"Chosen though she is,
Death is above.
In grand course, it must have its due—
To step down among men and women,
To spill her life.
Though by way of her Shadow,
She will prevail."
Songs of the Faceless, XIII
"Arya Stark was named and she must die," the Waif had told her. "But the Chosen must not."
"I am both! You damn made sure of that in your fancy confluence!" Arya screamed at her viciously. She pulled both daggers out of their sheaths, held them in a throwing stance. "What would it be now?! Because I do not have the slightest intention to fall—not in your filthy hands!"
The Waif's smile was not a product of mockery or disdain. It was not at all threatening. Rather, it was serene and accepting, as if in the subliminals of her that fused themselves with dark intentions, there was some form of quiet atonement the source of which the girl knew not. The Waif crossed the distance between them with painstaking slowness, and the girl, overpowered by hostile emotions could not find the strength to hurl the daggers towards the woman. Suspended mid-air, it was as if her arms were being restrained by invisible clutches, rendering her motionless.
Searing pain.
Jaqen!
The Waif's dagger that had wounded her carried fatal venin; and it was tearing the girl's sinews from her very core apart. Arya writhed, screamed until voice gave up on her, as pain wailed louder than her sudden cries for deliverance. That moment, all forms of belief to the many-faced god were cast aside. There was the verbosity of the Songs, which in the course of her passage towards facelessness she had kept close to heart, but when the death god gives up on that which he or she had chosen, sends servants to silence that subject for good, where must one stand as far as Valar Dohaeris is concerned?
Jaqen…
Silent lamentations will get her killed, and though basking in the painful glory of betrayal may be a form of art to understand for some, she cannot punish herself any further by unrelenting thoughts of him, embedded in hopes that this is nothing but mere caper, or a final test towards full ordinance as one Faceless, or a weighing of loyalties…
Abandon hope.
Decisions. She implored the old gods for the winds to be merciful and rush to her aid compellingly so she could be freed from this imperceptible hold. She prayed for the High Priestess of the Jogos Nhai to burst out of the temple's double-threshold, and run to her rescue.
Give me wings, make me a Wolf. Fly me back to Winterfell.
The old gods did not heed her. The winds blew unkindly, enveloping her in an almost fatal coldness, leaving her shivering from flesh to marrow. The double threshold remained shut.
Her desperate cried were discordant to the state of self she held, but the will to live was unbending.
Rhaegar, beloved…I need you, my dragon.
Voices belonged to archfiends…
I am in no need of your grief… Depart from here, dark heart. Begone! Die!
And to you, audacity. To dare to be the rival of a god.
…to fall is to sin to oneself. In suffering comes survival, and to live is an act of courage in itself.
"Arya Stark," the Waif spoke, walking closer to her. "When you return, warn Aegeus about the Shadowbinder."
"What the hell are you even talking about?! Release me!"
"Time, sweet girl. That dagger which drew fresh scarlet from your flesh was earlier coated with Viperidae. Your blood had mingled with the elements of the liquid. Poison holds you, I do not."
She was reaching denouement, as her body slowly collapsed onto the marmoreal steps. Mind over matter. For a Faceless Man, both instinct and intellect must be allowed to triumph over the assumed aftermath of toxin. In the core of every assassin is the psyche, the consciousness that must shape and dictate how flesh and blood should respond in the face of threats turned to concrete peril—to succumb or to develop resistance, to die or to live. All must be at the mercy of the power of a Faceless Man's mindwork.
Folly.
The Waif kept on traversing the marbled steps, narrowing their proximity from each other. "You must ponder Arya Stark, but not very long, or I will claim your life. The poison's aftereffects will weaken, then you may use your limbs and your blades to accomplish whatever you need to in order to survive. Within that small frame of time, be wise enough to pierce one dagger to my heart—thrice. The Long Farewell in your dagger's hilt will take effect as soon as the tip of your blade touches the skin of my chest."
"That, I will do and more!" Arya Stark spat. "I will scalp you and peel out your treacherous face, and hang it bloody in your damnable Hall of Faces! I will drag your body to the temple face-down, and throw it on Jaqen H'ghar's feet, that traitorous bastard. Then, I will cut all of his hair and slaughter him!"
With those words, her heart only keened.
At the end of all things, men will betray and kill the thing they loved or pretended to have loved; the coward with the cruelty of flattery and kisses, the brave with the mercy of the sword. Jaqen H'ghar did both.
The Waif laughed softly, and it was as murderous as the rupture that the poison was bringing her very corpuscles. "You are as fierce as your direwolf, fierier than your Lorathi's rogue dragon. But no, sweet girl…you cannot kill Jaqen H'ghar. You will weep. You will lose your only friend."
Yet in the recesses of her, no matter the depth of the misdeed and the treachery, that infallible trust on him still existed, albeit in a different form. Heartlessly, Jaqen H'ghar had shattered Arya Stark's loving faith in him with his bare hands, yet the shards of it—instead of wounding him fatally for his falseness, the shards of it clung to him still, enduringly in fact. It was as if that blind faith trusted him more than it trusted her, and it so desired to break, but it never wanted to collapse completely. The soul mourned for itself—how can she not even give up on that faith, that love, even in the face of her own demise brought by him?
She screamed in woe, tears bathed her face profusely. What came out of her throat was a screech, and it contained the words to her own elegy.
"You would never kill a friend!" Another scream—sorrowful rage. "All he does is manipulate, withdraw. He made me rescind myself for him, and now he wanted me obliterated for good so he sent you! He was never my friend! Damn you both!"
In the woman's face was calm amusement. "No, he was never a mere friend to a girl. Shield, Summer, Shadow—killing him is killing her defense; killing her defense is killing herself. It is a curse for a Faceless Man to kill herself—her soul will meander endlessly in the realm between and not rest. She will be denied entry to that ethereal bridge and will battle against other souls for eons and eons for the simple entreaty of being allowed within the death god's courts."
"Shut up! Do not confuse me with your senseless rhetorics! Fight like a true Faceless! Close combat, poison is gutlessness, even for a Faceless Man!" Arya Stark screamed. Cold sweat, scorching tears suffused her generously, and she retched, but nothing came out. There was only the desire for discontinuity, but she cannot die.
Not today, I cannot. Not ever.
Finally, the Waif stood right in front of her, such that the distance between them was nothing more than hair's breadth. She spoke. "Fulfill the prophecy, run back to your Guardian, beware of the shadows." The woman knelt on one knee so she could reach the girl, and she kissed her on the forehead—a final farewell. "Don't forget my name, Arya Stark—Sabine. And don't let me suffer."
The strength of that invisible grip was fading…
Then it was gone.
Haste. She forcefully thrust one dagger straight to the woman's heart. The girl heard her breathing change in a horrible, deathly rhythm. With an ear-shattering scream, the girl stabbed her a second time, a third. The woman's head slowly bowed as she stared at her own pierced chest. She trembled slightly, then weakly raised her eyes to look at the girl, whispering a final entreaty. The woman's supplication stunned her.
Find out the secrets behind the faces.
The Waif fell on the marbled floor, her metallic-smelling, richly-colored blood generously bathed the marmoreal ground. With a forceful last breath, she withdrew.
Commune with Death's lovely faces. Be with the meadows, the rocks, the waters. Be one with the hearts of men in mighty sepulchers. This is the only way to live without living.
Kneeling down, Arya pulled her dagger from the woman's chest and without wiping off the bloodsmear, sheathed it. As she stared at the Waif's face, her contempt for her that almost reached the far firmaments a moment ago ebbed away. The woman's eyes, nose, and mouth bled profusely in response to the Long Farewell.
Her face.
Arya covered the Waif's face with her left palm, and gradually, she let her hands travel down to the woman's chin.
Her true face. It was eloquently beautiful, peaceful in death. There existed in her a healing sympathy of one who endured much so others may not endure them any longer. Her visage reflected one that had married poetic harmony with Him of Many Faces; and in her surprisingly beatific countenance, Arya sensed where her spirit will venture—not in a place of breathless darkness, not in a place of sorrow or solitude or of…nothingness.
Somewhere…timeless. All-beholding and undying.
"Valar Morghulis," the girl whispered, as she hoisted the woman's body upon her exhausted shoulders and dragged themselves back to the temple. Transcend ages and go to that abode.
And she would go to him, thrust him with the sword they made her give up. The many-faced god can claim all, save this. That sword was Winterfell, it was Ned and Cat and Robb, Bran and Rickon, even Sansa. It was Old Nan's stories, the heart tree, the summer snows. It was Jon Snow's smile.
And with all these in a single sword, she will kill him.
Love for him had lashed her, mistakes must not be repeated.
Die, Faceless Master. Die, Jaqen.
He sloshed the blood-soaked washcloth on a glass basin, picked up a vial that contained cure.
Arya winced as Jaqen gently swabbed healing cream onto her slightly gashed neck.
They were in her bedchamber. She sat with her back against the wooden board and the Lorathi sat on the edge of the bed, facing her. The girl's eyes looked past the Lorathi and lingered on the hard, timber chair on the foot of her bed, where the Lorathi's gray master's robe, Needle, and her two Valyrian daggers were laid.
Kill him, the Voice in her whispered. He speared you in the back.
And weep? She questioned the dark, poisonous, insistent One. And lose myself? And die again and again, this time for good?
Surrender trust, the unrelenting hellion went on. He, who wants nothing to do with the likes of you, will pierce your heart with your own sword when you're in the midst of your helpless dreaming. This man will be a looming specter of your dark past and a forlorn forthcoming. It's now or never.
I was 'cloaked' because of his doing. She argued. A Faceless had to die for it—death was assured, she gave me her name. The 'gift' is beneath me now.
An act the death god despises. Kill and eat.
Kill and eat, her inner self conceded. With eyes overwhelming with raw enmity, he regarded him. A quick passing, then the poisoned daggers will consume his treacherous heart.
Stab him with a pointy end.
A prayer for forgiveness. She must put an end to his schemes of claiming souls before they claimed him. He has to face his own self, whatever form that self might take, concealed in his darkest of hearts.
"Quit from moving too much, Arya. The liniment needs to stay on this part of your neck," the Lorathi gently admonished her. "There." He tipped his head and kissed her cheek.
Say it now, lovely girl. Is it Joffrey?
No. It's Jaqen H'ghar.
Arya Stark's heart ached. Who was it truly, that proclaimed those capricious words of betrayal?
In matters of betrayal, the one from whose lips came forth the name is the perpetrator—the blame must neither be on the god nor on the Faceless. It is the intent to steal a person's right to breathe, indirect or otherwise, that would draw the line between the true murderer, and the tool used for the kill. The beseecher is the former, the Faceless is the latter. Even in some faiths whose precepts are purer, to stare at a brother with contempt is tantamount to killing him.
The death god is the insinuator, feeder of men's ambitions for other men's demise. The god must do this, for her concept of immortality survives only as long as people possess belief in Valar Morghulis, as long as people believe that the concept of Death does exist in the empirical sense.
If there was a single entity in the vastness of all time and spaces who the man has betrayed, it was not her. He betrayed the many-faced god.
Chosen though she is, Death is above. Death must have its due.
Was she not the one who had barefacedly named him for death before, despite his selfless acquiescence to her bloodthirsty nature? Did she not maliciously exploit the power he gave her over lives of men, useless they may be, and who was she to even decide about their worth?
I can understand Death, but not betrayal. Winking eyes, crossed fingers, stars that hide their fire. But what does one know about betraying another, truly? What constitutes treachery?
Jaqen H'ghar is not Him of Many Faces. He is not a god. Quattuorverbis—to cause to become. Jaqen, Arya, the Order, kings, fools, believers and blasphemers all—results of them who caused and who are prime causes in their divine right and powers that are both metaphysical yet as material as the realities men perceive.
He is nothing more than a beseecher, for her life to be spared; and a dealer of perpetual quietus who rebelled against the Creed and metaphorically spat on the face of the god, for Arya Stark to be defended from peril. He is nothing more than Death's servant who almost abandoned everything he had ever known and believed to be true about himself for one faultfinding, unappreciative, full-of-discontent, lovely girl.
There are things one must give up to become Faceless, and the manner of surrender is not allegorical. It is beyond what the girl knew and understood, for she is still young, and for the longest time she had hindered certain memories from seeping through her because of fear of time past. Time is not an infinitesimal singularity and the god has an infinitely lustful appetite. Perchance, in lives Jaqen had led in various realities, he had given up so much and he had saved her countless of times. And he will continue pulling her out of fire, if need be.
"Arya, sweetheart."
The Lorathi held her chin and tried to plant a kiss on her lips. The girl turned her head away.
"Arya, please…"
He kissed her again, she turned away, and his lips only lightly touched the side of her mouth. She pushed him infuriatedly and slapped his face with all the raw force she could muster, which was not much, considering her arduous struggle mere hours ago. The crisp sound of her palm against his cheek reverberated in the chamber, insulting—provoking.
The Lorathi's jaw hardened, his eyes reflected a sudden surge of aching, turned to pleading, to irritation. Jaqen held her face once more, this time in a manner more firm, and forced Arya's face to meet his own. His lips savagely plundered hers, sounds of rough and naked desire for her playing on his throat.
Arya tried to break from Jaqen's grasp but he was an unyielding fortress. She pursed her lips tightly, denying the Lorathi herself—and Arya laughed inwardly at the thought, for it was like denying Jaqen of what essentially belonged to him even before he had claimed it his own. Her not allowing him to fully ravage her mouth only inflamed the Lorathi—and in the midst of his pure libidinous rapture, he shook her forcibly, then sucked her lower lip.
Arya moaned.
"Open your mouth," Jaqen ordered her whilst he suckled her lips.
Arya turned her head from side to side violently. "Let me go, you cruel monster!"
Words and acts enraged him. He broke from the kiss, grabbed Arya's legs and pulled her down ruthlessly. Her head landed on the pillow as her back fell flat on the bed. He laid himself atop her as she writhed underneath. The man had constrained her from head to foot, and the wolf in her wanted to spring away from his trap…
"Get away from me, Jaqen!"
Rage engulfed her as he started ravenously nipping at her jaw, her ear, collarbone, the flesh of her now womanly breasts; and in all that she is, she realized that Jaqen had no intentions of lovingly possessing her.
He was hell-bent, beyond persuaded in his desire, in a bestial need to ravish her.
And her instincts may not be at all mistaken, for he began grinding his hips against hers, rumbling intensely in so doing. "I want you, Arya," he whispered as he lavished scarlet kiss marks all over the flesh of her bosom, as if marking his property. "So, so much." His right hand moved to part her legs and he kept on moving in sensual rhythms against her. "Please…I want to be inside you. Let me be in you."
His words after the ritual by the goddess pool rang in her ears, torturing her already mangled heart, crucifying her further. That once-regarded romantic gesture of freeing her from the snare of having to surrender herself to carnalities of men with fat purses turned into ridicule. Those words that warmed her heart prior taunted her now.
"A girl did beggar many men today with her maiden's blood."
"You are very expensive, do you know that?"
"Would I even throw a single gold bar at your feet if I do not find you delightful?"
She fought against tears threatening to swallow her whole. The bid was literal for him.
Why, of course. It was a cost of fifty ships in exchange for her sinless blood, and the Lorathi was no fool—he would claim her; and by all conventions he is allowed to. When she undertook that courtesan task, her state was objectified—reduced to that of mere commodity. The man who threw in gold of the highest value gains that entitlement to own her, to turn her into nothing but his possession. He may do whatever it is that he pleases, thrust inside her whatever it is that he possessed or could possibly lay his hands on, use her in ways unthinkable.
Bastard.
Beast.
Fight with the self as weapon, the girl thought. Let him stroke the core, where there is nothing but lust and rapture and surrender. This is beyond and beneath love, he will never know it.
Play courtesan with me.
Arya Stark sought the wisdom of the Winter Maiden. She heard the Black Pearl whisper in the wind, her own words: I will teach you how to please your Lorathi. Men are bestowed pleasure, they are dispossessed; and when they are dispossessed, they capitulate to anything without them knowing. The Sealord proved this true during luncheons and wine goblets at night; he left his thoughts completely unprotected—open for any gifted one to read because of his submission to the Winter Maiden's ministrations.
And for the first time she understood Bellegere's words—'That there is a difference between a prince and a murderer is false. At day's end, they need women whose clothes they could take off and whose bodies they could take over and again. One may claim you on petal-strewn cushion and the other with a knife pointing at your vulnerable heart—both pillage and leave none.'
You want me to whore myself?
She began tugging at Jaqen's hair, as if willing him to kiss deeper, to nip harder. "Jaqen…" she whispered, faking arousal though not, and his name on her lips drove him to the edge. He lifted himself, and when his face leveled with hers, he smothered her mouth with his own as if she was the last woman in the expanse of the Known and Unknown Worlds.
"Open."
"No."
"Open, damn it!"
Obediently, she received his mouth, pleasing him by playing, waltzing with his tongue, as her hands reached down and stroked his hardness with all the world's lustfulness. Jaqen groaned against her lips—the want was too deep, that he almost succumbed to the interstice of it. "Arya…sweetheart…y-yes please," were his words.
Arya Stark must let the scheming Winter Maiden take over, for if the former gained the upper hand, Jaqen would win. She knew in the very essence of her humanity that she desired this man more than anything, yet, she must not submit to his hedonistic whims. Clothe the self with deception and lies—this is the only way to continue surviving.
Wear your many faces.
She shoved him, an invitation to sit. He relented and she straddled him, wrapping her legs around his waist. Her fingers combed through his locks of scarlet and ivory, their temples connected. She blew soft, sweet air upon his lips. He inhaled her scent and tried to reach her open mouth. The girl withdrew from him a little—testing, teasing. Whispered. "I don't quite know why, but your hair of ice and fire makes me a little too responsive, Jaqen H'ghar."
She crushed his lips with hers, gorged him fiercely, swallowed his lush, as her left hand masterfully fondled him there—as if his shaft was sword in her hand—her capable hand, that could wield seven various types of it. Eight types, now. Jaqen's included.
"Here," the Lorathi guided her hand so she could caress in a way that was to him most erotically satisfying. She felt his strong hands engulfing her own, and her delicate palm rubbing his firmness.
"Guide me, yes?" she asked with the sweet innocence of Mercedene and ciceronian capacities of the Maiden. A few strokes here and there, and in ways opposing—tame then wild, storm then calm, ardent all the way. Her touch was wanton, lingering.
Jaqen looked at her with eyes of rhapsody—opened his mouth, closed it, lost for words. This, and he was already exploding. He bit his lower lip hard to hold back a groan.
He ruthlessly ripped the front part of her garment. The girl gasped, as her cool wind kissed the skin of her bosoms. Despite her loathing, her tips were aroused simply by Jaqen's kisses. He had keyed her up, of this he was aware, and so he suckled her breasts with want, intensifying their fleshly ritual.
"Jaqen…" She muttered. Her hands moved to massage him faster against the fabric of his breeches. "Do you prefer things this way?"
"Yes, sweetheart, exactly that…" he murmured against her breasts in Lorathi. "Ah…my sweet girl…she's very good…very good…"
Arya laughed at him inwardly. Easy. So lost, he is. "Bellegere had said this before, that even the most gifted of mummers could not fake an arousal," she recounted in a mellifluous tone. Inner laughter. An evil cackle, in fact. "Ah!" Jaqen had bit her. "N-not entirely sure if I agree on one other assumption of hers, that we can please ourselves without men? Wrong, so wrong," she said, placing emphasis on each word by squeezing him playfully.
"Shush…don't speak. You're driving a man defenselessly mad…"
The Winter Maiden knew in all her expertise what men wanted, and Jaqen was no exception. Mercedene gave the Maiden an irresistibly innocent character—beguiling him, entrancing him, imprisoning him in an abyss of nothing and everything.
A chortle—provocation. "Minds and hearts of men, they both lie on the same place—here."
Slowly yet skillfully, she unlaced him, let her hand move freely inside his breeches, and controlled herself, even as her jaw fell; though every pore in the physical, and every sense in the intellectual were eratically stupefied at how so, so enormous Jaqen's is.
"Gods!" Jaqen moaned as her skin and his skin made contact.
At the back of Arya Stark's head, she contemplated how, should she surrender herself to him—and she truly planned to—would he fit himself in her. Pain, excruciation no doubt, prior to gratification.
Jaqen.
The gods favor some men more than others. What unprincipled deities we have.
Perchance, in tasks that required you to use yourself, you have driven queens and paramours mad. You are one lover they would never be able to hold.
As always, in their lives, you come and go as you please. And perhaps, you kill them after the taking. Like what you did to me, almost.
For her, it was an attempt at self-preservation. She stroked him—back and forth in manner unrestrained—devil-may-care; tight, her fingers closing in on his hard member, with her own lustful yearning overtaking her. Facelessness. Temperance. Her ears were filled with primal sounds of his groaning and his words of "Dear heavens…Arya..." And how she gathered all the self-restraint of the greatest of men—dead and alive—to not surrender to him!
It was an undertaking too, to contain the physical to the realm of extension where it belonged; to use antipathy to envelop both the self and the other. First instinct is to live, second is to fight. She hardened her heart, acted as if the flesh is disconnected altogether with consciousness and instincts, with sentience and all emotions that lie therein.
She was thrown abed. Her head landed with a soft thud, strands strewn on the pillow. The hard cushion yielded at the force and sank, forming a hollow cast that had shaped itself after her frame. How to vanish? How to break away from the self? She felt the Lorathi's weight upon her once more. His hands traveled to her tips, rubbed her there, as he tasted the flesh of her breasts bit by bit. Arya Stark gasped as her Lorathi ran his tongue on both of her breasts—his kisses were sweltering and punishing, but there was her subjective interpretation of it all. He stroked her faster so she stroked him faster, and her hand had gone wet and sticky with his nectar. Her thumb rubbed his tip, he shuddered.
How to kill innocence?
He kissed her all over her face.
"Keep going…w-we're almost there, Arya," he uttered, then went back to pillaging her mouth.
"More?"
"Yes, yes. More. Oh, I'm going to do things to you, Arya, I swear by the seven new gods and the old gods beyond counting…"
She laughed coyly. He groaned at the sound.
"Things? Speak of them."
He spoke against her mouth, his words were to her a fleeting reverie. She had heard those phrases before from his own tongue—wishes forthcoming, carried by wind and dreams and knees on the ground, and here they are.
Force myself inside you, while I ravish your breasts.
Make you lose your voice in the night. Claim you…claim.
Fill you with my seed, till you bless me with babes.
Twilight, midnight, daylight.
You will beseech the death god for a man to never, ever stop—in your every waking second you will beg a man for it; and your want of it will be so much more than your want for life.
He pressed on. "I will do these things, Arya…and you won't be able to walk for days, I swear this by the weirwood with the gods as witnesses…"
Speech-slip. The Lorathi was slowly abnegating his self-abnegation.
It's now or never.
Kill and eat.
Sexual drunkenness. Arya bit his lip hard, drawing blood from it, letting the Lorathi plummet into an insufferable anticlimax.
"Damn it, Arya!"
With the swiftness of the Cat, she lunged at him and violently shoved him out of the bed, freeing herself in the process. The Lorathi's back hit the stone-cold floor and muttered curses under his breath. He stayed flat on his back for a moment, then slowly lifted himself to sit and stare at her face—wounded, the bastard, as if she was the one who sanctioned one other Faceless to kill him.
Death is beneath. The unCat was truthful in naming her—Stranger that was lost.
Arya was swift, as both impulse and instinct overwhelmed her restraint. She was already at the foot of the bed, hastily grabbing both daggers.
The girl hurled one dagger after the other at him. Wind aided the blades' momentum, no escaping it, for the steel's energy always seeks for hypnotic properties of blood with which it can commune itself.
An expert Faceless—she never misses. Of a hundred throws, she always manages to land a hundred and seven.
The sound of blade sliced through space.
Don't die.
The Lorathi tilted his head effortlessly to dodge one and used his right hand to sweep the other away. Both daggers fell uselessly on the floor, as the sound of what should have been deadly blades against the stone was reduced by the Lorathi to what seemed to be a dainty tinkle of harmless bells.
With an embittered laugh, Arya Stark sank on the floor—partly astonished at Jaqen H'ghar being damned breathtaking at every damned thing, and partly enraged at the fact that the Lorathi had merely insulted her dagger-throwing despite her being an ordained Faceless. She gently shook her head at him, still laughing rancorously.
Moments later, she screamed in frustration. Her cries intensified…and in the midst of the raging reverberations of it, the clay basin formed small fissures turned to large cracks, shattering into fine smithereens at the mercy of the water's sheer strength. Some shards of it flew to the Lorathi, as heavy waterdrops slightly tainted by blood drawn from her spilled and scattered in the air, soaking bedlinens and staining walls and floors of that chamber.
In the atrium, poisoned water from the pool stirred, formed ripples even in the absence of disturbance. It moved in an upsurge asudden, as if its center was disrupted by one massive object, the summit of its particles reaching the ceiling before descending with velocious force. Water flooded the stone tier, sprayed in all directions, as the atrium was engorged by pure hue and cry from those who besought mercy that night and knelt on the images of their gods.
The Shivering Sea went still, as if in so doing it could tender one act of veneration.
Jaqen slowly licked his lips and tasted blood. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, surveyed the uproar's aftermath.
With a sinking heart, he ran both hands through his red-and-white of hair and shut his eyes tight.
A girl was bloody, a man must be too.
Arya Stark walked hastily and stood towering above his slumped figure, Needle in hand. If all of the world's women took the path of men, the world will be one huge brothel without whores. Take the woman's path then, whore yourself in front of him, use yourself as weapon. Get yourself shattered enough to the breaking point, give up all—when you have nothing, nothing will be taken away from you anymore.
And this is when fear is truly lost.
To slay him is impossible, to punish him is not.
She stared at him with a harsh smirk. Using Needle's tip, she lifted his chin so he could look at her. The sword's tip made contact with the soft of his throat. He can't kill me, he 'veiled' me from Death. "Any last words, you bastard?"
Jaqen shook his head gently, eyes on her. His forehead was creased though not with the fury of one who wanted to wreak pain. Jaqen H'ghar appeared to her like a damaged man—battered by her wicked actions, unfeeling words that brutally drilled themselves into his person.
His tone was quiet. "Had I known that your faith in me will fade because of one consequence of that bid, I would not have made it—I have no knowledge about the Sealord's intent, the ploys against you. I have revealed myself unnecessarily, reneged against the Elder's clear commands, drafted my own rules, acted against better judgment. Forgive me. Perhaps, I should have trusted your capacities; you are Faceless after all. Yes, when it comes to you I am too possessive and bedeviled." He stopped, and his voice broke. "Pray tell. What would you think of me had I not shown up on the Winter Maiden's doorstep at all? How would you see me if I decide to lose you—to another man, to Death? In both decisions, I am bound to lose your faith."
Arya was dark and cold, unaffected. There were demons hiding inside every man, and she is slowly allowing herself to be taken to an inescapable chasm where all are meaningless, except for scarlet and retribution. In this state, sense of order comes when there is blood in the hands and the mouth, when suffering is accompanied by loud sounds and screeches. He had seen the evil, stygian shadow of that depth before—partly concealed in her eyes that feared on their way to the North. He had seen the same murk in the core of himself, when he gave up all except one to become Faceless.
The line between escaping Death and befriending it is obscure, and the Lorathi now saw the consequence of that Veiling.
She who conquers Death becomes it.
Jaqen's heart stopped. A wall—she's gradually building it, and that fortress will shut him out.
She's letting him go.
Do not undo all these, Arya Stark.
I ransomed you with my soul. I traded all to have you again.
Slowly, she pushed Needle's tip against him, even as her spirit howled its lamentations.
Act now, Jaqen. Don't die.
This is naught compared to death he had dealt others in various manners. He could navigate his way in an ocean of impending demise, overturn it. The way of the Faceless Man is the way of subterfuge, and Valyrian steel, any steel acquiesce to his commands. If he is wise enough, he could countermand her.
Still, he does nothing. The tip dug deeper into his skin, scarlet liquid revealed itself from pores slightly slit open. Arya Stark shook her head in despondence. Stop me, please, were the thoughts she fed his subliminals. He received them, yet acted not. His eyes were fondness, all unspoken words speak of submission and cherished remembrances—no other way but this. Within him was an invitation: You have breathed spirit to my flesh. Take it away if you must, you are entitled to it. It is the law of life renewed, your law of renaming.
Pierce deeper…
Blood in the skin…pores…
Thick liquid—only wolves drink of it.
To die is to gain.
And mercy is for weaklings and fools.
Die.
Stop breathing…stop.
Die!
She drew the blade away.
"Arya…"
Who are you, Lorathi?
With abandon, she dropped the steel on the floor, its metallic clang sending jarring echoes in the now becalmed room. She dashed to the door and unlocked it, traversed the corridors in haste, deaf to the Lorathi's call. When he had stared at her eyes, he had allowed her though briefly, inside the darkest abysm within him—remembrances he never wanted to recapture, yet he did. Come, be my witness, Jaqen had bid her.
Impossible. How can I have given form and life to something that did not, does not yet exist?
The corridor that led to the atrium seems to be ever-expanding, and the more she attempted to reach the end of it, the more it appeared elusive to her. Quicker darts, longer strides, in between spasmodic breaths and breathlessness are incoherent voices that riddled through those pronouncements which the Lorathi had revealed to her moments ago. How to comprehend all these, if even such a thing was possible?
Arya!
She reached the temple's main chamber, shut her eyes as she felt all the eyes of the god's images riveting to her, questioning her presence in the House, the circumvention undertaken by all Faceless for her preservation, her existence even, in this particular realm. The Songs were never from the deity's hands and you know it.
The now overflowing poison pool flooded the paths. Her feet sent water splashing in intermediate courses, nay, she cannot stop. She must reach it before the Lorathi does.
She rushed—she must—to that one place. The Crux that lay in the inner sanctum, deep in that darkened five-pronged passage with one leading to where thousands of faces lie, to the Iron Bank, to the catacombs and the chamber of bones, to concealed passages leading to other concealments.
The Crux is where the core memories of all Faceless Men are kept.
Who are you, Lorathi? What are you?
For the Faceless, No One-ness as a state is not complete nullification of the Self. Rather, it is mere dissimulation of it. Facelessness is mere equivocation, a distortion of what others see.
In all things that exist, there must always be the fundamental—the essence, the innate. Otherwise, even the state of being No One will disintegrate; for if the state seeks to shroud the Self, and temporarily break away from it, then it must fully understand in all truths the Self which it needs to provide camouflage to. One cannot perceive by plain sense the roots of the Weirwood, for it is concealed underneath, and it is the source of the tree's anchorage, stability, nourishment. In the state of being No One, the Weirwood is the many carved faceless faces, the Self is the root. What divides them is the ground—a metaphorical demarcation created by the death god, so that one is concealed, the other is revealed. No One cannot gain full existence and functionality as a state directly apart from the Self—for the former state was consciously created by the latter. The latter chose to be the former.
Hence, there is that chamber forgathering ten-year, fifty-two, even eight hundred-year old memories.
Dig the roots, forage…and find out how far they spread out.
She dashed past the darkened passage and reached the five fingers, adjusted her eyes in the eclipse of it. Not even faint light from the other halls bore traces. The cave-like channel smelled of damp stalactites, ruins, antiquity. With steps unsure, she entered the passage that led to the fifth prong, stretched her hands and allowed her palm to feel the coldness of the steel threshold. She is now ordained, she can enter portals locked—magical or otherwise.
"Do you really wish to open that door?"
It was Jaqen's voice.
How quickly she had forgotten—he can always appear from nowhere.
She turned to the source. Those silver locks somehow provided that hatchway some incandescence. "Why would I not?" With silent orders, she unlatched the door from the inside. "Afraid of who you are?"
Jaqen crossed the distance between them in slow strides. "Dead-scared of who you might think I am. Afraid of who we are—and what may happen once you learn once more what was unlearned."
"Oh?" was her response. "Riddles. This is why we Faceless lot are damn good with our games of truths and lies." The steel door yielded to her push. "I need to understand the very groundwork on why that hit was ordered on my name."
"Unearth all," Jaqen replied. "There is no going back once you do this. So, allow me to beg."
"Only a fool would want to go back."
With that, she entered the passage in a run, with Jaqen trailing behind. Arya! but she rejected his pleas. She leaped, whisked past arrayed candles that lit upon sensing the windgusts from her movements—presence of a Faceless. She ran to the chamber's core.
In the center of it was a huge fount of memories safekept within alchemical stones, drifting in concentric motions; and the force that emanates from each ore is unique to each Faceless—each memory a realm of its own, its secrets shielded from material and immaterial influences that seek to alter it.
Their arduous process of erasing memories stems from both magic and logical erudition—traces of Valyrian enlightenment. The centerpoint is alchemy, the neverending saga of humanistic attempts to achieve perfection of the body and the soul. As if suffused with elixir, those memories are immortalized within the parent rocks and metals that held them.
The game of faces was meant to target specific memories for ablation.
Chridhe memoriae—within glissading antimony, platinum, bismuth…
Essences. Bay laurels, evening primroses, geranium, dianthus. Snow, snow…
Ginger. Cloves.
She traced the scent of him, walked to the edge of the fount whose crevasse emitted a faint luster. Scintillation intensified as the fount interacted with her the faintest of her breaths and pulses—life. Memories are triggered by consciousness that lie within living men. Jaqen…Jaqen. There were only two hues in her dreams—dragon scales glistening against the grand hues of sunlight, direwolves howling in the melancholic hues of moonlight.
Gold and silver.
She stretched out her hand, as if to summon the elements. One contact with her breathing skin and she will unravel all tangles.
Arya!
Her hands caught the ore, she gripped them tightly. He reached her, pulled her from the fount.
Resistance was on the Lorathi's part, yet the girl drew him forcefully in his own ideations with her. Dark spirals, downwards, and they both descended into it. Jaqen! His hands reached her, their fingers intertwined. Hold my hand, he whispered as they both plummeted in the center of him.
Y mie sa antuulien, a herenya ami hyanda, verie, losse—a yu varyas….
Touch my soul.
They fell away to the Ostium—a portal, a means to travel to the path of memories, a source of power. It was one door to other realms which mages have unlocked through their gained wisdom of how spheres, turfs work and interact. Sorcery had a magical signature, and not every person is gifted the capacity to gain passage through certain types of Ostiae, the portal respects only those with blood of magic. There were greater and lesser Ostiae, and if a traveler's core is an anathema to the portal's source, she will remain trapped within the very remembrances she tried to access.
In that imprisonment, the traveler may reform the memories in an attempt to escape, and will destroy the holder of those memories in the process.
In the chaotic hold of it, she felt herself drift.
She was water; and she was strong enough to overwhelm him, gentle enough to redeem him. His scent of ginger and cloves wafted all over like a bold splurge of petals. His voice soothed her—it was in all corners and radii. She ran across the dark crepuscule, tried to find him, but there was No One. She turned her head in all directions. Any trace of him…any trace at all.
Jaqen?
It was all a vanishing span. There were flashes from the time past and time forthcoming. She drowned in a sea of scenarios and sequences and sagas untold.
A proposal—we must learn Rhoynar to understand our subjects. Torture, dragonfire—blood brothers, the gods did not create us demons…
Speak, goddess. The conclave will hear you.
I don't know…I may have fallen for an enemy.
She saw him in different forms, and in every surrender he loses fragments of himself.
Corpus, animus, arbitrio, memoriae, veritus, impetus.
Body, soul, will, memory, reality, purpose.
The voice of a woman reverberated within the closed walls of his core being. Arya shivered at the sound, for it spoke of only one thing—Stygai.
Spirit spouse, let us wake the sleeping Night.
Unmistakable—it was the death god's voice.
His words were a response, an acceptance.
Find me my Warrior Bride, and I will surrender my name.
Essen—substance. It is the only facet of him that was materially constant. He held on to it—his essence of what to him is absolute, essence of his liberation, essence of all his truths.
I traded all to have you again.
And if he loses this too, he would cease to exist.
In that darkness of him, Arya Stark saw only herself. It may be that within the Lorathi's crux are a million seeing glasses, for as her eyes roamed unhurriedly to his core, she saw only her face in various likenesses and impressions, in numberless mirrors of congruous and incongruous shapes and shards.
Her many selves.
In each shard, a series of smaller and smaller reflections of her appear to recede in distances infinite, and the depth of each is like tunnels carrying only that face, as the heart whispered but a single name.
Arya Arya Arya Arya Arya Arya…
Causal being: she is his prime mover, the genesis of him. In the days of Valyria and Rhoyne, she had named him. Without that ritualistic naming that made him one with her and her kin, he would not have come to life at all.
Accept your rebirth. Henceforth, you will be called Jaqen H'ghar—sent by the gods. From them, to us.
Hence, if she lets him go, he will fall apart.
Slowly, he draws her back, reached out for her so she may return from the heart of that spiral where they both fell.
She gasped, let herself collapse. She knelt, weakened by all these.
Tears fell in small droplets upon the stone tier.
"Why me? Jaqen, why did you do it all?"
He knelt in front of her, cupped her cheeks. His thumb brushed salt's rain from her eyes.
"What else must a man do for you, Arya?" he spoke, his anguished voice, his desperation slashing at her soul. He gazed at her and the girl almost broke at the sight of his bereavement. "Please, do tell. Do you wish for a man to kill the Elder? And the other nine masters? He has allowed you to kill one, anyway. Still, it seems as if for you nothing is enough." He tugged at his hair, thoroughly dejected. In his strong arms he imprisoned her asudden. Jaqen whispered against her ears. "Does a girl want the useless lives of the scums on her kill list? Does the Wolf want the Lioness? Or maybe, she wants him to help her renounce her duties, and renounce his too? Dragons, perhaps? Winterfell? Please…tell a man. Anything at all. Just…just…"
Arya Stark buried her face in his locks, sobbed quietly.
"Just don't hide, don't run away from me."
It made perfect sense.
After Ned's death, the wolf-girl had done nothing but run. She had become so masterful at running and concealing herself that she was sure her fur had already turned into scaled chameleon's skin. Then came the brutal slaying of Cat and Robb. By this, a girl concealed her true character behind a mask of fear turned to profound hatred—wrapping herself with the dark blankets of derision, acting as a punisher of men, claiming their lives as if she was some kind of god higher than the cardinal one and all the others. But mostly, she ran.
She ran away from the Hound who begged for the mercy of her steel; she ran from Westeros to lick her wounds and let them heal whilst she planned ways on how to wolf down the Lions and they who are in the Twins. When she ran from the Waif, despite the latter's noble death wish, she seriously considered running away from all of it—Braavos, the Faceless Order…
Him.
And her feet, they too, get enervated. As does her heart.
"Please say something," he whispered in desolation.
Puppets danced beneath hands masterful. The gods and men. Their movements were unbidden. In the midst of the marionettes' hysterical pirouette, a man without a face severs the puppet strings with his firesword. The string snaps.
The ones that held those severed strings began the almost ageless realm to realm chase of that man who caused the dissociation. Dreams, the voice from the Weirwood, killing her.
There are more, Jaqen—the god, the faces, the lords and you. Death. In that ore were certain memories only, not all. Very well, I yield. Know this though, I will uncloak every mystery you have under your skin, my love. Pray that I do not detest what I see. And the Waif—Sabine…her supplications…
She looked at his face. "What would the realms look like if all Shadows disappeared? The absence of shadows somehow means absence of light, yes?"
"Arya…"
"Faceless Men are said to be shadowless. In realities seen, yes. In realities hidden, no. Tell me, Jaqen. If light casts itself upon the body, and creates that dark form beneath it, can the Being be separated at all from its Shadow? Can the Being run away, without the Shadow chasing it?"
The Lorathi smiled softly. "Never."
"Then what would make you think that I will and can run away from you?"
He kissed her. She tasted blood from his lips.
"Death will run after us both," he murmured. "Take the risk with me?"
The girl embraced him tight, swallowed the bitter lump that had formed in her throat. "Your decisions, your acts are idiotic most of the time. Ten mistakes. A hundred, a thousand. Still, I will throw love in your face, and stab you with it, choke and smother you with it, strangle you even. I will kill you with it, because you are so precious to me."
These I will do, until you learn how to give love back without glancing over your shoulder in fear of the death god.
"Forgive me, for all."
"Forgiven." She kissed his cheek with lips quivering, her tears had bathed even his face. "Thank you, Jaqen. For the rescue."
They shared kisses. He is slowly reaching her—reaching that part of herself where even she dared not enter, for it was a place of obscurities and uncertainties. Obsidian candles had revealed to her not only West of Westeros, but a self long forgotten, and despite her inner protestations, she knew she could not hide from herself and from him that long.
Let us play in the fields, my goddess.
She welcomed him, only in accepting can concealments be further unlocked.
Aegeus stood solitary in the middle of the Hall of Faces—looking at one particular face that hung in there, though without truly seeing it.
The man's comely face reflected an expression that was more blank than nothing, as if life and soul were mercilessly sucked of his mortal body.
His silence and passiveness were the complete obverse of what he held inside that precise moment.
It was only blood that he saw, and shadows, and the spine-chilling wailing of souls. He was blind except for his sight of one thing, and this which he had to endure had turned him into an anarchical questioner.
He knew in the essence of his being faceless that he can survive without belief—a state incongruent with his supposed character as a priest of death, as a servant to Him of Many Faces. Albeit, it was the only truth in him, that he can exist without believing in anything…
Anyone may return from the curtains, but may not recall what was on the other side.
"I don't care," he spoke to himself. "I can make her remember."
He heard footsteps—one step heavier than another, but he was too occupied wallowing in his own murk to even pay it any mind.
"Just one question, and answer it truthfully," the voice of a man said. "Was it you with the Sealord?"
Aegeus still stared at that one face. "No."
"Who was it, then?"
The Tyroshi laughed bitterly, then glanced sideways at his Lorathi brother, most amused. "Remind me again why I should care?"
The Lorathi shook his head gently. A man cannot lose his sister, and his brother too. "You should, because if you will not, then Sabine had died in vain."
At those words, the Tyroshi regarded his brother with deep moroseness. "Had she not, already?"
"She must not, brother."
Aegeus scoffed and turned his attention back to her face. Stillness seemed to have found its home in that hall, for neither of them breathed a sound. Finally, a revelation from the comely one.
"She loved you, you know?"
The Lorathi heaved a sigh.
He had never regarded Sabine as someone who was more than kin to him. He had cared for her deeply. Somehow, he felt protective of her even, despite knowing that she could well defend her own self, what with her poisons and her gift of paralyzing foes with an unseeable force only she possessed. Perhaps, those protective instincts sprang from the Lorathi's thoughts of how fragile and precious women and girls are. He thought of Arya Stark, and her Needle against his chest and throat, her wolf teeth against his lips, her unthinkable power bestowed upon her by the old gods—and laughed inwardly at his prior sentiments. Women are precious, yes, but definitely not fragile.
Aegeus was smiling softly. "I was invited to the temple, we were no more than ten and four. I had this singular goal with me at that time—become an assassin for the Order. The life of a Tyroshi sellsword was never for me, will never be for me. Morn and night I spent perusing the Creed and Methods, fulfilling those damnable burial duties, training for combat. I committed myself only to Him of Many Faces. Oh, how I revered that god."
Jaqen was silent.
The Tyroshi spoke forth. "Then came the first acolytes' trials. They called you first for the one-to-one with a broadsword, and everyone laughed at how very little you were compared to the boar of a lad paired with you. How they swallowed their own banters when they saw you wield that broadsword! And hells brother, you were so good with your blade." Aegeus glanced at Jaqen who only smiled at him. "Yes, too good that I studied your techniques—attacks and defenses, stance and stops. I was bent on committing to memory how you did things. But then two acolytes away from me, a golden-haired girl sighed, and from that moment I was…I was distracted."
"Sabine adored you, brother," Jaqen assured him in the midst of his brother's embittered state.
"Oh, yes she most certainly did," Aegeus replied, chuckling at the thought. He looked at Jaqen from head to foot, though not with hostility. "But, she worshipped you. She was just truly gifted at being faceless that she was able to conceal it for a whole excruciating decade."
His chest was suddenly filled with inexplicable heaviness, aching. Sabine. Even with Death lurking behind her, despite her noble thirst to end it all and commune only with the god, she still graciously fulfilled for him and for Arya Stark a last favor. Uprightness, unswerving facelessness—this was how the Lorathi knew the Braavosi woman. It was all for the Order, the faith. What used to lie within the mind of her? How can he not have come to know this?
The poison pool was more merciful than the poisoned blade, yet she chose the latter.
"In the middle of mixing potions, she would utter your name. 'Jaqen' she would say, careful so no soul may hear her naming you—it was after you had rescued her from one task that almost led to her demise. But I heard everything, saw everything—her fascination, the heavy breathing when you're near, the helpless sighs when you're far; and her eyes, they were…celestial. For years it had been like that for her, and it ruined me beyond comprehension, brother, it did," Aegeus rubbed his face, eyes shut to contain himself. Estrangement slowly enveloped him, he kept his voice firm. "She stayed in your chamber dawn to midnight till you awoke from that long stupor. We were six and ten. We thought that illness would claim you, but so wrong we were, because she knows her cures and potions—holy hells, she's a breathing elixir!" The comely one chuckled, the Lorathi smiled. "I had told her, 'Go sleep, I will watch over him.' She refused. She thought I'd kill you in your vegetative state. Oh no, brother, I would never do that to her—take you away. I will kill myself first before I place her in such misery."
He paused.
"But what shattered me more was the fact that you were oblivious to everything."
"Brother," Jaqen spoke in a peaceful, comforting tone. "First, you are mistaken—she never felt that way about me. Second, even if a man did notice her affections, if there were any at all, it cannot happen amongst Faceless Men."
"Ah, yes," Aegeus said, laughing sourly. "But that did not stop you from helplessly falling for Arya Stark."
The Lorathi's jaw hardened, but could not at all respond. For it may be true, what his brother said. He had asked himself in the form of a million songs to his heart if he had loved her merely because she was Chosen—after all, some people fall in love with the idea of a person, not with the person herself.
But Arya Stark—fiery, dark, bloodthirsty; and sweet, loving, gentle all at the same time. So, so powerful, then and now. She's past and she's present.
"I cannot understand still what the dynamics of your souls were in your cycles prior, your mutual madness for each other is clarity enough," the comely one threw the Lorathi an aggrieved glare. "This insanity of yours over the Chosen, and the Elder's obsession over prophecies and faiths—these are lethal. Circumvention, hoodwinking the god, using another Faceless for such a purpose. There is the Creed on one side and hypocrisy on the other. The gods and men, the neverending chronicles of death and rebirth. Ah, brother! How can we all live with ourselves? Why the hell are we even here?"
Jaqen was silent in his many pondering. What truly is the grand scheme of life? He would never know, for perhaps, the answer is subjective. And for Faceless Men, subjectivity must not triumph.
For Faceless Men, the grand scheme of life, however beautiful it may be, cannot and must not be realized. They don't have the right to it.
Aegeus still looked at Sabine's false face now cleansed of blood.
Jaqen's eyes riveted to that face too, then to his brother's. "Sabine used to say this, 'I hate it whenever Aegeus comes home from his amusing escapades as male harlot for the House. Useless tasks. I hate it!' Hah!" The comely one snorted at Jaqen's pathetic attempt to imitate the woman's speech. "Morn to night, she would voice out her rage on assignments where sex is necessary for either the information or the kill. However, she only had issues when you had to do them."
'To crawl in mud once or twice for the Order is service, and all men must serve. But why must it always be Aegeus? Can you not don faces for such abhorrent tasks as well?'
'Come now, Sabine. It's fair mummer's farce. Bodies, sweat, and heat? Surely, these tasks cannot be more abhorrent that slaughtering the innocent. Not to mention, our brother can enhance the faces according to the target's preferences—his true face seems to be crafted for such purpose, meld perfectly with any mask and embellish it with long lashes or full lips or a strong jawline. Full artifice is a gift from the god. A man is not gifted with hypnosis either—'
'He certainly likes it. The women, the bathing, and…the gods know what else!'
'And the sucks and deep thrusts and tongue in between the ladies' legs? What man wouldn't? Valar dohaeris, and you can always ask him.'
'I'd rather poison myself.'
The comely one exhaled dejectedly at the Lorathi's recount. "I never asked questions, brother. It was all amusing at first, but then you start claiming secrets, gaining access to the most twisted of minds—more contorted than ours, believe me—admiring the struggles and the pains for some. Sexual climax is one of the purest states there is, you are simply gorged by passion on one side and affection on the other—no judgments, wrath ceases, even hopes. The zenith of the encounter closes your consciousness to everything else, a little death as they say, a preparation for real Death that is to come. On and on it goes—a sickening routine. They're of various shapes , stenches, sexes too; and flesh had become their life. The erotic flow becomes mechanical, the thrills become mere seizures. It was too much."
"Too much? It's like swallowing the gods, you mean."
He shook his head. "A lewd Pentoshi lord for a week's task. You wouldn't believe how the bastard pulled me with his mouth and teeth every damned time he would see me. Almost thought I'd lose myself with the pain and the revulsion—literally, I thought my cock would detach itself from my frame," the comely one confessed. Jaqen smiled with empathy. "After every encounter, I would vomit and bathe myself till my pores bleed. I savored the kill, brother. Ah, it was without finesse, nevertheless that bastard's blood all over his private chambers was art from my virtuosity. Did not even pray, or utter Valar Morghulis. Anticipation was there, to sail home. I came through the double doors and there she was by the poison pool—Sabine. When she turned to me, her countenance was with complete distaste, and I remember how she averted her eyes," he sighed. "That very stare shamed me from shadow to core, and so I could not bear hand her that one present I brought from the task, left the thing on her bedside. Might be that she threw it without even having a look."
"Yes," Jaqen nodded, tone reassuring. "The whitegold necklace she always wore around her neck, the one with the flora graeca pendant."
The comely one turned to him asudden. "She kept it?"
"Cherished it."
The comely one nodded, his smile was melancholic.
In the calmness, the faces seemed to speak with them, as if to plead.
"Forgiveness, brother. May you find it in your heart," Aegeus went on. "I had sought to ruin your bond with the girl, almost hindered the sacred confluence from happening, charged her that courtesan task. It was all for a purpose, believe me. The ritual by the goddess pool was derived from Rhoyne—Arya had to come of age."
He sat on the stone floor, legs crossed. Jaqen sat beside him. In the faint light of votive candles, the faces arrayed in the hall's ceiling-to-ceiling repository shone in an afterglow—a reaction to the phosphorescence. The faces almost appeared as if they contained warmth emanating from life, an illusion no better than transparent clock dials that seemed to move without moving. The Order is as old as the city—eight centuries, and in those years there were scums and kings, betrayers and faithful ones, mothers to babes and warriors to empires, sinful men and their sinless young, that were all executed in exchange for either coin or precious life. "The Creed, the holy texts," they would utter in order to explain the rationale of such acts. Blame it all on the pages. Blame it all on the many-faced god who sanctions. Do the tattooed traces of the dead matter, or their tales of old wounds and quiet laughters, before their lives are claimed prior to time designed? No. Valar Morghulis, and the Order gets to decide when. The disparity between what is preached and what is practiced is too great.
A name and a face—the first is prerequisite, the second is keepsake. Without fail, they fool believers with tenets and precepts dating back to the terrible grandiosity of Old Valyria—using literature of the oppressed as justification. But Faceless Men are men with either blameworthy or blameless blood in their hands; and they call themselves assassins, a euphemism for slaughterers and wreckers of lives. They perform murder and name it 'craft'. They peel off the faces of the dead, wear them to conceal their dark intents, and label the act 'method'. They poison, asphyxiate, slay men by the dagger and the sword, and call it 'religion'.
"Ah, that purpose," Jaqen was somber. "Spill me all, brother. Before I get exhausted of butchering men and collecting their faces."
Aegeus turned to Jaqen, very amused. "By the name of the gods. Since when did you start feeling remorseful after a kill? Since when did you realize that the death game and chase do get dead-tiring?"
Every morn, in the death god's cruel womb, an assassin is born.
He cast out the warning of the Burners. It was full admission, it was the only truth.
"Since Arya Stark." The Lorathi smiled sadly, eyes riveting to each pillar of faces. "Time will come, and one autumn morn you will sit with your child under the weirwood by the cold pond. Leaves fall, beauteous sight, and there are the sounds of white ravens' wings frolicking gently with the winds. He stutters, as he struggles with the words on the pages of his book, you help him with the phrases. Slowly you read them, and he mimics you: 'Winterfell is the home of Stark kings.' Your child then says, 'Again, you will be away. When will you come home?' You tell him, after the task is done—time is never certain, even life's continuance. 'What is the task?' he probes further," the Lorathi exhales deeply, morosely. His melancholic eyes cruised to Aegeus's face. "Tell me, how will you answer that?"
The Tyroshi only nodded. "Have not thought that far, honestly. You cannot tell the child that you carry out guileful, silent carnage for a living—and that it's the bloodbath that puts food on the table."
Jaqen H'ghar laughed, and perchance in that confused laughter, dead faces in that very sanctum were stirred. They carried on though, dead and dreaming. Iron Islanders may be bearers of falsehoods—what is dead can never rise again. But what does anyone know about the other side, truly? "To even think of children! I must be going insane!"
Aegeus placed one hand lightly on Jaqen's shoulder. "I beg to differ. It is only now that you are finding your sanity. Very good, Faceless."
Within the sanctum, there was only stillness coupled with lovely hopes contrary to reason, that the day will come when they could wash scarlet off their murderous hands and start anew.
This time, to create life, not take it away.
"Forgiveness too, brother," Jaqen said quietly.
Aegeus scoffed. "Three hundred dragons," he said, turning to the Lorathi. "Really, brother? You thought me that strong?"
"Arya was with you," Jaqen answered. "It was madness in the Freehold. Your damnable enchantments killed three imperial dragonriders. All lords were called to gather; and voices were one during the Archon's conclave—overkill. If there was one thing you Rhoynish lot have taught those pompous Valyrians, it is to erase from their minds and tongues the term 'underestimate'."
"Still, you have reduced my palace of love to a palace of sorrows." Nostalgia seeped through his contemplations, but the invasion was most welcome. He smirked. "Ah! How I prayed morn and night before my surrender: may Arya bring the Freehold unthinkable quagmire—especially you."
"She was too bold, too defiant," Jaqen said. "It was a battle of water and flames in my tower every single day the deities have created. We almost caused the other's downfall. So much power—never seen anything like it, despite Valyria being a haven of incomparable thaumaturgy that time past, the way Darkest Asshai is now. The curious thing is this: the magic that she held was all-good. It was something my blood could not comprehend, I have been taught that the sole purpose of magic is to subdue, not nourish."
"And so over and over, the bulge in your breeches grew and you fell hard and deep. Over and over, you have scoured the realms in search of her," Aegeus supplied for him. "The child?"
"Never saw him. She carried him in her womb to Westeros, married a Martell."
"There are certain things that must be done for one's survival and those of others," Aegeus said in defense. "For the sake of alliance, no emotions involved. And you were killed, anyway."
"That doesn't mean I died."
True. Direct descendants of the red god are almost invulnerable to dragonfire. There's the death god too, offering a bargain three seconds before damnation.
"A different conclusion to the cycles, a different ending," the comely one said. "We are fools to think we can change the destiny shaped by the gods. If so, then I desire to be a fool for the rest of my life." Two candles flickered, one died. He rose and lit three new ones, retrieved something from below one of the graystone pilasters. Gentle luminescence bathed the sanctum once more. "You never got to the North. You never killed Bloodraven. Citadel, then Braavos—you changed your route on purpose, and with it, the Order's objective on why you were in Westeros in the first place."
The Lorathi turned to the comely one, alarmed. "How do you even know this?"
"Calm, brother. I'm with you on this. Quaithe—Seastar. Those lover-siblings know everything, it seems," Aegeus replied. He walked to Jaqen and sat once more, handed him a goblet with strong Dornish. Jaqen's brows creased, then he chuckled. "What? I drink here. Faces are as good a company as any."
Jaqen sighed, accepted a glassful. "I cannot kill the only link we have to all Weirwood, unless we see what truly is West of Westeros. Good decision, it seems. As it appears, realms and time will disintegrate if he dies. He holds it all under higher influence."
"Oh," Aegeus teased, tipping the goblet's rim to drink. He smacked his lips at the intoxication's aftertaste, studied the goblet's ornate design. "You knew all long. Arya Stark saw nothing but illusions when she unlocked that obsidian candle of yours. Someone has been messing with her yondersight. I wonder who he is."
"Promise me," Jaqen turned to Aegeus, urgency in his voice. "Never tell her a thing about what lies past the Sunset." The comely's response was an insouciant shrug. "Aegeus…" Jaqen implored him.
Obsidian candles are benediction—it can allow men to reconnect with versions of themselves as true as the ones they have now. However, there is time for all forms of revelation.
"Fine." A temporary yield. "Three conditions."
"You do not demand."
"Neither do you."
Jaqen gritted his teeth, irritated apparently, though not provoked. He emptied the goblet with two hasty swallows, coughed at the aftereffects of the alky's intense taste. "One."
"Three. I need information, not favor."
"Go on, then."
"What is it truly, between you and the death god?"
Jaqen held his breath. "Anything but that."
"I will find out soon enough, brother."
"Then why ask?"
Aegeus took his sweet time with his cupful. "No judgments, we all made bargains which is why we are all here," he faced the Lorathi and shrugged with nonchalance, as if the latter emptying himself out is a feat none too serious. "Simple—renounce your old gods, she had told me. Sever all forms of coherence with them, Valar dohaeris. It was that, or a most assured death without the chance to wish for the dragonlords' comeuppance. Hopeless nightfall, but then I felt her cold lips against my own. When I awoke, I only saw sorrows, stonemen, and my reflection in the water—faceless and shrouded."
It started out as an embittered laugh. "That's it?" the Lorathi asked. Heartless, spiteful deity. His laughter had gone rancorous—madness ate him, as he pondered on his own misery. A lesson: never bargain with a god who dons many faces. "A damnable kiss!"
Aegeus lifted his goblet, as if to acknowledge his brother's rightful insults. "Yours?" He washed the bitter bile that had formed in his tongue with the bittersweetness of the Dornish. More, more—his goblet had gone full again. Carry on, act as if the godawful covenant with the salacious deity never happened.
"Don't hate me, brother."
The comely one choked on his wine. His eyes riveted to the Lorathi.
"You did not!"
Jaqen smiled dismally. "Forsake the red god—and many other things. Truly, a man has forgotten all other demands, brother."
It's all between me and the god.
Aegeus chuckled with amusement. "And I thought I was this Order's manwhore! You are too obsessed with Arya Stark, brother, for you to yield that much."
Jaqen ignored him. "What's your second?"
"Tell me about your firesword."
A thousand-year recollection. He told him.
Aegeus nodded, visage that of the unconvinced. "Third, then," he pointed to the pillars. "What do we do with all these faces?"
Spilled lives. Bloodsoaked ground. Putrid cleansing. Conscience's curse. Tragic treacheries.
Jaqen H'ghar's contemplations were dragged asudden to that canyon's pit in his memories. Three seconds, two. Blood from his scorched skin blessed the golden sands of Old. The death god's voice was insistent, to resist is to die. Once, he had this discussion with a brother whose face was now that of a Stormcrow, whose name was that of one Daario Naharis—a dead man. "She shows her face through our dreams, this death god. Oh yes, we Faceless lot are not allowed to dream unless the subject of that reverie is her. Normally, I would not have the slightest problem with it, she's damn beautiful, and she must be. How else can she lure men to becoming faceless if she is not? But every night, the obsession grows and it consumes you—and you find yourself losing even the nothingness that you have left, why of course she would claim from you even that. Then only, would you realize how disgustingly horrifying she truly is."
Every single time they wear those masks of skin and flesh, there were the voices of those dead warring against their No One state:
Hide not from the death god. Hide not underneath me!
What Sabine had said rang truth to it, the faces were not solely meant for assassinations; and they have not discovered the fullness of the purposes yet of the faces in the sanctum. Only this—that they use it to conceal themselves from the death god's eyes, for the deity's reckoning is always nigh. Bargains made must be paid.
Death needs both appellation and appearance—without these, tracery is as improbable as an arrow released from its nock over blindfold. Shiera Seastar who was said to bathe herself in blood to keep her youth, had concealed herself beneath her lacquered mask and the label 'Quaithe'. Melony of Old Valyria had been masquerading for centuries as one shadowbinder, using glamour to enshroud herself, claiming to carry out holy tasks for the red god under the guise 'Melisandre' of Asshai. Valar Morghulis is a universal precept, yet no one wants to die—even Faceless Men.
And when the reckoning comes, the faces must be returned to the souls to which they belong.
Sabine.
'I have questions, only the god can answer them.'
Jaqen rose, decided. "The faces will stay here."
Aegeus stared at him with incredulity. He too, stood up. "Brother, you know naught about what is happening in Asshai, do you? You think yourself too sophisticated to even be speaking with shadowbinders! Very well then, this is what Seastar had told me in the Unmasking—she fled from the Shadowlands for good. Death needs both name and face. The souls of men we have killed still roam the paths of the Vale of Shadows—the threshold, that damnable bridge to the death god's courts was locked, denying them entry because they cannot be recognized at all—their faces are here in the sanctum. There are not enough shadowbinders to contain those raging spirits. We cannot have them taking an exeunt from the Ash in the form of demons, and wreak cataclysm in the realms Known in search for those masks we have peeled from their bodies. We cannot defeat raving souls and Dark Valyria and Winter all at the same time. See reason, for once! Think me half-witted, but I cannot blame myself for the death of both men and their souls. For sakes, it is not worth keeping those faces!"
The Lorathi walked calmly to one of the pillars, touched the face of one young.
Might be, that when life still breathed itself into her, her eyes had smiled at the sight of blooming flora and the still sea in crisp, summer air. There was youthful bliss, childish escapades, tomfoolery that either made her snicker or sob. Dandelion seeds may have kissed her nosetip, and snow her cheeks of rose. Upon the warm shore she might have walked barefoot. Upon grassy meadows she might have danced and leaped in mirth.
A coin ended it all.
Does Death come only for the wicked and leave the decent behind?
No. Hence, she must die. Price was paid, servants must not ask questions.
Now, there were only songs unsung in both her lips and her heart. She had died in the Lorathi's hands. No One will ever know her tale—for Faceless Men, tales untold never mattered in the first place.
She is not one traitorous Sealord, or a dragonriding slaver. She's just a child.
And this child's soul is slowly being gorged by unrest, gradually turning into an irredeemable incubus, battling against all others to gain an impossible pass to the Realm Unseen. The masters are getting hints—the nightmares the faces contained are almost impossible to subdue now. With the dreams are the memories—both evil and good.
And for Faceless Men who had known nothing but Cimmerian shades and sad quietus, good memories are priceless gifts. One Braavosi brother admitted to wearing one face for three full nights—a seafarer's face. From the face's cherished recollections, he had learned that within a moon the mariner will be wed to his beloved. In tones of bliss, he spoke of his plans to quit from sea and settle with his fair-haired. There was the trade, and he was gifted at it—his maiden need not compete with the unmerciful ocean for his devotion. A reasonably-sized summerhouse with yellow daffodils and larkspar by the front, scents of roasts and cakes from the window, small feet hopscotching by the cobbled walkway, his cherub's laughter—all these.
That night, he died through poisoned water. He was too upright to even drink ale.
The beseecher—the father of his beloved.
His reminiscences were too lovely. Perchance, his beloved still gazed at the sea's horizon, waiting for the ship that would bring him home to her. He would never come back. And who is to blame—the beseecher, or the executioner?
Some stories were never bound to end well.
Those memories bless them blithely, and plague them with guilt. This is why most of the Faceless Men are slowly resorting to basic artifice—a weak method; so that stolen stories, beautiful stories will not take toll on their shattered selves and broken minds.
Jaqen shook his head remorsefully. The Sealord, the dragonlords, and let me be done. "The faces stay here." He ignored Aegeus's raging stare. He met his brother's eyes, beckoned in him some form of understanding. "For now."
The Lorathi threw him one glass vial. It was empty. Aegeus caught it, read the vial's marker.
Revixit coile-tare.
His eyes narrowed, grew. Indignation suddenly transformed into youthful anticipation. False hope is enough. Winter may claim petals of all flowers known, but Spring will always come, no matter the length of cold nights and solstices. He shook his head, breathed in soft convulsions. "Sabine could not have concocted this," Aegeus muttered in exhalation. Jaqen just smiled—a confirmation. It should have been enough, yet it was not. "This is a mythical substance, Jaqen."
The Lorathi chuckled. "You've said it yourself. She's a breathing elixir. Patience, dear brother. We wait for her."
Aegeus grinned and nodded back to the Lorathi. "Walk with me to the Hall of Masters. I'm kind of thirsty for one Sealord's blood."