Armies of Summer

Chapter Thirty-Five

One Year Before the Journey to Winterfell

Mariya Hill is a whore, her mother is a whore, her grandmother was probably a whore, and her children will probably be the same. As a woman, with no money, no name, an no father to raise her, Mariya's prospects were non-existent. But that never mattered to Lord Tyrion Lannister, the youngest of the Lannister children, Tyrion Lannister, a dwarf, was loathed by his father, blamed for everything by his sister, but loved by his brother, Jaime, the Lord of Casterly Rock. Tyrion, had been blamed by his sister for everything that had ever gone wrong in her life, beginning with his mother's death, and including such things as: Jaime's marriage to Arya Stark, Cersei's banishment to Dragonstone, her marriage to Robert Baratheon, Jaime's continued avoidance of her, and anything else she could put on him.

But to Mariya? He is her savior.

Her mother... was never a caring woman. She began training her how to please men when she was four years old. She didn't touch a man until she turned ten, but by then, she was already considered one of the better whores in the house, simply because their... boss, owner, what ever you want to call the man who allows her to reside in his whorehouse, was aware of her teachings, and repeatedly watched this lessons, adding in input where he thought was necessary.

By the time Mariya was eighteen she was the most sought after whore in the house, stealing clients from most of the girls, including her mother. This was through no fault of her own, she wished that she wasn't as good as she was, but she had been trained from a very young age, and it was all she knew how to do, and her boss used that for his advantage.

Her mother became jealous. Her last customer, who was a knight, walked out of her room when he saw Mariya walk down the hall, and asked for her instead, the younger version of the elder woman who had been below him.

It was at that moment that Clara Hill, the thirty-seven year old mother, decided to remove her daughter from the competition.

Of course it wasn't a competition, not for anyone else, and especially not for Mariya, who was miserable every day of her life, who was forced to give away her body to men who simply saw her a flesh glove to use instead of their hand. But Clara, who had been doing this since she was a young girl as well, had lost her mind, and felt worthless with less and less men coming to see her every day.

So, she raided her boss' cabinet, found the poison, she didn't know what it was as she was illiterate, just that she had heard about it, and didn't know how much to give, so at dinner, she discreetly put two drops into Mariya's ale, before giving it to her with a sweet smile.

When Mariya first took a drink she felt fine, but after a few minutes, of talking, and laughing with the other girls, during the only time of day they were allowed to be themselves, she noticed that the edges of her vision was getting dark, and it was slowly advancing, the darkness consuming more and more of her vision.

She screamed, hysterically as she tried to figure out what was happening, clawing at her eyes, trying to bring her vision back but nothing was happening. She could hear the girls around her screaming for him, for their boss, all except one voice, her mother's.

Clara was watching her, with glee and confusion, she had hurt her, obviously since she was screaming, but why wasn't she dead? When Mariya looked up, Clara was shocked to see that her eyes were different, they were a milky white, and her pupil was gone. They were beautifully haunting, making Clara freeze when they landed on her from across the room. She knew she couldn't see her. Mariya's eyes were darting around too much for her to be looking at them, but it was still nerve racking. Not as nerve racking as the next few hours of her life would be though.

When the girls came in, screaming for Denzin, the whorehouse owner, Tyrion Lannister was with him, sitting in his office, drinking wine, while Tyrion questioned him about his girls, which ones did what, who his favorite was, all the questions Tyrion normally asked before visiting a new whorehouse, and as he had heard of this one all the way from their keep, he knew it had to be a good one. Those thoughts were quickly stricken however when several girls burst into the office, crying about how 'Mariya was screaming, she's been poisoned, what do we do' and continuing on and on. When Denzin ran out of the room after the girls, Tyrion let out a heaving sigh before following after him, finding himself waddling into a shabby dining area, with one large table and two benches, where it seemed all of these girls took their meals.

What shocked him though, was the beautiful brunette woman, who was kneeling on the floor, crying while she covered her eyes, her hair billowing out around her in beautiful curls. When Denzin called her name, kneeling in front of her cautiously, she removed her hands, allowing Tyrion to see the tear tracks running down her face, and when she looked up, Tyrion sucked in a breath a the beauty of those haunting eyes.

After several long minutes, Mariya informed them that she had only had ale, and had not even touched her food. And when questioned, she admitted that her mother had given her the ale. Denzin searched the woman, who was standing off in the corner with a smirk on her face, not even bothering to flee, and when he pulled a bottle of poison from her folds of clothing, Tyrion left to call for the Lannister guards who were posted outside of the whorehouse, waiting for him.

When they arrived, he informed them of what had occurred, and ordered them to take Clara Hill into custody, to be charged with attempted murder of her daughter.

It took several days, but eventually Clara Hill stood trial before Lord Jaime Lannister, Lady Arya Lannister, and Lord Tyrion Lannister in the throne room of Casterly Rock. She asked for a trial by combat, but when she failed to supply a champion, and was unwilling for fight herself, she acquiesced to a trial by judge. Her daughter attended each day, and Tyrion found that once she entered the room, even though she looked thinner, frailer, than when he had seen her the day it happened, he could not keep his eyes off of the blind beauty.

She was found guilty, as Tyrion knew she would be, and when Jaime asked what Mariya would like her mother's punishment to be, the poor girl could not answer. She didn't want to hurt her mother, even though she had hurt her. So Tyrion, being the one who had submitted the charges, asked that she would be banished from the Westerlands for the rest of her days, and would not return, on pain of death. Jaime and Arya agreed, and Clara was sent with four guards to be escorted south out of their land, to Highgarden, where she could try to find work.

It was several weeks later before Tyrion saw Mariya again, but it was not somewhere he thought he would see her.

She was begging, on the side of the street, covered in piss, shit, and other fluids that Tyrion didn't even want to think about. When he walked by, she didn't even look up, so it took him several long moment to recognize her, but when he did, he pulled her up, and brought her with him to the whorehouse he first saw her in, the place he had been going to.

When they arrived, Tyrion helped Mariya to the ground, letting her sit in the entrance, and he looked at her for a moment, concerned, since she hadn't spoken, not even to ask who he was or where they were going, but he decided to ask her once he had her settled, and made his way up to the office, where Denzin was sitting, filling out papers.

Tyrion questioned him, yelling, and most everyone in the whorehouse could hear him, but after awhile, the yelling settled down, and Denzin agreed to take her back in, without forcing her to work, as long as Tyrion payed him, weekly, the cost for her to stay. Which ended up being a reasonable amount, as Tyrion was a skilled barterer, and talked him down from the ridiculous amount he had asked for before.

Once Tyrion had Mariya brought to her room, cleaned, with the help of the other girls who weren't currently working, he introduced himself, told her what he had arranged, and told her that he would come visit her often, to make sure the terms of their agreement were being met, and that he didn't expect anything from her for his kindness.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

A/N: Hey guys! So this is the end of the second book! This GoT story continues on in the next book: Sword in the Darkness.