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Podrick set off from the kitchens with a warm brown roll stuffed in one pocket and a ballad whistling past his lips. Cook had been kind to him that morning and said she’d saved the roll just for him. Podrick reminded her of her son, long dead in one of the many bloody battles for the North. There’d been tears in Cook’s eyes as she patted Podrick on his arm, and he’d reached out to touch her hand briefly, the way he thought her son would, and hoped Cook wouldn’t cry.
Podrick trudged across Winterfell’s snowy courtyard, past the grubby Wildling tents and the remnants of Stannis’ army. It was still early and the cook fires were just getting started, sputtering anemic grey smoke into a sky that promised snow.
Podrick clutched his roll tighter and made for the far side of the courtyard where the sparring grounds were kept clear for practice. There were reports of strange creatures in the forests surrounding Winterfell, and every few days or so, a party of men went out beyond the walls. They rarely returned.
Podrick tried not dwell on what that meant and focused instead on finding his Lady. She liked to spar in the early morning and told Podrick often that the biting chill was good training for stiff joints and lazy reflexes.
But the practice yard was empty. His Lady wasn’t there.
Podrick stood stupidly next to a row of practice swords and looked around. He even reached a hand out and let his fingers brush the pommel of a wooden sword, as if he might feel the lingering heat from his Lady’s sweaty-but-capable palms. The sword was cold.
Podrick tried the armory next, lest his Lady was still struggling to pull on her leathers before meeting Ser Jaime or another knight for a morning sparring session. But the armory was empty, too. Podrick lingered in the doorway and eyed the half-empty walls. The large room was cold and dark. His Lady was not there.
Podrick made his way back across the courtyard and checked the stables, but all the horses were accounted for. The stablehand huffed and stamped his feet like one of his charges when Podrick asked if he’d seen a large lady knight with clear blue eyes and a scarred cheek.
“Ain’t no lady knights here,” sneered the stablehand disbelievingly, and Podrick reached for the roll in his pocket to reassure himself that he had something more than horses, at least. He took his leave quickly, glancing back at the stablehand who had already returned to mucking out stalls. He was not much older than Podrick.
His Lady was not in her chambers in the Great Keep, though there was a pretty Wildling girl stripping the bed of its linens. She made eyes at Podrick when he rapped on the door and called his Lady’s name. Podrick trembled at the way the Wildling girl looked him over. She told him that he could be her Ser and she his Lady if he had naught else to do that morning. Podrick fled.
He searched for his Lady in the Great Hall filled with long wooden tables where men already supped at their breakfasts—bowls of thin, grey gruel that matched the sky outside set before them. Lord Stannis sat at the high table with his red witch, a woman as beautiful as a blade who wore a glowing red ruby at her throat. The witch glanced up at Podrick’s arrival, but her eyes did not linger. Still, the hairs on the back of Podrick’s neck stood on end, and he cast one more searching look around the hall before making a hasty retreat.
His Lady was not there, either. She was not anywhere.
He left the warmth of the Great Hall and passed the empty sept, silent as the armory, and thought about climbing the walls by the East Gate. But a wind had kicked up, blowing snow across his path, and Podrick’s nose stung with the cold. He thought of the high table in the Great Hall with only Stannis and his witch, and then he turned and made his way back into the Keep.
Lady Sansa was in her solar, but his Lady was not with her. She glanced up at Podrick’s knock and waved him in with a smile as comforting as the summer sun. She set aside her embroidery and insisted Podrick take the chair at her right. Podrick waffled, only for a moment, before dropping down beside her. He twisted his fingers while she greeted him with kind words and another smile, and when she paused to wait for Podrick’s answer, he blanched.
“I’m s-searching for my Lady,” he stuttered finally. “B-but I cannot find her anywhere.”
Lady Sansa sat back in her chair, her skirts rustling against the rushes on the floor. “You’ve tried her rooms?” She asked, “And the training yard?”
Podrick nodded, trying not to feel deflated that she thought him too simple to check even the most obvious of places. Lady Sansa opened her mouth as if to speak again and then snapped it shut. She looked at Podrick for a long moment. “Have you looked in Lord Lannister’s rooms?”
Podrick sat up straight as a pike and shook his head ‘no.’
Now it was Lady Sansa’s turn to wring her hands in discomfort. She looked away into the nearby hearth. The light from the flames caught along her cheeks and matched her hair for shade. Podrick thought about giving her the brown roll in his pocket, but it was like to be squished now and unappealing to a lady as elegant as Sansa Stark.
“Lady Brienne likes Lord Lannister,” Lady Sansa whispered. Podrick flushed. He knew that already from his time traveling the Riverlands with his Lady. She’d called Ser Jaime’s name while sleeping too many times to count, and she always insisted Ser Jaime was not what people thought. He was a good man, she’d said, and true. He’d returned to her in Winterfell and had not left her side since.
Lady Sansa looked up at Podrick with a strange expression on her face. She reached out and took his hand, gripped tightly around his other and clammy with sweat from her attention. “I think I know where to find them,” Lady Sansa said. “Let us go and look.”
Lady Sansa led Podrick by the hand out of her solar and through the Great Keep. They passed a rotund maester, who stumbled over his feet at the sight of them and bowed his head to Lady Sansa. A pair of guards trailed behind them through the halls and out into the courtyard, but Lady Sansa did not seem to give them much thought.
She smiled at Podrick when he hesitated in the courtyard; he was not convinced a lady like Sansa Stark should wander into the Wildling camp. To his chagrin, the Wildlings let them pass. A few men stood up from their campfires, but they did not reach for their weapons and they did not try to steal Lady Sansa, either. Podrick let out a breath, and Lady Sansa squeezed his hand. She led him through the tents to a gate in the wall next to a low guest house.
The gate creaked with grit and frost. Lady Sansa paused. She turned to her guards and bade them stay by the gate. They protested the order until Lady Sansa argued that there could be no safer place than the woods beyond. Begrudgingly, they stood aside. Lady Sansa thanked them, tossing them a smile as if it were a brightly polished coin, and Podrick followed her through the gate.
They found his Lady in the godswood by the great white heart tree. Its scarlet leaves shivered in the icy wind, and the trunk of the weirwood was as pale as the drift of snow at its base. A face carved into the front of the tree dripped red sap from its eyes and speckled the snow around its roots. His Lady clutched her hands and glared at the little frozen pond at the foot of the tree. Ser Jaime stood not far off, watching her.
Lady Sansa held out an arm at the sight of them and blocked Podrick’s path. He wanted to go to his Lady, but something about the scene and the way Lady Sansa’s breath caught in her throat stopped him. Lady Sansa pressed a finger to her lips and then drew her fur-lined hood up around her head, her eyes never leaving his Lady. Podrick buried his hands in his pockets, clutching the brown roll in one and fisting the fabric of his quilted wool coat in the other.
Ser Jaime said something to his Lady, but the cold wind whipped his words away from them. His Lady nodded a response, and Ser Jaime moved toward her slowly, as if he were a hunter and she were his prey. Podrick had watched them spar many times over the past few years, but this was a dance he had not seen before. Ser Jaime stopped in front of his Lady, only a hand’s-breadth away. He looked like he was waiting, but for what, Podrick did not know.
Finally, his Lady spoke, but her words, too, were caught by the wind and the godswood ate them up. Ser Jaime’s face was solemn, his back tense. He reached out, as if to touch her, but halted when his Lady lifted her hands to her neck. Podrick had to keep from calling out as his Lady unpinned her thick wool cloak and pulled it from her shoulders.
The cold was fierce, and she might catch fever!
He looked to Lady Sansa for support, but she was fixated on the couple by the heart tree, biting her lips as she watched them. Suddenly, she gasped, and Podrick looked back just in time to see his Lady swing her cloak up around Ser Jaime’s shoulders. She straightened and ran her hands down his arms—that was not a gesture Podrick had seen before, either. Ser Jaime caught one of her hands in his good one and lifted his damage arm to her waist. The couple bent their heads together, so close that Podrick could not tell if they were speaking or—
Oh!
Lady Sansa reached out and grasped Podrick’s wrist hard in her hand. Her face was wet with tears and her smile was back. “Podrick,” she cried, “do you realize what they’ve just—that they are—Oh, how beautiful!”
Podrick looked back at the couple beneath the heart tree. Ser Jaime had wrapped his Lady in his arms and swung her around with a shout. His Lady was large for a woman, and even Ser Jaime—who was as strong as any knight Podrick had ever known—only managed to lift her a few inches off the snow. But he could see his Lady was laughing when Ser Jaime set her down. And Podrick could see the way her face flushed as Ser Jaime lifted his good hand to her good cheek, smiled, and pressed a kiss to her mouth.
“Lady Sansa,” Podrick said suddenly, his stomach clenching awkwardly at the sight, “w-we should go.”
Lady Sansa nodded her head absently and stayed rooted in place like one of the trees in the grove. Podrick brushed his hands against his damp coat and held out his arm to her, turning away from his Lady and her new husband. His Lord?
Lady Sansa let out a long, dreamy sigh, and turned away, too. Color pinked her cheeks from the cold, and the wind ruffled her fur hood. She took Podrick’s arm, and together they traipsed back through the snow and the trees to the warmth of the Great Keep, leaving the new couple to celebrate alone.
His Lady and his Lord... Podrick tried the thought out in his head and found he quite liked the sound of it.