Chapter Text
When word came to Braavos, much later, of the death of the boy commander of the Night’s Watch, it meant nothing at all to the youngest silent sister at the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea.
The ships from Braavos had stopped visiting Eastwatch-by-the-sea after the Night’s Watch began impounding them. With autumn storms on the seas there had been little and less news from Westeros.
The silent sisters led a quiet and cloistered life. It was mere chance that the novice septa who apprenticed the apothecaries had fallen ill that day, so the youngest silent sister had to carry the baskets for old Sister Apothecary as she made her purchases at the market.
It was chance that, as they passed through the cloth market, she heard a well-dressed Braavosi merchant remark on the murder of the Black Bastard of the Wall – knives in the dark night, blood on ice, betrayal by his own men – and laugh: “So much for Tycho Nestoris and his loans to this Lord Snow; it is always so hard to require payment from a corpse.”
Sister Apothecary was tugging on her arm. She had stopped moving, her fingers icy, her face numb. It felt as if a hole had opened up inside her, one that went down to the bottom of the earth.
A loose shutter banged overhead; over the market chatter the Titan roared, announcing the arrival of another ship to the harbours of Braavos. Sister Apothecary’s fingers were tight and insistent. She let the old woman pull her onward, down to the market by Ragman's Harbour, where the spice merchants from Sothoryos had their stalls.
The death of the commander of the Night’s Watch meant nothing to the silent sisters of the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea. But somewhere very distant, Arya Stark was screaming.
-
She was called Patience. The name had been given her by Sister Apothecary. Patience, the sister had said in the brief, economical handsigns the silent sisters used instead of spoken words. When her fingers tapped as she waited for a water to boil; when she moved too fast in the sisters' mess; when she stamped, frustrated, at her fingers' clumsiness in learning the signs. Patience, Sister Apothecary had said over and over, patience. The name had stuck. Sister Patience had been Jeyne Fairweather, a merchant's daughter from Duskendale, sent to Braavos because of the War of Five Kings. Before that, of course, she has been someone else again.
On their return to the motherhouse, Sister Apothecary and Sister Patience found the door blocked by a cart carrying a corpse.
It was a common sight at the silent sisters' gate; most bodies came to them by cart, either brought by family or fetched by the silent sisters or the sextons. But the men with this cart wore ringmail, lion helms and lion pins on their crimson cloaks.
Before, when they accompanied the Westerosi envoy to services at the sept, their faces had been painted in colours by the lights through the stained glass windows. Now Patience saw their faces clearly. Even through the hollow in her chest, she felt her stomach clench. Was that—? It was a common enough face. No, it was. It must be.
The guards were in some wrangling argument with the carter. Since he only spoke Braavosi and they only spoke the Common Tongue, the argument was being mediated by the porter, a beleaguered-looking lay brother. He brightened when he saw Sister Apothecary, bowing and beckoning. “Sister, perhaps you can ask Sister Embalmer to make ready for this man?”
“I want my cart back,” the carter insisted in Braavosi. “They said to bring the body to the Sept and this I have done.”
“What is he saying?” The guard sergeant asked.
“He said—” the porter began
The carter was talking over him. “I was not paid for—”
Both men broke off. Sister Apothecary had walked between, her head erect, her wrinkled hands raised for silence. Eyes on the porter, in the handsigns the silent sisters used and their servants perforce learned, she said, pay the carter. Turning to Patience, she added, Fetch Sister Embalmer.
Patience did not want to go: she wanted to keep the guards in sight. But Sister Apothecary was glaring, and she knew she could not linger.
Behind her, the porter argued with the carter and the guards jostled and murmured among themselves. As she passed through the inner gate she heard one of them say, “Move your arse, Dunsen, do you want to be about this all day?” And then she knew it for a certainty.
It was the Westerosi envoy Ser Harys Swyft who had died. Ser Harys had been round and soft, bald as an egg. He was less round now. He had died of a putrid stomach: his illness had drained the fat away from his bones.
Patience helped Sister Embalmer to wash the other remains of his sickness and death from his body with harsh tallow soap. His eyes were sunken and bruised, already beginning to clot. She could not remember, now, why the cooks at Harrenhal had hated him so much that they spat on his food.
Ser Harys had fared poorly in his quest for mercy from the Iron Bank. “A dry fountain,” Septon Eustan had said. "I wonder that the Regent thought it might flow for him."
Septa Halla, the comptroller of the mother house, had snorted agreement. “The High Septon was willing to take payment in kind from the dowager queen, but the regent should have known he had nothing of like value he can barter with the Braavosi.”
Patience had heard of the Queen Regent’s bargain, the revival of the Faith Militant in exchange for forgiveness of the Crown’s debts: for half a year the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea had been debating little else. It had caused at least three shouting arguments at chapter. Septon Eustan had welcomed the handful of poor men and the solitary knight who had sworn their hands and blades to the Warrior, but he had not kept them, providing them passage on a ship to Kings Landing and no more. Braavos was no place for them, he had decreed. Hired guards were sufficient for the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea, as they had been for two hundred and fifty years.
Ser Harys's mission had faded poorly. The Iron Bank had no mercy, and the Sealord’s welcome had cooled after the Lord Treasurer's public outrage at the murder of once of his guards. And while all knew the Sealord's health was failing, Ser Harys had been so injudicious as to hint that Westeros would support any successor who might forgive the Iron Throne's debts. Death was a common hazard for any foreigner meddling in the elections of the Sealords of Braavos.
Neither had Ser Harys been beloved of the Westerosi in Braavos. Exiles in Braavos with sons in the Golden Company had no love for any who sat the Iron Throne. Targaryen loyalists despised him as a usurper's dog; so did the Stormlanders who supported Stannis Baratheon. The Dornishmen had never forgiven House Lannister for their murdered princess, nor the Northmen for the Red Wedding. Robert Baratheon's lord ambassador had been left a year without credentials by his sons, and was jealous of his prerogatives.
It was not a mystery why the Lord Treasurer died, only that it had taken so long.
Patience and Sister Embalmer anointed the body with the seven holy oils for the funeral. It was a swift funeral, and short; his men had liked Ser Harys little better than the Harrenhal cooks, and he had no family in Braavos. Patience, watching the company from beneath her grey veil and cowl, watched the guards all through the funeral. Though she looked hard, the coloured light from the stained glass made them look like gargoyles in their lion helms.
She could not follow them after the funeral. The late Lord Treasurer was destined for the tin bath and the beetles: only his bones would be returned to his keep of Cornfield in the Westerlands.
Patience had to help Sister Embalmer wash the body again, because the holy oils were poison to the beetles. Some called the beetles unholy for this reason, but, Sister Embalmer had pointed out, the silent sisters could not do this holy work so well without them.
Sister Embalmer's knives were very sharp. She opened the body and frowned. Setting aside the knife for a polished wooden rod, she beckoned Patience, pointing. Her hands were delicate, shifting the rod through the looped organs, showing her the lesions and bloody shreds of bowel and gut.
Poison? Patience asked.
Sister Embalmer nodded. She touched her cheek below the eye: tears. The tears of Lys, then, which mimicked a disease of the guts and had no taste. An expensive poison.
Sister Embalmer took out the damaged bowel and gut, lungs and heart, and put them into a wicker basket lined with rags.
Patience pointed at the offal and the beetles. Poison? She asked, hoping the question was clear: did they remove the damaged organs because they would harm the beetles, as the holy oils did? Septon Eustan had reprimanded her for being too free with her questions, even with her hands. “It quite goes against the logic of a vow of silence,” he had said.
Sister Embalmer pursed her lips and shook her head. She set her knives down neatly to sign, A little. Worse is, and then a sign Patience did not know. She felt as clumsy with this language as she had learning Braavosi.
Sister Embalmer saw her confusion. She made the sign again, then another, mouthing the words: rot, putrefaction.
Worse? Why?
Sister Embalmer raised her eyebrows, amused. The smell. She took up her knives again to carve away the meat of the legs and arms. When she used a long, thin hook to extract the brain, Patience leaned in, interested. Sister Embalmer offered her the hook and showed her how to insert it through the nose, how to twist and pull.
When they were done, Sister Embalmer handed the offal basket to Patience. The lichyard, she signed. The sexton. And indeed, the sexton showed Sister Patience to a shallow trench dug at the back of the lichyard, near the walls. Even in the autumn cold, the churned earth stank. It was a darker, heavier smell than rotten leaves; the smell of a battlefield after the crows were done. Sister Embalmer's workrooms smelled strongly—of vinegar, turpentine, bitter wormwood, the meaty stink of bug dung—but not this raw stench of rot. Putrefaction. Patience shaped the sign with her fingers, practicing.
-
Even silent sisters bound by penitential vows were permitted the use of their voices to confess their sins and seek absolution. At the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea, confessions were regimented and orderly to the days of the holy week: thus the silent sisters, the Stranger's brides, made their confession on the Stranger's day.
She had made a game of it. Sister Patience would confess a truth, and a lie, and an exaggeration. That week, after Septon Eustan had set her penance, she hesitated to make the closing formulas and leave the darkness of the confessional. "The Lord Treasurer Ser Harys was killed by poison," she said. "Sister Embalmer showed me the marks of it when we prepared his bones to be cleansed.
"This is no confession, Sister," Septon Eustan said.
Patience considered this. "In sermon last week you said it was sin to know of evil and say nothing. Would I not sin if I knew of this poisoning and said nothing?"
"You might," Septon Eustan said, "If you had the only knowledge of this evil. But Sister Embalmer has made this crime known."
"Will the poisoner be found? What will happen to him? Or her," she added, scrupulous.
"Not even the Seven can know the future," Septon Eustan said. "But Sister, know that curiousity may also tempt you to sin. You must trust in the wisdom and probity of we who are your elders in the faith, and in the judgement of the Father Above."
-
“The best route,” said the captain of Ser Harys’ guard, “Would be by sea: south via the narrow sea and the stepstones to circle Dorne. If we were to land at Lannisport, it is only a short journey overland to Cornfield, where Ser Harys’s bones may be at rest.”
The captain was a knight of the Westerlands: Ser Steffon Sarsfield was his name. Patience thought he was a nephew or cousin to the dead Lord Treasurer. He wore a green arrow on a white stripe on his badges, like the pimply squire who had bled out on the floor of the crossroads inn, a thousand years ago in Westeros.
Ser Steffon had taken authority over the Lord Treasurer's party with an officiousness that was getting on everyone's nerves. Among other things, he had insisted on bringing the late Lord Treasurer's guards with him wherever he went, paranoid that he, too, was in danger. Patience watched them from the corner of her eyes.
“We have heard of the troubled seas in the south,” Septa Halla said. “Pirates and Ironmen. Surely no captain would recommend that journey. Sisters…?”
Sister Weaver and Sister Apothecary had brought Patience to this conference, cowled and robed formally as for a funeral. They glanced at each other, but whatever message passed between them was wordless. Sister Apothecary signed, Ask.
Septon Eustan said, “I will have Brother Alban make inquiries at the Ragman’s Harbour.”
Once again Patience had to accompany her fellow silent sisters while Ser Steffon and his guards departed for their lodgings. She chewed on the insider of her cheek, wondering how she could get near them. Patience, she reminded herself, patience.
Septa Halla proved correct: no captain would recommend the voyage to Lannisport, though Brother Alban went down to the Ragman's Harbour every day for a week. All the seas were disturbed in these early days of winter, from the Shivering Sea to the Gulf of Grief. Pirates always roamed the Narrow Sea, but with the Westerosi fleet sailing west for the Sunset Sea and the fleets of Volantis gone east to Slaver's Bay, the pirates had grown bolder and more fearless. Even should a ship make it through the Narrow Sea unmolested, Ironmen swarmed the seas of the Reach and wilder rumours circled that Highgarden was razed to stones and ashes, together with Oldtown and its great library.
“After seven days,” Septon Eustan said when they met again, “I think we must assume we will not find a ship sailing for Lannisport. Seven is a holy number.”
Overland, said Sister Weaver. For this conference, she was accompanied by Sister Embalmer, but once again they had brought Patience with them.
“Via King's Landing, I suppose,” Septon Eustan said dubiously. “The man was Lord Treasurer, after all. He was on the Small Council. The Regent should hear of his death.”
“Aye, to King’s Landing and overland.” Ser Steffon said. “The Lord Regent must be told, and the Queen. Then we will not travel west by the Roseroad, with the tales we hear of Ironmen the Reach. By the Gold Road to Lannisport and south to Cornfield; that will be the safest path.”
“I am wary of sending the silent sisters on such a route,” Septa Halla said. “We hear such tales coming from the ruined lands in the heart of Westeros. Even silent sisters have been molested, they say, and many and more killed.”
“The war is over,” said Ser Steffon, impatient. “Lord Kevan sent many forces to restore the king's peace in the Riverlands, and I have no doubt Lord Mace will do the same. And the High Septon has revived the ancient military orders to protect travelers and pilgrims. Surely they would also protect the silent sisters from bandits on the road. And I and my men will protect them until they can reach King's Landing. How long until we may depart?”
Thrice seven days, Sister Embalmer said. Three more weeks, Patience thought watching Ser Steffon's guards. Surely I can do this in three more weeks.
Septon Eustan said, “I will set Brother Desmond to making a mortuary casket.”
-
A new girl came to the motherhouse shortly before the full moon. She was a knight's daughter, sixteen and pretty, with auburn hair and bright eyes. The new girl could spin a fine thread, but she was sick at the smell of the beetles, and Sister Embalmer's knives made her pale. She had no calling to be a silent sister. She was sullen, angry. Sometimes she forgot her vows of silence, and Sister Spinner struck her palms with a switch, and Septon Eustan set her penance on her knees before the Stranger's altar.
The lay sisters were pitying. The girl had been sent to the silent sisters in disgrace, one of them said, not quite out of hearing as Patience showed the new girl how the silent sisters washed and anointed the statue of the Stranger at his altar in the sept. She saw the new girl's face turn blotchy and pink, at the last sisters' words, the way she spent the rest of that day in a bloodless fury, her lips pressed tightly together and her movements jerky with anger. Patience still didn't understand until a day later at the baths, when she saw the stretch marks bright and raw on the loose skin of the new girl's belly.
What happened to your—Patience didn’t know the word. Her fingers still felt so clumsy in the silent speech. She mimicked a mother cradling a baby, mouthed the word. What happened?
The new girl opened her mouth and closed it again but too many people were around for her to speak. He’s dead, she signed, her movements choppy. He was a—then a word Sister Patience didn’t know.
She mimicked the gesture. What’s that?
The new girl’s face twisted in a snarl like a cornered cat. Movements exaggerated, she’d repeated the movement slower, her mouth forming the shape of the word. Bastard. He was a bastard.
Bastard, Patience repeated, then I have a bastard brother; although that had been some other girl. He’s dead, too. I’m sorry. The last was a gesture all silent sisters learned, part of the Stranger’s prayers, solace to the living and peace to the dead.
The new girl turned away as if she’d been slapped, but not before Patience saw the glint of tears in her eyes. Valar morghulis, she thought. But the youngest silent sister was faithful to the Seven, and not Braavosi. She would not know those words.
Patience had been set to guide the new girl and show her how to get along. It was tiresome work. That week she made her frustration her confession of truth and was set penance of prayers for her sin of pride. Worse, as she did not confess, guiding the new girl meant that she had no time to watch for the guardsman Dunsen, nor to run errands for Sister Apothecary that might take her out into the city; and with no errands, she had no pass that would allow her past the porters and out into Braavos. The silent sisters' cloistering was gentle, but it was still a cloister, and discipline tightest for the newest and youngest acolytes. It chafed at her.
At Patience was glad in the watches she was able to turn the new girl over to Sister Weaver for instruction: for it had been decided that Sister Weaver would be making the journey to Westeros. The other silent sisters were too old, or their skills too necessary to the Sept, and the new girl already knew how to weave.
Another truth, another lie, another exaggeration. Seven days remained before Sister Weaver would depart with Ser Harys's bones, and Ser Steffon, and all his guards. Sister Embalmer brought the bones forth from the tin bath. Some of the connective tissue still held the bones together: Sister Embalmer's knives separated them. For two days she soaked the bones in reeking spirit of hartshorn, and three times daily Sister Patience drained and refilled the tub, her eyes watering with the smell. Five days. They set the bones to dry in natron salts.
Brother Desmond had made a handsome mortuary box from dark wood. The sides were carved with seven pointed stars, and the lid with the warrior's sword. It was two feet long and a foot deep, and oiled to protect it from inclement weather, and the lid was cunningly fastened and bound with leather straps. He showed Sister Weaver the lock, and how to tie cloth and rope to carry it on her back.
And finally, accepting she would not be able to get near the guard in any other way, Sister Patience went before Sister Weaver, Sister Apothecary, Sister Embalmer and Sister Spinner, and made them a proposal.
-
She wound Sister Patience's grey veils around her face, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she folded and pinned the cloth. She could almost do it on her first try now, but the folds tended to come out crooked. Her hair was growing back. It was nearly as long as her thumb and tickled the back of her neck, but she couldn't pin her veils to it the way the others did. It meant that if she moved too quickly the veil slipped and her hair stuck out at the edges, and then the older sisters and the septas would stop her in the corridors and tug it straight again.
She pulled her grey robes over her linen undershirt and wiggled her toes in her shoes. They were a little too large, but the stone floors of the Sept were cold. In winter it was no hardship to wear a second pair of thick socks over her stockings. She liked the shoes. They were well made of supple leather and made no sound as she eased open the door and slid out into the corridor.
The moon would be dark tonight. It was time for her to return to the House of Black and White.
The fog was cold and thick on the canals, and tendrils of it chased her indoors. The light of the candles made the statues dark shapes in the darkness. The firelight rippled in the pool as she passed. Down in the vaults, she took off Sister Patience's heavy cloak and grey robes, still scented with incense from the chapel and the harsh lye soap she had used that morning to clean the embalming bath. She took off Sister Patiences's nice soft shoes, Sister Patience's thick socks and stockings and underthings, and washed herself with soap and lemon water. Except for the colour, the robes of a novice of the House of Black and White were not so different than the robes of the silent sisters.
Neither were her tasks in the House of Black and White much different from her tasks at the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea. In the dark rooms beneath the temple she washed and straightened bodies, and sorted their clothes and belongings.
The kindly man came on the third evening as she was finishing her tasks for the day. He asked her, in the smooth and practised silent speech of the Stranger’s brides, What do you know that you did not know when you left us?
It was hard to respond. The silent sisters had many words in their language, but used few; they took their vows of silence seriously. She often had to stop and spell out words, or mouth them until the kindly man understood her and showed her the correct form.
The daughter of Ser Barquen Peake—she had to spell the name, and was not sure if she had spelled it correctly—has become a silent sister. She had a baby with a Tyroshi sailor, but her baby died. Her family sent her to the motherhouse. She didn't want to go.
This is worth knowing, the kindly man said. What else?
When the silent sisters embalm bodies, the silent sisters take out the organs and the brain, then put the body in a bath with a mixture of brandy, vinegar, wormwood and salt. She knew how much of each was boiled together to make the brew, though Sister Apothecary hadn't yet taught her how to make the scented powders they used after the bath. But when they use the beetles, they only take out the organs. The wormwood would kill the beetles. They have to wash off the holy oils.
Very good, the kindly man said. What else?
The commander of the Night’s Watch in Westeros has died. She had thought about saying it, had even practiced the words. He was killed by his brothers of the Night's Watch. She could say, Eastwatch-by-the-sea let the ships they had impounded on his command go when they heard the news. Larksong reached the Ragman's Harbour just after the half moon. They brought the news. She could say, the merchant Oro Tenderis has wagered that the new commander will not pay his debts to the Iron Bank. The commander of the Night’s Watch has died, she could say. He used to have a sister called Arya Stark.
She said, The Westerosi envoy died, the one they sent to talk to the Iron Bank about the crown debts. He was poisoned for meddling in the Sealord’s election.
The kindly man smiled. Do you know this, or do you only think it?
She thought about the question, and did not chew her lip. I know he was poisoned. Sister Embalmer showed me in his guts. It was tears of Lys.
The Kindly Man said, This is worth knowing. And the rest?
I don't know why he was poisoned, she admitted. I only think.
Just so. And who are you?
No one.
It was nearing midnight when her tasks were finished and she could change back to the grey robes and soft leather shoes of the Stranger's brides. Mist curled like a cat around her ankles as she eased open the doors of the House of Black and White. Halfway down the steps to the dock she paused, balancing on her toes, testing her weight. The stone shifted, loose under her feet.
-
A thousand years ago a girl from Saltpans had sailed the Narrow Sea in the brindled light of autumn. When Sister Patience went to sea it was in the bitter grey of winter. Flurries of snow obscured the docks and the distant islands and canals of Braavos.
The ship was a merchantman of Duskendale called the Merry Widow, the captain a wiry and shrewd man named Barth. Merry Widow was returning to Westeros after five months in the Shivering Sea and she sailed from the Ragman’s Harbor in a convoy of eight ships bound for King's Landing by way of Gulltown.
Ser Steffon Sarsfield had bespoken a cabin for himself and one for Sister Weaver and Sister Patience. Of the two, the silent sisters' was the smaller cabin, and felt smaller still with Ser Harys's mortuary chest lashed between the two narrow bunks. The silent sisters would pray to the Stranger seven times each day for his soul. Sometimes Patience made a prayer of her own in counterpoint: Ser Gregor, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, Dunsen, Dunsen, Dunsen.
Most days it was too cold to be on deck for long without some work to do. Neither the silent sisters nor the knight and his men at arms had such tasks, though Ser Steffon was prone to seasickness which became worse we he could not see the horizon, so he spent many and more hours huddled in the deck in his cloaks and furs.
Ser Steffon's men at arms had been left to shift for themselves with the sailors in the belly of the Widow. It was a crowded space, and close, with rope hammocks slung from the ceilings above sea chests and merchandise.
Patience walked the deck many times a day to get away from the close air below decks. She could not move around the ship freely, for the officers were deferential, if awkward, and the sailors superstitious: all watched her everywhere she went, as one watches a wasp for fear of its sting.
As the days passed, and the convoy veered west to avoid the northern current that ran along the coast of Andalos from the Sea of Myrth to Braavos, she found that, as she went about quiet and boring, their interest waned. She was able to learn, by watching, where the cook kept the brandy and strongwine, and where the second mate's box of medicines and bonesaws was stored, and what Captain Barth's favourite dinner was. One day, as Ser Steffon again made his breakfast an offering to the waves, she picked the lock on his traveling chest. Within, nestled amid the knight's effects, a small vial, nearly empty, sealed with a cork.
The apothecaries of Braavos used a distinctive milky glass to carry pistons, and sealed them with black wax: the colours of him of Many Faces. Carefully, as the shop rolled, she eased the cork loose: no scent. If she touched a drop to her tongue it would taste of water.
The Lord Treasurer had brought his death with him from Westeros, it seemed. Foolish of Ser Steffon to still carry the vial: three canals of Braavos had swallowed worse secrets in their time.
She found that the lion soldiers, with nothing left to guard, spent their days dicing and drinking, or throwing up over the side of the ship—though they quickly learned to judge how the wind blew before picking a railing.
Dunsen, to her disappointment, had an iron stomach. It took some thought, and both the cook's strongwine and the second mate's medicines, to bring him to the side of the ship, offering up his breakfast to the waves. But with that accomplished, the rest was simple. He screamed when he fell, and one of the soldiers yelled, looking around frantically. "Man overboard! A rope, a rope—" But he had looked away from the sea, and when he turned back, moments later, with rope in hand and ready to toss, he couldn't see the dark head in the surging waves, didn't know where to toss it.
Patience, who had not taken her eyes from that head, saw it bob and splash. Dunsen tried to shout, but water filled his mouth and he choked, and finally his head bobbed under the sea and did not resurface. She couldn't keep herself from smiling as she returned to the silent sisters' cabin. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, Ser Gregor. Her prayers were growing short indeed.
-
The seventh day out from Braavos, Patience came on deck to find the convoy sailing in the midst of a score of whales. The great fishes were fifty feet long and thrust themselves up out of the water to flop down again in great gusts of seaspray. The sailors of the Merry Widow counted it a good omen and a blessing, though Ser Steffon gibbered that they would be capsized and a passenger from Ibben said, in accented Braavosi, that it was a pity they had no harpoons aboard.
Patience was fascinated. She longed to ask the sailors about the great beasts, but they did not know the signs of the silent sisters. In the end Sister Weaver took pity on her and explained that the whales made this journey every winter, down from the icy waters of the Bay of Seals to warmer seas amid the Stepstones and the great southern ocean. Though there are kraken in the south that kill and eat whales.
How? Patience asked, trying to imagine how anything so vast could be killed without harpoons and lances.
They drag them down and drown them.
Drown? But they’re fish!
Sister Weaver laughed silently. They breathe air. See! And Patience saw the spray of the whale’s breath, and the splay of the hole on its back as it breathed in; great blowing bellows that sprayed water ten feet into the air as it breathed out. She imagined it might be like a cow’s warm breath on a chill morning. Then one breached right next to the ship and she caught the reek of rotting fish.
Sister Weaver had to touch her arm to get her attention. Her hands said, Whales are a marvel of the Seven Above.
Near the Fingers the Merry Widow hailed a pair of small boats dragging a whale by its tail towards the shore. It was not quite dead yet, for every now and then it made a great thrashing that seemed like it would swamp the small boats, but it was trapped and couldn't escape. Sister Patience was sad for it.
Captain Barth brought the Merry Widow alongside the whalers and hailed them. “Merry Widow of Duskendale, Braavos to King’s Landing.”
“Hollytree of Snakewood, and Grey Goose,” came the response. The whaler was an older man, wrinkled and bronze from the sun.
“What news of the Vale? We’ve been gone half a year or more.”
“Trouble with the mountain men,” the whaler replied. “They raided the Gates of the Moon these four months past, carried off every woman they could lay their hands on. Young Lord Arryn was injured. Some even say the young lord is dead, and the Lord Protector is hiding it, for the young lord hasn't been out of his chambers since.”
“Littlefinger would swear himself blue if it profited him,” Captain Barth said darkly.
“You know the man?” Ser Steffon murmured.
“He was in charge of Gulltown customs some years ago, and made his profit from the backs of the merchantmen of Duskendale.” He raised his voice. "The Lord Protector still rules, then?"
"For now," the whaler said. "Folk are asking what good he is. The mountain men haven't come so far east as the Fingers, but they've struck a dozen villages and burned the town beneath the walls of Strongsong, and he's done little and less to stop them. The High Road's closed, but between the mountain men and the snows, no-one tries even the hill passes between the vales any longer."
"Bad business," Captain Barth said.
“Well, and so. You'll have heard the Regent's dead, and the queens old and young tried for fornications and treasons?"
“That's old news,” the captain said.
"We've none fresher. We're shore whalers; we get little news and less, these winter days."
"What of the sea?"
"Fewer ships than there were. We're no prize for raiders here, though. Gulltown patrols the Bay of Crabs, and the sistermen and White Harbour in the Bite, so it’s safe enough.”
"Fair sailing to you, then."
The whaler saluted. Merry Widow trimmed her sails and surged forward into the current. The whaler turned aside, headed for the distant mountains of the Vale.
-
The convoy turned west into the the Bay of Crabs in a fine misting of drizzle. The Bay of Crabs was wide and calm, with the mountains of the Vale rising pale with snow in the northwest. A thin dark line of land showing along the southern horizon was Crackclaw Point.
The silent sisters came to the deck as they approached the shore. Sister Weaver pointed out the motherhouse built tall and proud upon a windswept island near the harbour mouth.
Gulltown was a prosperous city, though small after Braavos. Neat buildings of slate and brick and whitewashed plaster climbed the gentle hills to the Septry on the west, merchants' mansions in an arc above the town, the soaring heights of Gull Tower on the eastern headland, flying bright flags: blue with a moon and falcon for the Arryns of the Vale, the stag and lion of the little king. Others, Patience didn't know: black and white chequy, white splotches on brown, red and black with a burning tower.
The Gulltown customs men were a full day taking inventories and duties of the convoy. Once they were done with Merry Widow, Captain Barth brought her into dock under oars and the lightest of sails. The oarmaster cussed out the sailors in time with the drums, although when he saw Patience watching, his cusses became suddenly less blasphemous to the Seven.
Three of the eight ships were to leave the convoy at Gulltown, but Merry Widow was to stay for only a handful of days. Sailors and dockworkers scurried to make the ship fast, calling orders and insults from ship to shore. Already the merchants and passengers were stirring, to make their way ashore for their negotiations and sales, for fresh food and a stroll on unmoving land. Sister Weaver touched Patience's shoulder and said, Let us go to the Sept. We'll give thanks for our safe passage and make confession.
Sister Weaver staggered and lurched, her first steps on the docks, and attempted dignity by moving very slowly. Patience practiced her patience, walking slowly, watching the bustle of the port. Many people ducked their heads and stepped apart as the silent sisters passed. They had not had such studied courtesies in Braavos, but here in Westeros it was ill fortune to look on the face of death.
The docks were filled with sailors, dockers, merchants and whores, but the shouts and conversations were only in one language instead of the many tongues of the Ragman's Harbour. Even after weeks in the Sept and days aboard the Merry Widow it was strange to hear so many people speaking in the Common Tongue of Westeros. Twice she even heard the burr of northerner's accents, achingly familiar, like something out of a dream.
The Sept of Gulltown was high on the hill across the bay from Gull Tower. Larger than the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea, its great walls were propped by half-arch buttresses leaping across the leaden sky to a small forest of ornamented towers. The space within the Sept was cavernous, with drifting incense lit in rainbows by the painted glass and enormous prismed chandeliers. Each of the altars stood below a painted glass window showing each of the seven, and beneath and around were septas and septons, begging brothers and holy warriors, and marvels and stories from The Seven-Pointed Star.
Silently they knelt at the Stranger's altar. Sister Weaver prayed, and Patience listened to the brush of clothing against the floor and the murmur of voices at the altars. Prayers, hymns, murmurings without true words. Then, shockingly clear, she heard someone say, "If Littlefinger had any decency he'd send the girl to the silent sisters."
Patience tilted her head, glanced sidelong. A pair of older women, one in grey and one in blue, were seated behind her and off to the left, gossiping comfortably. Chaperones, she guessed, of the girls blushing and giggling together at the maiden's altar.
"If the girl still lives," the one in grey said. She looked half a silent sister herself, though her coif and veil were shining silk.
"After whatever bastard the mountain men put in her belly, Littlefinger would have to pay a king's ransom in dower to get any lordling to look at the girl."
"Oh, I saw her at the tourney. She's a pretty enough thing. I think they'd still look."
Patience watched them sidelong, saw the knowing glance the two women shared, their glee in the gossip, their malice. She remembered the new girl from the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea with her stretched and empty belly, the grief and anger in her eyes.
"The young lord's certainly not missing his betrothed. That spicer's girl has missed her courses again, and her barely out of childbed from the last one."
Handbells interrupted any response the old woman would have made. She craned her neck to watch as a procession came into the Sept to kneel before the altars. Sister Weaver finished her prayer and stood, waiting, as the procession split and moved past them. Patience watched, wondering what was going on, as the women and girls in the party moved to the Maiden's and Crone's altars, the men and boys to the Warrior's and then the Smith's, saying prayers and making offerings. The two groups met again before the altars of the Father and Mother.
It was a wedding, Patience realised, feeling slow. She had never seen a Sept wedding before, though as a child she had prayed sometimes with her mother in the little Sept her father had built. In the North people married themselves before heart trees. No. That was not Patience, that was some other girl. Neither Patience nor Jeyne Fairweather were from the North.
My parents were married in a Sept, though. That had been in Riverrun, years and years ago during Robert's Rebellion.
Patience wondered if this was what it had been like for her mother: the singing, the incense, the septon's sonorous voice. She remembered, suddenly, one New Year's night at Winterfell, the sun still bright on the horizon at midnight. She'd been permitted to stay up to see the dawn, and her sister and Jeyne Poole had spent half the night arguing about whether Sept weddings and Northern ones were more romantic. Finally she and Bran had started a silent competition for who could make the most horrible face, and Bran laughed until he fell off the bench and into the rushes.
She had not thought of that night in years. Unsettled, she stood as Sister Weaver did. Silent sisters are not welcome at weddings, Sister Weaver said. They fear we will wither their parts and the marriage will not be fruitful. Neither did the wedding party stop at the Stranger's altar to pray, though one of them brought a heavy bag to the offering box bolted to the rack of candles and made a quick, nervous obeisance.
Come, Sister Weaver said. Patience followed her away from the wedding to kneel before the altar of the Warrior, where Sister Weaver said prayers for dead Ser Harys, and Patience counted the stars painted on the Warrior's surcoat.
A truth, an exaggeration, and a lie. In the dark of the confessional of the Gulltown Sept, she said, "I am a silent sister of the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea in Braavos." That might be the lie, but it barely counted. She cleared her throat. Her voice was always croaky after so long without speaking. "We are carrying the bones of a man who died in Braavos back to his keep in the Westerlands. He was a knight."
"It is a holy task," the septon said. "The Seven honour you in your service to the Stranger."
"I knew the knight when he was alive," she said, though Patience and Jayne Fairweather had not. "I hated him." That was an exaggeration: in truth she barely remembered Ser Harys. Still, it was not so great an exaggeration. He had been at Harrenhal, and all her memories of Harrenhal were evil.
"The Seven Above do not require that we like all men and women," the septon said. "Only that we treat them justly and with mercy, and guard our own souls from their corruptions. Why do you hate this knight?"
"What do you mean?" Septon Eustan at the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea had never asked her the reasons for her lesser confessions, only assigned her penance.
"The causes of your hatred are part of the truth of your confession," the aepton said. "I must know them to set your penance."
The question had taken her off guard. She didn't know what to say. The silence stretched.
The aepton shifted, his robes rustling together. "The Seven-Pointed Star teaches that hatred is a distortion of anger, anger beyond reason, which partakes of sin because it obstructs the flow of grace into the soul." He paused. "You must understand that anger is not, itself, a sin. All people feel anger and desire vengeance for wrongs done against them, for great injury or great humiliation. It is the distortion, the lust for vengeance beyond justice, which we call hatred and thereby a sin. What had this man done to injure you, child?"
"It was during the war," she said, and didn't know how to go on.
"Ah,"said the septon. "Oh. I see. In war many men do hateful things." She heard him swallow. "The Father Above judges us all justly, in time. You must trust He weighs this knight's sins against you as nicely as He weigh his virtues. You must strive to let your hatred go, and look to your own immortal soul.
"In respect of your own confessed sin of hatred, you must do penance to the Father, for taking upon yourself the judgement of this man when that is not your role; and to the Mother, for forsaking the mercy that is her gift to all women; and finally, as the man is dead, to the Stranger, whose charge the dead are."
In a suddenly conversational tone, he added, "Of course, in tending this man's bones, in despite of your wrath and your hatred, you are already making proper restitution to the Stranger. So, then: I charge you pray morning and night for forty days. The form of your prayer will be to ask our Father Above, who sits in judgement, to forgive your usurpation of his role; and to ask our Mother Above, who is the font of mercy, that you might be healed from your hatred."
In the darkness of the confessional she allowed herself to chew on her lip. "I didn't hate him as much as some of the others," she said, and that was the truth.
"And are these others still among the living?"
"Some of them." Ser Ilyn and Queen Cersei for her father, Ser Meryn for Syrio Forel. Ser Gregor for Harrenhal, and the storehouse in the village beside the God's Eye.
She was expecting him to ask for the rest of her confession, but instead he hesitated and quietly said, "In The Seven-Pointed Star it is written that all sins may be forgiven, but crimes must still be punished. If these men who committed crimes against you were accused, and their actions could be substantiated, I am sure the king's justice would be swift."
"It won't," she blurted out. "It won't. They were lions. They belonged to the king." She bit her knuckle. She was suddenly, blazingly furious, as she had not been in weeks, in months. Justice? The old High Septon had watched while the King's Justice cut her father's head off. And they were all lions anyway, even Gulltown which flew the lion and stag together at its harbour and on the high towers above the bay. Even this septon. She wanted to argue. She wanted to shout. She balled her hands into fists in the darkness of the confessional. What do you know of the king's justice, old man? What do you know of the king's war?
The septon was murmuring. "Justice is the king's business under Aegon's law, not the Faith's, but the new High Septon is a holy man who would see penance done for the Faithful who suffered in the war. It would require only that you speak the truth. Will you think on it, my child?"
"Yes," she said, and that would have to be her lie.
"And what have you further to confess?"
"No," she said. "Nothing."
Her head was full of heat and roaring noise. After the formulas were done, she opened the confessional, stepped out into the beautiful rainbow light and echoing vaults and heavy incense of the Sept. It was all a lie, anyway, this beauty, this shining light, these sweet smells. The truth was in the winter outside the walls, beetles and knives and reeking black earth of the lichyard.
Head down, she walked through the wedding party. They drew away from her, the ceremony faltering, but she didn't stop, not until she had passed through the great carved doors into the cold air beyond. Even there the scent of incense lingered, clinging to the grey veils around her face. She pulled them free, gasping as the cold struck her, a flurry of wet snow on her eyelids and hot cheeks.
She had a cloth pocket bound around her waist, beneath her outer robe. She reached through the slit and loosened the strings. By touch she sorted through the things within, the role of needles, the wrapped biscuit, the small knife, the tin fork. Beneath them, sunk to the bottom of the pocket, a square of cold iron. With that coin and two words any Braavosi ship in harbour would carry her back to the House of Black and White. If the wind were favourable she might even be back before the dark of the moon.
With enough coin –and she knew where Ser Steffon kept the travel funds – she could go anywhere in the world. She could even go north, to the Wall; but there was nothing for her there anymore.
Merry Widow was still bound for King's Landing. That was where the rest of her prayers might be answered. Where she might find a justice that did not belong to the king.