A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

both.”
    He is trying to scare me away,
Arya thought,
the way he did with the worm.
“I don’t care about that.”
    â€œYou should. Stay, and the Many-Faced God will take your ears, your nose, your tongue. He will take your sad grey eyes that have seen so much. He will take your hands, your feet, your arms and legs, your private parts. He will take your hopes and dreams, your loves and hates. Those who enter His service must give up all that makes them who they are. Can you do that?” He cupped her chin and gazed deep into her eyes, so deep it made her shiver. “No,” he said, “I do not think you can.”
    Arya knocked his hand away. “I could if I
wanted
to.”
    â€œSo says Arya of House Stark, eater of grave worms.”
    â€œI can give up
anything
I want!”
    He gestured at her treasures. “Then start with these.”
    That night after supper, Arya went back to her cell and took off her robe and whispered her names, but sleep refused to take her. She tossed on her mattress stuffed with rags, gnawing on her lip. She could feel the hole inside her where her heart had been.
    In the black of night she rose again, donned the clothes she’d worn from Westeros, and buckled on her swordbelt. Needle hung from one hip, her dagger from the other. With her floppy hat on her head, her fingerless gloves tucked into her belt, and her silver fork in one hand, she went stealing up the steps.
There is no place here for Arya of House Stark,
she was thinking. Arya’s place was Winterfell, only Winterfell was gone.
When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.
She had no pack, though. They had killed her pack, Ser Ilyn and Ser Meryn and the queen, and when she tried to make a new one all of them ran off, Hot Pie and Gendry and Yoren and Lommy Greenhands, even Harwin, who had been her father’s man. She shoved through the doors, out into the night.
    It was the first time she had been outside since entering the temple. The sky was overcast, and fog covered the ground like a frayed grey blanket. Off to her right she heard paddling from the canal.
Braavos, the Secret City,
she thought. The name seemed very apt. She crept down the steep steps to the covered dock, the mists swirling round her feet. It was so foggy she could not see the water, but she heard it lapping softly at stone pilings. In the distance, a light glowed through the gloom: the nightfire at the temple of the red priests, she thought.
    At the water’s edge she stopped, the silver fork in hand. It was real silver, solid through and through.
It’s not my fork. It was Salty that he gave it to.
She tossed it underhand, heard the soft
plop
as it sank below the water.
    Her floppy hat went next, then the gloves. They were Salty’s too. She emptied her pouch into her palm; five silver stags, nine copper stars, some pennies and halfpennies and groats. She scattered them across the water. Next her boots. They made the loudest splashes. Her dagger followed, the one she’d gotten off the archer who had begged the Hound for mercy. Her swordbelt went into the canal. Her cloak, tunic, breeches, smallclothes, all of it. All but Needle.
    She stood on the end of the dock, pale and goosefleshed and shivering in the fog. In her hand, Needle seemed to whisper to her.
Stick them with the pointy end,
it said, and,
don’t tell Sansa!
Mikken’s mark was on the blade.
It’s just a sword.
If she needed a sword, there were a hundred under the temple. Needle was too small to be a
proper
sword, it was hardly more than a toy. She’d been a stupid little girl when Jon had it made for her. “It’s just a sword,” she said, aloud this time . . .
    . . . but it wasn’t.
    Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile.
He used to mess my hair and call me “little sister,”
she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.
    Polliver had stolen the sword from her when the Mountain’s men took her captive, but when she and the Hound walked into the inn at the crossroads, there it was.
The gods