Rain hammered the rotting shingles of their hideout, finding every crack and seam in the ancient structure. Lorrick had spent the morning patching the worst leaks with scraps of tar-soaked cloth stolen from the shipyards, but water still dripped steadily into strategically placed buckets and pots. The sound created an oddly soothing rhythm that almost, but not quite, drowned out the rumble of thunder overhead.
"That's the third one this week," Weasel complained, eyeing a new leak that had formed near his sleeping pallet. "This whole place is gonna collapse on our heads someday."
"When it does, we'll find somewhere better," Lorrick replied, tossing the boy a rag to mop up the puddle already forming. "Maybe one of those fancy manses on the hill."
Tommen snorted from his place by the small cookfire. Two weeks after his fever broke, he was still thinner than before, but his strength was returning. "Sure, and maybe the king will invite us to live in the Red Keep."
"I'd rather stay here," little Jena said softly, looking up from the doll she was mending. It was a pitiful thing made of straw and scraps, but she treasured it like a highborn lady might treasure a golden necklace. "The Red Keep has ghosts."
"It's not ghosts you need to worry about in the Red Keep," Lorrick said, ruffling her hair as he passed. "It's the living that are dangerous there."
He studied the children as they went about their tasks, each content in their way despite the miserable conditions. They were survivors, these three, just as he was. Most orphans in Flea Bottom didn't last a year on their own. Those who survived either joined existing gangs, sold themselves to brothels, or found a protector.
Somehow, Lorrick had become the latter without quite meaning to.
Weasel was the newest addition, a skinny boy with sharp features and sharper eyes. Lorrick had caught him trying to pick his pocket six months ago and, impressed by the boy's skill if not his target selection, had offered him a place to sleep rather than the beating Weasel clearly expected. The boy's quick fingers had proven useful, though Lorrick tried to direct his talents toward emptying the pockets of merchants and minor nobles rather than the desperate poor of Flea Bottom.
"How much longer is this bloody rain going to last?" Weasel grumbled, wringing out the sodden rag into a bucket.
"Language," Tommen scolded automatically, earning an eye roll from the younger boy.
Tommen the Tall, as they called him, though at fourteen he hadn't quite grown into the name yet. Lorrick had found him nearly two years ago, beaten half to death behind a butcher's shop for stealing scraps. Something about the boy's determined refusal to cry even as Lorrick cleaned his wounds had earned his respect. Despite his size, Tommen was gentle by nature, preferring to care for the younger children rather than using his growing strength to intimidate others.
"Rain's good," Lorrick observed. "Keeps the Gold Cloaks inside. Makes it easier to move about unnoticed." He peered into the pot Tommen was stirring. "What is that supposed to be?"
"Soup," Tommen replied defensively. "Onions, turnips, and that salted fish you brought yesterday."
Lorrick made a non-committal noise that earned him a scowl from the older boy.
"Not all of us can sweet-talk our way into free food from the kitchen girls at the inns," Tommen muttered.
"It's not the sweet talk," Lorrick grinned. "It's the valuable information about which sailors have coin to spend and which are likely to skip out on their bills."
"Is that what you're calling it now?" Tommen snorted, but there was no real bite to his words.
Across the room, Jena had abandoned her doll and was now attempting to braid her unruly brown hair, her small face screwed up in concentration. Lorrick felt a familiar pang watching her. She was the same age his sister Lyarra had been when the coughing sickness took her six years ago, just months before their mother followed. The resemblance wasn't strong, Lyarra having inherited their mother's Northern coloring while Jena was pure Southron, but something in the determined set of her jaw often caught him off guard.
"Here," he said, crossing to her. "Let me help with that."
Jena looked up in surprise but turned obediently, allowing him to gather her tangled hair in his hands. His fingers worked methodically, separating strands and weaving them together in a simple pattern his mother had taught him long ago.
"Where'd you learn to braid hair?" Weasel asked, his tone suggesting he found the skill somehow suspicious in an older boy.
"My mother taught me," Lorrick replied without embarrassment. "Said every man should know how to make himself presentable, especially one with hair as wild as mine."
"Was your mother a Northerner?" Tommen asked, stirring the pot with more care now. "You said she told you winter stories."
"Half Northern," Lorrick confirmed, focusing on the braid to avoid meeting their curious gazes. He rarely spoke of his family, finding it easier to look forward than back. "Her father was from White Harbor, came south to work the ships and met my grandmother. My father was King's Landing born and bred, worked the docks until a crate crushed him when I was five."
"Is that why you go to the docks so much?" Jena asked. "To remember him?"
Lorrick's hands stilled momentarily. "No, little one. I go there because that's where the best gossip is." He resumed braiding. "But perhaps there's something in what you say. The sea gets in your blood, my mother used to claim."
"Is that why you can swim when most Flea Bottom folk can't?" Tommen asked. "Your grandfather taught your mother, and she taught you?"
"Something like that," Lorrick agreed, tying off Jena's braid with a scrap of string. "There, now you look almost respectable. We could pass you off as a merchant's daughter if we got you a clean dress."
Jena beamed at the compliment, running her fingers over the braid with evident satisfaction.
A sharp knock at their hidden door interrupted the moment. Lorrick tensed, hand moving to the knife at his belt. They weren't expecting visitors, and few knew the location of their hideout.
"Three knocks, pause, two more," Weasel whispered, already melting into the shadows of their shelter. "That's Tansy's signal."
Lorrick relaxed slightly but kept his hand near his knife as he moved to open the concealed entrance. Tansy might be a friend, but friends could be followed, or worse, coerced.
The red-haired girl slipped inside as soon as he opened the door, soaked to the skin and breathing hard. Her serving dress from the Red Keep kitchens was splattered with mud up to her knees.
"Seven hells, Tansy, what happened to you?" Lorrick demanded, securing the door behind her.
"Had to run," she gasped, accepting the rough blanket Tommen offered. "Didn't want to be followed."
Lorrick and Tommen exchanged glances. "Followed by whom?" Lorrick asked carefully.
Tansy shook her head, water droplets flying from her sodden hair. "Not sure. But something's happening in the Red Keep. The Hand's household guards are searching for someone, asking questions in the kitchens, the stables, everywhere."
"What sort of questions?" Lorrick's voice remained calm, but a cold feeling settled in his stomach.
"About people coming and going. Specifically boys from Flea Bottom who might have overheard things they shouldn't." Tansy's eyes fixed on Lorrick. "They described someone who sounds an awful lot like you."
The cold feeling spread. "Did they mention me by name?"
"No, but the description was good enough. Tall, dark-haired boy of seventeen or eighteen, blue eyes, knows his letters, asks too many questions." She paused. "They're offering silver to anyone who can point them to such a boy."
"That's not so bad," Weasel piped up from his corner. "Half the boys in Flea Bottom could match that description, more or less."
"Half the boys in Flea Bottom can't read," Lorrick corrected grimly. "That narrows it considerably."
Jena looked between them, her eyes wide with worry. "Are you in trouble, Lorrick?"
He forced a smile for her benefit. "No more than usual, little one. Probably just someone unhappy about some information I sold." He turned back to Tansy. "Did they say what this boy supposedly overheard?"
Tansy shook her head. "Not where I could hear. But one of the guards mentioned it had to do with the Hand's investigation."
"Jon Arryn," Tommen said, the name hanging in the suddenly quiet room.
"The very same," Lorrick confirmed, mind racing. "The man who died under mysterious circumstances just when he was looking into certain matters that might embarrass the crown."
"You know something about that?" Tansy asked sharply.
Lorrick shrugged, trying to appear more casual than he felt. "I know what the docks know, which is probably half rumor and half nonsense. But if the Hand's men are asking questions now, after their lord is dead..."
"Then someone thinks you know something worth knowing," Weasel finished.
"Or something worth silencing," Tommen added quietly.
They all fell silent, the only sound the steady drip of rain through the leaking roof. Lorrick stared into the small cookfire, weighing options.
"We should leave King's Landing," Tommen finally said.
"And go where?" Weasel challenged. "The whole bloody kingdom's at each other's throats. You want to wander into the Riverlands with all the fighting? Or maybe head north where they say it's already getting cold enough to freeze your balls off?"
"Language," Tommen muttered, but his heart wasn't in the reprimand.
"We stay," Lorrick decided. "For now. But we need to be smarter, more careful. No unnecessary risks." He looked at each of them in turn. "And we need to know exactly what they think I know."
"How do we find that out?" Jena asked.
Lorrick smiled, a genuine smile this time despite the danger. "The same way we find out anything in this city. We listen in the right places."
"I can ask around the kitchens," Tansy offered. "Carefully, like I'm just curious about the reward."
"I can check the usual spots at the docks," Tommen said. "No one notices me if I'm just moving crates."
"I'll see what the Street of Silk knows," Weasel added. "Lots of loose lips when men are spending coin on girls."
Lorrick nodded, feeling a surge of pride mixed with concern. They were good, his little band of outcasts. Too good for the lives they'd been dealt.
"What about me?" Jena asked, unwilling to be left out.
"You," Lorrick said, tapping her nose, "are going to help me with something special. We need to find out if anyone else in Flea Bottom matches the description they're giving. The more confusion we can create, the safer we are."
The child nodded solemnly, clearly pleased to have an important task.
As they continued planning, dividing up areas of the city and establishing signals to use if they spotted trouble, Lorrick studied them with mixed emotions. They weren't his blood, these children of the gutter, but they were his family nonetheless. He'd found them one by one, each broken in their way, each valuable beyond measure.
Family, his mother had taught him, wasn't just about the blood in your veins. It was about the people who stood beside you when the cold winds blew. The ones who shared their bread when times were lean and watched your back when dangers loomed.
By that measure, these ragged orphans in a leaking room in the worst part of the city were the finest family a man could ask for. And Lorrick would sooner face the Stranger himself than see harm come to any of them.
The rain continued to fall, but inside their humble shelter, a plan was taking shape. Whatever storm was coming, they would weather it together. Friends in low places, perhaps, but friends nonetheless, bound by something stronger than circumstance or convenience.
The bonds of chosen family, forged in the harshest crucible Westeros had to offer.... survival.