Asher Forrester in Essos

Little Sisters

I can tell that you have one. I can tell a lot of things- I'm a ghost. 

Dead, killed the second my feet hit my native soil of Westeros. I delivered the mercenaries that my brother so badly needed, but I never found out what was happening- if my family was safe. The anger, as I went down, at the injustice is probably why I'm still around now.

How had Ironrath been taken? I knew that the Starks had been betrayed at The Twins and the Whitehills given stewardship of our lands. That alone would have stirred any Westerosi from Essos, driven them home, blood boiling in our veins. We had experienced the blessings of a long summer before the civil unrest, and I'd missed that in the seethe of sweat and blood that was Essos.

My family hadn't been so lucky. The North remembers, and the first stirrings of war had my family moving to guard the Starks, placing our people in strategic positions. My little sister was a handmaiden to the Lady Tyrell, and my family had pinned a heavy burden of hope on that position. From King's Landing we had hoped she would make a change.

Her story had swept far away from our own, and in a wider scope. I'm told that she had written a journal, however obliquely, of the events that happened at court (and outside of it), before misfortune brought her back to our ancestral home.

While we were holding the border against dark magics, screaming inside at the foolishness of the Whitehills as they pillaged our precious Ironwood - vital for both wars to come - she was being pursued through the halls of the castle, a Northerner at the untender mercies of a Lannister rule. 

And things were about to get worse.