A Feast for Dragons

him
want to scream. “My lady.” Theon could not bring himself to call her Arya and
dare not call her Jeyne. “No need to hide. These are friends.”
    The furs stirred. An eye peered out, shining with tears.
Dark,
too dark. A brown eye
. “Theon?”
    “Lady Arya.” Rowan moved closer. “You must come with us, and
quickly. We’ve come to take you to your brother.”
    “Brother?” The girl’s face emerged from underneath the
wolfskins. “I … I have no brothers.”
    She has forgotten who she is. She has forgotten her
name
. “That’s so,” said Theon, “but you had brothers once. Three of
them. Robb and Bran and Rickon.”
    “They’re dead. I have no brothers now.”
    “You have a half-brother,” Rowan said. “Lord Crow, he is.”
    “Jon Snow?”
    “We’ll take you to him, but you must come at once.”
    Jeyne pulled her wolfskins up to her chin. “No. This is some
trick. It’s him, it’s my … my lord, my sweet lord, he sent you, this
is just some test to make sure that I love him. I do, I do, I love him more
than anything.” A tear ran down her cheek. “Tell him, you tell him. I’ll do
what he wants … whatever he wants … with him
or … or with the dog or … please … he doesn’t
need to cut my feet off, I won’t try to run away, not ever, I’ll give him sons,
I swear it, I swear it …”
    Rowan whistled softly. “Gods curse the man.”
    “I’m a
good
girl,” Jeyne whimpered. “They
trained
me.”
    Willow scowled. “Someone stop her crying. That guard was
mute, not deaf. They’re going to hear.”
    “Get her
up
, turncloak.” Holly had her knife
in hand. “Get her up or I will.
We have to go
. Get the little
cunt up on her feet and shake some courage into her.”
    “And if she screams?” said Rowan.
    We are all dead
, Theon thought.
I
told them this was folly, but none of them would listen
. Abel had
doomed them. All singers were half-mad. In songs, the hero always saved the
maiden from the monster’s castle, but life was not a song, no more than Jeyne
was Arya Stark.
Her eyes are the wrong color. And there are no heroes
here, only whores
. Even so, he knelt beside her, pulled down the furs,
touched her cheek. “You know me. I’m Theon, you remember. I know you too. I
know your name.”
    “My name?” She shook her head. “My
name … it’s …”
    He put a finger to her lips. “We can talk about that later.
You need to be quiet now. Come with us. With me. We will take you away from
here. Away from him.”
    Her eyes widened. “Please,” she whispered. “Oh, please.”
    Theon slipped his hand through hers. The stumps of his lost
fingers tingled as he drew the girl to her feet. The wolfskins fell away from her.
Underneath them she was naked, her small pale breasts covered with teeth marks.
He heard one of the women suck in her breath. Rowan thrust a bundle of clothes
into his hands. “Get her dressed. It’s cold outside.” Squirrel had stripped
down to her smallclothes, and was rooting through a carved cedar chest in
search of something warmer. In the end she settled for one of Lord Ramsay’s
quilted doublets and a well-worn pair of breeches that flapped about her legs
like a ship’s sails in a storm.
    With Rowan’s help, Theon got Jeyne Poole into Squirrel’s
clothes.
If the gods are good and the guards are blind, she may pass
.
“Now we are going out and down the steps,” Theon told the girl. “Keep your head
down and your hood up. Follow Holly. Don’t run, don’t cry, don’t speak, don’t
look anyone in the eye.”
    “Stay close to me,” Jeyne said. “Don’t leave me.”
    “I will be right beside you,” Theon promised as Squirrel
slipped into Lady Arya’s bed and pulled the blanket up.
    Frenya opened the bedchamber door.
    “You give her a good wash, Reek?” asked Sour Alyn as they
emerged. Grunt gave Willow’s breast a squeeze as she went by. They were
fortunate in his choice. If the man had touched Jeyne, she might have screamed.
Then Holly would have opened his throat for him with the knife hidden up her
sleeve. Willow simply twisted away and past him.
    For a moment Theon felt almost giddy.
They never
looked. They never saw. We walked the girl right by them!
    But on the steps the fear returned. What if they met Skinner
or Damon Dance-for-Me or Steelshanks Walton? Or Ramsay himself?
Gods
save me, not Ramsay, anyone but him
. What use was it to smuggle the
girl out of her bedchamber? They were still inside the