A Vow Without Honor

The Encounters

Sansa

Her first feast in the capital had filled her with a joy she had not quite touched since. Feasts at home had been one thing - smelly, drunken affairs lacking even the most basic of charms - but King's Landing had been a myriad of color and sound, music that echoed in her bones and food so numerous, she could never hope to taste it all. Little had she known that of the two, the revelry of her father's bannermen had been the innocent.

Sansa wondered what she might have seen then, knowing what she did now. Would she see their smiles for the cruel facades they were? Would their words ring hollow and their true meaning be known to her? Or was she still a naïve little girl, grasping to understand the destruction left in their wake?

The gathering at the Eyrie was not the complicated song and dance of the capital - the lines in the sand were obvious to all in attendance - but it was no less dangerous. The question of the matter was who was in danger. Littlefinger was the clear answer, but Sansa knew that would change before the night was through. She only hoped she could play her pieces before the board was overturned entirely.

At first, she had quietly watched the goings-on. There had been a fine feast in the High Hall with twenty-one courses, the last of the Eyrie's summer supplies. The onset of fall and cold winds that warned of winter would bring House Arryn down to the Gates of the Moon sooner rather than later. No doubt it was Littlefinger's deadline to keep the malcontent armies at bay.

He made a flowery speech midway through the courses, when the wine had begun to ebb away at the harsher personalities. The words were lost to her as they had not mattered as much as the faces of those who listened.

Had she not already known Nestor Royce was in Littlefinger's pocket, his rapt attention to the speech would have spelled it out for her. But his cousin, Yohn, looked unmoved. She recalled seeing him and his sons at the Tourney of the Hand, a lifetime ago when the world had been an unrecognizable place. Her father had thought highly of him. He would never be Littlefinger's, thus his reliance on the cousin.

Lady Anya Waynwood was unmoved, still as stone with her mouth pressed into a firm line. She was not so easy to read, but her ward was the heir to the Eyrie after Robert. She perhaps had her own plans.

Lord Gerold Grafton, Lord Benedar Belmore, knights and captains and lady wives, she watched them all, saw every turn of the head, every frown, every time they looked somewhere other than the high table, where she sat to Littlefinger's left and had command of the room. She could confidently guess at what side they would land on, and it was in reluctant favor of the man they all clearly hated.

Following dinner, it was Harrold Hardyng that had her attention.

As heir to House Arryn should her son die, Lysa harbored a conspicuous loathing toward him. Every word was ice, every look a glare. Robert had gone out of his way to scream at him earlier and threaten him with the Moon Door, and Sansa had actually witnessed Littlefinger pale. He was, after all, the one that truly held his fate in his hands. Should he claim the weirwood throne within the next year or two, as many suspected, Harrold would undoubtedly take no issue in tossing the Lord of Harrenhal out of his keep, along with his boisterous wife.

He was young, of age with Robb she guessed, with fine blonde hair and eyes like the sky. Though still a squire, he carried the air of those knights she had seen at her father's tourney, with their clean, untested armor, billowing capes, and feathers abound. Pride had been their downfall in the lists, and it would be his when the time came. It meant he would be a pain to speak with, as most men who knew they were handsome tended to be.

She'd watched him quietly as Nestor Royce spoke with her, both showering her father with compliments and burying Littlefinger with insults. She danced around his words as best she could with a calming word here and a small admittance there. It was enough to keep him sated, and his sword sheathed. Lysa had wanted to insist their weapons not be brought up, but Littlefinger had talked her out of it. With all the deaths at celebratory gatherings as of late, no man would dare attend one without a weapon. Somehow, they were less dangerous while armed.