Chapter I: Bloody Seas
The shouting woke her. For a moment, Sansa thought the ship was caught in another storm, and her stomach dropped before her head caught on to the fact that she was not being tossed back and forth by the roiling sea. The ship was only swaying gently on the waves, rocking her in her narrow bed like a child in a cradle. Her heartbeat slowed again, but she couldn’t go back to sleep, not with the sailors screaming above her. She couldn’t make out the words, but worry permeated every syllable. Something was wrong. It might not be another terrible storm like the one that had blown their ship so far eastwards, the memory of which still made Sansa shudder, but something was wrong.
Her cabin was cramped and small by Sansa’s reckoning, but Petyr had assured her that it was the biggest the ship had to offer. “As befits the daughter of the Warden of the North,” he had told her. It was big enough for an actual bed, not a hammock, as well as a chair, a small table and an armoire, but Sansa had to be careful not to bump against the chair when she opened the armoire. Petyr had prepared for her rescue by bringing along a small selection of clothes. Sansa took out the cloak, stumbling when the ship was rocked by a wave she hadn’t expected. Then she put it on to cover her nightdress before stepping out of the cabin.
“Alayne!” Petyr called. He stood on the steps that led up to the deck, and Sansa saw that he too had dressed in haste. The buttons of his usually so immaculate tunic were partly undone. She could see the undershirt peeking out. Petyr looked worried too, a slight furrow to his brow and an uncharacteristic tenseness around the eyes, even though he tried to cover it with a smile.
“Go back to your cabin, dear. I will return to my own in a moment as well.” Petyr descended the rest of the steps and put a hand on her arm in a gesture that was meant to be comforting and fatherly to Alayne but that fell just shy of it.
“What’s happening, Father?” Sansa asked. Above them, feet pounded on the deck as sailors ran frantically back and forth.
“Another ship draws close and the captain fears it may be pirates,” Petyr admitted, “but do not worry yourself. If it is pirates, they will have suffered from the storm as much as we did and be in no condition to do us any harm. Go back to bed, sweetling.”
His tone was soft, but his words brooked no resistance. Neither did the hand still on her arm. With a nod, Sansa went back to her cabin and closed the door, listening as Petyr stumbled down the narrow corridor to his own. Then she went over to the small, round window in the hull of the ship that allowed some light into the cabin. She peered outside, but could see nothing but the black water glistening in the moonlight.
There was no question of going back to sleep. In her mind, Sansa tried to imagine the sailors in their rough-spun clothes running to and fro, preparing for an attack as the unknown ship drew closer. They’d grab hooks and knives and whatever weapons they had handy. And all she could do was sit on her bed and wait. Would the three guards on the ship be enough to turn the tide if it came to an attack? Two others had vanished in the storm, but the remaining men were well-trained and well-equipped men-at-arms. Surely they could cope with a handful of weary pirates?
A collision shook the ship, along with a loud, wooden crack. Sansa fell sideways. So much for Petyr’s hope that the pirates would do no harm, she thought. Soon, screams rose and were joined by the angry clang of metal that she had learned to associate with tourneys and training yards in Westeros, and so Sansa decided that she would do the only thing she could do: she knelt in front of her bed and prayed. She prayed to the Father, to deliver justice, to the Warrior, to give the men the strength to repel the boarders, and to the Mother, to grant them mercy. It was habit and desperation more than true belief that made her do so. King’s Landing had taught her the truth about the efficacy of prayer. But there was nothing more to be done. Sansa was just a maiden, after all.
Heavy steps roused her from her trance and Sansa’s head turned around just in time to see the door being pushed open with head of an ax. A man stood there, the mighty ax in one hairy hand and a golden grin on his face when he spotted her. Sansa’s heart skipped a beat, and she knew she was lost. She was back in the streets of King’s Landing during the riot, only this time, there was no Hound to save her from being raped by a whole ship’s worth of thugs.
When the man took a first step to enter the cabin, Sansa jumped to her feet. She didn’t know where she was going, but she had to get away. She dodged left, almost hitting the armoire, and for one wild moment, she thought she’d throw herself into the seas and die a maid. Surely that fate was preferable to what awaited her on the ship. Then she ran headfirst into a second man, smaller and darker than the first, who had followed his friend. He grabbed her arms and jerked her around like a little doll. Then he chuckled, and it sent a shiver down her spine. Just a blink of an eye and they would tear off her cloak and rip apart her nightdress and reach for her—
But nothing happened. Neither pirate made a move to rape her. They just turned her around and shoved her out the door, talking lightly to each other in what must be a language of Essos, for Sansa didn’t understand a word. They didn’t bother talking to her either. Instead, they prodded her past two other pirates on their way deeper into the ship and pushed her forward whenever she hesitated, up the steps to the deck.
Sansa had spent little time up here since Petyr had saved her from Joffrey’s disastrous wedding. He had wanted her to be as invisible as possible, he said, until they could get her to the Vale. There, they could regularly dye her hair so she could pass for Alayne more convincingly. The few times she had left her cabin, with her hair hidden by a shawl, the deck had been busy but spotless. Now, it was covered in blood and scattered equipment, and worse.
The man who presided over the chaos stood in the middle of the deck and ordered his men around as he inspected the remainder of the crew. He was a big man with a green beard and jewelry glittering in his hair. As Sansa stepped fully into the torchlight, he waved at his men to move a young man from one group of people to another near the prow. Then he took one look at the next man—one of middling years who cradled a hurt arm—and beckoned to another pirate. That one flashed a quick grin and grabbed the hurt man by the scruff, then dragged him to the rail. The last Sansa saw of him before he was pushed of the ship was his terrified eyes. There was a splash, then nothing. The pirate captain turned to her.
His intense blue eyes narrowed on Sansa’s face as she tried to make herself small in front of the two pirates who had brought her up. She flinched when he reached out and took her chin in his rough hand and made her look at him. His gaze ran over her face, her hair, and finally her chest, then he waved her over to the group by the prow. A couple of pirates with strangely shaped swords kept watch over the group, so Sansa sat down next to the young sailor and wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to pretend that she wasn’t wearing only a nightdress and a cloak.
The captain went back to his examination of his captives, but soon was interrupted when two other men led Petyr Baelish up the stairs. He looked more nervous than Sansa had ever seen him, and still insisted on trying to cover it up with a self-assured smile that did little to fool anyone. He faltered a little when he was pushed forward to meet the captain.
“Now, there’s no need to be so coarse. I’m sure we can work out something to our mutual benefit,” Petyr said, brushing imaginary dirt off his cuff. The shadow of a little girl that still lingered in Sansa’s heart wanted nothing more than to believe his words, but the glint in the captain’s eye reminded her of Joffrey.
The captain looked Petyr up and down and didn’t seem impressed. “What you want, little man?”
“To make an offer,” Petyr answered. He drew himself up to his full height, still a full head shorter and half as bulky as the captain. “I am an important man in Westeros. Bring me back to my home, and you will be handsomely rewarded.”
“I will?” the captain asked, obviously amused.
“Of course. I am a man of my word.”
“But already I have your ship and your gold,” the captain pointed out.
Petyr’s smile became tense. “I am engaged to Lady Arryn of the Vale. She’ll be very thankful for my safe return.”
“Yes,” the captain snorted. “With a blade on the neck she will thank me. Do you think me fool, richman? I come to your town, anchor in your ports, and all your promises are wind.”
“Not even for a thousand golden dragons?” Petyr offered.
“A man needs a head to spend them.”
“Two thousand?” Petyr was getting desperate. “You cannot mean to sell me as a slave,” he scoffed. “I am a lord, the master of coin for King Joffrey.”
“Yes,” the pirate mused as he stroked his green beard. “I cannot sell you as slave. You are important lord, after all.”
“Thank y—” Petyr began, but his words were cut short by the stroke of a sword, and they died in a bloody gurgle. The captain wiped his bronze blade clean on Petyr’s cloak while the man who had saved Sansa tried to hold his throat together with his bare hands.
“It is best you were never here,” the pirate captain told him. “Disappear.”
Like a puppet whose strings were cut, Petyr crumpled onto the deck, and the pool of blood spread on the wood as Sansa stared into his lifeless eyes. Tears began to form in her own as a pirate gathered the corpse and dropped it into the sea. He’d been her last hope of returning home one day.
The captain looked around coolly once it was done. “Someone else want to make offers?” he sneered.
Nobody did.
*
The survivors were chained and then put in the hold of the pirates’ vessel, where five men already awaited their fate. They all stared at Sansa, since she was the only woman, but for once, none of the looks were lustful. She must look frightful, she knew, with tears streaming down her face and the hem of her nightdress drenched in blood.
Over the following hours and days, Sansa finally learned a bit more about the fate that awaited them. One of the sailors, a young man named Tom, spoke the pirates’ language and could translate what they spoke to each other while they guarded them or handed out bowls of disgusting slob that Sansa almost didn’t eat.
“You gotta eat, Alayne,” said Wat, who was chained up on her right side. “If you don’t, they’ll only beat you ’til you do.”
Sansa didn’t know how he knew that, since neither of them had been caught by pirates before, but Sansa wouldn’t risk it after seeing the grumpy man who was noticeably unhappy that he had to feed them.
“’M sorry about your father too,” Wat added in between bites. “Lost mine when I was just a little older than you. Hurts mightily.”
Sansa could imagine that, but she didn’t know. Her father was fine, as far as she knew. She’d last seen him the day King Joffrey sent him to prison. Two days later, when Sansa had prepared to plead for mercy for him, he was gone. Joffrey had raged and raved and Ser Meryn had beaten her until she bled. There were scars on her back still, even though Joffrey had ordered him to stop. He hadn’t wanted a scarred bride.
“If you ask me, it’s no great loss,” Marwin commented. He was the oldest man the captain had let live. He had been first mate on the ship and knew his letters and navigation, so he could be sold. “Littlefinger had a reputation, and it wasn’t a good one.”
“Don’t say that in front of his daughter,” Tom hissed.
Marwin shot her an apologetic look. He had a daughter that was her age, he had said. “I know he was your father, and that he’s dead and you shouldn’t speak badly of the dead, but you should also speak true. And Littlefinger was a well known crook. A highborn crook, maybe, but a crook. Made his money in brothels and by pocketing part of the harbor taxes. Thought money could buy him a title, but word on the street is he needed to buy the gold cloaks first to betray the Hand when the old king died. That’s how we got Joffrey the Illborn, and now we’re stuck with him.”
The men from her ship grumbled about that while the ones from the first vessel the pirates had captured looked at them in confusion. None of them knew the Common Tongue. But the Westerosi all hated Joffrey, even if nobody hated him as much as Sansa did.
“He’s dead,” she mumbled quietly.
“I know, girl,” Marwin told her. “But I speak the truth. Your father wasn’t the nicest man.”
“I don’t mean my father,” she clarified. They thought, of course, that she referred to the man who had just died on the deck, but she was thinking of her true father. He hopefully still lived. Although Tywin Lannister had been fighting him in the riverlands, last she heard. “I mean King Joffrey. He died shortly before I left.”
The sailors stared at her as if she’d announced she’d seen a wight in the flesh.
“Well, that’ll be good news if we ever make it back home,” Wat said.
“Fat chance of that happening,” Tom groused. “The fuckers are headed for Volantis. They’re just looking for one last merchantman to rob before heading south. And then we’ll all get our faces painted and sold to the highest bidder.”
“Faces painted?” Wat asked.
“It’s what they do to slaves there,” Marwin explained. “I’ll end up with a figurehead on one cheek and you and Tom’ll get flies or wheels or a horsehead, unless you’re lucky and end up on a ship as well. Seen enough Volantene cogs in my time, even traded there a couple of times. And the girl …”
They all looked at her with pity and Sansa felt dread coil up in the pit of her stomach like sleepy snake.
“I’ll end up in a brothel,” she said.
What would her mother say, she wondered one evening after they were served their food and the latrine bucket had been replaced. She shared all her private business with a couple of men and had seen more men’s privates than a lady ever should. And soon enough, she’d sink as low as a woman could, and sell her body. She listlessly moved her left foot—the shackled one—back and forth, and wished she had jumped into the sea when she had the chance. Her only consolation was the fact that nobody would ever know. No doubt they would think her dead. Vanished alongside Petyr Baelish, the man who had pretended to be her friend but who had stabbed her father in the back. The man who had looked at her in a heated, calculating way that had made her uncomfortable. The only man who had tried to save her.
It had been her own fault, really. She had ruined everything. She’d told the Queen that her Lord Father had wanted to send her and Arya away to safety, and it had cost them so much. Septa Mordane, Jeyne and her father, the whole household had lost their lives because Sansa had been a selfish little girl that didn’t want to listen to her father as a girl should. Her father had almost died, her sister was lost and probably dead… no wonder her family had never attempted to free her as Petyr had. Ending up in a brothel in Volantis might be better than what she deserved. Maybe this was a punishment from the gods for her sins. Joffrey had received one for his, after all.
*
Sansa felt an eerie sense of déjà vu when, after a week aboard the pirate ship, the men above their heads suddenly started chattering and working. Feet were running back and forth, commands were shouted that she didn’t understand and somewhere, someone used a whetstone on their steel. One of the Essosi sailors—the remnants of a crew of a Lorathi merchantman—muttered something.
“They’ve found another victim,” Tom translated gloomily.
Another ship to plunder only meant they were one step closer to the slave markets of Volantis. Again there were screams and curses, and the crash of ship against ship that tossed them on the floor. Next came the clashes of metal against metal, until the fighting subsided. The captives waited with bated breath. The pirates had left no guard behind, but they weren’t really needed. The chains were enough to keep them in their place.
It felt like an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than a fraction of an hour, when everything changed again. A man strode into the hold with an air of authority, and he was one they hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t led in by the pirates, either. He was as dusky skinned as they were, with a head of curly dark hair, receding from his hairline, but unlike them, he wore no gaudy jewels. His clothes were in a different style, too. When he saw the captives, he called back to someone else. Soon enough, the large doors in the deck above them opened at his command and Sansa had to blink against the sudden, bright light. She was lucky, she thought later, that it was a cloudy day. Otherwise her eyes might have been hurt.
The man asked the prisoners a question and the Lorathi sailors answered. Tom did too, a bit later and a little haltingly.
“You are Westerosi?” the man asked sharply. He spoke with a strange but muted accent.
Now the captives from Sansa’s ship sat up straighter. None of them expected a foreigner who was able to address them in their own tongue. Behind him, someone else entered the hold with a hammer and chisel. After a gesture from his superior, the new man went towards the Lorathi and got to work on their manacles.
“I have the honor of being Narquo Teryan, captain of the Titan’s Shoe, in the employ of Oro Tendyris, merchant of Braavos,” the man explained, and the men around Sansa started to sit up straighter. “This ship and its cargo are now in the custody of the city of Braavos, until such a time as their proper owners prove their claims, should they do so within a three-year term. However, as slavery is illegal in our fine city, you are hereby freed.”
Wat whooped with joy and Sansa felt as if she could float away were she not chained to the floor. The man with hammer and chisel was bent over Marwin’s leg now, and the captain was talking to the freed Lorathi, who bathed in the drab light. They had been below deck for almost a moon’s turn.
“What will happen to us now?” Sansa asked no-one in particular.
Captain Teryan’s eyes turned to her, as did many of the others. Only the man with the chisel kept working.
“My men will sail this ship to Braavos,” he explained,” And you are free to help—although maybe not you, girl. You best come aboard the Titan’s Shoe, after we’ve found you something better to wear in the loot. Then we’ll see.”
Then the chisel was put to the manacle on her ankle, the hammer went down once, twice, and Sansa was free. Braavos, she thought. She knew little about the city, other than that it lay in Essos, and was home to a famous giant statue and the Iron Bank. It wasn’t like Myr—where they made the fabled lace she’d loved to admire when she was young and innocent. It was just a merchant city to her, without even nobles and princes to keep her interested in her lessons.
“I know you want to go home, girl, but Braavos is the next best thing,” Marwin said from behind her. “Do you have family back home that can pay your way?”
Sansa thought of her mother and father, her brother and the aunt and uncle she didn’t know. But she wasn’t Sansa, she remembered. She was Alayne, the bastard daughter of a dead man and a woman who was lowborn, not someone who was wanted by half of the Seven Kingdoms for one reason or another. She shook her head.
“In that case, you might want to stay in Braavos. At least there’s no war there. And you’re a clever girl. You’ll land on your feet,” he assured her, patting her on her shoulder as he walked past to ask the captain what he could do. Which left Sansa to wonder what she could do. She had never had to make her own way. She was just a stupid girl who had no trade. She could read and write and do her numbers tolerably well, but that was all, really, aside from the womanly arts. Her mother had taught her to be a wife to a lord one day; Sansa didn’t really know how to do anything else.
But first, she went to find the part of the ship where the pirates kept their loot. And indeed, after rummaging through crates and chests, she found her dresses. Or rather Alayne’s dresses, which Petyr had brought for her to disguise herself. She took them and then retired to what had been the pirate captain’s cabin, where she washed herself as best she could with a bucket of saltwater before finally dressing. It was strange to wear a bodice again, but she felt more like herself. Even if that was not who she was supposed to be. Alayne. She was supposed to be Alayne now. She’d have to remember.