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.
Eleven servants of the Many-Faced God gathered that night beneath the temple, more than she had ever seen together at one time. Only the lordling and the fat fellow arrived by the front door; the rest came by secret ways, through tunnels and hidden passages.
Secret tunnels? Must be an Arya chapter.
+.+.+
Their tall chairs were carved of ebony and weirwood, like the doors of the temple above. The ebon chairs had weirwood faces on their backs, the weirwood chairs faces of carved ebony.
Remember the time I said there was a suspicious lack of the old gods in Braavos? That was dumb.
+.+.+
"I know this man," she did hear a priest with the face of a plague victim say. "I know this man," the fat fellow echoed, as she was pouring for him. But the handsome man said, "I will give this man the gift, I know him not." Later the squinter said the same thing, of someone else.
Arya will murder Raff the Sweetling in TWOW. Knowing her victims doesn't appear as if it's going to be an issue for her.
+.+.+
After three hours of wine and words, the priests took their leave … all but the kindly man, the waif, and the one whose face bore the marks of plague. His cheeks were covered with weeping sores, and his hair had fallen out. Blood dripped from one nostril and crusted at the corners of both eyes. "Our brother would have words with you, child," the kindly man told her. "Sit, if you wish." She seated herself in a weirwood chair with a face of ebony. Bloody sores held no terror for her. She had been too long in the House of Black and White to be afraid of a false face.
I don't know, seems like the author might be preparing Arya to look upon a ghastly face.
"Let us see." The priest lowered his cowl. Beneath he had no face; only a yellowed skull with a few scraps of skin still clinging to the cheeks, and a white worm wriggling from one empty eye socket. "Kiss me, child," he croaked, in a voice as dry and husky as a death rattle.
Does he think to scare me? - Arya I, AFFC
x
Lady Stoneheart lowered her hood and unwound the grey wool scarf from her face. Her hair was dry and brittle, white as bone. Her brow was mottled green and grey, spotted with the brown blooms of decay. The flesh of her face clung in ragged strips from her eyes down to her jaw. Some of the rips were crusted with dried blood, but others gaped open to reveal the skull beneath.
Her face, Brienne thought. Her face was so strong and handsome, her skin so smooth and soft. "Lady Catelyn?" Tears filled her eyes. - Brienne VIII, AFFC
+.+.+
He slapped her.
The blow left her cheek stinging, but she knew that she had earned it. "Thank you." Enough slaps, and she might stop chewing on her lip. Arya did that, not the night wolf. "I do deny it."
"You lie. I can see the truth in your eyes. You have the eyes of a wolf and a taste for blood."
Ser Gregor, she could not help but think. Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.
Only Arya would think a night wolf persona is detached from her real identity.
I think they know she's a warg.
+.+.+
"You were a cat, they tell me. Prowling through the alleys smelling of fish, selling cockles and mussels for coin. A small life, well suited for a small creature such as you. Ask, and it can be restored to you. Push your barrow, cry your cockles, be content. Your heart is too soft to be one of us."
They definitely know she's a warg.
Arya smelling of fish will be repeated 3x in this chapter. That might be Tully things.
+.+.+
He means to send me away. "I have no heart. I only have a hole. I've killed lots of people. I could kill you if I wanted."
"Would that taste sweet to you?"
She did not know the right answer. "Maybe."
"Then you do not belong here. Death holds no sweetness in this house.
Unless you're Daenerys Targaryen.
+.+.+
"I can pay the price. Give me a face."
"Faces must be earned."
"Tell me how."
"Give a certain man a certain gift. Can you do that?"
I'm sorry, did I miss something? Who is this man? Why is another servant giving out assignments and reprimanding Arya instead of the kindly man?
Also, hasn't she been wearing faces the whole time?
"Then on the morrow, you shall be Cat of the Canals again. Wear that face, watch, obey. And we will see if you are truly worthy to serve Him of Many Faces."
+.+.+
She got her first look at the man she must kill later that morning as she wheeled her barrow through the cobbled streets that fronted on the Purple Harbor. He was an old man, well past fifty. He has lived too long, she tried to tell herself. Why should he have so many years when my father had so few? But Cat of the Canals had no father, so she kept that thought to herself.
Two sisters attempting to justify awful situations.
When she closed her eyes she could see him in his sky cell, huddled in a corner away from the cold black sky, crouched beneath a fur with his woodharp cradled against his chest. I must not pity him, she told herself. He was vain and cruel, and soon he will be dead. She could not save him. And why should she want to? Marillion tried to rape her, and Petyr had saved her life not once but twice. Some lies you have to tell. Lies had been all that kept her alive in King's Landing. If she had not lied to Joffrey, his Kingsguard would have beat her bloody. - Sansa I, AFFC
Probably don't need to point out one of these acts is considerably worse than the other.
+.+.+
He has no courtesy, she thought, watching him go. His face is hard and mean.
Look who's talking.
+.+.+
The old man's nose was pinched and sharp, his lips thin, his eyes small and close-set. His hair had gone to grey, but the little pointed beard at the end of his chin was still black.
Boy, if I didn't know any better I would think this man is meant to represent another character in the story.
Petyr had been a small boy, and he had grown into a small man, an inch or two shorter than Catelyn, slender and quick, with the sharp features she remembered and the same laughing grey-green eyes. He had a little pointed chin beard now, and threads of silver in his dark hair, though he was still shy of thirty. - Catelyn IV, AGOT
+.+.+
"He is an evil man," she announced that evening when she returned to the House of Black and White. "His lips are cruel, his eyes are mean, and he has a villain's beard."
The kindly man chuckled. "He is a man like any other, with light in him and darkness. It is not for you to judge him."
Pfft, that doesn't sound very House of Black and White.
Villain's beard, lol.
+.+.+
That gave her pause. "Have the gods judged him?"
"Some gods, mayhaps. What are gods for if not to sit in judgment over men? The Many-Faced God does not weigh men's souls, however. He gives his gift to the best of men as he gives it to the worst. Elsewise the good would live forever."
The old man's hands were the worst thing about him, Cat decided the next day, as she watched him from behind her barrow. His fingers were long and bony, always moving, scratching at his beard, tugging at an ear, drumming on a table, twitching, twitching, twitching. He has hands like two white spiders. The more she watched his hands, the more she came to hate them.
"He moves his hands too much," she told them at the temple. "He must be full of fear. The gift will bring him peace."
Bending herself into a pretzel to rationalize this.
The Many-Faced God does not weigh men's souls, however. He gives his gift to the best of men as he gives it to the worst.
Assuming the cheque clears. What a crock of shit.
+.+.+
The old man was some sort of merchant, Cat concluded after watching him for a few days. His trade had to do with the sea, though she never saw him set foot upon a ship. He spent his days sitting in a soup shop near the Purple Harbor, a cup of onion broth cooling at his elbow as he shuffled papers and sealing wax and spoke in sharp tones to a parade of captains, shipowners, and other merchants, none of whom seemed to like him very much.
Some sort of merchant, eh?
Sounds like a man who might have a few enemies who would pay to have him killed.
+.+.+
The old man would count it out carefully, sorting the coins and stacking them up neatly, like with like. He never looked at the coins. Instead he bit them, always on the left side of his mouth, where he still had all his teeth.
I have a prediction!
Pate grabbed it from his hand. The gold felt warm against his palm. He brought it to his mouth and bit down on it the way he'd seen men do. If truth be told, he wasn't sure what gold should taste like, but he did not want to look a fool. - Prologue, AFFC
+.+.+
"But what is he selling them?"
"He is writing each a binder. If their ships are lost in a storm or taken by pirates, he promises to pay them for the value of the vessel and all its contents."
"How will the crown pay its debts without Lord Petyr? He is our wizard of coin, and we have no one to replace him." - Tyrion III, ASOS
x
The Waynwoods are very old and very proud, but not as rich as one might think, as I discovered when I began buying up their debt. - Alayne II, AFFC
+.+.+
"… they lose their ships, oftimes their very lives. The seas are dangerous, and never more so than in autumn. No doubt many a captain sinking in a storm has taken some small solace in his binder back in Braavos, knowing that his widow and children will not want." A sad smile touched his lips. "It is one thing to write such a binder, though, and another to make good on it."
Not paying debts owed? Goodness, that sounds familiar too!
He went back to work after she left, trying to track some golden dragons through the labyrinth of Littlefinger's ledgers. Petyr Baelish had not believed in letting gold sit about and grow dusty, that was for certain, but the more Tyrion tried to make sense of his accounts the more his head hurt. It was all very well to talk of breeding dragons instead of locking them up in the treasury, but some of these ventures smelled worse than week-old fish. - Tyrion VI, ASOS
+.+.+
Cat understood. One of them must hate him. One of them came to the House of Black and White and prayed for the god to take him. She wondered who it had been, but the kindly man would not tell her. "It is not for you to pry into such matters," he said. "Who are you?"
Prayed for the god to take him? Silly girl.
Controversial take, but scumbag insurance salesmen don't deserve to die ... they deserve a lifetime of endless psychological torture, and physical abuse.
I'm kidding. Mostly.
+.+.+
"If you cannot do this thing, you need only say so. There is no shame in that. Some are made to serve the Many-Faced God and some are not. Say the word, and I shall lift this task from you."
Say it.
Please say it.
Please don't kill this crooked old man.
This is not right.
This is not justice.
Think of your father.
Your brother.
Your mother. Your real mother.
+.+.+
"I will do it. I said I would. I will."
Fuck.
+.+.+
How, though? That was harder.
He had guards. Two of them, a tall thin man and a short thick one. They went with him everywhere, from when he left his house in the morning till he returned at night. They made certain no one got close to the old man without his leave.
Littlefinger has a tall and short knight too! Plus an extra for funsies.
The three knights bowed and withdrew, though the tall one with the blond hair kissed her hand before taking his leave.
"Hedge knights?" said Alayne, when the door had closed.
"Hungry knights. I thought it best that we have a few more swords about us. The times grow ever more interesting, my sweet, and when the times are interesting you can never have too many swords. The Merling King's returned to Gulltown, and old Oswell had some tales to tell." - Alayne II, AFFC
We already know Ser Shadrich is important, I wonder if Ser Byron and Ser Morgarth will be elevated in the story.
+.+.+
"The guards go with him even when he slips out to make water," she said, "but he doesn't go when they do. The tall one is the quicker. I'll wait till he is making water, walk into the soup shop, and stab the old man through the eye."
"And the other guard?"
"He's slow and stupid. I can kill him too."
"Are you some butcher of the battlefield, hacking down every man who stands in your way?"
And we have to sit here and entertain discussions about Sansa's morality. Lol
+.+.+
"Him of Many Faces will be pleased." The kindly man rose. "Cat of the Canals is known to many. If she is seen to have done this deed, it might bring down trouble on Brusco and his daughters. It is time you had another face."
The girl did not smile, but inside she was pleased. She had lost Cat once, and mourned her. She did not want to lose her again.
+.+.+
"What will I look like?"
"Ugly. Women will look away when they see you. Children will stare and point. Strong men will pity you, and some may shed a tear. No one who sees you will soon forget you. Come."
Wouldn't you want to go with a forgettable face?
+.+.+
The tunnels here were cramped and crooked, black wormholes twisting through the heart of the great rock. One passage was closed off by a heavy iron door. The priest hung the lantern from a hook, slipped a hand inside his robe, and produced an ornate key.
Gooseprickles rose along her arms. The sanctum. They were going lower still, down to the third level, to the secret chambers where only the priests were permitted.
Oh my goodness, are we travelling to the bottom of the castle where all the secret tunnels and chambers are? Never would have thought I'd see this in an Arya chapter.
+.+.+
The priest took down the lantern once again and led the way. The girl followed the light, counting the steps as she went down. Four five six seven. She found herself wishing that she had brought her stick. Ten eleven twelve. She knew how many steps there were between the temple and the cellar, between the cellar and the subcellar, she had even counted the steps on the cramped winding stair that spiraled up into the garret and the rungs on the steep wooden ladder that ascended to the rooftop door and the windy perch outside.
This stair was unknown to her, however, and that made it perilous. One-and-twenty two-and-twenty three-and-twenty. With every step the air seemed to grow a little colder. When her count reached thirty she knew that they were under even the canals. Three-and-thirty four-and-thirty. How deep were they going to go?
She had reached fifty-four when the steps finally ended at another iron door.
I feel like I've read something like this before.
At first he could see the dim outline of each rung as he grasped it, and the rough grey texture of the stone behind, but as he climbed the black grew thicker. Thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen. By thirty, his arms trembled with the strain of pulling. He paused a moment to catch his breath and glanced down. A circle of faint light shone far below, half obscured by his own feet. Tyrion resumed his ascent. Thirty-nine forty forty-one. By fifty, his legs burned. The ladder was endless, numbing. Sixty-eight sixty-nine seventy. By eighty, his back was a dull agony. Yet still he climbed. He could not have said why. One thirteen one fourteen one fifteen.
At two hundred and thirty, the shaft was black as pitch, but he could feel the warm air flowing from the tunnel to his left, like the breath of some great beast. - Tyrion XI, ASOS
+.+.+
A thousand faces were gazing down on her.
Got to ask ourselves if Jaqen recruited Arya because he knew what she was.
I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. - Bran II, ADWD
+.+.+
They hung upon the walls, before her and behind her, high and low, everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned. She saw old faces and young faces, pale faces and dark faces, smooth faces and wrinkled faces, freckled faces and scarred faces, handsome faces and homely faces, men and women, boys and girls, even babes, smiling faces, frowning faces, faces full of greed and rage and lust, bald faces and faces bristling with hair. Masks, she told herself, it's only masks, but even as she thought the thought, she knew it wasn't so. They were skins.
Pardon? Excuse me? What the hell are they going to do with a baby's face?
This place is fucked, how can anyone read this and not instantly recognize this is bad.
+.+.+
Arya bit her lip. She did not know what she wanted. If I leave, where will I go? She had washed and stripped a hundred corpses, dead things did not frighten her.
I sure hope so.
+.+.+
One tunnel was walled with human bones, its roof supported by columns of skulls. Another opened on winding steps that descended farther still. How many cellars are there? she wondered. Do they just go down forever?
There's four levels.
:)
+.+.+
Still as stone, she thought. She sat unmoving. The cut was quick, the blade sharp. By rights the metal should have been cold against her flesh, but it felt warm instead. She could feel the blood washing down her face, a rippling red curtain falling across her brow and cheeks and chin, and she understood why the priest had made her close her eyes. When it reached her lips the taste was salt and copper. She licked at it and shivered.
Since when is a knife involved?
+.+.+
"Bring me the face," said the kindly man. The waif made no answer, but she could hear her slippers whispering over the stone floor. To the girl he said, "Drink this," and pressed a cup into her hand. She drank it down at once. It was very tart, like biting into a lemon. A thousand years ago, she had known a girl who loved lemon cakes. No, that was not me, that was only Arya.
There are Arya fans who believe Arya is remembering Arya. Bless them.
Since when is there a drink? Are we doing blood magic?
+.+.+
"Mummers change their faces with artifice," the kindly man was saying, "and sorcerers use glamors, weaving light and shadow and desire to make illusions that trick the eye. These arts you shall learn, but what we do here goes deeper. Wise men can see through artifice, and glamors dissolve before sharp eyes, but the face you are about to don will be as true and solid as that face you were born with. Keep your eyes closed."
IS IT BLOOD MAGIC? It's blood magic, isn't it.
+.+.+
The leather scraped across her brow, dry and stiff, but as her blood soaked into it, it softened and turned supple. Her cheeks grew warm, flushed. She could feel her heart fluttering beneath her breast, and for one long moment she could not catch her breath. Hands closed around her throat, hard as stone, choking her. Her own hands shot up to claw at the arms of her attacker, but there was no one there. A terrible sense of fear filled her, and she heard a noise, a hideous crunching noise, accompanied by blinding pain. A face floated in front of her, fat, bearded, brutal, his mouth twisted with rage. She heard the priest say, "Breathe, child. Breathe out the fear. Shake off the shadows. He is dead. She is dead. Her pain is gone. Breathe."
Holy christ, this is dark.
+.+.+
"You may have bad dreams for a time," warned the kindly man. "Her father beat her so often and so brutally that she was never truly free of pain or fear until she came to us."
"Did you kill him?"
"She asked the gift for herself, not for her father."
You should have killed him.
Arya still firmly in camp Kill The Oppressor.
"He killed the slave?" That did not sound right. "He should have killed the masters!" - Arya II, AFFC
Hard to know where that might be going.
The memories staying is similar to warging.
When the man's flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades - Prologue, ADWD
+.+.+
As they made their way back to the steps, the empty eyeholes of the skins upon the walls seemed to follow her. For a moment she could almost see their lips moving, whispering dark sweet secrets to one another in words too faint to hear.
"It's dead," she said aloud. "It's just a skull, it can't hurt me." Yet somehow the monster seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. - Arya III, AGOT
x
Arya held the candle over her head. With each step she took, the shadows moved against the walls, as if they were turning to watch her pass. "Dragons," she whispered. - Arya IV, AGOT
+.+.+
Sleep did not come easily that night. Tangled in her blankets, she twisted this way and that in the cold dark room, but whichever way she turned, she saw the faces. They have no eyes, but they can see me. She saw her father's face upon the wall. Beside him hung her lady mother, and below them her three brothers all in a row. No. That was some other girl. I am no one, and my only brothers wear robes of black and white. Yet there was the black singer, there the stableboy she'd killed with Needle, there the pimply squire from the crossroads inn, and over there the guard whose throat she'd slashed to get them out of Harrenhal. The Tickler hung on the wall as well, the black holes that were his eyes swimming with malice. The sight of him brought back the feel of the dagger in her hand as she had plunged it into his back, again and again and again.
Quite the body count so far.
Unfortunate, but it's probably a positive thing she's being haunted by this.
+.+.+
An ugly girl should dress in ugly clothing, she decided, so she chose a stained brown cloak fraying at the hem, a musty green tunic smelling of fish, and a pair of heavy boots.
New face, same fishy smell.
+.+.+
One time, the girl remembered, the Sailor's Wife had walked her rounds with her and told her tales of the city's stranger gods. "That is the house of the Great Shepherd. Three-headed Trios has that tower with three turrets. The first head devours the dying, and the reborn emerge from the third. I don't know what the middle head's supposed to do. Those are the Stones of the Silent God, and there the entrance to the Patternmaker's Maze. Only those who learn to walk it properly will ever find their way to wisdom, the priests of the Pattern say. Beyond it, by the canal, that's the temple of Aquan the Red Bull. Every thirteenth day, his priests slit the throat of a pure white calf, and offer bowls of blood to beggars."
In case you missed it, it's possible the Sailor's Wife is Tysha.
Not sure if the three-headed tale is important, or if we're looking for any reason to drag the Sailor's Wife back into the story.
+.+.+
When she stopped to watch and listen for a moment, Tagganaro glanced at her without recognition, but Casso barked and clapped his flippers. He knows me, the girl thought, or else he smells the fish. She hurried on her way.
I mean the obvious implication is that a wolf will be able to sense a disguised Arya.
But again, smelling the fish on Arya could be a clever nod to House Tully. Kind of a stretch though.
+.+.+
Instead she perched atop a wooden piling twenty yards away as the blustery wind tugged at her cloak with ghostly fingers.
BRAN?!
+.+.+
It was almost noon before she saw the man she wanted, a prosperous shipowner she had seen doing business with the old man three times before. Big and bald and burly, he wore a heavy cloak of plush brown velvet trimmed with fur and a brown leather belt ornamented with silver moons and stars. Some mishap had left one leg stiff.
We'll later learn he's carrying Westerosi coins.
The ugly girl sat next to him and put a coin on the lip of the pool between them. It was gold, with a dragon on one face and a king on the other.
If the silver moons and stars is a specific house, I don't know what it is. Could simply be more random Daenerys hints.
+.+.+
The movement tangled her arm in the folds of his cloak as she was pulling out her hand. Coins rained around their feet. "Thief!" The big man raised his stick to strike at her. She kicked his bad leg out from under him, danced away, and bolted as he fell, darting past a mother with a child. More coins fell from between her fingers to bounce along the ground. Shouts of "thief, thief" rang out behind her. A potbellied innkeep passing by made a clumsy grab for her arm, but she spun around him, flashed past a laughing whore, raced headlong for the nearest alley.
Slightly similar to another scene I've read.
The old man feinted with one end of the staff, pulled it back, and whipped the other end about faster than Dany would have believed. The Titan's Bastard staggered back into the surf, spitting blood and broken teeth from the ruin of his mouth. Whitebeard put Dany behind him. Mero slashed at his face. The old man jerked back, cat-quick. The staff thumped Mero's ribs, sending him reeling. Arstan splashed sideways, parried a looping cut, danced away from a second, checked a third mid-swing. The moves were so fast she could hardly follow. - Daenerys V, ASOS
+.+.+
Cat of the Canals had known these alleys, and the ugly girl remembered. She darted left, vaulted a low wall, leapt across a small canal, and slipped through an unlocked door into some dusty storeroom. All sounds of pursuit had faded by then, but it was best to be sure. She hunkered down behind some crates and waited, arms wrapped around her knees. She waited for the best part of an hour, then decided it was safe to go, climbed straight up the side of the building, and made her way across the rooftops almost as far as the Canal of Heroes.
Enjoying this account of Arya narrowly escaping a pursuit.
She heard shouts, then pounding footsteps, closing behind her. She dropped and rolled. The red cloak went careening past her, stumbling. Arya sprang back to her feet. She saw a window above her, high and narrow, scarcely more than an arrow slit. Arya leapt, caught the sill, pulled herself up. She held her breath as she wriggled through. Slippery as an eel.
[...]
It was very dark right now, she realized. She hugged her bare knees tight against her chest and shivered. She would wait quietly and count to ten thousand. By then it would be safe for her to come creeping back out and find her way home.
By the time she had reached eighty-seven, the room had begun to lighten as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long teeth. - Arya III, AGOT
+.+.+
"It wasn't stealing. I took one of his, but I left him one of ours."
The kindly man understood. "And with that coin and the others in his purse, he paid a certain man. Soon after that man's heart gave out. Is that the way of it? Very sad." The priest picked up the coin and tossed it into the pool. "You have much and more to learn, but it may be you are not hopeless."
What if the sailor didn't pay with all his coins? What if someone pocketed the coin while it was on the street? Flawed plan.
+.+.+
That night they gave her back the face of Arya Stark.
They brought a robe for her as well, the soft thick robe of an acolyte, black upon one side and white upon the other. "Wear this when you are here," the priest said, "but know that you shall have little need of it for the present. On the morrow you will go to Izembaro to begin your first apprenticeship. Take what clothes you will from the vaults below. The city watch is looking for a certain ugly girl, known to frequent the Purple Harbor, so best you have a new face as well." He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. "A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own. Who are you, child?"
"No one," she replied.
I don't understand why she keeps progressing when they know she still identifies as Arya.
Final thoughts:
I don't think the takeaway is that Arya will poison Littlefinger (she could still kill him), but perhaps a contributing factor to his downfall will be coin?
With the curtains drawn and door closed, darkness enveloped everything inside the room in a complete void. He’d lost all sense of time, but knew he’d been wide awake in the bed for hours. Now and then he’d shift on the mattress, and either kick the blankets off after they became too hot or rolled up in the soft duvet when the cool bedroom air turned cold. Sometimes it took hours for him to fall asleep, but once he was finally out he could stay in bed for days. Then there were nights, like that night, where it felt like he’d never sleep again. Matteo couldn’t quiet his mind. He thought about a shower or bath, but they’d only help keep him awake. Food was always great. Liquor was a great sleep aid when he was alive, if he drank enough of it, but Matt didn’t want to turn to old habits. So, maybe a walk?
Matteo was still in the gray lounge pants he wore to bed, but with a t-shirt thrown on before he left his room. A little walk, or run, down the neighborhood would be nice, help clear his head - at least, he wanted to convince himself it’d help. Maybe he just needed to make it routine for a bit? As the door on his left came into view, Matt stopped in the hallway. There was a knot in his stomach when he quietly approached the doorway, shoulder against the wall. It was like he was a child again, awake from a nightmare, standing outside his parents’ room; too afraid to go back to bed, but worried he’d upset the sleeping man and woman if he woke them up. But Matteo wasn’t a kid anymore, and they weren’t his parents.
He’d already forgotten what he’d planned to do only moments before as he stepped through the open bedroom doorway. Dark eyes danced over both bodies barely visible in the dim light that stretched into the room as he approached the bed, and walked to a side. Softly, the back of his fingers brushed up Arya’s arm, and down her shoulder. The man knelt, and reached to carefully brush a few rogue strands of dark hair from the goddess’s face. In a tone as soft as his touch he said, “I can’t sleep. And I can’t stop thinking about you.” Carefully, Matteo leaned forward, and crawled onto the bed, straddled over Arya on his hands and knees.
And we’re back in King’s Landing. My thoughts on Arya II, below the cut.
Aw, I feel really sorry for Arya at the beginning of this scene.
Arya’s missing the rest of her siblings:
The rest of the time, they ate in [Ned’s] 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.
Compare this to Jon III:
He missed his true brothers: little Rickon, bright eyes shining as he begged for a sweet; Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion; Bran, stubborn and curious, always wanting to follow and join in whatever Jon and Robb were doing. He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but "my half brother" since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant. And Arya . . . he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had . . . yet she could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him.
They remember Robb, Bran and Rickon slightly differently, but share the same memories of each other.
Okay, so I think in my post about Sansa I, I talked about how we didn’t have much evidence one way or the other yet about Ned’s take on class / ‘the common people’...
In this chapter, we learn that Ned really makes an effort to get to know those who follow him directly
However, of all his kids, we only have evidence that he taught this explicitly to Robb, as the next lord
Arya (and Bran) seem to have picked up the know-everyone approach mainly through proximity, curiosity and natural friendliness
So perhaps its not too surprising that Sansa and Jon didn’t learn the lesson
And anyway, there is a difference between the men Ned invited to dine at his table, who all have good, stable jobs, and the people Jon initially disliked in the Night’s Watch (the bastards of sailors, etc)
Oh, poor Arya. She’s crying and thinks that what happened to Mycah and Lady is her fault. :(
And Ned’s there
He’s a good dad, actually
Bless
So Arya was born in the (current) summer.
I’ve been wondering, because the summer is nine years old and so is Arya, but I was trying to work out which came first
I think it’s still possible that Sansa was born in the winter though... I suppose it depends how long the most recent winter was.
This entire conversation is wonderful and heart-warming and iconic. I very nearly quoted it all, but that would be a bit extra.
The sword-fighting lesson is very good too, fun to read.
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.
