The King of Winters

Chapter 30

Andrew

The stars began to fade in the eastern sky and Braavos was filled in the morning mist. Outside the world was grey of fogs and pink in the first light of dawn. Andrew watched them all from his bed. Watching was all he did for the past few days. He woke up, stayed in the bed, watching the canals ran beneath the room on top of a stone building half submerged under water, watching Joy taking care of her household, watching the day rises with the sun and ends with the rising of stars and then slept again. He was too weak to do anything else. His bad leg ached when he moved it or when he tried to walk. More than half a dozen time he tried to get up from the bed and get away but no sooner did he placed his legs on the floor and took a step his leg bucked under him and he ended up on the floor. 

As he tried again and again to walk it seemed more like starting it all from the first again. He felt like a child who has troubles making his steps and walking his way. He remembered the time when he learned to walk for the first time in Winterfell. He had started it in the godswood with his parents both of them there with him to watch him walk. Andrew had used the Old Gods of the north as a support when he first stood on his two feet. He had leaned against the white bark of the weirwood, getting up further and further until he found his feet. He remembered how he swayed and struggled on the moss covered floor of the godswood and before he could fall his mother had reached him gathering him safe in her arms. Only now, Ashara Dayne is not here to help him nor is Eddard Stark. 

Joy helped him back to the bed now every time he found himself down. She helped him to his feet every time with a certain softness gracing from her. "You shouldn't walk until I ask you to," the girl would say every time as she eases him back on the bed. He would stay in the bed hearing her words until it would bore him again and he would walk and fall again. 

Andrew sat up against the headboard and watched Joy as she went on about doing her morning chores. Everyday she would've been already awake by the time he woke up. He would glance her by the fires cooking something, or going on about his medicines or bandages. Somedays he would see her sewing or saying her prayers. Everyday they would talk and the more they talked he came to know more about her. 

Joy had come to Braavos with her father when she was five. Her mother was a Braavosi and Gerion Lannister had brought her to Braavos so she could see the home of her mother. Her father had left her here with a promise and a kiss and continued his voyage to Valyria to find the long lost valyrian steel sword of the Lannisters, Brightroar. Gerion Lannister had promised her to take her back to Casterly Rock when he comes back from his voyage. An empty promise, Andrew thought sadly. No one enters Valyria and comes back alive to tell the tale of it. Darker stuff and remnants of the blood magic still reigned heavily in the ruined city and the air was filled with the use of dark arts. Even the Smoking Sea around the ruined city was dangerous as the land itself. Filled with volcanoes and smoking stacks of rock, it is said to boil in places and to be haunted by demons. Andrew had known many a men who had boasted of braving the Smoking Sea to enter the ruined city and get the treasures that might have survived the Doom of Valyria. But none of them did very much neared even the Smoking Sea. They would return back defeated and empty-handed. 

Joy had faith in her father though. Even after all these years she still prayed for her father to come back. She still believed that her father would come back. Andrew felt sad for her. She was a sweet girl. She had hope that her father would return and he had no mind to break her hope just like that. He might even want to thank Gerion Lannister for briging her here. If it wasn't for her he would've been dead already. 

After her father had left Joy lived with her mother, Briony. When Gerion Lannister did not return as he told he would, it broke Joy's mother. After her mother's death Joy made her life on her own here in Braavos waiting for her father. And it was then she found him almost dead on the streets one day. Her mother had been a healer and Joy had learnt the arts of healing from her mother. It was with those arts she saved him and took care of him.