Sorry for all the delays, and I really want to get the next one right so it will take some time, too. But it's all still on track for the end of the year.

This is the final Arya chapter! Hope you like it :)

CHAPTER 48

ARYA

Arya left her home at the House of Black and White in the company of seven dwarves. Her companions were one gilded treasure chest poorer than before they had adopted her into their group, but those material goods were replaced with a resolute ferocity observably fixed in their set jaws and in the determined pumping of their little legs as they marched to the loading dock of the ship Lady Bright. It was Arya's presence that wrought such confidence, for she was the keystone that united them in the fulfillment of one common wish—they all wanted Cersei dead.

Lady Bright was a mid-sized trading galley with a mess of ropes rigging tall sails to tree trunk-like posts and a single row of oars sticking out along both sides of the ship in what looked like so-many centipede feet. Arya and her companions were the only passengers on a vessel otherwise loaded with spices and steel. It was a good thing for them; they could travel without scrutiny and the little judgement meted out by the crew was swiftly rebuked by the ship's captain. Arya, stealing her way through passageways, overheard the skipper's complaints at the first sight of a few rainclouds.

"We couldn't ask for worse luck than to sail across the sea with a boatload of dwarves! Death is with us, and doom! Doom!"

The captain cuffed him sharply across the back of his head. "I'll hear no more talk of invisible luck! Their money's real, and luck isn't."

Besides dwarves, it was common knowledge that a woman on a ship brought ill fortune, too. Arya hardly thought about it until they were a few days out of sight from land. She woke up tired with a dull ache in her legs and belly that made her wonder if she was sick. Making her way over to the dark corner of the hold where the waste bucket sat, Arya knelt to make water and instead stared in abject fascination at her smallclothes, which were stained with globs of dark blood.

"Here, dear," the lady dwarf hobbled over, unsteady from the rocking ship, and pressed a fistful of clouts into Arya's hand. "I noticed you tossing and turning in the night. These pads of cloth will protect your smallclothes until the bleeding stops."

Arya realized that her childhood days were over. She shook her head in disbelief that this morbid occurrence was what separated women—ladies, as her mother and Sansa always stressed—from the rest of the people in the world. "Why is this happening?" she asked, rhetorically.

"Why, it's nothing to be afraid of," the lady smiled at her, mistaking Arya's disappointment for ignorance. "It's healthy and normal for a young woman. It will be over in a few days. And pay no mind to any mythos about it, those are just stories to scare men."

A woman. There was no mirror on the ship, but Arya could look down at her body and see that it had changed. She was still thin and small-framed, and possessed a boyish figure. But she could no longer be mistaken for a boy as she had when she was a child—not even if she chopped off the long black hair that now fell past her shoulders. There was a slight flare to her hips, toned legs that ended in delicate, cat-like feet, slim shoulders, and small, perky breasts. Arya had noticed years of subtle changes to her body as she grew, but now she looked on herself as having the body of a woman for the first time.

The lady was right, and the blood ended in a few days. Arya fiercely resented the process, but admittedly it was little more than a troublesome distraction. If the Gods truly found menstruating women and dwarves offensive, then they were merciful enough not to punish Lady Bright. The ship rowed over the smooth sea in fair weather. In a fortnight little stucco houses dotted the coastline. They were in King's Landing, Westeros.

The captain planned to continue on and land safely in Duskendale and Pentos, since it would be foolish to dock his passengers in a city where every dwarf had their head presented to the Queen. There was just the small matter of getting Arya inside. The gates of King's Landing were barred against its citizens, and masses of starving people huddled, freezing, outside its walls. Arya was not concerned. She knew her own way in.

Father dwarf, the strong muscled dwarf, and two crewmen accompanied her in a dinghy lowered into the water on the captain's command. Under the cover of darkness, they rowed the small boat to a cove that was little more than a patch of sand between the cliffs. The five were quiet, conscious that capture meant death. The loudest sounds were the waves lapping at the shore and the distant sounds of the city at nighttime. The crewmen navigated the dinghy around the rocks and then pushed the boat onto the beach. Arya leapt out, her sturdy knee-high boots landing out of the way of the water. In front of her, she knew, was a cave opening inside the cliff-face.

"My lady!" the cry behind her was a barely shouted whisper. Arya turned back to see the concerned faces of her patrons. "Please, be careful."

She nodded at them for the final time. "The thing is done."

Arya scaled the rocks and squeezed herself into the maw. Inside was complete, total darkness. She crawled through the tight passageway until it opened to a height she could stand. Still, she made her way so slowly as to keep pace with the trickling water. Arya was sure the first light of dawn was in the sky by now. She felt her way through the dark until her hand grabbed something smoother, warmer, and sharper than wet stone.

A dragon's tooth. Arya was in the cave below King's Landing that she had discovered as a child, where the dragon skulls were kept. Once the mounts of Targaryen conquerors, their resting place was now forgotten in this hidden chamber. Arya felt her way over the jagged teeth of this, the largest of the dragons, as she came through its mouth. These monsters that had frightened her so much as a child smiled on her return.

Twists, turns, a glimmer of light, and Arya found the ladder to the cellar door she had squeezed through as a child. I am in the belly of the dragon, she thought as she climbed up, up, until she pushed her way out of the crawl space that had long since been built over it and into the yard of the Red Keep.

Her back pressed against the wall and her limbs positioned like a crab's, Arya darted from corner to corner as she once had when she chased cats. She even snuck up on one, a big black one that turned to look at her with great green eyes and twitched its tail, seeming to decide that if she came so close without touching she meant no harm. Hidden only by the hood of her roughspun cloak, Arya crept until she came within sight of a group of poor, shabby servants working in the courtyard.

It was easier to hide in plain sight among these timid people than it was to go from place to place without being seen at all. Arya discarded her mud and filth-covered cloak and walked out of the alley, boldly mingling with the residents. She could pass for a page or other important servant; in fact, she looked better off than most, judging by the fact that she was better fed and by the quality of her leather boots. The servants were dirty and hungry, and beggars loitered outside the keep's gate. Arya was appalled at the state of Westeros—her home was in shambles, ravaged by the fires of war. I have no home, Arya reminded herself, steeling her eyes against the poverty and focusing on her destination. But as she walked, she wondered how fared the North.

Arya crossed the bailey with confidence, and no one stopped her. The layout stuck out in her mind as clearly as if she had grown up here, so that she marveled that it had been just a few months in her youth. Everything came back to her easily in this place where she had lived until her father died, where she had learned water dancing from Syrio Forel. Even so, she pushed any nostalgic feelings from her heart. I am no one, she reminded herself. Her destination was Maegor's Holdfast, the castle-within-a-castle where Cersei certainly slept.

It was a supposedly impenetrable fortress, but that had not stopped Gregor Clegane from scaling the walls and killing Elia Martell, nor history's treasonous knights from rushing the gate, and it did not stop Arya as she joined the flow of a river of servants making their way across the drawbridge against the flow of a group making their way out. Arya joined them and passed a white-cloaked knight standing guard at the end of the bridge and an anxious, thin-lipped steward who oversaw the transition between night and morning servants. Once her boots tapped on the polished stone floor she was inside, and Arya melted into the shadows amid the confusion of the servants filing to their positions.

If anyone had been looking for her, they might have noticed she was gone, but as it was Arya floated from room to room like a leaf of paper blown in the wind. Maegor's Holdfast was a maze of rooms exhibiting wealth incomparable to the poverty she'd seen outside. Here was a kitchen filled with food, a feast hall that could sit one hundred guests, an office with stained glass windows. Once Arya scaled the steps to the living quarters she moved as slowly as she had in the dragon's cavern. She meditated until, sure of her silence, a quick running movement brought her to her new destination. She moved like a cat until she came to a gallery with tapestries hanging loose against the walls. Inside was a man, his back to her, scribbling hunched over a piece of parchment and counting coins at the end of a long table.

Arya walked forward silently, unafraid that he would break his concentration and notice her. She was sure she could have walked up behind him and peered over his shoulder without him noticing. And even if not—he paused to dip his quill into the inkwell and Arya, quiet as a shadow, slipped behind a tapestry. Her movement was as unobtrusive as though the fabric were just billowing in the draft.

The doors at the other end of the hall banged open and the Queen came in, flanked by a white cloak on either side. She looked tired, though it was not nightfall yet, and walked with choppy steps on stiff legs. Arya couldn't help but feel her heart beat a little faster when she caught sight of her target. She gripped down through the long pocket of her pants for the dagger kept close against her thigh.

"What is the meaning of this!" Cersei slammed a letter clutched in her fist down on the table, disturbing the man's pile of coins. He sighed and rubbed his forehead, then snatched up the paper. He read it quickly.

"I don't know what to believe about the dragons, but the rest is as we heard." The hairs on the back of Arya's neck stood up as she recognized his voice. Littlefinger. "Jaime has fallen at Moat Cailin. Cersei, your brother is dead."

"Jaime is not dead!" Cersei's shriek rattled the men, who all flinched. Glass hearts, Arya thought, but mine's made of iron. She steadied her breath. "This is a trick by that little wolf bitch of yours—"

"Doubtful," Baelish interrupted. "She likely hasn't heard any of this, locked up in that ice box of hers. Which reminds me, I've grown more concerned about our plan going awry. Gregor Clegane is hardly temperant—you know what happened when your father sent him—"

"More concerned? Need I remind you—again—that if Rhaegar had married me, none of this would have happened! Gregor wouldn't have killed the precious Dornish princess, Robert never would have become king, Jaime—Joff wouldn't be dead!—none of it! Do you hear me?"

"That . . . may or may not be true. Regardless, Rhaegar is dead."

"He wouldn't be if he hadn't run off with that Stark bitch!" Littlefinger reacted to her ruinous composure with considerable annoyance, and Arya had the sense this was not the first time they had had this argument. "Once I get ahold of Sansa and the North is in my hands again, I'll be rid of her line once and for all."

The North was never in your hands, Arya bristled.

"Killing Sansa will not get your revenge on Lyanna," Baelish countered.

"I hate them! All of them!"

"She's already dead, Cersei! Sansa isn't. My proposal for a diplomatic solution—"

"—Will fail. And when it does, my plan will succeed."

Arya had heard enough. She slipped back out from the room unseen into the dark foyer. She had to find the Queen's chambers before Cersei retired. Arya crossed quickly past the door that masked Cersei and Baelish's muffled argument to the as-yet-unseen apartments on the other side, a guard posted at the foot of the stairs far below her.

Here was a room more resplendent than all the rest. A double-canopied bed rested atop a raised dais, intricate tapestries embellished with gemstones and gold threaded designs warmed the walls, and every piece of wood furniture featured ornate carving. The room was unusual for looking lived-in and messy, so that Arya surmised that servants did not frequent here. There was a mess of pots and jars, some with the lids off, packed in front of the vanity, smallclothes and lighter garments lay in wrinkled heaps strewn across the dark red carpet, and a hairbrush matted with golden hair tilted carelessly in front of the mirror. With reluctant curiosity, Arya approached a pair of fine silk slippers with embroidery so careful that she could make out tiny unicorns and maidens frolicking in a woodland.

The room was dark except for a few dim oil lamps, the most prominent one placed by the mirror. There was a corner by the wardrobe where Arya thought she could hide, and maybe duck under if need be. It was near enough to the room's only window for her escape route if necessary. She settled in with her back against the wall, breathing deeply, her fingers brushing the handle of the dagger in her pocket.

Calm as still water. Quiet as a shadow. Quick as a snake.

The door handle turned. Cersei came in, wearing a regal expression, but slamming the door behind her. Arya slid an inch lower against the wall before she stopped herself, forced herself to remain composed and breathe deeply again. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Fear cuts deeper than swords.

Cersei plopped down on the stool in front of her vanity, oblivious to the presence of another person in the room. She added fire to the oil lamp and the flame grew, flickering brightly inside its glass chamber. Cersei began sorting her beauty items, stacking some, closing the lids on others, mumbling to herself. She lifted up a ceramic pot, slammed it down, seized a green jar and threw it across the room with blood-curdling scream. The concoction splattered against the carpet and Cersei picked up a blue vase and threw that, too. Arya pressed herself into the corner. Almost at once there were frantic knocks on the other side of the door.

"Your Grace? Your Grace? Are you all right? We thought we heard a struggle."

Cersei answered with a pained, inhuman growl. "Oh, damn you all to Seven Hells that a woman can't even find peace in her own house! Leave me alone, you idiot cunts! Alone!"

Arya could see Cersei's profile in the lamplight, twisted into a menacing snarl. Caught in her rage. Arya wondered what she would destroy next, but Cersei sank back onto the stool. She stared at herself, hallow-eyed, disheveled. Then she covered her mouth with her hand, and cried.

She is weak. Arya was drawn out of the shadows, dagger in hand. It was time. Cersei saw Arya's reflection materialize behind her own in the mirror.

"Lyanna."

Arya felt a surge of pride. She had not even changed her face.