When she'd left, Sansa had said she intended to rebuild the Moat. Bran was loved and trusted, but while Tyrion's idea had merit when it was proposed – enough merit that the other Lords had all agreed to it – there was truly no guarantee that Westeros would not descend into war once more upon Bran's death. In fact, Sansa and Arya both believed it was more likely to happen than not. Sensibly, Sansa had wanted to be ready for it. Had wanted the North to be able to defend itself against any and all threats, no matter the direction they came from.
Truly, Sansa had learned her lesson about not trusting in people's intentions.
Which made it all the more surprising to Arya that Moat Cailin was still a ruin. Upon closer inspection, Arya realised that, actually, Moat Cailin looked exactly as it had when she'd first seen it as a child. The marks of Ironborn invasion and occupation were nowhere to be seen, but neither was there any sign of repairs being made.
"Captain?"
"We take the ship overland from here to the east coast, then we'll sail through White Harbour and up the White Knife to Winterfell," Arya instructed. "Something is strange, and the sooner I get to Winterfell to find out just what, the better."
"Beach her! We're hauling her east overland until we hit water!" the first mate obediently bellowed across the decks.
The crew groaned at the prospect of hauling Old Nan overland for near a hundred and fifty miles, but they voiced no actual complaints. It was not the first time they'd hauled Old Nan overland from one body of water to another. It would, however, almost certainly longest distance she had been hauled. Thankfully, it should also be the last it happened for quite some time.
Their captain was home, and would not soon take to sea again. Or if she did, then it was more likely to be simple trading missions from White Harbour to Braavos. No overland hauling would be required for that.
Except for right now, to get from the Fever River to the harbour in question. (It took a full moon's turn! Everyone cheered when Old Nan was finally rolled back into the water again.)
~oOo~
Lord Wyman Manderly came to greet Old Nan upon her arrival in White Harbour. Likely some look-out had spotted the Stark Direwolf on her sails. Arya had expected to be greeted. She did not expect the greeting she received.
Lord Manderly paled, his eyes grew wide.
"Lady Lyanna," he said.
"You flatter me, Lord Manderly, but I'm afraid you've got the wrong Stark. Nevertheless, I am going home, my lord," Arya said. "I should like it to be a surprise, and likewise to not be delayed. I have been gone far too long."
"Yes my lady, of course my lady," Lord Manderly agreed. "Please. Your ship has the freedom of White Harbour, and the White Knife, of course. Only, since my lady is headed for Winterfell, we have had a shipment arrive recently that is to be sent to your family...?"
Arya nodded.
"We can delay long enough to see a shipment for Winterfell loaded," she agreed, "but do not think to send a raven ahead of us and spoil the surprise of my return, Lord Manderly," she cautioned.
"Of course, my lady."
~oOo~
Not one of the men or women on Old Nan had been with Arya when she'd left the North. Those men had all either decided to make new lives for themselves in this or that land they'd discovered on their travels, or else been brought low by injury or sickness. Crossing the Sunset Sea had not been easy on anybody. Not the first time, anyway.
Arya had made sure that Old Nan was better stocked for the return trip. Up to and including potted trees so that fruit was available to them fresh. Samples (and seeds) of strange, foreign crops that Arya was certain would grow well in the North, but had never been seen there before. She had filled her journals with the things she had learned. Of foreign medicines, of what she had seen work, and what looked to be superstitious mummery that hurt more than it healed. Of foreign technologies, some as seemingly simple as better farming methods, others as complicated as strange machines that made it so one man could do the work of twenty. There was so much that Arya was bringing home with her, to help the North flourish more than ever before...
All of the preparations Arya had made before beginning her journey home did not make her in the least bit ready to see Ser Rodrik, alive, supervising a young Robb and Jon at their sword training, an equally young Theon by his side as he sulked and waited his turn. It did not prepare her to be approached by Jory Cassel, also alive.
"I am here to see the Lord of Winterfell," Arya said, and drew on every bit of training she had ever received from the House of Black and White to keep her voice steady, her expression neutral, and her appearance unaffected. "My ship, Old Nan, brings an expected cargo from White Harbour, which my people are unloading as we speak."
"Of course," Jory agreed easily, though his eyes studied her face. So many familiar Stark features, Arya knew, and yet he did not know her. "This way, please."
~oOo~
The halls were so familiar. She could live a thousand years across the seas, and still she would know the halls of Winterfell. Still, she followed behind Jory, rather than out-pacing him as he led her to her father's solar.
"My lord," Jory called as he knocked on the door. "You've... a visitor."
"Send them in."
Arya breathed deeply at the sound of her father's voice. Gods, she'd realised... but the knowledge in her head and the voice in her ear -! Arya nodded her thanks to Jory as she stepped around him and through the door.
The sight that greeted her was one that Arya had never thought to see again. Had known very well, the moment Illyn Payne had drawn Ice and Lannister men had forced her father onto his knees, that she would never see this sight again. And yet, here it was. Real.
Ned Stark looked up from the paperwork he'd been going through, and stopped just as still as she had the moment his eyes landed on her face.
"Lyanna?" he asked, and stood cautiously from his desk.
Arya shook her head.
"I am not my aunt, Father," she answered.
His eyes went wide.
"Arya," he realised, and rounded the desk in swift strides to take her in his arms.
Arya held him tightly, and buried her face into his shoulder. This, more than seeing Sansa again in the crypts, more than seeing Bran or Jon before the heart tree in the godswood, this was coming home. This was a reunion she had never thought she would get to have.
"How is this possible? I saw you running away from your lessons with Septa Mordane scarcely a candle-mark past," he said. He didn't release his tight hold on her though.
Which was just as well, because Arya was not letting her father go.
"No idea," Arya admitted. "I've spent the last four years sailing the seas west of Westeros, discovering the lands beyond the Sunset Sea. I knew something strange must have happened when I came up the Fever River and Moat Cailin was not repaired."
"The Moat was being repaired when you left?" Ned asked, and shifted his hold on her just enough to make it easier for them to walk over to a couch and sit down together.
"Plans were being made, but work had not yet begun when I left," Arya answered, and once they were sat down, she burrowed herself into her father's side once more. "Sansa was shoring up the North's defences in preparation for when the Six Kingdoms fell to war again."
"Sansa? The Six Kingdoms?" Ned repeated.
"Sansa Stark, the Queen in the North, and at only twenty name-days," Arya confirmed with a sad smile. "It's a long, bloody story," she warned her father.
"I think I'd better hear it all the same," Ned decided.
Arya nodded, and began at what she considered the beginning – the day Lord Stark had gone to execute a deserter of the Night's Watch, and returned with a passel of direwolf pups for his children.
~oOo~
"The new crops, style of armour, and knowledge I brought back with me were to be a twenty-fifth name-day gift for Sansa," Arya admitted when she had finished her story. "To help the North."
"They still can help the North," Ned said firmly. "We're still in the Long Summer. It's not Autumn yet. Winter is coming, but we still have time to prepare."
"Ned -" the door opened, and Lady Catelyn was there. Her expression tightened to see her husband with his arm around a young woman.
But Arya was on her feet and crossing the room faster than Lady Stark could regain her composure enough to speak.
"Mother," Arya said, as she wrapped her arms around the woman's back, and buried her face into her shoulder, just as she had with her father not so long ago.
Arya was so, so grateful that her mother's arms had come up to return the embrace without her thinking about it.
"It's Arya, Cat," Ned supplied.
"Arya?" Catelyn repeated. "But... how? No. This is not Arya. I just sent Arya to clean up for dinner." She removed her arms from around Arya's shoulders, and placed her hands there so that she could push Arya far enough away to look at her face. "This woman grown is not my Arya..."
"At this point, I'm pretty sure there was some magic involved, Mother," Arya said. "Possibly even divine interference."
"The gods!?" Catelyn gasped.
"I was an acolyte to a temple in Braavos for a year," Arya said, "but I'm just guessing. Sailing, literally, into my own past isn't exactly something any god I know of would arrange for me, but I can't think it could be anything or anybody else that caused this to happen."
Neither of her parents could argue that point, and did not even try.
"I came to get you for dinner, Ned," Catelyn said, rather obviously changing the subject. Then she looked at the woman grown who was also her daughter. "And you too, now, I suppose."
Arya shook her head.
"As much as I would love to, I ought to get back to my ship. They'll have finished unloading the things that Lord Manderly asked us to carry to Winterfell, but they'll still be awaiting my orders on what to do with the things I brought from across the Sunset Sea," she said. "Perhaps tomorrow instead?"
"That would give us time to figure out what to tell the children," Ned agreed.
"And how we're going to handle having two Aryas about," Cat added.
~oOo~
"Captain?"
"We're roughly thirteen years backwards in time from where we ought to be," Arya answered her first mate when she returned to Old Nan. "With no idea how it happened, why, or if getting back to the time we should be in is even possible."
"Thirteen years..."
"Just so."
"Um, what about the cargo? The gifts that were for your sister the Queen?"
"Will be given to my Lord Father instead," Arya answered. "But in the morning, after he and my mother have discussed between themselves what they will be telling... my siblings and my own younger self."
"And us, Captain?"
"Have the crew gather in the galley," Arya said. "I'll do my best to explain."
"Aye, Captain."
~oOo~
The last watch of the night woke everybody else as the sky turned the grey of approaching dawn, and Arya was among the first on deck. She always was. The freshest hour of the morning was a good time to get in a little sparring practice with the crew – it made sure that everybody who needed to be awake was.
If they weren't, then they soon felt it.
Arya wasn't one for raising her voice. Hadn't been for a long time. She'd only ever really yelled in an effort to actually make herself heard. As captain of Old Nan, she didn't even need to do that much. That's what first mates were for, after all. Arya could be softly spoken and wield a heavy stick, and her First Mate did the yelling for her.
And that is exactly what Freya did when the bell sounded, ending the sparring.
"Alright you lot! Balm on bruises, breakfast in bellies, and then it's time to get the Captain's gifts into Winterfell!" Freya called out over them all. "Chins up! Knees up! We get to see the Captain's home today!"
There was a single great cheer from the crew, and then everybody was filing down below-decks again.
~oOo~
Lord Stark, being quite aware of where, exactly, boats that came up the White Knife docked when they were carrying goods from White Harbour, was there to greet Arya and her crew not long after breakfast was done. As they were sorting out how things would load onto the carts that would take them up to the castle proper, in fact.
Arya was stood by the gangplank, supervising everything as her quartermaster checked everything and her first mate yelled at people for her. When she spotted him, she descended and embraced him tightly. It would likely be quite some time before she stopped being so very clingy in her embraces with her father. Arya found she did not care.
"That's quite a lot you've got coming out of that ship," Ned observed.
"Just so. Souvenirs of several years travel. Gifts to help the North ready itself for the war that Sansa and I could see coming, though it should still have been a few decades off," Arya explained with a smile. "What did you and Mother decide to tell everyone?"
"We thought that we might actually stick with the truth, however unbelievable it might be," Ned admitted, "rather than try and find a branch of the Stark family tree a mysterious cousin might have suddenly sprung from. At least, when telling your siblings. Beyond our family... Your mother and I finally decided it would be best to include you in that discussion, since it will affect you more directly."
Arya nodded in understanding.
"You've only ever lied to protect your family," Arya said, "and I hardly need protecting."
Ned huffed a soft laugh at that.
"You going to be teaching any of those skills to your family?" he asked.
"If I'm asked to," Arya agreed, "and you don't object."
"So long as you prove your competence to Ser Rodrik," was his condition, "then no, I don't object."
"Even... er... little me?"
"Seeing as I clearly wasn't able to stop you from learning once already, I see no point in trying to stop you now," Ned replied with a smile. Arya had shown him Needle the night before, he had again found Mikken's mark on it, and Syrio's teachings, and then death, had been part of her story.
~oOo~
Arya was escorted to the family wing, and was truthfully introduced as herself, somehow transported through time. She suspected some of her siblings were surprised by how tightly she embraced them, but none of them stinted in returning those embraces with equal fierceness. Not even Sansa.
"What should we call you?" Robb asked. "I don't think 'big Arya' and 'little Arya' is going to work for long."
"Apart from anything else, I didn't exactly get that big," Arya said with a faint smirk. "I'm used to being called 'Captain', though, if you think that might work?" she suggested. "Or I could just take another name altogether."
"Not Lyanna," Ned said at once. "You already look too much like my sister. If you used her name as well, Robert would set aside Cersei and be up here demanding your hand in marriage faster than should be rightly possible, thinking she'd come back to life."
"I already had to correct Lord Manderly on that point as well," Arya agreed. "I didn't tell him what my name was, just that I wasn't Lyanna."
"Alys," Catelyn suggested. "It's a good, Northron name, and I'd been thinking of it for a third daughter already."
Arya nodded.
"I'll be Alys then," she said.
"Alys Stark," Ned confirmed.
"Alys Snow," she denied with a shake of her head. "Uncle Brandon's get off an ill-advised and very drunken affair. Known about but kept out of sight because he was betrothed to Mother, before everything happened, and nobody wanted Lord Hoster Tully to break the betrothal because of me."
Catelyn looked pained at that. Whether that pain was because of one of her daughters claiming to be a Snow, because of bringing up the late Brandon Stark (as opposed to the child of the same name who sat a few places down at the table), or because of her own feelings regarding Jon Snow, or even if it was just that, if she was a Snow, Catelyn couldn't arrange a good match for her...
Alys did not care to cause further pain by poking at the matter any further.
"Alys Snow," Ned agreed.
"So, cousin Alys," Robb said with a grin. "Can you use that sword at your hip? Or is it just a pretty decoration?"
"I'll kick all comers all over the training yard after lunch," Alys promised. "Including you, Fa- Uncle."
Ned's smile at that was just a bit pained.
"I'm still your father," he said. "You will always be my blood, no matter what."
"Will you teach me to fight with a sword?" Arya asked.
"It would be hypocritical of me not to," Alys answered with a nod.
Then they all headed for the great hall where the announcement of her new identity was made, and not a word breathed of the truth. There were those who would know it was a lie, Ser Rodrik was certainly old enough to know that no such daughter had existed in all the years he had been loyal to the Starks, but none of them would question it. Any more than they questioned who Jon's mother was.
Then the gifts from aboard Old Nan were brought in and presented. The first lot was given over to Lord Stark's steward Vayon Poole, to see to making sure everything went where it should go. Whether that was food stores, seed stores for planting once the fields were ready, or into the glass gardens. The second lot of gifts were the chests of cloth and thread, which Septa Mordane took charge of. Third, were Arya's journals all together in a chest of their own. This chest was given to the care of Maester Luwin, who started paging through one of them immediately, rather than taking the chest to file the books among Winterfell's library.
Gifts that had always been intended to be used for the benefit of an independent North. To help it become less dependant on trade with the South. To, yes, help it prepare for when war came at the end of Bran's life. There were new styles of armour, weapons, and ship designs as well.
By the end of all of that, it was time for lunch, so Alys sat down with her family to eat, share tales of her adventures, and answer questions. There were a lot of questions.
~oOo~
Alys was maybe a little bit tempted to grab a staff and blindfold herself to spar with her... cousins... and Theon, but that would perhaps have been too much for their young pride. At least right away. So she took one of the training swords off the rack instead.
"Come," she ordered.
Robb was the first to charge her, and Alys danced around him in the same way that Syrio Forel had once danced around her in King's Landing. When he finally tried to attack her from behind – having failed to land a hit on her by attacking from the front (and been rendered 'dead' five times) – Alys caught his sword on hers without turning.
Everybody froze.
Except Alys, who shifted her practice sword to slide Robb's downwards to the ground.
"How did you do that?" Robb asked.
"Part of my training was to go around blindfolded," Alys said, and decided to leave out the part where she'd been actually blind while learning from the House of Black and White. She'd told her father, she wouldn't tell anybody else. Besides, Syrio had also instructed her to go about blindfolded when he'd been teaching her in King's Landing. It was part of learning to see properly, with the senses other than sight. "Once I stopped bruising myself from just walking around like that, I started learning how to fight that way as well."
"So you don't actually have eyes in the back of your head then," Theon said.
"If I did, I wouldn't tell you," Alys teased back with a grin. "Now, who is next?"
Theon stepped up, but he was better with a bow than a sword, and the cheap tricks he tried to pull to gain a victory only caused him to fail faster. His pride – and bruises – had him retreating after only three 'deaths'.
Then it was Jon's turn. He was better than either Robb or Theon with the sword – any time there was some feast that Lady Stark felt should not have a bastard present for it, he went to train on his own. But. He was better than them in the Westeros style of swordsmanship. Hacking and hammering. He was good, he was absolutely good.
Alys was better. She'd all but mastered the Water Dance, and only lacked the title to match her skill level because, after leaving the House of Black and White, she had never returned to Braavos. While the Faceless Men had been... reluctantly complimentary of her combat prowess, she'd not had her skills properly assessed by any of the master sword fighters anywhere in the city before she'd left.
Jon came back again and again, until Alys declared him 'dead' seven times, and Arya lost patience with waiting for her turn to learn from... an older version of herself.
"This is the sword," Alys said, and passed it to her tiny counterpart. "Tell me its name, Arya."
"How would I -?"
"I named it," Alys cut her off. "That is how you know its name."
Arya looked up at the tip, and down at the grip in her hand, and then around at her family.
"Needle," Arya said softly.
"That's right," Alys answered, just as softly, then took her sword back and slid it into its sheath, and picked up the two training swords that had been used until now. One she kept for herself, the other she lightly tossed to Arya with a warning to catch it.
She did.
"Good," Alys said. "Now, turn your body side-face," she instructed, and tapped at Arya's posture once she was standing facing the right way. "Even skinnier than I remember," Alys said with a smile. "But, as I was told when I was learning, that is good. Makes you a smaller target. Now, the grip. Just one hand, that's all you need, and the grip must be delicate."
"But what if I drop it?"
"I asked that once too," Alys said. "But you can no more drop it than you can drop part of your arm, because the steel is part of your arm. Or rather, it will be. We'll get you there. Remember though, you are not holding a battle axe. You are holding...?"
"A needle," Arya supplied with a grin.
"Just so," Alys agreed, and despite the years separating them, their grins were identical. "This won't be the hacking and hammering of Westerosi knights. My first teacher introduced himself to me as my new dancing master, and that is what he taught me. The Water Dance, he called it. Can you guess why?"
Arya shook her head.
"Because all men are made of water," Alys revealed. "If you pierce them -" she poked the tip of her training sword into Arya's tummy, just as Syrio once had to her. "- the water leaks out, and they die."
~oOo~
Some of Alys's crew stayed with Old Nan, kept her maintained while in port and taught any who were interested in how sailing worked. (Theon, in particular, was very interested in learning the skills he would have learned if he'd stayed on the Iron Islands. Even if, as a technical hostage of Lord Stark's, he'd never be allowed to sail with them beyond the bounds of the North as long as that status lasted.) More of them sought a place among the guardsmen and farmers of Winterfell. All of them presented themselves in the grey, pre-dawn light to get their arses handed to them by Alys.
It only took a sennight before Arya found out about this, and insisted on joining in as well.
Alys responded to this by tying a blindfold around Arya's eyes, putting a quarterstaff in her hands, and nodding to Freya. Freya who proceeded to beat Arya up with her own quaterstaff.
Not as brutally as Alys had been, when she was blind in the House of Black and White, but Freya was not exactly gentle about it, either.
"Every hurt is a lesson," Alys told Arya after the first time they did this. As she dabbed ointments onto the bruises. "And every lesson makes you stronger. Not just hurts of the body, either. Hurts of the heart, of the soul. That is a different kind of hurt, and a different kind of strength you might gain, if you heed the lessons those hurts teach you. Some hurts will try to break you. This is the lesson that you must teach to such hurts: I cannot and will not be broken."
Arya always returned to don a blindfold and collect fresh bruises from Freya just as soon as the old ones had completely faded. In addition to the other training Alys was giving her.
~oOo~
"Brandon! How many times must I tell you? No climbing!" Lady Stark scolded her son as he descended from atop the walls. Via the sides of the walls, rather than any of the stairs.
"Not unless you are confident you can always land safely if you fall," Alys said. She had been walking with Lady Stark and discussing the ways the crops she had brought with her could be cooked and eaten.
"Please don't encourage him," Catelyn entreated softly.
"Better he learns how to land, just in case," Alys said. "The only way Bran will stop climbing is if his legs stop working."
Bran smiled at that, as though it was something to smile about, as though Alys meant that he would never, ever stop climbing.
Catelyn sighed, sadly. She knew better. Her husband had told her some of Alys's story, including the part about Bran being crippled. She dreaded such a thing coming to pass.
"Can you teach him that?" she asked. "To always land on his feet?"
"Landing on your feet sometimes isn't the safest way to land," Alys corrected, "but... yes. I can teach Bran to land safely. Well, my crew will. At least at the beginning."
"Your crew?" Bran asked, eyes bright.
"Just so. You'll be scaling the rigging of Old Nan, and learning how to judge jumps between the rigging and down from the rigging to the deck," Alys said. "I'll let Freya know, and you'll report for duty at midday."
"Thank you!" Bran cheered, and hugged Alys tightly about her middle. Then he hugged his mother as well, and ran off to brag of his good fortune to Arya.
"He's always said he wants to be a knight of the Kingsguard," Catelyn said with a sigh, "but the way he behaves... he would probably be happier on your ship, climbing masts all day."
"Well, he'll get to find out," Alys said gently, "and maybe this time, he'll have a better story than the one I saw him live."
Catelyn nodded, lips thin with the fear of what might be. Of what had once been, from Alys's perspective. Still, as much as Alys's tale had created new fears in her heart, it had soothed other, older fears. To know that Jon Snow, when given the chance to be the King in the North, had only taken it because he was the last son of Eddard Stark, had deferred to Sansa the whole time, had surrendered the title to her as soon as he could and gone instead to live beyond the Wall as a wildling... It eased a great many of her fears about the greedy and traitorous nature of bastards that had been taught to her when she was a girl in Riverrun.
She was able to treat him better, these days.
~oOo~
Alys smiled to herself, unsure if Sansa or Arya was more surprised to see her step into the room where Septa Mordane had the young ladies of Winterfell sitting in a circle with embroidery hoops in their hands.
"Even a woman who is captain of her own ship has mending to do," Alys explained with a rueful smile as she held up a bag, fat and lumpy with whatever it contained. "And I thought the young ladies might like to hear some of the songs I learned while across the Sunset Sea, and translated where needed."
"You learned to sing?" Arya asked.
"I became a sailor," Alys answered, "sooner or later, every sailor learns to sing. Not always the most cultured of songs," she hastened to admit, "but we're not always the most cultured of singers, either."
Septa Mordane sniffed, but the girls giggled.
"Of course, Freya knows more songs than I do. Knowing songs and performing them was her profession before she joined my crew and became my first mate," Alys said as she took a seat between Arya and Sansa, "and she doesn't lose the tune or forget the words, not ever," she added as she pulled out the socks she needed to darn.
Alys hummed a few notes, finding one that sounded right, then she sang.
"Still the round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate, and though we pass them by today, tomorrow we may come this way..."
~oOo~
"What's this then?" Lord Stark asked.
Five of Alys's crew were circling her while she was blindfolded. All of them had staves in hand.
"Making sure I'm not slacking off in training myself, just because I'm also teaching," Alys answered, and blocked a swing that came at her from behind, then one that came from left, then from right, and then caught two sticks at once before she kicked with her left leg, released her staff from her right hand, and swung it. She caught one of her opponents, and tipped them into another.
"She's very good, my lord," Ser Rodrik, who had been supervising, offered.
Alys thrust her staff backwards beneath her arm, against her side, and caught another of her opponents in the gut before she returned to the basic stance once more.
"So I see," Ned agreed. "It puts into perspective how much she holds back when she gives Arya or the boys a lesson, doesn't it?"
"She holds herself to just above the level they're at, forever forcing them to improve," Ser Rodrik said. "And to my shame, the one time I sparred with her, she did the same thing."
"Can't see there's much shame in it when she taking on six, who know her fighting style, and she's still winning even when she'd blindfolded," Ned countered with a chuckle.
"Then maybe you can fight the Captain next, my lord," suggested one of the men Alys had knocked to the ground. From where he lay on the ground.
"Now there's an idea," Ned mused. "She did offer to give me a drubbing some time ago, and I haven't taken her up on it yet. Ser Rodrik, I believe I'll be needing a training sword."
"Yes, my lord."
To be completely fair, Lord Stark gave Alys just as many new bruises as she gave him.
~oOo~
The first harvest of new crops (some of them even planted with the technologies that Maester Luwin had learned from Alys's journals) was in. Winterfell had never seen a harvest like it. The new plough had allowed for more land to be cultivated than ever before, and the crops had grown so well...
"We're going to have to pass this on to the other Houses of the North," Lord Stark decided. "If every harvest is like this one, then we may be able to have sufficient stores for winter that we won't have to buy grain from the Reach."
"Aye," agreed Vayon as he looked over the numbers, "and with such savings, repairs and improvements can be made upon those keeps and castles that need such."
"Including us," Lord Stark said. "We might finally have the coin to do something about the Broken Tower."
"I was thinking of expanding the glass gardens, my lord," Vayon admitted.
"I think Maester Luwin is looking into that, actually," Lord Stark mused thoughtfully. He did not begrudge his steward for thinking of expanding their crop capacity. Of course not. Unlike his steward though, Ned Stark still had the words ringing in his ears that told of how Bran had once fallen from the Broken Tower and been unable to walk when he'd finally woken up. The fates his children had suffered in Alys's memory haunted him some nights. "Alys apparently learned something of how glass was made in one of the places she went."
"If we do not have to import glass from Myr, then that will certainly be a wonderful thing, my lord," Vayon said, awed at the very idea.
"A wonderful thing indeed," Lord Stark agreed. "Just as soon as Maester Luwin has the materials he needs, and made a few tests to see if he can teach the making of it to some young lads who've nothing better to do when it's not harvest time. With the expanded ability to grow though, we will also need a likewise greater ability to store. Hence, fixing up the Broken Tower and the Old Keep."
Vayon chuckled a wheezing chuckle at that.
"As Alys so often says, just so, my lord."
~oOo~
The first trip that Old Nan had gone on, two moons after Alys had returned to Winterfell, had been a short trip down to White Harbour. She'd taken Bran with her so that he could get his first taste of life as a sailor, scaling rigging with purpose, rather than for fun and lessons in how to to fall safely. She'd also taken Robb and Lord Stark, so that the latter could introduce the former to Lord Manderly.
They'd come back with crates that had been destined for Torrehn's Square, which had been dropped off at Castle Cerwin, from whence the delivery would be carted overland.
The second trip out, some half a moon after the first trip, had been to Braavos, and Alys had taken Jon with her. (Bran came too, as he'd decided he really liked being a sailor.) The motivation for taking Jon on the journey had been to show him that there were places where his name, or lack of name, didn't mean anything. That there were places in the world he could make something of himself if he decided that he wanted to. That the Wall was not the only option open to him.
The trip to Braavos had also been a venture in buying and trading expensive exotics – for and from Alys's own stocks. Then, on the last day before they were to return to Westeros, she'd given both Bran and Jon some coin and told them to go and buy whatever they wanted that they could afford – so long as they stayed together. With the two of them distracted by the Braavosi markets, a woman had gone to visit the House of Black and White.
When she knocked, it was the Kindly Man who greeted her, who let her in to pray.
She had spent a lot of time here, when she was young. Had dedicated herself to the Many Faced God and done his work. She had left. A woman could not think of any other god who she might have drawn the attention of in such a way.
A woman saw the Waif tending to the candles, and waved her over.
"A gift," a woman said softly, and handed over a recipe for a poison she had learned on the far side of the Sunset Sea. If she had returned in her own time, she would have said it paid a debt. Now, it was only so to her.
"Who would you see such a gift given to?" the Waif asked.
A woman shook her head.
"For the benefit of the House of Black and White," a woman answered. "To be used at their own discretion. It is a poison from beyond the Sunset Sea and causes a rupture in the brain. A half-dose may be survived, but the chances are poor, and even if they did, they would be as a drooling child and never improve. A full dose is certainly fatal."
"Who are you?" the Waif asked.
"Alys Snow of Winterfell," a woman answered.
The Waif tucked the recipe for the poison away into her robes.
"You will never be given this gift," the Waif assured her, "and I will never give the gift to you. I cannot promise any more than that."
"I know," a woman agreed.
The Waif nodded, and left a woman to her prayers.
Alys returned to her ship with no more answers than she'd had when she left it that morning, but nevertheless more at peace.
The trip after that had been to the waters further north, to collect ice. That had been packed into crates of sawdust, and then Alys had collected Arya and Sansa from White Harbour before continuing down to Dorne, where the ice was traded for their whitest sand. Alys had been the one to explain the reasons for and the reasoning behind the trade deal desired to Prince Doran, while Arya and Sansa were shown the wonders of Sunspear by Prince Oberyn, his paramour, and a few of his daughters.
Sansa had left Dorne completely enamoured of everything she had seen (especially Prince Oberyn and his paramour Ellaria Sand, but Alys would definitely not be mentioning that particular little, mercifully one-sided, infatuation to either the Lord or Lady Stark). Arya left with a savage grin on her face, a new set of bruises, and a new pair of friends for life in the form of Prince Oberyn's youngest daughters Dorea and Loreza.
Everything after that had either been repeat trips to Dorne (often carrying letters as well as the ice or sand), or journeys to Dragonstone where crate after crate of dragonglass was purchased.
~oOo~
When news came of a deserter from the Night's Watch being caught, Alys insisted that she, Sansa, and Arya all accompany Lord Stark. Not just all his sons but Rickon. Lady Stark didn't like that any more than she liked that Lord Stark had ordered for Bran to saddle his pony to accompany him for this, but she bowed to it all the same. Alys had been with them for two years, and attended more executions than just this one. This was the first time she'd said Arya and Sansa should come too, though.
She had certainly been with them long enough for more of her story to be shared in its fullness among certain members of the family. Lord Stark, of course, Lady Stark, though it came to her from her husband rather than Alys herself. Benjen, when he came to visit for the new year's celebration, was told in full the part of the story that was the end: the War for the Dawn. Which had led to questions about things that had caused that story to be as it was. There were different parts of Alys's tale that it was of vital importance for them to know, but know it in full, they all did.
Alys told Robb of how he'd raised the banners, been crowned, and then how he had lost his crown – she did not tell him the name of the woman he had wed. She'd never learned it. Alys told Jon of how going to the Wall had turned out for him, how he'd left after he'd been killed and resurrected, and at Sansa's direction taken up Robb's crown to help her lead their people, and how he'd gone to live with the Free Folk beyond the Wall when it was all done.
Alys told Sansa some of the horrors that her Sansa had told her she'd suffered, and at whose hands, and as much of what she knew of why. She told her of how she had been Queen in the North, and ruled well, for she put aside childish dreams and songs about the beauty of kings and princes, and instead focused on seeing to the needs of her people, first and last. Alys told Arya of her own adventures, and how she'd been such a brat about certain things, and too easily led in others.
Alys did not tell Bran about his fall, about his becoming the three-eyed raven or later King of the Six Kingdoms. Alys definitely didn't tell tiny little Rickon how he had been raised a wildling and then been shot down while running to Jon. Such stories were too horrible for boys still so young and full of life and joy. She told them about her adventures beyond the Sunset Sea instead.
Alys traded stories with Old Nan. There was a magic about Old Nan, for her to have lived so long and kept her wits well enough to be able to recite so many stories without forgetting a single detail in any of them.
And they all, those who were grown and those who were near-grown, knew there was only so much they could actually do to try and avoid the horrors that Alys had told them of. The coming of the Others? Was not something they could change. Only prepare for.
They rode out.
~oOo~
"I have questions for him, before he gives his last words to my uncle," Alys told the guards that held the deserter.
They nodded, and stepped back a bit. This was the fourth deserter this year. Alys always came, and always had questions for the men about to be executed.
"White Walkers," he muttered to himself. "I saw the White Walkers."
"Where?" Alys asked him. "Where were they?"
"The haunted forest," the man answered. "Eight, nine days ride from the Wall. Fortnight if it's snowed."
"Can you recall how many?" Alys asked next.
"They'd killed a whole wildling camp, and the noble son who got put in charge even though he'd never been beyond the Wall before," he said, and swallowed tightly. "I fink... I fink they got Gared too."
"You did well to outrun them," Alys said gently, "but you ran too far. It is the duty of the Night's Watch to guard against the White Walkers, more than the wildlings."
The man nodded, swallowed tightly.
"My oaf," he said.
"Your oath," Alys agreed. "What's your name?" she asked him.
"Will," he answered. "I was caught poaching on Mallister lands. Will you... will you get word to my family? Tell them I'm a coward, and that I'm sorry?"
"If I can find them. You were right to be afraid, Will," Alys assured him, "but yes, you were a coward to run. To think that running would be enough. Lord Eddard will give you a quick, clean death, for breaking your oath to the Night's Watch. It is better than they would have given you, and you will not become one of their number."
"Thank you," Will said. "For believing me. People have to know."
Alys nodded, and retreated.
She would stand with Sansa and Arya, with Robb and Jon and Bran, while Lord Stark heard Will's last words before taking his head.
~oOo~
"Do you understand why I did that?" Ned asked of his daughters and youngest son as they rode back to Winterfell.
"Jon said he was a deserter," Bran supplied.
"He broke his oath, and the law is the law," Arya said. "Traitors are executed."
"But do you understand why I had to be the one to do it?" Ned pressed.
"Our way is the Old Way," Sansa answered, voice soft. She'd been getting more lessons in the Old Way than the Ways of the Seven since Alys had arrived among them. She could say truly now that she followed the Old Way, rather than just paying them service as a daughter of House Stark.
Actually, Alys had told Sansa that the sister she had left behind had given up on praying. Said that she'd found no answers from the gods she'd prayed to. It was part of what had really set Sansa to shift from the gods of her mother to the gods of her father. If the Seven never answered, then Sansa would not waste her breath to ask anything of them.
"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword," Lord Stark confirmed with a solemn nod. "Lest he become too comfortable with ordering the deaths of others."
"Did he really see White Walkers?" Arya asked.
"Yes," Ned answered. "When we get back to Winterfell, I'll have Maester Luwin send a raven to your Uncle Benjen at the Wall. We'll be sending your cousin's ship down to Dragonstone as well soon, to buy up more dragonglass."
"Why dragonglass?" Bran asked.
"It's one of the only things that can kill them," Alys supplied. "Fire, dragonglass, and Valyrian steel."
"The first is easy enough, if we've the fuel for it. The second takes shipping in, so we'll be doing that. As for the third..." Ned trailed off.
"There's not a great deal of Valyrian steel to be had in Westeros. Not that we can get into the North without upsetting people, anyway," Alys finished. "Ancestral weapons like Ice aren't just handed over, after all. Uncle, perhaps recruit the alchemists from King's Landing? We never tried using wildfire on the White Walkers, but I can't see it being less effective than normal fire."
"And Robert will be glad to get them out of King's Landing as well," Ned said, and nodded.
"Hey! Come and see what Robb has found!" Jon called from up ahead, where he and Robb had been racing.
~oOo~
They were so small. So impossibly small. She'd forgotten how small they ever were, they'd grown so fast. But there they were, still damp, with their eyes closed and their ears folded, only just born – their mother's last act before she succumbed to the prong of antler that was struck through her throat.
Gods, she was even still warm. Not still breathing, but still warm.
Alys ran her hands over the dead mother's side, and felt, to her surprise, one more lump in her middle.
"What are you doing?" Bran yelped when Alys drew her knife. He'd already picked up one of the pups for himself.
"There's another pup still in her," Alys answered, and sliced the mother's belly open. There was, indeed, another pup still there. Alys pulled it out of the bloody insides, and puffed at its nose. She stroked its back firmly. It started to wriggle, just a little, in her hold.
"Wouldn't a quick death have been better?" Theon asked.
"Not when there's a pup for every child who carries Stark Blood," Alys answered.
"There are?" Sansa asked eagerly.
Alys picked up the one that had the pattern she remembered of Lady, and passed it to Sansa. The pup that she had once named Nymeria, she gave to Arya. Robb and Bran had already picked pups for themselves, and Alys carried two – the one she'd just pulled from the mother, and Rickon's.
"You have problems counting?" Theon asked.
Alys rearranged the pups so that the two tiny bodies were both held tucked into the same arm, and pointed to where a bush was moving, just slightly.
Jon went to investigate, and withdrew an albino pup, red eyes already open. The only one more than mere hours old.
Alys passed Rickon's pup to Bran, and tucked her own into her cloak.
"I'll skin the mother," Alys volunteered. "Winter is coming. It would be a crime to waste a good pelt, and we won't find better than this."
Ned nodded solemnly.
"Very well," he said, "but you're all to raise and train them yourselves, not hand them off to the servants, and you'll treat them well, lest they become dangerous."
"Yes Father," his children all answered.
"Just so," Alys agreed, and stroked her new pup with one hand, before she got to the bloody business of skinning the poor mother.
~oOo~
When Alys finally returned to Winterfell – with her pup still tucked into the fold of her jerkin, and the rolled up, yet-untreated fur of the mother wolf on the back of her horse – she found Arya waiting for her.
"What are you calling yours?" Arya asked as Alys dismounted.
"Not the same thing I named her once," Alys answered with a nod to the pup that Arya was cradling to her chest. "I'll take some time to think about it."
"Alright," Arya said with a nod. She bit her lip. Looked down. Looked up. "What did you -?"
"No," Alys denied, gently cutting her off. "You cannot live your life based entirely on my decisions. Some of the decisions I had to make, you will hopefully never have to. As it is, the circumstances of when I was given my sword, when I was given Needle, will not be the same for you. I'm not going to take away naming your direwolf as well."
Arya nodded again, and shifted her hold on the pup she held against her chest, so that it was higher up and closer to her face.
"Nymeria," Arya decided, and looked up at Alys.
"Just so," Alys said with a faint smile. "Now, I've got to get this skin to the tannery, and then I've got to feed my little one. Go on, off with you."
Arya grinned, and raced off. She didn't quite notice that Alys said 'tannery' and not 'tanner'. Alys would deal with the skin herself. She just needed to use the stretching frames there. None of the ones she'd ever used while on Old Nan were big enough for a fully grown direwolf.
~oOo~
Alys sat in her cabin on board Old Nan. She might have gone to the godswood, but Lord Stark always sought his solace there after an execution, and Alys wasn't going to bring a puppy, whining with hunger even as she fed it, to his place of peace. The godswood might be three acres large, but still. It was the principle of the thing.
"And what shall I name you?" she asked the pup as it suckled on the teat she offered it.
It was a rich mixture of goat milk, eggs, powdered bone meal, and a couple of ingredients that Alys hadn't told her family about. She'd taken the liver, the heart, and the afterbirth from the mother. She'd wrapped them in the oilcloth that she'd taken along to bag the deserter's head in. Once on board her ship, Alys had treated Will's Face to join her collection, and had ground the mother's organs up to add to the pup's meals. Just a very little bit mixed in with each bottle. In part to make it last as long as possible, but also so that the pup wasn't overwhelmed by all that was in those organs.
What wasn't mixed in to what the pup was suckling on right now was being kept separate from the rest of the milk mixture, and cold.
"Shall I call you 'lovely girl', and think no further? No," Alys denied. "That's actually worse than Sansa calling one of your sisters Lady. Probably as bad as Rickon calling one of your brothers Shaggydog, but we must forgive Rickon, he's very small and doesn't know anything about anything much. Not even the difference between a direwolf pup and a regular dog pup."
A knock to her cabin door interrupted her little conversation.
"Come," she called.
The door opened to reveal Bran, his own direwolf pup had its head poking out of a pouch tied to Bran's belt.
"Freya said to fetch you," Bran said.
Alys raised an eyebrow at that.
Bran straightened.
"Captain, the first mate says you're wanted on deck for cast off," Bran reported more properly.
"Thank you," Alys said, and stood. She tucked her pup into a sling she'd made that held the pup to her chest, like some mothers carried their babes, and settled one hand on Needle's hilt while the other maintained hold on the bottle the pup was still suckling from. With that all arranged to her satisfaction, Alys stepped out, closed her cabin door behind her, and headed up.
Bran fell in behind her.
"Captain," Freya greeted.
"Freya," Alys answered. "We're ready to cast off, then?" she checked.
"Aye," Freya confirmed. "Just waiting on your word."
"Have we got enough of the milk mix to keep two growing pups fed?" Alys checked.
Freya chuckled.
"Aye," she confirmed.
"Then cast off, and let's go get some more dragonglass," Alys ordered.
"Aye aye, Captain," Freya confirmed. "Cast off!" she bellowed at the crew.
As she watched Bran scale the rigging with his pup in a pouch at his hip, Alys wondered how much the little direwolf actually liked being so high up.
~oOo~
"What does the North want with all this dragonglass?" Ser Davos asked, even as he watched another crate of the stuff get loaded on board Old Nan. "I didn't think the folks in the North cared for fripperies."
"Dragonglass is the best way to kill a White Walker," Alys answered, "unless you have Valyrian steel."
"And of the two, I know which one's more common," Ser Davos agreed with a tight nod. "But really? White Walkers? That's what you want dragonglass for?"
"Fire also works, but they'll keep moving for a while until they're properly burning," she said blithely.
He gave her a look, a very speaking look that said she knew very well what he was asking.
"The Wall was built because of White Walkers, Ser Davos," Alys told him, "and we've had a few deserters from the Night's Watch who've reported seeing them before Lord Stark took their heads. The Night's Watch, which despite the number of petty and not-so-petty criminals in it these days, started out as a holy order, standing watch on the Wall, guarding the realms of men from the Others, the White Walkers, and their giant ice spiders."
Ser Davos shivered.
"Dammit woman," he grumbled. "I don't believe in any of that any more than I do grumpkins and snarks, but Seven Hells do you make it all sound horribly possible."
"Just because no one south of the Wall has seen them for eight thousand years doesn't mean they don't exist," Alys said with a shrug. "Better to be prepared, than to be caught without so much as flint and tinder."
"Fair enough," Ser Davos allowed, "and if the North wants to throw good coin at us for it, then so much the better for Dragonstone."
"Just so," Alys agreed.
~oOo~
A good ship at full sail was a good deal faster than a good horse, especially if that good horse was moving at a walk due to having to keep pace with a large and badly-sprung wheelhouse. Which meant that in the time it took for the King's party – all three hundred of them – to travel from King's Landing to Winterfell, Old Nan had gone to Dragonstone, loaded up with dragonglass, and returned to Winterfell.
Bran, in the crow's nest with a spyglass, spotted the King's party in the distance, crawling up the Kingsroad, as Old Nan turned in to the bit of river that led right up to Winterfell – and her usual berth.
"They'll be a couple of days away from arriving then," Alys said when Bran reported the sighting to her. "Soon as we dock, you jump ship and go run and tell your parents."
"Aye aye, Captain!" Bran answered cheerfully.
~oOo~
"Did you pick a name yet?"
Alys looked over from where she was supervising the unloading of the dragonglass, and saw Arya and Jon both on a part of the dock that wasn't busy. Their direwolves were with them. Just like Alys's and Bran's, they'd grown a lot in the time Old Nan had been away from Winterfell. (Bran wasn't able to carry his pup in a bag on his hip any more. Now, he had to be strapped to Bran's back or remain on the deck and just watch his boy as Bran scaled the rigging.)
"With a lot of helpful suggestions from the crew to further confuse things, yes," Alys answered with a rueful smile.
"I still say you should have named her Eowyn!" called Freya.
"Syrah!"
"Mag!"
"Lucky!"
"As you can see, there is still a heated debate going on as to what names I should have picked, rather than the one I did," Alys said.
Jon and Arya laughed.
"At least young Bran picked a name everyone could agree on for his!"
Summer had been named faster than before, simply due to the plethora of suggestions that Bran had been offered, but the name had ultimately been the same this time as it had before by Alys's reckoning.
Alys gave a whistle, and her direwolf hauled herself up from where she'd been lying and trotted over.
"Jon, Arya, meet Mercy," Alys presented proudly, and stroked her hand across her direwolf's head gently. Her direwolf would be all the mercy Alys intended to give to her enemies.
~oOo~
Alys stood between Jon and Maester Luwin when the King and all his entourage arrived at Winterfell. Her hair was bound tightly in braids that twisted in a knot at the back of her head. An effort to be as unlike to her late aunt as possible – Lyanna, for all she'd been free-spirited, had also enjoyed being a lady just as much as Sansa. So long as none of her brothers actually called her on it. So no, Alys didn't even have the shortest wisps of hair flowing freely right now.
Alys Snow was, in fact, dressed in much the same manner as Arya Stark had been when she'd boarded Old Nan and begun her journey west, and left her sister, the Queen in the North, to rule their home. She'd actually been tempted to wear a different Face entirely, rather than run the risk of King Robert seeing her and mistaking her for Lyanna.
That was attention that Alys did not need, and definitely did not want. To that end, Alys planned to skip the welcome feast entirely, and dine aboard her ship. If there was any chance that King Robert would get a good look at her, take her for Lyanna, and drunkenly try to bed her, then Alys would wear the same title as Ser Jamie.
Which would be bad, because if she did that, then she would have broken guest rights. Not only that, but Joffrey would be declared king. Again. Alys would much prefer for Joffrey to die first – but again, guest rights.
Alys was quite sure that she could hear the horse grunting in discomfort as King Robert hauled his leg over and stepped down onto the box that had been brought for him. Gods. When had the man last been to the training yards? She could remember his avowing to take part in the melee during the Tourney of the Hand, and only that his armour didn't close around him had prevented him in the end.
Then he went and -
"You've got fat," the King said. To Lord Stark.
To a man who took the time to meet Alys in the training grounds at least once a week, so long as she wasn't on Old Nan on a trading mission on behalf of Winterfell.
Some days, Alys didn't know why she hadn't sailed down to King's Landing and killed every last one of them in their sleep. This looked like it was going to be another one of those days.
~oOo~
Alys collected Arya for training. When they reached the training yard, Ser Rodrik was supervising Bran and Tommen as they sparred with training swords, with Robb, Jon, and Theon watching on as well.
"Are you planning on making a spectacle of yourself, Alys?" Ser Rodrik asked, "or will the lads be able to continue their training without distractions?"
"If they get distracted when they're in a fight, then they're dead," Alys pointed out with a grin. "Is it not better they take their knocks now, rather than in battle?"
Ser Rodrik huffed.
"What jape is this?" Joffrey asked as he walked up, a smirk on his face. "A woman with a sword? And not even a proper sword!"
"I don't need to hack a man's head off to kill him," Alys answered simply, and ran an assessing eye over the prince. "Or in your case, order someone else to do it for lack of personal strength and skill."
Colour bloomed high on Joffrey's cheeks.
"And who are you, to dare say such things?" Joffrey spat.
"Alys Snow, only daughter of the late Brandon Stark, niece of Lord Eddard Stark, Captain of Old Nan, and a recognised master of the blade as judged by the First Sword to the Sealord of Braavos," she answered. Yes, she'd finally got around to getting her skill assessed by a man who had, once, taught her. Not that Syrio Forel remembered teaching her. It was good to see him alive and well, anyway. Even if he did not know her.
Alys also thought she was being very tactful in leaving off such titles as Faceless man, assassin, and Defeater of the Night King, the Bringer of Light.
The colour was rising even higher in Joffrey's face, while Alys maintained the calm expression she had learned while becoming No One.
"Will you face my accusations yourself, Prince Joffrey? Or prove them by ordering Clegane to fight me in your stead?" Alys asked. "Or even by walking away and refusing to fight me because I am beneath you?"
Joffrey scowled, but she'd neatly cornered him. He drew his sword.
"Arya," Alys said.
Arya tossed her a practice wooden sword.
"What?!" Joffrey spat, incensed at what he perceived to be a mockery of his person.
"Can't have a lowly bastard spilling royal blood, no matter what other relations and status I have," Alys explained with obvious disdain. "Not even in the training yard."
~oOo~
That evening, when Joffrey appeared at the table covered in bruises, to the vocal distress of his mother, the Hound reported that these Northron folk took their training very seriously, and that Prince Joffrey had underestimated his opponent in the training yard.
"I want that bastard dead!" Joffrey howled.
"For beating you up in the training yard?" Robert scoffed.
"And while the Prince used live steel, and Snow used a wooden training sword," Sandor supplied with barely concealed delight at making such a report. "His highness here didn't land so much as a single glancing hit."
Robert scowled at his son.
"Clearly, those who have been teaching you to fight down in King's Landing have been doing you no favours," the King said. "No one is dying for finally pounding it into your head that whoever you've been sparring with in the past has either always let you win, or they've been genuinely shit at teaching you the sword."
"If I may," Lord Stark spoke up. "Which Snow? My natural son? Or my brother Brandon's girl?"
"The girl," Sandor answered. "Then your younger daughter bruised his pride as badly as the bastard girl did his face. By doing better in a spar against her than the prince did."
"You've got a niece, Ned?" Robert asked, surprised. "Why have I not heard of this before?"
"Brandon sired her when I was at the Eyrie with you, and Father was negotiating with Lord Hoster Tully for Brandon to marry Catelyn," Ned explained. "Brandon and Father had decided to put her on a ship bound to explore west of Westeros just before..." he breathed deeply. "Just before they died. She only returned to us with the fruits of her discoveries a couple of years ago. I learned of her when I was going through the expenses of House Stark after the Rebellion. After that, I saw no point in speaking of a girl I didn't even know for sure was still alive."
"That makes sense," Robert agreed, "and she returned skilled at fighting, did she?"
"She's since been declared a master of the blade by the First Sword of the Sealord of Braavos," Ned answered. "She's been in charge of most of Winterfell's own sea trade since she came back to us, including increasing its capacity. Of course, sailing the Narrow Sea means she occasionally also has to fight off pirates."
Robert nodded.
"She gives me bruises too, when I spar with her," Ned admitted lightly, "and if you sparred with her, your Grace, I've no doubt she'd leave you black and blue as well."
Robert roared with laughter.
"She sounds like a savage," the Queen denounced with a sneer.
Lord Stark shrugged at that. He could defend Alys, he knew. There were so many things she could do beyond just fight with occasionally frightening skill. She wouldn't thank him if he did though, and he knew it. So Ned lived up to his name of 'the Quiet Wolf', and he kept his mouth shut.
Well...
"Just so," Lord Stark said.
~oOo~
Apart from beating Joffrey black and blue – and that in front of doughy little Tommen, who had looked very pleased indeed to see his horrible elder brother so thoroughly set down upon – Alys had been avoiding the Royal Family and everybody that had come to Winterfell with them. Thrashing Joffrey might, perhaps, have been a little bit too satisfying.
He'd always topped her List, and she'd never got to kill him for herself. Learning that he'd been poisoned at his own wedding wasn't as satisfying as it would have been to slip him the poison herself. It didn't even begin to approach the justice that would have been cutting off Joffrey's head, the way he'd ordered the removal of her father's.
For the chance to do that, she would have taken up Ice, though it was longer from tip to pommel than she was tall. That would have been true justice.
"What are you thinking of?" Benjen asked, a half a smile on his face.
"Old dreams," Alys answered softly, and shook herself out of it. "Will said the entire wildling party they'd been sent to find in the haunted woods was wights, that they definitely took the noble who was leading their ranging, and that they'd probably also taken a man called Gared."
"Gared was an older, more experienced Ranger. He was supposed to be minding Waymar, but the lad wasn't just younger son, he was a youngest son. Worse than that, he was knighted right before they sent him to the Wall. It's as likely he wouldn't have listened beyond being told he was in charge of the Ranging," Benjen said with a frustrated sigh. "We get too many of those, for all we never have enough men at all. Give me a dozen poachers and pickpockets over a single Southron knight any day."
Jon looked askance at his uncle for that last comment.
"The petty criminals don't come in thinking they know anything," Benjen explained to his nephew, "and they still know a good deal more of tracking than the noble sons do, and tracking is what we do more than most anything else, for all that no one goes beyond the Wall who can't fight."
"Did you have a hard time adjusting, Uncle Benjen?" Alys asked.
Benjen shook his head, but not in negation.
"Of course I did," he admitted. "I'd been running Winterfell while Ned was fighting in the Rebellion, and then when he came back from the fighting with Lyanna's bones... I was a mess when I went, but I helped the other recruits with their sword work and their letters, let myself be taught when they knew things I didn't, usually about tracking, and I found family there. Every one of those men on the Wall is as much my brother as your father is."
"The ones that have been there more than a moon's turn, anyway," Alys said with a smirk.
"Aye," Benjen agreed with a huff, "but if we could get back to the wights and the map, Niece?"
Maps of the lands beyond the Wall were... of dubious quality, generally speaking. The one they were all standing around now was one that Benjen himself had made. It was as accurate as he could make it, and as the First Ranger, he went on such Rangings as allowed for him to make a very fair map indeed.
Alys set the small, white-painted and simply-carved figure atop the map where the haunted woods was marked.
"Eight or nine days from the Wall, a fortnight if it snowed..." she mused, and moved the little figure a bit deeper in.
There were other little white figures that had been sat atop the map. There were also figures that had not been painted (to represent the wildlings) as well as one that was painted red (Bloodraven), a few that were painted yellow (giants and their mammoth herds), and finally, a couple of black figures, to represent where members of the Night's Watch had been sent Ranging. The positions of every little marker was based on the most recent information that could be had.
"They're advancing," Benjen noted. "We'll be dealing with a King Beyond the Wall soon enough. Alys, you said Mance Rayder united them?"
"I'm pretty sure it was Mance that united them, aye," Alys confirmed. "He'd been killed and Tormund Giantsbane was leading the Free Folk by the time I returned."
"On the Wall," Benjen noted.
"There weren't enough Black Brothers to man every castle. There were, however, enough of Tormund's people to cover -"
A puppy's distressed howl sounded out and Alys cut herself off. Her eyes widened with horror. She thought, she'd hoped, all hells, she'd prayed -! Alys took off at a sprint. She wouldn't get there in time, she knew she wouldn't. She'd been talking with Jon and Uncle Benjen in her navigation office aboard Old Nan. They weren't even properly in Winterfell.
Alys vaulted from the deck straight onto one of the horses that was hobbled at the dock, and spurred it into a gallop. Behind her, Mercy made the same leap from ship to shore, and raced after her. Jon, Ghost, and Benjen likewise raced after her, though only Benjen copied her leap over the side of the ship.
Unlike Jon, Benjen had been told of Bran's fall, and his later journey beyond the Wall to meet the Bloodraven. As such, unlike Jon, Benjen absolutely understood the urgency. (He was also a man grown, and better able to jump the gap than young Jon, who was neither as practised at such things as Alys was, nor yet quite as long-limbed as his uncle.)
~oOo~
"Alys!" Lady Catelyn cried, when she arrived at Maester Luwin's door, and flung herself at the younger woman.
Alys caught her, and held her tightly.
"Cat," Benjen said, and wrapped his own arm around his good-sister's shoulders, even as she clung to Alys. "Cat, what happened?"
"He broke both of his arms," came the answer, spoken in between shaking breaths. "And is insensible from milk of the poppy right now, but he will be fine. He will walk again. He will even climb again. Thanks to you and your crew teaching him how to catch himself from a fall. He protected his head, and did not land upon his spine. He'll be alright."
"Will he be able to tell Uncle what happened when he gets back from the hunt?" Alys asked quietly.
Catelyn shook her head.
"In the morning," she corrected. "Bran will be kept asleep until then."
"I'll sit up with Bran tonight," Jon offered. "Make sure no more harm comes to him."
Lady Stark looked up from where she'd near-buried her face in Alys's hair.
"Thank you, Jon," she said. "I'll be staying up to watch over Bran as well. We can talk."
Jon blinked at that.
"We're long overdue a talk between us, I think," Catelyn admitted.
Alys gave the Lady of Winterfell a comforting squeeze.
~oOo~
"It turns out," Robert announced to all those gathered for the midday meal, "that young Bran Stark did not simply fall while climbing the walls of his home, but was pushed. Pushed for coming upon a scene that those committing it would, I am certain, prefer to have never been witnessed. A scene which throws into serious doubt the legitimacy of Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella as my children. A scene which, here in the North, would see the perpetrators heads removed from their shoulders even before the matter of breaking guest rights was brought up."
Myrcella and Tommen looked surprised and distressed at the revelation that they might not be their father's children, and Joffrey was equally shocked, but there was also hate twisted up in his features – he knew very well who was to blame if he wasn't the son of the king, after all. Queen Cersei was very, very still in her seat. Ser Jamie was equally still in his.
"Queen Cersei, Ser Jamie, you are accused of incest. You were witnessed committing this crime by Brandon Stark. You are accused of breaking guest rights. You committed this crime against Brandon Stark because he witnessed you in the act of the aforementioned crime of incest. You are further accused of treason, for trying to pass of the children of your incest as the children of your king. The children will be remanded to the care and custody of their grandfather, the Lord Tywin Lannister, and will leave at first light tomorrow. I've already sent him a raven detailing all of this. Know that I send the children away so quickly to spare them from having to witness the execution of their parents, which is required by law and will take place as soon as the children are away."
~oOo~
Alys stood in the shadows to watch the execution.
Cersei hadn't been much of a deterrent, but where even a bastard girl could say she wouldn't let herself be dishonoured by a married man, a king without a queen was free to marry whomsoever he chose. Politically astute choices were better, but Robert was still obsessed with Lyanna even all these years later.
If he caught sight of her, and decided she was Lyanna brought back from the dead? She could refuse him all she liked, but doing so would just make matters difficult awkward for Lord Stark, and possibly difficult for the North. Better to stay out of sight until he'd married again, and Alys could use any one of her dozen excuses to fend off casual lust, rather than determination to wed.
Yes, a raven had been sent to Varys in King's Landing, telling the Spider to let families with daughters of marriageable age know that the King found himself in need of a new Queen. One, ideally, that would provide him with children that were actually his.
That did not mean that Alys was out of danger. Just that King Robert was aware enough of the needs of King and Kingdom, and that she had so far been successful in hiding from him.
She would not miss watching Cersei lose her head though. She wasn't going to get to remove the woman's head herself, but she could live with that. She'd still get to witness it.
It was still Ice that removed their heads, and Lord Stark who swung the sword, because King Robert was still wedded to Cersei. It was enough.
Alys still made sure to find Lord Tyrion afterwards and give him her sympathies. Alys knew very well, after all, what it was to lose a beloved sibling – and she also knew that, though there was no love lost between Lord Tyrion and his sister, he had loved Ser Jamie very well.
~oOo~
Alys was going to take Sansa, Arya, Jon, their direwolves, and Septa Mordane on Old Nan to visit Sunspear before turning around and heading back to King's Landing. She had offered to take Lord Tyrion as well, but Lord Tyrion planned to see the Wall before heading south again. She would also have taken Bran (he was part of her crew, well and truly, by this point) but he was still restricted to his bed because of his broken arms and regular doses of milk of the poppy to help with the pain.
Jon would be squiring to Prince Oberyn. It had been Sansa's idea, actually. She had proposed the idea to her father, then by letter to Prince Oberyn, and then told Jon he was going to become a knight, and no, he didn't get any say in the matter. He could still join the Night's Watch after he'd been knighted. He wouldn't be the first knight to take the Black, and he wouldn't be the last.
But Prince Oberyn would make certain that Jon learned about all the things he would be giving up when he swore the oath all the Black Brothers swore when they joined the Night's Watch. He would not knight Jon and release him to go join the Night's Watch until he'd tried everything enough times to say what he did and didn't like.
Which fit with the advice Benjen had given to his nephew, and satisfied Lord Stark that Jon would be safe and cared for in the coming years.
There was just one thing Alys and Jon had to do before Old Nan launched.
"We've got something for you, and it has to be packed very carefully," Jon announced as the pair of them entered Arya's room while she was settling her things into her trunk.
"A present?" Arya asked with a bright, eager smile.
"Close the door," Alys advised.
Arya didn't hesitate except to check both ways up and down the hall before doing so.
Alys sat on Arya's bed, and Jon presented Arya with a sword that, except in the decorative detailing around the crossguard and pommel, was identical to Needle.
"This is not a toy, or a training sword," Jon warned. "It's properly sharp, and the same as Alys's mostly. Not meant to hack a man's head off, but you'll be able to poke him full of holes if you're quick enough."
"I can be quick," Arya insisted.
Jon and Alys both chuckled.
"Yes, so we've all seen," Jon agreed.
"Mikken made it for you special, and compared to mine as he went to make sure they weren't completely identical," Alys spoke up. "Repeat the first lesson?"
"Stick 'em with the pointy end," Arya chirped.
"And lesson two?" Alys pressed with an arched brow.
"Don't get hit," Arya recited. "Lesson three is don't touch your friends with your blade, unless you've converted to the Seven and you're knighting someone."
Alys nodded in approval.
"What are you going to name it?" Jon asked.
"I've been thinking about it, since Alys's sword is already called Needle," Arya admitted softly. "I'll call my sword Pin."
~oOo~
Prince Oberyn and Ellaria and some of their daughters were waiting for Old Nan, or more precisely, they were waiting for her passengers. They had wide, eager smiles on their faces, and Sansa and Arya were both leaning over the rails and waving in greeting. Propriety, they had learned on their previous visit to Dorne, had a time and place – and that time and place was not reuniting with friends on the quayside.
Once Sansa was within arms-reach of Oberyn, he scooped her up and twirled her around.
"Look at you!" he crowed. "So tall, it would be easy to mistake you for a woman grown!"
"And yet I seem to be growing still," Sansa answered him. "Put me down, my prince, and let me greet Ellaria!"
"Hello, my dear," Ellaria greeted, and kissed each of Sansa's cheeks – a gesture she returned. "It is a joy to see you again."
"And you," Sansa answered.
"Now where is this brother of yours?" Prince Oberyn asked. "The one I am to take as my squire? Do not look at me so, Lady Sansa, there is no way to talk about having a squire that cannot be taken multiple ways, once a person knows my interests."
"Especially if they know that Ser Daemon, who was also Prince Oberyn's squire once, is also sometimes his lover," Ellaria agreed with a grin. Ser Daemon was also sometimes her lover too, after all. Usually at the same time that he was Oberyn's.
Sansa rolled her eyes, but smiled all the same.
"Jon!" she called. "Come and meet Prince Oberyn!"
Jon, with Ghost trotting at his side, separated himself from those members of the crew who were unloading his own trunks onto the dock.
"Lady Sansa, you did not tell us your brother was so handsome!" Prince Oberyn said. "Why did you not warn me?"
Jon blushed at being called handsome, but did not lower his head.
"It's not typical for a girl to look at her brother and think of how handsome he is," Sansa answered pertly. "Not in the North, anyway. Incest is an executable offence."
"As was recently proven when the late Queen Cersei and her brother, the equally late Ser Jamie, were found tumbling together, yes," Prince Oberyn said softly. The ravens had gone out to all of the Seven Kingdoms, after all, detailing exactly why King Robert was in want of a new queen.
Really, cuckolding the King was a bad idea in the first place. To do so with not only someone who looked nothing like the King, but with a sibling? It was patently stupid.
Arya dragged Dorea and Loreza over to meet Jon, and to be included in the general conversation.
Old Nan would stay in port for a few days. Enough time for the Stark sisters to catch up with their Dornish friends properly, for them to see Jon settled comfortably in among the Dornish, and for Prince Doran to pack his daughter, the Princess Arianne, along with Oberyn's daughters Nymeria and Tyene, onto Old Nan so that they could be taken to King's Landing along with Sansa and Arya.
Time enough for Prince Oberyn and Prince Doran to have a quiet talk in the cool of the evening with Alys, and ask her about the true parentage of her cousin Jon Snow.
"You ask for the answer to a secret that Lord Stark has not shared with either his wife, nor with Jon himself," Alys told them softly.
"And yet, we have eyes, and memory sharp enough, to recall the shape of Targaryen features," Prince Doran said, just as softly, "and with your own face before us, it is also easy to recall the visage of your aunt, the Lady Lyanna. In Jon Snow, we can see such features combined."
"What were no doubt considered Stark grey eyes in the North shine with Targaryen purple beneath the Dornish sun," Prince Oberyn added.
"Just so," Alys answered. It was no answer at all, and yet answer enough.
~oOo~
Despite no longer being slowed down by a wheelhouse, the King still took a month to return to King's Landing – enjoying imagining himself a hedge knight with no responsibilities to the kingdom for a short while, apparently – by which time Old Nan had made port.
Princess Arianne had settled herself into apartments somewhere in the city with Nym and Tyene, but Sansa and Arya stayed aboard Old Nan until Lord Stark arrived in King's Landing. Not to say that the girls didn't explore the city, but they did so with the crew of Old Nan as their guards, and they returned to the safety of the ship at night.
News finally came that King Robert and Lord Stark would arrive at King's Landing the next day, and that night Alys covered her face with Will's, and crept through the darkened streets.
Will traded coppers to the smallfolk for information on Petyr Baelish, and finally found his way to the residence of the Master of Coin, through the back door, and up to the Littlefinger's rooms.
There, Will damped a pillow with a potent spirit that Alys had learned the brewing of while across the Sunset Sea. It worked in a way akin to Sweetsleep, but needed only be breathed deeply in. It would also evaporate away after a time if left in open air, and would never be discovered.
The damped pillow was set gently over Baelish's face, and when his chest had risen and fallen twice, Will pushed down.
He never waked as he was smothered to death.
Alys carefully took his Face, and immediately wore it. She needed the memories of Petyr Baelish to find out his secrets, and he had so many. Where he kept the gold he stole, where he kept the gold that came to him through his brothels, and where he had last seen the dagger that matched the one that rested on Alys's hip, opposite Needle.
Alys peeled off his Face again, replaced it with Will's, and stole a few of the little treasures that Petyr Baelish had acquired over his lifetime and never told anybody about. Among them were a few more pieces of Valyrian steel – necklaces and rings, in fact. He'd been collecting them to have them eventually taken to Tobho Mott to be reforged into a blade – and, of all things, a dragon's egg.
It was stone of course, but so were the three that Danaerys had hatched in the pyre of her husband and child. A husband she had just married, and a child she may not even be carrying yet.
Petyr Baelish's Face joined Walder Frey's in the small case of Faces that Alys kept despite having no intention to ever wear them again (as opposed to the likewise-small case that held those Faces that Alys kept with the intention to use regularly) and then she went to sleep.
King Robert arrived to the news that his Master of Coin was dead, and that he needed a new one. The sooner the better, as it is discovered rather quickly during the investigation of his death that the previous Master of Coin had been taking advantage of the Crown's inclination towards indulgence – and disinclination towards counting coppers – and had dug the Iron Throne deeply into debt with both the Iron Bank and the Lannisters in order to line his own pockets. The funds and businesses claimed from him as a sort of post-death punishment were not enough to repay the debts that Lord Baelish created in the name of the crown, and so the urgency for someone both competent and a measure more trustworthy.
Fortunately, there were a great many representatives from the many Houses of Westeros present in King's Landing already, due to ravens having been sent from Winterfell that the King was in need of a new wife.
~oOo~
When word got around about the financial state of the Iron Throne – as it must, when a new Master of Coin was being sought while a great many nobles were in the capital hoping to entice the King to marry their daughters – it rather polarised matters among the families who were angling to have their daughters made Queen.
There were those who had no desire to associate themselves with such a debt, even through marriage to the crown. They had no desire to risk their coffers being emptied to pay the crown's outstanding debts. Nor to supplement the King's lifestyle that was so rich as to allow for the previous Master of Coin to be able to slip away such sums as he had without anybody noticing.
And the sums that Petyr Baelish had stolen had also become public knowledge. As had the fact that recouping those sums and his businesses would repay scarcely one sixth of the total debt owed by the Iron Throne to its lenders.
Lenders which included the Iron Bank of Braavos, and Lord Tywin Lannister – whose eldest two children had just been executed by order of the King.
Frankly, all that considered, and also adding in Robert's known proclivity to whores, it was more surprising that anybody was left at all that had any interest in marrying King Robert.
In truth, after only a sennight in the capital, most families withdrew back to their keeps, castles, and lands, thinking to make safer matches with their neighbours. Some of them even seemed to be considering the happiness of their daughters when they left King's Landing.
Only Maegery Tyrell remained that was determined to marry King Robert, and a great many people looked at the girl askance for it. They looked at her father with even greater dubiousness, as it was very clear that he was the one really pushing for it. That even Lady Olenna Tyrell merely pursed her lips and said nothing...
Well, there were many people giving the Tyrells the most polite side-eye it was possible to give. Which didn't stop any of them from attending her wedding to King Robert.
~oOo~
Lessons with Arya had ended for the day, and Alys was headed down to the Black Cells before she returned to Old Nan for the night. Oh, she had a room of her own in the Tower of the Hand, just as Sansa and Arya did, just as all of the servants that had come with Lord Stark did, and just as all of her crew did. Alys still preferred to row out to her ship every night and sleep in the security of her own cabin.
Alys went down to the Black Cells once a sennight, and brought skins of weak beer for whatever poor souls were being kept there. She carried a candle, rather than a torch, to spare the eyes of the men who squinted up at her.
She was slowly mapping the many twists and turns of King's Landing. All the places where things were hidden away. Secret passages, hidden caches, and resting places for spies. She cleaned the former, killed the latter, and claimed the caches as she found them. The bowels of Old Nan were beginning to get quite full. She would have to make a trade journey soon.
Alys's candle caught upon hair that was red and white, and a face she had not seen for quite some time, but which was nevertheless her truest reason for coming down to the Black Cells. Whatever other reasons she gave – memorising every secret passage, ferreting out the hidden things of King's Landing, just straight up avoiding King Robert and the court – this was the truest of them, and the only one she'd never given to anybody but herself.
She passed one of the skins of weak beer she had brought to the Black Cells through the bars to him. The last of them.
He drank.
"A man thanks a lovely woman for her generosity," he said once he had lowered the skin from his lips. His voice that was coarse silk over steel, low and sweet, and as heady as Dornish wine.
"A woman is not done being generous," Alys said as she knelt beside his cell and withdrew her lockpicks from the cuff of her boot.
A slide, a push, a pull, a twist, and a soft click. The door opened. She reached for the shackle around his ankle, and did the same.
"Come," Alys instructed lowly as she rose to her feet and took up her candle once again. A small smile tugged at her lips when she heard him following her.
He followed her into the rowboat, where Mercy was waiting for them. Alys introduced Mercy to him, but not herself, and did not yet ask his name. He followed her up the rope ladder – Alys carried Mercy over her shoulders – and into her cabin. Once all three were inside, and the door closed, Mercy curled up on the rug in front of the door.
Guarding it. Blocking it.
"The water-closet is through there, if a man wishes to clean himself," Alys offered with a gesture to the small door that was almost at the back of her cabin. "There are soaps, lotions, perfumes, brushes, a shaving razor, and there should be hot water. Please don't use it all. A woman wants to wash herself as well when a man is done."
"A man is most grateful," he said, and presently disappeared through the door.
While he saw to his ablutions, Alys stripped off her brigandine, gambeson, and breeches, and set her weapons into what were their places when she wasn't wearing them. She undid the braids of her hair. In nothing but her shirt and smallclothes, Alys sat at her table and poured herself a drink.
There was a knock at the door – the door to her cabin, rather than the one that connected to her water-closet – and she rose to answer it.
"Dinner, Captain," presented Gydo, the ship's cook. "Freya said you've a guest, so there's more food than just for you and Mercy."
"My thanks, Gydo," Alys said, and stepped aside to let her in.
Gydo had a tray balanced on each hand, and a bowl balanced on her wrapped head – the wrapping helped keep the bowl steady. Gydo first set the trays down on Alys's table, and then lifted the bowl down from her head for Mercy.
"Have a good night, Captain," Gydo bid.
"You also," Alys answered.
A man emerged, freshly cleaned and shaved, not long after. He also emerged with only a soft towel wrapped around his waist, and his dirty clothes bundled in one hand.
"Those go there," Alys directed, with a gesture to her laundry basket. "There is sure to be some clothing that will fit a man in one of the chests. For now, a man should help himself to the food while a woman cleans herself."
"A man thanks a woman," he said, but there was curiosity in his eyes as she stood and walked past him.
~oOo~
A man had found a large, ivory-coloured night-shirt that fell to his knees, and was open from his neck to the base of his sternum, and was sitting at her table, eating his portion of the dinner Gydo had provided for them.
She was freshly scrubbed and her modesty covered only by a towel that was wrapped around her body from just below her arms to the tops of her thighs. Truly, her modesty was not terribly well covered, but both her breasts and her womanhood were hidden from view by the fluffy towel she wore.
Alys settled casually on the chair opposite him. She hadn't exactly made much of a start on her own dinner before it was her turn to wash, after all. She didn't bother to dress. Simply sat on the chair in nought but her towel.
(She wasn't worried that he might have found her Faces. She'd directed him to find something to wear in one of the chests, and her faces weren't kept in any of the chests. Even if he had found them, Alys would tell him the truth. To this Face, Alys would always answer truthfully, whatever question was asked.)
"A woman is honoured to be Captain Alys Snow of Old Nan, and daughter of House Stark of the North," she offered.
"A man is honoured to be Jaqen H'ghar, once of the Free City of Lorath," he answered. "A man also wonders why a woman took him from the Black Cells."
"Many reasons," she said. (She would answer him truthfully. That did not mean she would answer fully or without riddles. He'd made her earn her answers once. It was her turn.)
He said nothing. He watched. He waited for her to speak one of them.
"A man has been in a woman's dreams for many years," Alys admitted.
An intrigued eyebrow twitched upwards.
"Some of the dreams were pleasant things," Alys allowed, and took some food from her plate with a quick smile before she sobered. "But in just as many, a woman found a man dead, and cried for his loss. Then, when she reached to cradle him in her arms, the skin sloughed away from his face and there was nothing beneath. Not flesh or skull, just a darkened hollow, and a woman wept for the loss of him again, and even more bitterly."
His gaze was more wary than most would expect from an attractive man in only a night-shirt who was looking at a lovely woman in only a towel while sat in her bedroom.
"A woman dreamed of a man," he said, his tone just as wary as his gaze.
"The first time a woman saw a man's face, she was a girl not yet flowered," she answered. "When she was a lonely girl, she dreamed of a man as her friend. A girl dreamed that a man offered to teach her how to kill her enemies for herself, or perhaps she tricked him into agreeing to do so. Perhaps it was both at once. Dreams are like that, sometimes."
The man inclined his head in acknowledgement and his lips twitched ever-so-slightly in amusement.
"This is why a woman has taken a man from the Black Cells and brought him to her private chambers?" he asked.
"A woman did these things because she wanted to know the man who had been haunting her dreams. To know that he is real, a man with wants and dreams of his own. To know that he is more than just a Face that haunts her dreams and vanishes with the dawn," Alys answered firmly.
She rose from her seat and grabbed her own night-shirt from beneath her pillow. She drew it over her head and let her towel drop from under it.
"A woman's bed is large enough for two," she said. "It had to be, for many of the other women on the crew were rescued from bad situations, and only being held by the captain that saved them was able to gentle them to sleep for the first sennight of their freedom. A man may likewise share a woman's bed tonight, or he may find a blanket and hammock if that is more to his liking. Either way, there will be a warm meal and a chance to speak more in the morning."
~oOo~
A woman smiled when she woke to the feeling of another's feet tangled together with her own, a strong arm curled her waist, warm skin beneath her hand, and the regular thump of a steady heartbeat beneath her ear as her head rested on a firm chest. This was not the position she had fallen asleep in. Indeed, she had still been alone in her bed when she had closed her eyes and slipped from wakefulness.
He had joined her in her bed.
It was a promising beginning.
~The End~
