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“How’s that going to fit?!” The breathy gasp is the sort of thing one might expect to hear in a brothel, winesink or behind the stables. It is not what one expects to hear from the room of the eldest Princess in the North.
Any Northman worth his salt would have interrupted for the sake of Crown Princess Eddara’s honour. Any guard who heard those words would have hammered at the door till the old weirwood rattled. Sandor Clegane, the Wolf’s Hound and sworn shield of her grace Queen Sansa, banged the door open and stepped into the thirteen-year-old’s rooms with bared steel and raging bloodlust.
Twin screams reached his ears, and two little princesses dived over the side of Eddara’s feather bed.
“Athair!” Two heads, one brunette and the other auburn, peeked back up over the edge of the bed.
“Where’s the boy?” Sandor growled, eyes flicking about the room. There were clothes scattered across the bed, sheets rumpled, and Sandor was going to shove his dagger so far up this cunt’s arse –!
“There isn’t a boy!” Aenor snapped.
“… You aren’t Lannisters,” Sandor snapped back, still looking. “What were you doing with each other?”
“What? Athair, we were trying on dresses!” Sandor had watched over the girls since the moment their mother brought them into this world, had trained both girls in weapon-craft since they were three years old, and had done the same again to their three little sisters. Of Sansa Stark’s five Little Wolves, not a one had taken after their mother’s love of pretty dresses – the closest they ever got was the knee-length, half-slit style favoured by the southernmost of the Free Folk women. It was said that Sansa’s Little Wolves were wilder than any of old Maege Mormont’s Little Bears.
“Really.”
“Promise!” They exclaimed together, Eddara throwing her proof at him and pulling a discarded tunic back towards herself across the bed and tugging it on.
Sansa had made the grey gown he now held for her heir to wear to a Harvest Festival when the twins were nine, and it had been worn all of five minutes before Eddara had shirked it for a formal tunic and breaches that she had made. It hadn’t been touched in the four years since.
“Mother was really upset today,” Aenor offered, scuffing her feet, “So we thought to cheer her up by being proper ladies. We were going to take her lemon cakes and tea, too.”
“Catelyn, Robbin, and Branda can all fit in to some of our old things, but we’re having trouble with stuff for us.” Eddara finished, morose. “Catey’s helping the little girls into their things whilst we deal with this.”
Sandor snorted, sheathed his steel, and ruffled both heads.
“You had me worried. I thought some up-jumped cunt had snuck in here.”
Two sets of eyes – one grey, the other blue – blink up at him, and then he is met with identical looks of pure disgust.
“As if,” Eddara spat. “I’m going to be like Mother – I don’t need a husband to be Queen!”
“And Mother says we’re not to let boys sweet-talk us until we know for sure that it’s not because they want the honour of a Stark Princess.” Aenor paused for a moment, then said, “Though, I suppose it’d be alright if that Ander Arryn tried to woo me. Queen of the East wouldn’t be a terrible title, and Uncle Robert would make him let me visit whenever I want.”
Sandor shook his head at them again, pride growing thick and hot in his chest. The Little Bird had grown into a fierce Red Wolf, and had taught all her babes the lessons she had once learnt through blood and tears.
“Should I check on the littler Wolves, then?”
“There won’t be any boys in there, Athair, Catey locked the door.”
“You want any help here?”
Both girls giggle up at him, and it is one of the sweetest sounds he has ever heard in all his life. “No, Athair, we’ll be alright! Thank you.”
“Want to try and alter one of your Aunt Arya’s old dresses? Or one of your mother’s?”
Aenor chews at her lip – a habit she picked up from her aunt that her mother despairs over – and Eddara shakes her head slowly.
“What if Mother sees you and asks you what you’re doing? You never lie to Mother, so, leave it be until we’re ready. Although, can you bring Mother into our solar in two hours, please?”
“Are you sure you’ll be ready by then, pups?”
“Aye! Even if we don’t have dresses that look proper, we can still put on airs and graces and try and make Mother laugh!”
With a bark of laughter, Sandor ruffled their hair again, and continued on his round of the royal family.
As the twins had said, he found the three youngest princesses in Catey’s room on the bed in a chain – Catelyn brushed out Robb’s auburn curls whilst the seven-year-old brushed out Branda’s thick, straight locks, the five-year-old humming and playing with her Dame Dolly.
“Athair!” Branda squealed. “Sit in front, let me make your hair pretty for Mama too!”
“If my hair is pretty, then no one will fear me,” Sandor said, closing the door behind himself. “The twins said you had locked the door, Catey.”
The nine-year-old had inherited her aunt’s impossible brunette hair, and had concentrated so on her baby sisters that she had let it fluff out about her face like a tangle of briars. It was so wild that Sandor was hard-pressed to spot her blue eyes or bladed nose through it all.
“Oops. Sorry, Athair, I was going to, but Branda kept running in and out for everything, and we just forgot to after the last time.”
“It’s not my fault!” Branda cried, trying to twist around. Robb growled at her, and tugged her back to face forward once again.
“Here, pup,” Sandor grumbled, sitting on the floor against the bed, with his back to the littlest princess. “You can brush it out for me, but no more. I’m going to go and check on your mother soon – why is she upset?”
“She was in meetings all day without us or Aunt Brienne,” Catey whispered, trying to order Robb’s curls into a braided bun like Sansa favoured. “People want to offer marriage contracts for us, but since Mother has no husband and only the Free Folk know who made us with her, people are still trying to offer contracts to Mother or give a contract for us on the condition they know who fathered us. And Aunt Arya sent a raven that made her mad this morning, and Uncle Rickon hasn’t sent anything from Skagos in weeks, and Uncle Jon won’t come down from the Wall even though he says he found Direwolf pups for us, and Uncle Bran sent a letter that made her even madder.”
“That sounds very serious, then. Maybe I should go and check on her, after all?”
“Only after I’ve finished your hair, Athair! Mother loves your hair!” Branda demands, tugging insistently.
Luckily for Sandor, she doesn’t take too much longer, and so he can continue on to the Queen’s chambers. Brienne of Tarth stands guard outside, and Sandor has known the wench long enough now to see just how uncomfortable she is.
“Clegane. You’re early; your shift won’t start for another few hours, yet.”
“The Little Wolves told me to come. Go over there a bit; I’ll see what I can do.”
Brienne nods, still formal even sixteen years later, and shifts enough that he can knock and enter comfortably.
“Little Bird?” The Queen was sitting by her window, unpicking stitches with a deliberate determination, face a cold mask. The wolfgirls had told him true: their mother was not in high spirits.
“Sandor – surely I haven’t missed the changing of the guard!”
“No, no, I’m early. The pups sent me.”
Sansa gave a tight smile, rubbing her hands down her face. “Is something wrong?”
“They’re worried for you; you’ve been ill-tempered all day.”
“… I suppose so. I’ll go to them in a moment and apologise.”
“No, let them be. I’ve been sent to keep you busy for another little while, anyway.”
She quirks a tired brow at him, holding a hand out. “Have you?”
He takes her hand and squeezes gently. “Aye, if my Queen can spare an hour or two for an old dog.”
“For you, my love, I would give you all the time in the world.”
“Would you give me the answer to what has you so ill-tempered?”
That emotionless mask slips back over her features, but Sandor won’t have any of that. He kisses the back of her hand, brushes his lips over each knuckles and plants a kiss over the pulse in her wrist.
“I’m not –”
“You are, Bird, what’s wrong?”
“Nobles calling the girls Snow instead of Stark; Arya being a brat; Rickon not talking to me; Bran talking to me too much; Jon being stupid – take your pick.”
“That sounds like a regular day for the Queen in the North. Tell me true, Bird, why is today different?”
Something that might be another smile passes over her lips, but instead of answering him she says, “Jon found Direwolf pups for the children. There’s a mother, for me, and six pups; five girls and a boy.”
She twists her hand under his, taking his hand and bringing it to her belly. “I was thinking of Donnor, for this one.”
He crouches, takes a moment to breath in slowly, a smile blooming across his wasted face and both hands resting against the little life growing inside of her.
“No,” he chokes. “Rickon will pitch a fit if he is the only one that you do not honour. Call the babe Rickard, for him and for your grandfather.”
“I ought to have known, without Jon’s message,” Sansa grumbles half-heartedly. “My humours are never steady when I’m with child.” She licks her lips and looks up at him through her lashes. “Just in case, though, perhaps we should make sure that the seed took.”
“In the daytime, your grace?” He grins. “With the wench only just down the hall?”
Sansa laughed, cupped his face and kissed him. “I think after five children Dame Brienne is fully aware of what we do behind closed doors, my love.”
There was a cough from the door. “Your Grace, the Princesses request an audience.”
“Fucking really?” He demanded, easing himself from his crouch. “I thought we had two hours?!”
Sansa laughs behind him, and from the other side of the door he can hear five little giggles. He can picture all of them so clearly, every hair and every freckle. He knows all his ladies, their faces long or heart-shaped, tall or taller still. He thinks of the wolves that Jon is sending – thinks of the son that will soon be with them, pictures a child that matches Sansa, like Aenor, or himself, like Eddara, who takes the hair colour of one parent and the eyes of another, like Catey and Robb, or mixes everything together like Branda. He doesn’t know what this new babe will look like: but he cannot wait to find out.
He opens the door and growls out, “Come here, pups. Your mother has something to tell you.”