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I killed a little boy.
He couldn't have been more than seven, eight years old, and I killed him.
I could still smell his blood on my hands.
I would forever smell his blood on my hands.
Because I killed a little boy, and this is how I paid for it.
I'm in Braavos. It's the Sevenmas week, and I'm in Braavos with my old friend and mentor, Davos Seaworth. Davos, who lost the tools of the trade that one time when his target was faster and got to him and cut his fingers off. Davos, who had to learn again to kill, with his other hand, and how's a hitman supposed to work with only one hand anyway.
Everything stinks in Braavos. Our boss, Littlefinger, sent us here. He knows a lot about stink because he owns brothels in King's Landing where everything stinks even worse. High-class brothels, but still. He's the one who got Davos out of trouble when he was not fast enough to keep his fingers attached to his hand. Braavos must be his favourite place in all the known world. I believe he's even got ancestors hailing from here. It's a fairy-tale town, he told Davos, and all lit up in Sevenmas lights it's even dreamier. He told Davos to take me here, that I needed to rest, needed to think. To regroup. But what's there to regroup when you have killed a little boy.
I didn't mean to. I'm not saying it to excuse myself. Not at all. I didn't mean to because he wasn't meant to stand there, behind my target. Behind that filthy septon, childfucker that he was. He was my target, but I would have killed him anyway because he liked his acquaintances innocent and young. Littlefinger wanted him dead for money, but I know how Littlefinger is about kids. As if he was abused as a child himself. Beat them with your intellect, he always says. Beat them with your intellect if your body is not strong enough. (Gods... What if he really was?)
And the little boy was not strong enough. He was right there, right behind the fucking septon, maybe he was trying to escape from his filthy septon hands, I don't know, I couldn't know, because I pulled the trigger and they were gone. The bullet passed through the septon and reached the little boy and they were both gone, the fucking septon and the little boy hidden behind him and I didn't know it and I killed a little boy and now I'm in this stinking town with my old friend who shoots with the wrong hand and everyone is happy except me.
It's Sevenmastime after all. Everyone is happy, and they have every right to be. Let them be, until they kill a little boy and their boss thinks he's giving them something good and happy and sends them to a fairy-tale fucking town to regroup.
I could have been happy, in reality. I have been happy, for a little while.
I was happy the day I met a lovely girl.
Sightseeing, that's what we had to do according to Davos. Having a nice time, seeing all the canals and the old buildings and that. Because that's what people do when they are in Braavos and it's the Sevenmas week and they have killed a little boy.
Sightseeing my arse.
Forgetting. Being forgotten. That's what I wanted. But sightseeing we did because Davos was my friend and Davos was still alive.
Braavos is a lagoon surrounded by a wall of hills covered with pine trees, with a hundred islands inside, crammed with houses and monuments made of nothing but dark grey stone.
A canal barge trip first took us to the central lagoon where all the temples are located. There's a perpetual freezing fog hanging over everything and I almost couldn't see a thing. But Davos, pocket guidebook in hand, started to spell them out, one by one. I don't even know why this week they only celebrate Sevenmas. They built a bloody temple on every bloody corner over here, because apparently all Gods are honoured in Braavos. The damned seven, the old gits, the whole lot. They have enough Gods to celebrate a different one every day.
The barge stopped next at the Titan, a huge bloke made of stone who roars every dawn and every sunset. It was barely noon, and I was afraid Davos was going to make us stay there and wait until the next damned roar, but the damned guidebook said that the roar could be heard all over town, so when he said we could move I pretty much rushed back to the barge. As if it was an escape. I was forced to stay in this stinking town anyway. Stay. For what? I just wanted to go back to our pretty canalside hotel and disappear until the Sevenmas week was over and perhaps then we could go home. But where's home now? The truth is that I had nowhere else to go. And there was still Drowned Town to visit.
Our canal trip ended at Ragman's Harbor. From there, we walked the short distance to our next pick-up point, where we were told that the thick skim of ice that formed in the night on the surface of the narrow canals running between the domes and towers of the old, drowned buildings in this part of the lagoon made our scheduled gondola ride through them impossible. Brilliant. I really wanted to sink deep into my mattress now. Drown in my despondency. Sleep the year away. Davos stayed and listened religiously and delightedly to the flashy red-haired tour guide who was trying her best to describe what we were supposed to see but we were not seeing. I got bored at the second sentence and left.
Fucking hells. I'm about the worst tourist in the whole world.
As I walked back to the hotel, hands in pockets and deep in thought, the fog opened before me like a tattered grey curtain to reveal an old warehouse. Buttery yellow light spilled from the doors, and I could hear voices from within. I stopped to have a look.
Even from afar I could tell that she had the deepest eyes I had ever seen.
She was bickering with a... dwarf? Who kept whining about his... cock flopping out? Bobono! She called his name out loud in annoyance. And the little prick reminded her that she had to be ready. Because soon he would be raping her.
Now, I would fight for a woman. Any time. But then I realised. They were mummers. Preparing to perform. It was not a warehouse; it was a playhouse.
I stayed and watched the matinee. And not only was she raped; she was murdered too.
As soon as her scenes ended, I sneaked backstage. And I did all I could to distract her from her wardrobe duties until she took my hand and led me off and we were wandering the misty cobbled streets and bridges as she smiled at me. Her sweet smile. The best bit of Braavos so far.
Gods, she's lovely.
The loveliest girl I've ever seen in all of my life. And maybe in another life too.
She's from Braavos, she said. She loved her town, fiercely, and I couldn't believe it because despite having met her everything still stank and how could you love a place where everything stinks.
Braavos is a shithole. It's her home town, but it's still a shithole. And it's built on water, for fuck's sake. Everything is built on fucking water, and everything fucking stinks. All those bridges and all those cobbled streets and all of that beautiful fucking fairy-tale stuff; cat piss and rotten fish everywhere but she loved her town.
I could love her.
When I woke up curled up beside her with the early morning sun finally breaking through the fog and filtering through the curtains, bathing her skin in shades of pink and gold and warmth, I knew I could.
And now that I'm lying here and she's crying above me and crying to the people carrying me away, I know. I should stay. I should stay and make a home with her and maybe pick up two stray cats or twelve and take care of them all. So the fucking town won't stink of fucking cat piss anymore. (I want to take care of you, she said when she woke up.)
But how could I?
I killed a little boy.
A little boy who isn't here any more and will never be here again. And all because of me. He is dead because of me. I'm trying to get my head round it but I can't. I will always have killed that little boy. And that ain't ever gonna go away. Ever.
I killed a little boy!
Davos says that I should get out of this business, try to do something good. That I deserve a chance at redemption.
Davos says that this is not just a bloody holiday. That Littlefinger sent us here for a reason.
There's an eerie glow in the sky, and Davos says that I have to die.
Davos, who finds this shithole charming and finds the tour guide he spent the night with even more charming. Davos, who wears the bones of his severed fingers in a pouch around his neck for luck.
As he lies on the cobblestones in a puddle of blood with the bones of his severed fingers scattered all around, he says that I have to die because I killed a little boy and our boss liked me but to our boss killing a little boy is unforgivable so he ordered my old friend and mentor to take me to Braavos and kill me, make it look like a suicide, I don't care, he said, but don't bring him back to me or I'll kill him and then I'll kill you too.
I can't let Davos die in my place. I killed a little boy and I can't have a friend killed too. My only friend, I guess.
There's the lovely girl, but I don't know if I can count her as a friend.
She did things with me, things that friends don't do to each other. Or maybe they do and I missed out all the fun because I was too busy murdering people for money. Bringing the gift of death into the world. That's the only thing I ever did. Kill. Get paid. Rest. The occasional courtesan provided by Littlefinger to relieve the stress. No attachments. Never attachments. And then kill again.
Braavos is not nearly as freezing as the fucking North but the constant fog makes everything uncomfortably cold; and after the playhouse and after we'd been wandering for a while the misty cobbled streets and bridges and later the canals on a gondola ride, I was not surprised when she cuddled close to me, wrapping her purple woollen cloak lined in red silk around us both.
She surprised me though when our gondola glided under an imposing stone bridge carved with faces and she tilted her head up and kissed me. This is the Bridge of Eyes, she said, and from the top of its span you can see all the city. The fog was thick and there was nothing to see but grey; I could see nothing else anyway because I was lost in the grey of her eyes and I drowned out her words with more kisses as I finally heard the Titan give a mighty roar.
She surprised me again later at her apartment, a cramped attic really, when her hand grabbed something from under a cushion then disappeared between her legs and after a click I felt the deep, rumbly vibrations of the toy against her clit reverberating up my cock and soon her walls were clenching around my flesh and I was emptying myself into the condom she had slipped on me before sinking to all fours on the couch and glancing at me over her shoulder with those deep grey eyes that have been haunting me since the moment I set mine on her.
No, she's so much more than a friend.
But what do I know. I never had friends.
Except Davos. Davos with his weathered face always grumpy, Davos who called me divvy for no reason except that I was. He taught me everything. And then on the Sevenmas week he died for me in this stinking town because he just didn't have it in him to kill me and Littlefinger knew it and came to this stinking town too because you've gotta do what you've gotta do and when he was about to get to me Davos was there and used his body to save me and now I don't have friends anymore.
And Littlefinger still wants me dead.
I was walking arm in arm with my lovely girl when it all started. I was walking with my lovely girl and with the hole inside me where my heart had been. Guilt ate away at it, and the hole had filled up with black, putrid sewage that somehow was turning lighter, cleaner the more I held my lovely girl.
My lovely girl. I like how it rolls off my lips.
I wish she could be mine. Truly, I do. I wish I could call someone mine at last. But I killed a little boy, and now my boss wants to kill me too.
Braavos is lost in fog once again. It's the Sevenmas week and everyone is happy and everyone is wandering the misty cobbled streets and bridges all lit up in Sevenmas lights and Littlefinger is running after me with the gun he fired at my friend in his hand.
It's beginning to snow and Littlefinger chases me through the fog, over bridges and through alleys, and I can't run anymore. Too many people, too much happiness. I can't risk having someone killed. I don't even know if I could ever kill another person at all.
I stop and slowly turn to him and it's obvious that he doesn't feel the same way.
He shoots.
I fall.
I fall back on the snow that is covering rapidly the cobblestones and behind me someone else falls. Someone short. Someone little. A little boy.
The bullet passed through me and reached a little boy among the passers-by behind me; and I can't see clearly, the snow, the blood, the fog, but I realise the little boy sprawled face down on the cobblestones is not a little boy. He's short. He's little. He's Bobono the dwarf.
But Littlefinger is totally out of his mind because he wanted to kill me and instead he killed a little boy and he's shaking in horror as he stands above me and you can't kill a kid and expect to get away with it, he says, and I have no chance to speak because he raises the gun again as he stares wide-eyed at the dead body of the dwarf.
He shoots again.
He dies.
He dies with a bullet in his head on the Sevenmas week in this fairy-tale fucking town as the snow falls heavy and I lie in a fucking alley with my guts bleeding out and my lovely girl running towards me with tears in her eyes and it's then that I know that I love her.
Gods, I love her.
I can't feel the hole inside me, not anymore. Maybe she put my heart back in there. Maybe she filled the hole with a piece of her own heart. Maybe she'll even teach me how to use it someday.
But I feel like I'm dying now, the paramedics above me and her purple woollen cloak lined in red silk and my blood, in this fucking alley of this fairy-tale fucking town on the Sevenmas week.
Because I killed a little boy.