Often the simple seems absurd,
Black is white, white is black...
(translated from "The Big Change")
No good deed goes unpunished, and even the noble Lord Eddard could not deny himself the pleasure of teasing Lionel when he came in the morning to inquire about Arya's health, wisely deciding not to climb through her window to do so, although something was tempting him.
"She'll be dancing soon," Eddard assured Lionel with a smile, "well, at least the dances she learns from Syrio Forel. But I'll have to explain to the honest folk why you were carrying a dark-haired girl in front of the whole town when your bride is a redhead.
Contrary to Eddard's expectations, Lionel was more embarrassed than indignant by his teasing.
"I told you nothing good would come of it," Lionel muttered angrily, reminding Eddard of their heart-to-heart talk in the prison corridor.
"Well, you found Arya, thank you," Eddard replied more carefully, but then turned to his duties as regent. "And I also heard that you vowed not to go near them when they're drunk. I approve. Come visit more often, and you'll see, you'll quit drinking altogether."
"Arya blabbed," Lionel thought discontentedly, returning from his right-hand man, who had been having fun at his expense. Lionel hadn't said anything like that, he had just done what he had decided to do. "As for his therapy, I'd better go and drink some more, just to be on the safe side," and Lionel firmly resolved to mend his ways — until the next turn in the corridor.
Rousse Bolton respected the judicial process and believed that criminals should be brought to trial whenever possible, and that a good court should judge on the basis of solid evidence. "A robber should lie on the block," Rousse often said to Eddard, stopping by for a drink at his noble neighbour's house and listening to the latest complaints about his methods. "A robber should lie on the block, and people don't care how I expose him!"
This time, Eddard did not dwell too much on obtaining evidence and distributed earrings to all the Lannisters, and Rhaegar approved of his fighting spirit, but could not approve of Eddard's decision not to obtain any evidence at all.
"Lord Bolton will prove it," Lord Eddard said sternly to Cersei at the end of his unusual investigation, dismissing not only the High Septon, but also Mendel's father and Vaysen, which was more difficult. "Bolton can prove that your brother killed King Aerys and that he did not kill him. That your younger children are from your brother, or from your father, or from the Great Other. Do you understand me? So why should I prove what I already know?
Lord Eddard was obviously a little offended that Cersei was going to slaughter all his men who had come with him from Winterfell to King's Landing, take his daughters hostage, and, for good measure, chop off his head, and his unexpected severity had a very convincing effect on Cersei, but this outcome greatly upset Lord Bolton, who had lost the chance to conduct an investigation that would have been the pinnacle of his career as an interrogator, not to mention the fact that Lord Bolton was not that old and appreciated female beauty — when it was well secured.For several days after that, Bolton wandered the corridors of the Red Keep like a gloomy shadow, hoping to uncover some other conspiracy or at least a petty crime, but his deathly pale face and terrible reputation struck such fear into the hearts of all the inhabitants of the Red Keep that even the cook stopped stealing meat from the pot. And even on the morning after Lionel and Arya returned, Lord Bolton was unlucky in the most offensive way, because at first he was almost lucky.
"Ah, my neighbour, you are beautiful," Bolton said in that modulation of his quiet voice which he considered charming and which made many girls lose their ability to resist, because fear took away their legs and their tongues. Sansa, who was looking out from the deserted upper gallery at the autumn forests of the Crownlands, merely shivered slightly and turned to Bolton to dismiss him with small talk.
"Lord Bolton," came a firm young voice from the end of the gallery, and Roose Bolton hastened to take his leave, lest the young and brave king have heard any false rumours about Lord Eddard's investigation. Rousse feared the harsh and noble Baratheons — they had no respect for criminal procedure and cut first, then gathered evidence.
"Thank you," Sansa said quietly. "Bolton is constantly trying to marry us off, first to me, then to Arya. I think he's confused about us. He's tormented us enough, the ghoul, excuse my language."
Lionel, of course, would never have confused the sisters, they were so different: Arya was prickly, agile and daring, while Sansa was soft, quiet and gentle; when you hugged her, it felt like you didn't need anything else in life, just to stand there forever. However, Lionel remembered how Arya had stopped struggling yesterday and given in, settling down in his arms — and that was only the first surprising similarity between the sisters that fate had revealed to him. Lionel's fate was full of surprises: as soon as he remembered Arya, he immediately realised that he was not hugging her, and was surprised himself when he managed to hug Sansa and why she did not object. Following this thought, Lionel somehow remembered Ser Barristan's lessons about how many directions any gallery could be shot from, and the young king hastened to hide the romantic scene from prying eyes.
"A crossbow is very effective against ghouls like your Bolton," Lionel shared his idea and wondered if Sansa would believe that his bedroom was the best place to learn how to shoot a crossbow. "Come on, I'll teach you."
Teaching a beautiful girl to shoot a crossbow turned out to be an exciting but not easy task. To begin with, Lionel threw out all the colourful and vivid profanity he had heard and uttered himself from the instructions he had given her, including brief expressions such as "this nonsense". After that, he found himself at a loss for words, and the remaining words, such as "pull back" and "insert the bolt," sounded somewhat inappropriate. And when it came to teaching Sansa how to aim, the learning process came to a complete halt, but for a different reason.
"Nothing will come of it," Lionel said firmly to himself, burying his face in her red hair and quietly inhaling its faint scent. "Not now, not in a year. No fiery hair scattered across the pillow, no sweet moans, no kisses where they shouldn't be," and Lionel, with the steadfastness of a ballad, refrained from biting the lobe of her small ear, but the exposed neck was still too tempting. "I'll just touch it lightly with my lips," the young and passionate king tried to bargain with his conscience. "Ah, damn it, who am I kidding!"
Lionel was almost certain that he would receive a crossbow bolt to the head for his misdeeds, but Sansa only sighed, not like they sigh in ballads, but like earthly women sigh at such moments, and from that sigh, all the dreams he had just forbidden himself came rushing back to Lionel with renewed force, so that he only stopped when Sansa's dress had already slipped off one shoulder. Lionel once again tried in vain to call himself to order, but Sansa suddenly turned to him and caught his lips with hers.
The kisses were sweet and painful, as if after a long climb to a mountain pass, a fairy-tale land opened up before you, but you had to turn away and go back in a minute. Lionel clasped his hands around Sansa's waist because his left hand was already trying to slide a little lower, and his right hand had no idea where it was going, but he was saved only by the fact that Sansa had never been kissed before — although she was a quick learner, and the grip of his hands holding her grew weaker with every passing minute.
Sansa was sensible, so instead of chatting with Jeyne Poole about her handsome prince, she talked to a couple of maids and the cook — not exactly about the prince, but about things in general. Of course, Sansa heard some rather indecent expressions, but she managed to correctly assess the moment when she needed to slip away from the prince.
"I think I've learned how to shoot," said Sansa, taking a few steps back. She was breathing heavily and biting her lip, but she still managed to hit the stuffed bear in the nose — from ten steps away and with her first shot. Lionel looked puzzled at the dummy with an arrow in its nose, and when he realised what had happened a few seconds later and smiled at Sansa's clever trick, wanting almost the same thing as her, Sansa had already slipped out the door.
"Don't be offended," Sansa said softly as she left, as if secretly telling Lionel that she didn't want to leave either and would have liked to stay.
For the rest of the day, Lionel waited for his conscience to prick him, but it never came, as if the engagement and his firm intention to marry were some kind of indulgence that Lionel had not stepped outside of, even though he had kissed Sansa as a woman and awakened something in her that should not have been awakened before the wedding.
"Perhaps it's because I resisted the temptation after all," the young king finally explained to himself, although his only merit was that he had let Sansa go when she recoiled from him. But the gods who watched over the royal family probably didn't think his act of self-denial was convincing enough, so they gave Lionel another chance to prove himself.
"Leo!" Arya called out to the young king, and Lionel started, instantly realising that he had been lost in romantic thoughts in his own bedroom, where he was not supposed to be disturbed, while Arya was sitting on the window sill seven feet above the floor, about to jump.
"Let me go!" Arya demanded quietly but indignantly, because Lionel had managed to catch her so that she wouldn't twist her injured leg again. Arya was only ten, and she couldn't yet know that in her position, the right thing to do when she next saw Lionel would be to pretend that nothing had happened between them, that he hadn't carried her in his arms in front of a crowd of thousands, and that she hadn't hugged him around the neck. Aria had almost managed to stop thinking about it all the time, but as soon as Lionel touched her, his simple act of kindness, which any friend would have done, was no longer acceptable, and the situation changed dramatically. Aria climbed across the rooftops to her older friend Leo, and ended up late at night in the bedroom of a young man. Lionel himself was too young and too hot-blooded to help Arya.
"You always get me into trouble," Arya said angrily, jumping away from Lionel as if he were a leper and again falling back on her injured leg from the sudden movement, but it sounded so flirtatious against her will that she wanted to hide under the table. "Now go and bring Jon back from the Wall for me."
"What has he done?" Lionel asked mechanically, thinking about how to get out of the current awkward situation, especially considering that with night falling, the Royal Guard had doubled the guard at his chambers and he would not be able to simply take Arya out of his bedroom and escort her through the quiet corridors to the Tower of the Right Hand.
"This is your fault!" Arya snapped, and the young king was struck by a vague realisation that women are often capricious, demanding and dissatisfied only because of their weakness, and that all their demands and discontent can be translated into simple human language as "grab me and kiss me!" However, this insight, useful in every respect, was of no help to Lionel at that moment, for he could not, in fact, grab Arya and kiss her.
"Jon went to the Wall himself," Arya explained, controlling herself, as if thoughts of her beloved brother calmed her and dulled her embarrassment. "When Father became Hand, and Sansa became your betrothed, the three of us left home, Robb became Lord of Winterfell, and Jon felt that the family he had always belonged to, even if only half, was no longer around him. And he decided to wear black.
King Lionel was moved by the fate of the honest and lonely man, which Arya recounted simply and powerfully, and the ambiguous situation that bound him to Arya resolved itself.
"He has made his decision, and no one has the right to force him to change his chosen path," said the young king sternly and honestly. "We can only hope to change his mind — he hardly considers me his friend. Write him a letter."
Arya always had a thirst for immediate action, and she sat down to write a letter to Jon right there in the king's bedroom, while Lionel decided to take her home across the rooftops and prayed to the Old Gods for the first time in his life. "Old Gods, maybe you can help me with her," asked the confused Lionel. "Let her at least allow me to take her hand on the roof. The moment is not far off." "And let everything be as it was before," Lionel added, and for some reason he imagined that the char tree that appeared before his mind's eye in response to his second request, uttered with a heavy heart, grimaced at him, clearly hinting that they would be electrocuted by touching each other for a long time to come. Perhaps forever.
***
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