If you've read this far, you know I like cliffhangers :) I promise we will find out what happened to Sandor next week. Jon Snow will also be in that chapter. I didn't include every character in this fic but I wanted to at least give hints about what happened to all the major ones.

Arya has one more chapter after this. We haven't seen her in a while but she has a major part to play in the story, besides how she warged with Nymeria to help Sansa and Sandor make it safely through the Neck. And it's not killing the Night King, hah . . . .

CHAPTER 37

ARYA

Three figures met in Jaqen H'ghar's dark office—himself, Arya, and her old, gouty, and inept faceless training teacher. They knelt, cramped together, on silk floor pillows in the lantern-lit room. Her old friend formed the point of the triangle while she and the teacher made its base. Arya hated that it had come to this. Jaqen looked passively between the guilty-looking Arya and the teacher's twisted mug.

"She is a stupid, lazy, brash, entitled, selfish, ugly, awful little girl! I cannot teach her. She sleeps through every class!"

"That's not true!" Arya shot back. She hadn't slept through every class. She'd made it through a few.

"I have half a mind to hold her back, but I don't want her in my class again. I won't teach her anymore! What is the point? She is a waste of time, of breath, of life!"

"Just so," Jaqen spoke softly and gave a sympathetic nod to the teacher. He chanced a glance at red-faced Arya, who dropped her head in shame.

"Why did you bring her here?" Her teacher continued to rail against her. "She will never become a Faceless Man!"

"Leave the girl here. A man can talk some sense into a stubborn child."

"You can try! But I won't teach her again." The fat man stood up, gathering his rough-spun robes around him, and maneuvered around Arya. She recoiled from his stench and he sighed at her impudence before slamming the door behind him.

Jaqen sighed, too, and rose to study one of the room's paintings with his hands clasped behind his back. It was a scene of ships coming and going in the harbor at Braavos. Since there were no windows in the room, the paintings served the purpose of having something to look at. Arya felt insecure, wondering if she would be expelled, but steeled her heart so that she wouldn't cry in front of Jaqen.

After a time he asked softly, "Little girl, who are you?"

"No one!" She answered too loud, sounding desperate even to herself. A lie.

"Hmm. A man doesn't think so." He moved away from the painting and stood in front of Arya. She looked up to face him defiantly. "A man thinks that even after all this time, and all these lessons, a girl is still Arya of House Stark."

"I'm not!" Arya whined, unable to stop the pained expression that crossed her countenance.

"A girl is. And a girl will be, for so long as she keeps that face." He knelt again on the silk pillow. "Perhaps a girl should not be so put out. It is not a bad thing to be a princess. Is there a girl the world over who has not dreamed to be born so lucky?" He smiled. "And here a princess is."

"I'm not!" Arya shouted and threw herself at his feet. "I'm not a princess! I'm not Arya! I'm no one, no one, no one!"

Jaqen's voice was soft, consoling her. "What does a girl chase in her dreams, then? The past? The future?" And then, barely a whisper, "Her family?"

Arya yowled and wailed at the floor. She wouldn't fail her training! She wouldn't lose herself, she wouldn't be sent away, not again! Jaqen and her studies were all she had.

"A man thinks a girl will always be Arya of House Stark. This is the path the Gods have chosen."

Arya sobbed, shaking her head against her fate. "No. No!"

"Shhh, lovely girl. It's no matter. If a girl, even a princess, is meant to give the gift of the Many-Faced God, then just so will she pass her final test."

Arya sat up, wiping the tears from her eyes with her forearm. "You aren't going to send me away?"

"No, not yet. There are places in this House even for those who cannot pass their Faceless training. The world must see what fate the Gods have for a girl as talented as this one is at swords and sneaking, despite her failures at deception. Come to the graduation assembly with the rest of the students," he winked at her, "just don't sleep through it."

Arya took the promise that she could graduate and bowed gratefully before leaving the room. She could have hugged Jaqen but felt she had embarrassed herself enough with her exaggerated displays of emotion. Her heart pounding, she finished the day practicing athletics in an effort to burn off her nervous energy.

Arya never returned to the basement class, but sat in rapt attention and studied hard in all the others. She tried to discern what she had missed through notes borrowed from her classmates, but it was too little, too late. She tried to change her face on her own in front of the mirror in her and Mym's room, but it never worked.

Her wolf dreams abandoned her, too. She knew it was better not to have them—they were too exhausting and distracting—but she missed them. The loss brought with it deep sleep and easy-to-come-by rest. Once in a while she woke up with the taste of blood in her mouth and the feeling of a full stomach, but that was it. She never again saw her sister.

It was Sansa who got lost in dreams, not me, Arya mused. Still, she prayed every night. Dunsen. Raff the Sweetling. Ser Gregor, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn. Queen Cersei. News traveled slowly across the sea, but Arya heard rumors about the people on her list from those who came to pray at the temple. Dunsen and Raff, blurry figures from her memory, died in battle. Ser Ilyn died at Moat Cailin, unable to warn Jaime Lannister's garrison of approaching hostiles because his cut-out tongue rendered him mute. Ser Meryn stayed at King's Landing to guard the Queen and was pulled from his horse and cannibalized by starving peasants. Ser Gregor was killed by the Prince of Dorne's poisoned spear, but later, some came and said that he had been revived and walked again. Even the God of Death did not want him, Arya joked with herself. If it were true, she wondered if that didn't make him like the Hound—who was no longer the same person as when she had put him on her list. So she let Gregor fall off it, too.

Just before falling asleep on the night before graduation, Arya lamely whispered the only name she had left. "Queen Cersei."

The next day the students dressed in their black and white dress robes and filed into the auditorium. At twilight the crisp desert air dropped on them cold and stars filled the sky above. Jaqen took the podium. This speech would be his parting words for his graduating students.

"A proud man's children gather before him, eager to begin the next chapter of their lives. Many paths brought them here, as many paths as there are faces. A man sees many children, many faces, many paths.

"But in truth, there is only one path. There is only path because there is only one God. True, men may worship other Gods while they live and breathe on this planet, but in the end all paths lead the same way. All paths lead to Him, the Many-Faced God. All lives end in death.

"A man is proud of his devoted, religious children. A man knows that when they go to bed at night, they pray. Do a man's children know the great sums and riches given to the temple in hopes that some acolyte within will hear their prayers? Do a man's children realize why some riches are accepted, but some are not; why some prayers are answered, and others not? Do a man's children know that all people have their paths laid out by God?

"A man's children have grown up and will soon be allowed to meet with clients. The client will not know the man or woman who hears him. But a man or a woman will know. A man or a woman will hear the word, and give the gift. Valar morghulis." All men must die.

"Valar dohaeris." All men must serve. Arya chanted in time with the rest of the students. They flipped their robes inside out, reversing the order of black and white fabric so that the black was on the right and the white on the left, marking them all as priests of the order. That was the end of the ceremony, and the graduates filed neatly out of the auditorium.

What in Seven Hells was that supposed to mean? Arya wondered. She met Gogo and Mym outside in the desert sand. Gogo had nicked a bottle of Dornish red from an altar and the three of them snuck away to drink it beneath the stone pillars in the desert ruins, making merry until sunlight threatened as a gray band on the horizon. Only then did they finally crawl to their beds and sleep the rest of the morning away.

The following night Arya put on her long black and white robes and flipped up the hood, dressing as a proper priest. She strapped her braided sandals to her feet and entered the temple to resume her usual duties. She swept the entranceway, changed wax candles, removed rotting foods and fruits from altars. The high priests drained a poisoned pool and Arya scrubbed it before it was filled again with black water. She continued to help her Lyseni swordmaster train the younger students, but without her own classes the days blended into one another monotonously. Though she scarcely kept track of the time, Arya lived like this for an entire year.

Meanwhile, her classmates slowly disappeared. There we are all present in the temple the day after graduation, but day by day she noticed more of them missing. They disappeared so silently that Arya was not sure when they left, with whom, or why. But some she was able to piece together. Every day, the priests heard prayers from those who came to the House of Black and White to pray for death—their own, or another's. One day a man who had sold his own daughters into slavery came to the temple. He had learned what the slaver had done to them and asked for his own death as penance. He gave all his money in tribute—as much as he had got for his daughters, and more. The next day, Arya's roommate Mym was gone. A month later, a Lazarene man came and prayed for the death of a Khal that had slaughtered his tribe. After that, Arya never saw Gogo again. Finally, of all her classmates, Arya was the only one left.

She guessed that it was not her fate to go on one of these missions. She had failed her training, after all. Jaqen had let her save some face by graduating. If there was some riddle she was supposed to solve, or test she was supposed to pass, it hadn't occurred to her. So she attended to her simple temple duties, day in, day out, a shadow sweeping in the dark.

One day a company of dwarves came to the House of Black of White. They struggled to carry a chest of riches between them, three on each side of it, grappling with the enormous gold-plated box. The burly sellswords that guarded them were forced to wait outside as the dwarves made their offering.

It was clear they wished for the Many-Faced God to take someone away. Jaqen received their offering and then sat in council with them. Arya kept to the shadows, but swept closer to listen.

"How did such a group come by such riches?"

A stocky male dwarf who Arya guessed was the father-figure or leader of the group did most of the talking. "We pooled all of our money! And some of us have benefactors, friends in high places, who gave to us as well. The friends and families of those slain added to the coffer, and of those there were many. And thus our coffer grew. We willingly offer all of it to your God, if only he will have mercy and accept it!"

"The Queen's decree has killed so many of us!" A gentle-looking woman, who dressed herself as a pretty noble lady, beseeched Jaqen. "Please have mercy!" She fell at his feet.

"She is an instrument of genocide," a strong one with thick and muscled limbs added. "She must be stopped."

Jaqen nodded sympathetically. "The chest holds a Queen's ransom, to be sure."

It would take a heavy price to kill a Queen. Arya wondered how much was in there.

Father dwarf stepped forward. "That's because we want a Queen dead."

Arya listened to it all as she swept passively in the shadows. She guessed it was the Dragon Queen they wanted dead. Daenerys Targaryen had a ferocious reputation, and people were always coming to pray for the gift of death for that woman. Men the Dragon Queen had scorned in marriage or defeated in battle, slavers who had managed to escape her wrath, and lords of nothing but ashes now that Daenerys had brought her dragon over their lands. All found their way to the House of Black and White and prayed for someone to end her life. But the prayers kept coming, so Arya knew that no amount of money had yet been accepted and brought a Faceless Man out to kill her. Besides, Arya wondered, why would the Dragon Queen want to kill dwarves?

"We dwarves are not a people, live Tyroshi or Dothraki," Father dwarf continued. "Even if she wiped every dwarf off the face of Planetos, more will be born to the next generation of men in every culture. Her violence is senseless!"

An old woman in the group of dwarves spoke up. "Men hunt us like animals hoping for her reward!"

"Yet this group could give the Queen what she wants," Jaqen whispered. "This priest has heard that the Queen's brother goes now with the Dragon Queen. This is the dwarf the Queen seeks."

So it isn't Daenerys, Arya knew. She wondered how many queens in the world had a dwarf for a brother and her heart started racing.

"Surely, even with such company, his death would be cheaper to get," Jaqen went on, "A priest wonders why this group does not buy the gift for that dwarf, send his head back to the Queen, and split the reward among themselves."

The group of dwarves bristled at Jaqen's suggestion and the father shook his head adamantly. "It is not right to feed a ravenous beast so it grows larger. We come here on behalf of every dwarf—as vengeance for the murdered, a shield for the living, and mercy for the future!"

Arya considered Jaqen's argument, the dwarves' exclamation of support, and her own racing mind—and she moved quickly out of the shadows, understanding why fate had brought her to the House of Black and White.

Jaqen nodded. "It is time. Speak her name."

Arya stepped out from the shadows, her hood falling back to reveal her cold gray eyes as she spoke in time with the dwarves. The same prayer they wished for was also on her lips every night.

"Queen Cersei."