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She no longer dreams the wolf dreams, and when she tells the kindly man that she is no one, he no longer calls her a liar. Faces, memories, thoughts: all fade away to nothing, leaving only knowledge acquired along the way. She has no name, no past, no future. Each time she looks into the dark pool her rippling reflection is different – a new face to match each gift she bestows, a new self to wash the old one clean of memory or attachment.
A plain little girl watches a man overbalance on the side of a ship and sink under the waters of the Braavosi harbour. A bright-eyed maid makes a pretty face of surprise as some small lord chokes on his wine. A smelly fisherman’s daughter slips a dagger back into her sleeve as a thief once too clever by half dies amongst the shadows. A street urchin seeks out the Kindly Man to tell him of a gift delivered, and a skinny faceless girl leaves him, to await orders.
“A pretty face for this one, I think,” says the Kindly Man one day. She nods, expressionless. Pretty or ugly, it makes no difference to her; she will wear this face only for the time it takes to give her gift. Then she will cast it aside like the others, and cease to be once more.
“Can you give a man a gift?”
“What man?” asks the faceless girl, following the script that two dozen girls before her followed.
“No one that you know. No one that you love.”
One girl, moons ago, had replied that I don’t know a lot of people. This girl knows no one, but knows of many, and love is wasted for all men must die. She says as much to the Kindly Man. His face never moves, but if it did it might have smiled.
“And hate?” he asks her.
“I hate no one. Hate is wasted, for gifts may be given to hated and loved alike. For all men must die.”
He gives her a name, then, and a place that can only be reached by ship. The pretty girl will be sent away from Braavos. The other girls had not earned that right, but this girl, with her long dark hair and long face, solemn in its beauty, will go where the others could not.
*****
For one with the blessings of the House of Black and White, it is easy to gain passage on a ship to the riverlands. From there she follows whispers and traces, aided by knowledge another girl gave her long ago. Many seek the Brotherhood in vain, but she finds them easily and follows behind, quiet as a shadow and calm as still water as she studies them, finds the face of the man to whom she will give the gift of the Many-Faced God.
“This one should see the face of the one who brings him the gift,” the Kindly Man had instructed her. So she has a blade to hand, hidden, as she wakes him quietly from his dreams one night. Confusion shows plainly in his eyes still clouded by sleep, before giving way to an expression of surprised recognition and awe. He draws breath to speak, and dies with a name on his lips, soft as a sigh, as her blade slips smoothly beneath his ribs and into his heart.
Valar morghulis, the grey-eyed girl whispers, closing his eyes softly before slipping away to vanish into the shadows of the trees.
*****
The beautiful girl ends when she returns to the House of Black and White and tells the Kindly Man that the gift has been given. He nods, and she is sent to the room of the faces to have hers taken away. A different girl leaves the room to go about her duties, but the Kindly Man finds her almost immediately. He takes her chin in his hand, tilts her face to the light.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“I am no one,” the girl replies without the slightest hint of a lie. She has not so much as seen the face she wears now.
“Whose face do you wear?”
“I wear no one’s face,” she says, “faces must be earned.”
“Then you must earn this face as well as the others.”
“Tell me how.”
“Give a certain man a certain gift.”
“What man?”
“No one you know. No one you love. Will you kill him?”
“Yes.”
And then he whispers a name into her ear, a name that a different girl had once known.
Jon Snow.
*****
He does not give her a new face this time. It is her final test, he says. She must carry it out with the face she has, that her own face become no one’s face. Instead, he hands her a sword. It is shorter than most, a bravo’s blade, and her hand closes comfortably around the hilt. It is the sword a girl called Arya Stark once carried, she knows.
“Who are you?” he asks once more as she tests the weight of the sword in her hand. His tone gives away little, but she has learned to read even the most impassive of faces. He is testing her, though she knows not why.
“No one,” she says, sheathing the blade at her side.
He nods and tells her where to go. North, to the Wall and the Night’s Watch. She is to kill only the man, no others. Not black brothers, not the wolf. She does not ask what he means about the wolf, for she knows she will receive no answer.
“If you return successful, it will be time to discard the novice’s robe,” he tells her. She nods once, solemnly, before turning to leave.
“Valar morghulis,” says the Kindly Man as she crosses the threshold.
“Valar dohaeris,” she replies.
*****
She catches the first glimpse of her face in the rippling waters of the harbour. It is not unlike the face she only recently relinquished, the face that has not yet faded entirely from her awareness. That girl, too, sought out a bastard to give him the gift of the Many-Faced God.
The black travelling cloak she wears hides the sword at her hip as well as any hint of a figure. Still, the dark hair falling in soft curls around a long, pretty face gives her the appearance of a young maiden, an innocent. So she chooses a ship with care, showing the captain a token coin and telling him she is sailing to meet her brother. Her parents have died and he is all the family she has left, she says with wide-eyed innocence. He looks at the coin and smiles, and asks her name.
“Lya,” she says.
He gives her a cabin, and they set sail on the next tide, headed north.
*****
The winter wind tosses frigid water onto the deck, and snow falls from the sky on stormy days. As they finally make towards land, Lya thinks she can hear wolves howling in the night.
Finally, one clear morning, she sees the towering Wall of ice rising in the distance, and she knows her journey is near an end. When they pull in at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, she thanks the captain with a demure curtsy and a handful of coins, given to her by the House of Black and White for her journey. Then she disembarks, to make her way through the frozen wilds below the Wall.
She knows she cannot be seen here, not with this face. But the Kindly Man has instructed her to carry out this task with the face she wears. So she hides herself in the shadows of Eastwatch, unseen but seeing all. It is hardly difficult to slip into the stables and steal a horse during a change in patrol. Once out of sight of the tower, she spurs her horse to a canter and sets off into the winter night, the howling of wolves ringing in her ears.
To stay warm she rides at night, sleeping during the day, always keeping near the wall but just out of sight of those who walk along it. But as she draws near to Castle Black, she sees no sign of the man for whom she is searching. She has worn many faces, but none of those girls had ever been to the Wall.
In the end, the wolves show her the way. A blind girl once saw through the eyes of a cat, so Lya closes her eyes and seeks those of a wolf slipping through the trees. At first she sees only glimpses, but those lead eventually to smells and tracks and a silent white shape slipping through the trees towards a black-gloved hand.
*****
She opens Lya’s eyes, then, and leaves the horse hidden in the trees when she draws close. The watchtower that calls itself a castle rises against the wall in the distance, too far for sentries to see clearly. A lone black figure walks near the base of the wall, seemingly unguarded, unprotected. So simple, she thinks. She could slip up behind him, a dagger in the dark, in the shadow of the trees, and he would never see or hear a thing.
But this one, too, must see her face. It is her final test, and she will not fail. So she draws her bravo’s blade and strikes the nearest tree. The figure’s head turns as he hears the snow-muted thunk of metal on wood, and she lets him glimpse the corner of her cloak as she slips behind the tree. Peering around the trunk, she can see him hesitate before turning towards where she remains hidden. She does not hear him speak, but a great white shape pads silently towards him, following. Not entirely unguarded, then, she thinks.
He has drawn his sword, the shimmer of Valyrian steel evident even from where she stands, and she knows she must be careful. She waits until he has almost reached her hiding place before turning around the far side of the tree, walking up silently behind him. She freezes when she sees the wolf stop and stare at her with red eyes that seem almost inquisitive. She stares back, hardly daring to breathe, gripping her sword tighter.
But the wolf simply turns back to walk ahead of the man, and Lya does not think to wonder at the strangeness of it all. She walks up to the man, silently and swiftly, and in an instant has a knife to his sword hand and her blade pressed against his neck. He stops as he feels the touch of steel.
“Drop your sword and turn around,” she says with no expression in her voice. But he startles as soon as she speaks, dropping the sword and turning to face her with an expression of incredulity on his face, the whisper of a name on his lips. She makes her first mistake then, and hesitates for a fraction of a second when she should have silenced him. His hand flies to hers as his expression changes to one of fear.
“Ghost!” The man cries out, still trying to push her sword hand away, even as she tries to slice his throat. “Ghost, to me!”
And suddenly something jars in her memories. Ghost. Something to do with a whisper…Ghost. Yes. I was the ghost in Harrenhal.
And then her eyes flick to the white direwolf, and its red eyes once again meet hers, and the memories pour into her like a flood, and he is no longer shouting to the wolf but to her, saying a name over and over, the name the other bastard boy had whispered as he died.
“Arya! Arya! Arya!”
Her name.
As she remembers her name something inside her awakens, and she sees Jon Snow standing frozen in front of her, sees her blade at his throat, his eyes locked on hers.
Just like the other one, before her knife had taken his life. Gendry.
With his name comes a sob, and she throws the sword away, not caring where it lands, and then she throws herself at her brother and sees the relief and love and tears on his face as his arms envelop her. She buries her face in his furs and sobs as the memories continue to wash over her, and Gendry’s last whisper echoes in her head.