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i.
“Lommy,” she says, because she does not believe him. “Lommy Greenhands.”
There is a moment- just a moment- of still surprise in his face. But she does not trust this, this gift dangled in front of her, and she will not ask yet for anything she cannot bear to lose.
He doesn’t need the body. He draws a circle in the dust, and takes two drops of blood, one from his finger and one from hers. There is nothing in it of a street performer, a false magician, just spare and simple movements like a knife across the throat.
Light sparks in from the melted window, gathering in great woolly clutches of sparks. For a moment it seems as though all the air has gone from the room, and as she gasps for breath a fleshy white lump appears amid the brightness.
And then it is a boy in dirty clothes, taking in great heaving breaths, covered with sweat and grime and not a drop of blood.
-
She watches him for half a day. Her hands shake with what she is about to do, but she must be patient. If this is a trick, then there is no point in asking for- for anything else.
Lommy stays, shaking, in the little hidden alcove where he came back. She bullies him out the door, and he stands outside for barely a moment before hearing a clatter and diving back in.
“Do you remember dying?” she asks him.
He shakes his head, wide-eyed, his words unintelligible.
“Do you remember dying?”
“Yes,” he whispers.
“Hold out your hand.”
He bleeds red, and jerks his hand to his chest, betrayed. She leaves him there before she is missed.
-
“A girl thinks too much.” But there’s a gleam in his eyes when he says it.
“Can he die again?”
Lommy clearly does not like the turn this conversation is taking, but she ignores him. She isn’t really talking about him anyway.
“A boy is as he was.”
“He can die?”
“As any man can die.”
She nods. Lommy had gulped down the moldy bread she’d brought him like fresh lemoncakes. He is painfully useless, but he is inarguably alive. He has not vanished into the moonlight the second she turned away her gaze.
“I want my second life.”
“Say the name.”
He has already drawn his little knife, gleaming in the darkness. He knows what she will say. She knows it, too.
ii.
“Eddard Stark. Lord of Winterfell.”
The night has leached all color from the room, but the two drops of blood still glow red in the darkness. She watches the sparks form, not daring to blink, not daring, still, to hope.
She knows what to look for, now, and she sees the white lights dance around a forming throat like a necklace, sees them sink into the shape of eyes, sees hands begin to twitch. The only sound is Lommy, gasping in a breath of shock, but Lommy doesn’t matter.
The figure on the floor coughs, and tries to sit up, and at just that scrap of his voice, she knows.
“Father,” Arya whispers. “Father.” Against his tunic, her eyes are stinging wet.
-
“Where-“
“Harrenhal.”
The rest of it spills from her, words tripping over themselves. Yoren. The Mountain. The King in the North. Robb is at war and Sansa is still in King’s Landing and she knows nothing of Mother or Rickon or Bran. Nothing of Jon, either, and Needle is gone, and Syrio.
But she will not let herself cry any longer.
“You’re alive,” she tells her father. “You don’t need to worry. You’ll stay alive. Lommy has.”
“Lommy?”
“Hullo,” says Lommy. He tries to straighten his back, which is a first, and swallows. He looks like something that’s going to stay alive. Jaquen is nowhere to be seen, but that’s not a worry. He always comes back. There’s still one name to go.
And she can feel her father’s pulse in his fingers. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.
Everything’s going to be alright.
-
But of course it isn’t.
-
Her father can’t run. She does not know if he’ll be able to ride. He paces around the little room in circles, dragging one leg, uncaring that someone might hear. She is terrified to leave him alone.
She hadn’t really thought that it would be one of Sansa’s songs, that he would slay Lord Tywin in single combat and break them all free to Robb. If that could happen, then he would never have died. She knows that. She does.
But she doesn’t know what to do next. And, far worse, neither does he.
“Manderly. Karstark.”
The prisoners have sworn not to escape. “But you’re their liege lord,” she tells him. “They’ll listen to you.”
“Arya,” he says. “Their liege lord is dead.”
“But you’re not!”
“They won’t believe it.” He shakes his head. “I scarce believe it. Your mother might know me. To the men in that tower, I’d be an old man speaking a dead man’s name.”
He’s rubbing his throat, the place where a scar ought to be, and she hisses at him desperately to stop. Then he looks at his hand, as though checking for blood, and somehow that’s worse.
-
“I’ll trade,” she says. “Help us escape, and you keep the third life. That’s worth more.”
“Us” might include the prisoners, might be Lommy, Gendry, Hot Pie, might just be herself and her father. She doesn’t know.
And it doesn’t matter.
“There are no trades. A girl holds one life. She must choose.”
Must choose.
She could choose justice. She could bring back Mycah, Jory, even Septa Lemore. She could bring back even fat King Robert, if she wanted, but if men won’t know her father then they’ll never know the king. She needs someone who can help them.
“One life,” she says. “Any life?”
“All deaths touch the Many Faced God.”
“That’s not an answer. Could I choose Lady? She was a wolf. Or Brandon the Builder.”
“Is that-“
“I don’t choose. I’m asking.”
His eyes are cold and merry. “The wolf, yes. But a girl has one life, and legends are many men.”
She scowls. “The King who Knelt. Aegon the Conqueror.”
“One only. But yes.”
Both would be useless. Dead heroes don’t know her. They would never help her. Besides, no king would sneak out from a castle, and no warrior could take on all of Harrenhal. A wolf would be more use. Men whispered Grey Wind had killed a hundred.
“A man will not wait forever.”
“At midnight,” says Arya. “Come at midnight. I’ll decide.”
-
What does she know of Braavos?
They have magic, and assassins, and swords. They follow a thousand gods, and each of them is another face of Death. They were slaves once. They fought the Dragonlords of old Valyria.
And she knew Syrio Forel.
She whispers his name, over and over, as the day drags on, as night falls. He would help her. She knows it.
(But she sees it, she hears it, over and over, knights in armor and a man with a wooden sword).
Her father and Lommy are silent. Arya stares at the twists in the melted stone, and waits for midnight to come.
What does she know of Braavos?
iii.
And she smiles. And speaks a name.
“Balerion. The Black Dread.”