The scent of hot bread drifting from the shops
along the Street of Flour was sweeter than any perfume Arya had
ever smelled. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the
pigeon. It was a plump one, speckled brown, busily pecking at a
crust that had fallen between two cobblestones, but when
Arya’s shadow touched it, it took to the air.
Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the
ground, and it went down in a flurry of brown feathers. She was on
it in the blink of an eye, grabbing a wing as the pigeon flapped
and fluttered. It pecked at her hand. She grabbed its neck and
twisted until she felt the bone snap.
Compared with catching cats, pigeons were easy.
A passing septon was looking at her askance. “Here’s
the best place to find pigeon,” Arya told him as she brushed
herself off and picked up her fallen stick sword. “They come
for the crumbs.” He hurried away.
She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A
man was pushing a load of tarts by on a two-wheeled cart; the
smells sang of blueberries and lemons and apricots. Her stomach
made a hollow rumbly noise. “Could I have one?” she
heard herself say. “A lemon, or . . . or any kind.”
The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like
what he saw. “Three coppers.”
Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot.
“I’ll trade you a fat pigeon,” she said.
“The Others take your pigeon,” the pushcart man
said.
The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making
her mouth water, but she did not have three coppers . . . or one.
She gave the pushcart man a look, remembering what Syrio had told
her about seeing. He was short, with a little round belly, and when
he moved he seemed to favor his left leg a little. She was just
thinking that if she snatched a tart and ran he would never be able
to catch her when he said, “You be keepin’ your filthy
hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little
gutter rats, that they do.”
Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were
standing at the mouth of an alley. Their cloaks hung almost to the
ground, the heavy wool dyed a rich gold; their mail and boots and
gloves were black. One wore a longsword at his hip, the other an
iron cudgel. With a last wistful glance at the tarts, Arya edged
back from the cart and hurried off. The gold cloaks had not been
paying her any special attention, but the sight of them tied her
stomach in knots. Arya had been staying as far from the castle as
she could get, yet even from a distance she could see the heads
rotting atop the high red walls. Flocks of crows squabbled noisily
over each head, thick as flies. The talk in Flea Bottom was that
the gold cloaks had thrown in with the Lannisters, their commander
raised to a lord, with lands on the Trident and a seat on the
king’s council.
She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made
no sense to her. Some said her father had murdered King Robert and
been slain in turn by Lord Renly. Others insisted that Renly had
killed the king in a drunken quarrel between brothers. Why else
should he have fled in the night like a common thief? One story
said the king had been killed by a boar while hunting, another that
he’d died eating a boar, stuffing himself so full that
he’d ruptured at the table. No, the king had died at table,
others said, but only because Varys the Spider poisoned him. No, it
had been the queen who poisoned him. No, he had died of a pox. No,
he had choked on a fish bone.
One thing all the stories agreed on: King Robert was dead. The
bells in the seven towers of the Great Sept of Baelor had tolled
for a day and a night, the thunder of their grief rolling across
the city in a bronze tide. They only rang the bells like that for
the death of a king, a tanner’s boy told Arya.
All she wanted was to go home, but leaving King’s Landing
was not so easy as she had hoped. Talk of war was on every lip, and
gold cloaks were as thick on the city walls as fleas on . . . well,
her, for one. She had been sleeping in Flea Bottom, on rooftops and
in stables, wherever she could find a place to lie down, and it
hadn’t taken her long to learn that the district was well
named.
Every day since her escape from the Red Keep, Arya had visited
each of the seven city gates in turn. The Dragon Gate, the Lion
Gate, and the Old Gate were closed and barred. The Mud Gate and the
Gate of the Gods were open, but only to those who wanted to enter
the city; the guards let no one out. Those who were allowed to
leave left by the King’s Gate or the Iron Gate, but Lannister
men-at-arms in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms manned the
guard posts there. Spying down from the roof of an inn by the
King’s Gate, Arya saw them searching wagons and carriages,
forcing riders to open their saddlebags, and questioning everyone
who tried to pass on foot.
Sometimes she thought about swimming the river, but the
Blackwater Rush was wide and deep, and everyone agreed that its
currents were wicked and treacherous. She had no coin to pay a
ferryman or take passage on a ship.
Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was
growing harder to remember why. If she did not get out soon, she
would have to take her chances with the gold cloaks. She
hadn’t gone hungry much since she learned to knock down birds
with her stick sword, but she feared so much pigeon was making her
sick. A couple she’d eaten raw, before she found Flea
Bottom.
In the Bottom there were pot-shops along the alleys where huge
tubs of stew had been simmering for years, and you could trade half
your bird for a heel of yesterday’s bread and a “bowl
o’ brown,” and they’d even stick the other half
in the fire and crisp it up for you, so long as you plucked the
feathers yourself. Arya would have given anything for a cup of milk
and a lemon cake, but the brown wasn’t so bad. It usually had
barley in it, and chunks of carrot and onion and turnip, and
sometimes even apple, with a film of grease swimming on top. Mostly
she tried not to think about the meat. Once she had gotten a piece
of fish.
The only thing was, the pot-shops were never empty, and even as
she bolted down her food, Arya could feel them watching. Some of
them stared at her boots or her cloak, and she knew what they were
thinking. With others, she could almost feel their eyes crawling
under her leathers; she didn’t know what they were thinking,
and that scared her even more. A couple times, she was followed out
into the alleys and chased, but so far no one had been able to
catch her.
The silver bracelet she’d hoped to sell had been stolen
her first night out of the castle, along with her bundle of good
clothes, snatched while she slept in a burnt-out house off Pig
Alley. All they left her was the cloak she had been huddled in, the
leathers on her back, her wooden practice sword . . . and Needle.
She’d been lying on top of Needle, or else it would have been
gone too; it was worth more than all the rest together. Since then
Arya had taken to walking around with her cloak draped over her
right arm, to conceal the blade at her hip. The wooden sword she
carried in her left hand, out where everybody could see it, to
scare off robbers, but there were men in the pot-shops who
wouldn’t have been scared off if she’d had a
battle-axe. It was enough to make her lose her taste for pigeon and
stale bread. Often as not, she went to bed hungry rather than risk
the stares.
Once she was outside the city, she would find berries to pick,
or orchards she might raid for apples and cherries. Arya remembered
seeing some from the kingsroad on the journey south. And she could
dig for roots in the forest, even run down some rabbits. In the
city, the only things to run down were rats and cats and scrawny
dogs. The potshops would give you a fistful of coppers for a litter
of pups, she’d heard, but she didn’t like to think
about that.
Down below the Street of Flour was a maze of twisting alleys and
cross streets. Arya scrambled through the crowds, trying to put
distance between her and the gold cloaks. She had learned to keep
to the center of the street. Sometimes she had to dodge wagons and
horses, but at least you could see them coming. If you walked near
the buildings, people grabbed you. In some alleys you
couldn’t help but brush against the walls; the buildings
leaned in so close they almost met.
A whooping gang of small children went running past, chasing a
rolling hoop. Arya stared at them with resentment, remembering the
times she’d played at hoops with Bran and Jon and their baby
brother Rickon. She wondered how big Rickon had grown, and whether
Bran was sad. She would have given anything if Jon had been here to
call her “little sister” and muss her hair. Not that it
needed mussing. She’d seen her reflection in puddles, and she
didn’t think hair got any more mussed than hers.
She had tried talking to the children she saw in the street,
hoping to make a friend who would give her a place to sleep, but
she must have talked wrong or something. The little ones only
looked at her with quick, wary eyes and ran away if she came too
close. Their big brothers and sisters asked questions Arya
couldn’t answer, called her names, and tried to steal from
her. Only yesterday, a scrawny barefoot girl twice her age had
knocked her down and tried to pull the boots off her feet, but Arya
gave her a crack on her ear with her stick sword that sent her off
sobbing and bleeding.
A gull wheeled overhead as she made her way down the hill toward
Flea Bottom. Arya glanced at it thoughtfully, but it was well
beyond the reach of her stick. It made her think of the sea. Maybe
that was the way out. Old Nan used to tell stories of boys who
stowed away on trading galleys and sailed off into all kinds of
adventures. Maybe Arya could do that too. She decided to visit the
riverfront. It was on the way to the Mud Gate anyway, and she
hadn’t checked that one today.
The wharfs were oddly quiet when Arya got there. She spied
another pair of gold cloaks, walking side by side through the fish
market, but they never so much as looked at her. Half the stalls
were empty, and it seemed to her that there were fewer ships at
dock than she remembered. Out on the Blackwater, three of the
king’s war galleys moved in formation, gold-painted hulls
splitting the water as their oars rose and fell. Arya watched them
for a bit, then began to make her way along the river.
When she saw the guardsmen on the third pier, in grey woolen
cloaks trimmed with white satin, her heart almost stopped in her
chest. The sight of Winterfell’s colors brought tears to her
eyes. Behind them, a sleek three-banked trading galley rocked at
her moorings. Arya could not read the name painted on the hull; the
words were strange, Myrish, Braavosi, perhaps even High Valyrian.
She grabbed a passing longshoreman by the sleeve.
“Please,” she said, “what ship is
this?”
“She’s the Wind Witch, out of Myr,” the man
said.
“She’s still here,” Arya blurted. The
longshoreman gave her a queer look, shrugged, and walked away. Arya
ran toward the pier. The Wind Witch was the ship Father had hired
to take her home . . . still waiting! She’d imagined it had
sailed ages ago.
Two of the guardsmen were dicing together while the third walked
rounds, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Ashamed to let them
see her crying like a baby, she stopped to rub at her eyes. Her
eyes her eyes her eyes, why did . . . Look with your eyes, she heard Syrio whisper.
Arya looked. She knew all of her father’s men. The three
in the grey cloaks were strangers. “You,” the one
walking rounds called out. “What do you want here,
boy?” The other two looked up from their dice.
It was all Arya could do not to bolt and run, but she knew that
if she did, they would be after her at once. She made herself walk
closer. They were looking for a girl, but he thought she was a boy.
She’d be a boy, then. “Want to buy a pigeon?” She
showed him the dead bird.
“Get out of here,” the guardsman said.
Arya did as he told her. She did not have to pretend to be
frightened. Behind her, the men went back to their dice.
She could not have said how she got back to Flea Bottom, but she
was breathing hard by the time she reached the narrow crooked
unpaved streets between the hills. The Bottom had a stench to it, a
stink of pigsties and stables and tanner’s sheds, mixed in
with the sour smell of winesinks and cheap whorehouses. Arya wound
her way through the maze dully. It was not until she caught a whiff
of bubbling brown coming through a pot-shop door that she realized
her pigeon was gone. It must have slipped from her belt as she ran,
or someone had stolen it and she’d never noticed. For a
moment she wanted to cry again. She’d have to walk all the
way back to the Street of Flour to find another one that plump.
Far across the city, bells began to ring.
Arya glanced up, listening, wondering what the ringing meant
this time.
“What’s this now?” a fat man called from the
pot-shop.
“The bells again, gods ha’mercy,” wailed an
old woman.
A red-haired whore in a wisp of painted silk pushed open a
second-story window. “Is it the boy king that’s died
now?” she shouted down, leaning out over the street.
“Ah, that’s a boy for you, they never last long.”
As she laughed, a naked man slid his arms around her from behind,
biting her neck and rubbing the heavy white breasts that hung loose
beneath her shift.
“Stupid slut,” the fat man shouted up. “The
king’s not dead, that’s only summoning bells. One tower
tolling. When the king dies, they ring every bell in the
city.”
“Here, quit your biting, or I’ll ring your
bells,” the woman in the window said to the man behind her,
pushing him off with an elbow. “So who is it died, if not the
king?”
“It’s a summoning,” the fat man repeated.
Two boys close to Arya’s age scampered past, splashing
through a puddle. The old woman cursed them, but they kept right on
going. Other people were moving too, heading up the hill to see
what the noise was about. Arya ran after the slower boy.
“Where you going?” she shouted when she was right
behind him. “What’s happening?”
He glanced back without slowing. “The gold cloaks is
carryin’ him to the sept.”
“Who?” she yelled, running hard.
“The Hand! They’ll be taking his head off, Buu
says.”
A passing wagon had left a deep rut in the street. The boy leapt
over, but Arya never saw it. She tripped and fell, face first,
scraping her knee open on a stone and smashing her fingers when her
hands hit the hard-packed earth. Needle tangled between her legs.
She sobbed as she struggled to her knees. The thumb of her left
hand was covered with blood. When she sucked on it, she saw that
half the thumbnail was gone, ripped off in her fall. Her hands
throbbed, and her knee was all bloody too.
“Make way!” someone shouted from the cross street.
“Make way for my lords of Redwyne!” It was all Arya
could do to get out of the road before they ran her down, four
guardsmen on huge horses, pounding past at a gallop. They wore
checked cloaks, blue-and-burgundy. Behind them, two young lordlings
rode side by side on a pair of chestnut mares alike as peas in a
pod. Arya had seen them in the bailey a hundred times; the Redwyne
twins, Ser Horas and Ser Hobber, homely youths with orange hair and
square, freckled faces. Sansa and Jeyne Poole used to call them Ser
Horror and Ser Slobber, and giggle whenever they caught sight of
them. They did not look funny now.
Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see
what the ringing was all about. The bells seemed louder now,
clanging, calling. Arya joined the stream of people. Her thumb hurt
so bad where the nail had broken that it was all she could do not
to cry. She bit her lip as she limped along, listening to the
excited voices around her.
“—the King’s Hand, Lord Stark. They’re
carrying him up to Baelor’s Sept.”
“I heard he was dead.”
“Soon enough, soon enough. Here, I got me a silver stag
says they lop his head off.”
“Past time, the traitor.” The man spat.
Arya struggled to find a voice. “He never—” she
started, but she was only a child and they talked right over
her.
“Fool! They ain’t neither going to lop him. Since
when do they knick traitors on the steps of the Great
Sept?”
“Well, they don’t mean to anoint him no knight. I
heard it was Stark killed old King Robert. Slit his throat in the
woods, and when they found him, he stood there cool as you please
and said it was some old boar did for His Grace.”
“Ah, that’s not true, it was his own brother did
him, that Renly, him with his gold antlers.”
“You shut your lying mouth, woman. You don’t know
what you’re saying, his lordship’s a fine true
man.”
By the time they reached the Street of the Sisters, they were
packed in shoulder to shoulder. Arya let the human current carry
her along, up to the top of Visenya’s Hill. The white marble
plaza was a solid mass of people, all yammering excitedly at each
other and straining to get closer to the Great Sept of Baelor. The
bells were very loud here.
Arya squirmed through the press, ducking between the legs of
horses and clutching tight to her sword stick. From the middle of
the crowd, all she could see were arms and legs and stomachs, and
the seven slender towers of the sept looming overhead. She spotted
a wood wagon and thought to climb up on the back where she might be
able to see, but others had the same idea. The teamster cursed at
them and drove them off with a crack of his whip.
Arya grew frantic. Forcing her way to the front of the crowd,
she was shoved up against the stone of a plinth. She looked up at
Baelor the Blessed, the septon king. Sliding her stick sword
through her belt, Arya began to climb. Her broken thumbnail left
smears of blood on the painted marble, but she made it up, and
wedged herself in between the king’s feet.
That was when she saw her father.
Lord Eddard stood on the High Septon’s pulpit outside the
doors of the sept, supported between two of the gold cloaks. He was
dressed in a rich grey velvet doublet with a white wolf sewn on the
front in beads, and a grey wool cloak trimmed with fur, but he was
thinner than Arya had ever seen him, his long face drawn with pain.
He was not standing so much as being held up; the cast over his
broken leg was grey and rotten.
The High Septon himself stood behind him, a squat man, grey with
age and ponderously fat, wearing long white robes and an immense
crown of spun gold and crystal that wreathed his head with rainbows
whenever he moved.
Clustered around the doors of the sept, in front of the raised
marble pulpit, were a knot of knights and high lords. Joffrey was
prominent among them, his raiment all crimson, silk and satin
patterned with prancing stags and roaring lions, a gold crown on
his head. His queen mother stood beside him in a black mourning
gown slashed with crimson, a veil of black diamonds in her hair.
Arya recognized the Hound, wearing a snowy white cloak over his
dark grey armor, with four of the Kingsguard around him. She saw
Varys the eunuch gliding among the lords in soft slippers and a
patterned damask robe, and she thought the short man with the
silvery cape and pointed beard might be the one who had once fought
a duel for Mother.
And there in their midst was Sansa, dressed in sky-blue silk,
with her long auburn hair washed and curled and silver bracelets on
her wrists. Arya scowled, wondering what her sister was doing here,
why she looked so happy.
A long line of gold-cloaked spearmen held back the crowd,
commanded by a stout man in elaborate armor, all black lacquer and
gold filigree. His cloak had the metallic shimmer of true
cloth-of-gold.
When the bell ceased to toll, a quiet slowly settled across the
great plaza, and her father lifted his head and began to speak, his
voice so thin and weak she could scarcely make him out. People
behind her began to shout out, “What?” and
“Louder!” The man in the black-and-gold armor stepped up
behind Father and prodded him sharply. You leave him alone! Arya
wanted to shout, but she knew no one would listen. She chewed her
lip.
Her father raised his voice and began again. “I am Eddard
Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King,” he said more
loudly, his voice carrying across the plaza, “and I come
before you to confess my treason in the sight of gods and
men.”
“No,” Arya whimpered. Below her, the crowd began to
scream and shout. Taunts and obscenities filled the air. Sansa had
hidden her face in her hands.
Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard.
“I betrayed the faith of my king and the trust of my friend,
Robert,” he shouted. “I swore to defend and protect his
children, yet before his blood was cold, I plotted to depose and
murder his son and seize the throne for myself. Let the High Septon
and Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of
what I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron
Throne, and by the grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven
Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.”
A stone came sailing out of the crowd. Arya cried out as she saw
her father hit. The gold cloaks kept him from falling. Blood ran
down his face from a deep gash across his forehead. More stones
followed. One struck the guard to Father’s left. Another went
clanging off the breastplate of the knight in the black-and-gold
armor. Two of the Kingsguard stepped in front of Joffrey and the
queen, protecting them with their shields.
Her hand slid beneath her cloak and found Needle in its sheath.
She tightened her fingers around the grip, squeezing as hard as she
had ever squeezed anything. Please, gods, keep him safe, she
prayed. Don’t let them hurt my father.
The High Septon knelt before Joffrey and his mother. “As
we sin, so do we suffer,” he intoned, in a deep swelling
voice much louder than Father’s. “This man has
confessed his crimes in the sight of gods and men, here in this
holy place.” Rainbows danced around his head as he lifted his
hands in entreaty. “The gods are just, yet Blessed Baelor
taught us that they are also merciful. What shall be done with this
traitor, Your Grace?”
A thousand voices were screaming, but Arya never heard them.
Prince Joffrey . . . no, King Joffrey . . . stepped out from behind
the shields of his Kingsguard. “My mother bids me let Lord
Eddard take the black, and Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her
father.” He looked straight at Sansa then, and smiled, and
for a moment Arya thought that the gods had heard her prayer, until
Joffrey turned back to the crowd and said, “But they have the
soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall
never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!”
The crowd roared, and Arya felt the statue of Baelor rock as
they surged against it. The High Septon clutched at the
king’s cape, and Varys came rushing over waving his arms, and
even the queen was saying something to him, but Joffrey shook his
head. Lords and knights moved aside as he stepped through, tall and
fleshless, a skeleton in iron mail, the King’s Justice.
Dimly, as if from far off, Arya heard her sister scream. Sansa had
fallen to her knees, sobbing hysterically. Ser Ilyn Payne climbed
the steps of the pulpit.
Arya wriggled between Baelor’s feet and threw herself into
the crowd, drawing Needle. She landed on a man in a butcher’s
apron, knocking him to the ground. Immediately someone slammed into
her back and she almost went down herself. Bodies closed in around
her, stumbling and pushing, trampling on the poor butcher. Arya
slashed at them with Needle.
High atop the pulpit, Ser Ilyn Payne gestured and the knight in
black-and-gold gave a command. The gold cloaks flung Lord Eddard to
the marble, with his head and chest out over the edge.
“Here, you!” an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she
bowled past, shoving people aside, squirming between them, slamming
into anyone in her way. A hand fumbled at her leg and she hacked at
it, kicked at shins. A woman stumbled and Arya ran up her back,
cutting to both sides, but it was no good, no good, there were too
many people, no sooner did she make a hole than it closed again.
Someone buffeted her aside. She could still hear Sansa
screaming.
Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his
back. As he lifted the blade above his head, sunlight seemed to
ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper
than any razor. Ice, she thought, he has Ice! Her tears streamed down
her face, blinding her.
And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm
like a wolf trap, so hard that Needle went flying from her hand.
Arya was wrenched off her feet. She would have fallen if he
hadn’t held her up, as easy as if she were a doll. A face
pressed close to hers, long black hair and tangled beard and rotten
teeth. “Don’t look!” a thick voice snarled at
her.
“I . . . I . . . I . . . ” Arya sobbed.
The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “Shut
your mouth and close your eyes, boy.” Dimly, as if from far
away, she heard a . . . a noise . . . a soft sighing sound, as if a
million people had let out their breath at once. The old
man’s fingers dug into her arm, stiff as iron. “Look at
me. Yes, that’s the way of it, at me.” Sour wine
perfumed his breath. “Remember, boy?”
It was the smell that did it. Arya saw the matted greasy hair,
the patched, dusty black cloak that covered his twisted shoulders,
the hard black eyes squinting at her. And she remembered the black
brother who had come to visit her father.
“Know me now, do you? There’s a bright boy.”
He spat. “They’re done here. You’ll be coming
with me, and you’ll be keeping your mouth shut.” When
she started to reply, he shook her again, even harder. “Shut,
I said.”
The plaza was beginning to empty. The press dissolved around
them as people drifted back to their lives. But Arya’s life
was gone. Numb, she trailed along beside . . . Yoren, yes, his name
is Yoren. She did not recall him finding Needle, until he handed
the sword back to her. “Hope you can use that,
boy.”
“I’m not—” she started.
He shoved her into a doorway, thrust dirty fingers through her
hair, and gave it a twist, yanking her head back. “—not a
smart boy, that what you mean to say?”
He had a knife in his other hand.
As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself
backward, kicking wildly, wrenching her head from side to side, but
he had her by the hair, so strong, she could feel her scalp
tearing, and on her lips the salt taste of tears.
The scent of hot bread drifting from the shops
along the Street of Flour was sweeter than any perfume Arya had
ever smelled. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the
pigeon. It was a plump one, speckled brown, busily pecking at a
crust that had fallen between two cobblestones, but when
Arya’s shadow touched it, it took to the air.
Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the
ground, and it went down in a flurry of brown feathers. She was on
it in the blink of an eye, grabbing a wing as the pigeon flapped
and fluttered. It pecked at her hand. She grabbed its neck and
twisted until she felt the bone snap.
Compared with catching cats, pigeons were easy.
A passing septon was looking at her askance. “Here’s
the best place to find pigeon,” Arya told him as she brushed
herself off and picked up her fallen stick sword. “They come
for the crumbs.” He hurried away.
She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A
man was pushing a load of tarts by on a two-wheeled cart; the
smells sang of blueberries and lemons and apricots. Her stomach
made a hollow rumbly noise. “Could I have one?” she
heard herself say. “A lemon, or . . . or any kind.”
The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like
what he saw. “Three coppers.”
Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot.
“I’ll trade you a fat pigeon,” she said.
“The Others take your pigeon,” the pushcart man
said.
The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making
her mouth water, but she did not have three coppers . . . or one.
She gave the pushcart man a look, remembering what Syrio had told
her about seeing. He was short, with a little round belly, and when
he moved he seemed to favor his left leg a little. She was just
thinking that if she snatched a tart and ran he would never be able
to catch her when he said, “You be keepin’ your filthy
hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little
gutter rats, that they do.”
Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were
standing at the mouth of an alley. Their cloaks hung almost to the
ground, the heavy wool dyed a rich gold; their mail and boots and
gloves were black. One wore a longsword at his hip, the other an
iron cudgel. With a last wistful glance at the tarts, Arya edged
back from the cart and hurried off. The gold cloaks had not been
paying her any special attention, but the sight of them tied her
stomach in knots. Arya had been staying as far from the castle as
she could get, yet even from a distance she could see the heads
rotting atop the high red walls. Flocks of crows squabbled noisily
over each head, thick as flies. The talk in Flea Bottom was that
the gold cloaks had thrown in with the Lannisters, their commander
raised to a lord, with lands on the Trident and a seat on the
king’s council.
She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made
no sense to her. Some said her father had murdered King Robert and
been slain in turn by Lord Renly. Others insisted that Renly had
killed the king in a drunken quarrel between brothers. Why else
should he have fled in the night like a common thief? One story
said the king had been killed by a boar while hunting, another that
he’d died eating a boar, stuffing himself so full that
he’d ruptured at the table. No, the king had died at table,
others said, but only because Varys the Spider poisoned him. No, it
had been the queen who poisoned him. No, he had died of a pox. No,
he had choked on a fish bone.
One thing all the stories agreed on: King Robert was dead. The
bells in the seven towers of the Great Sept of Baelor had tolled
for a day and a night, the thunder of their grief rolling across
the city in a bronze tide. They only rang the bells like that for
the death of a king, a tanner’s boy told Arya.
All she wanted was to go home, but leaving King’s Landing
was not so easy as she had hoped. Talk of war was on every lip, and
gold cloaks were as thick on the city walls as fleas on . . . well,
her, for one. She had been sleeping in Flea Bottom, on rooftops and
in stables, wherever she could find a place to lie down, and it
hadn’t taken her long to learn that the district was well
named.
Every day since her escape from the Red Keep, Arya had visited
each of the seven city gates in turn. The Dragon Gate, the Lion
Gate, and the Old Gate were closed and barred. The Mud Gate and the
Gate of the Gods were open, but only to those who wanted to enter
the city; the guards let no one out. Those who were allowed to
leave left by the King’s Gate or the Iron Gate, but Lannister
men-at-arms in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms manned the
guard posts there. Spying down from the roof of an inn by the
King’s Gate, Arya saw them searching wagons and carriages,
forcing riders to open their saddlebags, and questioning everyone
who tried to pass on foot.
Sometimes she thought about swimming the river, but the
Blackwater Rush was wide and deep, and everyone agreed that its
currents were wicked and treacherous. She had no coin to pay a
ferryman or take passage on a ship.
Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was
growing harder to remember why. If she did not get out soon, she
would have to take her chances with the gold cloaks. She
hadn’t gone hungry much since she learned to knock down birds
with her stick sword, but she feared so much pigeon was making her
sick. A couple she’d eaten raw, before she found Flea
Bottom.
In the Bottom there were pot-shops along the alleys where huge
tubs of stew had been simmering for years, and you could trade half
your bird for a heel of yesterday’s bread and a “bowl
o’ brown,” and they’d even stick the other half
in the fire and crisp it up for you, so long as you plucked the
feathers yourself. Arya would have given anything for a cup of milk
and a lemon cake, but the brown wasn’t so bad. It usually had
barley in it, and chunks of carrot and onion and turnip, and
sometimes even apple, with a film of grease swimming on top. Mostly
she tried not to think about the meat. Once she had gotten a piece
of fish.
The only thing was, the pot-shops were never empty, and even as
she bolted down her food, Arya could feel them watching. Some of
them stared at her boots or her cloak, and she knew what they were
thinking. With others, she could almost feel their eyes crawling
under her leathers; she didn’t know what they were thinking,
and that scared her even more. A couple times, she was followed out
into the alleys and chased, but so far no one had been able to
catch her.
The silver bracelet she’d hoped to sell had been stolen
her first night out of the castle, along with her bundle of good
clothes, snatched while she slept in a burnt-out house off Pig
Alley. All they left her was the cloak she had been huddled in, the
leathers on her back, her wooden practice sword . . . and Needle.
She’d been lying on top of Needle, or else it would have been
gone too; it was worth more than all the rest together. Since then
Arya had taken to walking around with her cloak draped over her
right arm, to conceal the blade at her hip. The wooden sword she
carried in her left hand, out where everybody could see it, to
scare off robbers, but there were men in the pot-shops who
wouldn’t have been scared off if she’d had a
battle-axe. It was enough to make her lose her taste for pigeon and
stale bread. Often as not, she went to bed hungry rather than risk
the stares.
Once she was outside the city, she would find berries to pick,
or orchards she might raid for apples and cherries. Arya remembered
seeing some from the kingsroad on the journey south. And she could
dig for roots in the forest, even run down some rabbits. In the
city, the only things to run down were rats and cats and scrawny
dogs. The potshops would give you a fistful of coppers for a litter
of pups, she’d heard, but she didn’t like to think
about that.
Down below the Street of Flour was a maze of twisting alleys and
cross streets. Arya scrambled through the crowds, trying to put
distance between her and the gold cloaks. She had learned to keep
to the center of the street. Sometimes she had to dodge wagons and
horses, but at least you could see them coming. If you walked near
the buildings, people grabbed you. In some alleys you
couldn’t help but brush against the walls; the buildings
leaned in so close they almost met.
A whooping gang of small children went running past, chasing a
rolling hoop. Arya stared at them with resentment, remembering the
times she’d played at hoops with Bran and Jon and their baby
brother Rickon. She wondered how big Rickon had grown, and whether
Bran was sad. She would have given anything if Jon had been here to
call her “little sister” and muss her hair. Not that it
needed mussing. She’d seen her reflection in puddles, and she
didn’t think hair got any more mussed than hers.
She had tried talking to the children she saw in the street,
hoping to make a friend who would give her a place to sleep, but
she must have talked wrong or something. The little ones only
looked at her with quick, wary eyes and ran away if she came too
close. Their big brothers and sisters asked questions Arya
couldn’t answer, called her names, and tried to steal from
her. Only yesterday, a scrawny barefoot girl twice her age had
knocked her down and tried to pull the boots off her feet, but Arya
gave her a crack on her ear with her stick sword that sent her off
sobbing and bleeding.
A gull wheeled overhead as she made her way down the hill toward
Flea Bottom. Arya glanced at it thoughtfully, but it was well
beyond the reach of her stick. It made her think of the sea. Maybe
that was the way out. Old Nan used to tell stories of boys who
stowed away on trading galleys and sailed off into all kinds of
adventures. Maybe Arya could do that too. She decided to visit the
riverfront. It was on the way to the Mud Gate anyway, and she
hadn’t checked that one today.
The wharfs were oddly quiet when Arya got there. She spied
another pair of gold cloaks, walking side by side through the fish
market, but they never so much as looked at her. Half the stalls
were empty, and it seemed to her that there were fewer ships at
dock than she remembered. Out on the Blackwater, three of the
king’s war galleys moved in formation, gold-painted hulls
splitting the water as their oars rose and fell. Arya watched them
for a bit, then began to make her way along the river.
When she saw the guardsmen on the third pier, in grey woolen
cloaks trimmed with white satin, her heart almost stopped in her
chest. The sight of Winterfell’s colors brought tears to her
eyes. Behind them, a sleek three-banked trading galley rocked at
her moorings. Arya could not read the name painted on the hull; the
words were strange, Myrish, Braavosi, perhaps even High Valyrian.
She grabbed a passing longshoreman by the sleeve.
“Please,” she said, “what ship is
this?”
“She’s the Wind Witch, out of Myr,” the man
said.
“She’s still here,” Arya blurted. The
longshoreman gave her a queer look, shrugged, and walked away. Arya
ran toward the pier. The Wind Witch was the ship Father had hired
to take her home . . . still waiting! She’d imagined it had
sailed ages ago.
Two of the guardsmen were dicing together while the third walked
rounds, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Ashamed to let them
see her crying like a baby, she stopped to rub at her eyes. Her
eyes her eyes her eyes, why did . . . Look with your eyes, she heard Syrio whisper.
Arya looked. She knew all of her father’s men. The three
in the grey cloaks were strangers. “You,” the one
walking rounds called out. “What do you want here,
boy?” The other two looked up from their dice.
It was all Arya could do not to bolt and run, but she knew that
if she did, they would be after her at once. She made herself walk
closer. They were looking for a girl, but he thought she was a boy.
She’d be a boy, then. “Want to buy a pigeon?” She
showed him the dead bird.
“Get out of here,” the guardsman said.
Arya did as he told her. She did not have to pretend to be
frightened. Behind her, the men went back to their dice.
She could not have said how she got back to Flea Bottom, but she
was breathing hard by the time she reached the narrow crooked
unpaved streets between the hills. The Bottom had a stench to it, a
stink of pigsties and stables and tanner’s sheds, mixed in
with the sour smell of winesinks and cheap whorehouses. Arya wound
her way through the maze dully. It was not until she caught a whiff
of bubbling brown coming through a pot-shop door that she realized
her pigeon was gone. It must have slipped from her belt as she ran,
or someone had stolen it and she’d never noticed. For a
moment she wanted to cry again. She’d have to walk all the
way back to the Street of Flour to find another one that plump.
Far across the city, bells began to ring.
Arya glanced up, listening, wondering what the ringing meant
this time.
“What’s this now?” a fat man called from the
pot-shop.
“The bells again, gods ha’mercy,” wailed an
old woman.
A red-haired whore in a wisp of painted silk pushed open a
second-story window. “Is it the boy king that’s died
now?” she shouted down, leaning out over the street.
“Ah, that’s a boy for you, they never last long.”
As she laughed, a naked man slid his arms around her from behind,
biting her neck and rubbing the heavy white breasts that hung loose
beneath her shift.
“Stupid slut,” the fat man shouted up. “The
king’s not dead, that’s only summoning bells. One tower
tolling. When the king dies, they ring every bell in the
city.”
“Here, quit your biting, or I’ll ring your
bells,” the woman in the window said to the man behind her,
pushing him off with an elbow. “So who is it died, if not the
king?”
“It’s a summoning,” the fat man repeated.
Two boys close to Arya’s age scampered past, splashing
through a puddle. The old woman cursed them, but they kept right on
going. Other people were moving too, heading up the hill to see
what the noise was about. Arya ran after the slower boy.
“Where you going?” she shouted when she was right
behind him. “What’s happening?”
He glanced back without slowing. “The gold cloaks is
carryin’ him to the sept.”
“Who?” she yelled, running hard.
“The Hand! They’ll be taking his head off, Buu
says.”
A passing wagon had left a deep rut in the street. The boy leapt
over, but Arya never saw it. She tripped and fell, face first,
scraping her knee open on a stone and smashing her fingers when her
hands hit the hard-packed earth. Needle tangled between her legs.
She sobbed as she struggled to her knees. The thumb of her left
hand was covered with blood. When she sucked on it, she saw that
half the thumbnail was gone, ripped off in her fall. Her hands
throbbed, and her knee was all bloody too.
“Make way!” someone shouted from the cross street.
“Make way for my lords of Redwyne!” It was all Arya
could do to get out of the road before they ran her down, four
guardsmen on huge horses, pounding past at a gallop. They wore
checked cloaks, blue-and-burgundy. Behind them, two young lordlings
rode side by side on a pair of chestnut mares alike as peas in a
pod. Arya had seen them in the bailey a hundred times; the Redwyne
twins, Ser Horas and Ser Hobber, homely youths with orange hair and
square, freckled faces. Sansa and Jeyne Poole used to call them Ser
Horror and Ser Slobber, and giggle whenever they caught sight of
them. They did not look funny now.
Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see
what the ringing was all about. The bells seemed louder now,
clanging, calling. Arya joined the stream of people. Her thumb hurt
so bad where the nail had broken that it was all she could do not
to cry. She bit her lip as she limped along, listening to the
excited voices around her.
“—the King’s Hand, Lord Stark. They’re
carrying him up to Baelor’s Sept.”
“I heard he was dead.”
“Soon enough, soon enough. Here, I got me a silver stag
says they lop his head off.”
“Past time, the traitor.” The man spat.
Arya struggled to find a voice. “He never—” she
started, but she was only a child and they talked right over
her.
“Fool! They ain’t neither going to lop him. Since
when do they knick traitors on the steps of the Great
Sept?”
“Well, they don’t mean to anoint him no knight. I
heard it was Stark killed old King Robert. Slit his throat in the
woods, and when they found him, he stood there cool as you please
and said it was some old boar did for His Grace.”
“Ah, that’s not true, it was his own brother did
him, that Renly, him with his gold antlers.”
“You shut your lying mouth, woman. You don’t know
what you’re saying, his lordship’s a fine true
man.”
By the time they reached the Street of the Sisters, they were
packed in shoulder to shoulder. Arya let the human current carry
her along, up to the top of Visenya’s Hill. The white marble
plaza was a solid mass of people, all yammering excitedly at each
other and straining to get closer to the Great Sept of Baelor. The
bells were very loud here.
Arya squirmed through the press, ducking between the legs of
horses and clutching tight to her sword stick. From the middle of
the crowd, all she could see were arms and legs and stomachs, and
the seven slender towers of the sept looming overhead. She spotted
a wood wagon and thought to climb up on the back where she might be
able to see, but others had the same idea. The teamster cursed at
them and drove them off with a crack of his whip.
Arya grew frantic. Forcing her way to the front of the crowd,
she was shoved up against the stone of a plinth. She looked up at
Baelor the Blessed, the septon king. Sliding her stick sword
through her belt, Arya began to climb. Her broken thumbnail left
smears of blood on the painted marble, but she made it up, and
wedged herself in between the king’s feet.
That was when she saw her father.
Lord Eddard stood on the High Septon’s pulpit outside the
doors of the sept, supported between two of the gold cloaks. He was
dressed in a rich grey velvet doublet with a white wolf sewn on the
front in beads, and a grey wool cloak trimmed with fur, but he was
thinner than Arya had ever seen him, his long face drawn with pain.
He was not standing so much as being held up; the cast over his
broken leg was grey and rotten.
The High Septon himself stood behind him, a squat man, grey with
age and ponderously fat, wearing long white robes and an immense
crown of spun gold and crystal that wreathed his head with rainbows
whenever he moved.
Clustered around the doors of the sept, in front of the raised
marble pulpit, were a knot of knights and high lords. Joffrey was
prominent among them, his raiment all crimson, silk and satin
patterned with prancing stags and roaring lions, a gold crown on
his head. His queen mother stood beside him in a black mourning
gown slashed with crimson, a veil of black diamonds in her hair.
Arya recognized the Hound, wearing a snowy white cloak over his
dark grey armor, with four of the Kingsguard around him. She saw
Varys the eunuch gliding among the lords in soft slippers and a
patterned damask robe, and she thought the short man with the
silvery cape and pointed beard might be the one who had once fought
a duel for Mother.
And there in their midst was Sansa, dressed in sky-blue silk,
with her long auburn hair washed and curled and silver bracelets on
her wrists. Arya scowled, wondering what her sister was doing here,
why she looked so happy.
A long line of gold-cloaked spearmen held back the crowd,
commanded by a stout man in elaborate armor, all black lacquer and
gold filigree. His cloak had the metallic shimmer of true
cloth-of-gold.
When the bell ceased to toll, a quiet slowly settled across the
great plaza, and her father lifted his head and began to speak, his
voice so thin and weak she could scarcely make him out. People
behind her began to shout out, “What?” and
“Louder!” The man in the black-and-gold armor stepped up
behind Father and prodded him sharply. You leave him alone! Arya
wanted to shout, but she knew no one would listen. She chewed her
lip.
Her father raised his voice and began again. “I am Eddard
Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King,” he said more
loudly, his voice carrying across the plaza, “and I come
before you to confess my treason in the sight of gods and
men.”
“No,” Arya whimpered. Below her, the crowd began to
scream and shout. Taunts and obscenities filled the air. Sansa had
hidden her face in her hands.
Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard.
“I betrayed the faith of my king and the trust of my friend,
Robert,” he shouted. “I swore to defend and protect his
children, yet before his blood was cold, I plotted to depose and
murder his son and seize the throne for myself. Let the High Septon
and Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of
what I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron
Throne, and by the grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven
Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.”
A stone came sailing out of the crowd. Arya cried out as she saw
her father hit. The gold cloaks kept him from falling. Blood ran
down his face from a deep gash across his forehead. More stones
followed. One struck the guard to Father’s left. Another went
clanging off the breastplate of the knight in the black-and-gold
armor. Two of the Kingsguard stepped in front of Joffrey and the
queen, protecting them with their shields.
Her hand slid beneath her cloak and found Needle in its sheath.
She tightened her fingers around the grip, squeezing as hard as she
had ever squeezed anything. Please, gods, keep him safe, she
prayed. Don’t let them hurt my father.
The High Septon knelt before Joffrey and his mother. “As
we sin, so do we suffer,” he intoned, in a deep swelling
voice much louder than Father’s. “This man has
confessed his crimes in the sight of gods and men, here in this
holy place.” Rainbows danced around his head as he lifted his
hands in entreaty. “The gods are just, yet Blessed Baelor
taught us that they are also merciful. What shall be done with this
traitor, Your Grace?”
A thousand voices were screaming, but Arya never heard them.
Prince Joffrey . . . no, King Joffrey . . . stepped out from behind
the shields of his Kingsguard. “My mother bids me let Lord
Eddard take the black, and Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her
father.” He looked straight at Sansa then, and smiled, and
for a moment Arya thought that the gods had heard her prayer, until
Joffrey turned back to the crowd and said, “But they have the
soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall
never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!”
The crowd roared, and Arya felt the statue of Baelor rock as
they surged against it. The High Septon clutched at the
king’s cape, and Varys came rushing over waving his arms, and
even the queen was saying something to him, but Joffrey shook his
head. Lords and knights moved aside as he stepped through, tall and
fleshless, a skeleton in iron mail, the King’s Justice.
Dimly, as if from far off, Arya heard her sister scream. Sansa had
fallen to her knees, sobbing hysterically. Ser Ilyn Payne climbed
the steps of the pulpit.
Arya wriggled between Baelor’s feet and threw herself into
the crowd, drawing Needle. She landed on a man in a butcher’s
apron, knocking him to the ground. Immediately someone slammed into
her back and she almost went down herself. Bodies closed in around
her, stumbling and pushing, trampling on the poor butcher. Arya
slashed at them with Needle.
High atop the pulpit, Ser Ilyn Payne gestured and the knight in
black-and-gold gave a command. The gold cloaks flung Lord Eddard to
the marble, with his head and chest out over the edge.
“Here, you!” an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she
bowled past, shoving people aside, squirming between them, slamming
into anyone in her way. A hand fumbled at her leg and she hacked at
it, kicked at shins. A woman stumbled and Arya ran up her back,
cutting to both sides, but it was no good, no good, there were too
many people, no sooner did she make a hole than it closed again.
Someone buffeted her aside. She could still hear Sansa
screaming.
Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his
back. As he lifted the blade above his head, sunlight seemed to
ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper
than any razor. Ice, she thought, he has Ice! Her tears streamed down
her face, blinding her.
And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm
like a wolf trap, so hard that Needle went flying from her hand.
Arya was wrenched off her feet. She would have fallen if he
hadn’t held her up, as easy as if she were a doll. A face
pressed close to hers, long black hair and tangled beard and rotten
teeth. “Don’t look!” a thick voice snarled at
her.
“I . . . I . . . I . . . ” Arya sobbed.
The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “Shut
your mouth and close your eyes, boy.” Dimly, as if from far
away, she heard a . . . a noise . . . a soft sighing sound, as if a
million people had let out their breath at once. The old
man’s fingers dug into her arm, stiff as iron. “Look at
me. Yes, that’s the way of it, at me.” Sour wine
perfumed his breath. “Remember, boy?”
It was the smell that did it. Arya saw the matted greasy hair,
the patched, dusty black cloak that covered his twisted shoulders,
the hard black eyes squinting at her. And she remembered the black
brother who had come to visit her father.
“Know me now, do you? There’s a bright boy.”
He spat. “They’re done here. You’ll be coming
with me, and you’ll be keeping your mouth shut.” When
she started to reply, he shook her again, even harder. “Shut,
I said.”
The plaza was beginning to empty. The press dissolved around
them as people drifted back to their lives. But Arya’s life
was gone. Numb, she trailed along beside . . . Yoren, yes, his name
is Yoren. She did not recall him finding Needle, until he handed
the sword back to her. “Hope you can use that,
boy.”
“I’m not—” she started.
He shoved her into a doorway, thrust dirty fingers through her
hair, and gave it a twist, yanking her head back. “—not a
smart boy, that what you mean to say?”
He had a knife in his other hand.
As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself
backward, kicking wildly, wrenching her head from side to side, but
he had her by the hair, so strong, she could feel her scalp
tearing, and on her lips the salt taste of tears.