Chapter Text
Lord Stark does not mean to give her a choice.
“Catelyn…” he starts, looking pained, as if Joanna does not know the reason why already, as if he actually thinks Joanna wants to stay in Winterfell with Lady Stark once he leaves. “Catelyn refuses to allow you to stay, but the South is no place for Starks, Joanna. You’re old enough to get married. I promise you I’ll find you a good match.”
“A good match.” What does that mean for a bastard girl? Joanna had known this was coming, of course, but the knowing does not make her uncertain future any less frightening.
Joanna’s lips stay sealed, but something in her expression must prompt her lord father to say, “It’ll be the heir to a wealthy merchant family, most likely. Sometimes they marry into impoverished nobility, and with your blood, perhaps your children might make such a match.”
“And there’s more wealth in the South,” Joanna says.
Lord Stark hesitates. “Yes, but White Harbor—”
“I’d like to go South,” Joanna tells him. She decided days ago. When she sees Lord Stark preparing himself to deny her, she strikes before he is able to. “In King’s Landing, you’ll be the Hand of the King, not just the Warden of the North, Father. Please. I’ll make a better match there.” This is true, of course, but Joanna has no intention of actually marrying in the South.
What is the South if not more of the North, more of Lady Stark looking at her like she is unclean, more of lordlings and ladies getting her name and going, oh, you’re the bastard? For all that Tyrion Lannister had never been to the Free Cities, he had known much of them, and he had told her that birth does not mean half as much over there as it does here in the Seven Kingdoms.
Lord Stark does not need to know Joanna’s plans, though.
“We have a wolf,” the queen says, so quiet Joanna almost does not hear her. “We have two.”
Nymeria has gone missing, but Ghost and Lady remain. Joanna knows that if they pick only one to kill, which one it will be, but she stands frozen when the King says, “As you will, have Ser Ilyn see to it.”
“Robert, you cannot mean this!”
But the King does, no matter how much Father protests and Sansa begs. They mean to have both Ghost and Lady killed.
“Your Grace,” Joanna says as she steps into the King’s path. She does not have to fake the tears in her eyes or the way her voice trembles. “Please, please, I—” Here, there is a choice: to beg for both direwolves or not. She thinks of all the times Sansa has called Joanna her half-sister—never her sister, her actual sister—and the choice is not a choice at all. It is a certainty. One of the direwolves must die, but Joanna has suffered the King’s stares in silence. She deserves to keep Ghost, at least. The gods must give this to me. “I wasn’t there, Your Grace, and Ghost never makes a sound. He’s so well-behaved, you couldn’t find a nicer pet, and—please, Your Grace, Father always says that you are kind and just. I wasn’t there…” She steps closer to him, and somehow the knights of the Kingsguard let her. The King’s eyes are a deep blue, and they are wide and bright with something when he looks down at her begging.
“You’re right, girl.”
Lord Stark appoints two guards for her at all times. He says it is because bastards are not safe in King’s Landing, but Joanna knows that is a lie. The truth is that girls who look like Lyanna Stark are not safe anywhere, and Joanna is older than Arya. Five-and-ten with the flower of youth, she is the right age for the King to fuck and the Queen to murder.
Joanna does not push back against the protection—only a fool would. She goes out into the city and meets the sons of rich merchants with her two guards, two lumbering men who are quiet and deadly. The merchants are properly impressed, and she even likes some of the men. Every time she feels herself wanting to settle, though, Joanna forces herself to think of feeling small when Lady Stark swept through Winterfell’s halls; of Sansa calling her a bastard to her face after Lord Stark killed Lady.
No, Joanna decides, and the ice around her heart burns.
Somehow, Arya convinces Lord Stark of letting her learn water dancing, the Braavosi style of fighting.
“It’s because he feels bad about Mycah,” her sister tells Joanna. “Do you want to learn too?” Arya turns hopeful eyes on her.
“I can’t.” She continues before Arya protests, “It’s not that Father wouldn’t let me. If he allowed it for you, I’m sure he’d do the same for me, but I’m hoping to get married. Most men won’t want a wife who can fight.” To say nothing of a wife who is a bastard.
Arya stomps her foot. “I don’t want you to get married!”
Joanna smiles at her. “I think you’re the first person to tell me that to my face, Arya.” Of course, most people mean it maliciously, not out of concern for Joanna like Arya does. “I want to get married, though. It’ll make me happy.” Or more secure, anyway.
Arya huffs. “If you say so.”
As the days pass, Joanna continues her search for a suitor. She takes to running errands for Lord Stark, insisting that she must make herself useful, and then admitting that the Red Keep feels stifling when he does not believe her newfound work ethic. In reality, Joanna makes it a point to step into the city to run errands because it puts her in contact with a variety of people, most of whom are in contact themselves with the very suitors she is after. While the men Lord Stark has introduced to her have been appropriate, Joanna has bigger ambitions.
Joanna meets goldsmiths, seamstresses, armorers, singers, merchants great and small, traders who deal in grain or even luxury items like Tyroshi dye. Slowly, she breaks into the shadowed world of the commons, the upjumped masses of King’s Landing that the highborn so despise. Cynthia, an apprentice seamstress with an eye for intrigue and the daughter of a prosperous alehouse owner, informs her of the sailors’ gossip, and it proves to be a good way to learn of the men’s characters, since most of them do not have established reputations in King’s Landing. This is especially true of the ones merely passing through, which are the ones Joanna is most interested in.
Lord Stark catches on to her scheming quick enough.
“Do you really want to live across the sea, away from your siblings and I?” he asks her one night after Sansa, Arya and Septa Mordane have all retired.
“I don’t, Father. I didn’t plan on this at all, but I like them best. They don’t care that I’m a bastard and I…” Joanna does not have to say anymore. Lord Stark looks away from her, guilty. “Pentos and Tyrosh are closer to King’s Landing than Winterfell. Braavos is closer to White Harbor than King’s Landing as well. I wouldn’t be that far… and I want to see the world.”
That settles the matter. Father has always found it difficult to deny Joanna what she asks him for, a fact that neither Lady Stark nor Sansa have ever forgiven her for, so she takes care not to ask for much.
The next day, Arya is busy chasing after cats yet again. Her hands are full of scratches. “I have one left!” she says excitedly. “It’s this old tomcat with a torn ear. He’s fast and mean like nothing else, Joanna.”
“Come on. I’ll help.”
Arya gasps. “You can’t do that. I’m training!”
Joanna tilts her head. “Then I’ll watch.” They roam about the keep for a good two hours before they find the cat hissing at a kitchenmaid that has crumpled to the floor. Arya flings herself at the cat while Joanna focuses on helping up the girl, who is crying. “Here,” she says, handing the girl a golden dragon. The girl looks shocked. “To pay back what you spilled,” Joanna explains. “Tell them Arya Stark ran into you and they won’t punish you.”
The kitchenmaid nods and rushes off.
Something rubs up against Joanna’s ankle, making her jump, but it is only the cat. He stares up at her with his black eyes. “Meow.”
“Oh, you’re not mean,” Joanna decides, and picks him up.
Arya trails after her with wide eyes, an expression which seems to be contagious, as everyone who they come across starts adopting it. At one point, they meet a round, bald man in violet silks. He looks from Joanna to the tomcat, then back again, his eyes wide as saucers.
“My lady,” he says. “Is that a torn ear?”
Joanna looks down at the cat cradled in her arms. “Yes, the poor thing.”
When the man attempts to come closer, the cat hisses, fierce as a dragon. “Oh,” he says, then laughs nervously. “That’s… that’s most… Yes, yes, have a wonderful day…” He waves them away.
“What a strange man,” Joanna mutters to herself, but she pushes such thoughts away for the time being. When she and Arya arrive at the Tower of the Hand, she shows the tomcat to Father. Unfortunately, he hisses and tries to scratch. In fact, it bites Arya and tries to jump at Sansa, who flees back to her room. “Please, Father, I’ll teach him to behave. I’ve done so well with Ghost! Please!”
Lord Stark gives her a dubious look, but he gives in eventually.
“He needs a name,” Arya says after the two of them have washed the cat and trimmed his fur. Well, Arya just watched, but she insisted her task was to supervise.
Joanna frowns. “That’s sad, that he’s so old but doesn’t have a name yet.”
Arya looks uncomfortable for a moment, but Ghost climbs onto Joanna’s bed and nuzzles Arya’s side. “Better late than never.”
“His name is Florian,” Joanna says firmly. “We can play Florian and Jonquil together.”
A cat must be much more amenable than Robb, at least.
Lord Varys stuffs Ghost into a box, then gives Joanna boy’s clothes, a wig, and a bag.
Joanna looks at the wig. It is not Lannister gold, for obviously that would draw too much attention, but it reminds her of the Queen all the same, of that vile, wretched woman who had no doubt asked her son to kill her father. She blinks away her tears, suddenly enraged, and pushes the offending thing back into Varys’ hands. “I’ll cut off my hair. It’ll be less of a hassle.”
“No, no.” He looks alarmed. “Not that beautiful hair of yours. Wear the wig, my lady.”
Joanna opens her mouth, ready to protest, to tell him that she will not need her hair to look pretty where she is going, but she does not actually know where she is going. “I will,” she says.
“You’re not to open that under any circumstances,” the man titters, pointing at the bag. “My associate will pick you up in Braavos and send you on your way. You’ll give the bag to the man with whom you’ll be staying.” Staying for how long? Joanna wants to ask, but she keeps her mouth shut. “You’re a maid and you must remain a maid. Do you understand?” His voice turns deeper, suddenly sharp. Lord Varys sounds like a different person.
“I do,” Joanna says. The Spider makes as if to turn, presumably to leave her in this cramped little cabin. Her heart slams into her chest, fear gripping her. Varys is all I have; Varys is the last familiar face I’ll see in a long time. Joanna had known the eunuch only by word of mouth before her father’s imprisonment, but when he saved her from the Queen’s men and hid her in the Red Keep’s bowels, he became almost a friend. For two moons, he had kept her alive, bringing her food and news of her family. Now here the two of them are: a bastard and a spider, on the cusp of parting, and she has so much to ask him before she leaves. She settles for the most crucial: “Why are you helping me, my lord?” She sounds like someone is strangling her. Grief is strangling me, she thinks sardonically, mad at herself.
“Lord Eddard asked it of me, my lady.”
Joanna wants to break something. “He did?” That vile whore, she thinks of Cersei, that horrible woman. She deserves to die for all she’s done. “And Arya? Sansa? Didn’t he ask—?”
There is a knock on the door.
Varys gives her a stern look. He completely ignores her questions, instead choosing to tell her, “Don’t touch the bag, don’t touch the hair, and don’t let anyone else touch you. Understood?”
“Yes,” she says meekly, still thinking of her father.
Joanna tries to sleep at night, stuck on her cot inside her cramped cabin, Ghost curled up next to her. She does not dare go out onto the ship’s deck, for even disguised as a boy, there are men who will have young boys as well as girls.
“You’re a maid and you must remain a maid,” she mutters to herself, suspicious. Why is that so important? She is only a bastard, but then Joanna has no handsome knight to steal her away and make her stupid with lust. No, even then, Joanna would never give up her maidenhead so cheaply. She will not shame her father so.
Father is dead, she remembers. Funny how she so often forgets. It’s because I want to forget, she realizes in a sudden moment of clarity. Soon after Varys had sent her off with a crew of sailors, she had realized that crying her days away left her disoriented and vulnerable. “Don’t let anyone else touch you,” she says, viciously trying to push aside all thoughts of Lord Stark, but they refuse to go away.
Joanna buries her face into Ghost’s fur.
The Queen’s men had taken taken her prisoner as she had been packing her things to leave the city. She had been furious at being ordered to travel back North when she had had a meeting with a Magister of Myr the very next day, a very promising meeting, given that the man’s son had been not only handsome but taken with her.
Joanna had gone still like a cornered cat—like Florian—when the killing began, but then Varys had been there not even an hour later, sneaking her out of her rooms and into the bowels of the keep. The Spider had made her promises, so many promises. For the most part he had kept them, but not all had gone as planned. Varys had said he would free Lord Stark from the Black Cells and smuggle them both out, had said he’d find Arya for her, but the only one who had escaped King’s Landing, in the end, had been Joanna, the bastard.
Sleep, she tells herself. Sleep, you fool, sleep, none of that matters now. Sleep.
Dead is dead.
Her father is dead.
Dead is dead.
He’s dead, and I’m alone.
In Braavos, Joanna changes ships. A man as thin as a reed leads her to another ship, this time one that looks clean and reputable. He tells her someone will be waiting for her in Pentos. When she asks why she could not have gone to Pentos straight out, the man looks at her like she is an idiot and tells her, “So you’ll be harder to track, girl.”
“Ah.” And now she certainly feels like an idiot.
Joanna nods her goodbye and boards the ship. She finds herself thinking of the Wind Witch, the trading galley her lord father had contracted to take Sansa, Arya and Joanna back to Winterfell. She desperately wishes for news of Arya and Sansa—whether they are alive or dead, captured or free. Is Robb waging war? He’s too young for it, my brother.
She wonders if he is looking for her, if he cares, if he misses her at all.
Joanna needs to believe he does.
Joanna hands Magister Illyrio the bag Varys gave her more than a moon ago, and when he opens one of the letters inside, he goes quiet for some time. When he raises his head, he looks at her like—well, not a piece of meat, exactly, but like something very, very tasty, for all that she looks like a short little boy. He has a group of maids strip her down, bathe and pamper her. They do her hair and dress her in an airy teal blue gown that fits her well enough.
Joanna has never worn anything so fine, but the Magister promises her better ones soon.
“Can… Can I have a cat? A little black cat?” she says suddenly, lonely. “I don’t want a rare one or anything that would cost you; just a cat. I’d pick up one from—”
“You already have one beast,” the Magister says distractedly. “I won’t tolerate another one.”
Joanna drops her eyes. “Are there any news of my family?” She asks next, uncomfortable with the way his eyes rove all over her figure. It reminds her of the way King Robert looked at her, but worse.
“Robb Stark has been named King in the North and the Riverlands. Sansa Stark is the Lannisters’ captive and Arya Stark is dead, it appears. Renly Baratheon has been crowned the King in Highgarden.” Illyrio goes on, but Joanna is no longer listening to him.
“Arya? Dead?” she cries, all thoughts of Illyrio’s greedy eyes forgotten. Joanna had known it to be a possibility, for Arya to be dead but they are talking about Arya, her wild little sister, so full of life and strength. No, it must be a mistake.
“I’m afraid so, dear girl.”
Illyrio gets her a septa. From where, Joanna does not know, but on the day she meets the portly woman, she quizzes Joanna on her knowledge on what feels like everything a lady should know, from embroidery to courtesies to running a household. On the latter, Maester Luwin had made sure Joanna would excel, but she has never received any formal instruction in the former and she knows little about courtesy as a lady would. Joanna, after all, is a bastard, and that is how she has interacted with lords and ladies all her life. She does not know how to simply be courteous; she is subservient because that is what she has been taught to be all her life, regardless of how rebellious she had always wished she could be.
“What have you been doing with your time, then?” Septa Jenelle asks her, clearly thinking that Joanna has wasted her entire life. It makes her feel small.
“I’m very good at sums and geometry. I can read High Valyrian but can’t speak it fluently. I read very well and have a good knowledge of poetry, songs and the histories of the Seven Kingdoms. I can sew, weave and spin thread, and I’m very good at making bone lace—”
“Bone lace? Do you mean pillow lace?”
“That’s what it’s called in the North.”
“Pillow lace!” the septa screeches. “Ladies don’t make pillow lace. That’s for the smallfolk!”
Joanna looks down at her hands, suddenly ashamed. Lady Stark and Septa Mordane were never willing to teach her how to embroider like a proper Southron lady, and although Arya had tried to pass on what she was taught, she had never been good enough at it to explain it to Joanna, no matter how much she tried. All she knows, she knows because Old Nan taught her, frail and blind as she was.
“Not in the North,” she mutters under her breath. Northern ladies make bone lace just like common girls. Not that Lady Stark cared. “I’m sorry,” Joanna says. “I’m a quick learner. I can learn embroidery if you teach me.”
Septa Jenelle shakes her head and sets about teaching her how to sing and dance. She does not bother with needlework at all, saying that she is so far behind that her countenance is all they can fix in the time they have.
“The time we have? Time for what?” Joanna has a feeling she knows, and this is further confirmed when Illyrio presents her with a pleasure slave. “I’m not a whore,” Joanna hisses, near blind with rage.
“Of course not, but if in the future you’re to be married, then wouldn’t it be better to acquaint yourself with the womanly arts of love?”
“And who says I’m to be married?” Joanna thinks back on the way Varys had warned her to remain a maid, why the Spider had even bothered to save Joanna and not Sansa. “You think my siblings are going to die! You mean to use me to get the North!” Joanna wishes, perhaps for the very first time in her life, for Lady Catelyn to be here. The Magister sometimes reminds Joanna of Lord Stark’s wife, with his domineering looks and pretty words. While Lady Stark is tall and fair where the Magister is fat and ugly, they both look at Joanna like she is some lesser thing lucky to be alive, for all that Illyrio insists on dressing her in decadent luxury. She’d tear you apart for daring to even think of my taking her children’s inheritance.
Illyrio does not seem bothered by Joanna’s outburst. He makes a gesture towards the pleasure slave he just presented Joanna with, and the girl leaves the room. “Your family will die, I’m sure,” he says, and Joanna sucks in a breath, pain flooding her chest. How can he be so cruel to confirm that to my face? “But no, it’s not your claim to Winterfell I want. Rather, it’s your blood, your father’s blood.”
Joanna blinks at him, thinking him dense. “Of course you want my father’s blood, I know, but Winterfell is Robb’s!”
Illyrio smiles at her. “I think it’s time to tell you the truth, then. We’ll be having guests soon… and you’ll need time to come to terms with everything.”
Joanna does not understand a thing he is saying, but she feels the first stirrings of distrust. He knows something, she decides, but whatever it is, I won’t be his pawn.
“Your mother,” Illyrio says, surprising her, “was Lyanna Stark.”
And Joanna’s world tips on its axis.