Her father had been fighting with the council
again. Arya could see it on his face when he came to table, late
again, as he had been so often. The first course, a thick sweet
soup made with pumpkins, had already been taken away when Ned Stark
strode into the Small Hall. They called it that to set it apart
from the Great Hall, where the king could feast a thousand, but it
was a long room with a high vaulted ceiling and bench space for two
hundred at its trestle tables.
“My lord,” Jory said when Father entered. He rose to
his feet, and the rest of the guard rose with him. Each man wore a
new cloak, heavy grey wool with a white satin border. A hand of
beaten silver clutched the woolen folds of each cloak and marked
their wearers as men of the Hand’s household guard. There
were only fifty of them, so most of the benches were empty.
“Be seated,” Eddard Stark said. “I see you
have started without me. I am pleased to know there are still some
men of sense in this city.” He signaled for the meal to
resume. The servants began bringing out platters of ribs, roasted
in a crust of garlic and herbs.
“The talk in the yard is we shall have a tourney, my
lord,” Jory said as he resumed his seat. “They say that
knights will come from all over the realm to joust and feast in
honor of your appointment as Hand of the King.”
Arya could see that her father was not very happy about that.
“Do they also say this is the last thing in the world I would
have wished?”
Sansa’s eyes had grown wide as the plates. “A
tourney,” she breathed. She was seated between Septa Mordane
and Jeyne Poole, as far from Arya as she could get without drawing
a reproach from Father. “Will we be permitted to go,
Father?”
“You know my feelings, Sansa. It seems I must arrange
Robert’s games and pretend to be honored for his sake. That
does not mean I must subject my daughters to this folly.”
“Oh, please,” Sansa said. “I want to
see.”
Septa Mordane spoke up. “Princess Myrcella will be there,
my lord, and her younger than Lady Sansa. All the ladies of the
court will be expected at a grand event like this, and as the
tourney is in your honor, it would look queer if your family did
not attend.”
Father looked pained. “I suppose so. Very well, I shall
arrange a place for you, Sansa.” He saw Arya. “For both
of you.”
“I don’t care about their stupid tourney,”
Arya said. She knew Prince Joffrey would be there, and she hated
Prince Joffrey.
Sansa lifted her head. “It will be a splendid event. You
shan’t be wanted.”
Anger flashed across Father’s face. “Enough, Sansa.
More of that and you will change my mind. I am weary unto death of
this endless war you two are fighting. You are sisters. I expect
you to behave like sisters, is that understood?”
Sansa bit her lip and nodded. Arya lowered her face to stare
sullenly at her plate. She could feel tears stinging her eyes. She
rubbed them away angrily, determined not to cry.
The only sound was the clatter of knives and forks. “Pray
excuse me,” her father announced to the table. “I find
I have small appetite tonight.” He walked from the hall.
After he was gone, Sansa exchanged excited whispers with Jeyne
Poole. Down the table Jory laughed at a joke, and Hullen started in
about horseflesh. “Your warhorse, now, he may not be the best
one for the joust. Not the same thing, oh, no, not the same at
all.” The men had heard it all before; Desmond, Jacks, and
Hullen’s son Harwin shouted him down together, and Porther
called for more wine.
No one talked to Arya. She didn’t care. She liked it that
way. She would have eaten her meals alone in her bedchamber if they
let her. Sometimes they did, when Father had to dine with the king
or some lord or the envoys from this place or that place. The rest
of the time, they ate in his solar, just him and her and Sansa.
That was when Arya missed her brothers most. She wanted to tease
Bran and play with baby Rickon and have Robb smile at her. She
wanted Jon to muss up her hair and call her “little
sister” and finish her sentences with her. But all of them
were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa wouldn’t
even talk to her unless Father made her.
Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half
the time. Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his
men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow
you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know
you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” At
Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and
every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it
would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread
stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her
father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot
a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it
might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from
the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her
stories.
Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s
table and listen to them talk. She had loved listening to the men
on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights
and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms. She used to throw
snowballs at them and help them steal pies from the kitchen. Their
wives gave her scones and she invented names for their babies and
played monsters-and-maidens and hide-the-treasure and
come-into-my-castle with their children. Fat Tom used to call her
“Arya Underfoot,” because he said that was where she
always was. She’d liked that a lot better than “Arya
Horseface.”
Only that was Winterfell, a world away, and now everything was
changed. This was the first time they had supped with the men since
arriving in King’s Landing. Arya hated it. She hated the
sounds of their voices now, the way they laughed, the stories they
told. They’d been her friends, she’d felt safe around
them, but now she knew that was a lie. They’d let the queen
kill Lady, that was horrible enough, but then the Hound found
Mycah. Jeyne Poole had told Arya that he’d cut him up in so
many pieces that they’d given him back to the butcher in a
bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig
they’d slaughtered. And no one had raised a voice or drawn a
blade or anything, not Harwin who always talked so bold, or Alyn
who was going to be a knight, or Jory who was captain of the guard.
Not even her father.
“He was my friend,” Arya whispered into her plate,
so low that no one could hear. Her ribs sat there untouched, grown
cold now, a thin film of grease congealing beneath them on the
plate. Arya looked at them and felt ill. She pushed away from the
table.
“Pray, where do you think you are going, young
lady?” Septa Mordane asked.
“I’m not hungry.” Arya found it an effort to
remember her courtesies. “May I be excused, please?”
she recited stiffly.
“You may not,” the septa said. “You have
scarcely touched your food. You will sit down and clean your
plate.”
“You clean it!” Before anyone could stop her, Arya
bolted for the door as the men laughed and Septa Mordane called
loudly after her, her voice rising higher and higher.
Fat Tom was at his post, guarding the door to the Tower of the
Hand. He blinked when he saw Arya rushing toward him and heard the
septa’s shouts. “Here now, little one, hold on,”
he started to say, reaching, but Arya slid between his legs and
then she was running up the winding tower steps, her feet hammering
on the stone while Fat Tom huffed and puffed behind her.
Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of
King’s Landing, and the thing she liked best about it was the
door, a massive slab of dark oak with black iron bands. When she
slammed that door and dropped the heavy crossbar, nobody could get
into her room, not Septa Mordane or Fat Tom or Sansa or Jory or the
Hound, nobody! She slammed it now.
When the bar was down, Arya finally felt safe enough to cry.
She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating
them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything
bad that had happened. Sansa said so, and Jeyne too.
Fat Tom was knocking on her door. “Arya girl, what’s
wrong?” he called out. “You in there?”
“No!” she shouted. The knocking stopped. A moment
later she heard him going away. Fat Tom was always easy to
fool.
Arya went to the chest at the foot of her bed. She knelt, opened
the lid, and began pulling her clothes out with both hands,
grabbing handfuls of silk and satin and velvet and wool and tossing
them on the floor. It was there at the bottom of the chest, where
she’d hidden it. Arya lifted it out almost tenderly and drew
the slender blade from its sheath.
Needle.
She thought of Mycah again and her eyes filled with tears. Her
fault, her fault, her fault. If she had never asked him to play at
swords with her . . .
There was a pounding at her door, louder than before.
“Arya Stark, you open this door at once, do you hear
me?”
Arya spun around, with Needle in her hand. “You better not
come in here!” she warned. She slashed at the air
savagely.
“The Hand will hear of this!” Septa Mordane
raged.
“I don’t care,” Arya screamed. “Go
away.”
“You will rue this insolent behavior, young lady, I
promise you that.” Arya listened at the door until she heard the sound of the
septa’s receding footsteps.
She went back to the window, Needle in hand, and looked down
into the courtyard below. If only she could climb like Bran, she
thought; she would go out the window and down the tower, run away
from this horrible place, away from Sansa and Septa Mordane and
Prince Joffrey, from all of them. Steal some food from the
kitchens, take Needle and her good boots and a warm cloak. She
could find Nymeria in the wild woods below the Trident, and
together they’d return to Winterfell, or run to Jon on the
Wall. She found herself wishing that Jon was here with her now.
Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so alone.
A soft knock at the door behind her turned Arya away from the
window and her dreams of escape. “Arya,” her
father’s voice called out. “Open the door. We need to
talk.”
Arya crossed the room and lifted the crossbar. Father was alone.
He seemed more sad than angry. That made Arya feel even worse.
“May I come in?” Arya nodded, then dropped her eyes,
ashamed. Father closed the door. “Whose sword is
that?”
“Mine.” Arya had almost forgotten Needle, in her
hand.
“Give it to me.”
Reluctantly Arya surrendered her sword, wondering if she would
ever hold it again. Her father turned it in the light, examining
both sides of the blade. He tested the point with his thumb.
“A bravo’s blade,” he said. “Yet it seems
to me that I know this maker’s mark. This is Mikken’s
work.”
Arya could not lie to him. She lowered her eyes.
Lord Eddard Stark sighed. “My nine-year-old daughter is
being armed from my own forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand
of the King is expected to rule the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I
cannot even rule my own household. How is it that you come to own a
sword, Arya? Where did you get this?”
Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon,
not even to their father.
After a while, Father said, “I don’t suppose it
matters, truly.” He looked down gravely at the sword in his
hands. “This is no toy for children, least of all for a girl.
What would Septa Mordane say if she knew you were playing with
swords?”
“I wasn’t playing,” Arya insisted. “I
hate Septa Mordane.”
“That’s enough.” Her father’s voice was
curt and hard. “The septa is doing no more than is her duty,
though gods know you have made it a struggle for the poor woman.
Your mother and I have charged her with the impossible task of
making you a lady.”
“I don’t want to be a lady!” Arya flared.
“I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and
put an end to this nonsense.”
“Needle wouldn’t break,” Arya said defiantly,
but her voice betrayed her words.
“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed.
“Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf
blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it,
and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to
an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not
often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had
died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword,
if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes.
You even look like her.”
“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled.
Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of
Arya.
“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful,
and willful, and dead before her time.” He lifted the sword,
held it out between them. “Arya, what did you think to do
with this . . . Needle? Who did you hope to skewer? Your sister?
Septa Mordane? Do you know the first thing about sword
fighting?”
All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her.
“Stick them with the pointy end,” she blurted out.
Her father snorted back laughter. “That is the essence of
it, I suppose.”
Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. “I
was trying to learn, but . . . ” Her eyes filled with tears.
“I asked Mycah to practice with me.” The grief came on
her all at once. She turned away, shaking. “I asked
him,” she cried. “It was my fault, it was me . . . ”
Suddenly her father’s arms were around her. He held her
gently as she turned to him and sobbed against his chest.
“No, sweet one,” he murmured. “Grieve for your
friend, but never blame yourself. You did not kill the
butcher’s boy. That murder lies at the Hound’s door,
him and the cruel woman he serves.”
“I hate them,” Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling.
“The Hound and the queen and the king and Prince Joffrey. I
hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn’t the way he said. I
hate Sansa too. She did remember, she just lied so Joffrey would
like her.”
“We all lie,” her father said. “Or did you
truly think I’d believe that Nymeria ran off?”
Arya blushed guiltily. “Jory promised not to
tell.”
“Jory kept his word,” her father said with a smile.
“There are some things I do not need to be told. Even a blind
man could see that wolf would never have left you
willingly.”
“We had to throw rocks,” she said miserably.
“I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn’t want
her anymore. There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard
them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so
she’d have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally
we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me
and I felt so ’shamed, but it was right, wasn’t it? The
queen would have killed her.”
“It was right,” her father said. “And even the
lie was . . . not without honor.” He’d put Needle aside
when he went to Arya to embrace her. Now he took the blade up again
and walked to the window, where he stood for a moment, looking out
across the courtyard. When he turned back, his eyes were
thoughtful. He seated himself on the window seat, Needle across his
lap. “Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain some things
to you.”
She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. “You are too
young to be burdened with all my cares,” he told her,
“but you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our
words.”
“Winter is coming,” Arya whispered.
“The hard cruel times,” her father said. “We
tasted them on the Trident, child, and when Bran fell. You were
born in the long summer, sweet one, you’ve never known
anything else, but now the winter is truly coming. Remember the
sigil of our House, Arya.”
“The direwolf,” she said, thinking of Nymeria. She
hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid.
“Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the
snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the
pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must
protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So
if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm.
Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa . . . Sansa is your
sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the
same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she
needs you . . . and I need both of you, gods help me.”
He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. “I don’t
hate Sansa,” she told him. “Not truly.” It was
only half a lie.
“I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to
you. We have come to a dark dangerous place, child. This is not
Winterfell. We have enemies who mean us ill. We cannot fight a war
among ourselves. This willfulness of yours, the running off, the
angry words, the disobedience . . . at home, these were only the
summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter soon upon us,
that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing
up.”
“I will,” Arya vowed. She had never loved him so
much as she did in that instant. “I can be strong too. I can
be as strong as Robb.”
He held Needle out to her, hilt first. “Here.”
She looked at the sword with wonder in her eyes. For a moment
she was afraid to touch it, afraid that if she reached for it it
would be snatched away again, but then her father said, “Go
on, it’s yours,” and she took it in her hand.
“I can keep it?” she said. “For
true?”
“For true.” He smiled. “If I took it away, no
doubt I’d find a morningstar hidden under your pillow within
the fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the
provocation.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Arya clutched Needle
tightly to her chest as her father took his leave.
The next morning, as they broke their fast, she apologized to
Septa Mordane and asked for her pardon. The septa peered at her
suspiciously, but Father nodded.
Three days later, at midday, her father’s steward Vayon
Poole sent Arya to the Small Hall. The trestle tables had been
dismantled and the benches shoved against the walls. The hall
seemed empty, until an unfamiliar voice said, “You are late,
boy.” A slight man with a bald head and a great beak of a
nose stepped out of the shadows, holding a pair of slender wooden
swords. “Tomorrow you will be here at midday.” He had
an accent, the lilt of the Free Cities, Braavos perhaps, or
Myr.
“Who are you?” Arya asked.
“I am your dancing master.” He tossed her one of the
wooden blades. She grabbed for it, missed, and heard it clatter to
the floor. “Tomorrow you will catch it. Now pick it
up.”
It was not just a stick, but a true wooden sword complete with
grip and guard and pommel. Arya picked it up and clutched it
nervously with both hands, holding it out in front of her. It was
heavier than it looked, much heavier than Needle.
The bald man clicked his teeth together. “That is not the
way, boy. This is not a greatsword that is needing two hands to
swing it. You will take the blade in one hand.”
“It’s too heavy,” Arya said.
“It is heavy as it needs to be to make you strong, and for
the balancing. A hollow inside is filled with lead, just so. One
hand now is all that is needing.”
Arya took her right hand off the grip and wiped her sweaty palm
on her pants. She held the sword in her left hand. He seemed to
approve. “The left is good. All is reversed, it will make
your enemies more awkward. Now you are standing wrong. Turn your
body sideface, yes, so. You are skinny as the shaft of a spear, do
you know. That is good too, the target is smaller. Now the grip.
Let me see.” He moved closer and peered at her hand, prying
her fingers apart, rearranging them. “Just so, yes. Do not
squeeze it so tight, no, the grip must be deft,
delicate.”
“What if I drop it?” Arya said.
“The steel must be part of your arm,” the bald man
told her. “Can you drop part of your arm? No. Nine years
Syrio Forel was first sword to the Sealord of Braavos, he knows
these things. Listen to him, boy.”
It was the third time he had called her “boy.”
“I’m a girl,” Arya objected.
“Boy, girl,” Syrio Forel said. “You are a
sword, that is all.” He clicked his teeth together.
“Just so, that is the grip. You are not holding a battle-axe,
you are holding a—”
“—needle,” Arya finished for him, fiercely.
“Just so. Now we will begin the dance. Remember, child,
this is not the iron dance of Westeros we are learning, the
knight’s dance, hacking and hammering, no. This is the
bravo’s dance, the water dance, swift and sudden. All men are
made of water, do you know this? When you pierce them, the water
leaks out and they die.” He took a step backward, raised his
own wooden blade. “Now you will try to strike me.”
Arya tried to strike him. She tried for four hours, until every
muscle in her body was sore and aching, while Syrio Forel clicked
his teeth together and told her what to do.
The next day their real work began.
Her father had been fighting with the council
again. Arya could see it on his face when he came to table, late
again, as he had been so often. The first course, a thick sweet
soup made with pumpkins, had already been taken away when Ned Stark
strode into the Small Hall. They called it that to set it apart
from the Great Hall, where the king could feast a thousand, but it
was a long room with a high vaulted ceiling and bench space for two
hundred at its trestle tables.
“My lord,” Jory said when Father entered. He rose to
his feet, and the rest of the guard rose with him. Each man wore a
new cloak, heavy grey wool with a white satin border. A hand of
beaten silver clutched the woolen folds of each cloak and marked
their wearers as men of the Hand’s household guard. There
were only fifty of them, so most of the benches were empty.
“Be seated,” Eddard Stark said. “I see you
have started without me. I am pleased to know there are still some
men of sense in this city.” He signaled for the meal to
resume. The servants began bringing out platters of ribs, roasted
in a crust of garlic and herbs.
“The talk in the yard is we shall have a tourney, my
lord,” Jory said as he resumed his seat. “They say that
knights will come from all over the realm to joust and feast in
honor of your appointment as Hand of the King.”
Arya could see that her father was not very happy about that.
“Do they also say this is the last thing in the world I would
have wished?”
Sansa’s eyes had grown wide as the plates. “A
tourney,” she breathed. She was seated between Septa Mordane
and Jeyne Poole, as far from Arya as she could get without drawing
a reproach from Father. “Will we be permitted to go,
Father?”
“You know my feelings, Sansa. It seems I must arrange
Robert’s games and pretend to be honored for his sake. That
does not mean I must subject my daughters to this folly.”
“Oh, please,” Sansa said. “I want to
see.”
Septa Mordane spoke up. “Princess Myrcella will be there,
my lord, and her younger than Lady Sansa. All the ladies of the
court will be expected at a grand event like this, and as the
tourney is in your honor, it would look queer if your family did
not attend.”
Father looked pained. “I suppose so. Very well, I shall
arrange a place for you, Sansa.” He saw Arya. “For both
of you.”
“I don’t care about their stupid tourney,”
Arya said. She knew Prince Joffrey would be there, and she hated
Prince Joffrey.
Sansa lifted her head. “It will be a splendid event. You
shan’t be wanted.”
Anger flashed across Father’s face. “Enough, Sansa.
More of that and you will change my mind. I am weary unto death of
this endless war you two are fighting. You are sisters. I expect
you to behave like sisters, is that understood?”
Sansa bit her lip and nodded. Arya lowered her face to stare
sullenly at her plate. She could feel tears stinging her eyes. She
rubbed them away angrily, determined not to cry.
The only sound was the clatter of knives and forks. “Pray
excuse me,” her father announced to the table. “I find
I have small appetite tonight.” He walked from the hall.
After he was gone, Sansa exchanged excited whispers with Jeyne
Poole. Down the table Jory laughed at a joke, and Hullen started in
about horseflesh. “Your warhorse, now, he may not be the best
one for the joust. Not the same thing, oh, no, not the same at
all.” The men had heard it all before; Desmond, Jacks, and
Hullen’s son Harwin shouted him down together, and Porther
called for more wine.
No one talked to Arya. She didn’t care. She liked it that
way. She would have eaten her meals alone in her bedchamber if they
let her. Sometimes they did, when Father had to dine with the king
or some lord or the envoys from this place or that place. The rest
of the time, they ate in his solar, just him and her and Sansa.
That was when Arya missed her brothers most. She wanted to tease
Bran and play with baby Rickon and have Robb smile at her. She
wanted Jon to muss up her hair and call her “little
sister” and finish her sentences with her. But all of them
were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa wouldn’t
even talk to her unless Father made her.
Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half
the time. Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his
men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow
you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know
you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” At
Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and
every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it
would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread
stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her
father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot
a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it
might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from
the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her
stories.
Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s
table and listen to them talk. She had loved listening to the men
on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights
and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms. She used to throw
snowballs at them and help them steal pies from the kitchen. Their
wives gave her scones and she invented names for their babies and
played monsters-and-maidens and hide-the-treasure and
come-into-my-castle with their children. Fat Tom used to call her
“Arya Underfoot,” because he said that was where she
always was. She’d liked that a lot better than “Arya
Horseface.”
Only that was Winterfell, a world away, and now everything was
changed. This was the first time they had supped with the men since
arriving in King’s Landing. Arya hated it. She hated the
sounds of their voices now, the way they laughed, the stories they
told. They’d been her friends, she’d felt safe around
them, but now she knew that was a lie. They’d let the queen
kill Lady, that was horrible enough, but then the Hound found
Mycah. Jeyne Poole had told Arya that he’d cut him up in so
many pieces that they’d given him back to the butcher in a
bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig
they’d slaughtered. And no one had raised a voice or drawn a
blade or anything, not Harwin who always talked so bold, or Alyn
who was going to be a knight, or Jory who was captain of the guard.
Not even her father.
“He was my friend,” Arya whispered into her plate,
so low that no one could hear. Her ribs sat there untouched, grown
cold now, a thin film of grease congealing beneath them on the
plate. Arya looked at them and felt ill. She pushed away from the
table.
“Pray, where do you think you are going, young
lady?” Septa Mordane asked.
“I’m not hungry.” Arya found it an effort to
remember her courtesies. “May I be excused, please?”
she recited stiffly.
“You may not,” the septa said. “You have
scarcely touched your food. You will sit down and clean your
plate.”
“You clean it!” Before anyone could stop her, Arya
bolted for the door as the men laughed and Septa Mordane called
loudly after her, her voice rising higher and higher.
Fat Tom was at his post, guarding the door to the Tower of the
Hand. He blinked when he saw Arya rushing toward him and heard the
septa’s shouts. “Here now, little one, hold on,”
he started to say, reaching, but Arya slid between his legs and
then she was running up the winding tower steps, her feet hammering
on the stone while Fat Tom huffed and puffed behind her.
Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of
King’s Landing, and the thing she liked best about it was the
door, a massive slab of dark oak with black iron bands. When she
slammed that door and dropped the heavy crossbar, nobody could get
into her room, not Septa Mordane or Fat Tom or Sansa or Jory or the
Hound, nobody! She slammed it now.
When the bar was down, Arya finally felt safe enough to cry.
She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating
them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything
bad that had happened. Sansa said so, and Jeyne too.
Fat Tom was knocking on her door. “Arya girl, what’s
wrong?” he called out. “You in there?”
“No!” she shouted. The knocking stopped. A moment
later she heard him going away. Fat Tom was always easy to
fool.
Arya went to the chest at the foot of her bed. She knelt, opened
the lid, and began pulling her clothes out with both hands,
grabbing handfuls of silk and satin and velvet and wool and tossing
them on the floor. It was there at the bottom of the chest, where
she’d hidden it. Arya lifted it out almost tenderly and drew
the slender blade from its sheath.
Needle.
She thought of Mycah again and her eyes filled with tears. Her
fault, her fault, her fault. If she had never asked him to play at
swords with her . . .
There was a pounding at her door, louder than before.
“Arya Stark, you open this door at once, do you hear
me?”
Arya spun around, with Needle in her hand. “You better not
come in here!” she warned. She slashed at the air
savagely.
“The Hand will hear of this!” Septa Mordane
raged.
“I don’t care,” Arya screamed. “Go
away.”
“You will rue this insolent behavior, young lady, I
promise you that.” Arya listened at the door until she heard the sound of the
septa’s receding footsteps.
She went back to the window, Needle in hand, and looked down
into the courtyard below. If only she could climb like Bran, she
thought; she would go out the window and down the tower, run away
from this horrible place, away from Sansa and Septa Mordane and
Prince Joffrey, from all of them. Steal some food from the
kitchens, take Needle and her good boots and a warm cloak. She
could find Nymeria in the wild woods below the Trident, and
together they’d return to Winterfell, or run to Jon on the
Wall. She found herself wishing that Jon was here with her now.
Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so alone.
A soft knock at the door behind her turned Arya away from the
window and her dreams of escape. “Arya,” her
father’s voice called out. “Open the door. We need to
talk.”
Arya crossed the room and lifted the crossbar. Father was alone.
He seemed more sad than angry. That made Arya feel even worse.
“May I come in?” Arya nodded, then dropped her eyes,
ashamed. Father closed the door. “Whose sword is
that?”
“Mine.” Arya had almost forgotten Needle, in her
hand.
“Give it to me.”
Reluctantly Arya surrendered her sword, wondering if she would
ever hold it again. Her father turned it in the light, examining
both sides of the blade. He tested the point with his thumb.
“A bravo’s blade,” he said. “Yet it seems
to me that I know this maker’s mark. This is Mikken’s
work.”
Arya could not lie to him. She lowered her eyes.
Lord Eddard Stark sighed. “My nine-year-old daughter is
being armed from my own forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand
of the King is expected to rule the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I
cannot even rule my own household. How is it that you come to own a
sword, Arya? Where did you get this?”
Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon,
not even to their father.
After a while, Father said, “I don’t suppose it
matters, truly.” He looked down gravely at the sword in his
hands. “This is no toy for children, least of all for a girl.
What would Septa Mordane say if she knew you were playing with
swords?”
“I wasn’t playing,” Arya insisted. “I
hate Septa Mordane.”
“That’s enough.” Her father’s voice was
curt and hard. “The septa is doing no more than is her duty,
though gods know you have made it a struggle for the poor woman.
Your mother and I have charged her with the impossible task of
making you a lady.”
“I don’t want to be a lady!” Arya flared.
“I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and
put an end to this nonsense.”
“Needle wouldn’t break,” Arya said defiantly,
but her voice betrayed her words.
“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed.
“Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf
blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it,
and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to
an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not
often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had
died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword,
if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes.
You even look like her.”
“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled.
Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of
Arya.
“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful,
and willful, and dead before her time.” He lifted the sword,
held it out between them. “Arya, what did you think to do
with this . . . Needle? Who did you hope to skewer? Your sister?
Septa Mordane? Do you know the first thing about sword
fighting?”
All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her.
“Stick them with the pointy end,” she blurted out.
Her father snorted back laughter. “That is the essence of
it, I suppose.”
Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. “I
was trying to learn, but . . . ” Her eyes filled with tears.
“I asked Mycah to practice with me.” The grief came on
her all at once. She turned away, shaking. “I asked
him,” she cried. “It was my fault, it was me . . . ”
Suddenly her father’s arms were around her. He held her
gently as she turned to him and sobbed against his chest.
“No, sweet one,” he murmured. “Grieve for your
friend, but never blame yourself. You did not kill the
butcher’s boy. That murder lies at the Hound’s door,
him and the cruel woman he serves.”
“I hate them,” Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling.
“The Hound and the queen and the king and Prince Joffrey. I
hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn’t the way he said. I
hate Sansa too. She did remember, she just lied so Joffrey would
like her.”
“We all lie,” her father said. “Or did you
truly think I’d believe that Nymeria ran off?”
Arya blushed guiltily. “Jory promised not to
tell.”
“Jory kept his word,” her father said with a smile.
“There are some things I do not need to be told. Even a blind
man could see that wolf would never have left you
willingly.”
“We had to throw rocks,” she said miserably.
“I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn’t want
her anymore. There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard
them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so
she’d have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally
we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me
and I felt so ’shamed, but it was right, wasn’t it? The
queen would have killed her.”
“It was right,” her father said. “And even the
lie was . . . not without honor.” He’d put Needle aside
when he went to Arya to embrace her. Now he took the blade up again
and walked to the window, where he stood for a moment, looking out
across the courtyard. When he turned back, his eyes were
thoughtful. He seated himself on the window seat, Needle across his
lap. “Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain some things
to you.”
She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. “You are too
young to be burdened with all my cares,” he told her,
“but you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our
words.”
“Winter is coming,” Arya whispered.
“The hard cruel times,” her father said. “We
tasted them on the Trident, child, and when Bran fell. You were
born in the long summer, sweet one, you’ve never known
anything else, but now the winter is truly coming. Remember the
sigil of our House, Arya.”
“The direwolf,” she said, thinking of Nymeria. She
hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid.
“Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the
snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the
pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must
protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So
if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm.
Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa . . . Sansa is your
sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the
same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she
needs you . . . and I need both of you, gods help me.”
He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. “I don’t
hate Sansa,” she told him. “Not truly.” It was
only half a lie.
“I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to
you. We have come to a dark dangerous place, child. This is not
Winterfell. We have enemies who mean us ill. We cannot fight a war
among ourselves. This willfulness of yours, the running off, the
angry words, the disobedience . . . at home, these were only the
summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter soon upon us,
that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing
up.”
“I will,” Arya vowed. She had never loved him so
much as she did in that instant. “I can be strong too. I can
be as strong as Robb.”
He held Needle out to her, hilt first. “Here.”
She looked at the sword with wonder in her eyes. For a moment
she was afraid to touch it, afraid that if she reached for it it
would be snatched away again, but then her father said, “Go
on, it’s yours,” and she took it in her hand.
“I can keep it?” she said. “For
true?”
“For true.” He smiled. “If I took it away, no
doubt I’d find a morningstar hidden under your pillow within
the fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the
provocation.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Arya clutched Needle
tightly to her chest as her father took his leave.
The next morning, as they broke their fast, she apologized to
Septa Mordane and asked for her pardon. The septa peered at her
suspiciously, but Father nodded.
Three days later, at midday, her father’s steward Vayon
Poole sent Arya to the Small Hall. The trestle tables had been
dismantled and the benches shoved against the walls. The hall
seemed empty, until an unfamiliar voice said, “You are late,
boy.” A slight man with a bald head and a great beak of a
nose stepped out of the shadows, holding a pair of slender wooden
swords. “Tomorrow you will be here at midday.” He had
an accent, the lilt of the Free Cities, Braavos perhaps, or
Myr.
“Who are you?” Arya asked.
“I am your dancing master.” He tossed her one of the
wooden blades. She grabbed for it, missed, and heard it clatter to
the floor. “Tomorrow you will catch it. Now pick it
up.”
It was not just a stick, but a true wooden sword complete with
grip and guard and pommel. Arya picked it up and clutched it
nervously with both hands, holding it out in front of her. It was
heavier than it looked, much heavier than Needle.
The bald man clicked his teeth together. “That is not the
way, boy. This is not a greatsword that is needing two hands to
swing it. You will take the blade in one hand.”
“It’s too heavy,” Arya said.
“It is heavy as it needs to be to make you strong, and for
the balancing. A hollow inside is filled with lead, just so. One
hand now is all that is needing.”
Arya took her right hand off the grip and wiped her sweaty palm
on her pants. She held the sword in her left hand. He seemed to
approve. “The left is good. All is reversed, it will make
your enemies more awkward. Now you are standing wrong. Turn your
body sideface, yes, so. You are skinny as the shaft of a spear, do
you know. That is good too, the target is smaller. Now the grip.
Let me see.” He moved closer and peered at her hand, prying
her fingers apart, rearranging them. “Just so, yes. Do not
squeeze it so tight, no, the grip must be deft,
delicate.”
“What if I drop it?” Arya said.
“The steel must be part of your arm,” the bald man
told her. “Can you drop part of your arm? No. Nine years
Syrio Forel was first sword to the Sealord of Braavos, he knows
these things. Listen to him, boy.”
It was the third time he had called her “boy.”
“I’m a girl,” Arya objected.
“Boy, girl,” Syrio Forel said. “You are a
sword, that is all.” He clicked his teeth together.
“Just so, that is the grip. You are not holding a battle-axe,
you are holding a—”
“—needle,” Arya finished for him, fiercely.
“Just so. Now we will begin the dance. Remember, child,
this is not the iron dance of Westeros we are learning, the
knight’s dance, hacking and hammering, no. This is the
bravo’s dance, the water dance, swift and sudden. All men are
made of water, do you know this? When you pierce them, the water
leaks out and they die.” He took a step backward, raised his
own wooden blade. “Now you will try to strike me.”
Arya tried to strike him. She tried for four hours, until every
muscle in her body was sore and aching, while Syrio Forel clicked
his teeth together and told her what to do.
The next day their real work began.