They had been upon the great grass plains for two moons, absent the comforts of a well appointed villa in Pentos. It was only Daenerys who need travel with the horde, but Viserys had insisted on keeping Khal Drogo within his sights until his crown was returned to him and Aegon was not one miss out on an adventure.

Life on the Dothraki sea had not been easy for his aunt, but it had been especially difficult on his uncle. Both often remained within their tents, recovering from the ride and the cruelty of the sun. But Aegon and the sun were old friends, and the Dornish in him allowed his skin to simply grow darker rather than burning and peeling and stinging. "Ser Jorah," he greeted through his yawn, collapsing onto the dirt beside the man and resting his head back against the fallen log Jorah sat atop.

"You're early to rise," the older man said, glancing toward Irri, Jhiqui, and Doreah as they passed them by on their way to Daenerys, each eyeing the impossibly blonde boy beside him before bursting into giggles. Aegon did not seem to notice. "To what end?"

"Sparring with Rakharo before we ride," he answered.

"You understand the boy's words?"

"Well enough," said Aegon.

Jorah was silent for a long while and he thought Aegon was likely to drift back into sleep as he waited for Rakharo to join him. As more of the Dothraki awoke, he noticed even more looks the boy received from women passing them by. Jorah thought it passing odd that despite this attention, he'd never actually seen the boy with a woman. "You prefer the company of the men to the women," observed Jorah, before realizing the unintentional implication.

"Is that what the whispers say?" asked Aegon, a crooked smile spreading across his face. The tension in Jorah's shoulders released upon realizing this was not Viserys he was dealing with and there would be no tantrum or threats. "There is no information to be mined from these women that I could not learn from a stray bitch in Pentos. I have not spent two months atop a horse because I wanted to fuck Dothraki women."

"You sat atop a horse for two months to learn how to swing an arakh?" asked Jorah. It was no different than swinging a sword, though Jorah did not doubt the boy could learn many combat skills from the Dothraki screamers. His ability to sit a horse had already improved considerably and he was in the midst of learning his third language, but these were both things he could've learned from the safety of Pentos if he truly desired it. Aegon merely smiled. "Your aunt is here because she must be and your uncle is here for a crown. Why you are here, I do not know."

"Ask the question you intend to ask," suggested Aegon.

"I fear it would be overstepping," admitted Jorah.

"We're friends, are we not? There is little you could ask that would overstep."

"According to Westerosi custom, in the line of succession for the Iron Throne, the crown would pass to the eldest son's children before his siblings," Jorah stated, watching Aegon carefully for any sign of a reaction. "That would put Rhaegar's children ahead of the children of Aerys in the line of succession." Aegon watched him expectantly. "Why is it we're reclaiming your uncle's crown?"

Any possibility the boy may answer him evaporated when Rakharo appeared before them, whip and arakh in hand. "You raise a compelling question," said Aegon, rising to his feet with that same smile ever upon his lips. "One best kept from more discerning ears than his."

Jorah could only watch as Rakharo led Aegon away from the main camp, finding himself with more questions than he had started with. "The boy is a conundrum, is he not?"

Jorah glanced up to find himself in the presence of Ser Arthur Dayne now, Aegon's longest and most faithful companion. He'd been alone with the boy for nearly a decade and a half before bringing him to join his family and only he knew of what had transpired in his life between the day Gregor Clegane was sent to butcher him and now. "He is not what one would expect," said the old bear. "I cannot imagine he has anything to learn from Rakharo that he could not learn from you."

"I fear there is little he could learn from me he has not already learned," said Arthur. "Seventeen years is a long time," he added when Jorah gave him a dubious look. Arthur Dayne was the greatest swordsman to ever live, as far as Jorah was concerned. There was no end to what the man could teach a boy willing to learn and Aegon was certainly that. "I don't know his mind for training with the man but he is not one to waste time on fruitless ventures."

"No, he is not," said Jorah, thinking the boy's reasoning for not taking to Dothraki women made more sense now. "Who was it that stole him away from the capital? I don't think I've ever asked."

Arthur smiled at him over a cup of tepid water. "I'd best tend to my horse before another day of riding is upon us."

Gregor Clegane was easily the largest man Arya had ever seen, even surpassing Hodor in size. She thought him to be nearly eight feet tall and he was absolutely terrifying. What ought to have frightened her away only drew her to him and she often found herself perched above the training yard to see what atrocities he might commit that day. The day before last she had witnessed him cut a squire clean in half for being too slow to deliver his sword.

A sudden movement at her side stole her attention from the man and she turned in time to see Jaime Lannister settling in beside her. It might have surprised her had she not seen so much of him in recent weeks. He seemed impossible to find at times and yet around every corner at others. "Who do you think would win?" she asked him in greeting. "Between the Mountain and the Hound. You know, if the king hadn't stopped them at the tourney."

Jaime's brow lifted as he looked to the men below them, easily spotting the source of her question among them. He wondered how often she shadowed Gregor Clegane's steps and prayed it was not often enough for the great oaf to take notice. "I would hope they'd kill each other and finally rid the realm of House Clegane," he answered. Arya huffed a great sigh of displeasure, clearly not as amused with his answer as he was. "The Hound," he said instead. "He's strong enough but faster and more skilled than his brother."

"Do you think I could beat him?" she wondered next. "If I was faster and more skilled."

"Perhaps if someone cut all his limbs off first," said Jaime. "Why the fascination?"

Arya shrugged noncommittally. "What else am I meant to be doing? I've already had my lesson with Syrio today."

"Don't you have a crippled husband to hold your attention?"

She cut him an annoyed look out of the corner of her eye. "I was just with him."

"Couldn't convince him to join you in your efforts to stalk the Mountain?"

"Willas is less interested in these sorts of things," she explained. "He didn't care for blood and battle even before."

"It's a wonder good old Ned permits you to have such an interest."

"He didn't always," she said, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "I suppose when I was younger he thought it was something that would pass. He told me fighting was for boys and tried to keep me from my brothers, but it never worked. Every day I'd sneak away to join them and every day my brother Robb would beat me and I'd come home covered in mud and bruises. Robb always ended up taking quite a beating of his own from father but he still never let me win." She laughed now, remembering those days quite fondly. "But then on my tenth nameday my father took me aside with my brothers and Jon gave me my sword, Needle." Jaime glanced to the sword at her hip, nearly as thin as a needle. "He said remember that you are a Stark. Comport yourself with dignity and try to stay out of fights. But if you have to fight ..." She glanced at him with another smile, "win."

"Decent advice," said Jaime.

"I was doing what I was meant to be doing and he knew it," she said, but her smile had faded. "He feels differently now."

"Well, you're not ten now," he reminded her.

Arya supposed she wasn't. "You're much kinder to me when no one is around," she said. Jaime opened his mouth, ready to tell her he wasn't kind to anyone, least of all her. But that wasn't quite true and he knew it, and he suspected she knew it, as well. "You have a Lannister demeanor to uphold, I expect."

"There are certain expectations," he agreed. She looked up at him, eyes big and round as she waited for him to elaborate, and he was struck with a sudden wondering of what he was doing there, sat outside the training grounds with Ned Stark's daughter. He could've been training or fucking Cersei or doing anything else and yet here he was, listening to stories about her childhood in Winterfell. But why? He knew the most obvious answer but that was not an idea he was willing to entertain.

"The first and foremost being an expectation to greet your brother promptly upon his return."

Jaime turned around sharply and the sound of such a familiar voice to find Tyrion standing behind them, a bit unkempt and unshaven, but otherwise looking the same as last Jaime had seen him. "Little brother," he greeted. "How was the Wall?"

"Cold," said Tyrion, waddling over and taking a seat on Jaime's other side. "Your brother handled it much better than I did," he told Arya, leaning forward to look past Jaime at her. Her smile lit up her face and Tyrion felt compelled to offer something more that might keep her smile in place for longer. "He misses you already."

"Is he a ranger like he wanted?" she asked.

Truthfully, Tyrion didn't think the boy had even taken his vows yet, let alone been given a role, but he liked Arya Stark's smile. He didn't think he'd ever actually seen a Stark smile before and certainly never at him. "Yes," he lied. "Just like your uncle Benjen."

"And the road back?" asked Jaime, forcing his brother's attention back to him.

Tyrion gave him a dirty look, annoyed at being interrupted. He talked to his brother very often and it was much more rare for him to have a girl smiling at him without a handful of his gold in her pocket. "Uneventful," he answered briefly before reverting his attention back to Arya. "I saw your other brothers on the way. Bran should be riding again with the saddle I provided."

"A horse?" she demanded. "Father said he wouldn't be able to."

"If a dwarf can sit a horse, so can a cripple," he told her, watching as her smile fell.

"What is it with Lannisters and cripples?" she asked the pair, pushing to her feet and leaving them both with a look that was not particularly friendly.

Tyrion watched her as she stormed away, lamenting his choice of words. "What did you do?" he asked, finally turning back to his brother.

"She's marrying Willas Tyrell," Jaime explained.

"And that bothers you," said Tyrion. "Interesting." Jaime didn't think it bothered him at all, but he thought it odd Ned wanted to marry his eldest daughter off to a cripple when there were so many lords in Westeros with two working legs. "It's particularly interesting when I consider Cersei telling me I'd most likely find you with that … ugly little Stark bitch, I believe she said." Tyrion waited for Jaime to speak up, for a cruel jape about the girl's appearance to fall from his tongue. He had called the girl horse faced back in Winterfell, but no such cruelty came from his brother now. "After all these years and of all the women in the realm, Ned Stark's daughter."

Jaime wanted nothing more than to argue against the notion, but his brother knew him better than anyone. The idea he wanted so desperately to reject was becoming increasingly inevitable. "I'm not any happier about it than you are," he finally said. "She'll be gone soon enough and it will hardly matter."

Sansa glared at her as she traipsed about their chambers, grabbing whatever food remained from their breakfast and slipping it into a knapsack. "What are you doing?" Arya glanced up from her work to look at her sister, but her eyes soon fell to the pile of lemon cakes sitting beside her. She lunged for the cakes, managing to grab three of them before Sansa could whack her away with a heavy book. "Arya!"

"Taking breakfast to my friend," she answered, laughing as she dodged out of the way when Sansa threw one of the remaining lemoncakes at her.

"What poor, little butcher's boy have you befriended now that doesn't have his own breakfast?"

"He's a blacksmith," corrected Arya. "Or at least an apprentice. How did you know it wasn't a girl?"

Sansa cut her a derisive look, flipping open the book she had so recently hit her sister with to continue with her studies. "You'll make friends with just about anyone," she said. Arya didn't think that sounded like a compliment. "But never girls."

Arya hesitated at the door, sack filled with food hiked over her shoulder, and her mouth ready and poised to list off a few of her female friends. Her brow knitted together when she could not think of any and Sansa's smirk grew. "Well, you don't have any friends at all!"

Arya stormed out of the room before Sansa could throw anything else at her, her jaw set firmly as she stomped crankily down the hall. Admittedly, Sansa had at least one friend in Jeyne Poole but Arya hated her. Jeyne Poole had been the first to call her Arya Horseface. What want did she have of any female friends when the only two girls she'd known had always been so cruel? Jaime was often cruel but at least he didn't neigh at her whenever she came by.

As she traipsed through Flea Bottom she wondered how she'd ever gotten lost the first time. The streets were narrow but simplistic and the Street of Steel was an easy one to find with its proximity to the Sept of Baelor. She hesitated a moment outside of Tobho Mott's shop, hoping that he would not be in that morning. A loud voice greeted her as she stepped through the door. "You again," the boy called, erasing any fears she had of him not remembering her. "Have you brought me another pigeon?"

"No," she answered rather smugly, approaching the cleanest, or rather, the least dirty table in the shop and beginning to spread out her breakfast assortment. She could hear Gendry stop hammering as he came over to see what she was setting out. "Fair payment for a piece of your bread."

Gendry had never seen such an assortment of food in his life. He recognized a bit of it, the lemon cakes looking similar enough to those sold by merchants around the shop, but he hadn't a clue what other bits of food were. "Who'd you steal it from?" he asked, giving her an incredulous look.

"I didn't steal it," she said. "I just took it from the castle."

"A kitchen wench, is it?" he wondered, giving her a once over. He thought she looked a bit too dirty to be allowed in the kitchens and would have pegged her for stable work if anything. "You know they'll cut off your hands if they catch you."

Arya almost told him that she was the daughter of the Hand of the King and the Warden of the North. She could set the kitchen ablaze and receive no such punishment, but Gendry seemed almost impressed that she had done something so reckless and brave. He would be less impressed if he knew she had only stolen it from her own breakfast table. "Are you going to eat it or not?" Gendry glanced toward the door, almost as if he were anticipating the gold cloaks to break it down at any moment in search of the thieving kitchen wench. "Afraid to eat a lemon cake?"

Gendry grabbed one of the cakes and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, stifling a moan as it near melted in his mouth and the citrus flavor coated his tongue. "Seven hells," he groaned, grabbing another as Arya laughed. "Highborns eat well."

As he set in on the rest of the food she'd brought him, Arya wandered around the shop taking in his wares. The armor on display way gorgeous, nearly as intricate as Jaime's and she wondered if Gendry had been the one to do it or if it had been his master. She reached up for a sword nearly as tall as she was, but it clanged loudly to the floor when it proved much heavier than she had expected.

She struggled with it for a moment, putting all her strength into lifting the tip off the ground but it wouldn't budge. "You're going to cut yourself," Gendry said from behind her before taking the hilt from her with one hand and hanging it back into place, his other hand still holding a half eaten scone. Arya could only stare, watching his bicep flex. "Who do you think's going to mop up your blood when you do? It won't be me."

"I wouldn't have cut myself," she informed him, watching his back as he walked back to the food. He was tall, she noted. At least as tall as Jaime who was nearly as tall as the Hound. She wondered how he would have fared against the Mountain if he knew how to swing a sword instead of just making one.

"A swordsman as well as kitchen wench, are you?" he asked. "You don't know the first thing about swords."

"Stick 'em with the pointy end," said Arya, recalling the first lesson Jon Snow had taught her.

Gendry actually smiled at that, the first smile she had seen from him. "I stand corrected."

"Did you make these?" she wondered, gesturing to the armor she'd been admiring earlier.

"Some of it," he answered. "That one's for Ser Loras Tyrell." She looked at the one before her, covered in intricate designs of little flowers and vines. "He's a lord of Highgarden. Always comes in with the king's brother."

"I know who he is," she said with a smile. "Do any other lords come in?"

Gendry shrugged. "The Hand of the King has come in a few times."

Arya spun around quickly. "Lord Stark?"

"Jon Arryn first, but him, too," he said. "Never buys anything, though."

She couldn't imagine why her father would visit a blacksmith in Flea Bottom, especially if he wasn't buying anything. He always seemed so busy and rarely had time to see her, why would he have time to waste here? "Did he come to see your master or you?"

"Me," said Gendry. "He'd ask about my work and my mother."

"Your mother? Who was your mother?"

Gendry looked annoyed to be asked the same questions by a third person, but he supposed she had at least fed him first. "She worked in a tavern and had yellow hair," was all he knew. "She wasn't anyone."

"Then it was your father he wanted to know about," she told him matter-of-factly. "Who was he?" Gendry shrugged. "Well he must be someone important or my father wouldn't have come to ask."

"Your father?"

Arya blanched, realizing she'd given herself up by accident. "No, your father," she said quickly before Gendry could think too long about it. He was not the cleverest boy she'd ever met but she didn't think he was stupid. "Maybe he's a great knight. Or maybe you were Jon Arryn's and that's why he came to visit you."

"Maybe I'm Lord Stark's," Gendry muttered, looking dubious.

"No," Arya snapped. "You're not his."

"Why not?" asked Gendry. "He visits me, too."

"Because Lord Stark is the most honorable man in Westeros and he loves his Lady Catelyn," she said. "She's the only one he loves."

Gendry smiled, looking away from her as she glared at him, the apples of her cheeks growing red as she grew more angry with him. "He must've found that bastard of his under a cabbage leaf, then," he said, adding fuel to the fire. Something flashed in her face that made Gendry suspect she was liable to grab another of his swords and stick it in his gut. He caught her by the wrist before she could and held her in place when she tried to jerk out of his grip. "At least your father raised his bastard, not like mine."

"Lord Stark's not my-"

"Yes, he is," replied Gendry. The pieces had come together in his mind. Why she hadn't known her way around Flea Bottom, how she'd managed to sneak out an entire sack full of food without any fear of repercussion. "My father's no lord or knight. Some smelly drunk, I'd wager, like the others my mother dragged home from the alehouse. Whenever she got mad at me, she'd say, 'If your father were here, he'd beat you bloody.' That's all I know of him." Arya felt her anger waning as he spoke and a different emotion entirely taking its place. "Well, if he was here now, might be I'd beat him bloody. But he's dead, I figure, so what does it matter who he was?"