Pate, the Citadel novice
A slow, unhappy novice of the Citadel in Oldtown, in over his head with a Braavosi stranger and a stolen key (book only).
A soul born at The Reach.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
(book only) ÔÇö before this story begins.
On the page. Died in Oldtown (AFFC, ch. 1)
The pig boy of the Citadel sold a maester's key to a stranger with a face that wasn't his, for a gold dragon and a girl's freedom. The coin was still in his fist when he died ÔÇö and someone left Oldtown wearing his name.
He dies in the prologue of A Feast for Crows, minutes after the worst bargain of his life. The alchemist pays him his golden dragon for Archmaester WalgraveÔÇÖs iron key; Pate, giddy with the enormity of it, bites the coin as men do ÔÇö and is dead before he has gone far, folding into the Oldtown street with the gold still in his fist, the taste of something wrong the last thing his slow, honest mind records. Whether the poison rode the coin or the parting is left for readers to argue; what is not left in doubt is the sequel, for by the volumeÔÇÖs end someone is walking the Citadel wearing PateÔÇÖs face and PateÔÇÖs name, keys and secrets within easy reach. He never appears in the show.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
Pate is book-only, and so is his entire mystery ÔÇö the showÔÇÖs visit to Oldtown, with SamÔÇÖs bedpans and chained library, borrows the setting but none of the conspiracy. On the page, the taleÔÇÖs eeriest thread runs straight through him: the alchemistÔÇÖs glimpsed features match the face Jaqen HÔÇÖghar wore when he left Arya at Harrenhal, and at the fourth bookÔÇÖs end a novice called Pate ÔÇö walking, smiling, unmistakably not the boy who died ÔÇö makes friendly introduction to Samwell Tarly at the CitadelÔÇÖs door. The Faceless Men have enrolled, the books quietly tell us, and only the reader knows.