No One of Importance

Alden's days in the Tyrell camp settled into a sharper rhythm after that. Every morning, besides his own training, he added one more task to the list: teaching Glory how to obey.

The little shadowcat cub was clever. Too clever, sometimes. Alden would throw strips of meat into the open ground beyond the tents and make her retrieve them without swallowing them. The first few attempts ended exactly as expected. Glory pounced, bit down, and tried to gulp the meat before he could call her back.

So Alden repeated the lesson.

Again. And again.

By the time the sun had climbed above the camp, Glory had finally learned to carry the meat back in her jaws and drop it at his feet. She still stared at it like a starving bandit staring at an unguarded purse, but at least she waited for permission now.

Obedience, then, was improving. Wildness was another matter.

Whenever strangers came too close, the cub's fur rose and her pale eyes turned murderous. Alden had to keep a muzzle, chain, and carrying sack ready if he needed to take her near crowded places. Without them, there was no telling whose hand she might decide was an acceptable toy.

He was crouched in front of her, making her sit and wait for another strip of meat, when Raul hurried over from the direction of the tents.

"Captain," Raul said quietly, "the Braavosi is still inside."

Alden's hand paused over the meat.

Bovo had entered the tent at dawn, dressed once again as an ordinary Tyrell soldier. The young woman from outside the Lion Gate had been carried inside with him. Since then, not a single sound had come from within.

That silence bothered Alden more than shouting would have.

His hearing had grown far sharper than it should have been. In a quiet camp, he could pick out whispers through canvas. Yet from his own tent, nothing came. No breathing, no sobbing, no scrape of cloth.

It was as though the space inside had been folded away from the world.

That made him think again about Bovo's place among the servants of the Many-Faced God. The man did not feel like a mere killer with a collection of masks. If the Red Priests had Melisandre, then perhaps the House of Black and White had someone like Bovo: a knife hidden inside a prayer.

Alden fed Glory the meat and stood.

Before he could step toward the tent, the flap lifted.

Bovo emerged looking more tired than Alden had ever seen him, though the tiredness sat beneath a smile. The disguise of a Tyrell soldier was still on him, but for a heartbeat Alden could almost see the older, stranger thing beneath the face.

Glory saw him too.

The cub hissed and launched herself at Bovo's boot.

Bovo moved half a step, just enough to keep his ankle out of her teeth. He looked down with interest instead of irritation.

"She has grown," he said.

"She eats like she intends to grow into a horse," Alden said.

Bovo crouched, studying the shadowcat. Glory lowered herself and snarled, but she did not attack again while Alden's hand rested on her neck.

"Not only larger," Bovo murmured. "Fiercer. The markings are changing as well."

Alden followed his gaze. Black stripes had begun to show more clearly through Glory's dark fur, and the pattern on her brow now hinted at something like a pale, ghostly face.

"I noticed," Alden said. "I do not know why."

"Her wildness is stronger than before."

"That, I noticed even faster."

Bovo smiled faintly and rose. "A stretcher. Four men. Take her to the docks."

Alden's amusement thinned. "She agreed?"

"Ask her yourself."

He went inside.

The young woman lay on his bed, wrapped in clean blankets. Her face still had the gray emptiness of someone who had walked too close to death and had not yet decided whether to come back. But the dead look in her eyes had changed. Beneath it, buried deep, there was life now. Life, and hatred sharp enough to cut.

Alden stood beside the bed and kept his voice low.

"You truly want to go to Braavos?"

Her throat had been ruined too badly for easy speech. Even swallowing seemed to hurt. But she moved her head in the smallest possible nod.

"The road ahead will not be gentle," Alden said. "If you stay, I can shelter you. I can make sure no one in King's Landing touches you again."

Her eyes shifted to him. The answer did not change.

Another nod.

Alden held her gaze for a moment, then accepted it. He went to his chest, took out the dagger Garlan had given him after the cavalry patrol, and placed it beside her hand.

"Then take this," he said. "May the Seven watch over you, if they can find the kindness for it."

Her fingers closed slowly around the hilt.

Bovo watched from the far side of the tent without speaking.

The young woman's lips moved. For a moment, no sound came out. Then a hoarse, broken whisper scraped through her damaged throat.

"Thank... you."

Alden bowed his head once.

Four Tyrell soldiers carried her out on a stretcher and brought her down to the harbor. A merchant ship from the Free Cities waited there with its sails half-ready and its crew uneasy at the sudden departure order. Bovo did not explain. He simply paid, boarded with the stretcher, and instructed the captain to leave at once.

By the time King's Landing's stink faded behind them, the young woman had been settled in a narrow cabin.

Bovo sat across from her.

"A person who enters the House of Black and White must leave the old name behind," he said. "The old past as well. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"Then you will need a new name."

Her eyes did not waver.

"In Braavos," Bovo said softly, "a name can be a door. It can also be a grave. Let this one be both."

He folded his hands inside his sleeves.

"Jaqen H'ghar."

The young woman listened to the name as if weighing the death of herself.

Then, slowly, she nodded.

The next morning, Alden was dragged from sleep by Ser Vortimer Crane.

"Up," Vortimer said. "Lord Mace wants to see you."

Alden blinked at him from beneath the blanket. Glory, curled against his ribs, opened one eye and bared her teeth.

"Now?"

"Now."

That was how Alden found himself in the Tyrell command tent before he had even eaten. Lord Mace Tyrell sat at the center with a face like curdled cream. Around him stood Garlan, Vortimer, Maester Moras, several Tyrell knights, and more bannermen than Alden cared to count.

No one told him why he had been summoned.

They looked him over instead.

Like a horse before purchase.

Lord Mace frowned. "He is large enough."

"And quick," Vortimer said.

"You are certain?"

"With two swords, his strength is not far below mine."

Mace's eyes moved over Alden again. He seemed dissatisfied, but not enough to argue.

"Very well. He will do."

Then the lord turned to the next matter as if Alden had already been carried out with the empty cups.

Alden stood there a moment longer, jaw tight.

So that was all. No explanation. No request. No courtesy. Just inspection, purchase, dismissal.

Garlan noticed his expression and gave him an apologetic look, but he could not speak freely in front of his father.

Only after they left the tent did the explanation come.

"Some of our men are ill," Garlan said.

"Ill," Alden repeated.

Vortimer's expression was ugly. "Food poisoning. The men Lord Mace intended to enter in the group melee have spent the morning losing everything their bodies know how to lose."

"Convenient timing."

"Too convenient," Vortimer said. "But proof is another matter."

Garlan looked genuinely embarrassed. "We needed a replacement. I suggested you."

Alden looked from one to the other. "And Ser Vortimer?"

"Already entered in the joust," Vortimer said. "If I break something in the melee, I cannot ride. Lord Mace will not risk that."

"But he will risk me."

Garlan winced.

Vortimer gave Alden a dry look. "You wanted a path upward. Paths upward are usually paved by men who do not care whether you break your neck on them."

"Why must House Tyrell enter at all?" Alden asked. "If the men are sick, withdraw."

Garlan suddenly found something very interesting outside the tent and excused himself.

Alden watched him go.

Vortimer sighed. "Lord Mace heard that most of the great lords were not planning to send serious fighters. So he made a wager. A very large wager. If Tyrell withdraws now, or enters and is disgraced, half the camp will laugh him all the way back to Highgarden."

Alden closed his eyes for a breath.

An overfed lord. A foolish bet. A field of armed men.

Of course that was how opportunity arrived.

"When?" he asked.

"After the archery."

"Then I need armor, food, and time."

Vortimer nodded once. "You will have the first two. The third, none of us have."

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