"Arya," her sister's voice called to her, gentle and sweet and quite unlike the usual tone Sansa had when addressing any of her siblings, but especially Arya. They'd spent a week at Highgarden so far and the sisters had grown closer in that week than in all of their previous years together combined. Their father had spoken to them once, back in King's Landing, of how they were in danger so far South, of how they must protect one another. They hadn't taken him seriously until they'd experienced that danger first hand, and both girls were relieved to have someone they knew, someone they trusted, even if it had been their least favorite sibling.
"What is it?" wondered Arya, cracking one eye open as she glanced from her spot laying on the blanket to where Sansa was working on her needlework. The pair were outside by the lake, resting under the shade of a giant willow tree. Arya would've preferred to be training, but there were still limitations to what she could do, and she was grateful her father had allowed her to finally leave her bed.
Arya watched her sister as she stared down at the needlework in her hands, her brow furrowed. "Is it …" she began hesitantly. "Were you quite close with Ser Jaime?"
Arya sat up sharply, at least as high as she could rise on such short notice, propping herself up on an elbow. "Why are you asking me that?"
"Lady Margaery was consoling me," Sansa admitted. "She knows how difficult it's been for me to be away from Prince Joffrey." Arya's eyes rolled back into her skull. "She thought you might understand how I feel, being away from Ser Jaime."
She could feel her jaw clenching tightly. "What else did she say?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"She thought it was quite romantic the way Ser Jaime couldn't hurt you, even though he ought to," said Sansa.
"She doesn't know what she's talking about," snapped Arya. "She wasn't even there."
"But Lord Willas was," Sansa argued, her eyes still focused on her lap.
With the way Sansa hung her head, Arya wondered briefly if she was more aware than Arya might've guessed at how Margery Tyrell was manipulating her. She had been a fool with Cersei, and an even bigger one with Joffrey, but perhaps she was beginning to learn. "What did you tell her?"
"That you were loyal to Lord Willas, your one true love," her sister answered, finally glancing up to meet Arya's gaze. Surprise passed over Arya's features for a brief moment, before she offered her younger sister a small smile that Sansa eagerly returned, pleased to have given an answer that her sister liked. Arya laid back down, staring up at the canopy of leaves above her, her mind circulating through a thousand thoughts at once. "Why do you think she was asking?"
"I don't know," admitted Arya. Perhaps the Tyrells had figured out the Lannisters had not known their exact escape route from the city by happy accident. It was true Arya had spent a great deal of time with both Jaime and Tyrion during her time in King's Landing. She couldn't fault them for thinking she had been the one to give their plan away.
"Do you think Lord Willas is jealous of Ser Jaime?"
Arya let out a strange sound, something between a laugh and a cough. The idea was too absurd and had taken her by surprise. "No," she said.
A week came and went at Highgarden, and then another, and one more after that. Ned Stark's leg grew stronger by the day, though he still walked with a limp. Arya, however, had made a full recovery. Most days she was found out in the training yard with Garlan Tyrell, who had delighted in taking her into his tutelage. She missed Syrio Forel, but she would see him again. The Tyrell boy was a far superior teacher than Jaime Lannister had been, or at least a much more willing one. She had been knocked to the dirt more times than she could count, and returned to her room every evening with fresh bruises. Garlan didn't treat her as a delicate, young girl, but rather the same as he treated any of the soldiers out in the yard.
She supposed that might've had something to do with their other training companion: Brienne of Tarth. A monstrous woman, taller than any man she'd ever known, save the Clegane brothers. She was a terror with a sword, too, but she served more poignantly as an example for Arya. As proof that she could be exactly what she wanted to be, because Brienne already was.
The time she was not training was spent more uncustomarily. Some afternoons she spent reading with Willas in Highgarden's magnificent library. Others were devoted to spending time with her father and sister, walking about the gardens or swimming in one of the pristine lakes. Presently, she had been invited to join Willas's sister Margaery and his grandmother Lady Olenna for tea.
"Lady Arya," Margaery greeted, always rather formal despite the fact they'd met several times over the past few weeks. The name never felt right to Arya, no matter how many times she heard it. Lady Sansa, Lady Catelyn, Lady Margaery … it all rolled off the tongue easily, but Lady Arya always felt foreign to her ears.
Arya curtsied awkwardly, wondering if she looked odd attempting to curtsy in trousers. If she did, Margaery gave no indication. Although, she never gave much of an indication of anything. None of the Tyrells ever seemed to. "Lady Margaery," she returned. "Apologies for my appearance."
Margaery's brow knit together as she fought off a smile, looking the Stark girl up and down. She was covered in dirt and blood, her hair akin to a sweaty bird's nest. "Is there something the matter with it?" she wondered, leading the younger girl through the corridors.
"To see your grandmother, shouldn't I look more … like you?" Arya had not met Lady Olenna.
"Like me?"
"Clean, a dress," Arya gestured to her vaguely. "Beautiful."
"You don't think you're beautiful?" Margaery asked curiously. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Well, my sister-"
Margaery laughed before she could even finish explaining. "Has anyone who's not your sister and not twelve ever told you you weren't beautiful?"
Arya paused to think for a moment. "Jaime Lannister said I was horse faced," she supplied, remembering back to that first day they had met in Winterfell. It felt as if it had been years ago, when the reality was it hadn't even been one.
"From what I hear, Jaime Lannister is rather fond of you," said Margaery.
Arya sent her a glance out of the corner of her eye. Sansa had told her the truth of it, and she could only wonder how often her relationship with Jaime was a topic of conversation in Highgarden. "Probably less so now."
The older girl gave her a knowing smile. "You're still young, Arya. You've got a lot to learn about love." Arya did not think Margaery was that much older than she was, but she reckoned she likely did have more experience with the matter. "A man's affections do not sway so easily once captured."
"As you said, my lady, you would know better than I."
Undeterred by the dismissive response, Margaery pressed on. "I hear you've earned the affections of more than one Lannister," she teased.
"That's the one we'll be focusing on today," another voice chimed in. Arya all but flinched as she turned her sights on the old woman, sitting no more than a few feet away, surrounded by roses and beautiful young girls dressed in Tyrell green. She didn't know how she hadn't heard them. Perhaps that hit to the head had limited her hearing. "The Imp," Olenna elaborated, when the Stark girl merely stared at her. She had already dealt with one rather slow Stark girl that day, and her patience was well strained for dealing with another.
"What do you care about Tyrion?"
The old woman's eyes were unreadable as she flashed Margaery a look. Had she slipped up by calling him Tyrion? Should she have added a 'lord', or parroted the cruel moniker? "I care a great deal about him now that he's the Hand of the King," she said. "Come, child, sit down. You knew him quite well, didn't you?"
"Not really," she lied.
"You spent hours alone with the man in his chambers," said Olenna. "Whatever were you doing if not getting to know one another?"
Anger she had been suppressing since Sansa had first asked her about Jaime erupted in her belly, like a hot, sticky sap, clinging to her ribcage. "Perhaps you'll get to the information you want more quickly if you stop asking questions you already know the answer to."
Margaery tensed beside her, but Olenna smiled. "My grandson said you were a clever girl," she said. "It's good to see he was right." With a flick of her wrist, the girls who surrounded them quickly flittered off, leaving the trio alone amongst the flowers. "We've all but declared open rebellion against the crown, and yet there have been no repercussions. No pillaging, no raiding of the common folk, not so much as a letter. Why do you think that is?"
"I expect he knows the suffering of peasants would do little to draw anyone of import out of Highgarden," she replied.
"Including you, Arya," Olenna agreed. "Including the noble Ned Stark."
Her teeth ground against each other fiercely as she tried to keep her temper under control. "Is that a question?" she asked, forcing a smile as she tried to summon her best attempt at a Lannister kind of aloofness. Jaime had always annoyed her with it - perhaps it would irritate the old bat, as well.
"We have reports that the Imp has set sail from the capital," she said, ignoring the Stark girl's show of rebellion. Sansa was a dimwitted girl, but she'd been malleable and obedient. Arya, however, knew full well when she was being manipulated, and she didn't seem to care for it. "It would be wise of him to take a ship full of gold and live out the rest of his days in peace across the Narrow Sea."
The implication about Tyrion's character annoyed her, nearly as much as the insistence upon calling him the Imp. She knew the Lannisters were her enemies now, but it had been difficult to count Tyrion among them. She had seen Jaime's betrayal, she had felt it. Tyrion still felt like her friend. "Tyrion is clever, not wise," said Arya. "And braver than you give him credit."
"Then why?"
Allies , thought Arya. The Lannisters were in desperate need of them now. Starks had allied with Tyrells who'd allied with Baratheons … the Riverlands and the Vale would not betray her mother. Even the Greyjoys could not turn against Father, not when Theon was still his ward. What reason would the Martells have to support the Lannisters who'd butchered Elia Martell? If he could find no friends in Westeros, he would sail to Essos with his Lannister gold and purchase some. She could see Olenna's eyes roll back into her head out of her peripheral, clearly impatient with waiting for her to say anything intelligent or useful. "Apologies, my lady. I'm only a young girl," she said. "I've no head for warfare and strategy."
Tyrion Lannister had never been across the Narrow Sea before. He had never stepped foot in Essos; not until war had necessitated it. A war that could have been avoided, he thought, if not for his siblings. A trip across the sea that could've been skipped.
He felt ill at ease in the great city of Volantis. At home, he was unanimously despised, but he was also known. He was also feared. In Volantis, he was nothing and no one. Especially to Harry Strickland, who had, quite resolutely, laughed in his face upon his request to go to war for him. "You're all exiled Westerosi or the sons of exiles," reasoned Tyrion. "Should you not want to go home?"
"Aye," said Harry. "We'll go home."
Tyrion's brow furrowed; he had heard of the Golden Company breaking their contract with the city of Lys. It was the first contract they had ever broken, but he still didn't know why. "I can pay you double whatever you're getting now," he offered. "You know what they say, a Lannister always pays his debts."
"I'm not paying them anything," a new voice said. Tyrion's eyes followed it to a boy, young and tall and silver . He might've thought it a trick of the light, had the girl behind him not been equally ethereal. "Some loyalty can't be purchased, my lord."
"Not often said of a group of mercenaries," replied Tyrion, watching as the boy took Harry's seat and the girl sat beside him. "I had thought the two of you yet upon the Dothraki sea."
The boy threatened to smile as a handful of Dothraki warriors filed into the room behind Tyrion. Bronn's hand fell to the hilt of his sword, but even he knew when the odds were stacked unfavorably against him. Tyrion watched as two knights moved to stand behind the Targaryens; one he recognized instantly as Ser Jorah Mormont, but the other was a ghost. A man who'd been dead for well over a decade. "It would seem our spies are better than yours," said Aegon. "I empathize with your need for an army, Lord Tyrion, but I'm afraid I can't part with them."
"Well, I had to try," said Tyrion. "We've taken up enough of your time, I'll just-"
Aegon's eyes flickered over his head and suddenly a cold blade was pressed to his neck. "Now would be the time to propose a counter offer," he said. "Unless you would like to die."
"We could help each other," said Tyrion, not missing a beat. "You need your army to invade Westeros, but I could grant you free passage. We're at war with each other now, but we would unite against a foreign invader."
"Foreign?" spat Daenerys. "We were both born at Dragonstone."
"A very long time ago," said Tyrion. "Robert Baratheon was not a good king, but he also didn't burn his own people alive. There will be no welcoming return for a new Targaryen dynasty."
"When my dragons are grown, we will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground," threatened Daenerys, all fire and brimstone as her nephew sat calmly beside her.
"Three dragons or no, my lady, a united Westeros would expel you," he said. "And if not, you would be ruling over little more than charred bones and cooked meat."
Daenerys opened her mouth to speak again, but Aegon raised a lazy hand to stop her. She was not entirely deterred; she had always been close to Aegon, especially when they were still in Pentos at Illyrio's villa. He had been unwaveringly kind to her where Viserys had only ever been cruel. "You turn from me because I want justice for our family?" she asked her nephew.
"Justice is only vengeance in pretty packaging," he replied, quoting something Arthur had often told him as a boy.
"Justice, vengeance, call it what you like," said Dany. "The usurper butchered your father at the Trident. He caved his chest in with-"
"I know the story quite well," Aegon assured her. "I also know Robert Baratheon is dead. Shall I fight one ghost to avenge another?"
She leaned closer to him, grabbing his hand and holding it between her own. "The Kingslayer is still alive. The dog who stabbed my father, your grandfather, the man he'd sworn an oath to protect, in the back."
"Your father was mad," said Aegon, watching as Daenerys recoiled from him as if struck, dropping his hand and letting it fall back into his lap. "Viserys was mad. Might be that you're mad, as well." He could see Ser Jorah shifting uncomfortably in his periphery. "But I'm not. I would prefer to rule over more than ashes."
"And your mother?"
The mother Tyrion's father had ordered killed. The mother Gregor Clegane had raped and butchered. Tyrion swore he could see the boy's jaw clench just a little bit tighter, before he jerked it towards the door and suddenly his aunt was being led out of the room by a pair of Dothraki. "You'll have to excuse her," he finally said, turning his attention back to his Lannister guest. "She's rather … sentimental for the family she never knew."
"And you're not?"
"There's little room for sentiment in ruling," said Aegon. "Now, let us get to the heart of this. What happens once we've helped you win this little war of yours? I can't imagine the boy will abdicate and pass the throne to me."
"No, I expect not," Tyrion agreed. "But it just so happens we've recently … misplaced his betrothed." Tyrion glanced toward the door Daenerys had just walked out of. "He could do with another. And Dragonstone for you."
The boy finally smiled at that. "We're nearly there, Lord Tyrion," he said. "One more thing and we'll have a deal." Tyrion's stomach plummeted. He had already negotiated more than his father would likely approve of, and much less than the boy likely wanted. There was little more he could give the boy. "I know you have a spy placed among my ranks. Is it Magister Illyrio or is it Ser Jorah?"
Tyrion's eyes flickered to Jorah and in an instant a whip was locked around his throat, yanking him to his knees. Jorah Mormont let out a string of guttural sounds, the whip too tight around his trachea for words to form properly. He waited for the boy to speak, to ask the man why he'd done it, why he'd betrayed them, but all the boy offered was a swift swing of his blade and then Ser Jorah's head was on the ground as blood pooled up around him.
Tyrion could only gape at it as Aegon's attentions returned to him once more and he extended a hand towards him. He accepted it hesitantly. "Terms well struck," Aegon said, his smile now a full blown grin. "We'll set sail for Starfall in the morning."
The arrow nearly gave her a splinter as she let it loose and it flew from her bow, toward her intended target. Or at least close to it. She hit just outside the target, nowhere near the bull's eye, but what could she say? She wasn't an archer. She shrugged sheepishly as Anguy laughed at her from atop his fence post.
"I believe you might be the worst archer I've ever seen," he teased as she came over to sulk against the fence beside him. She had shot nearly twenty arrows, but none had landed. It was fair to say her mind was elsewhere that afternoon.
"Whatever," she muttered, resisting the urge to knock him off the fence post. "Archery's for cunts anyways."
Anguy hopped down from the fence post, nocking an arrow on his own bow. "Language, little lady," he said, letting it loose and watching it sail right to the center of the bull's eye. Arya regretted not knocking him down when she had the chance. "Your father'll have my head if he hears you talking like that."
"And how dearly you'd be missed," she grumbled, sitting down and leaning her head back against the fence post as Nymeria trotted over to lay beside her. Anguy merely smiled as he nocked back another arrow. "I've been meaning to talk to you about something. About the day we left King's Landing. My father's been … weird about the whole thing," she said. "It was like he wanted to tell me something about it at first, but he won't talk about it at all now."
"You're a skinchanger," the boy answered simply, not taking his eyes off the target. "He doesn't want you to know because he doesn't trust the Tyrells."
Arya sat in silence for a long moment, letting herself process what he'd said. It aligned with what little her father had let slip - his curiosity about her knowledge of the events leading up to their escape. How had she remembered exactly what had happened if she'd been unconscious? Why could she still taste Sandor Clegane's blood in her mouth? She stared at Nymeria's head as it laid in her lap. "How do you know?"
"Your eyes were open when I grabbed you, but they were white," he answered. "So were hers, according to your father, and she did what no beast ought to be smart enough to. Why don't you try to do it again?"
Arya stared at Nymeria some more, concentrating as much as she could. She grit her teeth together and squinted her eyes together, but when she opened them again she was still in her own body. "How?"
"How should I know?" asked Anguy. "I'm not a bloody warg."
She glared at the back of his head before letting out a sigh, scratching Nymeria behind the ear. She would try to figure it out later, when she wasn't with him and no one was around to hear the weird sounds she made or laugh at the faces she pulled as she attempted it. "He doesn't trust the Tyrells?"
"Do you?"
She didn't trust Olenna Redwyne, that was for certain, and Margaery would tell anyone anything they wanted to hear. But Willas … "No," she finally said. "No, I don't trust the Tyrells."
Anguy smiled at her over his shoulder. "They've already canceled the girl's wedding to Renly Baratheon," he told her. "Let's see how long yours holds up."