Dara allowed Lord Jon and poor foolish Robert to believe that she was staying safe at Winterfell. Ben was more than capable of forging her writing, which ought to have concerned her more than it did, and he had agreed to remain in Winterfell and aid her deception.
Dara had called those most loyal to her - to Bran and to Lya, in truth, for she was so long gone from Winterfell as to almost be a stranger to many of their bannermen and guardsmen and servants - and picked out a small handful of them, six in total, and shared with them the burden that she did not dare entrust to any other person: together, she informed them, they would help her find her sister.
Oh, Dara knew that Robert doubtless intended on finding Lya himself, a hero's rescue for her sister like something from a song, but Dara also knew that Robert would be busy fighting the war, too busy to concern himself with the hunt for Lya. Dara did not dare risk word getting to him that she had taken off into the wilds with such a small band of men to guard her - Ethan Glover, who had been Bran's squire; Willam Dustin who had so recently wed wild Barbrey Ryswell, Brandon's once-paramour; Theo Wull, who flirted ineptly and so harmlessly that she could only laugh; Martyn Cassel, who knew her better than mayhaps any of her other companions; Mark Ryswell, who would have much liked to flirt more seriously than dear Theo; and odd little Howland Reed, who pronounced that he owed a debt of honour to Lya and had somehow known the truth of her mission even though she had not thought to tell him of it.
They were a strange company, but Dara found herself growing fond of them. Martyn and Willam in particular made for easy company, she thought, because she had known them as a child, because they did not watch themselves about her as carefully as Mark and Ethan in particular did - they had known Bran, after all, but they had also known her and Bran together, and that made all the difference.
Still, none of them were particularly enthused with the part of her plan that involved her joining their search for Lya.
"Rhaenys and Aegon are not mine," Arthur said, once they were out on the water and had been for several days - Asric thought they were somewhere south of Storm's End, but he was a poor sailor and spent too much time vomiting over the rail to be certain of anything much.
That, however, drew him out of his sickness-induced stupor.
"But you and the princess-"
"We were never lovers," Arthur said, his jaw so tight that Asric knew it pained him to speak the words. "Elia and I... I was aware that the Princess would never have allowed her to marry me, but we. Well. I never allowed us to be lovers."
Asric breathed heavily through his nose to calm his stomach as he waited for Arthur to continue.
"She took me as her confidant after she wed Rhaegar," he explained. "She was far from home, and Aerys would not allow her any companions from Dorne - she could not go to Lewyn, of course, but I... I was her friend. I have always been her friend."
"I was certain that you were lovers," Asric admitted. "So is Oberyn, for that matter - he told me so, says he has never seen a pair so clearly in love before."
"And Oberyn is an authority on such matters, is he?" Arthur sneered. "The man has a woman in every port and holdfast-"
"That is not the point," Asric cut in. "If we believe it, who's to say that others don't?"
Dara's first stop on her way south was Riverrun.
Or at least, she had planned on making it Riverrun, and had refrained upon hearing that Lord Jon was to be there to take Catelyn Tully to wife.
Dara loved Jon Arryn almost as much as she had her own lord father, but she could not shake her misgivings - he was old, old enough to be Catelyn's sire and more, and while he was a kind man with a good heart, he was not given to affection. The Eyrie, too, was isolated, isolated and sometimes lonely, even for someone as solitary by nature as Dara.
And so, from Greywater Watch they set out not for Riverrun, but for White Harbour – and hopefully not for Lord Manderly's abundant hospitality.
Starfall smelled of salt and peach blossom and home, and Asric would have been lying had he said that he was unhappy to be there.
That did not mean that he felt a coward for hiding away when there was a war to be fought. When there were people he loved to be defended from madness and murderers.
"Arthur sought only to protect you, Asric," Allem said in his quiet way, as they sat atop the Palestone Tower and looked out at the sea. "You know how he worries."
"I can protect myself," Asric said furiously, loathing that Allem had sided with Arthur on this.
"And were I still in King's Landing, I might offer the Princess some protection, too, from one loyal to her and her alone-"
"And risk your own life, if the King's madness turns on Elia? If the rebels are somehow victorious, do you think they would spare the Princess or her champion? You are not so foolish as this, little brother, do not allow your pride to rob you of your wits."
"Why do you call Asric foolish, Allem?"
They turned together, and Asric held out his arms to Allyria - she was so small, their little sister, and she curled up in his lap and sighed contentedly as though he had never spent a moment away during her short little life.
"Asric is very clever," she informed Allem. "Papa always says so, and Papa is always right."
"What does Father say, Lyria?" Asric asked, unable to help himself - he knew what was likely coming, but he had to be sure.
"That you're too clever for your own good," she answered promptly, beaming up at him. "Might we go swimming on the morrow, Asric?"
Arthur arrived weeks later, just as the first sheen of dawn was silvering the skyline away far to the east.
"I have need of a midwife," he said bluntly, without greeting or enquiry after Father's health. "A good one, not that charlatan that was in charge of Mother's care when Allyria was born."
Asric felt sick. If the Lady Lyanna had not willingly departed Winterfell with the Prince, and if she was now with child - how could Arthur remain loyal to a man not only guilty of abducting a woman barely more than a child, if more than a child at all, but of raping her?
Allem looked queasy at the thought as well, but he departed without a word to search for a midwife - there were several in the town by necessity, for there were always a great number of children being born in a busy port town.
"Do not dare look at me like that," Arthur said sharply. "Do you think that I enjoy this? I have no option-"
"You could hold the vows you took when you were anointed a knight in higher regard than those sworn to a madman when you were raised to the white cloak," Asric suggested bitterly. "You could be the man our mother raised you to be, rather than the man King's Landing made you."
Allem had to pry them apart when he returned, and Asric nearly leapt for Arthur again when his brother tossed a folded letter at his feet, and snapped that Lady Lyanna wished for it to be delivered to her family at Winterfell at their earliest convenience. The disdain, the anger, Asric almost couldn't breathe for the shock of the stranger that Arthur had been revealed to be.
Arthur as Asric knew him would never have stood by and allowed a man to rape an innocent woman, would he?
The Whispers was a barren, eerie wreck of a place, far more frightening to Dara's mind than Harrenhall could ever hope to be, but rumours of Lya's whereabouts had led her here from White Harbour, and she had no choice but to follow them.
"There are signs that someone spent time here, my lady," Martyn informed her. "Ash of a fire, marks where tent poles might have been set - three, mayhaps four, men I'd say but it's possible they had a woman with them too, aye."
"And horses, as well," Buckets said, shaking his head. "I and young Ethan followed them trails a ways out, we did, and Mark too, and they seems good big steeds with a long stride."
Dara looked over her shoulder to their horses, steady, sturdy Northern mounts, none exceptional save Willam's beautiful red. They would never catch up the the Prince and his accomplices.
I will find you, Lya, she thought miserably. I will.
Howland appeared from somewhere other than where the others had searched, something heavy in his hands - a cloak? Where had he found a cloak?
"This was beneath the heart tree, Dara," he said quietly, handing it to her. It had once been Stark white, she could see, and was stitched with a direwolf.
It was stained with red, about level with where a woman of Lya's height's hips would have been had she been laid out on it.
"So he wed her, then," Dara heard herself say, feeling sick. "He wed her before he raped her."
She swallowed thickly, shook her head, and looked to Buckets and Mark.
"Where were the trails headed?" she asked, folding the cloak up as small as she could - she would burn it as soon as she could. "Where did it seem that they have taken my sister?"
"Back to the coast," Mark said, folding his arms and tucking his chin to his chest. "But not towards where they landed - they were headed more southwise, I think."
Dara looked south of where she stood, right atop the edge of the cliff.
"Dragonstone," she said. "How are we to enter Dragonstone?"
Asric had long known Larra Blackmont - they had been children together, in the Water Gardens under Princess Ariella's watchful gaze, they and Oberyn and dozens of others - and so he was unsurprised when she came to him with a strange request.
Larra's hand had always been near indecipherable, but he puzzled it out as best he could and was astonished to find that Arthur had been sighted away up the Prince's Pass beyond Blackmont, near in blasted Nightsong, with a woman with fair hair in tow - the midwife Allem had found for him, no doubt.
Well, at least Asric knew where the Prince would keep the Lady Lyanna prisoner. If only he could get her away from four of the finest swordsmen in the realm without both of them dying. He wondered if the raven carrying Lady Lyanna's letter had reached Winterfell yet, and if so, what it had contained.
Sharp Point was near as desolate as the Whispers had been, for all their beacon burning day and night was a magnificent sight. House Bar Emmon gave shelter and food to any sailor in need, no questions asked, and Dara was glad of it.
Buckets had claimed her as his wife to avoid her presence being questioned, which had made Mark pink with jealousy and brought a smile to her face. She had not smiled in so long that it had felt strange, and that had saddened her.
"Where do we go from here?" she asked Howland, who always seemed to know. "How am I to find Lya when we have no trail to follow?"
"Dorne," Howland said. "The very last place any would suspect the Prince of bringing her, Dara, will be the very place we find her. Somewhere in the deserts and mountains of Dorne, that's where Lyanna is."