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It was tremendously unfair.
It had all been Arya's fault in the first place: her stick, her butcher's boy, her direwolf. It was her fault that everything was ruined, and yet Father had rewarded her with the dancing lessons while Sansa had to remain enclosed with Septa Mordane all day for her own lessons. Arya wasn't even good at it.
"How do you know what I'm good at?" Arya yelled, when Sansa brought her complaint to him.
"Because you've never been good at anything!" Sansa yelled back. She had been furious when the Septa had told her: Arya had never shown the slightest inclination toward ladylike improvement, but there she was, the moment they set foot in King's Landing, learning to dance, of all things. And it angered her still, for Arya wasn't to marry the prince; she had no need for such talents.
Father put a hand on each of their shoulders, separating them.
"There's no need for this," he said. "Sansa, if you would like dancing lessons of your own--"
"I don't want any stupid dancing lessons," she said. That wasn't the point. He was always missing the point.
"Then don't begrudge your sister hers," said Father.
Arya made a face at her.
Father sighed. "Arya," he said. He always sounded weary, and he always sounded disappointed. He never seemed to care that he had disappointed her. "I would like to speak to your sister alone."
All conversation seemed to go that way, now. Since they had arrived in King's Landing, Sansa had been unable to look at either of them without resentment, and each of her father's attempts to make peace seemed worse and more insulting than the last. Sansa didn't want to speak to him at all.
Once Arya was gone, he sat Sansa across the desk from him, and looked at her with that horrible hopeful expression of his. "What are we going to do about this?" he asked.
Sansa shrugged, looking at her hands. "I don't know," she said.
Father sighed again: he was always sighing at her. "If you are bored here--"
"I am not bored," said Sansa. "Only it wasn't meant to be like this when we came here, but Arya ruined it--"
"Your sister did not ruin anything," said Father. "It is not her fault that Joffrey is a spoiled child."
"Joffrey is not," said Sansa, but even as she did, she felt a wretched kind of dryness in her throat, for Joffrey had scarcely spoken to her since that horrible night when Lady died. But she was not going to cry about it again.
"Perhaps not," Father relented. "But I understand that it must be lonely, for your septa is not, perhaps, the most -- engaging companion."
"There is also Jeyne," said Sansa, although she rarely saw her.
"There is also Jeyne," her father agreed. "But if you would like some other entertainment -- before the tournament -- perhaps you would like dancing lessons of your own."
Sansa said nothing. Learning to dance was not going to stop Arya from being as she was -- sullen and rude and ill-mannered -- and neither would it bring Lady back. But it would give her something to do -- and perhaps, when they were married, it meant that she would be able to dance with Joffrey, and he might come to love her again.
"Or perhaps music lessons," said Father cautiously.
"No," said Sansa. "I would like to learn to dance after all. Who is Arya's teacher?"
The dancing master met her in the solarium. He must have been waiting some time, but he remained still as she entered, hands folded behind his back, and did not seem at all interested in her arrival.
He was nothing as she had imagined.
He was dark, for one thing. He had the look of an easterner, with dark glittering eyes and wildly curling hair. He did not look proper, as she had hoped, and he certainly did not look like a dancer. He was sturdily built, with broad shoulders; but he was short -- only somewhat taller than she herself. He was dressed more as a soldier than a courtier; his dark jerkin was cut in a style wholly unfashionable in King's Landing, and his boots looked as if they had not seen polish for some time. Although he was certainly no knight of Westeros, he was possessed of a kind of nobility in his demeanor.
Sansa politely offered him her hand.
"You are the Lady Sansa," he said. His accent was foreign as well: of the free cities, she thought. He took her hand, but he did not kiss it: he sketched an odd sort of bow instead, yet holding it. "I am Syrio Forel."
"You are Braavosi," she said, withdrawing from his touch. It did not seem right, she thought, for her father to engage an easterner when there was all of Westeros to choose from: how was he to know how to dance at a western court? She regarded him as he folded his hands behind him, and she did not miss the way his mouth twitched. She had not expected him to be so hairy.
"Just so," said he. "And you are a northerner, just like your sister."
"My mother is a Tully of Riverrun," said Sansa. "I am as much of the south as of the north."
"And quite unlike your sister, after all," he said. There was a familiarity to his tone that she did not like.
"It's none of your concern what I am like," said Sansa.
He gave her a smile. "Just so," he said. "Now come. Are we here to be talking, or to be dancing?"
He stretched out a hand to her, palm up. Sansa did not take it. His fingers had been rough, and callused. He did not have the hands of a dancer. She was not sure that she liked him.
"I will teach you to dance the dance of the canals," he said, as though this were an enticement. "I believe that must be why I have been called here."
"Is that what you have been teaching my sister?" she asked.
"It is none of your concern what I have been teaching your sister," Syrio said, and the turnabout stung, though his tone was pleasant enough. Perhaps he had not meant it so, but Sansa felt a quiet kind of hurt all the same.
"I have no need for your rudeness," she said.
"Then do not trouble yourself with it," he replied, as though it were quite that simple. "Shall we?"
His hand was yet outstretched, but he made no move to draw near, or to touch her: he was waiting, Sansa knew, for her. He seemed perfectly at ease no matter what she might do, and his indifference shamed her. Her father had offered her this opportunity, and it would be the height of bad manners to discard it simply because she could not abide the man's talk. It was wholly possible that he meant nothing by it. He was foreign, after all: perhaps they did things differently.
"Tell me about this dance of the canals," she said.
Syrio Forel moved with a kind of grace that Sansa would have thought impossible. His body seemed ill-suited to the movement he showed her: the steps of what he called the dance of the canals, with its light-footed turns and twists, never seemed to catch him up but flowed easily from one step to the next. He performed each step easily, and masterfully, and Sansa wanted desperately to match him.
She could not see how he did it. It was like no dance she had ever seen.
When she tried to follow the steps herself, repeating the motions he had shown her, she ended up with his hand against her back, steadying her as she reached for him not to let her fall. She was endlessly tripped up. He did not laugh at her, but she felt embarrassed all the same: she had mocked Arya for her clumsiness, and yet there she was, was faring no better.
"Is this how Arya dances?" she asked, when she had at last given up and stepped away.
"Do not be thinking of your sister," he said. "Do not be thinking of how you look, or how you compare. Your dance is not her dance. Show me again."
"I can't," said Sansa.
"You say you can't, but you have not tried. Do you control the dance, or does the dance control you?"
"I control the dance," she said, knowing it to be the correct response, if not entirely true. She did not feel in control of anything: she couldn't even keep her hands still as her feet moved, as he had shown her.
"And yet you are allowing the dance to control you," said Syrio. "You are the dance: you cannot say that you cannot."
Sansa looked down, at the floor and her uncooperative feet. Her face felt hot with embarrassment, even though she did not care what this man thought of her. "And yet I cannot," she repeated.
"That is because you have not yet learned what your body can do," he said. "Once you have learned, then you shall be able."
When she looked up, Syrio was watching her with a hard kind of look. Sansa lifted her chin. It seemed to a stupid thing for him to say: her body was hers; how could she not know what it could do? "And how am I to learn?" she asked, haughty.
"Why," said Syrio: "by doing." But then he bowed to her, in that odd way of his. "But I believe this concludes our lesson for today."
The lessons continued in much that way.
Sansa did not improve overmuch from those first lessons. She felt awkward and graceless beside Syrio, who did not mock her but who constantly criticized. Nothing she did ever seemed to impress him, but neither did he ever seem displeased: it was such a change from her lessons with Septa Mordane -- who was never satisfied, and for whom Sansa would never be clever enough -- that she did not quite know what to make of it.
But what surprised her most was that she came to like Syrio Forel.
He was not courtly, like the lords and knights at King's Landing; or indeed even like her father's men at Winterfell. He was not well-mannered, and he was not always polite: he did not always bow to her, and sometimes he not only neglected to give her her proper title, but he even called her "girl" instead, as though she were no one important at all. But even that was refreshing, and the familiarity secretly thrilled her: no one else at court would dare be so bold.
She did call him on it, once. He had been walking alongside her as she danced down the length of the solarium, holding her hand up high above her, and telling her, repeatedly, to lift her toes -- as if any such instruction made sense.
"You know that I am engaged to be married to Prince Joffrey?" she interrupted, and dropped his hand.
"That is what I am hearing," said Syrio. He did not ask her to begin again, but instead withdrew, as if they were quite finished. "What has this to do with your lessons?"
"Someday I am to be queen of the Seven Kingdoms," said Sansa.
Syrio smiled at her faintly, but he did not reply. It was another thing she liked about him, even as it irritated her: he let her talk, even if sometimes too much.
"You must show me some respect," she told him. "I am Lady Sansa of House Stark of Winterfell, not some girl."
"And yet you are a girl, are you not?" said Syrio. She opened her mouth to protest, but he went on: "I am not thinking it is the title you want so much, nor the respect." He looked at her as though he knew something that she did not. "Do you know what it is you are wanting?"
Sansa frowned. She did not know what he was driving at.
"Come," he said, after a pause. "Let me show you something different."
She let him lead her through something he called the dance of the seven schools -- another Braavosi dance, and another that she would never be able to dance at court. But this was a slower one, with simpler steps: the difficulty lay in matching her movements to his, for if she did not, she would stumble over his feet if not her own. It took all of her concentration to complete each step, and by the end her mind had gone utterly still.
When they had finished, Sansa felt herself in a kind of shock. She felt quite detached from her earlier irritation, and when she looked back at Syrio, she was not struck by frustration at his familiarity, or at his rudeness. She looked at him and thought: he is not even a real dancer, and somehow it filled her with excitement in place of resentment.
"I see that you are learning," was all he said.
She did not want to speak of her lessons with Arya.
It wasn't as though she ever saw her sister, anyway: when she was not with Syrio, she was elsewhere in the castle, getting in the way and ever filthier. Whatever Syrio was teaching her, evidently it wasn't taking.
"You cannot punish your sister forever," said Septa Mordane. They had broken from her lessons for a meal, but there was scarcely any pause from the septa's talk, and Sansa had grown weary.
"I shall if I like," she replied. "Besides, I have nothing to say to her."
"Your dancing lessons," the Septa began.
"My dancing lessons are nothing to you," said Sansa. She picked at her food: she was not hungry.
"But they might be something to your sister," said Septa Mordane.
Sansa pushed away her plate, and regarded her septa across the table. Septa Mordane did not understand. There was nothing that tied Sansa to her sister anymore. "Arya is the reason Lady was killed," she said. "What do I care what she thinks of her dancing lessons? What do I care what she does at all?"
"Because she is your sister," said Septa Mordane, but Sansa did not think that was enough at all.
Sansa was standing in the middle of her room when the knock sounded. She had taken off her slippers as Syrio had instructed, and she stood with her feet together, her toes touching but her heels slightly parted. She could not stop swaying, but she left her hands clasped before her, just as he had said.
"Enter," she called.
It was Jeyne Poole.
"What are you doing?" Jeyne asked from the doorway.
Sansa did not move, although she knew that she ought to offer Jeyne a seat, and some refreshment. It had been some days since she had seen her. "Practicing," Sansa said.
"Practicing what?" asked Jeyne.
"Dancing," said Sansa.
Jeyne sighed as she closed the door behind her. Sansa watched her as she approached, but Jeyne made no move to interrupt her. Instead, she went to the table and poured herself a cup of water, and watched Sansa in return over the rim.
"You are not even moving," said Jeyne doubtfully.
"You must learn to be still first," Sansa said: Syrio had told her so. "You can't dance if you don't know how to be still."
Jeyne laughed. "Is that what your dancing teacher says? He must be dreadfully boring."
"He isn't," said Sansa. She could feel herself wavering, and she quite wanted to step out of the pose and join Jeyne at the table -- but if she did not learn, then she could not dance.
Jeyne put aside the cup and sat, folding her hands in her lap as she did. "Yes," she said, "I'm sure he must be very interesting to keep you so occupied. When shall we go riding again? Or perhaps we might start another embroidery project." She pursed her lips, her mouth flattening to a line. "Only it's so boring here, especially when you're too busy dancing. What am I to do?"
What was Jeyne to do? The proper thing, Sansa knew, would be to offer to have Jeyne join her. Certainly Syrio could not mind, and she might ask her father that Jeyne accompany her as some remedy from boredom for them both. It would be perfectly reasonable a request.
She did not want to ask. She wanted this thing -- this one thing -- to be for her alone.
"Surely you can find some other way to occupy yourself during my lessons," she said.
"I have," said Jeyne. "But am I also to find some way to occupy myself during your practice? What need have you to practice standing, anyway?"
"Syrio says it's very important," said Sansa. But then she relented, found her slippers, and joined Jeyne at the table. They were to take a walk about the gardens, and she had grown tired of standing after so long. And it was impolite, anyway, she thought, not to sit with her guest.
"Oh, Syrio says, does he?" said Jeyne. "I didn't think you'd be so taken with him. I hear he isn't even handsome."
Sansa frowned. "I don't see what that has to do with anything," she said. But she felt chastened by Jeyne's words anyway -- as if there was something quite wrong about liking her dancing teacher, as if he were unworthy of it simply because he was not handsome, or at least because Jeyne did not think him so.
Jeyne shrugged. "I only mean it would have been much better if your father had given you a proper courtier for a teacher," she said. "Someone young and handsome, like Ser Loras..." Her smile was kind and wistful as she trailed off, and Sansa was sure she meant no offense, but she felt vaguely insulted on Syrio's behalf anyway.
"I'm sure," said Sansa. "But shall we?" she asked, rising, and offered Jeyne her arm.
"I think that Joffrey hates me," Sansa said.
"And I am thinking that if you are talking, you cannot be dancing," said Syrio.
She had been at her lesson not longer than a quarter of an hour, but already her mind was wandering. Today already she had been granted Ser Loras' favor, and then watched as he unhorsed the Mountain. She had not been able to stop touching the flowers he had given her, and she had not been able to stop smiling as she showed them to Jeyne. But Joffrey had not even looked, and though it had seemed inconsequential at the time, the more she thought on it, the worse it became. For if her betrothed did not even care as she received attention from another -- he must hate her.
Ser Loras' gift could scarcely compensate for it.
"I don't want to dance today," she said. She had not been doing well, anyway: already she had missed too many steps, and had to begin again.
"When you are not wanting to is precisely when you should be dancing," said Syrio.
Sansa sighed. "Syrio," she said.
"When I was still learning the water dance," he said, "every day I had to practice. Especially the days I was not wanting. You must practice if you want to learn."
She shook her head. It was not that she did not want to learn, but that she suddenly felt as if there were no point or purpose to it. What did it matter if she could dance if she had no partner? What did it matter if she could dance if Joffrey hated her? Her wanting seemed very much inadequate.
"It doesn't matter," she said, "if Joffrey hates me."
"You are thinking your dance does not matter if you cannot share it?" Syrio asked. When Sansa nodded, he made a sharp sound of disapproval. He shook his head. "You do not dance for another," he said. "You dance for you."
Sansa did not know what to say. It was not true, after all: no one in Westeros danced alone, except maybe whores; it was not proper to dance only to be seen.
"I see you do not believe me," Syrio said. "But tell me: if you are dancing for your prince, then who is your sister dancing for?"
That gave Sansa pause. She had not imagined that Arya was dancing for anyone -- Arya was eleven. She looked around at Syrio, suddenly angry at the thought.
"But she is not learning those dances," he went on, before she could say anything. "And you are thinking of it in the wrong way. Your sister understands that her dance is her own. That is the Braavosi way."
"My sister is not Braavosi," said Sansa. "And neither am I."
"Just so," said Syrio. "But that should not be stopping you from thinking like you are."
Sansa sat. "You said you learned the water dance," she said. "But you have not taught me it. What is it?"
Syrio sat with her. He was very different, she thought, than either Joffrey or Loras -- and not simply because of his age, although he was old-- but because he did not care what she thought of him. He did not care if she loved him or if she hated him, or if she thought him ridiculous: he stayed with her anyway. He did not care, but Sansa realized that she cared very much.
"The water dance of Braavos," Syrio said, and there was a cautious kind of smile creeping onto his face, "is the most dangerous dance of all. It is the dance of the sword."
Sansa was taken aback. "And you can do it?" she asked.
"Girl," said Syrio: "I am the master of it."
Sansa hesitated. "Were you a knight in Braavos, then?" she asked.
"Braavos has no knights, as you call them," he said. "But I am the First Sword of Braavos, chosen by the Sealord himself." He said it with a quiet kind of pride, as though knowing it would mean nothing to her, but that her ignorance of his title was her own failing, and not his for a lack of fame.
"Who is the Sealord?" she asked, feeling stupid.
"Silly girl," said Syrio. "Do your teachers tell you nothing of the east?" Sansa felt her cheeks flaming, but he went on regardless: "The Sealord is the first lord of Braavos, chosen by the Lords of the Golden Book. He is the most powerful man in Braavos."
"And you are his First Sword," said Sansa. "What does that mean?"
"It means that I am the sword sworn to his protection," said Syrio. "I am the first among many."
"And yet you are here, in King's Landing," she said doubtfully.
"And yet I am here, in King's Landing," he agreed. "You will learn someday that protection is not always best given in close quarters," he said. He stood. "I think we are finished for today."
"No," said Sansa, although she did not stand with him. She looked at him again, and there was nothing changed about his features, but everything was different about the space that he occupied. She was suddenly, painfully aware of how dangerous he was, and the thought excited her. She did not want to speak of it, but neither did she want him to go. She wondered if Arya knew.
"Will you show me your dance?" she asked at last.
"No," said Syrio. "But I will show you yours. Next time, we will learn the dance of Westeros."
Sansa passed the next days growing increasingly and distractedly nervous. It was not that she did not know how the Westerosi danced: she was abstractly familiar with it, having seen her mother and father dance at feasts at Winterfell, and having observed the entertainments at court in King's Landing. But she had never done it, for there had been no one to dance with: at home, Robb would have refused her, and Bran was too young; in King's Landing, Joffrey had scarcely looked at her.
But her nervousness was not on account of her ignorance. She had not known any of the dances Syrio had taught her, but none of them had made heat curl in her belly, scratching its way up to her throat, such that she could not swallow whenever she thought of them. They had not affected her as the thought affected her now.
The dances of Westeros were too unlike those of Braavos that she had learned. They were nothing like the embellished, structured performances that Syrio had shown her: they were not done for the entertainment of the dancer, but the entertainment of the partner. As such, those dances had seemed strangely intimate to Sansa when she had watched, and it had felt as though she were intruding on some private moment inappropriately shared.
It had been precisely those dances she had longed to learn, when she had begun. She had imagined herself with Joffrey, her hand clasped in his, his other resting upon her waist as they turned. She had imagined they would be so happy, but that possibility now seemed quite distant.
Yet Syrio was still to teach her those dances. And now when she thought of them, it was not Joffrey's hands upon her that she imagined, nor Joffrey looking on her and smiling that she wanted. Instead it was Syrio, with his soldier's hands and his shocking grace -- and she could only imagine the heat of his body, the sharp scent of him as they drew close. She did not know how he would look at her, but she could not help imagining the way she might look at him, if she dared. She could not help any of it.
"What does Joffrey think of your dancing master?" Jeyne asked. She said it with an idle kind of curiosity, but Sansa knew that tone, and there was nothing either idle or curious about it.
Sansa did not answer.
Jeyne did not seem to take any offense at her silence. She had been picking flowers as they walked, and now she turned before Sansa, and tucked one of them into Sansa's hair. It was the sort of thing she might have done back at home, but here it made Sansa feel childish, and she reached up to pluck it away.
"Don't," said Jeyne.
Sansa left it.
"Nothing," Sansa replied, after a moment. "I don't see why Joffrey should think anything of him at all."
"Joffrey doesn't know about him, does he," said Jeyne.
Sansa faltered. "What is there to know?" she asked. "It's not as if it's a secret..."
Jeyne gave her a playful kind of smile, and then scattered her flowers in the path. She hooked one hand around Sansa's elbow, and leaned in: "He may not be a secret," she said quietly, "but that doesn't mean you don't have a secret when it comes to him."
"Jeyne!" Sansa cried.
But Jeyne was enjoying herself. "You do think he's handsome after all, don't you?" she said.
"Jeyne," Sansa repeated, shrugging out of Jeyne's reach. She felt mortified by Jeyne's teasing, but she could not even deny it. She couldn't bear to look at Jeyne, because then Jeyne would know.
"But never mind," Jeyne said quickly, and quite unexpectedly. "We're going to be late for Septa Mordane. You know how cross she gets."
"I do," said Sansa faintly. She had never felt so grateful.
By the time she did meet with Syrio, she had run out of nerves. She had already spent far too much time thinking about how she might look, what she might say, how she might act -- and discarded all of it, for she knew that Syrio did not care.
Yet she brushed her hair until it shone all the same.
There was nothing special about him that day. He met her in the solarium as usual, bowed to her as usual, complained about her lateness as usual. But the very sight of him made her flush, and it was not nervousness that curled through her, but quite an unfamiliar kind of warmth.
"You are not a good dancer," Syrio told her, once they had begun. "But you are not needing to be good to dance your western dances."
Sansa was not sure if she ought to be insulted.
"Do you know your menuet?" Syrio asked.
"I have seen it danced," said Sansa, and an absurd thrill shot through her. She had seen it at court and at Winterfell, and she had loved it: the small steps, the close intimacy of the movements. It was the very dance she had imagined performing with Joffrey, but it was not of him she was thinking now.
"Good," said Syrio. "Then you will watch, and you will repeat."
When at last he was satisfied that she knew the steps, he held his hand out to her, palm up. It was not, of course, the first time that she had taken his hand, but this time the rough slide of his palm against her soft one felt quite different. Facing him, she put her other hand on his shoulder, while his went to her waist. They were no closer than necessary, but still she felt an aching kind of pleasure seep through her.
She could not stop smiling.
"You should not be looking at your feet," said Syrio, when they had completed the first turn about the room.
"I was looking at yours," Sansa corrected him, and immediately mis-stepped.
"There is your problem," said Syrio. "You are looking, but you are not seeing. Keep your eyes up. Begin again."
She did.
But this time, it was not easy. This time, she could not hide her smile from Syrio; this time, she looked at him, and she could not breathe for the way he looked back. She wanted to lace her fingers with his, and curl her arm about his back: she wanted to dance with him as closely as was possible, two bodies moving in tandem while he held her. She wanted to kiss him, although she did not know how.
But there was no knowing what he was thinking, and she could not do anything without some sign. For he watched her; but he had always watched her. She did not know if there was anything different in his look, or if it was something like her own love that made her hope so.
She did not know what any of it meant.
But Joffrey came to her first: called her my lady, and gave her a token of his affection, once thought lost. He kissed her hands and her lips, and he apologized, as she had so often wished.
"We will dance together when are married, you and I," he said.
She believed him.