Dawn in Harrenhal crept up slowly. The great walls of the castle hid the face of the sun and only the lightening of the sky overhead gave any sign of the day's beginning. Even after the sun peeked over the walls, it might be trapped behind one of the five great towers and remain in hiding until nearly noon.
The Hound had still been snoring when Arya had stumbled out of their tent in the dark, a rope wound up around her waist. He would likely be snoring still, even now after she had washed her face and dressed and gone all the way to the Dread Tower.
For the most part, the camp of the Valelords looked much the same as it had on the journey through the Riverlands. All the buildings of wood that Arya remembered from her time in Harrenhal were gone now, turned to ash and cinders by the Mountain along with so much else, and so the Host of the Vale was forced to make camp, spreading about in the ruins while the five great towers glowered angrily down upon them.
The Dread Tower rose before her now, dark and foreboding. Ancient stones, fissured in some places and fused in others, but still holding fast after so many years. Every one of the towers was an impossible monument, every one of them made Arya feel as though she must be a mouse, but the Dread Tower dwarfed them all. It was said that a man could jump from the peak and count to fifty before hitting the ground. The last time she had been in Harrenhal, Arya had heard that there were whole families who lived and died in the upper levels of the Dread Tower, never setting foot on the earth below until they were buried beneath it. She had heard, too, that their souls were trapped in the tower, and that their screams mixed with the wind at night.
Arya did not know if she believed that, but it must be easy to believe in curses and ghosts when you lived in the shadow of the Dread Tower. But it mattered little enough. Arya did not fear any ghost. The living terrified her more, and Sansa most of all. The stranger who she had sat next to at every meal for as long as she could remember was in that tower, and Arya felt torn between hope and terror whenever she thought of her.
She had resolved to see her.
Sandor and Baelish and Robb and all the others could wait. Sansa lived, and Sansa needed her. Arya would not be too late a second time.
"Running potions for the Maester again, Arri?" the guard asked, as she approached the base of the tower. Arya breathed a sigh of relief. She knew his face, knew his name, and he would let her in without question.
Arya grimaced. "Milady is taking her potion twice as often now."
"Well, you best not keep milady waiting!" The guard laughed. "Get on with you!"
Cold settled over her as she stepped into the Dread Tower. Baelish had tried to make the place more welcoming, more courtly, more finished, but tapestries and rugs could only cover up so much, and there was not enough plaster in Westeros to keep the drafts out. Arya shivered.
What was she thinking coming up here at the crack of dawn? Sansa would take her for a thief, or a killer, or worse. She would never recognize her now, as she was. The winds howled outside the tower, and Arya half felt as though they were screaming at her. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she reminded herself and kept climbing.
Thirty-one, Thirty-two, Thirty-three, she counted as the doors passed by, one by one. Thirty-six! She turned to the side and entered an abandoned chamber on the fifth floor. Even with the whole host of the Vale in garrison, many rooms had been left empty, too ruined for any use, or else forgotten amidst thousands of other chambers and hallways and stairwells. This room, door thirty-six on the fourth stairwell, had been a tiny cell even when in good repair, and years of wind and rain and dragonfire had rendered it home to nothing larger than a spider.
But it did have a window.
Winds tugged and pulled at her as she climbed out of the window. Arya spooled out the rope from around her waist and tied a knot around a jagged stone that stuck out a full foot from the floor. She chewed her lip as she formed the knot, wondering if her hands still remembered all the steps old man Hewbyrt had taught her, back in when she had been Arya Underfoot. She gave the rope a sharp tug and it did not budge. That would have to be enough. If the knots failed her, she would have to see how high she could count before she hit the ground.
But the ropes held, and she lowered herself down with safety. The host of the Vale stretched out beneath her like a painted anthill, and Arya had to look away to avoid becoming sick. Fifteen feet further, and she would be to Sansa's window, the window she always stood at, looking west. Arya's hands grew chapped as the roughspun rope passed through her hand, and Arya realized with a heavy heart that she would never be able to climb up again. There was no turning back, not now.
Finally, she came to the window, the window at which she had seen Sansa standing so many times before now. Arya's feet touched on the windowsill, unlatched the wooden shutters with a knife, and then suddenly she was looking into Sansa's quarters themselves, like a child looking into a dollhouse. White plastered walls with glorious tapestries hung over them, a brass armillary sphere, and a wide oaken desk covered with books and maps... An embarrassment of riches that seemed a world apart from the hell that had been her last two years.
Nothing was stopping her from just walking in. Nothing and no one, and yet… I'm no craven, she told herself with a grimace and marched through the window.
She prowled like a cat through the chambers, every moment expecting Brune or Baelish or Lysa to appear from behind a curtain and kill her. How would she get past the guard in front of the door on her way out? Why had she not thought of that? She felt as though she were going to be sick.
"Who is there?"
Arya's blood froze in her veins. A woman's voice! Sansa's voice! Her sister was here, was awake... The old fright took her nerves by storm and she felt the urge to run, run and never look back once again.
"Who's there?" Sansa's voice was higher, more insistent now. "I can see your shadow by the door and I heard you come in. Don't think I won't scream for the guards."
Arya dragged herself forward to the doorway, eyes downcast, unable to raise her eyes to meet with Sansa's.
"Who are you?"
"I'm… I'm the one they call Arri, my lady." Arya's mouth went dry. Why had she said that?
"Arri?" The sound of shifting silks caused Arya to look up, and with terror, she saw that her sister had gotten out of the bed and was coming toward her. Their eyes met and Sansa gasped in surprise.
"Arya?"
Then Arya was rushing into her sister's arms, weeping and laughing and holding one another. Her smell, her warmth, Arya drank it all in, every last drop. How long had it been since they had met like this? Years, it must have been. Arya would not let her go, not again.
"How did this happen?" Sansa asked eventually, parting away from her. "I thought you had died, I had… I had given you up for dead, Arya. And yet here you are, so much taller and so much older and..."
"I did nearly die, a lot of times," Arya laughed. "I don't know how I'm alive, I don't know how any of us are alive. But I am alive, and I am here."
Sansa laughed along with her. It was all too ridiculous. "But what have you been doing all this time?"
"I've been running away. From Tywin, from Bolton. Trying to get to Robb, or Jon, or you, and always coming up short. I snuck out from the city with the Night's Watch, then I was on my own for a bit, and now I'm with the Hound for a while, if you can believe it. He's working for..."
"For Lord Baelish." A shadow passed over Sansa's face. "I have seen him, though I think Lord Baelish meant to keep us separate. I understood why a man like him might take up such work, but… is he helping you?
Arya sighed. "I don't know. At first, I was his prisoner. He tied me up in his cloak at night and said he was going to sell me to the highest bidder, but now..."
"Has he told Lord Baelish? About you, I mean."
"No." Of that much Arya was sure. "Baelish doesn't even look at me unless I say something."
Sansa stepped away and walked about the room in a circle, twirling her dyed hair between her fingers. She has changed too, Arya realized. She had become colder, sharper with the years. But she was still Sansa, still her sister.
"Everything is so confusing," Sansa said finally, sinking to her bed in exasperation. "I have enough to do keeping up with Petyr. There's something wrong with Lady Lysa, there's…"
"Baelish is poisoning her," Arya said flatly. "I've seen the maester prepare her potions, and it's no medicine."
"Are you sure?" Sansa's voice was low. "That's not the sort of thing to say lightly."
Arya rolled her eyes. "I know what I saw."
Sansa shook her head and laughed helplessly. "Rolling your eyes at me, Arya? We haven't changed so much after all, have we?"
Arya felt something like anger well up inside her but she kept it contained. "No. No, things will be different now." They would have to be.
"True. Even if we should all end up back together… Mother and Father and Bran and Rickon are all gone."
"Robb's dead too," Arya replied without thought.
"Oh! Haven't you heard?" Sansa smiled widely in surprise. "It seems that I get to be the bearer of good news. Robb's alive!"
"I heard he drowned in the Trident." His corpse was cold and red.
"That's what the Freys thought, but the Brotherhood fished him out and brought him back to life. In the months since he's put the Lannisters to rout and all but destroyed their hold on the Riverlands. Every report confirms it."
"But..." Arya's voice failed her. She had never once thought that the tales of Robb's survival might be true, that her brother had actually lived. She had been sure he was dead. But why had she been so sure? Because she saw him in her dreams? Because she had pulled his corpse from the River in a dream where she had thought she was a wolf? Even now she could not make herself believe that Robb lived, and yet how would she ever make Sansa believe her? She swallowed. "What's this I hear about you marrying our cousin?"
Sansa laughed. "Trying to change the subject? I wonder why. Perhaps you've been given false hope too many times. But it's Harry Hardyng I'm to marry, not Sweetrobin. He's heir to the Vale after our cousin, and Robin is… not strong. Harry and I will be Lord and Lady of the Vale in all but name."
And will be Lord and Lady in name as well when Robin dies, Arya thought but did not say. Baelish was already poisoning his wife, what was one more? Arya did not know what to think of that. Robin was her blood, but was he pack? Gendry had not been her blood, but he seemed more like pack to her than the sniveling child she had only seen a few times.
Arya cleared her head of confusion. There was no purpose in agonizing over such things now. "Do you trust Baelish?" she asked. "And this Harry, who is he, anyway?"
"Harry is a man. Well, he's a boy. He's headstrong, brave, handsome-"
"He sounds stupid."
Sansa only smiled. "Perhaps he is."
"And you trust Baelish?"
"I don't know," Sansa said, and now her face truly became troubled. "But Harry is a good match, so I do not see why I should not go along with it. We will need strong connections to survive, Arya."
Arya felt her guts twist. Sansa had said it right. They could never go back, never make things as they had been. She would be married off to someone to form a political alliance as well, in all likelihood. All throughout her childhood, she had known it would be so. She had even envied Sansa's prettiness, her marriageability. But now that it came to the matter Arya felt as though a knife had been thrust between her ribs. Had she just got her sister back, only to lose her again to some idiot Valelord?
Her eyes stung and she rubbed at them. "Sorry," she said. "Sorry, I'm being stupid."
Sansa embraced her again, more gently this time. "Come on now, Harry won't be worse than Tyrion."
Arya felt the urge to vomit. She had not even thought of that. Her sister seemed so composed, so pure, but she had suffered as much as Arya had, in her own way. Married to that awful dwarf, kept as Joffrey's prisoner for a year… Arya felt sure she could not have born it, felt sure that she would have died. She has been even more without friends than I have.
"Let's run away," Arya said. "It's easy enough to escape this castle if you know what you're doing. I've done it before, and I'll bet the Hound would help us if it came down to it."
Sansa drew in a deep breath. "And where should we run to, little sister?"
Arya bit her cheek. Sansa had grown since they had last parted ways in King's Landing. She was near enough a woman now that she would have a hard time passing as a boy, and the Riverlands were more dangerous than ever. If they ran now, they would have Baelish and half the Vale on their scent. "We can go to Robb," she said, almost desperately. Even a fake Robb would guard them more safely than Baelish. "Just a few weeks west of here, if the tales are true."
"I have greater ambitions than merely living," Sansa stated, leaning forward. "Whether I can trust Baelish or not, he is helping me for the moment. He is helping us. I will be Lady of the Vale, Arya, and I will make them love me. Robb will set the Riverlands to rights, Jon will break our enemies in the North, and I will bring in the Vale as an ally. Together we'll be stronger than Robb ever was alone."
"Jon?" Arya's heart jumped in her chest.
Sansa's eyes gleamed with fierce pride. "Had you not heard? Living so near to Baelish has its advantages, I suppose. The Watch released our brother from his vows, and within a month he had half the North cheering his name. The Boltons are dead or imprisoned, and soon all our other enemies in the North will be as well. One of Baelish's lickspittles claims that we should offer Robb help in putting down the bastard usurper."
Arya could only snort in reply to that. The last few years had seen a thousand awful miracles and a thousand tragedies, but Jon would never turn against Robb. But Robb is dead, she remembered, and then was unhappy again.
Still, whoever was pretending to be him must be a supporter of house Stark, and such a person could not be so wholly evil that they would stand against Jon's rightful claim… or was it Sansa's, now? She did not know.
"I still don't trust Baelish," Arya said. "The Hound is a villain and a murderer, but at least I know what to expect from him."
Sansa nodded. "If he's kept you safe so far… yes. It's probably best if you stay hidden. But I'm glad to have you back regardless, and I won't let you escape from me again."
"Nor I you, sister," Arya said, and the words may as well have been an oath. Never again.
A sound came at the door, the outer door to Sansa's quarters, and Arya cursed.
"Quiet," Sansa said. "It's just the maid come to get me ready for the day. Hide under the bed and you can escape after I leave for morning prayers. Dressed like you are, nobody will look twice at you leaving my room."
"Sansa!" Arya said. "There's a rope out by the window! You must close the shutters so they don't see it!"
"I will manage it, just hide!"
Arya did as she was told. The underside of Sansa's bed was dusty and cramped, but it was also dry, and Arya had slept in worse places. She stayed there for nearly an hour as Sansa went about her morning routine, getting her hair done, getting her dresses laced, and a thousand other things.
...and Arya found herself drifting off. It was a terribly dangerous place to sleep, all things considered, but she could not help herself. She had always been drowsy of late, it seemed, and her early morning adventures had tired her, and the room was so very warm…
Arya was a wolf again. The Wolf was sleeping this time, resting on a patch of dry ground amidst a wet and wild land. She was tired, and well-fed, having chased down an entire herd of deer the day before. She could smell the warmth of her packmates around her, even more clearly than she could see them in the fog. The pack had grown again, feasting on game both wild and tame. The air had been growing colder, however, and the Wolf felt it. The Wolf knew that winter was coming. For the moment the swamps were shelter enough, with dense warm fog rising up from the waters to fill their nostrils, and game of all sorts fleeing the cold forests… but soon there would not be enough to sustain them.
Something in the air haunted her, beyond the sense of the coming winter. Something awful and unspeakable blew in on the winds of the west, scenting panic and horror. The Wolf did not know what to think of such an omen, but neither did the Wolf did not fear the unknown. Whatever was coming, they would survive, or they would not. The Wolf knew this truth at least.
Her thoughts turned to her siblings. The runt walked a thin line, living with man and feasting on man-flesh. She could feel his rage as though it were a raging fire. Another of her brothers walked with him, ever confused and uncertain, but calmer now for their brother's presence. Her third brother went ever north, ever closer to the Heart of Winter and she could not see why. Only one wolf moved in the south. His presence was the most altered of all, so strange and watchful. He felt different, more mixed, as though he were two of her pack at once, but still, she knew him.
Come south, the voice in her thoughts echoed, and she felt herself agreeing. Come south and bring the pack with you, for soon you will all be required.
The great wolf rose from her seat and howled, a hundred more howls rising up in reply. 'Let us hunt!' They cried, 'Let us hunt to the south!' They would soon be required in the south, though she did not know why.
The scene changed, and suddenly she was Arya again, and not the wolf. Grey Wind lay curled up nearby, sleeping peacefully, but this time they were in a forest clearing and the moon was out. Arya had not seen the direwolf for almost a week now, except in her dreams like this. She allowed herself to relax, to lie closer to the wolf and feel its warmth.
"Ah there you are," her brother said, coming out of the dark of the trees. "How is my little sister."
"I went to see Sansa," Arya said.
"I am happy to hear you say that," Robb replied, his tired face crinkling into a smile. Arya's chest tightened with a pang of guilt. How many times had Robb's ghost told her to go to Sansa? Sometimes she felt that was all they talked about in these dreams, but that was not quite true. Sometimes he told her stories of the war, sometimes he told her of Jeyne Westerling, her new sister…
But it always came back to Sansa. Arya had made excuses, so many excuses. She swallowed. "I know I should have done it earlier, Robb. I could have done it, too. I only…."
"It's alright."
"I wanted to go, you know."
"But you also were afraid."
A lump formed in her throat. "Yes." She admitted, looking away. "I am afraid. I am a craven. I always called all the others that, but..."
Robb drew her into a hug, holding her tight and rocking her side to side as she sobbed. This isn't real, she reminded herself. This is only a dream.
"You've been a craven," he said, "but you've also been brave, little sister."
Arya grimaced. "Which is it? Brave or craven?"
Robb chuckled. "Both at the same time, I think. Nobody's ever just one thing or another."
You are, she thought. You're dead, and nothing more than that. But I'm glad you're here, anyway.
