Gendry wasn't sure what it was about the girl on the bridge that caught his attention. She was pretty enough, but not so pretty that she should have stood out from all the girls in the marketplace—at least until a man carrying a stack of lumber suddenly turned in her path. She should have been smacked with the lumber and knocked to the river below. Instead, she'd ducked and skittered to the side, graceful as a cat, and only he had noticed.

He couldn't stop himself from surging through the crowd and laying a hand on her arm. The girl whirled. The hair was too dark, and the face too round. The eyes that looked back at him were small and brown, not large and gray. But if he wasn't mistaken, he'd seen surprise flicker through them for a blink. Gendry remembered, vaguely, a changeable man with a coin.

The memory was strangely foggy—something he'd cast from his mind because he'd not been able to understand it. But since then he'd learned that more was possible in this world than most mortals had ever dreamed of. In the taverns, men and women gossiped about the return of dragons and, with them, the return of magic. More things were possible than had been.

The girl ducked her head, dipped her ankles and blushed. "Ser?"

It's not her, he thought, suddenly embarrassed. But the way she moved… Suddenly, he was knocked into her by a bustling woman carrying a basket of beets. As he inhaled, he knew the scent to the marrow of his bones. He felt that he was going mad. "Sorry, M'lady."

"My Lady? I'm not a lady!" She softened the exclamation with another head-duck, another blush.

"So sorry, miss. It's just that you remind me of a high-born girl I used to know."

"How so?"

"The way you move, more than anything."

Her left eyebrow raised almost imperceptibly for the briefest moment. "You really oughtn't comment on the movement of girls you don't know. Now if you'll excuse me, I must be going." As she turned away, her cloak opened a bit and he spied the blade hanging, sheathed, from her waist.

"It you don't want people to know who you are, you shouldn't carry Needle."

She turned to look at him in confusion. "What? Needles? I'm no seamstress."

"Oh, brava." he said, smiling. "Not even a flicker that time. You're doing better."

"Better at what? Please do leave me alone, ser. I'm but a maid who wishes to be left alone."

"Well, at least you're a maid, now. That's progress."

She looked so confused before walking away that he briefly doubted his conviction, but something in him knew, as he had so long ago: he was supposed to protect her.

"Why are you here?" he asked, still following her.

"I'm just trying to buy some bread," the girl proclaimed, exasperated.

"Not here in the market! Here in King's Landing," he hissed. "It's a dangerous time to be here. Cersea Lannister is in power and fighting Daenerys Targaerean for the throne. Trade routes are shut down. We'll be lucky if we don't all starve."

"This is my home. Where would I go?"

"Wherever the hell you've been, 'Arry!" He'd just barely stopped himself from calling her Arya. She stopped, sighed and turned to face him.

"God, you're relentless," she grumbled, giving him a hard shove in the chest. He nearly fell off the bridge. "For years, I've been no one." She sighed. "Needle was the only thing I couldn't leave behind."

"Not my fault you did a Bravosi Water Dancer move instead of falling off the bridge like any normal person would have. Now what did you do to your face?"