Syrio Forel

Braavos names a First Sword the way other cities name a champion, and Syrio Forel had held the title before ever appearing in King's Landing as Eddard Stark's curious choice of instructor for his younger daughter — a dancing master, by his own insistence, rather than a swordsman, teaching a style built on balance and quickness rather than brute strength, delivered in riddles Arya spends most of her lessons only half understanding. He explains the honor with a story rather than a boast: summoned before the Sealord of Braavos to judge a rare, fabulous cat said to be brought from a distant land, Syrio alone told the plain truth — that he had seen a thousand tomcats just like it in the alleys of Braavos — while every other man in the hall, primed to see something marvelous, duly saw one. Whether a maester ought to file that story as history or as parable, Syrio's actual swordsmanship, on the one occasion the text lets the reader watch it used in earnest, proves considerably harder to dismiss than any of his tales.