A Feast for Dragons

recognition, but Casso
barked and clapped his flippers.
He knows me
, the girl thought,
or else he smells the fish
. She hurried on her way.
    By the time she reached the Purple Harbor, the old man was
ensconced inside the soup shop at his usual table, counting a purse of coins as
he haggled with a ship’s captain. The tall thin guard was hovering over him.
The short thick one was seated near the door, where he would have a good view
of anyone who entered. That made no matter. She did not intend to enter.
Instead she perched atop a wooden piling twenty yards away as the blustery wind
tugged at her cloak with ghostly fingers.
    Even on a cold grey day like this, the harbor was a busy
place. She saw sailors on the prowl for whores, and whores on the prowl for
sailors. A pair of bravos passed in rumpled finery, leaning on each other as
they staggered drunkenly past the docks, their blades rattling at their sides.
A red priest swept past, his scarlet and crimson robes snapping in the wind.
    It was almost noon before she saw the man she wanted, a
prosperous shipowner she had seen doing business with the old man three times
before. Big and bald and burly, he wore a heavy cloak of plush brown velvet
trimmed with fur and a brown leather belt ornamented with silver moons and
stars. Some mishap had left one leg stiff. He walked slowly, leaning on a cane.
    He would do as well as any and better than most, the ugly
girl decided. She hopped off the piling and fell in after him. A dozen strides
put her right behind him, her finger knife poised. His purse was on his right
side, at his belt, but his cloak was in her way. Her blade flashed out, smooth
and quick, one deep slash through the velvet and he never felt a thing. Red
Roggo would have smiled to see it. She slipped her hand through the gap, slit
the purse open with the finger knife, filled her fist with gold …
    The big man turned. “What—”
    The movement tangled her arm in the folds of his cloak as
she was pulling out her hand. Coins rained around their feet.
“Thief!”
The big man raised his stick to strike at her. She kicked his bad leg out from
under him, danced away, and bolted as he fell, darting past a mother with a
child. More coins fell from between her fingers to bounce along the ground.
Shouts of
“thief, thief
” rang out behind her. A potbellied
innkeep passing by made a clumsy grab for her arm, but she spun around him, flashed
past a laughing whore, raced headlong for the nearest alley.
    Cat of the Canals had known these alleys, and the ugly girl
remembered. She darted left, vaulted a low wall, leapt across a small canal,
and slipped through an unlocked door into some dusty storeroom. All sounds of
pursuit had faded by then, but it was best to be sure. She hunkered down behind
some crates and waited, arms wrapped around her knees. She waited for the best
part of an hour, then decided it was safe to go, climbed straight up the side
of the building, and made her way across the rooftops almost as far as the
Canal of Heroes. By now the shipowner would have gathered up coins and cane and
limped on to the soup shop. He might be drinking a bowl of hot broth and
complaining to the old man about the ugly girl who had tried to rob his purse.
    The kindly man was waiting for her at the House of Black and
White, seated on the edge of the temple pool. The ugly girl sat next to him and
put a coin on the lip of the pool between them. It was gold, with a dragon on
one face and a king on the other.
    “The golden dragon of Westeros,” said the kindly man. “And
how did you come by this? We are no thieves.”
    “It wasn’t stealing. I took one of his, but I left him one
of ours.”
    The kindly man understood. “And with that coin and the
others in his purse, he paid a certain man. Soon after that man’s heart gave
out. Is that the way of it? Very sad.” The priest picked up the coin and tossed
it into the pool. “You have much and more to learn, but it may be you are not
hopeless.”
    That night they gave her back the face of Arya Stark.
    They brought a robe for her as well, the soft thick robe of
an acolyte, black upon one side and white upon the other. “Wear this when you
are here,” the priest said, “but know that you shall have little need of it for
the present. On the morrow you will go to Izembaro to begin your first
apprenticeship. Take what clothes you will from the vaults below. The city
watch is looking for a certain ugly girl, known to frequent the