A Feast for Dragons

vault was
still and silent. He was gone. Or was he? He could be standing right beside
her, she would never know.
Listen for his breathing
, she told
herself, but there was nothing. She gave it another moment, then put her stick
aside and resumed her work.
If I had my eyes, I could beat him bloody
.
One day the kindly man would give them back, and she would show them all.
    The old woman’s corpse was cool by now, the bravo’s body
stiffening. The girl was used to that. Most days, she spent more time with the
dead than with the living. She missed the friends she’d had when she was Cat of
the Canals; Old Brusco with his bad back, his daughters Talea and Brea, the
mummers from the Ship, Merry and her whores at the Happy Port, all the other
rogues and wharfside scum. She missed Cat herself the most of all, even more
than she missed her eyes. She had liked being Cat, more than she had ever liked
being Salty or Squab or Weasel or Arry.
I killed Cat when I killed that
singer
. The kindly man had told her that they would have taken her
eyes from her anyway, to help her to learn to use her other senses, but not for
half a year. Blind acolytes were common in the House of Black and White, but
few as young as she. The girl was not sorry, though. Dareon had been a deserter
from the Night’s Watch; he had deserved to die.
    She had said as much to the kindly man. “And are you a god,
to decide who should live and who should die?” he asked her. “We give the gift
to those marked by Him of Many Faces, after prayers and sacrifice. So has it
always been, from the beginning. I have told you of the founding of our order,
of how the first of us answered the prayers of slaves who wished for death. The
gift was given only to those who yearned for it, in the
beginning … but one day, the first of us heard a slave praying not
for his own death but for his master’s. So fervently did he desire this that he
offered all he had, that his prayer might be answered. And it seemed to our first
brother that this sacrifice would be pleasing to Him of Many Faces, so that
night he granted the prayer. Then he went to the slave and said, ‘You offered
all you had for this man’s death, but slaves have nothing but their lives. That
is what the god desires of you. For the rest of your days on earth, you will
serve him.’ And from that moment, we were two.” His hand closed around her arm,
gently but firmly. “All men must die. We are but death’s instruments, not death
himself. When you slew the singer, you took god’s powers on yourself. We kill
men, but we do not presume to judge them. Do you understand?”
    No
, she thought. “Yes,” she said.
    “You lie. And that is why you must now walk in darkness
until you see the way. Unless you wish to leave us. You need only ask, and you
may have your eyes back.”
    No
, she thought. “No,” she said.
    That evening, after supper and a short session of the lying
game, the blind girl tied a strip of rag around her head to hide her useless
eyes, found her begging bowl, and asked the waif to help her don Beth’s face.
The waif had shaved her head for her when they took her eyes; a mummer’s cut,
she called it, since many mummers did the same so their wigs might fit them
better. But it worked for beggars too and helped to keep their heads free from fleas
and lice. More than a wig was needed, though. “I could cover you with weeping
sores,” the waif said, “but then innkeeps and taverners would chase you from
their doors.” Instead she gave her pox scars and a mummer’s mole on one cheek
with a dark hair growing from it. “Is it ugly?” the blind girl asked.
    “It is not pretty.”
    “Good.” She had never cared if she was pretty, even when she
was stupid Arya Stark. Only her father had ever called her that.
Him,
and Jon
Snow, sometimes
. Her mother used to say she
could
be pretty if she would just wash and brush her hair and take more care with her
dress, the way her sister did. To her sister and sister’s friends and all the
rest, she had just been Arya Horseface. But they were all dead now, even Arya,
everyone but her half-brother, Jon. Some nights she heard talk of him, in the
taverns and brothels of the Ragman’s Harbor. The Black Bastard of the Wall, one
man had called him.
Even Jon would never know Blind Beth, I bet
.
That made her sad.
    The clothes she wore were rags, faded and fraying, but warm
clean rags for all that. Under them she hid three knives—one in a boot, one