They poled past the Fishmarket's stink and shouting. A Goldcloak on the quay spat and yelled at another to throw the dice faster. No one looked twice at four shapes clinging to a half-sunk barge and four "pack horses" led by a boy with his hood down. They drifted into deeper shadow where pilings made a forest.
When they reached the unbarred cistern, Lyanna slid into the Blackwater, rope in one hand and Winter's reins in the other. She kicked at the water before finding the tunnel's lip with her foot and stepping inside. Dijkstra launched from the pine and ghosted high, a pale fleck that any man would take for a trick of the evening.
Lyanna led the way into the reeking blackness. Stagnant water rose past her knees, a mix of human waste. Somewhere above, footsteps crossed a plank. Water echoed. The city hummed like a hive.
Whent's whisper found them. "Welcome to King's Landing," he said. "Try not to gag on it. Lead on, Lady Wolf."
Lyanna put her palm to the wet stone and closed her eyes, visualizing the city as it looked from the sky. Then she struck a torch for light and led them by feel and memory, one hand on the slick stone. The flame cast a shimmer of light over the still water, occasionally broken by floating feces or a swimming rat.
"The city stinks," Darry muttered behind her.
"It's worse then it should be," Ser Lewyn frowned. "The tunnels are wrong. The water does not run. It sits. The tide shoves the river up the throats of the drains and leaves it to rot."
They turned left where two bricks had been laid in a pattern she recognized from above, then climbed a short rise where rats watched from a shelf of stone and did not flee. The air fattened with a new smell: sharp, sweet, and wrong, like pine pitch and vinegar sharing one cup.
"Hold," Lyanna said. She raised the torch and moved it along the wall. Lines cut the stone: a sigil of a flaming bowl, scored and blackened by old heat. A bronze-bound door sat an arm's length beyond, edges tarred.
Whent's voice lost its humor. "Alchemists' mark."
The door was not barred from this side. Lyanna set her shoulder to it. The seal gave with a wet sigh.
Inside, the chamber was small and close. Racks held fat earthenware jars roped in twine, each stoppered with wax and stamped with a three-headed dragon. The torchlight turned the shadowed liquid within a hungry green.
"Wildfire," Oswell said. The word came out like a spit on the floor. "Typical of our brilliant king."
Lewyn drew in a slow breath and steadied it. "Aerys was not always like this," he said. "Time sharpened what was already cruel."
Darry's jaw worked. "Men plot against him on the road and in their halls. Every day. Perhaps a king must be iron to rule a realm like this."
"Burning a city is not ruling with an iron fist," Lyanna said. "It is madness."
Whent's hand flattened on a jar, then flinched back as if the glaze had teeth. "Rhaegar would not do this," he said. "He would not."
Lyanna shut the door and pressed the tar back with the heel of her palm. "For the sake of the common folk, let us hope not."
They moved on, quieter than before. Finally, they came to a rusted iron door just above the waterline. A faint night breeze drifted past the edges. Oswell Whent and Lewyn Martell worked together to open the ancient door, breaking the hinges in the process.
Climbing out of a forgotten basement, they exited the tunnels into a narrow alley where the ground dipped between three hills. Above, the bulk of the Red Keep loomed on Aegon's High Hill. To her right, the shoulders of Visenya's hill. To her left, the slope of Rhaenys'.
King's Landing at night was an eerie creature: carts creaking downhill, muffled talk behind shutters, a baby crying two alleys away and then going quiet. The smell did not improve, but there were new undertones. Smoke, lamp oil, and stale wine.
"Cloaks on," Whent said softly. "We're almost there."
They kept to the dips where torchlight did not reach. Twice they waited in alleys while patrols passed: eight men in gold cloaks walking two by two, spears at a lazy angle, a sergeant humming a tune under his breath. The second time Lyanna caught a scrap of words as he went by: "King's orders, king's orders," like he had to remind himself the orders were real.
Silk Street announced itself before they reached it. Lanterns shaped like fruit and flowers painted the night mist in soft colors. The house Lyanna wanted stood back from the street under a carved lintel. Red silk fell in long panels from the eaves. The door was plain wood polished by a thousand hands.
"We don't run an inn," the woman in the doorway said before they could knock. Her voice was warm, her eyes sharp. Dark skin, a coil of hair wrapped in a scarf of orange and blue.
"We don't need an inn," Oswell said. "We need a door that shuts and a room that forgets our faces by morning."
"My ladies remember faces very well," she said. "It is part of why they are dear."
"We will pay dear," Lewyn said. He took two steps forward into the lantern light and bowed as if he stood before a princess. "Chataya of the Silk Street, I am Ser Lewyn Martell of Sunspear. I ask for your hospitality during this difficult time. We are road-worn. I promise house Martell will remember your hospitality."
Her mouth tilted. "A Dornishman with manners." She let her gaze slide over Darry's scowl, Oswell's ruined helm, Lyanna's lowered hood. It lingered a heartbeat on the white bird perched silent on the girl's shoulder, then passed on. "Very well. Coin first."
Whent paid. She counted without embarrassment, tucked the purse into her sash, and stood aside. "No trouble under my roof," she said. "If you make any, make it somewhere else and bring me no part of it."
"We are too tired for trouble," Oswell said.
Chataya called for a groom to take their horses, then led them up a narrow stair that smelled of rosewater and soap. The turret room she gave them was high and clean, with a small hearth, a bowl of fresh water, and a window that looked onto a shallow court where night flowers climbed a trellis.
Darry took the stool by the door, sleeping with his back to it. Whent cracked the shutters to air out their sewer stink, then laid on his cloak below the window. Lewyn lit the hearth and slept with his back to the wardrobe. Lyanna stripped her boots, washed the worst of the tunnel from her skin, and sat on the edge of the bed with her fingers laced tight.
Once her traveling companions nodded off, she crooked a finger to the pale bird. Dijkstra hopped onto her wrist and tilted his head.
"Find Dacey," she whispered. "Say I am in the city. Say she should get out of the camp if she can. I don't want her being used as a hostage against me."
The raven's red eyes brightened. He opened his beak, then shut it again and only bobbed, mindful of waking Ser Jonothor. He hopped to the sill and waited.
Lyanna closed her eyes and found him. For a breath her world narrowed to feathers and wind. She felt the house's warm breath, the cool seam of night above it, the thrum of the city like a hive that refused to sleep. She took him up and up until the lanterns were sparks, then northwest until the stench of the city faded.
"Tell her," she thought, and shaped the words like a scroll to put in his beak. "Tell her I am under a safe roof. Tell her to live."
Dijkstra crowed his assent and continued flying, away from the rising sun.
Lyanna let herself fall back onto the mattress. The dawn of the city pressed through the shutters like a tide. Lyanna pulled the blanket to her hips and lay down with her face to the wall. She listened for wingbeats until sleep took her.