Part 72 (2/2)

Hot Pie was making oatcakes when she entered the kitchen. Three other cooks were boning fish, while a spit boy turned a boar over the flames. ”My lord wants his supper, and hot spice wine to wash it down,” Arya announced, ”and he doesn't want it cold.” One of the cooks washed his hands, took out a kettle, and filled it with a heavy, sweet red. Hot Pie was told to crumble in the spices as the wine heated. Arya went to help.

”I can do it,” he said sullenly. ”I don't need you to show me how to spice wine.”

He hates me too, or else he's scared of me. She backed away, more sad than angry. When the food was ready, the cooks covered it with a silver cover and wrapped the flagon in a thick towel to keep it warm. Dusk was settling outside. On the walls the crows muttered round the heads like courtiers round a king. One of the guards held the door to Kingspyre. ”Hope that's not weasel soup,” he jested.

Roose Bolton was seated by the hearth reading from a thick leatherbound book when she entered. ”Light some candles,” he commanded her as he turned a page. ”It grows gloomy in here.”

She placed the food at his elbow and did as he bid her, filling the room with flickering light and the scent of cloves. Bolton turned a few more pages with his finger, then closed the book and placed it carefully in the fire. He watched the flames consume it, pale eyes s.h.i.+ning with reflected light. The old dry leather went up with a whoosh, and the yellow pages stirred as they burned, as if some ghost were reading them. ”I will have no further need of you tonight,” he said, never looking at her.

She should have gone, silent as a mouse, but something had hold of her. ”My lord,” she asked, ”will you take me with you when you leave Harrenhal?”

He turned to stare at her, and from the look in his eyes it was as if his supper had just spoken to him. ”Did I give you leave to question me, Nan?”

”No, my lord.” She lowered her eyes.

”You should not have spoken, then. Should you?”

”No. My lord.”

For a moment he looked amused. ”I will answer you, just this once. I mean to give Harrenhal to Lord Vargo when I return to the north. You will remain here, with him.”

”But I don't-” she started.

He cut her off. ”I am not in the habit of being questioned by servants, Nan. Must I have your tongue out?”

He would do it as easily as another man might cuff a dog, she knew. ”No, my lord.”

”Then I'll hear no more from you?”

”No, my lord.”

”Go, then. I shall forget this insolence.”

Arya went, but not to her bed. When she stepped out into the darkness of the yard, the guard on the door nodded at her and said, ”Storm coming. Smell the air?” The wind was gusting, flames swirling off the torches mounted atop the walls beside the rows of heads. On her way to the G.o.dswood, she pa.s.sed the Wailing Tower where once she had lived in fear of Weese. The Freys had taken it for their own since Harrenhal's fall. She could hear angry voices coming from a window, many men talking and arguing all at once. Elmar was sitting on the steps outside, alone.

”What's wrong?” Arya asked him when she saw the tears s.h.i.+ning on his cheeks.

”My princess,” he sobbed. ”We've been dishonored, Aenys says. There was a bird from the Twins. My lord father says I'll need to marry someone else, or be a septon.”

A stupid princess, she thought, that's nothing to cry over. ”My brothers might be dead,” she confided.

Elmar gave her a scornful look. ”No one cares about a serving girl's brothers.”

It was hard not to hit him when he said that. ”I hope your princess dies,” she said, and ran off before he could grab her.

In the G.o.dswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the G.o.ds. ”Tell me what to do, you G.o.ds,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the G.o.dswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Goosep.r.i.c.kles rose on Arya's skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father's voice. ”When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

”But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. ”I'm not even me now, I'm Nan.”

”You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

”The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. ”I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.

That night she lay in her narrow bed upon the scratchy straw, listening to the voices of the living and the dead whisper and argue as she waited for the moon to rise. They were the only voices she trusted anymore. She could hear the sound of her own breath, and the wolves as well, a great pack of them now. They are closer than the one I heard in the G.o.dswood, she thought. They are calling to me.

Finally she slipped from under the blanket, wriggled into a tunic, and padded barefoot down the stairs. Roose Bolton was a cautious man, and the entrance to Kingspyre was guarded day and night, so she had to slip out of a narrow cellar window. The yard was still, the great castle lost in haunted dreams. Above, the wind keened through the Wailing Tower.

At the forge she found the fires extinguished and the doors closed and barred. She crept in a window, as she had once before. Gendry shared a mattress with two other apprentice smiths. She crouched in the loft for a long time before her eyes adjusted enough for her to be sure that he was the one on the end. Then she put a hand over his mouth and pinched him. His eyes opened. He could not have been very deeply asleep. ”Please,” she whispered. She took her hand off his mouth and pointed.

For a moment she did not think he understood, but then he slid out from under the blankets. Naked, he padded across the room, shrugged into a loose roughspun tunic, and climbed down from the loft after her. The other sleepers did not stir. ”What do you want now?” Gendry said in a low angry voice.

”A sword.”

”Blackthumb keeps all the blades locked up, I told you that a hundred times. Is this for Lord Leech?”

”For me. Break the lock with your hammer.”

”They'll break my hand,” he grumbled. ”Or worse.”

”Not if you run off with me.”

”Run, and they'll catch you and kill you.”

”They'll do you worse. Lord Bolton is giving Harrenhal to the b.l.o.o.d.y Mummers, he told me so.”

Gendry pushed black hair out of his eyes. ”So?”

She looked right at him, fearless. ”So when Vargo Hoat's the lord, he's going to cut off the feet of all the servants to keep them from running away. The smiths too.”

”That's only a story,” he said scornfully.

”No, it's true, I heard Lord Vargo say so,” she lied. ”He's going to cut one foot off everyone. The left one. Go to the kitchens and wake Hot Pie, he'll do what you say. We'll need bread or oakcakes or something. You get the swords and I'll do the horses. We'll meet near the postern in the east wall, behind the Tower of Ghosts. No one ever comes there.”

”I know that gate. It's guarded, same as the rest.”

”So? You won't forget the swords?”

”I never said I'd come.”

”No. But if you do, you won't forget the swords?”

He frowned. ”No,” he said at last. ”I guess I won't.”

Arya reentered Kingspyre the same way she had left it, and stole up the winding steps listening for footfalls. In her cell, she stripped to the skin and dressed herself carefully, in two layers of smallclothes, warm stockings, and her cleanest tunic. It was Lord Bolton's livery. On the breast was sewn his sigil, the flayed man of the Dreadfort. She tied her shoes, threw a wool cloak over her skinny shoulders, and knotted it under her throat. Quiet as a shadow, she moved back down the stairs. Outside the lord's solar she paused to listen at the door, easing it open slowly when she heard only silence.

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