The children of slaves are born into bondage, but the children of thralls are born free; any babe born on one of the islands is considered ironborn, even when both his parents are thralls.

- The World of Ice and Fire

Harlaw Island, 290 AC

The child's hand is warm in hers, the woman's cool as nacre. Two little hands, her mother's and her sister's, and now both are in her keeping.

"When kings sat the Seastone Chair, we yielded to you the gifts of youth and beauty on their pyres. When great warriors and high lords descend to your watery halls, we cast the bounty of gold and silver and iron unto the waves, for such is your due."

Here the priest stops to catch his breath. Mud-speckled foam laps against the edges of the coffin, the water swirling cold and brown around her naked ankles.

This is all wrong, Katniss thinks. He wouldn't have wanted this. She thinks of the secret lake in the woods. Her father's woods, she always liked to think of them as, though they would always be poachers inside it and all the game was for the fat lord in his stone castle. She had been plaiting willow leaves into a necklace for Prim, he had been whittling a doll from a wooden peg for her. And when the sun had shone hot and high in the sky, she had laid her drowsy head in his lap and he had sung her to sleep.

"But this, O Lord," the Drowned God's priest continues, swishing his driftwood cudgel, "was a lowly thrall, a humble bondsman. Have mercy on his soul and his meager offerings of fruit and flesh."

Katniss grits her teeth. The fruit and flesh is the last they're like to see of nourishing food in a while - parting gifts from Haymitch Abernathy, whose thrall her father was. As the children of thralls they are not in bondage themselves. Freedwomen, born on the Isles, they are no responsibility of Abernathy's and being children, not worth keeping at his hearth as salt wives or serving-women. From the morrow, they can look forward to feeding themselves.

Salt is sprinkled on the waves and Prim's eyes widen with longing as heels of bread and raw fish follow in short order. The men, friends of her father's, set their shoulders to the coffin. Dry-eyed Katniss watches as it sinks under the brine at last. Without stopping to hear the condolences that are sure to follow, she races up the knoll behind Haymitch Abernathy. He has spent a few minutes at his man's coffin, provided the funerary feast, and duty done has left to get roaringly drunk.

"My lord," she cries, catching up with him, "I beg of you a boon."

He does not stop for her, does not even turn to acknowledge her. A grunt is all she gets from him. And why should a scrawny brown waif expect more from the likes of one who was the most cunning butcher of men in the Isles, in his youth?

"I have a little sister, a mother," she begins, hating how breathy and childish her voice sounds. "Please, my lord-"

"I've let you keep the hut and your things inside it," he says shortly. "Few would be as kind, girl." There is a warning in his voice, this is a man known for his drunken rages, not the sweetness of his temper.

"I could be of service to you," she squeaks. "I-I am almost a woman grown and-and-"

He spares her a glance, dismissal writ large. "I have men looking for salt wives but they want pillowy tits and thighs to rest their heads on night. Not twigs. Come back to me in a few years when you've more meat on your bones."

If she were still a little girl, a foolish, feckless little girl, she would cry. Instead she says, "In a few years I'll starve to death."

He almost shrugs at that. That is the way of life in the Isles - babes die at the breast, thralls suffocate or are buried in cave-ins in the salt and iron mines, women bleed to death in the birthing bed or at their husbands' fists. Little girls die of hunger. "You can always try Cray."

Yes, she thinks, letting him go. She can always try Cray, the castle sergeant and a notorious sampler of female flesh.

Morning finds Katniss scrubbing her face and feet in a bucket of clean water for the first time in weeks, while Prim watches from the bed. She has her lower lip between her teeth, sucking at it as she does when she is scared or worrying. But even at seven she is wise beyond her years - she does not ask.

Their mother sits at the table, hands folded in her lap. Her eyes are as blue and blank as hyssop blossoms and she too does not speak.

"Papa was a northman," Prim says. "We shouldn't have put him to sea. We should have buried him under a heart-tree, like he would have wanted."

This is blasphemy, even from a small child and Katniss glances sharply at her mother to see what she makes of it. But her mother, so quick to give tongue to the slightest breath of treachery when their father was alive, is silent today. So it falls to Katniss to play both mother and father.

"Primrose, you can't say those things," she says sharply. "Not even here. Not even to us. You could be whipped at the pillory for it."

"I know," Prim says with a nod of resignation. "But I just had to say it." She watches curiously as Katniss smooths out her freshly-washed hair with the cow's horn comb. "Where are you going?"

"Somewhere."

"Will you bring food?" They have not eaten since the funeral feast and scantily at that too. They have scarcely eaten at all since their father's death.

"I hope so," Katniss says. She throws her shawl over her hair and shoulders, but she leaves the lacings at the neck of her gown open. Cray will want to see what he's buying.

Her mother stirs and gives a little jerk and Katniss waits to hear her speak. She has her arguments marshaled up, all in a row to be thrown at the target of her mother's aghast face like finger-knives. We are dying. We have nothing to sell but ourselves - if not you, then it has to be me. This is for Prim. But her mother only sags back in her chair without saying a word - had she expected otherwise? - and Katniss sighs and stoops to kiss her sister. "Be good, Prim," she whispers, "Take care of Mother for me when I'm gone."

Prim nods and there are tears in her eyes, as though she has the faintest glimmering of what Katniss is about. She may only be seven but she is not stupid.

Cray lives in a fine timber house with a tiled roof nestled in a sunny corner of the keep. He comes quickly when she knocks, a smear of honey on the side of his mouth from his breakfast. The sight of it makes Katniss' stomach grumble and she falters through her carefully rehearsed speech. But at the end of it, there is only pity in his eyes - not desire as she had hoped to evoke. Not desire at all.

"I haven't flowered yet," she says desperately, "if you want a child-" Its a sin to bed a child but where there are sins, there are always lusty men willing to take advantage of them.

"I wouldn't mind a pretty little maid," he admits, "say one like your little sister. Rose isn't it?"

"Primrose," she says between gritted teeth. "Prim."

He nods. "That's the one. She has your mother's looks."

"She's only seven."

"Aye, as I said - a pretty little maid." He grimaces at the thunderous look on her face. "Well think on't. Send her to me when you like and I'll pay dear enough."

"There won't be a when," she says and thinks of adding a few choice cuss words. It'd be a fist to her face and blood in her mouth if she said them aloud, so she only nods to him civilly.

"I'll be waiting," he shouts behind her back and she thinks he can wait forever for her to whore her baby sister out to him.

Prim's eyes light up when she comes back. "I'm sorry I didn't bring back any food, little duck," Katniss says, twining a lock of her sister's hair around her finger. Pale gold like fresh-churned butter, not a color that's easy to find in the Isles. But then their mother was not born to the Isles - she was taken by reavers from the westerlands where beautiful women and golden hair are legion. Oh the hearts you'll break, Prim.

"It doesn't matter," Prim says, throwing her arms impulsively around her sister. "I'll make nettle tea for all of us." Hardly something to fill the belly, but it might stave the pangs off for a little while.

"There's always fish in the sea," Katniss says, trying to be cheerful. But it is hard and she gives up the pose, it fools no one. "Fat good it'll do us though without a net or a boat." Her father was a miner, not a fisherman.

"And game in the forest," Prim murmurs.

Katniss snorts. "That's the lord's virgin woods. Its not ours for the taking, not like the open sea."

"It never stopped Papa," Prim reminds her. "And we might not have a net but we do have a bow. And we have someone who knows how to use it." She gives Katniss a meaningful look over the cracked rim of her cup and the muddy tea sloshing inside it.

Every morning she slings the great bow over her back, scatters a handful of salt over the threshold to ward off the wicked ones and gritting her teeth, says, "I am not afraid."

But she is.

"I can come too," Prim offers, her voice a brave little quaver even though she is owl-eyed with fear. "I could pick berries and herbs while you hunt. I have the book, I know which ones are good and which are not."

"You take care of Mother and the house," Katniss tells her. "You're too small now, you'll only slow me down." Prim nods, grateful at the reprieve but trying not to show it too hard.

So far she's had some luck - plucking eggs from birds' nests and snares she sets for small creatures. But she's never used her father's bow and at the slightest sound, she's all too quick to scramble up a tree and into safety. All very well for high summer, but what will they do when winter finally comes?

By the grace of the gods, I'll be old enough to be bedded by then, she thinks disconsolately. The idea of providing for her family in the depths of winter is overwhelming - no woman can do it alone, she has always been taught, not without a man, a protector.

Not a brave huntress at all, she thinks, disgusted with herself. Her papa had called her that - he had made her feel brave, magnificent. Now she feels like a drab little squirrel, a petty poacher, a thief.

That is the day she meets Gale.

She falls out of her bough, so startled is she to see another human in the woods. Luckily its a low one. He gives her the same look he might a mangled possum caught in a trap, mildly repelled and not quite sure it'll make good eating once its stripped and skinned. Not enough meat on the bones, a mangy little creature almost not worth the effort of slitting its throat in a clean blow.

They know each other in the vague way all the serfs' children within the castle walls do - their fathers worked and died together, once upon a time their mothers would pass gossip at the well with the other women. But he is almost a man grown now and being freeborn, not bound to the mines. Still too young, too slight to be of great use on a galley or the castle walls but growing fast and easily providing for a family of five.

"These are the lord's woods, little poacher-girl," he tells her mildly. "What are you doing here?"

She hugs her bow tighter to herself. "Same as you are, Gale Hawthorne," she snaps, nervousness make her voice higher and sharper.

He circles around her and she jumps around so that she never has her back to him. "Happens I might spare you," he says. "Wouldn't want to have such a pretty thing like you lose a hand or a foot."

"Happens I might not spare you," she says sullenly. "They'd chop off your arm at the elbow and your foot at the knee if I turned you in, you being a boy and older." But she knows who's side the keeper of the woods would take if it came to a quarrel - between a strapping young man with surplus coin in his pouch and an ugly little waif, there'd be no contest at all.

He laughs as if he can read her mind. "That's a fine bow," he says, nodding to it, strapped across her back. "I knew your father and he was a fair craftsman. Since you've no use for it, I think you'd like to give it to me."

"I would not," she says hotly. And my father wasn't just a fair craftsman, he was the best apprentice on Bear Island! Or so he had always told her, before the reavers had burnt his homestead and taken him away when he was little older than her. A rustling in the bushes distracts her for a moment but Gale doesn't seem to have heard.

"Little girl like you with a big bow like that? You're just giving men a reason to shove an arrow up somewhere." He chuckles. "Be reasonable now, Kitten."

What happens next is rage and pure instinct. "My name," she hisses, stepping back and notching an arrow, "is Katniss." And she lets it fly past his shoulder, the goose feather almost brushing his cheek. He leaps back, startled, stumbles and goes sprawling at her feet. And a hundred years away, she hits a squirrel in the eye. I know a man who'd pay dearly for unmarked squirrel, she thinks dreamily.

She licks her lips and though her heart is beating faster than she ever knew it could, she forces her voice to be calm and smiles down benignly at Gale. "You were saying?"

A/N: So with my usual penchant for mixing up fandoms I present to you The Hunger Games of Thrones! Originally this was going to be one long shot, like "The Lady of the Rock" but I wanted to explore it more so I'll just be putting up moderately big and not enormous chunks of chapters. I hope you enjoyed and as always, leave a review if you did and would like more :)