Arianne?

  The waters of the Greenblood lapped at her belly, cool and dark against the heat of her skin. Upon its surface she spied a fat moon and a bleeding star, their reflections distorted slightly by the slow ripple of the current.

  Sarella stood beside her, as still as a statue carved from shadow. The moonlight caught on the rich teak of her skin, and her cloak of sunset feathers dipped into the waters behind her like the tail of a drowned bird.

  This was where Garin had said all the tiny streams of the river met, a place sacred to the orphans. He sat upon the riverbank with Tyene, their pole boat tied around a stone thick with moss. Daemon was there also, his white cloak making him seem a ghost.

  "The moon will not be higher in the sky than now," Sarella whispered.

  Arianne drew in a deeper breath as she looked upon the Greenblood again. She was a daughter of Nymeria of Ny Sar. She had even spoken to her… or a shade of her. It was her blood that had stewarded the river for a thousand years, her blood that was sovereign over it.

  That truth she held close to her heart as they whispered to the river in the tongue of the Rhoynar, the way the princes and princesses once commanded the Rhoyne. And though the waters remained still as winter, neither she nor Sarella would relent.

  Hear me, she pleaded as her whispers continued.

  Her heart would soon quicken when the waters shivered in a way no wind could stir. And for a breath she could have swore she saw something grey beneath the surface.

  She peeked at her cousin. If she had seen it also, she was not like to say.

  Yet something remained. She felt it on the tip of her tongue and the tips of her fingers, a wetness clinging to her.

  "Do you feel it also?" she asked.

  "Like silks after a rain," Sarella lowly returned.

  When their hands moved, the waters swayed with them in some small way. It was enough for a smile to take her, and it encouraged them to more than whisper.

  Their voices carried across the river as they raised their hands toward the moon above. The waters obeyed, reaching for the night sky in a great, shimmering swell. It was a sight the world had not seen in a thousand years…

  The spell over the Greenblood had broken the moment her thoughts strayed. The waters that had risen so high returned to the river, leaving a faint mist that smelt of mud and fish.

  Her belly fluttered like a butterfly's wings, leaving her with a sudden craving for a late supper. Garin obliged her when they returned from the river, some awe in his dark eyes that she much liked.

  Though they would stay for another night more, they could hardly stir the river an inch once the moon had turned.

  Her father had called on her as soon as they returned to Sunspear. He stood on his own strength for the first time in years, though that did not help the soft frown she spied.

  "Troubles?" She cradled the swell of her belly. She already knew it was a daughter for a sorcerer's whispers in her ear, a daughter with her own hair and her father's eyes.

  "The Kingslayer sails to Dorne."

  A snort escaped her. "Surely he does not intend to wed me still."

  "His dwarf brother, the new Hand, has only said he sends to Dorne with a gift."

  Her hand reaching for a lemon cake paused. "New Hand?"

  "Tywin left Deep Den and has not been seen since." Her father moved to stare from his solar's window, the sun catching on the white and grey of his hair. "I can scarcely see what the board will show tomorrow, let alone a moon from now."

  She took a bite of the cake. Her father's humors had only worsened after they witnessed three dragons come into the world.

  She wondered if he wouldn't have preferred that it was all mummery.

  "This chaos in King's Landing, and Oldtown also…"

  "Is it not to our benefit? As things stand, most the kingdoms stand behind Renly."

  His eyes touched hers before falling to her belly. "Will my grandchildren rule a realm at war with itself?" He turned his eyes back upon the shadow city. "Our lords ask questions also. They wonder if Princess Daenerys should not wed another." Not in the ears of her betrothed. "And the Faith…"

  "The Faith has never held as much sway in Dorne or the north," she argued.

  If her father listened to them now, how long would it be until they complained of her also? The Faith had ever painted with a large brush.

  "Here in the east. In the west…" His eyes turned to the sky, where the smear of red was easy to see even at high noon now. "Sarella says he spends most his days watching the sky."

  She pulled on a lock of her hair. Perhaps she might ask him herself.

  "I can only hope a royal wedding will serve enough distraction," he continued. "I will bid Tyene travel to Oldtown as well, to put her ear to the heart of the Faith."

  "With three dragons," she began after a hum, "it is certain to be a spectacle."

  She touched a hand to his arm before leaving for the shadow city and the tower that towered higher every moon. Its high doors were carved into the face of a sphinx, her eyes gemstones.

  As she walked its halls, she spied alchemists, woods witches, maesters, even a warlock with skin and lips the color of a bruise. Quentyn and her uncle played a game of cyvasse on the second level, and on the fifth she would find Viserys and an archmaester.

  Balerion balanced precariously upon his slender shoulder, near the size of a Dornish vulture now. His scales were black as dragonglass with streaks of vivid scarlet red, the same as his eyes and horns. He made a sound between a croon and a rumble when she tickled him beneath his maw.

  A sight that once would have seemed a fever dream was now a fixture of her days. And one day her daughter would have a dragon also.

  Arianne ascended higher still, to the seventh of the thirteen there would be when it was complete.

  The first she saw was Solomon's dragon curled around a half-finished pillar reaching for a roof that wasn't there. His scales were jadestone and polished bronze, and where his brothers rivaled vultures, he rivaled men, his form slender as a serpent's. A yellow eye opened at her entrance, and soon he unfurled, taking to the skies.

  A Targaryen princess met her with a smile, her own Rhaellion resting in her lap as her fingers trailed wings the color of cream and honey.

  A sigh touched her lips when she saw the sorcerer she was here to see. Though he was there in the flesh, the rest of him was elsewhere, all three of his eyes fixed upon the sphere of dragonglass in his hand that drank the noonday sun.

  "He said you would soon be here," the princess whispered. "He left a gift for you to find. Water from the heart of the Rhoyne."

  Arianne followed her violet eyes to a bowl thick with water the color of stone and silt. "A fine gift. Did he mention what I was to do with it?"

  Some red touched her pale cheeks. "No…"

  "Surely not." She picked up her bowl of muddy water. "If you would excuse me, princess. I must consult with it."

  The rooms a step below were largely unfurnished, but she found a seat and a stand in one of them. There she stared at her bowl of muddy water. She must have looked a fool whispering to it, and it didn't help any. Until a thought struck her.

  Plucking a pin from her silks, she pricked her finger. Her heart fluttered as much as her belly when she saw the water turn more grey with every drop of blood. She would whisper to it again, and as soon as she spoke a name that once touched the lips of every soul along the Rhoyne, she saw ruins. The remnants of a city that stretched the length of a river whose grandeur made the Greenblood seem a muddy trickle.

  It was a city she knew, having seen it when it wasn't a ruin. Chroyane.

  A palace stood at its heart that had been a wonder of the world once. The Rhoynar named it the Palace of Love. Now men only knew it as the Palace of Sorrow.

  Arianne was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

  It was grey within and grey without, paint flaking off its walls as she traversed stones she could hardly see for the thick fog that choked the air. And at its heart, the heart of hearts, a man in grey played court.

  Every part of him was grey, from his hair that touched the same stones to his skin and his eyes. Even his finery had turned grey. His subjects were more stone than men.

  The man's eyes were so sad that the sight of them plucked at her heartstrings. He held out his hand, his brows thick with regret. "Nymeria…"

  For a heartbeat she thought to take it. But she was not Nymeria.

  "You were right…"

  His words were wet and dry. They touched her ears and skin, sinking deeper and deeper until she could bear it no more.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The flutter of her heart mimicked a hummingbird's wings as she found herself back in Sunspear. Her bowl of muddy water stared back at her as if she only imagined it.

  But the sun was high, and she was shivering…

  Brienne?

  The rush of the river drowned out the crackle of the fire, a trio of yellow-bellied trout suspended over it. The sweet smell finally woke her charge from his slumber.

  "I had another dream," he chirped happily. "I saw a star fall and break the world apart."

  Beienne swallowed a sigh. It seemed all Bran Stark dreamed of were horrors to turn her stomach, and yet his humors only improved the farther they traveled from the weirwood where a mountain's heart would be.

  They had left the Mountains of the Moon behind a sennight ago, and passed Sweetwillow in the riverlands three nights back. Soon they would reach the Neck, and the north beyond it.

  Where she would go after she returned her charge to Winterfell was less certain…

  The trout warmed her belly, and his also. It was enough that he was already eager to begin their lessons.

  "Cut with your shoulder, not your arm…"

  "Only move as much as you need to, and no more…"

  "Don't stare at your sword any more than you would stare at your hand…"

  "Let your eyes only tell lies…"

  They were all words her father's knights had spoken to her when she was a stubborn girl still fighting pimples. The wolf had returned from his hunt in the meantime, his golden eyes watching them patiently.

  He only padded over after her charge had stuck his training sword in the ground. "I wish I were older," he huffed, puffing and pouting.

  "You're a moon older than when I met you," she reminded.

  He turned his pout on her. "That's not what I meant."

  "You're also older than when you asked."

  "I mean much older! As tall as Uncle Benjen!"

  Brienne could not say she had wished the same, having only grown more mannish with the years. At three-and-ten she already towered over her own lord father.

  They had put out the fire when the wolf rumbled low in his throat, his eyes fixed north and his ears perked. Soon she heard the thunder of hooves and sighted banners, her eyes narrowing. House Frey…

  The witch's words tickled her ears again. Beware the towers.

  "Hide in the rushes," she urged her charge. He stirred to stubbornness instead. "Think of your mother who waits for you."

  He scowled but nodded his head jerkily, making for the trailing rushes along the riverbank with his wolf, rushes high enough in some places to hide a palfrey. Her eyes turned back upon the riders. Some twenty… thirty of them, the way the sun caught the steel making for a harder count.

  The steel, the numbers, the sight of coursers, it all painted an unpleasant picture. They were prepared for a pursuit.

  The sight of twenty clansmen had left her faint, and that with less armor than most men-at-arms. Thirty knights…

  Time. That she could provide. If her charge could find his way back downriver to Sweetwillow, he would be safe. Naught else she put to thought.

  Her dapple grey palfrey gave a snort of protest at her urgency. Soon the thunder quieted.

  "Well met, my lady," one of them spoke, soft as silk, the only one not armed and armored in steel. A dark, pointed beard and hair just as dark framed a cravenly mien. "We thought we might escort you north. There have been cutthroats afoot of late, deserters who had no stomach for a war in the Vale."

  "And your name, ser?" she asked.

  "No knight, my lady. Not for this twisted leg of mine. I am only Lothar, or Lame Lothar if you would."

  The man next to him was fleshy, his weasel's features marked with signs of age and red in the way drunkards often were. "Ser Ryman Frey," he proudly brayed after he noticed her eyes. "Now call the boy and let us be on!"

  A flicker of something like annoyance passed over Lothar's eyes.

  "There are other travelers that you would serve more," she suggested. Every word spoken was a second more bought. "I am no helpless maid."

  "We know of your travails and the oath you swore," Lothar Frey spoke again. "My father would see that neither cutthroat nor bog devil stays Brandon Stark from a safe return to Winterfell."

  Her eyes raked across the rest of the knights gathered, silent behind their shadowed helms. Some of their number bore the twin towers of Frey, where others bore the arms of those houses sworn to the Twins. The heron gold of Erenford, the pitchfork black of Haigh, and the green and red mistletoe of Charlton, river kings in their own right once.

  Twenty-seven. She had no chance against twenty-seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice.

  "Are you hard of hearing, woman?" Ser Ryman whined at her.

  "As you insist," she whispered. She would only have surprise for a breath.

  Her eyes found the knight she thought most a danger, and she stirred her palfrey with a sudden movement. He raised his sword, but her yellow was already past his guard. His gorget did not stop it from giving his neck a shear.

  Brienne left him to choke on his blood as her momentum took her past the throng of knights north. She heard Ser Ryman's shouts as they gave chase.

  Though she could not outspeed their coursers, she would not make their approach easy. The sword in her hand drank in the sun as a knight approached on either side of her.

  Dishonorable though it was, she sheared the neck of one's horse. She met the morningstar of the other, cleaving through it. She spied his surprise as she drove it through his heart, his armor no guard against sorcery.

  They were more wary to approach after. A frown set on her lips as they surrounded her.

  When they came this time, she slew two, maimed another, and threw herself at a fourth, bringing them both to the soft mud. His pale eyes were wide with fright as she pricked his heart.

  Her lungs burned from the strain of it all, her ribs bruised. They circled her, some eleven knights. The rest fended off the direwolf that had laid a horse low. She could hear the wet screams of its rider as his throat was torn out.

  "Crossbows! Kill the beast! Kill it!" she heard Ser Ryman shriek, red-faced and shining with sweat.

  Her sword of sorcery struck out against both beast and man as they crowded her, each wild cut or slash more desperate than the last. Her arms turned leaden, her breath short. One blow broke her left arm. Another her finger. She did not even see the…

  CLANG

  The ground met her, grass tickling her cheek. The blow and the fall had sent her helm spinning away, her head ringing as if a horse had kicked it. Her vision blurred together. Her tongue tasted iron.

  Though the sword remained in her hand, the yellow blade slick with her blood and theirs, she could not stir herself to stand. Her body felt not her own.

  One of their number kicked it away from her.

  "Ugly bitch," another scorned.

  "The Maid of Tarth," a third mocked. "Small wonder she's not had a man between her legs."

  "Soon she'll have a dozen."

  Brienne fought as any woman would, breaking one would-be raper's nose and another's hand. Then, suddenly, they stopped.

  "Freys…"

  The sword had gone from the grass. Instead she found it in the hands of a horror in yellow. It spoke with a voice she knew, dulcet tones smearing the world the same yellow.

  "You've met the Maiden and the Warrior." Its three eyes met hers almost softly, then turned again. "Now meet the Stranger."

  She took advantage of the madness that followed the words to retrieve her sword—steel, not sorcery—thrusting it into the visor of the man atop her. She pushed the false knight's corpse off of her, her eyes on the slaughter.

  There was no knightly artistry to it. It was the Stranger's own scythe, reaping one man's life after another, and all their steel paid no more use than their pleas.

  At the end, Lothar Frey knelt before the horror, having fallen from a spooked horse. The yellow touched his throat. "M-Mother grant me mercy."

  His head tumbled from his shoulders. She agreed it was the only mercy he was owed.

  It was an eerie quiet that settled on the world after, the only sound the wind. The three eyes met hers again. "My lady."

  As soon as she dared blink, the sight was gone, the sword planted into the soft riverlands dirt. The slaughterhouse remained… but not a drop of blood was left to stain the grass, the corpses all pale and pallor.

  She searched her heart and only found uncertainty. She stirred to her duty instead.

  The sword did not feel wrong in her hand, and returned to its sheath without complaint. They would needs reach the Neck before the news found the other hundred Freys.