The female prisoner

"By the way, is your left eye really blind?"

Cold iron chains bound White Stag Wenda's wrists. She raised her head and looked at the man who had asked the question.

At that very moment.

She was in an interrogation room in Starpike's dungeon, seated at an old wooden table covered with filthy instruments of torture.

Wenda looked straight ahead, seemingly without the slightest fear of the dreadful things on the table.

A mere female bandit, yet so defiant. Naturally, Earl Titus had to handle her himself and interrogate her alone.

She tilted her head up to look at the young earl, this "Ser Don Quixote" who had thoroughly outmaneuvered them, and there was still resentment in her eye.

Their target on this job had been modest-just some money-and the other party had been very "cooperative." Wenda had clearly let her guard down and completely failed to notice those unusual details.

The bitter consequences of underestimating an enemy had become apparent.

Now that things had come to this, she went over the day's events again. After reviewing them, she could only admit that she had fallen to this man of noble birth and exceptionally peculiar methods.

Seeing that she did not answer, Titus could easily have removed her eyepatch to check for himself, but he had no intention of treating his female prisoner that way.

"Don't want to answer?"

It was his first time interrogating a female prisoner, and he found it particularly novel. As for Westeros's distinctive "society under the rule of law," he had only one thing to say: this place was wonderful!

"Then I'll ask another question. Was your original plan really to go to Oldtown?"

Slowly accepting her status as a prisoner, White Stag stopped resisting and nodded in acknowledgment.

Titus smiled.

"What, did you want to take your talents to the west coast?

Pull off a big job in Oldtown? Let me guess. Robbery, theft, or using Queen Alicent's name to run a scam and get the Hightower to send you money? No, no, kidnapping was more likely. That old fellow Leyton Hightower certainly knew how to father children. There were plenty of Hightowers..."

Finding it tiring to stand while talking, the earl pulled over a chair and sat casually opposite Wenda.

"Seriously, what's so good about Oldtown that you can't stop thinking about it?"

Lady Wenda was just like Han Li from A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality. Whenever she encountered a question that was difficult to answer, or that she did not want to answer, she played the silence game.

Brother Han, was it really impossible to become a skinchanger without First Men blood?

Heh.

Titus rather enjoyed teasing the skinchanger before him.

"Why do you keep quiet? Don't you like it? You were quite talkative earlier today when you were making eyes at me...

"How about we talk about your father?"

As though he had touched a sore spot, Wenda reacted strongly, glaring at Titus with her one eye.

"My lord, you're hardly chivalrous."

"My lady, you're hardly a lady either."

A reaction was good enough. Titus continued.

"Oldtown lacks opportunities to get ahead. Its social classes have long since become rigid... unlike here, where I'm desperate for talent."

"Haven't I already agreed? I was the one who offered in the first place. My people and I can all work for you."

"No, you're not being sincere."

"Was he really a merchant?"

"Who?"

"Your father."

"He's a nobleman from the Stormlands!"

"Oh? Then should I call you Lady Wenda, or Wenda Storm?"

The surname given to bastards in the Stormlands was "Storm."

Wenda raised an eyebrow, apparently genuinely inclined to talk now.

Whatever her reasons, she personally revealed her secret identity as a nobleman's bastard daughter.

House Caron was a moderately powerful, middling noble house in the southern Stormlands. Its seat, Fawn Hall, lay near the Dornish border, and its sigil was two white fawns leaping toward one another on a green field.

Titus's impression of Cavron was that they had once been dealt a savage blow by House Wyl of the Boneway.

That had happened a very long time ago.

Members of House Wyl had arrived uninvited at the wedding of Jon Caron, heir to Fawn Hall, and Alys Oakheart, daughter of the Earl of Old Oak. They had killed Earl Oakheart and most of the guests, then forced Alys to watch her husband being castrated. In the end, the Wyl men had also taken turns raping Alys and her handmaids before selling them to slavers from Myr.

Titus remembered a saying: Dorne's devils were as thick as sand, but this house alone outdid them all.

Even among the many depraved houses in Westerosi history notorious for their madness, House Wyl stood out.

A member of that house had cut off the sword hand of Aegon the Conqueror's bastard brother, Orys Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End-the first "Baratheon" of the Stormlands.

Because "the Hand of the King must have a hand," Orys, unwilling to be called "the King's Stump," had decisively resigned his office... he had been the Targaryen Dynasty's first Hand of the King, the kingdom's chief minister.

After losing his hand, Orys, who had always regarded himself as an outstanding warrior, had grown bitter and irritable, no longer allowing others close.

Then, during the campaign against the Vulture King, he had led troops out of Storm's End for the last time and captured Walter Wyl, son of the Earl Wyl who had cut off his arm, beneath the walls of Stonehelm.

First he had cut off Walter Wyl's right hand, then severed his remaining limbs one by one, declaring them interest on the hand he had lost all those years ago.

Afterward, he had died of his wounds on the journey back to Storm's End. According to his son, Davos Baratheon, the old lord Orys had passed away smiling as he gazed at Walter's rotting severed limbs.

The Wyls had committed far too many infamous acts.

Later, they had also captured Aemon Targaryen the Dragonknight and imprisoned him in the Snake Pit, making the new king, Baelor Targaryen the Blessed, cross the Boneway barefoot and enter the cage to rescue him. They had even gleefully wagered on which of the two Targaryens would be bitten to death by the venomous snakes first...

Titus had only recently reread the account of that last little wager in The Four Kings.

Earl Cavron was White Stag Wenda's biological father.

Before he had a son, Earl Cavron had often left his castle to visit Wenda and had found quite a few teachers for his young bastard daughter.

Among them had been the renowned archer Dick the Fletcher. Old Dick had been living in a village near Stonehelm at the time, and Earl Cavron had paid handsomely to bring him to Fawn Hall to teach Wenda how to shoot arrows and put them through people's heads.

Titus had heard of "Arrowmaker's" reputation.

In the Stormlands and the Reach, particularly in the Dornish Marches, he was hailed as the greatest archer and arrow-maker of all time.

The title "Arrowmaker" meant that his archery was so good, he might as well have been the founding master who had invented the art of the bow.

Wenda was skilled with a sword and even better with a bow. She wielded her sword left-handed and drew her bow with her right. Her fighting ability was not to be underestimated, and she was far more dangerous than she looked.

It was precisely those skills that had allowed her to become one of the six leaders of the Kingswood Brotherhood.

She could even be considered the Brotherhood's second-in-command, and at one point had rivaled Simon Toyne.

White Stag as a child: