Chapter II: The Bastard Daughter of Valyria
Alayne stared up, gaping. She’d known about the Titan of Braavos. She’d known it was big, but she hadn’t known just how big it was. It towered over the gap between the two rocky islands that shielded the lagoon beyond. The ships weaving through the fog at his feet looked like little toy boats, like the ones her brothers used to play with in the pond in the godswood. She couldn’t even see the tip of the sword; it disappeared into the low hanging clouds. Slowly, the wind carried the Titan’s Shoe closer to her home port. In the bad weather, Alayne had yet to catch a glimpse of the city they called the bastard daughter of Valyria.
“We’ll dock soon,” Captain Teryn told her. He stood with her near the prow of his ship. In the past few days, he had been kind to her, but also curious as to what led to a well-educated young girl being captured by slavers. At times, Alayne thought she saw a little suspicion in his gaze.
She simply nodded. Her future seemed so unsure to her. What would happen to her once she stepped onto dry land once more? She didn’t even speak the bastardized version of Valyrian they spoke in Braavos, and she had no coin to her name.
“There’s always work,” the captain told her, “for those who want it. Provided they’re not too proud to take it.”
He was fishing for something again. This wasn’t the first time they had tried to discuss her future, and always he managed to hint at what he presumed to know about Alayne Stone without outright saying it. Alayne had been careful not to drop the smallest hint of knowledge around him. The last thing she wanted was to be ransomed back to the Lannisters, whose reputation for paying their debts with their fabled riches was surely known in a city of commerce such as this.
“It is not my pride that worries me,” Alayne explained. “I have never worked before and have no skills but those my father saw fit to teach me. I don’t know how to wash or cook and I never learned any trade.”
“If it comes to the worst, any pretty face can sell flowers or fruit in the markets,” he told her with a smirk. “But don’t think about what you cannot do, think about what you can do. I can’t put an ox before a plow anymore than I can count coppers for the Iron Bank, but I can sail a ship better than most, and so that is what I do.”
Slowly the shadow of the Titan fell over them. Distantly, Alayne could see the burning eyes, the murder holes, and the bronze fingers that grabbed the bluff to its left. A deafening roar emanated from the statue quite suddenly, and Alayne flinched. The captain beside her laughed and she could hear the other sailors chuckle as well when her ears stopped ringing.
“They’re only warning the Arsenal of our approach,” Narquo Teryan explained. “Only those that mean harm to Braavos need to worry if they hear the Titan’s Roar.”
Alayne peered ahead cautiously, hoping that they wouldn’t be mistaken for enemies. The Braavosi seemed unconcerned, and no further warnings rang out over the water as they entered the lagoon.
“My father had me educated with the hope of finding me a good match,” Alayne said after a while, continuing the previous conversation. “I know my letters, can do my sums and I can sing a little. But apart from that, the septa spent most of her time instructing me in the Faith. Oh, and embroidery.”
“Embroidery?” the captain asked. His grasp of the Common Tongue was very good, but sometimes, she or the others found a word that tripped him up. Usually he just grinned and reminded them that he had learned it to deal with greedy Westerosi merchants, not to make conversation.
“Sewing pictures onto cloth,” Alayne explained. “Although I can sew other things as well. It’s a common pastime for noble ladies to embroider their husbands’ and children’s clothes and banners and even cushions.”
The captain shook his head and mumbled something that sounded almost like “Westerosi”. Alayne assumed it was the Braavosi word. “If that is so, you can come with me when we dock. My neighbor is a seamstress who employs a number of girls in her shop.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Alayne nodded. It was better than being left on her own. She just hoped the captain was as honorable as he had seemed at first. You could never know for certain, though. She had learned that the hard way.
It didn’t take long for them to pass the bastion that the captain called the Arsenal. Then, the Titan’s Shoe pulled into one of the city’s ports. They weren’t to leave the ship yet, the Westerosi and Lorathi were cautioned by one of the crew. In fact, nobody left it. Instead, a man dressed in deep burgundy velvet with an ermine trim came aboard and talked with the captain, After a few words, the two went below deck, talking.
“A customs official,” Tom said, translating the first mate’s explanation for their benefit. “They’ll talk about the pirates’ loot and their ship and the like, some Braavosi custom. And they’ll want to know what Captain Teryan has on board so they can tax his master accordingly.”
There were quite a few ships docked in what she was told was called Chequy Port. Some had people busy on deck, while others lay in their distant berths like old men in their sickbeds.
“Those are the quarantined ones—captured or requisitioned ships and those that might carry plague,” Tom explained when he noticed her looking. Then he pointed to the guards that patrolled the quays, making sure nobody sneaked onto or off the ships.
They had to wait for hours while the port authority inspected the ship’s cargo. Alayne was starting to worry a bit, but the Titan’s Shoe’s crew seemed only bored. Finally, the man in the expensive doublet came back onto the deck, shook hands with the Captain and left the ship. Suddenly, the sailors sprang into action. Soon the sails were unfurled and the ship slowly left Chequy Port behind, passing the quays and houses and countless little boats as it made towards the Purple Harbor.
The fog had mostly lifted by then, so Alayne finally got a good first look at the city she would call home for the foreseeable future. The first thing that stood out to her was that Braavos seemed to be a city of stone. Where even King’s Landing had wooden shacks and dirty lanes, all of Braavos was either stone or water, a warren of lanes and canals that wound through towering, narrow houses that seemed to grow out of the sea.
The Purple Harbor was a lively place with sailors and merchants unloading the cogs that docked in this port, while men haggled and girls with wheelbarrows and baskets attempted to sell their wares. Everyone was chattering loudly or calling out to someone. There were spices being loaded into barges and bolts of colorful fabric being moved. It was so busy, for a moment Alayne didn’t know where to go or look as she stepped off the plank, dressed in one of the three modest gowns that were her only possessions. The other two she carried in a bag.
“Alayne!” someone called, and when Alayne turned she saw that it was Marwin. “Have you decided what to do?” he asked when he reached her. He was always so worried about her, it made Alayne simultaneously happy and uncomfortable. She missed her father.
“Captain Teryan has offered to introduce me to his neighbor, a seamstress. She might hire me, he says.”
Marwin frowned. “I’ll come along,” he told her. “Better safe than sorry. The captain seems a decent man, but you never know.”
Alayne nodded, and together they waited until the captain finished talking to a man who sat in a booth by the quayside. Then they followed the captain into the labyrinth of narrow alleyways, small bridges and murky canals. Everywhere were people, Alayne thought, so many of them, as she silently followed the two men. They talked about ships, and about the possibility of Marwin joining the captain’s next voyage. King’s Landing must have been just as densely packed with people, but Alayne had seen little of the city, and even less of the common folk who lived there. Children now ran past her skirts in a game of tag, while in front of her, a man was weaving his way through the throngs of people with a giant instrument that was almost as wide as the entire street above his head.
The captain’s home looked much like the other houses. He motioned for them to go inside, and for a moment, Alayne’s heart beat faster with fear, before she reminded herself that Marwin was there as well. She stepped inside and was promptly led out the back into a tiny courtyard that was paved with the same gray stones as the rest of the city. One side was open to a canal. There was a small midden with flies swarming around it, and a wooden tub stood beside one of the doors that led to this place. Above their heads, the sky was blocked by clotheslines heavy with dresses and smallclothes and the odd doublets with sliced sleeves that many Braavosi men seemed to wear.
The captain knocked on the door opposite his own and, after a moment, a young girl with mousy brown hair in two buns opened the door. She vanished inside again after a few words, and finally a matronly woman with furrowed brows appeared in her place. Even Alayne could tell that her gruff words towards the captain were not a greeting, but Narquo Teryan just smiled and started with his explanation, gesturing at Alayne in between sentences.
Finally, the woman turned to her and looked her over, from top to bottom, as Alayne returned her scrutiny. She was overweight bordering on fat, and her dark hair was graying. Her dress was well-made and of a shade between dark red and brown, with a white trim.
After a moment, she said something. “Mistress Sarnel asks if you can really sew,” Captain Teryan translated.
Alayne shrugged. “A little,” she said.
“And you can—what was the word again?”
“Embroider?”
The captain nodded.
“Yes.”
Mistress Sarnel sighed deeply and then stepped aside, motioning for Alayne to come inside. She was a little unsure, though.
“Mistress Sarnel wants you to show her what you can do,” the captain told her. Then the seamstress said something else. “And she has a girl working for her that speaks your language,” Narquo Teryan translated. “Do not worry, you will be fine.”
With a goodbye to the two men, she did as she was bid. Mistress Sarnel closed the door behind them and Alayne once again felt alone. She should be used to it by now, she thought, but somehow she wasn’t. She still felt it sting.
With some gestures, her new mistress told Alayne to sit down on a chair in a room where a couple of other girls were already working on various gowns or parts thereof in different states of completion. Then she was handed an embroidery hoop and a basket with a selection of thread and a piece of cloth.
“Sera!” the mistress called, and one of the girls walked over to sit down beside her after a short exchange of words. She was willowy and maybe Robb’s age.
“You are from Westeros?” she asked in the common tongue without any trace of an accent. That surprised Alayne a little and distracted her from thinking about what to stitch.
“Yes.”
“I’m Sera, one of Mistress Sarnel’s apprentices. My father is a ship’s captain, like Captain Teryan. He met my mother in Gulltown, when they were young, of course, and then they moved back here. My mother works as a servant for the Antaryons, so as soon as I was old enough, I was introduced to Mistress Sarnel, and well, here I am,” the girl explained, and Alayne wondered if she always talked this much to people she had just met.
“I’m Alayne,” she replied. “Alayne Stone.”
The fabric was a pale green that reminded Alayne of Margaery, and so she picked up some golden-yellow thread and another thread one or two shades darker. She took a needle and began working on a rose. She had embroidered enough of those over the years, and they were a safe subject unlikely to give away any political leanings. Everybody liked roses.
“That’s a bastard’s name, isn’t it?” Sera asked, and when Alayne nodded she continued. “So was your father a lord? Is that why you were abducted by pirates?”
Alayne sighed wearily as she began with the first stitches of the center. She hadn’t embroidered in quite a while, but it came back to her as soon as she started.
“That’s not quite it,” she explained. “My father was a lord, a minor one from the Fingers, and the pirates seized our ship as we were on our way back there. They didn’t care one whit that he was a lord, because they threw him into the sea anyway.” But not before cutting his throat. The memories of Petyr’s wide eyes and all the blood still stole into her dreams. But Sera didn’t need to know that.
“Oh,” Sera said, and put down her own work for a moment. She was working on a skirt of blue samite, working glassy pearls onto the cloth in a pattern Alayne couldn’t make out. “I’m so sorry. Maybe that’s why the mistress was so ready to take you in. She lost her husband to pirates as well.”
Alayne chanced a glance at the woman, who was showing the young girl that had opened the door how to properly sew a seam. She was surprisingly gentle, considering the first impression she gave Alayne. A little like Septa Mordane, perhaps, only the septa had been anything but gentle when Arya didn’t manage to keep her stitches straight. For a while, Sera and Alayne sat together and each worked on their own project. The center of the rose was quickly finished, and so now it was time for the hardest part: outlining the petals in the darker thread so that they were all the right size.
“What’s it like in Westeros?” Sera asked her. “My mother doesn’t tell me much, and she’s only been in Gulltown, anyway. She mostly says we’re better off without lords starting wars with each other all the time here in Braavos.”
Sera’s mother might have it right, Alayne thought. Westeros was tearing itself apart, Stark against Lannister against Baratheon against Baratheon against Tyrell, with all the smaller houses caught up in trying to choose the winner so as to get some of the crumbs. “It’s different,” she answered vaguely, as she threaded the needle through the fabric again and again. “It’s really big too, so you can’t really compare all of Westeros with just Braavos. There’s big forests in the North, mountains in the east and the west and the deserts of Dorne … I haven’t seen much, mind you. But I spent some time in King’s Landing, and it’s different, I suppose. There’s more color, for one. The Red Keep really is red, and the houses of the richer merchants are painted. There are flowers and even some trees. The smell, though … I much prefer Braavos in that regard.”
Sera shot her a quizzical look. “Have you ever seen the King or Queen?”
Alayne hesitated for a moment. “Once, from a distance,” she lied.
“Really! What were they like?”
“Not as kingly and queenly as you’d think,” Alayne said, before retreating into her work again. The stitching calmed her, and chased away thoughts of Cersei and the speech she’d given Sansa during the Battle of the Blackwater, and thoughts of Joffrey as he made Sansa look at the decapitated heads of the Stark household in King’s Landing. She drew the thread just tight enough, wove the needle through the cloth and bit by bit, the picture of a golden rose formed.
When she was done, Alayne examined her work. It looked like a passable attempt at a Tyrell rose to her. Then she showed it to Sera, who grinned in delight and called over the stern mistress. The woman walked over cautiously after a last look at the little girl’s work, then stared at the golden rose with raised eyebrows, before addressing a question to Sera.
“She wants to know whether everyone in Westeros embroiders this way,” Sera translated.
Alayne cocked her head. “It is the only way of embroidering I know of,” she told them. “Why? Is it bad?”
Mistress Sarnel scoffed when Sera translated the question. “Not bad,” she answered. “Different. Useful, maybe. And with a talent like yours, you’ll pick up the Braavosi way in no time.” After Sera was done relaying her words, she paused for a moment, then spoke again. “You can stay. Now help Sera—I mean me—with the hem of the dress,” Sera translated, while Mistress Sarnel had already wandered off to look at the other apprentices’ work.
Alayne looked at the skirt and took the bottom into her lap, while Sera handed her a needle and pins from her own sewing basket. After the other girl had made sure that Alayne knew how to sew a hem like the one planned for the dress, she went back to adding pearls to the top of the skirt, which now looked like a river of stars ran down its side.
*
Mistress Sarnel’s apprentices lived in the attic of her shop, as Alayne found out that evening. There were six of them now, which was too many, Sera told her, but it wasn’t too bad, since Marla, the oldest, would leave them within a moon. Alayne had been too tired to properly parse Sera’s explanation as to why, but it was either because she wanted to open or own shop or marry her sweetheart, or maybe both. Marla was a serious girl of nine and ten, or perhaps twenty, and she seemed to keep the others in line when the mistress wasn’t around.
Then there was Dia, the girl with the mousy hair. She was the youngest at eight and had been taken on three moons previously to eventually become Marla’s replacement. Alayne got the impression that Dia didn’t know what to make of her yet. Shaena, too, was wary of her. She was a bit younger than Alayne as well. The last girl, Tarry, was around Alayne’s age, and she at least sent her an encouraging smile when they ate that evening. All the girls, with the exception of Sera with her dirty-blonde hair, had brown hair, and darker skin than Alayne. When they got ready for bed after spreading their pallets on the floor, Dia looked on in fascination as Alayne brushed her long hair.
The lumpy mattress was the worst Alayne had ever slept on. Years ago, she would have complained until she had a feather bed to lie down on, but after weeks on ships sleeping on nothing but wooden planks and hammocks, she was quite happy with the straw-filled sack and pillow. It didn’t even distract her to share a room with five girls, one of whom snored. She fell asleep the moment after she first turned from one side onto another.
The next morning, Mistress Sarnel’s apprentices rose at dawn to the roar of the Titan. Alayne had been so exhausted, she didn’t even hear it. Shaena had to wake her with an apologetic smile on her lips. In relative silence, the girls washed and dressed, as countless people in the tall houses around them doubtless did the same.
There were many tasks to be done before the day’s work could begin, and Alayne was unsuited to all of them. She knew nothing about how to cook or clean, and could only look on helplessly as the others went to work.
Marla took down the dresses hanging from the lines in the yard and Tarry prepared the food for breaking their fasts. Then Sera handed her two buckets. “Come on, we have to go.”
“Where are we going?” she asked as she slipped past Dia, who swept the floors. Shaena was already waiting for them outside.
“We need to fetch water,” Sera explained.
“Is the well far away?”
That elicited a laugh from Sera, followed by a question from Shaena, who apparently found Alayne’s question amusing as well. They had already left the street their shop was in and joined a crowd of others who were carrying buckets of their own.
“There are no wells in Braavos, Alayne. It’s all brine here. We have to go to the closest water fountain,” Sera told her, and followed it up with a lengthy explanation of the sweetwater river, a bulky construction that could be seen in the distance and that Alayne had mistaken for some sort of battlement or wall. It transported water into the city from the mainland, and by the Sealord’s grace, it was free for all who dwelled in the city.
Soon, the three girls reached the square that was big by Braavosi standards but small by those of Westeros. There were already plenty of people, mostly women and girls, grouped around the small pool in one corner that was fed by what looked like a solid archway. Some of the women chatted with each other—probably the latest gossip—and Alayne yawned. She could have slept for a few more hours. There hadn’t even been any nightmares. Maybe it helped that she was on solid ground again.
“Shaena wants to know who taught you to sew so well,” Sera said suddenly, and Alayne noticed she’d almost dozed off where she stood. The crowd before them had thinned a little. Soon it would be their turn at the fountain.
“Oh, my mother and my septa.”
“Septa?”
Alayne furrowed her brow in confusion for a moment. “Yes, my septa. My father got her to teach me how to be ladylike.”
Sera giggled as she translated for Shaena, then relayed the girl’s answer. “Well, she definitely succeeded there. So that’s what a septa is for? We call them governesses here,” she added, her own question separated from Shaena’s words by only a small pause and a subtle change in inflection.
“No …” Alayne answered, then abruptly caught on to what else the girl had said. “What do you mean, she succeeded?” She was supposed to be a bastard, not a lady.
Sera shrugged. “It’s how you walk and sit, I think. You’re a little stiff, like a lady. Your septa must have taught you that, no?”
Alayne started to shake her head, then thought better of it. Septa Mordane had never had to remind her not to slouch, unlike Arya, but it was a good excuse. She resolved to study the other girls more, to learn how to blend in, but now it was almost time to fill their buckets. Only a gaggle of servant girls was standing in front of them.
“Besides,” Alayne replied, “that’s not just what a septa is for. A septa is a female servant of the Faith of the Seven. They teach young women the Seven Pointed Star and prepare them for their lives as wives. And they live in septries and minister to the poor and the common folk, or serve the gods in other ways.”
“Ah,” Sera said as she walked forward to fill her first bucket. “Are you very religious? My mother goes to the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea sometimes, but I don’t like it there. I go to the Temple of the Moonsingers with my father, when he is here. I can show you on our next free day, if you want?”
Alayne hesitated for a bit; she was busy heaving the heavy buckets back up and tried not to splash too much of the precious water on her skirts. The way back was far harder than the way to the fountain, and Alayne’s arms began to ache before they were even halfway there. But she gritted her teeth and persisted.
“I’ll think about your offer,” she finally answered as they entered their street. It was home to not only a seamstress’ shop, but also to one that sold glassware, one for candles and candelabras, and one for paper, ledgers and other books, if the signs and displays were anything to go by. Alayne didn’t know how she felt about the gods anymore, and her father’s gods were strangers in this foreign land. There would be no godswood to be found, she was sure of that. Then her stomach growled when she smelled what the bakery two doors down the street had to offer. Hopefully it was time for breakfast.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Not yet. When they were back, the girls still had to empty the chamber pots and the privy, a task that Alayne had never thought would be hers. She wished she could stop her nose from smelling when she did so, but to no avail. At least the midden was smaller than it had been the previous night—she would later learn that there were men who emptied them onto their barges in the dead of night and sold the waste to farmers on the mainland.
After washing that unpleasant task off her hands, it was finally time for breaking her fast. She was ravenous. The bread was fresh and the cheese delicious on her tongue. She would have loved to take more than the others, but Alayne didn’t want to stand out. She did cherish the apple, though, and the fish.
Then it was time for work. First they finished what they could in the back, so that the dresses could be delivered to their customers, while the mistress worked in the front of the shop. The girls sat on their chairs and stools and chatted a little when Mistress Sarnel wasn’t there to supervise them. Alayne let the idle chatter run over her while she worked, adding a lacy collar to an otherwise plain maroon dress.
In the afternoon, the mistress spent some time with them in the back. Sera began to teach her some Braavosi Valyrian and found it very amusing that Alayne had so much trouble wrapping her tongue around some of the vowels and consonants. Of course, in between language lessons, Sera also explained Braavosi embroidery to her, which created patterns by adding small, crossed stitches until they formed a picture. Alayne worked again with the golden threads and the leftover green fabric to create another rose, this one in the new style. She felt proud of herself when Mistress Sarnel praised her, and even prouder when she managed to thank the woman in her own tongue.