Chapter Three

Arthur's right foot skid across the dusty ground before he braced it enough to hold himself still. A drop of beaded sweat fell from strands of silver hair to his eyelashes, momentarily obfuscating the snarling, heavy-set man in tarnished armor and black tunic with three feathers embossed on it, that was holding back his sword. Reluctant to keep this standoff for long and knowing that his stamina and strength were flagging, Arthur angled his blade down a fraction, twisted his hand on the hilt and moved directly to the left. As the man tried to regain his balance, his boot struck out with vengeance and unbalanced him further, the sword making quick work of his weapon and its pommel knocking him to the ground.

'One more down, eight to go.' The silver-haired lord backed up to maneuver better in the chaotic medley that the field had fallen to. Of the more than fifty men initially entered into the melee, the numbers had been whittled down to less than ten. They included, he was at once gratified and disappointed to note, Beric Dondarrion. 'I wish I had Dawn in my grasp.'

The milkglass sword wasn't his though, at least not yet. Arthur would undertake the test to be worthy of it one day soon but until that day came, the finely honed steel in his hand would have to do. 'Time to show them how a proper Dornishman fights.'

He was the only one of Dorne left on the field, as well as the youngest competitor. The others had noticed that as well and a few were heading towards him, hoping to knock him out before the boy could regain any breath. Arthur stilled his face into one of stern acknowledgement and then threw himself directly back into the fray. 'I'm not done yet.'

He'd been fighting near-straight for about two hours now, fully clad in armor, against a sun that didn't beat nearly as harshly as the sands but was of burden all the same. There were circles of his eyes from dreams of slim, pretty-faced boys with a head full of dark curls that no dreamwine would stifle. His arms were sore, his entire body throbbing from an unknown patchwork of blue-purple bruises but he was Ser Arthur Dayne, Lord of Starfall, and he would not yield, dammit.

'I'll show you my worth,' was the silent promise of each swing of his blade. Each thrust, each parry, each deflection, each stab was a repetition of that single promise that drove him to a future shrouded in blotches of grey, just waiting for the colors to bleed in and reveal his purpose. 'I'll show everyone.'

Whatever it was that Arthur Dayne was destined to do, he'd do so perfectly and without fault.

In the part of his mind that kept track of the idiot his sister fell for, Arthur noted that Beric was fourth-to-last to be removed from the field. Hmph, the man would have been better off getting some sleep or practicing his forms instead of cavorting about with that priest of his last night. At least the drunken Myrish had the sense to drag the insensate man off the field.

There were two men remaining. In the pattern of his life thus far, they both exchanged glances and decided to attack him together.

In a bit of fancy footwork that Arthur would never admit came from years of attending balls with a sister that loved to dance, the boy with the silver-gilt hair maneuvered around the two. He immediately focused on the man in white with a grey band across his chest as the weaker of the two. Doing his best to avoid the green-clad man that rained blows twice as heavy on his body as he could manage, Arthur headed directly to the weaker opponent. Unfortunately that man was clever enough to keep dancing away, allowing his friend to take point and forcing Arthur to resort to dodging more than he'd like. As his stamina began to flag and his breath came out in shorter pants, the knight inwardly grimaced. Time to make a gamble.

'Focus on me, asshole,' he thought savagely, purposefully lowering his shield to dart into the inner guard of the grey-banded opponent. The man stepped backwards quickly, a set of small, well-timed movements that spoke of extended training but Arthur forced on. Within the narrow window of opportunity available to him, he extended his reach and with a deft flick of his wrist, unarmed the other man. That left his side wide open for his last opponent to take advantage. 'Do your worst.'

The Gods chose the worst damned time to listen.

Arthur choked on his own tongue as the blunted broadsword hit him flatly between the ribs. His breath came out in a sharp wheeze, sword still shakily in his hand, as tears sprung to his eyes. His vision became blurred again, chest expanding for a lungful of air as the thirteen-year-old boy desperately attempted to get some room. But his opponent was a veteran that refused to give any quarters. Blows rained down on him one after the other, most parried or deflected by artful skill or lucky chance, until the man chose to test their strengths directly. The Dayne knight held onto his mettle for as long as he could but his arms were already shaking from the effort of it.

In the end, he yielded. His sword dropped down, his legs buckling soon after and blood pooled on his tongue. Coppery and warm, it tasted of bitter defeat.

Arthur's head spun and he closed his eyes briefly. The curly-haired boy was back, a confident grin on his face, as he waved around a parchment full of streaks of numbers. The Dornishman took a brief moment to savor that smile, look into violet eyes a shade darker than his own and feel his member stir. He'd have to take that into hand later. It was downright embarrassing to have it pop up in the most inconvenient of moments.

Ire fighting with embarrassment to take foremost attention, Arthur took a deep breath and opened his eyes. A gloved hand was extended to him. Accepting the proffered hand, the boy allowed the victor of the melee to draw him up, taking in additional details such as a well-trimmed beard, kindly brown eyes and a tunic with two golden roses crossed against each other.

"Garlan Tyrell," the man introduced himself in an exhausted but amiable voice.

"Arthur Dayne," he replied, nodding back. "Well done."

There was a quiet around them that erupted into cheers as soon as they both stood. The smallfolk were clapping their hands and stomping their feet, many of them leaning over their seats or pressing against the wooden slats separating stand and field to make their approval heard. Even the lords were enthusiastically clapping their hands together and many ladies waving handkerchiefs in the air.

Ser Garlan noticed the direction of his gaze. "They're impressed. You were brilliant."

"As were you," Arthur admitted, trying to bury the mixture of disappointment and resentment that coiled in his belly. He was so close… 'Almost does not make a victory banner.'

"I'm three handspan taller and at least two stone heavier," Garlan Tyrell answered matter-of-factly. Arthur tried not to bristle at the implied slight to his height. He would gain a growth spurt soon. He'd better for all the milk he drank. "How many melees have you been in?"

"This is my first." The admission made the man's eyebrows rise in shock, soothing a bit of his pique.

"Your first?" Garlan Tyrell blinked at him with dazed delight. "Marry me?"

The Dornish knight paused. He didn't think an opponent had ever offered marriage to him before but then, enough blows to the head or enough tankards of wine and his fine features could be mistaken for a woman's. Inwardly impressed by the egalitarian nature of the Reachman before him, the Dayne tried to find an appropriate answer. His eyes fell on the sigil and he remembered that the second Tyrell son was supposed to be wed.

"Don't you have a wife already?"

"Leonette will understand," was the grave reply.

Arthur was pretty sure that Leonette would not understand.

Thankfully he was spared the unknown woman's ire as the other combatants started to trail into the field. The grey-banded man grinning sheepishly as one of his friends clapped him on the back. From the corner of his eye, he saw Beric stumbling towards him.

'That idiot needs to sit down! He just got a goddamn concussion,' Arthur inwardly ranted, abandoning the conversation to save his aunt's awful choice in suitor from falling on his own sword. He grunted as the taller and more heavyset man leant against his exhausted body but managed to ungainly drag Beric over to their tent. Violently purple lightning forked across one side, while a lavender shooting star arced below it. Black four-pointed stars were an eyesore everywhere else. No matter his pleading, the man refused to be rid of them. "Here. You take him."

The servant of House Dondarrion squeaked as the Lord of Blackhaven was turned over to him. Arthur didn't bother to be gentle with him- he deserved the pain if he was stupid enough to wander about while seeing double- but he did have the decency to toss a washcloth on his face. It made a satisfying splat on that reddish-gold hair, while Arthur fetched one of his own. He quickly divested himself of his armor but didn't do more than to wipe off the worst of the sweat on his body. The Dornishman could head out and acquire the runner-up gold later. That imaginary dark-curled boy of his dreams had made handling another problem an immediate necessity. Gods dammit.

x

Had Robb Stark looked at his little sister, dressed as a boyish acolyte, running an illegal betting ring with a blatantly shark-like grin on her pretty face, he would've been… not surprised in the least. More than a little exasperated certainly, and prideful, though he'd refuse to admit it but there wouldn't be any surprise. Lyarra Snow had been born into the world as an act of defiance and continued the theme of her birth thereafter.

Now Lyle Snow was making a killing registering all of the bets around him.

She was in her element. There was shouting all around her, snatches of conversation and bickering, as drunken revelers stepped around or occasionally through her little operation. She'd taken a handful of game cards and shuffled them about around her for her disguise. By all accounts Lyle was one part magician, one part card shark, as the dark-haired novice gleefully shuffled her cards for the next round. Each one had little markers on them forged in her own quill. The latest results had filtered in and her mind, having collected the bets and drawn the numbers swiftly without parchment, was ready to pay out the prizes. Of course, the winners wouldn't be receiving the gold from her directly. She wasn't an idiot.

Instead a handful of black cards made their way to the proper hands while red ones were offered to far more unhappy customers. One drunken old man attempted to leer threateningly at her. Lyle flipped her dagger out and jammed it sharply between the man's fingers on her small table. There was a yelp and the man scrambled back. Her smile notched even higher in brightness. This was fun!

'I should have started a gambling operation ages ago!' Lyle thought fondly of the ten golden coins resting in her spare pillow case. She'd made over a year's salary for the average craftsman today! 'Maybe this is the life I'm looking for?'

Not permanently by any means but it would be a decent way to earn a little extra coin if her true career path took longer to start. Midwifery was a respectable middle level profession but the maesters in the Citadel sneered down on it. They'd cover the basics of childbirth thus far- and convinced Lyle that Lady Stark would have her dearest wish come true because Lyle was never birthing a child- but she'd need more guidance. It would take time to apprentice to a proper midwife though and she'll need coin to keep her by for that time.

Pushing thoughts of midwifery aside, as she was almost as squeamish about other women's children as the possibility of her own, Lyle returned to her customers. There was an ebb and flow in this business but the melee had been finished and it was just the final bets that needed calculating. As well as a few rowdy customers to convince to walk away. For the ones that expressed their doubts politely, Lyle worked out the sums on parchment withdrawn from her satchel and showed them. There were a few impressed glances at her mental manipulation of the numbers but they left peaceably after that. One man even handed her a card and requested a raven should she ever be interested in being a gold-counter for a local tailor's guild.

As the final customers trickled away, Lyle went about cleaning up her space and discarding of the fruit crate she'd been using as a makeshift table. Her stomach didn't feel particularly hungry but Alleras had insisted on making dinner today to celebrate her first foray into criminal business, so she should probably eat something soon. Enough to take off the edge of her appetite, while she politely poked at her friend's cooking.

'Hmm… auroch skewer, mashed pumpkin gourd or steamed corn cobs?' Lyle tapped her chin with one slim finger. 'Decisions, decisions.'

Eh, she was rich now, at least by her standards. Might as well buy all three and feed whatever her stomach couldn't handle to the nearby stray dogs. Between Lyle feeding the dogs and Alleras' inability to resist a kitten in need, their apartment was always visited by little friends that neither could convince to leave, not that they'd tried all that hard.

Lyle was accepting two ears of corn, the husk still steamy enough to peel off at the barest touch, when a shiver ran down her spine. It was one she'd learnt to associate as a child with an intent look being leveled at her, most often by the harridan of a septa Lady Stark employed. Curious as to who would elicit such an emotion now, she turned and scanned her gaze across the market.

They settled on a boy just a little shorter than herself with silver-gilt hair and lavender hued eyes. The color was distinct enough for her to linger upon him for a moment, where Lyle recognized that he was staring back. In an intense, deeply unnerving manner. The knight, and he could be nothing else in light armor and with a sword strapped to his waist, moved closer. Lyle promptly turned and started to walk in the opposite direction.

'Is he following me?' Her heartbeat picked up as she swerved around a man carrying a twin pair of squawking chickens in his arm and then past a handful of round-bellied septons. If she perked her ears up, the clink of armor could be heard behind her. Palms dampened. Stomach tightened. 'I need to get out of here.'

She turned to one of the zig-zag alleyways branching across the main street and ducked in. It was darker here, a narrow pathway filled with vegetable refuse and buildings stifling any view of the sky. Lyle quickened her pace. Behind her, the sound of armor clinking together only heightened.

"Wait!" A young man's voice called. "I need to speak to you!"

Lyle bolted.

'He knows!' The dark-haired acolyte ran across the alleyway, came across a wall separating her from the next street, braced one feet against sun-dried mud and pulled herself upwards. She should never have brokered those bets! Swinging both feet over the wall, Lyle threw her body down to the other side. One hand drifted to the pocket of her Citadel robes, where the parchment and remaining cards waited and crumpled them up. She'd have to find a safe place to toss them. 'Gods dammit!'

"Please stop running!" The boy's voice was closer now, less than an arm's reach from her on the opposite side of the wall. Lyle took to running again, her satchel bouncing uncomfortably against her hip. "Wait! I'm not going to hurt you!"

'No, just toss me in the stockades and reveal my identity!' She thought hysterically. Overconfidence had tripped Lyle once before but this time wouldn't likely result in another Alleras in her life. She had been such an idiot! 'I have to get away from the main streets. With a knight chasing me, they'd know I was the guilty one for sure.'

The bastard turned sharply into yet another alleyway and began to run down that path instead, switching once more at the nearest fork. The knight doggedly followed her as they fell into a frantic chase around the poorer section of Oldtown. He held the advantage of armor and sigil to draw bystanders to his side, a few attempting to obstruct her path, but she had advantages of her own. A lighter load to carry, a better grasp of the city streets and a shamelessness in using the terrain and people for her own benefit.

Her saving grace may have just been another pair of clucking chickens. Or possibly the same pair because as Lyle ran by them, she angled her body to face the man sideways. Violet eyes met the farmer's stunned brown ones, plush lips voiced a simple 'sorry' and then Lyle swept her arm out to dislodge his grip on the loud animals. The man dropped them onto the ground and one ran directly at a sleepy-looking guard that released a high-pitched shriek. The other decided to flap up to another woman's elaborately coiffed hair piece, accurately judging the array of bright feathers as a comfortable- and fashionable- nest for itself. Lyle wished the chicken well.

Leaving behind a sudden onset of chaos behind her, the bastard ducked under a store railing, peered out to find that Hat Chicken was now trying to nest on the blonde knight and smothered her chuckles. 'Oh, that is absolutely brilliant. I hope that chicken never graces a dinner table.'

Assured that she'd now be left alone, Lyle stood up, kept her head ducked down and took the direct route to her apartment. For the next few days, Alleras' Northern lady love would be visiting and yet more suspicion would be thrown away from her male identity. She was a mere two streets away from the apartment when the voice she'd come to quickly detest called out to her.

"Please stop running! I just want to talk to you!"

Lyle bolted again. 'Of course, I'd get the damned stickler for rules!'

It didn't matter. She was so close to home base now. All she had to do was duck his sight, reach her apartment and change into a frock. One of Tyene's wimples would keep her curls hidden and as a maiden of modesty and virtue, she needn't look up should the man attempt to speak to her. The bastard took the steps two at a time, threw herself into the one-bedroom apartment, startling Alleras into actually dropping her book, and frantically started pulling at her clothes.

"I admire the enthusiasm but your strip tease technique needs more work," Alleras informed her.

"I need a wimple!" To her friend's credit, Lyarra had the white fabric in her hands within seconds and another pair tugging her trousers down, as she unfurled it. The bandages were cut off first, the curve of her bust accentuated by a sky blue, back-laced bodice tightly thrown on over her white blouse. A white underskirt and blue overskirt were attached easily but then she had an ungodly struggle with the stupid wimple.

"Oh, give me that!" Alleras snatched the white sheet from her hands and had it wrapped loosely around her a moment later. A few hints of dark curls could be seen but before Lyle had a chance to tuck them in, there was a demanding knock on her door. "Who's that?"

"I'll tell you when I find out myself." Lyle, or now Lyarra Snow's, tone was grim when she walked to the door. Bowing her head meekly as she used to do in Winterfell, the dark-haired maiden opened the door. Standing before her was the young knight from before, silver-haired, violet-eyed, sharp-jawed and undoubtedly handsome, despite the ruffled hair that Hat Chicken had attempted to get to. Her lips twitched a little at the reminder. "Who are you?"

Her words seemed to snap the silently staring boy from his stupor. When he spoke his voice was soft and measured, almost kind. "Ser Arthur Dayne, Lord of Starfall. May I have your name?"

"No," Lyarra said and slammed the door in his face.

x

If Lyarra has to deal with period cramps, than Arthur has to face sudden stiffies. Teenage life, right?