Mya Stone

Mya was born in the year 279 after the Conquest, when Robert Baratheon was still a boy under Lord Jon Arryn's guardianship. Of her father she keeps only blurred memories: a big, strong man who used to lift her up and toss her into the air before catching her again.

Lord Eddard Stark often came along on Robert's visits, even after Robert's interest in the girl's mother had faded. Once the rebellion ended and Robert took the crown, Mya stayed behind at the Gates of the Moon, without title or official recognition, though the whole Vale knew whose daughter she was.

She became a guide on the road up to the Eyrie, one of the most dangerous climbs in the Seven Kingdoms, learning to make the ascent even in darkness more times than she could count, on mules she trained herself. Tall and thin, with black hair cropped short and deep blue eyes, she dresses like a man and avoids gowns; she is cheerful and headstrong, and trusts her mules more than she has ever trusted any man.

Years later, after Prince Joffrey was born, Robert said aloud that he wanted to bring one of his bastard daughters to King's Landing; everything points to Mya being the one he meant. Queen Cersei Lannister did not openly object, but let slip a venomous remark about how unhealthy the city would be for a growing girl.

Robert understood the threat hidden in those words and grew angry enough to strike his wife, though he never pushed the matter again. Mya stayed where she had always lived, at the Gates of the Moon, never setting foot in the court she was almost sent to.

Mya lost her maidenhood to Mychel Redfort during the years he served as squire to Ser Lyn Corbray. It was also around then that Ser Nestor Royce, steward of the Eyrie, tried to arrange a marriage for her, a plan she turned down every time it was raised.

None of it came to anything: she stayed unmarried, keeping clear of the matches others tried to make for her, with the Eyrie and its mules as the only ground she truly claimed as her own.

When Catelyn Tully arrives in the Vale looking for her sister, Mya confides that she is in love with Mychel Redfort and hopes to marry him one day. The hope does not last: Mychel is soon forced to marry a highborn girl from the Vale, and the gap between their births — her bastard blood against his Andal lineage — surprises no one.

When Lysa Tully demands that her sister climb to the Eyrie at once, it is Mya who offers to guide her up the mountain path, leading her on the trained mules along the trail she knows better than any other guide in the Vale.

In time, Mya becomes one of the closest companions of Alayne Piedra, the girl living at the Eyrie with her father, Lord Petyr Baelish. A bond of trust grows between them, visible in the afternoons they spend together around the castle.

She also wins, without much trying, the affection of Lothor Brune, one of Baelish's men-at-arms, though the material does not say she returns his feelings.