Arya Month 2022 || Day 11: House of Black and White
“A man pays his debts. A man owes three.” “Three?”
“The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”
He wants to help me, Arya realized with a rush of hope that made her dizzy. “Take me to Riverrun, it’s not far, if we stole some horses we could—”
He laid a finger on her lips. “Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done. So a girl must ponder.” He kissed her hair softly. “But not too long.” – Arya VII, ACOK
Dareon had been a deserter from the Night’s Watch; he had deserved to die.
She had said as much to the kindly man. “And are you a god, to decide who should live and who should die?” he asked her. “We give the gift to those marked by Him of Many Faces, after prayers and sacrifice. So has it always been, from the beginning. I have told you of the founding of our order, of how the first of us answered the prayers of slaves who wished for death. The gift was given only to those who yearned for it, in the beginning … but one day, the first of us heard a slave praying not for his own death but for his master’s. So fervently did he desire this that he offered all he had, that his prayer might be answered. And it seemed to our first brother that this sacrifice would be pleasing to Him of Many Faces, so that night he granted the prayer. Then he went to the slave and said, ‘You offered all you had for this man’s death, but slaves have nothing but their lives. That is what the god desires of you. For the rest of your days on earth, you will serve him.’ And from that moment, we were two.” His hand closed around her arm, gently but firmly. “All men must die. We are but death’s instruments, not death himself. When you slew the singer, you took god’s powers on yourself. We kill men, but we do not presume to judge them. Do you understand?” – Arya I, ADWD
Though Arya doesn’t reach the House of Black and White until A Feast For Crows, her connection to that organization begins in A Clash of Kings where she meets a member of the Faceless Men, a man going by the name of Jaqen. After she helps to save his life and the lives of two men he was with, he tells her that she must choose three lives to take the place of the three she saved. In place of the last life, Arya is able to renegotiate that death wish into a rescue mission, freeing the imprisoned Northmen, which results in more lives being taken. In this part of the Faceless Men arc, Arya is specifically given the power to choose who will die. Once reaching the House of Black and White, this ability is specifically forbidden to her by the kindly man who claims that she cannot take the god’s power for herself while enforcing justice.
Given this contradiction, either Jaqen doesn’t follow the rules or the kindly man is lying to Arya. It could be that his lies are intended as part of the ways they are not only training her, but testing her. While the stated goal of the training is to shape her into an instrument of the many faced god, in reality she’s being tested for something else that does involve her making the choices, as she did with Jaqen.
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