Chapter 3: Arya's Inconvenient Lesson from Syrio Forelli

The orangery had been built by Eddard's grandfather in a spirit of botanical optimism that the northern climate had spent fifty years systematically discouraging. It stood at the east end of the house — a long, glass-sided corridor of ambition and draughts, populated by citrus trees of uncertain health and a collection of potted ferns that Lady Catelyn regarded with more affection than their condition warranted. It was, in short, the only room at Wintermere Park with sufficient ceiling height and insufficient domestic traffic to serve as a fencing salle, which was why Arya had identified it six months previously as her preferred location for activities her mother did not yet know she was conducting.

Syrio Forelli arrived on a Thursday, in a hired conveyance from the market town of Barrowfield, carrying one trunk, two foils, and an expression of cheerful assessment that suggested he was already forming opinions about everything he observed and finding most of it instructive.

He was a small man — not so small as to invite comment, but small enough that Arya, who had spent considerable energy resenting her own stature, felt an immediate and unreasonable warmth toward him. His hair was very white and his eyes were very dark and he walked with the unhurried precision of a man who had decided, some years ago, that hurrying was a form of imprecision he could not afford. Lady Catelyn, receiving him in the entrance hall with the particular expression she reserved for decisions she had not yet entirely reconciled herself to, remarked afterward to Eddard that the man looked like a philosophy tutor. Eddard allowed that this was possibly not the worst thing.