in accordance with wartime regulations. To add to the strangeness, Howland Reed led Lionel under an archway near the front door and presented him with a cup, which Lionel took for a strange northern custom, but Sansa and Arya recognised with alarm as a hasty attempt to take the young king under the protection of the laws of hospitality.
"Whoever is found guilty will not feel guilt, and whoever is found innocent will bear the burden," recited Howland, whom the entire North considered a strange man. "Consider this a small and simple prediction of the future."
After these words, the women finally appeared in the courtyard, and Howland's wife, Reeda, and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Mira, who resembled a grown-up Arya in her hunting attire, came out to greet the guests.
"I still like you, my lord," Mira declared boldly, as if everyone else was shying away from Lionel and there was no one else to be jealous of.
"You say that as if you've already seen the worst of me," Lionel replied with a smile.
"Of course," admitted the fearless Mira. "My brother often has strange dreams where you have light hair. Compared to those dreams, that's your bad side," she said. "She's very nice."
"I often have dreams that don't come true," admitted Joyen Reid, Mira's brother. "And the ones that do come true are rarer. The most annoying thing is that until they come true, you can't tell them apart. And there are some that contradict each other. In one, Balen Greyjoy's daughter is called Asha, and in another, Yara, I've already forgotten what her real name is. In one, Lord Eddard's steward's daughter, Jeyne Poole, leaves with Lady Sansa for King's Landing, and in another, she doesn't even appear.
"She's there," Sansa reassured the confused young man, whom Gilly Reed, Howland's wife, had already told about how the boy had contracted swamp fever as a child and since then had developed unusual talents and a vivid imagination. Meanwhile, Arya learned from Howland Reed himself all about Robb's victorious campaign, his minor injury, and very few losses. "Jeyne is still in King's Landing.
"And she really lived in the same room with you?" Sansa asked Joyen, and even Arya thought that the rumours were true, that the Reeds were strange after all. Lionel found this assumption amusing, and Sansa was a little embarrassed — it was a great idea, and Sept Mordein was probably regretting now that it hadn't occurred to her, but both Sansa and Lionel were much better off as things were. And of course, it was Lionel's cheerful look at Sansa that caught her eye, making her feel even more embarrassed.
"But he tells great scary stories about the ghouls beyond the Wall and the Bolton bastard, and they don't contradict each other because they never repeat themselves," Mira shared. "You won't like the ones about the Bolton bastard, I want to kill him myself, but the ones about the ghouls are really good.
"Do you have dreams about dragons?" Arya asked, for some reason.
"There's a whole series about dragons," Mira replied for her brother, she was much more talkative. "But not about the ones that were, but about the ones that supposedly are. In the last part, they burned the slave traders, I liked that."
The stories told after dinner by the fireplace, which were either true or imagined, about dragons and the young princess Deni, who was determined, noble and yet a little silly, were just what was needed, despite their implausibility. Wanderings and battles change people quickly, and so the young Ridas at home were surprised at which parts of the story their guests found unbelievable.
"So you believe in dragons being born from funeral pyres," said Mira cheerfully. "You believe that a girl came out of a fire with her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes intact. But you can't believe that she persuaded her wounded husband to be treated by the witch she saved?"
"There are dragons, I've even seen their skeletons in King's Landing," Arya objected. "But I don't even know how crazy you have to be to teach someone who has been fighting for years how to heal wounds."
"You're one to talk," Lionel wanted to tease, remembering how Arya had suggested that Thoros put mud on his wounded hand, but he thought it would be unfair, since Arya hadn't insisted, she had just said it to start a conversation.
"And the khal himself let himself be persuaded, no one will believe that," Sansa agreed with her sister and glanced at her Leo: he wouldn't let anyone persuade him if he knew how. With Leo, she felt free and safe, like in a castle: inside the walls, you could go wherever you wanted, and when you reached the wall, you wouldn't try to move it, because what was the point? And anyway, a castle without walls was a misunderstanding of some kind, just a village.Everything in Serowodye is unusual, not only the road leading to it and the appearance of the castle, but also the castle itself: there are so many corridors and turns that anyone but the owners would get lost. When Lionel was being shown to his room, he really didn't want Sansa and Arya to be led somewhere else at the next crossroads of corridors, as if he was afraid of getting lost and not being able to find them, but that didn't happen. On the contrary, they were given adjoining rooms, contrary to all rules of propriety. Lionel's room was warm, which was unusual after so many weeks of travelling, and very welcome: Sansa came to him almost immediately through the door connecting their rooms, as if they were already married, and in the flickering candlelight, Lionel took off not only Sansa's jacket, but also the simple shirt underneath. Sansa didn't need lace and expensive lingerie to be beautiful; Leo's heart was already beating fast and joyfully, and his eyes couldn't get enough of her, so Sansa even felt a little embarrassed: she had sat down so boldly on his lap that there was nowhere to hide now. But then her embarrassment passed, at the most unexpected moment, when Leo took her by the shoulders and began to kiss her breasts: she could have burned with shame, especially when she realised what Leo had been hinting at all this time, moving his lips down her neck to her collarbone, but even at the thought that now even a single kiss on her neck or a nibbled earlobe would mean this, there was no shame, only heat. And afterwards there was no embarrassment when his hand found its way into her trousers and Leo kissed her lips, running his tongue over them. He loved to see her face at moments like this, to feel her body respond to him, to hear her loud, ragged breathing. He even pulled her towards him so he could see her whole body, as if she were floating above him: her untied trousers, slightly pulled aside at the front by his hand, her thin waist, her small, young breasts, from which he sometimes tore himself away, her bare shoulders covered with red hair, her graceful neck, the soft line of her chin, and her cool lips parted to meet him.
Sansa only realised what Leo was looking at her like that when he had to pay for his hooliganism and she lost herself for too long with her tongue on his chest, finally pressing her body against his, not her jacket against his. Leo liked this punishment; it did not deter him from future acts of hooliganism, quite the contrary. He would have even done it again right then and there, but Sansa slipped out of his bed and left, picking up her clothes, feeling that she could not stay: not only would she stay to sleep, but she would allow him to do everything else. It was better this way: they had both grown accustomed to the fact that their wedding night was dragging on, they were gradually getting to know each other, bonding over memories of what had happened for the first time, and Leo, as the older one, had already begun to think about things he would never have thought about in the usual rush of the first night of marriage and the fever of the following nights: he now wanted to find a sensible master from a large family, at least Luwin in Winterfell, and talk about when the birth of an heir to the throne would not be too great a risk for Sansa. And Leo knew that until then, he himself would be a big target.
Leo woke up in the middle of the night and thought that Sansa had picked up on his thoughts, which sometimes visited him at night, and that she had sneaked in for more. It was a good thing that he didn't immediately agree to communicate in sign language, or rather, that he quickly stopped when Arya appeared in his bed.
"Stop!" Arya demanded in a loud whisper, although if the half-asleep Lionel had thought about it, he would have realised that just three weeks ago she would have either killed him or not spoken to him for ten days.
"Today, when I was talking about dragon skeletons, I remembered something important," Arya said, sitting down on her heels next to Leo. "Then I forgot, but now I woke up and remembered again. I overheard Varys talking in the dungeons. He's a traitor."
Lionel listened to the story of how Varys wanted to sacrifice Lord Eddard for the sake of state stability, and immediately believed it, not only because Arya told it, but also because the truth about Lionel's family that Varys had mentioned and which had been unknown at the time was now known to him and Arya, so she faltered at this point in the story, although up to that point, the part about catching cats had been so funny that even the mention of Arya stumbling upon Cersei with her younger children hardly scratched Lionel.
"Varys has been arrested," Lionel reassured Arya when the story ended.
"That's not enough," Arya said harshly. "He must not be allowed to go free. And he needs to be talked to — the way you talked to Lorch."
Lionel often thought of Arya as a child, and she was, but her character had already formed, and Lionel could also see that she was much tougher than her sister. While he wanted to protect Sansa from the harsh world, in Arya's case, he sometimes wanted to protect the world from her. Of course, he also pitied and cherished her, but he had a feeling that if Arya had a hard life, the world would pay for every tear she shed with rivers of blood. Not that the world would be any better off if Lionel had to take serious revenge for her wrongs, but at least he would have had a clear conscience. As a man and as a monarch, Lionel was obliged to prevent anything like that from happening in Westeros, and for that, Arya had to be happy and always safe.
"I'm going to sleep now," Arya muttered and, through the encroaching sleep, rubbed her cheek against Lionel's bare chest: if he was going to fulfil his royal duties, he would do so diligently and well. "Write a letter to King's Landing."
But Arya wouldn't let him light a candle, either, either because she was embarrassed by her nightclothes or because she was afraid that Sansa or someone else would see the light in Lionel's room in the dead of night.
"Listen, you can't write a letter in the dark," Lionel explained patiently and wrapped Arya in his blanket. "If you want, go write it yourself, and I'll seal it."
"Father didn't believe me," Arya reminded him. "What difference will it make now?" And Arya bit her tongue, remembering the new argument that proved she was right.
"Well, what should I write?" Lionel tried to refuse. It was not easy for him to write to Lord Eddard, to whom he felt guilty. "That you heard it from her and that it sounds true?"
"Don't write about me, write that you heard it at Howland Reed's house," suggested the cunning Arya, who had already brought paper and a pen, nearly getting tangled up in the blanket on the way and almost falling to the floor with a crash. "Holden Reed knows many things that no one else knows; his father always believes him."
Lionel paused briefly over the paper, wondering whether to apologise at the beginning or the end, but Arya got her way and cheered up, sitting down next to him on the bed.
"Listen, did you understand the part where Loras Tyrell takes his sister to court?" Arya asked slyly, as if a little imp had possessed her. "The girl is sweet, beautiful and obedient." Don't you regret leaving now?
Lionel tried to catch Arya in response, since she herself had brought up the subject, but Arya rolled away from him on the bed with the blanket and fell onto the floor.
"I'm naughty," said Arya, peeking out from behind the bed, and Leo noticed that the blanket was still on the floor and Arya's shirt was much too big for her, even indecently so. "I'm warning you right now.
The castle following the ravine of Kaylin welcomed the young king just as Reed had welcomed him at first: the entire court was full of guards, Lionel quickly got to know all the men of the family, who welcomed him warmly, as if they were already proud of their monarch, even though he had not yet officially taken office, and there were no women to be seen either in the courtyard or in the castle. Lionel initially attributed this to northern customs, although he remembered from his first trip that these customs were not the same, and not only in Winterfell. Only later did he notice that Sansa and Arya were the only women at the table, and even Arya, who loved to fight with boys and listen to the conversations of armoured warriors, felt a little uncomfortable, no matter how hospitable the hosts were. The hosts and their entourage were indeed cheerful, constantly proposing toasts to the guests, as at a wedding feast, and telling jokes, some of which were borderline offensive, others incomprehensible. A story about a squire told by a border knight caused particular merriment. The knight said that the squire, who had once served a knight, rode a donkey, knew a lot of funny sayings, and both he and the donkey were lazy and gluttonous.
"I tell you, noble sirs," said the border knight. "If you hang two bundles of hay in front of this grey beast, one a little closer and the other a little further away, he will inevitably eat the one that is closer so that he doesn't have to stretch a couple of inches, and then he will start on the one that is further away.
"I'd like a squire like that, who eats hay," said someone sitting lower down, "you can't feed my horse."
"Once, I deliberately hung two bundles at the same distance in front of his muzzle," continued the storyteller. "He would jerk his head this way and that, unable to make up his mind. I thought either his head would come off or he would die of hunger.
"How can noble sirs conclude that a donkey is a stupid animal?" interjected the master's jester. "It would be much smarter not to think about it and just pull from one bundle and then the other."
The story and the moral drawn from it by the jester brought the whole table into unexpected delight, and they even threw whole turkey legs at the jester, as if in punishment and reward for his well-spoken boldness.
At the end of the evening, Lionel, Sansu and Arya were escorted to their rooms by the host and his sons, and the rooms were again next to each other, and the host slipped Lionel a letter as a farewell.
"Sent by the Reeds, read it at your leisure, sire," said the northern lord familiarly, patting the young king approvingly on the shoulder, as if he had just won a good tournament. "Well, someday, if you ever have the leisure."
Entering his room, Lionel saw that all three rooms were connected again, and at the sight of the two doors in the corners of his room, he remembered the story about the squire and the donkey, but he never got to the meaning of it or the letter because Sansa came to him again. This time, Sansa's shirt disappeared more quickly because Lionel already knew that Sansa would allow it, and Sansa lingered a little longer, quietly getting used to the fact that Leo would see her like this very often, and not always before something that was not yet allowed. Leo took the letter from the bedside table, smiling at the fact that Sansa was not so jealous, and even the letters to Leo lying in plain sight did not seem to catch her eye, and he stopped smiling when he saw the sun pierced by a spear on the seal.
"Greetings, my king," wrote Prince Oberyn. "You know that I never addressed your father in this manner, and you know why. But now I can only regret that the Mountain did not fall to me alive." However, I heard stories about how he died, and every time I remembered you with kind words, so that many kind words have accumulated. And besides, I will get Lorch one way or another — let us consider your letter about him a true peace treaty between the Martells and the Baratheons.
Of course, you know that the whole kingdom praises you and speaks ill of you, and not only for this. It seems that we are destined to have a similar fate: I have always been loved by men and hated by all women, except those who ended up in my bed. I could never understand this, for I was a rival to men and a generous friend to women, so it would have been wiser for men to fear me and for women to seek my company. And yet, it is a fact that both my daughters and Ellaria, though they wield a spear as well as any man, find it somewhat burdensome that my presence condemns them to be the only ladies within a hundred yards, and even without me, they are not much better off. I can bet that now no noble lady will be found in the same room with you, a bigamist and a seducer, and she will hide her daughters from you — and the knights and lords will show the nobility of their souls and congratulate you on your success, although if what I have heard about Stark's daughters is true, is true, all men would envy you terribly. You may not notice the change, but if your girls get bored, come and visit me — mine will take them in."
"Leo," Sansa suddenly called out to him. He turned and forgot about the letter for a moment, and probably even went deaf — there is little that can be more captivating than a young, beautiful girl wearing only trousers, certainly not letters from cunning forty-year-old men.
"You're not listening to me," Sansa said cheerfully and wrapped her arms around Leo, as if that would make him listen better and restrain himself more easily. "Please don't believe the Red Snake."
Sansa had never told Lionel what to do or given him advice, so Lionel took her unexpected words seriously.
"I don't believe it," said Lionel. "I mean, I don't trust it, but there's a lot of truth in that letter."
***
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