A Storm of Swords

a crowd had gathered to watch her. “The Mad Huntsman will hear of this,” a man threatened. “He won’t like it. No, he won’t.”

“He’ll like this even less, then.” Anguy strung his longbow, slid an arrow from his quiver, nocked, drew, loosed. The fat man shuddered as the shaft drove up between his chins, but the cage would not let him fall. Two more arrows ended the other two northmen. The only sound in the market square was the splash of falling water and the buzzing of flies.

Valar morghulis, Arya thought.

On the east side of the market square stood a modest inn with whitewashed walls and broken windows. Half its roof had burnt off recently, but the hole had been patched over. Above the door hung a wooden shingle painted as a peach, with a big bite taken out of it. They dismounted at the stables sitting catty-corner, and Greenbeard bellowed for grooms.

The buxom red-haired innkeep howled with pleasure at the sight of them, then promptly set to tweaking them. “Greenbeard, is it? Or Greybeard? Mother take mercy, when did you get so old? Lem, is that you? Still wearing the same ratty cloak, are you? I know why you never wash it, I do. You’re afraid all the piss will wash out and we’ll see you’re really a knight o’ the Kingsguard! And Tom o’ Sevens, you randy old goat! You come to see that son o’ yours? Well, you’re too late, he’s off riding with that bloody Huntsman. And don’t tell me he’s not yours!”

“He hasn’t got my voice,” Tom protested weakly.

“He’s got your nose, though. Aye, and t’other parts as well, to hear the girls talk.” She spied Gendry then, and pinched him on the cheek. “Look at this fine young ox. Wait till Alyce sees those arms. Oh, and he blushes like a maid, too. Well, Alyce will fix that for you, boy, see if she don’t.”

Arya had never seen Gendry turn so red. “Tansy, you leave the Bull alone, he’s a good lad,” said Tom Sevenstrings. “All we need from you is safe beds for a night.”

“Speak for yourself, singer.” Anguy slid his arm around a strapping young serving girl as freckly as he was.

“Beds we got,” said red-haired Tansy. “There’s never been no lack o’ beds at the Peach. But you’ll all climb in a tub first. Last time you lot stayed under my roof you left your fleas behind.” She poked Greenbeard in the chest. “And yours was green, too. You want food?”

“If you can spare it, we won’t say no,” Tom conceded.

“Now when did you ever say no to anything, Tom?” the woman hooted. “I’ll roast some mutton for your friends, and an old dry rat for you. It’s more than you deserve, but if you gargle me a song or three, might be I’ll weaken. I always pity the afflicted. Come on, come on. Cass, Lanna, put some kettles on. Jyzene, help me get the clothes off them, we’ll need to boil those too.”

She made good on all her threats. Arya tried to tell them that she’d been bathed twice at Acorn Hall, not a fortnight past, but the red-haired woman was having none of it. Two serving wenches carried her up the stairs bodily, arguing about whether she was a girl or a boy. The one called Helly won, so the other had to fetch the hot water and scrub Arya’s back with a stiff bristly brush that almost took her skin off. Then they stole all the clothes that Lady Smallwood had given her and dressed her up like one of Sansa’s dolls in linen and lace. But at least when they were done she got to go down and eat.

As she sat in the common room in her stupid girl clothes, Arya remembered what Syrio Forel had told her, the trick of looking and seeing what was there. When she looked, she saw more serving wenches than any inn could want, and most of them young and comely. And come evenfall, lots of men started coming and going at the Peach. They did not linger long in the common room, not even when Tom took out his woodharp and began to sing “Six Maids in a Pool.” The wooden steps were old and steep, and creaked something fierce whenever one of the men took a girl upstairs. “I bet this is a brothel,” she whispered to Gendry.

“You don’t even know what a brothel is.”

“I do so,” she insisted. “It’s like an inn, with girls.”

He was turning red again. “What are you doing here, then?” he demanded. “A brothel’s no fit place for no bloody highborn lady, everybody knows that.”

One of the girls sat down on the bench beside him. “Who’s a highborn lady? The little skinny one?” She looked at Arya and laughed. “I’m a king’s daughter myself.”

Arya knew she was being mocked. “You are not.”

“Well, I might be.” When the girl shrugged, her gown slipped off one shoulder. “They say King Robert fucked my mother when he hid here, back before the battle. Not that he didn’t have all the other girls too, but Leslyn says he liked my ma the best.”

The girl did have hair like the old king’s, Arya thought; a great thick mop of it, as black as coal. That doesn’t mean anything, though. Gendry has the same kind of hair too. Lots of people have black hair.

“I’m named Bella,” the girl told Gendry. “For the battle. I bet I could ring your bell, too. You want to?”

“No,” he said gruffly.

“I bet you do.” She ran a hand along his arm. “I don’t cost nothing to friends of Thoros and the lightning lord.”

“No, I said.” Gendry rose abruptly and stalked away from the table out into the night.

Bella turned to Arya. “Don’t he like girls?”

Arya shrugged. “He’s just stupid. He likes to polish helmets and beat on swords with hammers.”

“Oh.” Bella tugged her gown back over her shoulder and went to talk with Jack-Be-Lucky. Before long she was sitting in his lap, giggling and drinking wine from his cup. Greenbeard had two girls, one on each knee. Anguy had vanished with his freckle-faced wench, and Lem was gone as well. Tom Sevenstrings sat by the fire, singing. “The Maids that Bloom in Spring.” Arya sipped at the cup of watered wine the red-haired woman had allowed her, listening. Across the square the dead men were rotting in their crow cages, but inside the Peach everyone was jolly. Except it seemed to her that some of them were laughing too hard, somehow.

It would have been a good time to sneak away and steal a horse, but Arya couldn’t see how that would help her. She could only ride as far as the city gates. That captain would never let me pass, and if he did, Harwin would come after me, or that Huntsman with his dogs. She wished she had her map, so she could see how far Stoney Sept was from Riverrun.

By the time her cup was empty, Arya was yawning. Gendry hadn’t come back. Tom Sevenstrings was singing “Two Hearts that Beat as One,” and kissing a different girl at the end of every verse. In the corner by the window Lem and Harwin sat talking to red-haired Tansy in low voices. “… spent the night in Jaime’s cell,” she heard the woman say. “Her and this other wench, the one who slew Renly. All three o’ them together, and come the morn Lady Catelyn cut him loose for love.” She gave a throaty chuckle.

It’s not true, Arya thought. She never would. She felt sad and angry and lonely, all at once.

An old man sat down beside her. “Well, aren’t you a pretty little peach?” His breath smelled near as foul as the dead men in the cages, and his little pig eyes were crawling up and down her. “Does my sweet peach have a name?”

For half a heartbeat she forgot who she was supposed to be. She wasn’t any peach, but she couldn’t be Arya Stark either, not here with some smelly drunk she did not know. “I’m…”

“She’s my sister.” Gendry put a heavy hand on the old man’s shoulder, and squeezed. “Leave her be.”

The man turned, spoiling for a quarrel, but when he saw Gendry’s size he thought better of it. “Your sister, is she? What kind of brother are you? I’d never bring no sister of mine to the Peach, that I wouldn’t.” He got up from the bench and moved off muttering, in search of a new friend.

“Why did you say that?” Arya hopped to her feet. “You’re not my brother.”

“That’s right,” he said angrily. “I’m too bloody lowborn to be kin to m’lady high.”

Arya was taken aback by the fury in his voice. “That’s not the way I meant it.”

“Yes it is.” He sat down on the bench, cradling a cup of wine between his hands. “Go away. I want to drink this wine in peace. Then maybe I’ll go find that black-haired girl and ring her bell for her.”

“But…”