A Feast for Dragons

sweetness in
this house. We are not warriors, nor soldiers, nor swaggering bravos puffed up
with pride. We do not kill to serve some lord, to fatten our purses, to stroke
our vanity. We never give the gift to please ourselves. Nor do we choose the
ones we kill. We are but servants of the God of Many Faces.”
    “Valar dohaeris.” All men must serve
.
    “You know the words, but you are too proud to serve. A
servant must be humble and obedient.”
    “I obey. I can be humbler than anyone.”
    That made him chuckle. “You will be the very goddess of
humility, I am sure. But can you pay the price?”
    “What price?”
    “The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever
hope to have. We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your
ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl. You
will be no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s mother. Your name will be a
lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.”
    She almost bit her lip again, but this time she caught
herself and stopped.
My face is a dark pool, hiding everything, showing
nothing
. She thought of all the names that she had worn: Arry, Weasel,
Squab, Cat of the Canals. She thought of that stupid girl from Winterfell
called Arya Horseface. Names did not matter. “I can pay the price. Give me a
face.”
    “Faces must be earned.”
    “Tell me how.”
    “Give a certain man a certain gift. Can you do that?”
    “What man?”
    “No one that you know.”
    “I don’t know a lot of people.”
    “He is one of them. A stranger. No one you love, no one you
hate, no one you have ever known. Will you kill him?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then on the morrow, you shall be Cat of the Canals again.
Wear that face, watch, obey. And we will see if you are truly worthy to serve
Him of Many Faces.”
    So the next day she returned to Brusco and his daughters in
the house on the canal. Brusco’s eyes widened when he saw her, and Brea gave a
little gasp.
“Valar morghulis,”
Cat said, by way of greeting.
“Valar
dohaeris,”
Brusco replied.
    After that it was as if she had never been away.
    She got her first look at the man she must kill later that
morning as she wheeled her barrow through the cobbled streets that fronted on
the Purple Harbor. He was an old man, well past fifty.
He has lived too
long
, she tried to tell herself.
Why should he have so many
years when my father had so few?
But Cat of the Canals had no father,
so she kept that thought to herself.
    “Cockles and mussels and clams,”
Cat cried
as he went past,
“oysters and prawns and fat green mussels.”
She even smiled at him. Sometimes a smile was all you needed to make them stop
and buy. The old man did not smile back. He scowled at her and went on past,
sloshing through a puddle. The splash wet her feet.
    He has no courtesy
, she thought, watching
him go.
His face is hard and mean
. The old man’s nose was
pinched and sharp, his lips thin, his eyes small and close-set. His hair had
gone to grey, but the little pointed beard at the end of his chin was still
black. Cat thought it must be dyed and wondered why he had not dyed his hair as
well. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, giving him a crooked
cast.
    “He is an evil man,” she announced that evening when she
returned to the House of Black and White. “His lips are cruel, his eyes are
mean, and he has a villain’s beard.”
    The kindly man chuckled. “He is a man like any other, with
light in him and darkness. It is not for you to judge him.”
    That gave her pause. “Have the gods judged him?”
    “Some gods, mayhaps. What are gods for if not to sit in
judgment over men? The Many-Faced God does not weigh men’s souls, however. He
gives his gift to the best of men as he gives it to the worst. Elsewise the
good would live forever.”
    The old man’s hands were the worst thing about him, Cat
decided the next day, as she watched him from behind her barrow. His fingers
were long and bony, always moving, scratching at his beard, tugging at an ear,
drumming on a table, twitching, twitching, twitching.
He has hands like
two white spiders
. The more she watched his hands, the more she came
to hate them.
    “He moves his hands too much,” she told them at the temple.
“He must be full of fear. The gift will bring him peace.”
    “The gift brings all men peace.”
    “When I kill him he will look in my eyes and thank me.”
    “If he does, you will have failed. It would be