ARYA

a year before

In a tavern of Ragman's Harbor, Cat laughed with Brusco's daughters as the men drank and japed with the women on their laps. The tavern was dark and musty, as buildings in Braavos often were. On the air hung the briny odor of the sea, sweat, and spiced meat. It was a good place to hide, amongst the sailors; amongst the dark Summer Islanders with their jeweled vests and kaftans, men of the free cities with arched daggers and dirks, and pale northern knights in their heavy quilted vests and boiled leather. A man could get lost and never be found.

The evening settled into night and Ragman's Harbor was grey and foggy again. She learned that price of lumber had risen drastically and the pepper trade was being used as a cover to smuggle food into the towns and castles that were starving. She spotted the broad back of a Westerosi traveler, his large ears poking out from under a head of shaggy black hair. He sat huddled in the corner, not one patron noticing him but her.

He turned his head when a girl gave him another glass of wine, and in the dim light she caught a high cheekbone, and the line of a strong jaw. He was better looking than those washed up boys that the wars had been bringing. The free cities were turning up all sorts of people running from the east and the west alike.

The first time a man kissed her, she slit his ribs for it. He'd been abed for a whole turn of the moon of poisoned blood. Men liked to steal kisses like fruit. Her girlhood had been wrung out of her over the years. She was fifteen now, and hadn't yet decided if she might like kissing. Brea and Talea had decided. Late at night, when she was worn from pushing her cart of clams and cockles up and down the Harbor, they would tell her stories under the covers. Brea would slip away later to meet her roof rat, and Talea would tease her endlessly when she returned.

She mocked herself for thinking the young traveler handsome, and watched the room, like Syrio Forel had taught her, and the kindly old man too. Her ears pricked at the whispers of men in the corner, and she slid silently off of her bench and crept closer in the shadows. She wished she were a cat instead of a girl; she could have hidden in the rafters and no one would be afraid at all of what she would hear. But she was a cat, and she slid into the shadows silently, away from the candlelight. The two men playing cyvasse over whispers and ale never saw nor heard her.

"The spice trade to Dorne will be ruined if the Dragon queen sets sail," complained a white-whiskered man in a green surcoat as he made his move on the board.

"Afraid her dragons will roast all your turmeric and saffron, old man?" replied his companion, in accented common tongue, Bravvosi to the bone. He was younger, lean and brown and wiry, but he took longer to make a move on the board.

"Dorne will ally with her, of course. Her brother's wife was slain by those that took her throne."

"The throne she believes is hers, you mean. Dragons, pah. That Aegon has taken the Stormlands. Perhaps Dorne will side with a son of Elia Martell rather than his aunt."

"He has sat on the Stormlands and has not made any moves into the Crownlands or the Riverlands. He ought to sail for Dorne."

"He ought to take the Crownlands and be done with the Lannisters, or take the Riverlands from the outlaws."

"It's not the outlaws that are the terror anymore." The old whiskered man leaned close to his companion, "There's an army in the Riverlands, come out of the Vale."

"I thought they'd never come off their perch and deign to fight. The Arryn child is a boy of eight, is he not? And Lysa Arryn is dead. Have the Royce's taken up arms instead?"

"The Arryn child is dead, it is a Hardyng that is the heir now. His wife is Lysa Arryn's own neice."

"Her neice?"

Cat held her heart in her throat.

"Sansa Stark, from what I hear. She's going to take back Winterfell."

She wanted to laugh. Sansa didn't know how to command an army. The only thing she had command over was the high harp, and all she knew of war was battles in the songs. This one was a fake, like the Arya Stark that they married to the Bastard of Bolton years ago.

"Winterfell en't nothing but bones."

"But with a Stark sitting there again…"

Couldn't these men tell lies from the truth? Sansa was gone. Her heart thrummed and her hands shook, tingling oddly. She clenched her fists hard, her nails in her palms to stop the shaking. Calm as still water. Quiet as a shadow. The man who fears losing has already lost.

"Her armies won't make it there."

"She'll be welcomed with open arms."

"Aye, then Bolton will flay the pretty skin right o' her."

She closed her eyes and wished to be anything but a cat. Her training was a hard teacher, firm and implacable. Valar dohaeris. She watched a few men exchange coin with tavern wenches and disappear upstairs, but for the most part the men in the corner continued to throw knives at the painted panel on the wall and a few older captains with dark skin and thick black beards played cyvasse and japed about the dragon queen. The man with the large ears from before left his table and Cat glanced at him, seeing his face for the first time that night.

For a moment, she couldn't move. In the dim light of the candles she had mistaken him...no...not him. It couldn't be him. There was blood in her ears, pounding like the sound of a drum.

With her wool cloak on her shoulders, she followed him out the door of the tavern and onto the small street along the canal. He had lifted his hood over his head, but a man nearly grown that breached far past six feet tall was not a man that could hide easily from anyone, and especially not her. He strode along the narrow cobbled path, skirting aside drunken men and painted whores. Quiet as a shadow, Cat padded along behind him in her deerskin slippers until he disappeared into an alleyway and headed towards a block of apartments. It was too cold to go barefoot so deep into winter. She climbed onto the low roof of the house, silently moving up over a balcony and onto the cold tiles. He slunk through the alleyway only half as careful as he should have been watched him slink through the alleyway and came up behind him without a noise, a dagger at his throat. He struggled, trying to claw her off his back, but the blade at his throat was sharp and soon her hands were covered in blood. He fell to his knees and she took the chance to press him against the stone of the alleyway.

"Stop," she hissed in his ear, "If you stop I won't kill you." He stilled and she lay the flat of her dagger against his skin.

"Take whatever coin I have," he said, his voice trembling. She yanked the hood off his head and grabbed a chunk of his shaggy black hair, dark as a raven's wing, and pulled. He cried out.

"Why are you here?" Cat hissed. His face was a pale blue in the moonlight and untouched by scars or weather.

"Hi...hi...hiding."

"You liked the outlaw life so much you decided to come here?"

"What...what, no! I'm not an outlaw!"

She dug the knife deeper, unafraid to cut, but then she heard it. A whimper. It made her stop, and look. His eyes were blue. The very same color, the very same shape. But his cheeks were not so wide, and his jaw was weaker. The beard on his face was short and thin; a boy's beard and not a man's, his brows weren't so thick, and his ears – how could it have been him? Stupid girl, she thought, stupid, stupid girl. Syrio would have chastised her for such a mistake.

"You're not him," said Arya after a moment. She felt the hard knot of his throat move under her knife as he swallowed.

"No! No! I'm not him!"

"But you look like him. Why do you look like him?" she spat.

"He's dead!" the man said, his eyes wide and glittering in the light. "You don't have to worry about him, he's dead, you must have heard! Everyone's heard for years!"

His words rang in her head as she brought the dagger to the man's throat and cut. He seemed to realize at the last moment that she was only a scrawny girl and wrested out of her grip, tossing her onto the ground with all his strength. She took the dagger and leapt, but he turned from her and the blade cut into the flesh of his shoulder.

"King Robert's dead! He's been dead for seven years!" he yelled, striking out. He clipped the top of her head and she fell backwards, breathing heavily, dizzy. She was fast but he had been too strong.

"What's wrong with you, you crazy girl? He's dead, I'm not him. I don't know you. I'm not my father."

He held his hand over his neck, blood leaking from under his fingers. She felt like she had been dropped in a frozen river.

"What do you want with me?" he asked, his voice trembling again. He should have had the good sense to run, "Are you going to kill me? Did someone pay you to kill me?"

"No," Cat said.

"What...what do you want from me?"

"Your name."

He laughed darkly.

"People are looking for me, people who want me dead."

"If I wanted you dead you would have been a corpse long ago."

"Edric Storm."

"King Robert's bastard."

"Yes."

She unsheathed Needle from her scabbard and placed the tip of the blade on his leather jerkin, over his heart between the ribs.

"Run home," she said. "You won't die today."

He scrambled up and broke into a run, still holding the cloth to his neck. Her head reeled painfully. I must never slip again like that. But she did slip and would again and again. She slipped into a wolf's skin at night and ran upon the frozen ground with her brothers and sisters. Every night the snow was thicker and the men in the woods sparser. Live ones, at least. In the wolf dreams she had a pack that would never leave her. Her normal dreams were only nightmares. She sank to her knees in the dirty alleyway, the slush from last night's snow soaking through her breeches. It was a chilling fear, wild and savage. They would have me forget. One day I will lose every memory I have. I have thought that by coming here I would live, but Arya will die anyways. Arya will die and I will have killed her.

To Be Continued...

A/N: Please be kind and review.

Are the characters making sense? Or are they too OOC?

Is the setting and plot elements as they are presented in the story clear enough?

What doesn't seem to make sense when you read it?

Is the pace of the story too fast or too slow?