22. Valar Morghulis.

Arya rubbed her hands together, feeling extremely bored while she sat on the ground of that place in the middle of nowhere. She had been sitting there for the past hour and she was starting to feel impatient and annoyed. Besides, she still had jet lag, and that wasn't improving her mood in the slightest way. The fact that there were mosquitoes everywhere and the place was super humid didn't help at all. She kept slapping herself whenever a new bug decided to land on her face of neck or hands.

Jaqen, on the other hand, sat beside her keeping quiet and still. That annoyed Arya as well.

"We shouldn't be here," Arya scoffed. "We should be in Westeros killing Joffrey. My sister is getting married to that monster in less than two weeks!"

"Patience, sweet girl," the bravos I said with his typical smirk in his face. "The time of death comes for everybody, but death must come at it's due time."

"Yeah, so?"

"Now it's not the time. You failed when the time first came, and now you must wait for the second chance," Jaqen explained to him. His voice was calm as always; Arya usually wondered how he managed to keep his voice so calm in every single situation. Sometimes that calmness gave her the impression that Jaqen was mocking everything and everyone, and sometimes it made her think that Jaqen just didn't care about anything. He was so uninterested in most things that he never got upset about anything.

"Death will come for Joffrey Baratheon, girl, don't worry. You have his name, and the god of Death will take his life. Valar Morghulis.

Arya knew that Jaqen was being sincere. The Faceless Men always ended the lives that they promised to take, and her boss had promised her that she would take away Joffrey's life. Arya was a Faceless Woman now; she would not fail the next time that she attempted to get her revenge.

She couldn't wait, though. Sansa would be getting married in a matter of days, and the thought of her sister having to spend one single minute as that man's wife made Arya feel sick. She couldn't let Sansa down, not now. Arya had promised her that she would avenge their father, and she would. She needed to save her sister.

She had wanted to try to kill Joffrey again before the wedding, but until two days ago she hadn't known that she had a new mission for the Faceless Men. She had wanted to travel to King's Landing and study Joffrey's movements for a few days until she had the perfect plan to kill him. However, before she left Braavos her boss had informed her and her partner, Jaqen, that they had a person to kill. Arya couldn't refuse: when the boss gave an order he did not wait for approval. You either accepted the assignment or you were out, and Arya needed to stay with the Faceless Men. It was the only way in which she could succeed to kill Joffrey, otherwise she would be on her own.

The person that she and Jaqen had been sent to kill was named Dakshesh Khedekar. He was in his early fifties and he was one of the richest men in the city of Mumbai. He came from poor origins, so where had all his money come from? Filthy business. Arya wasn't sure what it was exactly that the man did, but she knew it wasn't something good. The first time that she saw a picture of him that had been provided by another one of the Faceless men she had thought that Khedekar looked like a human hamburger. She just didn't like his aspect, she didn't like his expression. The person that had hired them and that wanted Kedekhar dead didn't provide much information about the future victim, just the name and the city. It didn;t matter, the Faceless Men only needed a name. "Give a name, and a Faceless Man will do the rest" was the saying that everyone knew about them. A name... and money, of course. No death is for free.

Arya had been impressed by the amount of money paid for that life. The price for hiring a Faceless Man was always high, yes, but one million Westerosi dragons... That was even more millions of dollars. Of course that the House of Black and White couldn't turn down an offer like that! The Faceless Men didn't kill for money. Their goals were others, but the money was needed. Being a Faceless Man was very risky, and very expensive, so of course that the prices were high. The Faceless Men were the best at what they did, after all.

Arya hadn't travelled to India only with Jaqen. They had brought other Faceless Men as part of their team. each one had a different part in the plan: some of them used their abilities in disguise and identity thievery and their talent for obtaining information to find Dakshesh Khedekar and find out where he would be going to every hour of every day and with whom he would be and what would he do and why. Another part of the team formed part of the escape plan in case things were wrong, or if they needed to run anyway after Khedekar was dead. Arya and Jaqen were the ones actually doing the killing.

They had tracked down Dakshesh Khedekar and they had discovered that he would be meeting someone far away from civilization, in an area that was just nature everywhere: jungle, mountains, hills, and animals. Not a single village or city anywhere in miles around. That was where Jaqen and Arya were waiting, hiding among the vegetation. It was plain daylight, so instead of wearing all-black suits they wore camouflage clothes that helped them become part of the endless green vegetation around them. They had dirtied their faces with a bit of mud, and Jaqen had had to temporarily dye his hair to brown because his half white and half red hair was too flamboyant and could give them away at any moment.

"If anyone say your hair from afar, they might think it was a tiger!" Arya joked, grinning.

Jaqen rolled his eyes.

"Sure they would..."

Arya wondered if there would be any tigers around there. She hoped not. Tigers were too damn similar to lions, and she hated lions. She didn't the jungle either. She was a wolf of Winterfell, she belonged to the Northern colder weather, to the forest and the snow and the ice. The jungle was too damn overwhelming, too bright, and too hot. It was Summer in there, and she was sweating non-stop. She hoped that the man would show up soon, before she completely lost her patience. She wanted to get out of there and catch a plain back to Westeros. She needed to be in King's Landing...

Jaqen gestured to her to lay low all of a sudden.

"There they are," the braavosi whispered, dropping flat on his stomach on the ground and looking at the place that he was pointing to Arya.

She dropped to the ground as well, hiding even further in the sickening green vegetation that was everywhere around them. They were on a hill that was completely covered with trees and huge rocks, so they had the best hiding place that they could find in the entire jungle. The vegetation and the distance didn't allow to see much, but they had brought binoculars with them so that wasn't a problem.

Two cars approached from opposite directions: a white land rover came from the North, and a black range rover drove from the South. They parked in front of each other in the middle of the dirt road that crossed that part of the jungle, and armed men came out from both cars. They stood to the side, looking all tall and mean and menacing while they allowed two other people to come out from the cars. From the white car emerged a little skinny guy with a rat's face dressed in a dark suit, and Dakshesh Khedekar came out from the black car. Arya recognized him immediately from the picture that the other Faceless Man had given her earlier. Both men faced each other and started talking in Hindi, and soon after the conversation evolved into heavy arguing. Arya guessed that the little rat-faced man was one of Khedekar's associates.

"Do you want me to do it?" Jaqen asked, whispering so that no one could hear him.

Arya shook her head. She would do it. She had killed enough people in the last year and she knew what she was going. She was very good at it.

She handed the binoculars over to Jaqen, who took them while she grabbed her sniper rifle and placed it in the right position so that she could get ready to shoot. She lowered herself on the ground, careful not to make any noise or movements that would give her away. She could not mess this up. If she did she would not be able to go back, they would not allow her. Everything had to go according to plan. She looked through the telescopic sight of the sniper rifle, aiming right at Dakshesh Khedekar's head. She didn't know if he was wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his suit, so she didn't want to risk missing her shot.

She out her finger on the trigger and focused, but she didn't shoot yet. Jaqen looked at her and frowned.

"What are you doing? What are you waiting for?"

"What does he do?" Arya asked then.

"What?"

"What does he do? Khedekar, how does he get his money?"

Jaqen hissed impatiently. "A Faceless Man does not care about that. A Faceless Man just has to know a name, and take the life, no more. It doesn't matter if he deserves to die or not."

"Doesn't it?" Arya wondered. "But I never said that wanted to know if he deserves it. I just want to know."

"That is none of your concern, Arya!" Jaqen kept hissing. "Shoot, the moment is now!"

It was indeed the perfect moment to shoot, but Arya didn't do it. Seconds later one of Khedekar's bodyguards took a step forward and stepped right in between his boss and Arya's rifle, making it impossible to carry on the mission for the time being. Jaqen cursed under his breath, but he gave up.

"He kidnaps girls," he told Arya then, giving her the information that she wanted. "Young, beautiful girls. He prostitutes them. Sometimes he sells them to brothels all over the world for a large sum of money."

That was all that Arya needed to know. The bodyguard took a step back then, and Arya pulled the trigger.

Valar Morghulis.

The bullet flew silently without making any noise (thanks to the silencer on the sniper rifle,) downhill through the trees of the jungle, and struck Dakshesh Khedekar on his right temple. He collapsed to the ground dead before anyone could figure out what was happening, but when they saw the bloodied hole in his head they all started shouting. The little rat-faced man started screaming curses in Hindi and ran panicked towards his car; his bodyguards followed him and the car drove away. Khedekar's bodyguards, however, pulled out they guns and aimed them in every direction trying to find whoever had killed their boss. They started shooting at the vegetation of the jungle, and Jaqen and Arya fell flat on their bellies to avoid being hit by one of the stray bullets. One of them hit a bird that rested on a branch of a tree next to them, and fell to the ground dead right on top of Jaqen, hitting his head. He cursed under his breath for the second time that day, only that this time he did it in braavosi. He pushes the dead bird away from him and started crawling away quickly, always keeping himself lying low on the ground so that the bodyguards would not see him and shoot him. Arya did the same and followed him, only that she had more difficulty because she was carrying the sniper rifle.

They heard the bodyguards shouting something in Hindi, and they also heard them running. They were spreading in every direction, looking for them.

We should have brought someone that spoke Hindi, she thought while she quickly crawled away from there.

Silent as a cat, quick as a snake, she thought, remembering her lessons from her first master. That was what she did while she crawled through the jungle in India; being silent and quick as a cat and a snake.

The only reason why they were bothering with crawling away and trying not to get caught was because they didn't want to hurt the bodyguards. Both Jaqen and Arya could have easily stood up and killed all of them, but the Faceless Men only killed the people that they had been sent to kill, no more, no less. They had been sent there to take one life only, and only that life they would take. So patiently they made their way from the heavy vegetation of that place, hiding and moving as quickly as they could to get out of there unseen. Once they were far away enough and reached a place were the vegetation was even heavier than in the place they had been before, they got back up on their feet and started running. It took then almost no time to lose the bodyguards, who had been misled and went towards the opposite direction in search for them.

Jaqen looked at Arya with an approving half-smile, and Arya felt satisfied that she had managed to go through another mission successfully. It hadn't been easy at first, killing. She saw the faces of their whose eyes she shut forever in the dark, judging her, haunting her. But not anymore. It hadn't taken long to learn that effectively, all men must die, and all men had a reason to die. At least, the ones that she was sent to kill did. Knowing that she was freeing the world from another bad person made her conscience feel better.

"That was easy," Jaqen commented. It had been very easy, actually. "Now come, I want to get out of this jungle."

Arya wanted to get out of there too, she was really hating the heat. She had always thought that the weather of King's Landing was too hot and humid, but she was finding that place to be even worse. She didn't like the heat, she found comfort in the cold.

Someday, I'll return to the North, she vowed to herself.

The rest of their team was waiting for them a couple of miles away from there with a car so that they could return to Mumbai and catch a flight to the United States, and from there await for orders to return to Braavos or go to Westeros. Arya hoped that it would be the latter, but she would have to wait for the orders. She walked alongside Jaqen in silence until they arrived at the place where the others were waiting with the car.

"Guys?" Jaqen called them, but no one responded. The car was hidden right behind a big group of trees that were so close together that it was impossible to see what was at the other side. Jaqen got no reply from the men. "We are back. She did it."

Arya followed him a bit distracted, looking down at her feet while she walked, but she stopped and looked up when she heard his astonished voice:

"What in the name of God...?"

Arya took a peek around Jaqen to see what he was looking at, and she froze when she found the dead bodies of their three four companions lying on the floor around the car. The first thought that occurred to Arya was that they had been attacked by some wild animal. Then she saw that they had been shot.

"What the hell?!" she exclaimed, not believing what she was seeing.

That couldn't have been the bodyguards that were trying to find them. It was impossible, they had gone in a completely different direction, and there was no way that they were able to surprise and kill for Faceless Men, the best assassins in the world. But then... who had done that? And why?

The car was still there. Arya walked towards it, and was about to open the door to take a look inside when suddenly Jaqen ran after her and grabbed her arm. He pulled her away from the car and threw her to the ground.

"Watch out!" he shouted right before the car blew up in a violent explosions. A second later all that was left of the car was a shredded ruin engulfed in furious flames.

Arya was too stunned to get back up from her feet and react to what was happening. Besides, she was in pain. A flying piece of metal from the car had hit her, cutting a gash in her right thigh, and the flames had grazed her left hip and burned pieces of her clothes, but when she hit the ground the flames had been extinguished and she hadn't been burn, luckily for her.

Jaqen reacted more quickly. He got up immediately and pulled Arya to her feet, ignoring the girl's whimper when she put all of her weight on her injured leg. She saw that Jaqen had been hurt too, and that he had a long cut on his forehead. There was blood running down his face, but he didn't seem to mind.

"Run, girl, run!" he urged her, pushing her away, and she did as she was told.

She didn't know where she was running to, she just went where her feet told her to go. Jaqen was right behind her, and he picked up from the ground the sniper rifle that she had dropped during the explosion. She heard other footsteps that weren't theirs then, and when she looked over her shoulder she saw men coming out behind the vegetation and jumping down from their hiding places up in the branches of the trees. They were all armed, and they were going after them. They were many, at least eight.

"Jaqen!" Arya screamed to warm him.

Jaqen turned around then and aimed the rifle at the men that was closest to him. He shot and killed them man, and then he shot down a second man and a third. Jaqen was very, very quick. He was in the process of shooting a fourth man down but then one of them started shooting back, and Jaqen had to suck to dodge the bullets and he turned around again to continue running. Arya had kept running and was well ahead of him by then, but she slowed down when she turned her head around to look at Jaqen. He waved his arm making gestures for her to go on.

"Run! Arya, run!" he shouted at her.

She did as he told her. She couldn't look back, or she would slow down and they would catch up with her and they would kill her. She kept hearing Jaqen shouting at her to go on for a little bit, until she couldn't hear him anymore. She didn't look back. Was he still behind her? Was he even alive?

Please, don't kill him, she begged in her mind while she ran. He's my friend. You can't take my friend away too...

She ran so much that her legs were killing her. The pain didn't come from the cut in her thigh anymore, but from her burning muscles. The men behind her were still shooting in her direction, trying to kill her. She miraculously managed to doge all the bullets, though some of them missed her by mere inches and grazed her as they flew by her side.

She tripped on the roots of a tree and fell flat on her face. She grunted as she hit the ground, and kicked the root to free her trapped foot. She turned around so that she was lying on her back, and that was when she saw that Jaqen wasn't there anymore, but a man was approaching her with a gun in hand. Arya quickly reached for her own gun, the one she had in her belt. She took it out and aimed it at the man, shooting him desperately in the chest. She succeeded in killing him and he dropped first on his knees and then on his face on the jungle ground.

Arya gasped and got up on her feet again. She stared at the dead man. There was no one else around her, so she guessed that they were all either dead or they had gone in a different direction. As she stared at the dead body, she realized that she was having trouble breathing. Her kings ached, her chest ached, and her legs were in agony. She couldn't stop there, though. She was in the middle of the jungle in India, and she didn't know if there were more men coming after her... She had to get out of there...

Just as she turned around to leave, two mean appeared out of nowhere. One of them hit her in the face, and the other one grabbed her hand and made her drop her gun. She was now disarmed, but luckily for her, they weren't carrying any guns, only knives. She had a knife too, hidden inside her boot, but she couldn't reach it with the man still holding her by the wrist. Furious, she slammed her knee between his legs and made him bend over and cry out in pain, releasing her. The man that had hit her in the face cursed and tried to stab her with his knife. She ducked and dodged him, but she stared at him wide eyed when she realized what she had heard.

The man had cursed in Valyrian. That was only spoken in Essos...

"Who are you?" she asked in Valyrian, feeling more confused by the second. She wished she could recognize the men by their uniform, but they were all wearing black clothes. "Who sent you?!"

"No one," the man said, looking at her with a serious face.

"Why are you trying to kill us?"

"You want to kill the Governor," the man said, grinning. "That interferes with our own plans..."

What...? Did Joffrey send them?

That didn't make any sense. Joffrey had no idea that she was the one that had attacked him in King's Landing, he couldn't know. And surely her sister and her bodyguard boyfriend wouldn't have said anything, it wouldn't make any sense either.

No, those men hadn't been sent by Joffrey. Then who the fuck were they?

There wasn't time to make those questions. The man attacked her with his knife, but again Arya was quickly dodging and she avoided the sharp blade. She punched the man in the face with all the strength and then she grabbed his arm. Making use of his moment of weakness, she twisted his arm and buried the man's own knife into his chest. He screamed, and then she reached down to her boot with her free hand and took out her own knife.

"Valar Morghulis," she hissed as she slit his throat. Then she turned around and threw the knife at the other man, burying it in his forehead.

There was a loud bang! all of a sudden, and a sharp and agonizing pain hit her shoulder. She screamed and fell to the floor next to the man she had just killed, but she managed to support herself on her hands and knees. Almost biting her tongue off because of the pain, she made a great effort to raise her head. There were more men coming that way. One of them had shot her.

If she stayed there, they were going to kill her as soon as they got there without giving her any explanations first. She wasn't about to let that happen. Resisting the urge to cry out in agony, she crawled her way towards the nearest try, and then she supported herself with it using the arm that wasn't injured until she was able to stand on her feet. Someone shoot her again but hit the wood of the tree right next to her, and that urged her to keep walking to get out of there. She couldn't run anymore, but she limped as fast as she could.

She heard running water not far from there. Was it a river?

Yes, it was. Arya reached the riverside and stared into the brownish water that flowed in it. The river was wide and deep enough to get lost in it, but a million thoughts came into her mind. She was in India after all, lost in the middle of the jungle. She had no idea what she could find in those waters...

The men shot again, and missed. That action took her decision for her. Never in her right mind would she ever jump into the river, but she had no other choice. She took a deep breath and dove into the water.

It was colder than she expected, and filthy. When she opened her eyes underwater she couldn't see anything, and she felt the current taking her away. She wanted to swim to the surface, but then the men would see her and shoot. She didn't want to risk that.

She bit down on her tongue again. Her leg and shoulder hurt so bad...

Just when she thought that things couldn't go worse, they did. She could feel the men shooting at the water from the surface, but none of the billets fell near Arya, so they tried another option.

Arya didn't know they had thrown the grenade into the river until it exploded underwater. The grenade had fallen several feet away from her, so the explosion didn't hit her, but it did feel like her ears were exploding just as the grenade did. The force of the explosion was so strong that it send Arya spending rapidly over and over and over around herself, deeper into the water. She screamed, and her lungs filled with water. She choked and coughed, which flooded her lungs even more. She was sinking deeper into the river, and she didn't know which way was up and which way was down.

I'm going to drown... she realized. I'm going to drown, I'm going to die...

She didn't know how long she was underwater. She just knew that the river was taking her away and sinking her into it's deeper waters, and that her lungs and throat were on fire and she felt like her insides were going to explode. Was that was dying felt like? She hated it. They had lied to her, it wasn't a relief. It wasn't peaceful. It was hell...

No, she couldn't die there. She couldn't let herself die there. She had made a promise to herself, a promise to her sister...

I have to go back, she thought, not knowing any longer if she meant the King's Landing, the North, or simply just the surface of the river. I have to go back...

And so she kicked. It hurt like hell, but she kicked again. And again. And again... Until her head broke the surface of the river.

She crashed against a rock that was there right next to the riverside, and she held on to it for dear life. She coughed, and spit half the river out from inside her lungs.

I did it... I did it.

She held on to the rock, not letting go but not knowing what to do next. She had managed to swim back to the surface, but she couldn't make herself step out of the river. Blood was pouring out of her wound and dying the surface of the rock and the water of the river red. She didn't know if the men were still there, if they could see her and were about to kill her. Maybe they were. Maybe she should have drowned after all and not have given them the satisfaction of ending her themselves...

Two hands held her arms then, and she gasped. She thought that they had found her, but when she looked up she found a familiar face.

"You are safe now, Arya," Jaqen H'ghar assured her as he pulled her out of the river. There was no sight of the men anywhere around the place. "You are safe now."