The day was warm for winter, the winds were mild - barely strong enough to move the ship, the sun was high, and the sky was flawlessly blue. Yet Tyrion Lannister felt as gloomy as if he was descending to the black cells. It is the damned ship, he though.

He had been passing time the same way as many times before during their dragging unfortunate voyage – beating their captain mercilessly in cyvasse, when they had come upon her. Thago, a Lorathi almost as tall as the Cleganes, was just losing the third game in row when the sailor from the crow's nest called that a ship had been spotted port. Meereenese freewoman and another crewmen who had been mending tattered sails nearby shouted with joy in perfect unison and an oarsman called for firewine. Nevertheless, the cheer faded quickly. The vessel was not one of their own. What was worse, the Purple Eel, as her name read in Braavosi, seemed to float aimlessly, with no life in sight.

All of them could fathom what befell her most likely - illness. Be it pale mare, greyscale or some other plague vengeful gods deemed just to send on the ship, no one wanted to find out. However, the storm which had dragged them away from the rest of Daenerys's fleet had not been gentle to their own vessel. The Smiling Widow was barely seaworthy. Tyrion doubted more with each passing day that the hastily done repairs would last till the nearest port.

He had been rather surprised that it took only two hours of arguing with Jorah Mormont and the captain until they all agreed to send scouts. Five of three hundred on the deck volunteered to go of their own free will. In the end they choose an old woman with daughter and grandchildren on the board and a sullen youth called Cello who had been a skilled fighter before he had lost a leg and an eye not a moon turn ago. Both swore a solemn vow not to try to return if they sighted any sign of illness.

Tyrion had watched the little boat being put on water. Cello rowed through mild waves until he reached the Purple Eel. The Lannister saw through the captain's Myrish lenses that it took the lad three attempts to throw a rope with a hook onto the ship. Together the boy the woman boarded it. It was long before the two returned to their boat. But by then Tyrion knew that they were carrying good news.

Or not as bad as we had been expecting, Tyrion mused, his boot touching an old stain of dried blood which graced a fore deck of the Purple Eel. After Cello and the woman returned Tyrion and Jorah Mormont had gone to look at the ship themselves.

"I found something too," he called after Jorah Mormont. Probably only because so far it had been Mormont who had found all the clues, from a hidden love letter which had told them from where the ship was sailing to a barrel full of firewine. Besides, sticking a stick to a grumpy bear took his mind of uneasiness he felt since they boarded the ship.

"Blood stain. Not too old. Someone had tried to scrub it off. Could be from an accident, could be from fight, who cares?" The knight spat in a gruff irritated voice. Of recently it was the only voice he used. The death of Daenerys' latest husband might have pleased Mormont some, but there were already ten new suitors ready to offer her a marriage. All of them with a better chance to woo the Dragon Queen than Ser Jorah. It did not help any that they found themselves on the same ship again.

"Did you find anything else?" Tyrion asked. Inwardly he had to agree that a little blood on any ship was hardly noteworthy, but he would rather eat his own fingers that confess it aloud.

"No," Mormont barked, "the ship seems almost new and well-handled. Even boats are still there and the crew couldn't left more than few days ago."

"So all is great." Tyrion grinned with false cheer. He counted on it irritating the knight further, but Mormont was too lost in his own thoughts to take the bait.

"There is still that body the boy had found."

The one who died of cut throat, or so we all should hope. Tyrion could not find a reason, why the crippled boy would lie about it. He had no reason to wish them harm. Maybe aside of harming all luckier than him.

"Do you want to have a look?" Mormont asked, scratching an ugly mark slavers had burned on his cheek. Tyrion wondered if he was even aware of the gesture.

"Nah, I want to see the captain's cabin first, but suit yourself."

"And let you steal whatever you finds there? No way, Imp, we are going together."

The captain's cabin was small but well equipped, paneled with dark wood from Summer Isles and with a desk which would make even most of the furniture in Casterly Rock pale with envy. No less than two big paintings were adorning the walls. Tyrion had never seen a craft which such a detail and lively colors before. The same could not be said about captain's taste in motifs. One painting was depicting Galyddo Neer, a local hero of Stepstones, easily recognizable by unusually long nose and three nipples at his revealed muscled chest. The tale had it that Galyddo Neer was the one who had supposedly deflowered Nissa Nissa before she married her husband, helped Brandon Stark harry wildlings behind the Wall and even outsmarted Lann the clever. Luckily the other one simply showed a young naked girl with generous curves taking bath in a stream.

With the help of Jorah Mormont's axe they gained an access into the locked drawer. Inside there was a small bottle with an unknown potion, a bigger bottle of firewine, some parchments, ink and quills, three maps and two books. The first book was a Lyseni tome about the art of love with hundreds images and not a written word in it, the other a small one with black leather cover confirmed what they had seen so far, the ship headed from Braavos.

Tyrion returned to the black book. "No one keeps such records but Braavosi."

Quickly he found the last page with written text. It was only three days old. There was a marked position and note about a tragic accident which likely led to the very same bloodstain he have found. The fortnight before that there was a note about regular inspection of the cargo. Most of it was expensive food intended for Maidenpool and Gulltown. Going back and forth, Tyrion noticed few more tragic accidents, which seemed strange mostly only by their number and the first one truly interesting entry.

"Look here," he turned to Mormont, "a few days before the end the handwriting changed. Something happened to the captain, this second man keeps much less records. And they changed the course too. The ship turned south."

"Anything else?" Mormont didn't sound too interested.

"No." Tyrion put the book in his pocked. He would take the Lyseni one too, but it was too big. "Time to see the dead man."

The scent of the corpse could be felt from afar, together with the gloominess of under-deck it did not help to improve Tyrion's mood. The cabin they found him in looked no different than any cabin for a wealthy passenger, though the dead man did look more like a sailor than a merchant. He was lying face down. Jorah Mormont kicked the corpse and it turned around.

In an instant Tyrion noticed that man's breeches were unlaced and his cock out, much more unnerving was his throat. It wasn't cut, the flesh seemed bitten off. A big piece was missing and the border of the wound in the shape suspiciously resembling a bite of man's teeth.

"What in seven hells happened in here?" Tyrion cursed, wondering how to put all pieces together.

A fortnight had passed since they had abandoned the battered Smiling Widow and boarded the Purple Eel. Tyrion almost stopped waking up in the middle of the night with the uneasy feeling that another piece of this ship's mystery was just out of reach. All he was ever likely to know was hardly more than the words from the black book about the first captain who died and a series of improbable unlucky accidents which followed.

The only thing Tyrion could conclude was that the owner of the second handwriting meant to seal the ship to the Summer Islands. Maybe he was behind the death of the first captain, maybe he decided to steal the ship, when the opportunity arose, maybe he was fleeing something. Where the man with the torn throat and missing passengers fit in that was likely to remain mystery forever. Did they die too unnoticed after the man who kept the record perished? It was a disquieting thought Tyrion did not like to ponder on. Luckily, little by little new worries overshadowed the mystery of the Purple Eel and Tyrion's life slowly but surely returned to its original route, where his time was dived equally between planning what he will do once they landed, cyvasse, and boredom.

And so he found himself once again waiting for Thago to finally make a move. His bored gaze wandered the overcrowded board and lingered on a girl scrubbing deck not far from them. From time to time, she turned her head and glanced at their game. He must have seen her earlier but it was only her broken nose, dark circles under her eyes and bruises covering left side of her face, which finally caught his attention.

"What happened to you, girl?" he asked in High Valyrian. She lifted her face, looked at him wide-eyed and then smiled stupidly.

"What tongue do you, speak?" he tried again with one of few sentences he spoke in Trade tongue.

"Pentoshi, Trade tongue." she answered in the same tongue in a rather crude manner. Though a crude manner had to be a rule if half a words is substituted by obscene gestures.

"What happened to your..." Tyrion called to her and gestured to his own face not able to remember the right word in Pentoshi.

"Got smashed against zbara in storm, magister." Tyrion could not recall what zbara meant, but he remembered all too well the storm which almost sent the Smiling Widow kissing the seabed. Yes, there had been a girl who hit her head against the railing. Afterward the healers on the ship argued furiously if to count her among living or dead. Though neither of them seemed strongly inclined that she would recover.

"My lord, your move," Captain Thago demanded impatiently.

Tyrion turned back to the game board and immediately wrinkled his nose, or at least what little was left of it. Of all the moves the captain could have made, he went for the most stupid. The trap he had managed to set for Tyrion's dragon was hardly worth the effort as it also bared his own king. Tyrion rubbed his cold hands and ended it quickly.

On the morrow, Tyrion noticed the girl watching them again. An idea struck him. Mercilessly, he finished the game with the captain and went to the girl.

"Do you want to learn the game?" he asked her. He had toyed with an idea of teaching Frina, the woman he had taken to bed, but dismissed it quickly. Even if Frina had the wits to turn out better player than the captain, which wasn't all that sure, Tyrion had learned his lesson about giving too much attention to women he bedded. They all turned up fickle bitches in the end. No, better not to combine my only two pleasures on this tedious voyage.

There was not much risk of him ever wanting to bed this girl. She was about six and ten, which was a good age, but even without her injuries she was hardly attractive. Her ears were so big they would make a Florent proud, her hair was unkept and her round eyes were too close, besides being the dullest brown color. To top it all she was now blushing, which with her injuries gave her a rather grotesque look.

"I have no need to know, tis is my work, I don't have time to play, magister."

Tyrion had expected such an answer.

"Do you know, who is the second most important man on this ship?" he asked her lightly.

"Magister Jorah," she answered.

Tyrion grinned. Jorah was below him, Daenerys made that clear and even the last orphan on the ship knew that.

"You flatter me," he objected humbly, "I am not the most important man here, because even if I can decide where the ship should be sailing, only the captain can make it move. Even with king aboard, the captain is always the only true king on his own ship. And of course Ser Jorah comes after me, but I still can make sure you will have no trouble from this. I would feel slighted if you refused me needlessly."

She nodded still looking troubled, but both of them knew she could not really refuse him.

To Tyrion's delight the girl turned out to be a quick study. Both of the cyvasse and the Common Tongue. Not that she ever made any especially clever moves, but she never needed to be told anything twice and never missed any immediate threat to her pieces. As a reward, she helped him to dust his Pentoshi.

They played every day at dawn and dusk. Outside if the weather allowed it, inside just as often. Soon Tyrion relieved the captain from their mutual games.

"Thinking with your cock again? She isn't even pretty," Thago commented when Tyrion told him, but he seemed more relieved than angry. The captain had never been too fond of the game. As far as Tyrion could tell, his greatest passion when he wasn't busy captaining was to watch different kinds of seabirds trough his Myrish lenses.

Tyrion learned little about the girl he had been playing with. Her name was Liaha and she had been born and lived most of her life in Pentos as a fisherman's sister, but she did not share much past that and he did not care to hear it. The only thing he made any effort to find out was if she had a boy or a man on the ship. Though he desired her no more than Penny, he could not abide a though, that she would share anything he told her with some fool while they kissed surrounded by salted fish and sacks of onions.

The time started to flow somehow quicker. Tyrion almost forgotten the uneasiness he felt when they boarded the ship. Or maybe he was just getting better ignoring that weak nagging voice it the back of his mind.

They had almost reached the main fleet the day Tyrion was woken by hysterical screams. Hurriedly, he dressed and run below decks.

In one of the overcrowded large cabins he found an old woman shrieking hysterically. The crone's eyes were turned back, so only the whites shone in dim light and she was trashing so wildly that if not for younger women holding her, Tyrion was sure she would had fallen on the floor.

"She only had a bad dream." One of the girls shouted through noise of crying children when the woman quieted for a moment. She did not have a time to tell more because the crone started to scream again.

She seemed to be repeating something but Tyrion caught only one word, vlk-a. It did not last long after that. In the end she fainted exhausted.

"What was she saying?" Tyrion asked the girl who spoke Common Tongue.

"It is nothing, she is old. She had a bad dream and forgotten she is awake now."

"What was she saying?" Tyrion repeated.

"Death is on the ship. She saw the death walking on this ship."

Suddenly, Tyrion felt as gloomy as when they came upon the abandoned ship. He shook his head forcefully. The girl is right, I am becoming old and fool myself, it is nothing but delusions of an old woman. He turned away from the cabin and noticed that Jorah had come down too.

"This is how you spend yours days now, teaching whelps cyvasse and listening to scared old women?" The knight asked in his usual charming way.

"As it happens Pentoshi orphans and Dotharaki crones beat watching a hairy bear dance at the tune of self-pity."

"The woman is Lhazareene," the knight spat before leaving.

Nevertheless of what she was, death indeed boarded their deck the next day.

If there was one thing that Tyrion Lannister had come to hate with all his heart as much his own sweet family, it was surely fog.

That morning he watched yellow drops of his piss disappear in milky white air unable to see even the surface of the water. He had to try very hard not to remember another time when he sailed in a fog like this through the Sorrows. Lost in his thoughts, he did not even have time to lace himself back before the attack started.

How the buggers found them in that thick fog, he would never know, but an Ironborn longship fell upon them and quickly overwhelmed the crew. Captain Thago was the first one to die. Ironborn would abide neither man-fuckers nor other captains on the ship. The poor boy who had been sharing captain's bed was butchered before he even had a time to wake up. Tyrion was recognized quickly and ended up as a prisoner in his own cabin. Albeit it did resemble a proper prison cell with all the furniture removed.

Tyrion could not decide if he mourned most his books, his narrow featherbed or the magnificent painting of the naked girl. Mormont joined him some time later, beaten, bruised and with hands and legs in irons.

Tyrion grinned. "Remind me not to sail with you ever again. It always ends up with both of us enslaved."

Mormont actually smiled back, his teeth red with blood. "We are meant for ransom, dwarf. If they wanted us for thralls they would have drowned you for a start."

It were the last words they exchanged for a long time.

The Ironborn who become the captain of the Purple Eel was some years past his prime. He was of middling height with a hook nose, pale blue-grey eyes and no sense of humor at all. The man, Tyrion learned, came with little-telling name of Dagon Pyke. As with all men who reminded Tyrion of his father, the Imp misliked him from the start.

The captivity wasn't a hard one, Tyrion had to acknowledge. Jorah still didn't talk to him, but they fed them well enough and mostly left them alone. Inwardly Tyrion agreed with Mormont, they were likely kept for ransom. Tyrion did not fear much who he might be sold to. Daenerys would pay for him and the two men who ruled Westeros at the moment he had met and befriended both while they have been mere boys. What vexed him the most, was the lack of wine. Well, that, and the noises.

A few times a day women were chosen to pleasure the new crew. Most Dothraki women would rather die than to be heard screaming when men took them, but the others... Often he found himself thinking about Liaha. He wondered if any of the screams belonged to her and if she was still alive. He would kill any man who dared to touch her, he vowed to himself, as once he should have killed all the men his father let to bed his wife. Strangely, Liaha was on his mind more than Frina, who had warmed his own bed. Frina had been a whore though, Liaha could have been still a maiden for all I know. Granted, the girl was no beauty and her face was still bruised, but she was also young and healthy, which would fit most men's preferences well enough.

On the fourth day, the captain stormed into their cabin half mad with rage. He went straight to Tyrion and before the Imp knew what was happening the Ironborn grabbed his hand and in one savage move broke at least two of his fingers.

Tyrion wailed. Maybe his injuries from the Blackwater had hurt worse but that was then and this was now and it hurt like hell.

"Why?" Tyrion managed to squeal.

"Who poisoned my men?" the captain shouted, his face so close Tyrion could feel his spit on his face. "Three men are dead and ten are blinded."

"I don't know, what you are talking about, I swear." Tyrion tried to hold his injured limb as still as possible, but the captain dragged it roughly again and the Lannister screamed in full force.

"I warn you, Imp, start talking. If you think this hurts, you know nothing. I heard you read a lot and I am sure you have read about many ways to make men talk. I can make you try a few for yourself." Tyrion almost threw up recalling one particular translation of Astapori scrolls he had read as a foolish boy.

"The ship is cursed," Jorah Mormont spoke for the first time since the captain entered.

Pyke snorted competently, but at least he looked at the knight. Tyrion saw his chance. "There was a chest in this cabin, if it is still on the ship in the bottom, there is a small black book. The old captain kept a diary, read for yourself."

"What are you babbling about?" the Ironborn spat, but he did sound a little confused.

"We did not sail from the harbor on this ship. We found it abandoned after a storm savaged our first vessel and boarded this one a fortnight ago."

"The Imp is telling it true. Find the book and read for yourself," Mormont supported him.

"Let's hope he does know how to read," Tyrion added once the man was gone. He found himself almost regretting all the times he was rude to the knight when Mormont used one of his own leathers to bind his injured fingers despite the irons on his own hands. Fighting the pain, Tyrion tried to recall the finer points of the diary. Will it be enough to convince the captain? Will he have us killed anyways just to be sure? What really happened to his men, and to all the other men on this ship?

According to what Tyrion could remember, the first captain of the Purple Eel was the first man to die. Soon after, the others started to meet fatal misfortunes. Bad water, bad food, bad drink, broken spar, sleek deck, rotten rail… One was supposedly pecked to death by a flock of seagulls. And though, in typical Braavosi fashion, there were even written the names of witnesses, Tyrion had still a hard time believing it. What seemed true enough was that they had lost twelve men in three days. What happened to the rest of the crew and forty passengers who, according to earlier notes, were also on the ship Tyrion could not imagine.

It turned out that Dagon Pyke did know how to read. He came to their cabin holding the little black book in his left hand.

"You may be telling the truth," he grunted. "but I don't believe any curse is behind it. Whoever did it, must have been hiding on the ship when you boarded."

"If it were true, I would be the first one pointing my broken finger on that son of a bitch, but we searched the whole ship, there was no one. Ask anyone still alive, they all will tell you the same tale."

For a moment captain's eyes hardened and Tyrion almost took a step back expecting more broken limbs, but in the end the Ironborn only frowned and left. The next day, he was dead as was all of his crew.

It was Cello who opened their door in the middle of the night. The rag hiding his missing eye was filthy and his wooden leg was spotted with blood, but his mouth was bent in a hard cold smile. "The first ship wrecked upon a whale. Most of them on our ship died," he told them, "the rest we killed."

Despite his newfound freedom and reunion with his featherbed, Tyrion did not sleep that night. He kept returning to what had happened at the Purple Eel since the Ironborn took it and even before. Unhappily he found himself agreeing with Pyke. There was a skilled killer on the board and Tyrion was none the wiser how it was possible.

The sunrise found Tyrion tired, but awake. Not much later, the outside deck started to fill with people and noise. Finally, he came out rubbing his red eyes in sun. The board was as crowded as he had seen it. After being closed in their cabins for days even Dothraki welcomed the chance to glance once again upon the sky. Most strangely of all, the people seemed happy. He even saw few women dancing. With slow steps he went along the rail. A group of men let him pass and he spotted the old woman he had seen screaming few days ago. Her wrinkled brown face was glistening in the sun, her eyes were closed and she was smiling. Suddenly, she turned to Tyrion and opened her eyes.

"Sa he vlk-a."

Tyrion looked around and found a boy who could translate for him. A mongrel no older than nine with dark skin and auburn hair.

"Tell her to repeat what she had told me," he ordered the child.

"Sa he vlk-a," the woman repeated.

"The wolf hunts on this deck," the boy translated.

Tyrion frowned, remembering what another Lhazarene told him. "I thought vlk-a means death."

The boy nodded in agreement. "Tis the same thing. For sheep folk death is a monstrous she-wolf, the queen and mother of all wolves. In the end no one can run from her."

The crone nodded her head too and smiled an evil toothless smile. "Sa he vlk-a, ba ne me."

"The wolf hunts on this deck, but not us," the boy repeated.

Tyrion returned her grin with an ugly smile of his own. Indeed death was not so terrible when she came for your enemies. Or at least when she took more of them than yours.

Twelve of their own men had been killed, five women, and one babe still on teat. Most of the women and girls had been raped. Some, not for the first time in their lives, Tyrion judged. It made him think of Liaha again. He decided to find her. He was directed towards one of the least savory cabins on the Purple Eel. He heard the voices clearly even before he approached the entrance.

"I saw you."

"Lori, you are wrong," Tyrion recognized Liaha's voice.

"Please leave me, you scares me. Let me be!" Tyrion hid himself behind a barrel and watched as a young fair-haired woman passed by. Her face was pale as milk.

He waited for some time before he entered the cabin. In a small space there were four wide, hastily-made berths above each other. Likely each of them served for two or more passengers. At the moment though, there was only one person in the room.

Liaha was turned away from him staring at the pitiful flame of a thin tallow candle someone put atop an old barrel in the corner.

"I don't want to talk about what you heard," she greeted him without turning.

Tyrion was taken aback. What he had heard was indeed still lingering in his mind, but her commanding voice seemed out of place even more. Casterly Rock she would have been whipped for such a remark. But then again, Daenerys Targaryen was not his father and they were definitely not in Casterly Rock. He put the though aside. "Will you meet me for a cyvasse game again?" he asked instead.

"I will be there."

It turned out to be the longest game they had ever played. Liaha was even more silent than usual, but Tyrion quickly overcame the uneasiness of their reunion. After being locked for days with only Mormont for company, Tyrion found it hard to restrain the flow of his own words. All the while the girl was avoiding all his traps. She might never know how to defeat me, but she surely knows how to flee. Only when the sun was leaving its zenith, Liaha's overseer came to ask for her and the accident must have put the girl out of balance because not a tree moves later his white archer ended her black king.

The day turned out to be more plentiful of meetings then Tyrion would have expected. Besides meeting their new captain, a man of ordinary ability and extraordinary boring nature, he chanced upon Frina. The woman was eight years his senior and used to be a mummer in her best times, which were now long gone, but she was still pretty enough and would do most anything for a wine. As he was pulling out of her, he once again decided not to ponder upon the fact that he had her from behind more times than any other way. The amount of wine they had shared was a great help in that.

Tyrion was still very much drunk, when he found Liaha by the cyvasse table. No matter, Tyrion was better player than her even drunk. Yet he could not find interest for the game that time. He kept tipping playing pieces while he tried to reach for them, once he even moved his horse in a wrong way and trice he felt asleep, still he kept winning. Most of the days he would not mind being the one safely on the top of the game, but that day it started to irritate him. In the end he could not stand it any longer and moved his dragon in a way, which would allow even someone with Liaha's limited abilities to see the chance for victory. He expected to see a joy and excitement on her face once she noticed, instead he saw her frown. It was a slightest tremble of her bottom lip, but for Tyrion in that moment nothing could be more obvious. She is letting me win.

He woke in his own bed with a headache worth all the wine in Westeros. He could not remember how he got to his cabin. All he could recall was fucking Frina again, pissing as the sun was setting, and Liaha. Liaha frowning at his move. The memory would not leave him. At first he just judged she let him win because he was a lord and close to Queen Daenerys. But that somehow didn't fit. With each recalled game an ugly suspicion grew stronger. She always knew much more than she let on.

Tyrion never liked being played, least of all when he was unaware of the fact. In a gloomy mood, he waddled out of his cabin. It was already past the midday. He almost collided with a woman scrubbing the deck. There were other people around helping, running messages, scrubbing, mending sails, boning fish, but he could not see Liaha.

Even the first boy he asked knew her, though he understood barely more than her name. Still, Tyrion followed the direction boy pointed. He found himself on the opposite end of the ship.

She was seated comfortably on a barrel between three menacingly looking sailors while boning a fish with obvious skill and chatting merrily in Trade Tongue. From what Tyrion could understand she was talking about a Westerosi boy who took her to bed and promised to marry her. The men of course humoured her. But is it truly her, who knows nothing or them? Once he saw it, he could not unsee it. There was a sharp cold mind hiding behind shy smiles and naive face.

Making sure she had enough work for at least an hour he quietly retreated. There was a person he needed to find. That proved to be much more tiresome task than his first search.

A girl scrubbing the deck send him to one of oarsmen, who send him to a boy mending sail, who directed him to a young cook, who finally send him to the right place. It turned out he had been looking for a washerwoman and for the first time in his life it was a kind who actually did some washing.

In small hot space with air so damp Tyrion could hardly breathe three women worked side by side. One of them, he noticed, was washing his own doublet. She was not the one he was seeking though. He came to the right woman avoiding all the butts and elbows and touched her arm.

"Come outside. I want to speak with you," he shouted through the noise of splashing water. He was not sure if she had truly heard him, but she must have understood enough, because she followed him outside. Even with a face red from heat, she was rather pretty. Around his own age, fair-haired, with delicate heart shaped face, a birthmark above her upper lip and big full breasts.

"You are Lori?" he asked her in Pentoshi.

She nodded visibly surprised that he knew her name.

"Why are you afraid of Liaha?"

"I am sorry, but I don't understand what magister is asking," she answered, but the startled look gave away her lie.

"I heard you two talking. You know who I am so don't you dare to lie to me."

She only nodded wordlessly.

"How long have you known Liaha and how did you end up on this ship?"

"For five years, since she was one and ten. I was married to her brother before he died. Our little boy died too. She has no one else. I used to sell fish by day and ale by night and Liaha made nets and crab traps and sold them."

"What are you doing here now?" Daenerys attracted all kind of people but to a Pentoshi woman with honest work there would be little to await her in a war-torn Westeros.

"One day, a man came and told me to come with him to work in his inn. He also told me not to let Liaha meet with men. I knew he was from no inn. I told him to leave us alone, but he kept coming and every time it was worse. And then Liaha took some fool to her bed. I beat her so hard she could barely sit without whining, but I was afraid Ruggo will learn she was no longer a maiden and hurt us. So when the dragon queen came, we ran."

"You were not afraid of her then."

She looked as if she might laugh at that. "She was such a mild stupid girl. Believing everything anyone told her. Her brother had to take care of her as if she was a little child."

Tyrion fought a frown forming on his face. "When did it change?" Her eyes instantly became guarded again. Tyrion cursed himself for not being more patient.

"You have to tell me," he commanded in a voice which could have belonged to his father.

She looked around as if to find someone who would help her, but though they still heard the water splashing from the room where other washerwomen worked, they could not see them nor heard their words. Her eyes stared at him pleadingly but he did not back down. Scared, she shifted to look at her feet. They were bare, Tyrion noticed. Finally she took a deep breath and answered.

"Liaha is like a heavy stone I have to take with me wherever I go. I found myself even thinking that Ruggo would not bother me if not for her, that my boy would not have caught a chill if she did not open windows so often. Tis probably not true, but not once I thought how much easier life would be without her." Tears filled her eyes. "Sometimes the gods listen."

"She almost died. She hit her head in a storm." Tyrion had heard this part of the tale.

"No one thought she would last. Her brother had been a good man, always so good to me and I felt so guilty. I prayed hard for her, I offered a living fish, than a chicken, than my own blood. She did not get any better, she did not get any worse. She screamed all the time. Other women urged me to take a pillow and gave her the gift of mercy, but I felt so guilty that I threatened to slit their own throats if they harmed her."

"You were right, she got better."

The woman looked at him with unrestrained disgust. "I was a fool. Dead should stay dead. She died when she hit her head, no matter if she was still breathing. A day after we moved to the new ship I found her sitting at our berth healthy as ever, if not for bruises on her face I would not be able to guess that she had been hurt. I was so relieved that I ran to her and embraced her fiercely." She started crying. "Only it wasn't her. It wasn't her."

Tyrion waited with all patience he could muster till she got her tears under control.

"How it wasn't her?" he asked, cocking his head.

Though her visible distrust Lori answered without further probing. "No one else sees it, but I noticed almost from the beginning. The way she is watching everything, the way she is always aware. Even when she speaks, the words are all right but somehow it is still wrong. Yet, I was telling myself I was seeing things, but then she killed the man."

"Which man?" Tyrion had to fight himself not to let his raw interest show in his voice.

"The reaver. When they took the ship they started to look for girls, the way they always do." Her voice became flat. "There were many pretty girls, but Liaha was never pretty even before she got hurt. I thought that maybe there will be enough others, but on the fourth day one of them came for her too. She never tried to fight or flee, I wasn't even sure she knew what was going to happen. We all went quiet, you could always hear when they took someone to the next cabin and gods help us, we always went quiet as mice and listened. They talked and then we heard a body falling on the ground and nothing else for hours, till a boy came to tell us the reavers were dead and let us out. I ran up just in time to see the body being thrown into sea. She had torn his throat like a beast. I went to our cabin and she was there washing herself calmly in pile of water and her shift was thorn and drenched in blood."

Tyrion wasn't sure if she told him anything afterward, he was too lost in his own mind. All he could think of was the man with ripped throat they had found on the Purple Eel when he boarded the ship for the first time. The reaver had died the same way. This could not be coincidence. Was it possible that Liaha, a simple girl he had spent so much time with, was behind at least two savage kills? But she could not have been on the Purple Eel before they found it. Who or what was he dealing with? He should try to corner her, he knew, but others tried before him and they always paid with their own lives.

Their game of cyvasse that day proved to be a very mundane one. As did the one next morning and ones that followed. Liaha never hinted that she was aware of his suspicion, but deep down Tyrion felt she knew. And so they played their game of waiting till few days later the Purple Eel finally came upon the rest of Daenerys' fleet.

"Am I growing forgetful or is this truly a different ship, than the one which took sail with from Pentos?" Marwyn greeted him with raised eyebrow just as his foot touched the other ship for the first time.

Even before they met during Daenerys's dark days of marriage to Euron Greyjoy, Tyrion had heard about Archmaester Marwyn. The man's thirst for knowledge and his uncommon mind were known to all educated people in Westeros. His particular interest in magic won him the name "Mage" and the distrust of his own order. It had turned out even Daenerys had heard of the archmaester, though that particular familiarity had almost cost the man his life. But as Tyrion learned, the old grudges might last centuries, yet new allegiances can be made in the blink of an eye. It had been Marwyn who managed to free Daenerys from the Crow's Eye. That had won him endless gratitude from the last Targaryen.

"The Smiling Widow was not seaworthy after the last storm. As luck would have it, that we came upon this girl and she suits our needs well." Tyrion made a mummer's gesture introducing the ship to the audience.

"Even more lucky she does not agree with squids half so much," Mormont added gruffly. The knight was waiting impatiently for the news of his love, but the archmaester did not do as much as to spare a second glance to Mormont. He only ordered three of his men to inspect the ship and called Tyrion to his own cabin.

The Lannister gritted his teeth as he crossed the swaying board connecting the two ships. Though once he was safely there he could not help but admire the vessel. The Midnight Light was a ship like no other in Daenerys's fleet. Small, lean and quick with fifteen oars on each side and sails resembling ships from Ashai, she was built by the design of three best shipwrights Archmaester Marwyn collected from half of the known world.

"Tell me all you have seen since you spotted the Purple Eel and leave nothing out, even if you deem it insignificant," the Mage ordered once the door of the cabin closed behind them.

The archmaester let the Imp talk as he was wont to do, interrupting only when he demanded to know some detail. Tyrion had always taken pride in his wits but Marwyn was probably the only person who could make him feel like a little boy clumsily learning his first letters. He both admired and despised the older man for it.

"The girl called Liaha is dead. Your little companion is a faceless man or someone very close to it wearing her face. She must have been hiding on the ship when you found it," the archmaester concluded in the end seeming only mildly interested by the finding.

"A faceless man?" Tyrion himself was much more taken aback. "I always dreamed I would hire one for my sweet sister and dreaded she would do the same. For some reason, though, I never imagined him to be as a skinny girl barely old enough to grow breasts."

"A faceless girl, yes, that is more apt," Marwyn nodded undisturbed. "I need you to return to the ship and invite her to a game of cyvasse with me."

Tyrion demanded to know more of this insane plan, but the archmaester refused firmly. Though not satisfied with this outcome, Tyrion knew he desperately needed Marwyn's help.

Being the same size, the Purple Eel was just as overcrowded as the Smiling Widow had been. It was never more apparent than after Tyrion returned from the Midnight Light, where Marwyn kept only a necessary crew. He felt as if he had walked King's Landing across twice, before he found Liaha. Though many people seemed to know her, no one knew where she was at the moment. He was starting to wonder if she had found a way to flee the ship when finally one little girl pointed towards the crow's nest. Feeling generous, Tyrion gave her a gold coin and the child took it, looking at it confused.

His heart squeezed with fear and his injured hand hurt like hell yet Tyrion managed to climb up. Liaha wasn't alone. There was a young sailor pointing to the dark shapes and teaching her how to tell the ships apart before seeing flags. Tyrion watched them for moment before climbing the last part. Despite her looks, she has a way of charming men, which he could see now. Behind a plain face there was a rare and dangerous beast. How many lives has she lived before? How many lives has she taken?

"What are you doing here, my lord?" she asked him, seeming surprised.

"Help me up and I might even tell you."

It was the sailor who helped him to climb the last part before giving his pardons and leaving them alone. Both of them watched him depart silently, Tyrion trying to stay as far from the edge as possible. The ship seemed unsettlingly small from this height.

Liaha turned to him. He never before noticed just how piercing her gaze was.

"One of the men on the ships we joined, the Archmaester Marwyn, would like to play cyvasse with you. He is a man of learning and a friend of mine." Well the last one of that statement might not have been entirely true, but Marwyn was as close to a friend as Tyrion allowed people these days.

"Is he the one who looks like glahi?" she asked, all false innocence.

"Glahi?" he did not know the word.

"Big, heavy, wrinkled dog."

Tyrion almost raised his eyebrows wondering if Marwyn truly looked so much like one of his nicknames or if she had heard of him all the way in Braavos. "A mastiff, yes, that would be the one."

"He looks scary."

"He is," Tyrion allowed. Yet, in the end, she agreed to come.

Two young men greeted them on the Midnight Light. The short one escorted them to the archmaester's cabin. As soon as they were inside, Tyrion heard the lock click. Liaha pierced him with her eyes, but he was no wiser about what was happening than her. She looked around and quicker than Tyrion would have believed possible threw herself against a small window. She was almost gone by the time Marwyn appeared from behind a secret wall and ran to her with dagger in hand. He only managed to scratch her hand but soon Tyrion heard a dull thud.

The archmaester unlocked the door and they walked towards the part of deck the window had been facing. The girl lay there with eyes wide open, but unseeing. Angry that Marwyn left him in the dark about his plan, Tyrion bent and put a hand on her neck. Mercifully, her heart was still beating, though rather slowly.

"You should be thankful I took so much interest in the Master Galad's teaching," the archmaester went on seemingly oblivious to Tyrion's mood. "The man had fearsome passion in creating new poisons. He named this one snake's breath. The only disadvantage I noticed is that its effect weakens with every use. Now step back, I need to take away her blades."

Tyrion did not protest when Marwyn started to strip the girl naked as he himself was not surprised that she had weapons concealed on various places. Four knives of different shape and even a slim sword. The sword looked a lot like Braavosi blade, but there was still something distinctively Westerosi about its design. Tyrion reached for it, but the Mage stopped him. Only then the Lannister noticed that the Marwyn was wearing thick leather gloves.

Once the girl was unarmed Marwyn beckoned his men and one took the girl in his arms. Together they went to the second deck. Aside of a prison The small cabin they entered reminded Tyrion of a temple of an especially sinister godhood. There were no windows and all the walls, ceiling and floor were framed by iron bars and only equipment contained of two bedsheets. As many as fourteen oil lamps lighted the space.

Marwyn's man lay the girl on a thick blanket and a new man appeared seemingly out of nowhere with smith's tools. With uneasy feeling Tyrion watched as the smith put an iron collar around girl's slim neck and chained her to the wall opposite the entrance. Tyrion could not help but to put a hand to his own neck, he still remembered the collars he wore in Volantis and Meereen.

"Wouldn't chaining her by a leg suffice?" he couldn't help but grumble.

"No, she might bite it off," Marwyn answered simply.

"So I take it that the effect of the poison is not permanent."

The Mage looked at him somehow annoyed. "If I wanted her dead or permanently incapacitated, there were thousands easier ways to do so. This is much more delicate affair. She will start to wake up tomorrow. At first two days her mind will wander like in fever, then will come the deep sleep. In the end she will wake up without any lasting damage."

"The best three days of her life," Tyrion commented sourly.

Marwyn ignored him. Instead the archmaester knelt, took off his glove and cut his own hand. Tyrion watched fascinated and horrified as drops of blood felt at Liaha's face. The Mage spoke few words in tongue the Lannister did not recognize and smeared the blood across girl's bruised face. Tyrion gasped utterly bewildered when Liaha's features changed right under Marwyn's thick hairy fingers.

"Of course I heard, but to see it..." Tyrion could not even find the words.

"Her true face. Glamours are known in the world, I myself am no novice in that regard, but this a higher art of magic."

Tyrion came closer to have a better look, thankful for all the oil lamps in the room. Even with her face covered by fresh blood he could see how pretty she was with straight nose and fine rosy lips. What surprised him the most was that she appeared no older than Tysha on the day he had wed her. Even younger than the girl whose face she had stolen.