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The first time she's invited to one of the priests meetings, she is instantly wary. Why her? Why not the Waif? Even though it’s been years upon years, the girl is now a woman. Arya’s been here for much less time and she's almost certainly less learned. But the Kindly Man tells her to come anyway, and Arya's in no position to argue or disagree.
So she goes.
Down, past the servant’s quarter, past the room with faces, down, down. In the last level, there is a small room where the meetings are held; it is cool and smells sweet swwet sweet (like blood and honey, oh). She follows the Handsome Man and stands awkwardly by as the rest of them take their seats.
The Kindly Man is the last to enter. He stands at front and says, "Are all those here in service of the Many-Faced God?"
There is a chorus of yes's and aye's.
"And who am I speaking to?"
Again, they chant in unison, "No One."
The Kindly Man turns to give Arya a look, not a pleasant or understanding one, and she knows better than to lie, quickly saying, "Arya Stark of Winterfell."
Instantly, she feels all their eyes on her. She returns their gazes calmly, fighting the urge to even blink. She will not be intimidated or cowed. The Faceless Men, she thinks with a flicker of disdain. All men.
And all men must die.
The Stern Man is the first to say, "I object. One with a face at one of our councils? It's unheard of, absolutely unacceptable."
The Kind Man doesn't answer directly, instead addressing the room in general. "We do not know how the Many-Faced God works and it is not our place to question. We only grant one wish: that to the God of Death. And when he sends us a blessing, we accept it."
"Are you calling this girl a blessing?" asks the Fat Man in mockery, and she has to clench her jaw from correcting him. She is not a girl and she would gladly rip his throat open to prove the point.
"No, the girl is not a blessing," the Kindly Man says and Arya frowns. Was she here to be poked fun of? Then he continues, "What is a blessing is what the girl can do. Would you tell them, Arya, or shall I?"
She knows inherently what he's talking about and it angers her he would be willing to tell everyone present without asking her first. Though she should know better than to expect him to ask permission.
But Arya isn't embarrassed or craven. She will speak amongst them with confidence, like being invited to one of her father's meetings with the Lords of the North. If he could see her now, he would tell her not to hesitate. He would be proud of her. It is that thought giving her courage, so she clears her throat and says, "I'll tell them."
They all wait in silence.
"I am a Stark and I am a warg."
A whisper travels throughout the room, uncomfortable shifting in seats, secretive exchanged glances, murmuring. Arya can feel the disapproval emanating through the room, all of them frowning.
Except one of them. The Handsome Man gives her a quick wink and she can see one corner of his mouth rising. She's mentally grateful for his support, though she doesn’t dare voice the sentiment.
The Stern Man speaks out again, "A warg? With all respect to the Many-Faced God, wargs are not trustable beings. They change their minds as quickly as their skin. We Faceless Men have discipline and control where wargs have nothing but raging emotion."
Arya wants to bare her teeth and snarl at him, show him just how right he is. Before she can, the Kindly Man says, "Are you questioning me? Or the judgment of the God, who was gracious enough to send us a warg at this opportune time?"
"What opportunity?" asks the Plagued Man, sounding curious, the scars on his face rippling as he leans closer.
"We do not meddle in affairs of the public, not the ones we haven't been paid for," the Kindly Man says. "But even we would be fools not to know the turmoil these lands have been in. Putting aside the rising threat of the Others, who have breached the Wall, we have a fight for the throne. We know the strife in Westeros, the King in the North making his way to fight the Tyrell and Lannister armies. The Sand Snakes have reared their heads in favor of family Martell. And we have, here in Essos, the Khaleesi and her dragons gaining strength."
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Arya knows the purpose of the meeting, of inviting her to join it, of telling the other Men she is a warg.
"You mean to have me warg into one of her dragons?" Arya blurts without a second thought, involuntarily taking a step toward the Man in indignation. She thinks he will scold her or hit her, or one of the Men will tell her to be quiet and stay out of council affairs, but to her surprise, they all lean forward in silence to hear the Kindly Man's answers.
He says calmly, "Yes, I do. To warg into one of her dragons and kill the khaleesi.”
The Men all turn to look at her when she insists, “You must be mad! I can’t do something like that!”
“And you must be trained so you can. But it is what you are here for; it is how you will serve the Many-Faced God.”
“Trained? And who will train me? Which of you has been in the body of a beast, has felt the wolf tear out throats of men under their paws like they were ants, has felt the jaws of a cat crush the skull of a mouse like lemon cakes, has quenched their thirst for blood in the skin of another?” She waits, staring in to the eyes of each man in turn before saying, “It’s not a circus trick. You cannot train a wolf to howl or a cat to hunt.”
The Kindly Man considers. “Do you mean to say you are prepared already?”
“For a dragon?” Arya hesitates. “Why should I be? You have already made it clear that I am not faceless.”
“But you are here to serve the Many-Faced God, are you not?”
Again, Arya finds herself torn between admitting she only wanted to learn to kill and between staying on at the House of Black and White for as long as she could. She says softly, “Aye, I am.”
“The Temple has already received payment for the deed to be done and make the Targareyan beasts seem the culprit. So it shall be.”
“If I had wanted payment,” Arya sneers, “I would have gone to work for the Lannisters.”
“It is the Lannisters that have paid us,” the Kindly Man confesses.
There is a stunned silence around the table. The Kindle Man did not typically reveal client names or payments.
Arya cannot help but laugh at this jape the Gods were playing on them all; lions hiring wolves to tame dragons. “Then you can return their gold to them and tell them to shove it up their arses. I’m not warging into the khaleesi’s dragons and I’m not killing her.”
The Kindly Man is the one who laughs this time, but his laugh is harsh and cruel; she cannot imagine how she ever called him Kind. “They did not pay us in gold, girl, and if you refuse to do the task for which they sent us Myrcella Lannister, we will slit the little virgin’s throat and hang her face in the room, and you can be sure that blood will be on your Stark hands. Do you understand?”
In that moment, Arya wants nothing more than to pounce and gouge out his tongue, but all she can think of is the poor girl whose life was ruined, like another girl she knew. Arya swallows back a lump and says, “I understand.”
“Then you have one moon to prepare yourself before the khaleesi visits Braavos with her army. You can leave the council room and leave us to the rest of our affairs now,” his dismissal is almost worse than his task, turning her worthless. Only a tool.
She’ll show them. Arya clenches her fist and leaves.
-
Myrcella is beautiful and generous. She has her mother’s grace and elegance, and her father’s honesty and poise. Arya is not a fool, she knows who the girl’s parents are, both of them. But she doesn’t hold the gentle girl for their mistakes. Myrcella cries the first entire week without stop, no matter how many sweets the Handsome Man brings her or how many perfumes the Waif makes for her. Arya keeps her distance, watches from the corner of her eye. She cannot let the girl die. She knows what she must do.
-
The khaleesi arrives in Braavos with much fanfare. Everyone has been waiting for her; streets have been swept, canals have been cleaned, brothels have even scrubbed their walls and tidied the streets. Mother of dragons, they call her, the rightful Queen of Westeros.
Arya is kept in the Temple, surrounded by the Faceless Men, the Waif, and Myrcella. The Kindly Man sits across from her. She tries not to think about how little she likes being trapped in their midst, how much she would rather be joining the festivities. Myrcella's kind eyes hold her back every time and the Kindly Man's threat hangs over them both like a swinging knife.
He asks her, "Are you ready?"
Arya takes a deep breath. No, she is not. Over the last moon, she had taken as many bodies as she could, dogs, mice, cats, horses, even fish, though she had thought she was drowning as fish and could not wear their skin for longer than a few seconds. She always awakened choking and gasping for air. It reminded her of slit throats and the taste of metal. Even though her mother was a Tully, Arya loathes being in the water.
She can only imagine how the dragons will make her feel.
"Yes," she answers with surprising calm in her voice.
"Then please, by all accounts, feel more than welcome to warg whenever you can," he says in a dry tone.
She closes her eyes, knowing she is leaving her body vulnerable, and reaches out with her mind. The city is crawling with animals of all sorts, particularly animals the khaleesi's army has brought along, elephants, camels, horses, even a lion. Arya feels all of their life, their consciousness, their thoughts, rubbing against her own. And in the very edge of her own mind, the constant: Nymeria.
There are three big presences in the city and Arya knows inherently that these are the dragons. Arya approaches them cautiously, knowing she’s very likely to never return from this task, prepared for the possibility. She steels her mind and lightly touches the surface of the first dragon.
The dragon’s mind pays her no attention, but she can feel the heat lurking under. Arya grazes over it again, gentle, a gossamer touch of fingerprints. She feels like a fly next to a dragon, but she assures herself she is a wolf, and knocks at the surface once more.
This time she feels a ripple: irritation. She is never going to get anywhere like this, with nudges and knocks. This is not how one fights a dragon. A horse, perhaps, or a dog. Those animals were willing, they invited the other presence. Dragons were more similar, she found, to cats: impossible to tame but possible to control. Arya prepares herself against the dragon’s mind and plunges.
Instantly the dragon’s mind is upon her, roaring, blazing with a fury. But even behind all that intensity, she feels a name: Drogon. And she knows, with a deep fear and panic, that dragons are nothing like cats, that her feeble mind could never control it. His networks are not nearly as organized as a human, but Drogon makes up for in vast sheer power what he lacks in intelligence. Overwhelmed, Arya considers backing out now but there’s fire everywhere, wildfire on her flesh and seeping under her skin, her muscles, and settling into her bones and she races through Drogon’s mind trying to find shelter or relief but an orange glow follows everywhere, and the glow is hot scorching burning blistering her entire being and she throws back her head and howls and-
There is a silence, coolness.
She has confused him. He is unused to howling. Arya bristles, throwing shadows through his well-lit mind, and takes the opportunity to retreat to a smaller corner in the endless sea of meat and flame and loyalty. Loyalty for the khaleesi. Their mother. An instinctive desire courses through Drogon’s mind to protect her, a small red door. Again, Arya despairs. The Kindly Man could not have expected the inside of the dragons mind to be this.
Hoping Drogon would not notice her licking her wounds, she tries to melt into the periphery, but Drogon has no periphery. He is open and honest and brash. There is no hiding for the great beast, no edges or corners to slink into. It is completely unlike Nymeria, whose mind is full of nooks and crannies, shadows and darkness. She feels him curiously probe toward her, puzzled. A toy? Some new animal? Meat?
Arya growls at him to keep his distance and desperately looks for a way out. But it seems getting into a dragon’s head is easier than getting out. The dragon sniffs at the trail she’s left running through his mind.
He has found her already, but he isn’t aware of doing so. The great beast doesn’t realize the intrusion in his mind was another conscious; he swats at it, like a gnat, but she glides away on spider’s silken wings. She is learning already to take advantage of his mind, of the glow and glimmer of its cavernous walls and the heat in the air making it easier for her to move.
Here, dragon, dragon, she calls, unsure if she’s taunting him or baiting, but either way he bites and she lures him into the corner she hid in previously. His conscious is massive, a bulk moving through the palace, lumbering, lazy- ferocious, she knows. Here, dragon, dragon.
A roar, surprisingly controlled. Arya realizes she is becoming accustomed to him. She feels sweaty and suffocating, even without a body, but she thinks she has Drogon figured out. He is used to being in control. He does not want to expend the effort to attack her. It will be his downfall, thinking a wolf cannot leap high enough to pierce reptilian skin.
Here, dragon, dragon.
She thinks she can hear him stomping when he heads in her direction again. Space, she has so much space here. Arya’s tempted to laugh, but she knows the slightest slip and she could end up crushed between his teeth, in the blazing hearth of Drogon’s being. She keeps flitting back and forth, dragging him along, clucking and calling and he follows, curious and convinced he can catch her. Here, dragon, dragon.
She feels it more than sees it, Drogon getting tired. She is beginning to wear him down, his thunderous steps slowing, the turns of his head to keep track of her labored. Once or twice, he has to struggle to find her in one of the sides- so much space. She takes full advantage of it, knowing Drogon has never needed to navigate the area and would be incapable of steadily chasing the intruder. He droops, his consciousness sluggish and peeved.
Here, dragon, dragon.
This time, Drogon does not follow. He crashes down to the warmth of his mind, tail lashing to curl up around his large sharp snout, bloodshot eyes falling closed. Asleep. Vulnerable. In this condition, to Arya, he looks smaller and more manageable than anything she’s ever felt. Smaller than a horse, smaller than a cat. Darling dragon. She wonders briefly if he’s fallen asleep in real life as well.
She rests for a moment and gathers her thoughts, knowing this had been the easy part and prepares for the worst. Inhaling the muggy heat and steeling her nerves, Arya takes one long look at the dragon and lets herself fall upon his conscious like wolves do upon lesser prey.
Down.
When she lands on his back, Arya jabs her sharp claws into him and-
HRUUUUAAAAAAAANGHHHRR!
With a terrifying roar, the dragon wakes, his conscious suddenly ablaze. He bucks and Arya struggles to hang on. From where her claws are digging into his skin rises a rank stench, rotting meat. Suddenly terrified of falling, she clings on and sinks in deeper and deeper until. Until.
She feels the power trembling under her, writhing, quaking and morphing.
Once, when she had been a little girl listening to the stories of Old Nan, she had dreamt of dragons and wolves and soaring through the sky and howling at the moon.
Now, her dreams have become reality.
She is the dragon.
Through his eyes, she can see a great feast, long tables laid out with food, but all she can smell are spices and meat. The nose is not as sharp as Nymeria, eyes better at focusing at a distance, ears hearing only certain frequencies.
Experimentally, Arya flaps her wings and Drogon keens for her to stop; he does not like being pupeteered. The gust of wing sends up sand and she feels a stirring- of her brothers. Drogon's brothers. Through his eyes, Arya notices she's in one of the inns near the canal, one of the lavish and wealthy parts of the city.
Despite Drogon's reluctance, Arya flaps her wings again and takes to the air. Her brothers look on curiously.
Flying is nothing like running. The wind under her wings is soft and caressing and Arya wants to howl in joy but when she opens her mouth, a column of flame spurts into the air instead. Interesting.
Arya heads down into the city, feeling a tug at the edge of her tail- the khaleesi's voice demanding Drogon's return. Drogon struggles between Arya's control and Dany's command, but Arya's hold over his conscious is too strong to fight. He continues to fly southward, in the direction of the House of Black and White. Within minutes, Arya can make out the building.
This next part will be complex, Arya knows. She'll need to tread the line carefully. She lands on the sloping roof of the temple, claws digging into the stone to hold on. Distantly, she feels a vibration like a vague memory. Her body.
She spits fire at the edge of the temple, feeling it catch on the wooden support beams and takes once again to the sky. Once she has put enough space between herself and the building, she shuts down Drogon's whining and builds up speed, heading straight for the temple. Another rumble shakes her body. She doesn't have much time now.
Flapping her wings harder, she realizes how fast she is going now. The ground beneath her shakes. She can feel sweat dripping from her body, stock still. A few seconds from impact, Arya let's go of Drogon.
-
Her eyes flash open. Around her, fire.
Outside, a thunderous roar and Drogon rights himself from crashing, just the tip of his wing grazing against the temple. Arya grins. She knew he would be able to control his body as soon as she left. One of the beams falling distracts her.
The Kindly Man is screaming something at the Waif, who holds a bucket of water in her small hands. The other Faceless Men are evacuating the temple. When the Kindly Man see's Arya's eyes open, he grabs her by the wrist and growls, "You little bitch. What have you done?"
"Made sure you and the rest of your cronies will never threaten another innocent girl again," she snaps, jerking her hand back. Myrcella. She's behind the Waif, cowering. Arya gestures toward the entrance for them to run. The bucket falls out of the Waif's hands and she nods, guiding Myrcella out.
"We helped you," the Kindly Man yells, ignoring the others, eyes furious. "You came to us and begged."
"And you used me."
"We'll come for you," the Man says in quiet menace and takes a step toward her.
Anger surges through her. "I'll kill whoever you send. I'll slit their fucking throat open," she snarls and leaps forward, her hands finding his neck. She sees the surprise on his features. He hadn't expected her attack. The flames lick the walls around them and Arya's grip tightens.
The Kindly Man gurgles, face turning red then purple. His breath rushes out in a hiss and he manages to choke out with the last of his strength, "The Many-Faced God… does not forgive."
"Fuck your God," Arya whispers, knowing even now that Syrio was right: there is indeed only one god and she already said no to it. She watches the life slip out of The Kindly Man.
Valar Morghulis.
-
Days later, she sneaks into the private chambers of the most expensive inns suite. Bowed before Daenerys, Arya admits everything to the khaleesi: that she is a Stark, that she is a Warg, that she is responsible for Drogon's erratic behavior a week earlier.
"A Stark," the silver-haired queen murmurs, nose wrinkling in disgust, but she does not call for her guards. In her features, Arya can see Targaryen blood- long sloping cheekbones and straight eyebrows, intensity perched on her pursed lips. It is a familiar expression. She has seen those features on another bastard face. The Handsome Man had not lied when he told her faces revealed all manner of secrets.
"Names do not matter," Arya says at last.
"Don't they?" The queen snorts.
"M'lady, Khaleesi. Your father burned my grandfather and nuncle in a court full of Targaryens and other nobles. Your lord brother kidnapped my aunt and brought about Robert's Rebellion and the usurping of the Iron Throne. I had the opportunity to kill you, to take your own dragon- your son- and drive his claws through your chest. So you'll have to forgive me for having the audacity to say that no, names do not matter."
Daenerys looks furious for a moment and Arya is sure she will need to defend herself from an onslaught. But within a few seconds, her violet eyes soften and she says, "You… controlled Drogon?"
Arya nods wordlessly and to her surprise, the khaleesi laughs.
-
When she is offered a place in the Queensguard and accepts, Arya does not smile.
She knows what it means: more blood on her hands.