Chapter 1
Six guards, three at each side of the first gate's entrance, Gezarhi calculated. Their garb was simple: light robes to deflect the Dornish heat, spears and whips to beat away unruly filth such as herself. They guarded the first of three gates into Sunspear. The walls curled around the city in three winding layers, making it tremendously hard to get inside successfully. The Threefold Gate kept out vermin of the slums, inhabitants of the hovels surrounding the gate's entrance. The Martells were adamant about maintaining a clean, reputable city; they had no desire for the undesirables outside their precious city walls. Alleyways and bazaars spawned from the Old Palace, a crowded infestation of winesinks, pillow houses, inns, and hidden courts. Entering the city was going to be tricky, getting out might even prove a challenge.
Gezarhi was crouched behind a pile of broken carts, abandoned on the fringes of a local bazaar. The first gate loomed overhead, rising into the sky, seemingly as if to touch the sun. Wiping her bloodied lips against a stained ragged tunic, the young girl, festering like a tender fruit in the ripe Dornish sun, stood. Gathering a handful of dirt in between her callused fingers, Gezarhi smeared it across her cheeks and rumpled her sweat soaked hair. Looking every bit like an urchin child playing in the muck, she ran into the bazaar, shouting and screaming along with the other soiled children.
Carts were piled high with lush citrus, hundreds of spices were sold by the stone, exotic trinkets hung from doorways, whores performed for coin, and serpents danced inside woven baskets. The people were in constant buzz, their pouches clanking with goods, many layers of cloth whispering against their sweaty skin as they called to sellers.
Stopping before a fruit stand visible from the First Gate, Gezarhi's mouth began to salivate, her dried tongue slithering along her cracked lips. The keeper cursed at her, batting her away with a crop. The leather sung her skin, and she whimpered. "I'm so hungry!"
"You little rats, plundering my goods!" He cursed, slicing the air with his crop. "The next time one of you shits steals something from me again, I'll have the guards take a hand!" Yelping as the leather cracked across her cheek, Gezarhi stumbled to the ground. Clutching her burning skin, she twisted her face to keep from crying. "Guards! Guards! Seize this filth! Take her from my sight!" Two of the guards broke from their post at the gate, stalking through the crowded marketplace. Measuring her breath, Gezarhi scuttled forward, inching closer to the precious fruit stand. Gezarhi's hand hesitated a moment, waiting for the shop keep to see her crime before snatching away a melon. The keeper lunged with his crop, shouting. Cradling the tender melon to her chest, Gezarhi darted through the throng of market customers, bare feet blistering against the hot sand. Screaming for the guards, the keeper's voice carried through the bazaar. Darting between a packing mule's legs, the girl looked behind her. The two guards were following her, shoving people aside to reach her.
Breathing hard and panicked, Gezarhi scampered through a fire breather's show, scattering the goblet of change at his feet. One woman tried to grab her tunic, hissing. Feet sliding against the sand, Gezarhi raced down a narrow alleyway. She could hear the guards yelling at her. Scaling the two adjacent buildings, she scampered up the walls, clutching tightly to her melon, her toes finding outcroppings of stone to cling to. The guards shouted to their companions, and two more men broke from the gate's entrance to assist in her capture. The buildings were compact and easy to run along, the guards below matching her pace along the market street.
Brandishing their whips, the tongues of black leather flickered against the buildings' edges in hopes of catching Gezarhi's ankles. Waiting for the right moment to hop from a building top to a lower hovel, the guards racing to keep beside her, Gezarhi looked down, noticing a spice dealer's stand. It had a large overhang to shield its customers from the violent sun. The fabric could hold me, Gezarhi thought with avid observation. The wooden posts appeared to be strong enough and she was small, she'd always been small. . . .
The guards shouted, swearing at her, whips clawing at the air. Dust burst from her toes and her heart stammered.
Gezarhi looked to the overhang, then at the whips lashing against the sky, and leapt from the building.
The rooftops abandoned her and she was falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Her wrist burned, the flesh of her skin searing as the black tongue coiled itself around her arm. Her body was yanked, another whip snaking around her ankle. The breath stuttered in Gezarhi's throat and she rasped for air. The overhang screamed in protest as her weight burdened the wooden posts. The guards shouted. Her body was in the air once more. Falling.
The melon burst against the ground, rhine shattering, juice creating mud in the dust. Seeds sprinkled wetly across Gezarhi's cheek and the tail of a whip tightened against her throat. Sticky blood leaked from her neck, mingling with the melon's slimy innards. Her skin shimmered in the sun, heat wafting along ground, blood soaking into the parched sand. Everything burned. The pain was great, but Gezarhi found she could not cry, the tears wouldn't come. Her chest convulsed, feeling at if it were about to collapse.
"What's your name, girl?" One of the guards tightened the whip around her wrist and watched as she flinched.
"Please, no."
"What is your name?" He demanded.
The dried skin of her lips split and she could taste blood.
The guard kicked her in the side.
"No one. Please. I am no one."
The stag lay lifeless in the snow. The pack had chased it for over an hour, driving it to their den. The massive one, the female that lead them, jumped the great beast, the force of her attack dragging them both to the ground. Her claw marks cut deep into the flesh, ripping down to the bone. Hot blood leaked lethargically from its wounds, steaming in the cold. The stag had cried, tried to stand, kicking its hooves madly. The female's iron jaws sunk into the creature's throat, silencing it.
Grunt. Snap.
Blood soaked her muzzle, dripping from her lips, staining the snow bright red. A snarl tore through her throat, vibrating, warning. The other slunk back from the kill, heads bent in submission. Snow drifted from the branches, swirling in and out of the light filtering through the canopy of trees overhead. Blood pooled in the snow, dripping, blooming around the carcass.
Scream. Slither. Grunt. Snap.
Only once the female had finished, licking her muzzle in contentment, did the others creep forward cautiously. Their snarls shattered the quiet, vibrant and savage, echoing loudly against the silent forest coated in frost. Ice clung from branches and the cold fed from each breath the she-wolf expelled, clouds of mist bursting from her mouth.
Snap. Scream. Slither.
Blood converged in the dust, the once minuscule puddle now a large mass of congealing red. The wetness ran between Gezarhi's legs, oozing between her thighs in rivulets, staining the rope that bound her ankles a murky brown before wandering the crevasses of her toes, dripping from her limp feet into the pool beneath her.
The flesh of her back weeped scarlet, drops running patterns down her body, branching along her skin like roots descending into the earth. The gaoler had stripped her body of attire, leaving her devoid of any material solace, exposing her bare silhouette in the sun. He had then tied her, the rope that bound her wrists fixed to the ceiling from two pulleys fastened to the walls of the cell. The bones of her wrists burned from the strain of her weight, chunks of flesh peeling off in flakes around the rope, raw and inflamed.
Her head slumped forward to her chest in exhaustion. Thirty lashes she had endured, the snap of the whip echoing through her ears like a sentence, the grunt of the gaoler wielding her punishment had become a curse, the wet whip slithering across the floor a condemning. Screaming had taken most of her energy, dragging her into an unconscious state of mind.
The wolves came again, she thought with something close to satisfaction. They had not visited her in many moons, she had been afraid they had left her for good. As hard as she tried, Gezarhi couldn't prevent herself from entering the parallel state. She knew it was dangerous, letting her past memories breathe life into the dead girl she once knew, but she found comfort in the pack, a place to exist without constant discretion.
"Lovely girl," a voice whispered. Gezarhi's eyes felt incredibly heavy as they cracked open. The Braavosi accent made his words all the more infuriating. She knew exactly what she was doing, she didn't need him patronizing her. She could manage on her own, she had no need of him.
He swept the fringes of the cell, avoiding the light pouring from the cell windows, keeping himself doused in the shadows. Pressing her dry lips together, Gerzarhi maintained a balanced expression.
"A girl looks terrible. She is making a man wonder if leaping from rooftops is the most wise action a girl could have taken. . .?"
She stayed silent. He was trying to provoke her as he had done countless times before, he enjoyed seeing her anger burst through the composure she tired so hard to keep in place. She would not let him get under her skin. She would not let him shatter this mask she had constructed so meticulously. Gezarhi was hers to control, craft, bend-not his. It had taken her nearly a year to earn a face this challenging to mold, an identity to practice with, to call her own. The nameless, conceited wretch would not take that from her. This was her assignment, and by the god, she would go through with it.
Biting her lip, she procured her expression to a masquerade of shame, tricked her cheeks to flush. Like a mummer and her farce, she would lure him to dance with her. Play his own words back to him in a delicious song.
Chin trembling, mouth pinched, Gezarhi forced a choke up her throat.
"A girl must be more careful. What have you been taught? Have you forgotten?" He tsked, cloak fluttering into the the light momentarily. Gezarhi rotated her shoulders, her fingers slithering around the rope, all the while persevering the discomfort she projected onto her features. His head crooked from the dark corner, teasing her. "A man thinks this No One needs more training. Izembaro would be disappointed." He crept along the wall, facing her. The sunlight that shone through the cell window flashed against his leather armor. He leaned with his back against the stone wall, smirk just visible in the shade.
"Have you forgotten?" He stepped forward into the light.
"I forget nothing."
Her hands slipped from their arrest and she landed softly to the ground, careful not to betray any emotion. The skin of her back crackled and burned, the grooves of her ripped flesh twisting down her back like wildfire. The snap of the whip resonated through her memory with menacing definition.
"It is you who forgets. It is you who missteps. This is my assignment. It was given to me. Not you." She spoke with a conserved tongue, weary of the anger bubbling in her throat. "A girl is here because she planned to be. A girl leapt from a roof because she planned her steps, guards' whips, and descent. Not because she forgot. A girl remembers just as she remembers Jaqen h'Ghar at Harrenhal." Her lips curled around her words like fingers around a blade. They are her weapon to wield. "What is it a man wants? This No One is busy."
He grined just as she knew he would. He stands taller than her by two feet, frame built agile and elegant like hers, yet she meets his eyes with ease, her neck tilted up ever so slightly. She knows him well. "A girl should not remember," he whisperd, eyes narrowing.
"A girl chooses to," stubbornly jutting out her chin. Unbinding her ankles, Gezarhi takes a private second to wince at the pain tearing into her back before straightening. "She likes to remember." She wondered if he knows her secret, her predicament.
One claim is all we can justify. No more. No less.
"A man owes a girl a favor," she says. "She is in need of that favor now."
"Name what you wish, lovely girl." She leaned into his ear, whispering the carefullest of instructions. The sun passed through the windows and receded lower in the sky when her voice falls quiet. He nods once and asks no questions. He knows her well.
Without a backwards glance, Gezarhi stole from the cell- from the prison into the streets of Sunspear, but this time is different. This time she walks the streets a different day, on the side of a different gate-the second gate. She need only slip past one more to reach the Old Palace. There she will find the precious Spear Towers, and inside something even more precious still.
One claim. No more. No less.