Chapter 117 114

Elena Snow.

The Starks had no luck in the south. The old saying was proving truer by the day. Gods, why did fortune hate them so? They had only needed to reach King Stannis's patrol ships and that would have been it, home again. But no. Instead they had to stumble across the one ship in all the waters around King's Landing that carried the one person capable of recognizing them.

She had spent a long time preparing the escape, working through every possible way things could unfold. Everything had seemed under control, and then a stupid accident had broken her plan apart. Elena had understood from the beginning that the most realistic escape route was to reach the ships or vassals of King Stannis. Her father was his ally and had sworn him his oath.

Sleepless nights, theft carried out through rats and other animals, careful reconnaissance, and eventually they had money, a map of the hidden passages, and a boat. But Elena had known that if they tried to run on any ordinary day they would be caught, and they had only one chance. She certainly did. Bran and Sansa would not be harmed, they were too valuable as hostages, but she would be executed for the attempt. She was a bastard. No one would mourn her. All that remained was to wait for the right moment, and in time, it came.

The Arryn envoys were taking Princess Myrcella to the Vale, to her betrothed, Lord Axel Arryn. She had a generous window of time to arrange ideal conditions for the escape. She had stolen gold, watching dozens of smugglers through borrowed eyes until she found the most reliable among them. She had lifted some vial of poison from the maester's stores. And in the meantime, Bran had "twisted" his ankle at the training yard and Sansa had taken to bed with a "cold," and Elena, as her devoted handmaiden, had naturally remained at her side.

While the most important people in King's Landing were occupied seeing the princess off, they began their escape. It was here that she committed her first killing, drawing a blade across the throat of the Lannister servant left to watch them. Her hands were shaking, her breathing came in short gasps, she retched while pressing her palm over dying Anna's mouth, but she held, and the guards heard nothing. Sansa was in a state of shock and offered no resistance as they led her through the hidden passages. They collected Bran quickly from the armory, where he had been cleaning Ser Barristan's armor. Using her gift to its limits to steer clear of lion patrols, they made their way to the Mud Gate, where the smuggler was waiting.

With the capital under siege, people had been making heavy use of smugglers to get out of the city, so a request to move three passengers raised no eyebrows. Mick was the most straightforward of all the men she had observed, and for a modest fee he was to take them to Sweetport Sound, the seat of House Sunglass, vassals of Dragonstone.

Everything that followed felt like moving through fog. Not long before, she had helped Robb in the battle against Lord Tarly, pushing herself past her limits to control a vast number of animals at once, and the strain had not left her. They managed to reach the boat, though toward the end it was Sansa and Bran who were half-carrying her. Elena was ill, nauseated and sick from the overexertion, but the growing distance from that hated castle gave her enough strength for the one last thing she had prepared.

The day before the escape, she had managed to steal a lethal poison from the late Grand Maester Pycelle's cabinet. She had wanted to kill Joffrey, Cersei, Clegane, Payne, and a dozen others in the castle, but at the time she had strength enough for only a single possession, and so she had chosen to strike the Lannisters as hard as she possibly could. Lord Tywin Lannister was the most important figure in the lion's camp, and his death would plunge House Lannister into chaos without question.

She had watched the Old Lion often enough to know his habits. Before Small Council sessions, he always wet his throat with lemon water. Wringing the last of her strength out of herself and making certain the poison reached the right carafe, she lost consciousness for a time.

Elena came to senses from the panicked shaking of her siblings. Her head was screaming with pain and she was sick again, barely managing to hang her head over the side of the boat in time. It turned out that ten minutes ago the Arryn ships had passed them by, but had then, for some reason, come about and closed in. How? Why?

When she found Myrcella waving from the deck, she understood the situation at once. The realization made her want, pain be damned, to curse loud enough to be heard across the water. There was nowhere to run, no point in fighting, and she could only hope that King Stannis's fleet would intercept the Vale ships and deliver them home that way. It did not happen.

After they were brought on board, Mick the smuggler had only enough time to ask about his payment before two crossbow bolts found him. While Elena stood frozen, his body was already going over the rail into the sea. He had not been a young man. He had a wife and three children. During the siege, the middle child had died of sickness, and the youngest was gravely ill and needed costly medicine to survive, and now Mick was gone. There one moment, gone the next. Human lives are such fragile things.

They were given a shared cabin and treated accordingly. As soon as her health allowed, she sent word to her father. His reply was deeply felt: reproach for their recklessness alongside pride in the escape, relief at their safety alongside longing for them. He asked them not to do anything foolish and not to fear for their lives. Axel Arryn was his friend and would not let any harm come to them.

She did not share his confidence. She had spent a great deal of time watching Varys, and through him had learned a great deal about her father's old friend, very little of it reassuring. Could one truly trust a man who had already earned a reputation as a ruthless killer at fifteen and had only built upon it during his years in Essos? Only a meeting in person would tell.

They stared up in open wonder at one of the most impregnable and extraordinary castles in the world. Elena could not begin to imagine what it would take to build such a thing. Sansa, for her part, recounted in vivid detail the remarkable history of House Arryn and the Eyrie, which earned her the warm approval of the knights assigned to watch over them.

The personal meeting, when it came, was... ordinary. Since Elena was a bastard, from whom most highborn people averted their noses, Sansa had taken the leading role at the reception. The usual polite courtesies, nothing more. They were told plainly afterward that barring any unforeseen circumstances, they would remain here until the war's end. They had been given considerable freedom of movement, but that did not make it sit any better. Elena had the persistent feeling that she had simply traded one cage for a larger one.

Out of old habit, formed during her time in King's Landing, she began making the entire castle her own private territory, working through its creatures in search of anything interesting. She quickly pieced together a picture of what was happening in the Vale, but did not consider that information particularly significant. And then she learned something that could turn the world upside down.

The Vale had positioned itself as a neutral party, one that had no stake in the war in Westeros. Lord Arryn, having crushed the elder Baratheon's allies, had let Stannis go his own way. The Falcon's Eye had put down his internal opposition and for the past six months had made no further moves. Westeros assumed he would keep waiting until the very end. Westeros was wrong. Elena saw it with her own eyes: Lord Axel Arryn and Prince Oberyn Martell, together, drafting a treaty of alliance against the rest of Westeros.

If the Vale entered the war, it would have little difficulty crushing the exhausted Riverlands and could squeeze her father's forces and Stannis in a vice. That could not be allowed to happen.

She had to get word to her father. Now.

...

That same night, a small, unremarkable bird with pale eyes and a note tied to its leg took flight in the direction of the northern camp on the border between the Westerlands and the Riverlands. It did not get far. A great Eagle dropped from the sky and seized it in its talons, killing the little creature instantly. But contrary to all instinct, the eagl did not eat its prey. It carried it back to its master.

...

Long ago, Axel had used the magic of the Unseen to save himself from an assassin. It had preserved his life, but the price had been his left eye, which had become part of that Wraith world in return. Along with the obvious drawbacks, the disfigurement and the inability to see the world in vivid color, that eye possessed a quality nothing else could replicate. It saw magic.

His eyepatch lay on the table. For the first time since his arrival in Westeros, Axel raised the lid of his left eye and read the note.

He was deeply intrigued.