“Ser Amory sent them down to the dungeon¹. The one under the Widow’s Tower, that’s just one big cell. You could smash the door open with your hammer-”  “While the guards watch and make bets on how many swings it will take me, maybe?”  Arya chewed her lips. “We’d need to kill the guards.”  “How are we supposed to do that?”  “Maybe there won’t be a lot of them.”  “If there’s two, that’s too many for you and me. You never learned nothing in that village, did you? You try this and Vargo Hoat will cut off your hands and feet, the way he does.” Gendry took up the tongs² again.  “You’re afraid.”  “Leave me alone, girl.”  “Gendry, there’s a hundred northmen. Maybe more, I couldn’t count them all. That’s as many as Ser Amory has. Well, not counting the Bloody³ Mummers. We just have to get them out and we can take over the castle and escape.”  “Well, you can’t get them out, no more’n you could save Lommy.” Gendry turned the breastplate with the tongs to look at it closely. “And if we did escape, where would we go?”  “Winterfell,” she said at once. “I’d tell Mother how you helped me, and you could stay-”  “Would m’lady permit? Could I shoe your horses for you, and make swords for your lordly brothers?”  Sometimes he made her so angry. “You stop that!”  “Why should I wager⁵ my feet for the chance to sweat in Winterfell in place of Harrenhal? You know old Ben Blackthumb? He came here as a boy. Smithed for Lady Whent and her father before her and his father before him, and even for Lord Lothston who held Harrenhal before the Whents. Now he smiths for Lord Tywin, and you know what he says? A sword’s a sword, a helm’s a helm, and if you reach in the fire you get burned, no matter who you’re serving. Lucan’s a fair enough master. I’ll stay here.”  “The queen will catch you, then. She didn’t send gold cloaks after Ben Blackthumb!”  “Likely it wasn’t even me they wanted.”  “It was too, you know it. You’re somebody.”  “I’m a ‘prentice smith, and one day might be I’ll make a master armorer... if I don’t run off and lose my feet or get myself killed.” He turned away from her, picked up his hammer once more, and began to bang.  Arya’s hands curled into helpless fists. “The next helm you make, put mule’s ears on it in place of bull’s horns!” She had to flee, or else she would have started hitting him. He probably wouldn’t even feel it if I did. When they find who he is and cut off his stupid mulehead, he’ll be sorry he didn’t help. She was better off without him anyhow. He was the one who got her caught at the village.  But thinking of the village made her remember the march, and the storeroom, and the Tickler. She thought of the little boy who’d been hit in the face with the

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