The bow thrummed, but the arrow sailed past its target. Sansa Stark watched from afar as Petyr Baelish taught his foster child the art of archery but failed miserably. Brienne of Tarth stood with her, along with Ghost. Evidently, the direwolf seemed to have taken a similar promise to Brienne’s.
“I don’t want to practice archery.” Robin Arryn had grown considerably taller from the last time Sansa had seen him. His black wavy hair still flopped on his shoulders, making him look like a handsome, just lord, when he was anything but.
“A good lord must be skilled in many facets,” Baelish told him, but before he could start, Robin stormed away. Baelish turned instead to a young lord, deep in conversation, while Robin walked in their direction. Upon seeing Sansa, his face showed signs of recognition, but before he could redirect his outburst towards her, the growls of Ghost made him scurry.
Ghost alerted Baelish and his companion to their presence. Their conversation, which was reaching argumentative tones, halted abruptly. “Lady Sansa,” said the stranger, walking towards them and bowing deeply, “I am Andar Royce, son of Lord Yohn Royce. I fear the tales do not do justice to your beauty.”
Sansa gave her courtesies, and after some meaningless chatter on weather and war, Andar Royce departed, with shifty eyes at Ghost. Littlefinger’s smile, which Sansa knew to be of pretense, disappeared the moment he did. “What was that about?” she asked him.
“I must not have left young Robin Arryn alone with them,” he muttered. “Yohn Royce has never been a true ally to me, and now I worry he and his son attempt to seize power in the Vale. His son Andar has been getting close to Robin in my absence. He now insists the boy is old enough to rule, but I know why he says so. If my foster child is formally proclaimed, Andar will always have his ear.”
“How will you get your power back?” Sansa asked.
Littlefinger seemed confused. “My name in the Vale is of no concern. I fear it will never be on high standing. What matters is Lysa’s child. If Yohn or Andar Royce are to usurp power in the Eyrie, they will need Robin to suffer an irreparable accident. I cannot let that happen.”
Yes, I’m certain you cared about the health of Lysa’s child before you so readily killed his mother. Instead of attacking his credibility, however, Sansa knew that a general comment on his benevolence would provoke the appropriate response. “I have never seen this side of you,” she said, with the tiniest of interrogative implications.
Baelish caught the connotation. “I am not a great man,” he said. “As such, I must and will debase myself with guttural politics and schemes to not be bullied by greater lords or kings. For me, whose last name will never be Arryn, Stark or Targaryen, my legacy is my people. My world is the people I care about and I will kill for them, be they Robin, Catelyn, or,” he said, eyes momentarily flashing in her direction, “anyone else that matters.”
But Sansa was not listening to him, for her eyes had strayed to his weaker hand. Baelish had casually stowed it away from her sight inside his cloak, but when the wind blew, she saw for a second the heavy dressing on it. She pretended not to notice the blood it was soaked with, nor the tiniest of winces Baelish betrayed in his speech.
*
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