Gendry kicked the dead man's face over, inspecting. It was swollen and grey, the skin bloated with water. Drowned. Perhaps that was not the manner in which he died-the foul-smelling wounds that ribboned his stomach told Gendry a different story-but that is what became of his corpse. Anguy had helped him pull this particular body from the river that morning. The Lady had more than a thirst for death-she had a terrible respect for it too, and every corpse that didn't have a lion, a flayed man, or twin gates sewn somewhere on it was to be buried.
There was a time when Gendry would have balked at the task of dragging bodies onto shore and burying them; especially in the dead of winter, with snow all around and frostbite a likely thing. He would have been sick at the sight of the bloated, white corpse, perhaps even doubled over and spilled his breakfast on his boots. But now, Gendry merely found the task tedious, the stink annoying at best. He hardly even felt sad any more.
He had not felt much of anything in a while. He worked whenever possible, even late into the evening; he hated sleep. His mind was too active at night, and his dreams were never kind. At night I can see Harrenhal, and men with two colours in their hair, and girls with grey eyes. But most of all, he saw the Lady, before she was the Lady. He remembered them pulling her from the river, the same way she made the Brothers pull bodies now. She had been swollen and grey, too, with a fat cut that left her neck hanging loose and open. This was Arya's mother, Gendry had thought. This was Lady Catelyn Stark. There was nothing left of the beautiful woman his skinny friend used to pipe about, though. Now she was a thing of death and horror.
And somehow, Gendry had become her man.
Is it penance? He wondered. Is this the gods' price, for Arya? For what I did? He remembered Lem telling them that the Hound had taken her off towards the Twins. He remembered the ride there, the panic he had tasted in the back of his throat. She can't die, not after Harrenhal. Not after she escaped death so many times before. Not when it was because of me that she ran.
Lord Beric had had them sort through corpses, searching. They found a Mormont girl, a Manderly, some Umbers...but none small enough to be her. Instead, they found her mother.
When Lord Beric kissed her and fell down dead, and her eyes-huge, horrible, so horrible-opened, the Lady could speak...in a sense. She managed to tell them Arya was not there, had never been there. She could have been killed outside, Gendry had thought numbly. If she lived, she would have come back to find us. What else is there for her?
Gendry had stopped caring for politics when the Lady assumed control of the Brotherhood. The Young Dragon had the Stormlands and Dorne, the Tyrells ruled King's Landing in all but name, the Lannister queen sat desolate and alone in the Red Keep-her two brothers both missing-the ironmen were squabbling amongst themselves after the return of their prince, and the Dragon Queen he'd heard so much tavern talk about years before appeared to be sitting comfortably across the Narrow Sea.
And Gendry didn't care a fig for any of it.
Dead highborns or living ones, what difference does it make to me? The only highborn he'd ever been fond of was three years dead. The Lady kept them out of politics; in a funny way, Gendry felt he was nearly a brother of the Night's Watch, as he'd intended to become when he made the march with Yoren. We swore vows, hold no lands, take no part...All they seemed to do was kill Lannister creatures and bury corpses. They don't even seem human when we hang them. It was as if they were all solemn brothers, killing wights and defending the realm, like the men of the Night's Watch did in the stories.
That evening, Gendry stood in the Lady's tent with Anguy, Lem, Ned Dayne, and Thoros of Myr. All the best, in our ragtag bunch of outlaws and farmer's boys.
"News," the Lady demanded hoarsely.
It was Ned Dayne who cleared his throat. "The foreign ship that came ashore at the Saltpans is now abandoned," he told her gravely. "Some Brave Companions made off with it." He's grown, Gendry realised, not for the first time. Years ago, little Ned Dayne had been a small, nervous, courteous boy, with a head of pale blonde hair and uncertain violet eyes. In three years he had become a man-grown; his fair hair was now streaked with sun and salt and wear, his height rivalling Gendry's own, his shoulders broad as any proper knight's. Blonde stubble grew along his jaw, making him appear at least twenty instead of his mere six-and-ten.
"Thoros?" the Lady asked, turning her eyes onto the red priest. More than anyone in the tent, she trusted him; he had given her life, albeit indirectly, and his power had been proven many times over besides.
Thoros of Myr wrung his hands nervously. "The boy tells it true. I have seen...I have seen the host of the ship in my fires. Their leader is a woman, my lady. A young girl."
The Lady merely stared at him with her terrible dead eyes, waiting.
Thoros shook his head, his eyes dark. "My Lady, it is my counsel that we do not trouble them. Their course is North; let them pass, I say, for they mean us no harm."
"You pet your hands and shift your eyes life a frightened child," Lem snapped. "Tell it all, Thoros. Tell it true."
The red priest turned to the Lady. "It's...I have spied the company. A group of Freedmen, from across the Narrow Sea-Braavosi and Lyseni and Tyroshi, and more. But the woman...when I search for her face in the flames, it changes and warps. And a shadow follows her, dark and repellent."
The Lady seemed to consider this. "Death?"
The red priest nodded. "Yes. The same is true for two men she has about her. I cannot see their faces, either. My lady, I have seen this sort of thing only once before, back in my home of Myr. And it bodes ill, this I promise you."
"What is their end?" Gendry asked. The red priest's fear troubled him. Thoros had seen much and more of the world and its horrors; it took a great deal to shake him. "What could they seek in the North? There's nothing left to it. Just Stannis and the Boltons, squabbling for land, as they have been for years." Months before, the news had come that Stannis now held Winterfell, and two Greyjoy captives...for the nonce. He had not yet succeeded in storming the Dreadfort.
Thoros shrugged, defeated. "Their cause is in the heart of their leader, the shadowed woman. I cannot see into her mind. For the Freedmen, their only course is to follow her. None truly seem to know the end, except for the woman."
Lem spat. "This has the stink of Stannis' red woman all over it. Or some sellswords, worse than the Golden Company. I say we head them off, my lady. Or at least meet with this woman."
The Lady paused, thinking. Gendry hated her silence more than anything else. How can a dead mind think? "Meet," she said at last. "Talk."
X
It was a month before Thoros spied the group of Freedmen and their shadowy woman in his fire again. "Fairmarket," he murmured. "They'll be at Fairmarket."
Marching the Brotherhood was a task, as always; but they managed to do it as they always did, even with diminished food supply. Anguy complained of the snow the whole way, but they made it to Fairmarket all the same. It was a sizeable town, but the presence of the Freedmen was felt at once; the tavern was overflowing, the market dry, the townspeople fearful.
The Lady sent Gendry, Anguy, Lem, Ned, and a few of their best swords into the tavern; Thoros had refused to enter. It was impossible crowded and initially raucous, but the building quieted upon their ingress.
Gendry surveyed their faces. Most were large and intimidating, and he spied a few with tattoos on their faces; swords and arrows, for the most part. Slaves from Volantis, Gendry thought, remembering Thoros' stories. Or they were, anyway. Some had the fair colouring of Lysene, while others had hair dyed flamboyant colours and others still had the darkness of the East in their skin.
The Freed warriors shuffled by, letting them pass. Gendry led the group; he did not know why, but he was anxious to see what lay at the end. Something in his stomach was tight and afraid.
When he saw the woman-the girl, in truth-at the tavern's bar, garbed in laced leather and the occasional stripe of black silk, he was half-relieved. She's small, he thought. Almost a child, in size. The two men flanking her unnerved him, however; they looked at him with eyes that seemed to be carved of dead marble. Their gazes were still and cruel, and Gendry could swear he recognised one of those gazes.
"Who comes?" asked the girl in a voice high and feminine, flavoured with the East.
It was Ned Dayne who spoke. "The Brotherhood Without Banners, servants of the good and humble Lady Stoneheart."
Gendry nearly choked on the lie. 'Good?'
The head turned slightly, still half in shadow. A grey eye looked inquisitively at them. It was as dead and cold as the eyes of the two men at her sides. "Lady Stoneheart? Yes...the wight, is it?"
Ned bristled beside him. "She is no wight, my lady."
"And I'm no lady." The girl turned to face them.
Gendry stared at her, unbelieving. Grey eyes, brown hair...it was longer than hers had been, braided and thrown over a small shoulder. The young woman's face was long, but high-cheeked and vulpine, a pretty face. But she has the eyes, those eyes.
"It's a pleasure, sers," she said, half-smiling. "I am called Cat of the Canals."
Liar. You foul, craven liar. Gendry's jaw worked. He wanted to strike her, or yell, or something. Where have you been? Where have you BEEN?
"I...my lady Cat," Ned Dayne proffered, bowing courteously.
Gendry wanted to strike him, too. Don't you see? Don't you see her eyes? Don't you remember her? Where has she been? Ask her where she's been, you blundering fool. His mind could hardly work. He felt like spitting, or holding her.
She smiled thinly. "Do you have business with me? My poor men were tired and hungry after the march, and there is still much and more work to be done."
"I, ah..." Ned fumbled.
"Our Lady sent us to learn your purpose," Gendry said, his voice hard. When she looked at him, he held her eyes with as much firmness as he could muster. That's it, look at me. Remember me. You left me, you let me think I'd killed you for three years. "Lannisters and Bolton and Freys are fond of raiding these parts. A host of your size could hardly march through unnoticed."
"It is not too large of a size, is it?" she asked him mildly, as if he were a stranger. That enraged him further. "Only a few of my friends from the East, come to taste what your fair country has to offer."
"My lady, your friends number in the hundreds," Lem said sternly from behind him. "And we are at war."
"But winter is such a lovely time," this girl, this Cat of the Canals answered. "Isn't it, friends?" Here she turned to the men standing at her sides.
One only nodded, but the other smiled devilishly. Gendry's guts roiled at the sight of it. I know that smile, I swear I do. But how can I not know his face? "A charming time, to be sure," he purred.
She smiled widely at him. "Always so agreeable, you are."
"Yes," Gendry cut in, fury boiling his blood. He did not even feel the cold any more. "Agreeable. Like a Hound." He hoped to get a rise from her with that. He carried you to the Twins, girl. What became of him? Did you kill him, or flee? Flee to the East, and forget me?
She frowned at him, but not in recognition. "You speak nonsense. Is this some dull Westerosi jape? Pah. Just so." She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, as if he were some servant she could wish away. Some bastard, more like. Some baseborn boy, too bloody lowborn to speak to milady Cat.
"Our Lady would like to have words with you," Ned said, firmer this time. "If it please you, Lady Cat."
"I'll speak with the wight, but you must stop calling me lady, boy. I'm Cat, just Cat."
Take whatever name you like. You're a lady, and you know it.
"As you wish," Ned said, pliable as always. Cat of the Canals turned and flashed another of her false smiles. "Then, it would be a pleasure. Oh, to speak to a dead woman-how interesting this will be."
X
Cat of the Canals, her two dead-eyed guards, and a small host of frightening Freedmen joined her in the Lady's tent, just outside Fairhaven. Cat took her seat before the Lady, but her eyes hardened when she met hers. She remembers, Gendry knew. She recognises her.
Cat smiled frostily. "A wight, well and true. This is fascinating indeed."
The Lady did not have voice to spare with games. "Name," she rasped.
"Cat of the Canals, if it please you." She gestured to the men behind her. "These are my Freedmen, fresh off the ship from Braavos. Slavery is a foul thing, don't you think? Especially when wasted on such strength." Cat looked admiringly at one of her men, a massive, brutish-looking Dothraki.
The Lady nodded. "Cause," she said next.
"We make for the Dreadfort," Cat answered coolly, as if it were an easy thing. "I've been dying to meet this Bastard of Bolton. He's famous, even in the East."
The Lady glanced at her again. "Name," she asked again, quieter this time.
Cat was stonefaced for a moment. Then, the coldest smile of all spread across her pretty face, slow as creeping ice. "Oh, Mother. Have you forgotten me? I suppose death can do that."
The Lady's lipless mouth quivered. Gendry thought she looked sad. I have never seen her look this way, never. His heart felt heavy and laboured, as if it were about to tense and burst.
"Never," the Lady croaked.
Arya Stark laughed humourlessly. "You are a shell, not my mother. An unnatural thing. You received the gift at the Twins, as all men must, but this...man..." she gestured harshly at Thoros, "has made you into this. Did you hear they married me to Bolton, Mother?" she laughed again. "No, I suppose not. Else you would not be here, hanging robbers and highwaymen, would you?"
The Lady said nothing.
Arya leaned in, grey eyes flashing. "I am not you, Stoneheart. That's what they call you, isn't it? You don't deserve the name. I do not hide behind the shields of better men, giving orders. D'you know what I did, in Braavos? I learned to kill men. I became terribly good at it."
Her purring companion laughed heartily at that. "Oh, very good. You rival me, my sweet."
My sweet. Gendry's blood was cold.
"But I tired of my company. Theirs was a disciplined order, and I had larger ambitions. It was fortune that landed me in the hands of slavers, bound for Qarth." She smiled wickedly. "I slipped into the captain's cabin and cut his throat, and by dawn, the slavers had all been cast into the sea, fodder for leviathans. So you see, Mother, I earned my men. They follow me because I'm strong. Why do your men follow you?"
The Lady was silent still.
"No-I know this one. It is because you were once Lady Catelyn Stark, a great highborn woman. But now..." Arya shook her head with disgust. "Now you are some heartless creature, consumed only with revenge."
"And what are you?" Gendry snapped.
Arya did not even look at him. "I, ser, am a Stark. The North is mine, and my brothers' and sisters'. I intend to get it back for us."
"Brothers and sisters?" Ned Dayne asked. Gendry glanced at him and saw that he was shaken by this. He truly did not recognise her before. This is all a shock to him. Gendry wondered why it was not a shock for him, too.
She sighed, exasperated. "I have some that remain, as it happens. My sister, my brothers." She turned to Thoros of Myr. "But you know this already. You've come to learn it the same way I have; through those wicked flames. Isn't that so?"
Thoros curled his lip at her. "You are no follower of the red god."
She chuckled. "Me? Oh, no. But I met an interesting man in Braavos, garbed all in red. He took me by the wrist and blurted these truths to me. So detailed, he was...how could it be a lie? And how perfectly it has all been kept secret, just as I have been. My sweet sister, tucked away in the Vale...and Rickon...ah, poor Rickon. He is whole, at least."
"So you're just going to storm the Dreadfort? Just like that?" Ned was growing slightly hysterical.
"Just like that...Ser, you misjudge me. I intend to slip into the Dreadfort, with my two men here, and open Roose and Ramsay's necks myself. Then my Freedmen will storm that godforsaken place, and burn it to the ground."
"Burn," the Lady echoed. She likes that, she does.
Arya looked at the thing that was her mother. "Yes, sweet Mother. Burn. Winterfell will belong to the Starks again, as it must. If Stannis will not vacate it, then I will open his neck, too."
"You're only a girl," Lem growled. "You've got fire, I'll give you that much, and you managed to break me nose once. But you're still half a child for all o' that."
Arya did not even flash him a smile. "Lem Lemoncloak. If you had to guess at how many men you'd killed, what number would you summon?"
Lem chewed on that for a moment. "How many? Seven hells. Fifty? A hundred, may be."
Her grey gaze was cold and steady. "A pitiful number. I have more than doubled that much."
Lem guffawed and opened his mouth again, no doubt to contest her claim, but Thoros spoke before him.
"Let it be, Ser. She tells it true."
The tent was silent. The eerily familiar man at Arya's right grinned again.
"You may continue with this farce of justice, if you like," Arya said coldly to the Lady, "but I'm for the Dreadfort. But first, the Vale. It has been too long since I have looked upon my sister. You remember her, don't you? Lovely, gentle Sansa."
The Lady sighed wistfully, longingly.
Arya looked all over the Lady, from her rotted, gnarled hands, to her ghastly sunken face. "Your time is gone," she said quietly. "You should be with father, and Robb. You should not have left them alone."
Arya stood and departed the tent, her men following her.
X
The next morning, the Lady was missing. The brothers dispersed to search for her, before discovering her body in Thoros' crimson tent, laid horizontally on a flimsy slab that passed for an altar.
"She pleaded for me to rescind the kiss," Thoros told them, sounding relieved.
"Who will lead us?" Gendry asked.
Thoros turned to him, his dark eyes weary. "She has chosen her. The Lady Arya."
X
A month, slow and creeping, marked their march to the Eyrie. Gendry wanted to speak to Arya, to at least know why she fled across the Narrow Sea instead of returning to them, but she was never without her two eerie shadows. She is one of them, he knew. The disciplined company she spoke of, the ones who taught her how to kill men.
The Bloody Gate was known to be impassable, but Arya merely whispered into the ears of her two men, and told the rest of her host to make camp at the base of the mountain and wait a day and a night. Gendry seized the opportunity, never caring what she meant for them to do, or why. That very evening, he entered her tent, as brusque and discourteous as any bastard.
Arya was attended by a pretty, buxom girl with gold hair who was of a similar age as her. Gendry wondered how he had not noticed her before. She stands out among the Freedmen, certainly.
"Ser Waters," Arya said mildly. "Just so. Lanna, I believe he wishes to speak privily."
The golden-haired girl, Lanna, bowed and murmured before shuffling out. Gendry frowned as she left.
"A handmaiden?"
"A friend." Arya smiled. "I have a great purpose in mind for Lanna, you see."
Gendry did not care about her purposes. He did not care about her friends, or the Eyrie, or what became of Lady Stoneheart. I care about the truth. I care about the coldness that came into your eyes while you were gone.
"Braavos," he said, so angry he could spit. "Is that the way of it? You'd rather become an assassin than stay with us?"
Her face darkened. "Your emotions cloud your judgment. Lord Beric wished to ransom me, and there was no one left for him to sell me to. I had loftier goals than being shipped away to Lady Smallwood, as it happens."
"I thought you were dead."
"A good thing, too. Else you might have done something stupid, like come to find me."
Gendry took a step forward. "You ran from the inn because you were angry with me. I thought you were taken and killed. Because of me."
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Regrettable, that. But I could hardly come back, or write to you. You can't read, after all."
"I can now," he snapped. "And someone could have read it to me."
"It was only a jape, Ser Waters. I was running for my life. I hardly had time to scrawl a note of apology to you and find a raven who knows the way to wherever the Brotherhood had shuffled off to."
He was running out of arguments. But there was one that remained to him. "You could've stayed."
"While Cersei Lannister yet lived? Or Ser Ilyn, the man who lopped off my father's head? Ser Meryn, Rafford, Dunsen? You wanted me to sit in Lady Smallwood's castle and sew?" A dark look fell upon her face. "A wolf doesn't leave scraps, Ser Waters. We consume our prey, whole and entire. And my hunt is not done; far from it."
"You're no wolf," Gendry said bitterly. "You're a cat. You said so yourself."
Arya's eyes became dreamy and distant as she looked to a spot above his head. "I was a cat, you know. I still can be, if I wished. And a wolf, and a dog, a rat, a pigeon...Ser Waters, do you know what a skinchanger is?"
Gendry stiffened. "Yes, I...stories. I've heard the stories, but..."
"Never mind," she sighed. "It's not a topic for your ears, anyhow."
He looked her over. She's grown to be beautiful, but cruel. It did not seem fair to Gendry that her face had sweetened so much while her soul had blackened with rot. "Have you a plan, at least?"
"Indeed. My sister is the Queen in the North, you know. Or at least, she will be. A fine head for politics, she always had...I see that now. So courteous, my beautiful sister. After that, I must needs recover my brothers. Then we will take Winterfell, the four of us. And if any king should want to give us our independence, I will fight for him. If not..." Arya smiled and drew a little line across her own neck, an obscene gesture for murder.
Her smile was so sweet and young that for a moment she looked like the child he had known, those many years ago. "You can't kill everyone who annoys you, milady."
"Arya." She frowned. "If I could, you'd be dead, wouldn't you?"
He had to smile. Prickly, after all this time. Could it be she is not all lost to me? "I suppose so."
"Is there anything else you had to say, Ser Waters?"
Gendry, call me Gendry. You always called me Gendry. His smile fell. "It seems not."
"Show yourself out, then. And return Lanna to me, if you will. There's much I must discuss with her."