Waif

Born in Braavos in the year 264, the Waif was the eldest daughter of an old house and her father's heir. Her mother died while she was still small, and when she was six her father remarried. Her stepmother treated her well until she had a child of her own, and then began looking for a way to make that daughter the family's heir instead.

She went to the temple of the Many-Faced God, but could not pay the price asked for her stepdaughter's life, so she tried to poison her herself. The poison did not kill her, but a healer from the House of the Red Hands discovered what the stepmother had done and told her father. He offered the temple two-thirds of his fortune and his own daughter, and the girl was given over to the House of Black and White to serve. The poisons she had drunk as a child left her with a child's face and body forever after: hollow cheeks, large dark eyes, and, from then on, the temple's robe, black on one side and white on the other.

When Arya Stark arrives at the House of Black and White, the Waif is one of the two people who receive her, alongside the Kindly Man, and between them they let her serve in the temple; her face reminds Arya of Weasel. The Kindly Man asks the two of them to teach each other their languages — the Common Tongue and the Braavosi tongue — and to play a lying game with each other, so Arya can learn to spot a lie; the Waif learns Arya's language faster than Arya learns hers. In one of these games the girl claims to be thirty-six years old; Arya does not believe her, but the Kindly Man confirms it is true.

Under the new identity of Cat, Arya moves in with the fishmonger Brusco and returns to the temple only on the night of each new moon. On those visits she helps the Waif prepare potions and learns from her the properties of poisons such as sweetsleep, the tears of Lys, and basilisk blood; the Waif also tells her her own story, though Arya is never sure how much of it is true. The night Arya confesses to having killed the deserter Dareon, the Kindly Man asks the Waif to bring her a cup of warm milk; the milk tastes burnt, and by the next morning Arya wakes blind.

Every night, the Waif brings Arya a cup of poisoned milk that keeps her blind; Arya knows that asking for her sight back would mean the end of her training among the Faceless Men, so she drinks without complaint. The girl teaches her to move with a cane, adapts the lying game to sound and facial muscle, and teaches her to tell coins apart by touch alone. When Arya poses as the blind beggar Beth, it is the Waif who shaves her own head and paints her face to go with her. After Arya passes the final test of her blindness, the Waif gives her a cup that tastes of fire, and by the next morning Arya's sight returns.

The Waif then attends the gathering of the servants of the Many-Faced God, after which a priest tasks Arya with killing an old man who has swindled a client's family. Arya chooses poison for the killing, and the Waif helps her prepare it. Before the task, the Kindly Man decides Arya needs a new face, so he and the Waif take her for the first time to the sanctuary on the temple's third level, where the faces of the Faceless Men are kept, and fit her with the face of an ugly girl. Wearing it, Arya delivers the poisoned coin to her mark; back at the House of Black and White, she becomes an acolyte.