Arya Stark

Arya grows up at Winterfell as the second child of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, caught between Septa Mordane's lessons and the sums and household accounts Maester Luwin teaches her. She rides better than her older sister, so well that Jeyne Poole mockingly nicknames her Arya Horseface for her long jaw; around the castle, though, people call her Arya Underfoot, because she's never where a lady is supposed to be.

She'd rather sit through her father's suppers — he invites a different member of his household each night and she loves their stories — than learn embroidery. Her half-brother Jon Snow encourages everything Sansa finds unladylike; once, when he covers himself in flour to scare his younger siblings in the crypts, Arya answers with a punch instead of a scream. When Robb and Jon find a litter of orphaned direwolf pups, Arya keeps a female she names Nymeria, after the warrior queen of the Rhoynar.

Before she leaves for the south with her father, Jon gives her a slender sword she names Needle, warning her that the first lesson is not to stick herself with the wrong end.

The journey changes everything. Near the Ruby Ford, Arya is play-fighting with Mycah, a butcher's boy, when Prince Joffrey finds them and attacks; Nymeria leaps to defend her and bites his arm. Knowing Joffrey will want payback, Jory Cassel helps Arya drive the wolf off before anyone finds her. King Robert orders her scolded, but Queen Cersei demands a wolf's death, and since Nymeria has run off, Sansa's Lady is killed in her place. Mycah is hunted down and killed by Sandor Clegane, Joffrey's Hound — a name Arya won't forget.

In King's Landing, her father finds Needle and, instead of punishing her, hires the Braavosi swordsman Syrio Forel to train her. Syrio has her repeat a litany that stays with her: 'Quiet as a shadow. Calm as still water. Quick as a snake. Swift as a deer. Fierce as a wolverine. A man who fears losing has already lost. Fear cuts deeper than swords.' During one of her balance drills in the Red Keep, she finds a hidden passage and overhears two men discussing spies and her father.

When King Robert dies and Joffrey takes the throne, the Lannister guard comes for the Starks. Syrio holds them off with a wooden practice sword so Arya can run; she kills a stable boy with Needle and escapes through the passage she'd found, while Sansa is taken prisoner and Septa Mordane is killed. Unable to leave the city, she survives for weeks in Flea Bottom, catching pigeons to trade for food, until she sees her father condemned before the Great Sept of Baelor. Yoren of the Night's Watch pulls her from the crowd before the execution and gets her out of King's Landing.

With her hair cut short and going by the name Arry, she travels toward the Wall among Yoren's recruits. Near a deserted town by the God's Eye, the group is ambushed by Ser Amory Lorch's raiders; Arya survives, but not before freeing three caged prisoners, among them a man called Jaqen H'ghar. She goes on with Gendry, Hot Pie and Lommy Greenhands until Ser Gregor Clegane's men catch them and take Needle from her.

She's taken to Harrenhal as a servant, under a steward named Weese who beats her. There she starts reciting a list every night, names of people she wants dead. When someone threatens her with the reach of House Lannister, she doesn't flinch: 'It's you who should be running, and Lord Tywin, and the Mountain, and Ser Addam, and Ser Amory, and that stupid Ser Lyonel whoever he is — you'd all better run, or my brother will kill you. He's a Stark, more wolf than man, and so am I.'

Jaqen H'ghar, who owes the Many-Faced God three deaths for the three prisoners she freed, asks her for three names. She gives him Chiswyck and Weese, and threatens to name a third: him. To make her take it back, Jaqen helps her free the northern prisoners from the dungeons and stages an uprising; afterward he changes his face in front of her and hands her an iron coin with one word: Valar Morghulis. Arya serves for a while as Lord Roose Bolton's cupbearer under another name, until Harrenhal passes to Vargo Hoat — she kills the guard at the postern gate and flees with Gendry and Hot Pie.

On the road north, Arya slips into a dream inside Nymeria's skin and watches the wolf and her pack tear apart the men hunting them. Soon after, the Brotherhood Without Banners takes all three of them. On the hill at High Heart they meet an old dwarf woman known as the Ghost of High Heart, who smells death on Arya and begs her to leave: 'It is cruel of you to come to my hill, so cruel. I choked on the grief of Summerhall, I want none of yours. Go from here, dark heart. Go!'

Beric Dondarrion plans to take her to Riverrun for ransom, but before that Sandor Clegane kidnaps her with the same idea in mind. They reach the Twins during her uncle Edmure's wedding to one of Walder Frey's daughters; the Hound can't get inside the castle, and something happens there that night that will later be known as the Red Wedding. He drags her back toward the Vale, hoping her aunt Lysa Tully will pay for her. In a dream, Nymeria helps her pull her mother's body from the river.

They can't reach the Vale, so they settle for a while near the Mountains of the Moon. At an inn by the crossroads they run into two of Ser Gregor's men, Polliver and the Tickler — Sandor kills the first and Arya the second, taking Needle back from his hands. When one of Sandor's wounds turns septic and he begs her to kill him, she refuses and leaves him there, dying.

At Saltpans she boards a ship to Braavos, showing the iron coin and saying Valar Morghulis. Once there, she's taken to the House of Black and White, the temple of the Many-Faced God, where a man makes her speak her true name and tests her before letting her in.

She settles into the temple's rhythms, though she can never fool the kindly man, who always knows when she's lying. One day he tells her to rid herself of everything tying her to her old name; she throws her belongings into the water, but hides Needle on the temple steps.

She becomes a novice and learns the local tongue; later she's sent to sell clams at the docks under the name Cat, and likes the life well enough, still dreaming as a wolf some nights. Every new moon she returns to the temple to tell the kindly man three things she's learned. One night she tells him about a man found with his throat cut and his body dumped in a canal — a Night's Watch deserter named Dareon — and that the one who killed him was a girl called Arya of House Stark. She wakes up blind the next morning.

Blind, she stays on at the House of Black and White and learns to trust her other senses, now going by Beth, a beggar working the streets of Braavos. Without meaning to, she starts slipping into the skins of the city's cats and seeing through their eyes; some nights she dreams as Nymeria too, though she tells no one.

With this new gift she passes a test set by the kindly man, who restores her sight. She's given a task: deliver 'the gift' to an old man who insures ships. They take her down to the Hall of Faces, where for the first time she changes her face and becomes, for the job, the Ugly Little Girl.

She watches her target for days and notices he always bites the coins he's handed before accepting them. She slits the purse of a man doing business with him and slips in a poisoned coin, which ends up in the old man's mouth. With the job done, she gets her own face back and an acolyte's robe: her training under Izembaro begins.