A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Arya I

A blind girl begs on Braavos's canals and learns to see with skin and ears; each night the kindly man asks who she is, and each night the lie tastes safer: no one.

The chapter retold

In Braavos, a blind beggar girl works the canal-side crowds for coins and scraps, and readers who remember Arya StarkÔÇÖs sharper self have to relearn her patience through months of sensory deprivation ÔÇö the House of Black and White has taken her sight as tuition, and she is being taught, slowly and without mercy, to read a city through smell, sound, and touch instead. Each night the kindly man who oversees her training asks the same question ÔÇö who are you? ÔÇö and each night the answer she gives gets a little easier to say and a little less true.

The chapter is the clearest statement yet of what the Faceless Men actually want from Arya: not a killer, which she already half is, but an erasure, a girl willing to trade her name for power over other peopleÔÇÖs names. Her blindness, cruel as it is, doubles as the bookÔÇÖs most literal metaphor for the whole training regimen ÔÇö strip away the self, and see whatÔÇÖs left worth keeping. WhatÔÇÖs left, stubbornly, keeps being Arya Stark, whether the House approves or not.

This movement: The Winterfell Knot

• Winterfell fills with Bolton banners and murdered guests; someone is killing Freys in the dark and the walls whisper 'Theon'.
• Abel the bard and his washerwomen ÔÇö spearwives ÔÇö recruit a broken creature to steal 'Arya' out of the castle.
• Theon remembers his name jumping from the battlements with a weeping girl in his arms, into the snow.
• Jon lets the free folk through the Wall by the thousand and lends Val, loans wildlings, and writes letters lords burn.