A Feast for Crows — Arya II

Cat of the Canals sells cockles and gathers secrets; when a deserter of the Night's Watch sings for coin in the Happy Port, the Many-Faced God is given his due.

The chapter retold

In Braavos, Arya — now going by Cat of the Canals, apprenticed to a kindly fishmonger's stall as much as to the House of Black and White — sells cockles, runs errands, and quietly gathers information the way she has been trained to since Syrio Forel's lessons a lifetime ago. Word reaches her of a deserter from the Night's Watch, Dareon, singing for coin and silks in the Happy Port, having abandoned his vows and his brothers to live comfortably in a foreign city. Arya — acting, it's implied, at least partly under the House's sanction as practice — kills him.

The chapter marks Arya's first confirmed kill as a Faceless Men trainee (as opposed to killings from earlier in the war, done for pure survival), and it's chosen carefully: Dareon is not an innocent by the story's own moral logic — he swore an oath to the realm's defense and chose comfort over duty while his brothers starved and died at the Wall — which lets the book use him to test whether Arya can kill dispassionately, for the god, rather than personally, for her list. She can. That distinction is exactly what the House of Black and White is trying to train into her, and exactly what she will keep fighting against for the rest of her arc.

This movement: The Quill and the Quiet Isle

• Brienne's hunt crosses the Quiet Isle, where a limping gravedigger is taller than any brother has a right to be.
• Sam sails for Oldtown via Braavos, where a girl called Cat learns his name — and Maester Aemon hears of dragons and weeps.
• Jaime brings the king's peace to the riverlands with words where his sword hand used to be; Riverrun yields without blood.
• Arya's nightly wolf dreams betray her to the kindly man; a girl must give up Arya Stark — she hides Needle instead.

The fallen — spoilers

• Dareon of the Night's Watch — Sang in silks in Braavos while his brothers starved; a girl's knife remembered his vows.