Chapter 17: Sansa Discovers What Joffrey Is

The invitation had arrived on cream paper, in a hand so accomplished it might have been printed, and had described the occasion as an intimate supper — a phrase which, Sansa was discovering, meant something in King's Landing-upon-Thames that it did not mean in the novels she had read.

In the novels, intimate suppers contained eight persons and resulted in declarations.

This one contained four — herself, Prince Joffrey, his particular friend Lord Meryn of the Kingsguard, and a young woman of approximately Sansa's age whose name Joffrey did not trouble to supply when he introduced her, referring to her only as "my cousin," which was either his name for her or a designation sufficiently approximate — and had so far produced nothing except an elaborate arrangement of dishes and a growing private unease that Sansa was engaged in methodically suppressing because the alternative was to examine it, and she was not yet certain what she would find.