Asha Greyjoy flung open the door to her cabin with a heave and pulled the girl in with her.
"We'll wake them," said the girl, a doe-eyed innkeep's daughter with dark curls that spilled down to her shoulders and a body that Asha was already undressing in her mind.
"I'm their captain and their queen," Yara said, planting a kiss on her new lover's neck. "No one on this ship's going to complain if I wake them. Unless that would embarrass you?"
Asha let loose a peal of laughter as the girl's face burned visibly red, even in the dim light of the cabin.
"You're to do what your queen says," Asha breathed, "or they'll be consequences."
The girl arched an eyebrow.
"Oh?"
Asha was drunk, and when she was drunk she liked to brag.
"Right now there's a former king who's about to find that out the hard way," Asha said, grabbing a fist full of firm buttocks. "He'll learn long before he gets to the Wall what it means to disappoint a queen."
She leaned in again for another kiss, her hands finding hard nipples through the girl's summer dress.
"And which former king would that be?" the girl asked between kisses.
"The pretty one," Asha said, cupping the innkeep's daughter's breasts. "The Bastard of Winterfell is about to join the rest of his family in their crypts. But I don't want to waste my thoughts on him now. My mind is firmly on what's between your legs."
They fell onto the bed with the girl straddling Asha, her curls tumbling in front of her face.
"You'll have to forgive me," Asha whispered into her ear with a giggle, "for I've had too much drink and seem to have forgotten your name."
The girl pushed back her hair, but this time her doe-eyes were dilated black and the lines of her face had changed.
"Arya," she said, and Asha felt a shove in her gut.
Incomprehension became sinking dread as Asha Greyjoy placed the face staring back at her. She made to speak but succeeded only in coughing up blood.
"I told you," Arya Stark said matter-of-factly, "that I would cut your throat if you threatened my brother again."
Asha sputtered.
"They'll…find you," she croaked. "You can't…"
Arya was nonchalantly slipping on a pair of gloves.
"I can't? Oh, I just did," the youngest Stark girl said. "They'll look for the girl you took to bed. And she's no one."
Tugging on her gloves until she was satisfied with the fit, Arya looked her victim in the eye again.
"You should have forgotten about Jon the moment the king agreed to send him back to the Wall," she said softly over the squelch of flesh as she withdrew the dagger from Asha's stomach. "Your cutthroats are dead. Maybe you'll see them in your Drowned God's watery halls."
It can't end like this! Asha Greyjoy thought as she saw the glint of the dagger in the Stark girl's hand. Arya's tone turned mocking as she brought the blade up.
"What is dead," Arya said, "may never die."
Faint candlelight caught the elaborately carved kraken inlaid in the ceiling of the cabin. That kraken and the Stark girl's mocking face were the last things Asha Greyjoy saw.
"Land ho!"
The sailor's voice snapped Arya out of her reverie, and she looked toward the foredeck, where the mates were already gathering to squint at the faint suggestion of land on the horizon.
"Quit your starin' and get on the rigging!" the deckmaster shouted, waving his men to action.
Arya stepped between a pair of shuffling deck mates as she made her way astern toward the aftercastle, where she knew she'd find the captain huddled with his officers.
Captain Quen had insisted Arya take his quarters, and he wouldn't be talked out of it.
It was all "I beg your pardon, m'lady," and "I cannot, m'lady, for the cabin is yours." He'd looked mortified when Arya said she could sleep aft in a hammock among the sailors, only becoming more resolute that she occupy his quarters.
She hadn't been able to dissuade him, nor had she broken him of his habit of calling her "m'lady." All the men addressed her that way. They were northerners, and to them she was still Eddard Stark's youngest girl.
The snarling direwolf figurehead was unmistakable from Westerosi shores or the Narrow Sea, but where they were going no one would know the name Stark.
To them, the beast baring its teeth from behind the bowsprit might as well be a manticore or a basilisk, Arya thought.
Arya slipped into the wardroom, momentarily unnoticed by the captain and the five or six men gathered round him, consulting a handful of parchments that were the only maps to chart west of the Sunset Sea. All were fragmentary, and they each differed in detail. This voyage was an opportunity to reconcile those maps and chart potential new lands, which is why the Citadel had petitioned King Bran the Broken to partake in the expedition.
The king had agreed, allowing the citadel to send one maester and one assistant in exchange for elevating Samwell Tarly to the station of grandmaester in service to the Crown – and pardoning his "theft" of several volumes about The Long Night and the White Walkers.
Maester Ocram Olop leaned over the long oaken wardroom table, his links dangling as he watched Fanta, his Pentoshi assistant, mark the landmass on a fresh parchment.
"…was just a portion of what we saw on Maester Ocram's Volantine scope," the captain was saying. "Then we'll follow the coastline and get the measure of it."
A few of the officers had noticed Arya, and Captain Quen looked up.
"M'lady," he said jubilantly. "Our persistence has paid off!"
"I never doubted you or your men, captain," Arya said.
Her eyes swept the maps laid out on the table.
"Is this the island from the Ghiscari charts?" she asked, her gaze lingering on a faded parchment marked in indecipherable Ghiscari script.
Captain Quen cleared his throat, turning the old map for her benefit.
"No, m'lady," he said, pointing a finger to a grid on the parchment. "On our heading we should have seen it by our second week at sea. We weren't entirely surprised, truth tell, because it don't show in the charts we took from that Greyjoy ship what belonged to Euron, nor does it exist on the Dornish trading maps."
Maester Ocram ran his fingers over his bald dome.
"But we do know of an island mentioned in Maester Ch'Vyalthan's 'Discoveries of Antiquity'," Ocram said, bowing his head. "Its description and apparent location seem to match an isle included in the Braavosi charts."
Quen gave the maester a sidelong glance and nodded at Arya.
"Aye," he said. "The Midnight Isle."
Arya looked back at Nymeria, which was anchored offshore as its crew unloaded the supplies they'd need to make camp for the night.
Captain Quen had found a natural bay after steering Nymeria southeast along the island's shore. The sailors would take shifts on the ship, allowing everyone time to get to shore and stretch their legs, even if the island proved to be of little interest.
For the time being there were no signs of human habitation. Quen had dispatched a trio of hunting parties – two would follow the shoreline looking for paths or any sign of human life before turning inward toward the jungle, while the third would head straight into the thick tangle of trees and brush.
Arya spotted Alyce and Jack struggling to bring a chest ashore and moved to help them.
"A bit heavy for you lot, isn't it?" Arya asked the two King's Landing orphans, a smile flashing across her face.
"I've got it, m'lady!" Jack said, redoubling his efforts in order to impress her.
"And what a strong lad you are!" Arya said.
Jack beamed. Alyce, who was older by two years, had taken to dressing, talking and moving like Arya. The sailors called her Little Nym, cheering her on during her sword lessons with Arya on the deck of the ship.
Arya nodded at Alyce, grabbing one side of the chest and helping the orphaned siblings drag the heavy load onto shore.
"What do you think, eh?" she asked the younger girl, gesturing toward the pristine beach and the jungle beyond.
Alyce's gaze followed Arya's hand before fixating on the jungle.
"I think," she said, "I've never seen one of those before."
"It were huge!" one of the sailors was saying, standing up in front of the fire to emphasize his point to his comrades. "Biggest cat I ever seen, teeth like knives! Makes them Lannister lions look like kittens."
The other sailors chuckled.
"What you saw was a tiger, Nigo," Maester Ocram said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the lapping waves.
They'd built several large fires about halfway between the shore and the jungle line and now the men were gathered around them, eating a supper of dried meat, bread and cheese as the last rays of sunlight disappeared over the horizon.
"A tiger," Nigo repeated with reverence, as if the name had some sort of cosmic significance. "Sounds Quhori."
The maester dug at a bit of meat stuck between his teeth with a toothpick.
"The name comes from Yi Ti," he said. "These beasts don't exist in Westeros."
"Aye," one of the other sailors put in. "And lucky for us."
There was a commotion at the tree line. Arya saw the outline of men emerging from the pitch-black jungle.
"Captain Quen!" the hunting party's leader called. "You'll want to see this!"
The jungle was an unending tangle of trees, vines, leaves, strange flowers, unfamiliar smells and sounds Arya didn't have words for. Something howled in the branches above her, flinging itself to another tree. An animal in the distance answered the howl with a call of its own and the branch-dweller took off in the direction of the shriek.
Arya glanced behind her. Alyce was at her back, hand on the pommel of her sword, a replica of Needle. Her younger brother had lobbied to tag along, but Arya ruled it out.
"Maybe during the day," she told the disappointed boy.
Behind Arya and Alyce were a dozen or so northmen, while Quen, Ocram and another half-dozen men pushed through the tangle.
The hunting party had already cleared a path but the men in front hacked away at vines and tree limbs all the same, widening the narrow lane for the larger group.
The front of the column stopped.
"What do we have, captain?" Arya called.
Quen waved her forward. The captain extended a hand and one of his men passed him a lit torch. He flung it high into the air, and Arya followed the torch's arc as it tumbled.
She heard wood slapping stone and saw stray embers float off as the torch bounced and came to rest.
Some of the northmen were already moving ahead, their own flames illuminating the path ahead.
They stood not far from the base of an enormous staircase etched in what appeared to be granite. The stairs were worn in some places, broken in others, but were wide enough to accommodate a dozen men abreast.
As they approached, their torches illuminated a greater part of the grand stair, and Arya could see it was swallowed by the jungle ahead.
"Up we go," one of the men called. "Watch your steps, m'ladies."
Another sailor snorted.
"Lady Stark and Alyce are more surefooted than ye, y'dunce," he said.
The first northmen grunted.
"Wasn't talkin' about those ladies," he said. "I was talkin' about you ladies!"
The others chuckled until Maester Ocram cut them off with a sharp hiss and a wave of his arms.
"Shush!" he said in a harsh whisper. "Listen."
Arya could hear it too. A rhythmic thumping. Deep, powerful, echoing off the top of the ridge where presumably the stairwell leveled off under the cover of jungle. And voices. What sounded like hundreds of voices chanting in unison.
"Drums," she whispered.
There was something else too. Something that barely registered above the din, Arya registering the sound too late to warn the others. All she could do was drop low against the stone of the great staircase as the arrows cut through the air above her, dragging Alyce down with her.
Ahead, one of the northmen howled as a sharp-tipped projectile caught him in the shoulder, sending him tumbling.
"Not today," Arya said, drawing Needle.