GOT Chapters

by Javir

game f thrones in the real world

11. Chapter 11

Her son's crown was fresh from the forge, and it seemed to Catelyn Stark that the weight of it pressed heavy on Robb's head. The ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say. Lord Hoster's smith had done his work well, and Robb's crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold. As they waited in Riverrun's Great Hall for the prisoner to be brought before them, she saw Robb push back the crown so it rested upon the thick auburn mop of his hair; moments later, he moved it forward again; later he gave it a quarter turn, as if that might make it sit more easily on his brow. It is no easy thing to wear a crown, Catelyn thought, watching, especially for a boy of fifteen years. When the guards brought in the captive, Robb called for his sword. Olyvar Frey offered it up hilt-first, and her son drew the blade and laid it bare across his knees, a threat plain for all to see. "Your Grace, here is the man you asked for," announced Ser Robin Ryger, captain of the Tully household guard. "Kneel before the king, Lannister!" Theon Greyjoy shouted. Ser Robin forced the prisoner to his knees. He did not look a lion, Catelyn reflected. This Ser Cleos Frey was a son of the Lady Genna who was sister to Lord Tywin Lannister, but he had none of the fabled Lannister beauty, the fair hair and green eyes. Instead he had inherited the stringy brown locks, weak 57 chin, and thin face of his sire, Ser Emmon Frey, old Lord Walder's second son. His eyes were pale and watery and he could not seem to stop blinking, but perhaps that was only the light. The cells below Riverrun were dark and damp . . . and these days crowded as well. "Rise, Ser Cleos." Her son's voice was not as icy as his father's would have been, but he did not sound a boy of fifteen either. War had made a man of him before his time. Morning light glimmered faintly against the edge of the steel across his knees. Yet it was not the sword that made Ser Cleos Frey anxious; it was the beast. Grey Wind, her son had named him. A direwolf large as any elkhound, lean and smoke-dark, with eyes like molten gold. When the beast padded forward and sniffed at the captive knight, every man in that hall could smell the scent of fear. Ser Cleos had been taken during the battle in the Whispering Wood, where Grey Wind had ripped out the throats of half a dozen men. The knight scrambled up, edging away with such alacrity that some of the watchers laughed aloud. "Thank you, my lord." "Your Grace," barked Lord Umber, the Greatjon, ever the loudest of Robb's northern bannermen . . . and the truest and fiercest as well, or so he insisted. He had been the first to proclaim her son King in the North, and he would brook no slight to the honor of his newmade sovereign. "Your Grace," Ser Cleos corrected hastily. "Pardons." He is not a bold man, this one, Catelyn thought. More of a Frey than a Lannister, in truth. His cousin the Kingslayer would have been a much different matter. They would never have gotten that honorific through Ser Jaime Lannister's perfect teeth. "I brought you from your cell to carry my message to your cousin Cersei Lannister in King's Landing. You'll travel under a peace banner, with thirty of my best men to escort you." Ser Cleos was visibly relieved. "Then I should be most glad to bring His Grace's message to the queen." "Understand," Robb said, "I am not giving you your freedom. Your grandfather Lord Walder pledged me his support and that of House Frey. Many of your cousins and uncles rode with us in the Whispering Wood, but you chose to fight beneath the lion banner. That makes you a Lannister, not a Frey. I want your pledge, on your honor as a knight, that after you deliver my message you'll return with the queen's reply, and resume your captivity." Ser Cleos answered at once. "I do so vow." "Every man in this hall has heard you," warned Catelyn's brother Ser Edmure Tully, who spoke for Riverrun and the lords of the Trident in the place of their dying father. "If you do not return, the whole realm will know you forsworn." "I will do as I pledged," Ser Cleos replied stiffly. "What is this message?" "An offer of peace." Robb stood, longsword in hand. Grey Wind moved to his side. The hall grew hushed. "Tell the Queen Regent that if she meets my terms, I will sheath this sword, and make an end to the war between us." In the back of the hall, Catelyn glimpsed the tall, gaunt figure of Lord Rickard Karstark shove through a rank of guards and out the door. No one else moved. Robb paid the disruption no mind. "Olyvar, the paper," he commanded. The squire took his longsword and handed up a rolled parchment. Robb unrolled it. "First, the queen must release my sisters and provide them with transport by sea from King's Landing to White Harbor. It is to be understood that Sansa's betrothal to Joffrey Baratheon is at an end. When I receive word from my castellan that my 58 sisters have returned unharmed to Winterfell, I will release the queen's cousins, the squire Willem Lannister and your brother Tion Frey, and give them safe escort to Casterly Rock or wheresoever she desires them delivered." Catelyn Stark wished she could read the thoughts that hid behind each face, each furrowed brow and pair of tightened lips. "Secondly, my lord father's bones will be returned to us, so he may rest beside his brother and sister in the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he would have wished. The remains of the men of his household guard who died in his service at King's Landing must also be returned." Living men had gone south, and cold bones would return. Ned had the truth of it, she thought. His place was at Winterfell, he said as much, but would I hear him? No. Go, I told him, you must be Robert's Hand, for the good of our House, for the sake of our children . . . my doing, mine, no other . . . "Third, my father's greatsword Ice will be delivered to my hand, here at Riverrun." She watched her brother Ser Edmure Tully as he stood with his thumbs hooked over his swordbelt, his face as still as stone. "Fourth, the queen will command her father Lord Tywin to release those knights and lords bannermen of mine that he took captive in the battle on the Green Fork of the Trident. Once he does so, I shall release my own captives taken in the Whispering Wood and the Battle of the Camps, save Jaime Lannister alone, who will remain my hostage for his father's good behavior." She studied Theon Greyjoy's sly smile, wondering what it meant. That young man had a way of looking as though he knew some secret jest that only he was privy to; Catelyn had never liked it. "Lastly, King Joffrey and the Queen Regent must renounce all claims to dominion over the north. Henceforth we are no part of their realm, but a free and independent kingdom, as of old. Our domain shall include all the Stark lands north of the Neck, and in addition the lands watered by the River Trident and its vassal streams, bounded by the Golden Tooth to the west and the Mountains of the Moon in the east." "THE KING IN THE NORTH!" boomed Greatjon Umber, a ham-sized fist hammering at the air as he shouted. "Stark! Stark! The King in the North!" Robb rolled up the parchment again. "Maester Vyman has drawn a map, showing the borders we claim. You shall have a copy for the queen. Lord Tywin must withdraw beyond these borders, and cease his raiding, burning, and pillage. The Queen Regent and her son shall make no claims to taxes, incomes, nor service from my people, and shall free my lords and knights from all oaths of fealty, vows, pledges, debts, and obligations owed to the Iron Throne and the Houses Baratheon and Lannister. Additionally, the Lannisters shall deliver ten highborn hostages, to be mutually agreed upon, as a pledge of peace. These I will treat as honored guests, according to their station. So long as the terms of this pact are abided with faithfully, I shall release two hostages every year, and return them safely to their families." Robb tossed the rolled parchment at the knight's feet. "There are the terms. If she meets them, I'll give her peace. If not"—he whistled, and Grey Wind moved forward snarling—"I'll give her another Whispering Wood." "Stark!" the Greatjon roared again, and now other voices took up the cry. "Stark, Stark, King in the North!" The direwolf threw back his head and howled. Ser Cleos had gone the color of curdled milk. "The queen shall hear your message, my— Your Grace." 59 "Good," Robb said. "Ser Robin, see that he has a good meal and clean clothing. He's to ride at first light." "As you command, Your Grace," Ser Robin Ryger replied. "Then we are done." The assembled knights and lords bannermen bent their knees as Robb turned to leave, Grey Wind at his heels. Olyvar Frey scrambled ahead to open the door. Catelyn followed them out, her brother at her side. "You did well," she told her son in the gallery that led from the rear of the hall, "though that business with the wolf was japery more befitting a boy than a king." Robb scratched Grey Wind behind the ear. "Did you see the look on his face, Mother?" he asked, smiling. "What I saw was Lord Karstark, walking out." "As did I." Robb lifted off his crown with both hands and gave it to Olyvar. "Take this thing back to my bedchamber." "At once, Your Grace." The squire hurried off. "I'll wager there were others who felt the same as Lord Karstark," her brother Edmure declared. "How can we talk of peace while the Lannisters spread like a pestilence over my father's domains, stealing his crops and slaughtering his people? I say again, we ought to be marching on Harrenhal." "We lack the strength," Robb said, though unhappily. Edmure persisted. "Do we grow stronger sitting here? Our host dwindles every day." "And whose doing is that?" Catelyn snapped at her brother. It had been at Edmure's insistence that Robb had given the river lords leave to depart after his crowning, each to defend his own lands. Ser Marq Piper and Lord Karyl Vance had been the first to go. Lord Jonos Bracken had followed, vowing to reclaim the burnt shell of his castle and bury his dead, and now Lord Jason Mallister had announced his intent to return to his seat at Seagard, still mercifully untouched by the fighting. "You cannot ask my river lords to remain idle while their fields are being pillaged and their people put to the sword," Ser Edmure said, "but Lord Karstark is a northman. It would be an ill thing if he were to leave us." "I'll speak with him," said Robb. "He lost two sons in the Whispering Wood. Who can blame him if he does not want to make peace with their killers . . . with my father's killers . . ." "More bloodshed will not bring your father back to us, or Lord Rickard's sons," Catelyn said. "An offer had to be made—though a wiser man might have offered sweeter terms." "Any sweeter and I would have gagged." Her son's beard had grown in redder than his auburn hair. Robb seemed to think it made him look fierce, royal . . . older. But bearded or no, he was still a youth of fifteen, and wanted vengeance no less than Rickard Karstark. It had been no easy thing to convince him to make even this offer, poor as it was. "Cersei Lannister will never consent to trade your sisters for a pair of cousins. It's her brother she'll want, as you know full well." She had told him as much before, but Catelyn was finding that kings do not listen half so attentively as sons. "I can't release the Kingslayer, not even if I wanted to. My lords would never abide it." "Your lords made you their king." "And can unmake me just as easy." 60 "If your crown is the price we must pay to have Arya and Sansa returned safe, we should pay it willingly. Half your lords would like to murder Lannister in his cell. If he should die while he's your prisoner, men will say—" "—that he well deserved it," Robb finished. "And your sisters?" Catelyn asked sharply. "Will they deserve their deaths as well? I promise you, if any harm comes to her brother, Cersei will pay us back blood for blood—" "Lannister won't die," Robb said. "No one so much as speaks to him without my warrant. He has food, water, clean straw, more comfort than he has any right to. But I won't free him, not even for Arya and Sansa." Her son was looking down at her, Catelyn realized. Was it war that made him grow so fast, she wondered, or the crown they had put on his head? "Are you afraid to have Jaime Lannister in the field again, is that the truth of it?" Grey Wind growled, as if he sensed Robb's anger, and Edmure Tully put a brotherly hand on Catelyn's shoulder. "Cat, don't. The boy has the right of this." "Don't call me the boy," Robb said, rounding on his uncle, his anger spilling out all at once on poor Edmure, who had only meant to support him. "I'm almost a man grown, and a king—your king, ser. And I don't fear Jaime Lannister. I defeated him once, I'll defeat him again if I must, only . . ." He pushed a fall of hair out of his eyes and gave a shake of the head. "I might have been able to trade the Kingslayer for Father, but . . ." ". . . but not for the girls?" Her voice was icy-quiet. "Girls are not important enough, are they?" Robb made no answer, but there was hurt in his eyes. Blue eyes, Tully eyes, eyes she had given him. She had wounded him, but he was too much his father's son to admit it. That was unworthy of me, she told herself. Gods be good, what is to become of me? He is doing his best, trying so hard, I know it, I see it, and yet . . . I have lost my Ned, the rock my life was built on, I could not bear to lose the girls as well . . . "I'll do all I can for my sisters," Robb said. "If the queen has any sense, she'll accept my terms. If not, I'll make her rue the day she refused me." Plainly, he'd had enough of the subject. "Mother, are you certain you will not consent to go to the Twins? You would be farther from the fighting, and you could acquaint yourself with Lord Frey's daughters to help me choose my bride when the war is done." He wants me gone, Catelyn thought wearily. Kings are not supposed to have mothers, it would seem, and I tell him things he does not want to hear. "You're old enough to decide which of Lord Walder's girls you prefer without your mother's help, Robb." "Then go with Theon. He leaves on the morrow. He'll help the Mallisters escort that lot of captives to Seagard and then take ship for the Iron Islands. You could find a ship as well, and be back at Winterfell with a moon's turn, if the winds are kind. Bran and Rickon need you." And you do not, is that what you mean to say? "My lord father has little enough time remaining him. So long as your grandfather lives, my place is at Riverrun with him." "I could command you to go. As king, I could." Catelyn ignored that. "I'll say again, I would sooner you sent someone else to Pyke, and kept Theon close to you." "Who better to treat with Balon Greyjoy than his son?" 61 "Jason Mallister," offered Catelyn. "Tytos Blackwood. Stevron Frey. Anyone . . . but not Theon." Her son squatted beside Grey Wind, ruffling the wolf's fur and incidentally avoiding her eyes. "Theon's fought bravely for us. I told you how he saved Bran from those wildlings in the wolfswood. If the Lannisters won't make peace, I'll have need of Lord Greyjoy's longships." "You'll have them sooner if you keep his son as hostage." "He's been a hostage half his life." "For good reason," Catelyn said. "Balon Greyjoy is not a man to be trusted. He wore a crown himself, remember, if only for a season. He may aspire to wear one again." Robb stood. "I will not grudge him that. If I'm King in the North, let him be King of the Iron Islands, if that's his desire. I'll give him a crown gladly, so long as he helps us bring down the Lannisters." "Robb—" "I'm sending Theon. Good day, Mother. Grey Wind, come." Robb walked off briskly, the direwolf padding beside him. Catelyn could only watch him go. Her son and now her king. How queer that felt. Command, she had told him back in Moat Cailin. And so he did. "I am going to visit Father," she announced abruptly. "Come with me, Edmure." "I need to have a word with those new bowmen Ser Desmond is training. I'll visit him later." If he still lives, Catelyn thought, but she said nothing. Her brother would sooner face battle than that sickroom. The shortest way to the central keep where her father lay dying was through the godswood, with its grass and wildflowers and thick stands of elm and redwood. A wealth of rustling leaves still clung to the branches of the trees, all ignorant of the word the white raven had brought to Riverrun a fortnight past. Autumn had come, the Conclave had declared, but the gods had not seen fit to tell the winds and woods as yet. For that Catelyn was duly grateful. Autumn was always a fearful time, with the specter of winter looming ahead. Even the wisest man never knew whether his next harvest would be the last. Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun, lay abed in his solar, with its commanding view to the east where the rivers Tumblestone and Red Fork met beyond the walls of his castle. He was sleeping when Catelyn entered, his hair and beard as white as his featherbed, his once-portly frame turned small and frail by the death that grew within him. Beside the bed, still dressed in mail hauberk and travel-stained cloak, sat her father's brother, the Blackfish. His boots were dusty and spattered with dried mud. "Does Robb know you are returned, Uncle?" Ser Brynden Tully was Robb's eyes and ears, the commander of his scouts and outriders. "No. I came here straight from the stables, when they told me the king was holding court. His Grace will want to hear my tidings in private first I'd think." The Blackfish was a tall, lean man, grey of hair and precise in his movements, his clean-shaven face lined and windburnt. "How is he?" he asked, and she knew he did not mean Robb. "Much the same. The maester gives him dreamwine and milk of the poppy for his pain, so he sleeps most of the time, and eats too little. He seems weaker with each day that passes." "Does he speak?" 62 "Yes . . . but there is less and less sense to the things he says. He talks of his regrets, of unfinished tasks, of people long dead and times long past. Sometimes he does not know what season it is, or who I am. Once he called me by Mother's name." "He misses her still," Ser Brynden answered. "You have her face. I can see it in your cheekbones, and your jaw . . ." "You remember more of her than I do. It has been a long time." She seated herself on the bed and brushed away a strand of fine white hair that had fallen across her father's face. "Each time I ride out, I wonder if I shall find him alive or dead on my return." Despite their quarrels, there was a deep bond between her father and the brother he had once disowned. "At least you made your peace with him." They sat for a time in silence, until Catelyn raised her head. "You spoke of tidings that Robb needed to hear?" Lord Hoster moaned and rolled onto his side, almost as if he had heard. Brynden stood. "Come outside. Best if we do not wake him." She followed him out onto the stone balcony that jutted three-sided from the solar like the prow of a ship. Her uncle glanced up, frowning. "You can see it by day now. My men call it the Red Messenger . . . but what is the message?" Catelyn raised her eyes, to where the faint red line of the comet traced a path across the deep blue sky like a long scratch across the face of god. "The Greatjon told Robb that the old gods have unfurled a red flag of vengeance for Ned. Edmure thinks it's an omen of victory for Riverrun—he sees a fish with a long tail, in the Tully colors, red against blue." She sighed. "I wish I had their faith. Crimson is a Lannister color." "That thing's not crimson," Ser Brynden said. "Nor Tully red, the mud red of the river. That's blood up there, child, smeared across the sky." "Our blood or theirs?" "Was there ever a war where only one side bled?" Her uncle gave a shake of the head. "The riverlands are awash in blood and flame all around the Gods Eye. The fighting has spread south to the Blackwater and north across the Trident, almost to the Twins. Marq Piper and Karyl Vance have won some small victories, and this southron lordling Beric Dondarrion has been raiding the raiders, falling upon Lord Tywin's foraging parties and vanishing back into the woods. It's said that Ser Burton Crakehall was boasting that he'd slain Dondarrion, until he led his column into one of Lord Beric's traps and got every man of them killed." "Some of Ned's guard from King's Landing are with this Lord Beric," Catelyn recalled. "May the gods preserve them." "Dondarrion and this red priest who rides with him are clever enough to preserve themselves, if the tales be true," her uncle said, "but your father's bannermen make a sadder tale. Robb should never have let them go. They've scattered like quail, each man trying to protect his own, and it's folly, Cat, folly. Jonos Bracken was wounded in the fighting amidst the ruins of his castle, and his nephew Hendry slain. Tytos Blackwood's swept the Lannisters off his lands, but they took every cow and pig and speck of grain and left him nothing to defend but Raventree Hall and a scorched desert. Darry men recaptured their lord's keep but held it less than a fortnight before Gregor Clegane descended on them and put the whole garrison to the sword, even their lord." Catelyn was horrorstruck. "Darry was only a child." 63 "Aye, and the last of his line as well. The boy would have brought a fine ransom, but what does gold mean to a frothing dog like Gregor Clegane? That beast's head would make a noble gift for all the people of the realm, I vow." Catelyn knew Ser Gregor's evil reputation, yet still . . . "Don't speak to me of heads, Uncle. Cersei has mounted Ned's on a spike above the walls of the Red Keep, and left it for the crows and flies." Even now, it was hard for her to believe that he was truly gone. Some nights she would wake in darkness, half-asleep, and for an instant expect to find him there beside her. "Clegane is no more than Lord Tywin's cat's-paw." For Tywin Lannister—Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, father to Queen Cersei, Ser Jaime the Kingslayer, and Tyrion the Imp, and grandfather to Joffrey Baratheon, the new-crowned boy king—was the true danger, Catelyn believed. "True enough," Ser Brynden admitted. "And Tywin Lannister is no man's fool. He sits safe behind the walls of Harrenhal, feeding his host on our harvest and burning what he does not take. Gregor is not the only dog he's loosed. Ser Amory Lorch is in the field as well, and some sellsword out of Qohor who'd sooner maim a man than kill him. I've seen what they leave behind them. Whole villages put to the torch, women raped and mutilated, butchered children left unburied to draw wolves and wild dogs . . . it would sicken even the dead." "When Edmure hears this, he will rage." "And that will be just as Lord Tywin desires. Even terror has its purpose, Cat. Lannister wants to provoke us to battle." "Robb is like to give him that wish," Catelyn said, fretful. "He is restless as a cat sitting here, and Edmure and the Greatjon and the others will urge him on." Her son had won two great victories, smashing Jaime Lannister in the Whispering Wood and routing his leaderless host outside the walls of Riverrun in the Battle of the Camps, but from the way some of his bannermen spoke of him, he might have been Aegon the Conqueror reborn. Brynden Blackfish arched a bushy grey eyebrow. "More fool they. My first rule of war, Cat—never give the enemy his wish. Lord Tywin would like to fight on a field of his own choosing. He wants us to march on Harrenhal." "Harrenhal." Every child of the Trident knew the tales told of Harrenhal, the vast fortress that King Harren the Black had raised beside the waters of Gods Eye three hundred years past, when the Seven Kingdoms had been seven kingdoms, and the riverlands were ruled by the ironmen from the islands. In his pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in all Westeros. Forty years it had taken, rising like a great shadow on the shore of the lake while Harren's armies plundered his neighbors for stone, lumber, gold, and workers. Thousands of captives died in his quarries, chained to his sledges, or laboring on his five colossal towers. Men froze by winter and sweltered in summer. Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down for beams and rafters. Harren had beggared the riverlands and the Iron Islands alike to ornament his dream. And when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King's Landing. Catelyn could remember hearing Old Nan tell the story to her own children, back at Winterfell. "And King Harren learned that thick walls and high towers are small use against dragons," the tale always ended. "For dragons fly." Harren and all his line had perished in the fires that engulfed his monstrous fortress, and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed. "I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep," Catelyn admitted. "Yet we must do something, Uncle." 64 "And soon," her uncle agreed. "I have not told you the worst of it, child. The men I sent west have brought back word that a new host is gathering at Casterly Rock." Another Lannister army. The thought made her ill. "Robb must be told at once. Who will command?" "Ser Stafford Lannister, it's said." He turned to gaze out over the rivers, his red-and-blue cloak stirring in the breeze. "Another nephew?" The Lannisters of Casterly Rock were a damnably large and fertile house. "Cousin," Ser Brynden corrected. "Brother to Lord Tywin's late wife, so twice related. An old man and a bit of a dullard, but he has a son, Ser Daven, who is more formidable." "Then let us hope it is the father and not the son who takes this army into the field." "We have some time yet before we must face them. This lot will be sellswords, freeriders, and green boys from the stews of Lannisport. Ser Stafford must see that they are armed and drilled before he dare risk battle . . . and make no mistake, Lord Tywin is not the Kingslayer. He will not rush in heedless. He will wait patiently for Ser Stafford to march before he stirs from behind the walls of Harrenhal." "Unless . . ." said Catelyn. "Yes?" Ser Brynden prompted. "Unless he must leave Harrenhal," she said, "to face some other threat." Her uncle looked at her thoughtfully. "Lord Renly." "King Renly." If she would ask help from the man, she would need to grant him the style he had claimed for himself. "Perhaps." The Blackfish smiled a dangerous smile. "He'll want something, though." "He'll want what kings always want," she said. "Homage." CHAPTER EIGHT TYRION Janos Slynt was a butcher's son, and he laughed like a man chopping meat. "More wine?" Tyrion asked him. "I should not object," Lord Janos said, holding out his cup. He was built like a keg, and had a similar capacity. "I should not object at all. That's a fine red. From the Arbor?" "Dornish." Tyrion gestured, and his serving man poured. But for the servants, he and Lord Janos were alone in the Small Hall, at a small candlelit table surrounded by darkness. "Quite the find. Dornish wines are not often so rich." "Rich," said the big frog-faced man, taking a healthy gulp. He was not a man for sipping, Janos Slynt. Tyrion had made note of that at once. "Yes, rich, that's the very word I was searching for, the very word. You have a gift for words, Lord Tyrion, if I might say so. And you tell a droll tale. Droll, yes." "I'm pleased you think so . . . but I'm not a lord, as you are. A simple Tyrion will suffice for me, Lord Janos." "As you wish." He took another swallow, dribbling wine on the front of his black satin doublet. He was wearing a cloth-of-gold half-cape fastened with a miniature spear, its point enameled in dark red. And he was well and truly drunk. 65 Tyrion covered his mouth and belched politely. Unlike Lord Janos he had gone easy on the wine, but he was very full. The first thing he had done after taking up residence in the Tower of the Hand was inquire after the finest cook in the city and take her into his service. This evening they had supped on oxtail soup, summer greens tossed with pecans, grapes, red fennel, and crumbled cheese, hot crab pie, spiced squash, and quails drowned in butter. Each dish had come with its own wine. Lord Janos allowed that he had never eaten half so well. "No doubt that will change when you take your seat in Harrenhal," Tyrion said. "For a certainty. Perhaps I should ask this cook of yours to enter my service, what do you say?" "Wars have been fought over less," he said, and they both had a good long laugh. "You're a bold man to take Harrenhal for your seat. Such a grim place, and huge . . . costly to maintain. And some say cursed as well." "Should I fear a pile of stone?" He hooted at the notion. "A bold man, you said. You must be bold, to rise. As I have. To Harrenhal, yes! And why not? You know. You are a bold man too, I sense. Small, mayhap, but bold." "You are too kind. More wine?" "No. No, truly, I . . . oh, gods be damned, yes. Why not? A bold man drinks his fill!" "Truly." Tyrion filled Lord Slynt's cup to the brim. "I have been glancing over the names you put forward to take your place as Commander of the City Watch." "Good men. Fine men. Any of the six will do, but I'd choose Allar Deem. My right arm. Good good man. Loyal. Pick him and you won't be sorry. If he pleases the king." "To be sure." Tyrion took a small sip of his own wine. "I had been considering Ser Jacelyn Bywater. He's been captain on the Mud Gate for three years, and he served with valor during Balon Greyjoy's Rebellion. King Robert knighted him at Pyke. And yet his name does not appear on your list." Lord Janos Slynt took a gulp of wine and sloshed it around in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. "Bywater. Well. Brave man, to be sure, yet . . . he's rigid, that one. A queer dog. The men don't like him. A cripple too, lost his hand at Pyke, that's what got him knighted. A poor trade, if you ask me, a hand for a ser." He laughed. "Ser Jacelyn thinks overmuch of himself and his honor, as I see it. You'll do better leaving that one where he is, my lor— Tyrion. Allar Deem's the man for you." "Deem is little loved in the streets, I am told." "He's feared. That's better." "What was it I heard of him? Some trouble in a brothel?" "That. Not his fault, my lor— Tyrion. No. He never meant to kill the woman, that was her own doing. He warned her to stand aside and let him do his duty." "Still . . . mothers and children, he might have expected she'd try to save the babe." Tyrion smiled. "Have some of this cheese, it goes splendidly with the wine. Tell me, why did you choose Deem for that unhappy task?" "A good commander knows his men, Tyrion. Some are good for one job, some for another. Doing for a babe, and her still on the tit, that takes a certain sort. Not every man'd do it. Even if it was only some whore and her whelp." "I suppose that's so," said Tyrion, hearing only some whore and thinking of Shae, and Tysha long ago, and all the other women who had taken his coin and his seed over the years. 66 Slynt went on, oblivious. "A hard man for a hard job, is Deem. Does as he's told, and never a word afterward." He cut a slice off the cheese. "This is fine. Sharp. Give me a good sharp knife and a good sharp cheese and I'm a happy man." Tyrion shrugged. "Enjoy it while you can. With the riverlands in flame and Renly king in Highgarden, good cheese will soon be hard to come by. So who sent you after the whore's bastard?" Lord Janos gave Tyrion a wary look, then laughed and wagged a wedge of cheese at him. "You're a sly one, Tyrion. Thought you could trick me, did you? It takes more than wine and cheese to make Janos Slynt tell more than he should. I pride myself. Never a question, and never a word afterward, not with me." "As with Deem." "Just the same. You make him your Commander when I'm off to Harrenhal, and you won't regret it." Tyrion broke off a nibble of the cheese. It was sharp indeed, and veined with wine; very choice. "Whoever the king names will not have an easy time stepping into your armor, I can tell. Lord Mormont faces the same problem." Lord Janos looked puzzled. "I thought she was a lady. Mormont. Beds down with bears, that's the one?" "It was her brother I was speaking of. Jeor Mormont, the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. When I was visiting with him on the Wall, he mentioned how concerned he was about finding a good man to take his place. The Watch gets so few good men these days." Tyrion grinned. "He'd sleep easier if he had a man like you, I imagine. Or the valiant Allar Deem." Lord Janos roared. "Small chance of that!" "One would think," Tyrion said, "but life does take queer turns. Consider Eddard Stark, my lord. I don't suppose he ever imagined his life would end on the steps of Baelor's Sept." "There were damn few as did," Lord Janos allowed, chuckling. Tyrion chuckled too. "A pity I wasn't here to see it. They say even Varys was surprised." Lord Janos laughed so hard his gut shook. "The Spider," he said. "Knows everything, they say. Well, he didn't know that." "How could he?" Tyrion put the first hint of a chill in his tone. "He had helped persuade my sister that Stark should be pardoned, on the condition that he take the black." "Eh?" Janos Slynt blinked vaguely at Tyrion. "My sister Cersei," Tyrion repeated, a shade more strongly, in case the fool had some doubt who he meant. "The Queen Regent." "Yes." Slynt took a swallow. "As to that, well . . . the king commanded it, m'lord. The king himself." "The king is thirteen," Tyrion reminded him. "Still. He is the king." Slynt's jowls quivered when he frowned. "The Lord of the Seven Kingdoms." "Well, one or two of them, at least," Tyrion said with a sour smile. "Might I have a look at your spear?" "My spear?" Lord Janos blinked in confusion. Tyrion pointed. "The clasp that fastens your cape." Hesitantly, Lord Janos drew out the ornament and handed it to Tyrion. 67 "We have goldsmiths in Lannisport who do better work," he opined. "The red enamel blood is a shade much, if you don't mind my saying. Tell me, my lord, did you drive the spear into the man's back yourself, or did you only give the command?" "I gave the command, and I'd give it again. Lord Stark was a traitor." The bald spot in the middle of Slynt's head was beet-red, and his cloth-of-gold cape had slithered off his shoulders onto the floor. "The man tried to buy me." "Little dreaming that you had already been sold." Slynt slammed down his wine cup. "Are you drunk? If you think I will sit here and have my honor questioned . . ." "What honor is that? I do admit, you made a better bargain than Ser Jacelyn. A lordship and a castle for a spear thrust in the back, and you didn't even need to thrust the spear." He tossed the golden ornament back to Janos Slynt. It bounced off his chest and clattered to the floor as the man rose. "I mislike the tone of your voice, my lo— Imp. I am the Lord of Harrenhal and a member of the king's council, who are you to chastise me like this?" Tyrion cocked his head sideways. "I think you know quite well who I am. How many sons do you have?" "What are my sons to you, dwarf?" "Dwarf?" His anger flashed. "You should have stopped at Imp. I am Tyrion of House Lannister, and someday, if you have the sense the gods gave a sea slug, you will drop to your knees in thanks that it was me you had to deal with, and not my lord father. Now, how many sons do you have?" Tyrion could see the sudden fear in Janos Slynt's eyes. "Th-three, m'lord. And a daughter. Please, m'lord—" "You need not beg." He slid off his chair. "You have my word, no harm will come to them. The younger boys will be fostered out as squires. If they serve well and loyally, they may be knights in time. Let it never be said that House Lannister does not reward those who serve it. Your eldest son will inherit the title Lord Slynt, and this appalling sigil of yours." He kicked at the little golden spear and sent it skittering across the floor. "Lands will be found for him, and he can build a seat for himself. It will not be Harrenhal, but it will be sufficient. It will be up to him to make a marriage for the girl." Janos Slynt's face had gone from red to white. "Wh-what . . . what do you . . . ?" His jowls were quivering like mounds of suet. "What do I mean to do with you?" Tyrion let the oaf tremble for a moment before he answered. "The carrack Summer's Dream sails on the morning tide. Her master tells me she will call at Gulltown, the Three Sisters, the isle of Skagos, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. When you see Lord Commander Mormont, give him my fond regards, and tell him that I have not forgotten the needs of the Night's Watch. I wish you long life and good service, my lord." Once Janos Slynt realized he was not to be summarily executed, color returned to his face. He thrust his jaw out. "We will see about this, Imp. Dwarf. Perhaps it will be you on that ship, what do you think of that? Perhaps it will be you on the Wall." He gave a bark of anxious laughter. "You and your threats, well, we will see. I am the king's friend, you know. We shall hear what Joffrey has to say about this. And Littlefinger and the queen, oh, yes. Janos Slynt has a good many friends. We will see who goes sailing, I promise you. Indeed we will." 68 Slynt spun on his heel like the watchman he'd once been, and strode the length of the Small Hall, boots ringing on the stone. He clattered up the steps, threw open the door . . . and came face-to-face with a tall, lantern-jawed man in black breastplate and gold cloak. Strapped to the stump of his right wrist was an iron hand. "Janos," he said, deep-set eyes glinting under a prominent brow ridge and a shock of salt-and-pepper hair. Six gold cloaks moved quietly into the Small Hall behind him as Janos Slynt backed away. "Lord Slynt," Tyrion called out, "I believe you know Ser Jacelyn Bywater, our new Commander of the City Watch." "We have a litter waiting for you, my lord," Ser Jacelyn told Slynt. "The docks are dark and distant, and the streets are not safe by night. Men." As the gold cloaks ushered out their onetime commander, Tyrion called Ser Jacelyn to his side and handed him a roll of parchment. "It's a long voyage, and Lord Slynt will want for company. See that these six join him on the Summer's Dream." Bywater glanced over the names and smiled. "As you will." "There's one," Tyrion said quietly. "Deem. Tell the captain it would not be taken amiss if that one should happen to be swept overboard before they reach Eastwatch." "I'm told those northern waters are very stormy, my lord." Ser Jacelyn bowed and took his leave, his cloak rippling behind him. He trod on Slynt's cloth-of-gold cape on his way. Tyrion sat alone, sipping at what remained of the fine sweet Dornish wine. Servants came and went, clearing the dishes from the table. He told them to leave the wine. When they were done, Varys came gliding into the hall, wearing flowing lavender robes that matched his smell. "Oh sweetly done, my good lord." "Then why do I have this bitter taste in my mouth?" He pressed his fingers into his temples. "I told them to throw Allar Deem into the sea. I am sorely tempted to do the same with you." "You might be disappointed by the result," Varys replied. "The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. Might I trouble you for a taste of the wine that Lord Slynt enjoyed so much?" Tyrion waved at the flagon, frowning. Varys filled a cup. "Ah. Sweet as summer." He took another sip. "I hear the grapes singing on my tongue." "I wondered what that noise was. Tell the grapes to keep still, my head is about to split. It was my sister. That was what the oh-so-loyal Lord Janos refused to say. Cersei sent the gold cloaks to that brothel." Varys tittered nervously. So he had known all along. "You left that part out," Tyrion said accusingly. "Your own sweet sister," Varys said, so grief-stricken he looked close to tears. "It is a hard thing to tell a man, my lord. I was fearful how you might take it. Can you forgive me?" "No," Tyrion snapped. "Damn you. Damn her." He could not touch Cersei, he knew. Not yet, not even if he'd wanted to, and he was far from certain that he did. Yet it rankled, to sit here and make a mummer's show of justice by punishing the sorry likes of Janos Slynt and Allar Deem, while his sister continued on her savage course. "In future, you will tell me what you know, Lord Varys. All of what you know." The eunuch's smile was sly. "That might take rather a long time, my good lord. I know quite a lot." 69 "Not enough to save this child, it would seem." "Alas, no. There was another bastard, a boy, older. I took steps to see him removed from harm's way . . . but I confess, I never dreamed the babe would be at risk. A baseborn girl, less than a year old, with a whore for a mother. What threat could she pose?" "She was Robert's," Tyrion said bitterly. "That was enough for Cersei, it would seem." "Yes. It is grievous sad. I must blame myself for the poor sweet babe and her mother, who was so young and loved the king." "Did she?" Tyrion had never seen the dead girl's face, but in his mind she was Shae and Tysha both. "Can a whore truly love anyone, I wonder? No, don't answer. Some things I would rather not know." He had settled Shae in a sprawling stone-and-timber manse, with its own well and stable and garden; he had given her servants to see to her wants, a white bird from the Summer Isles to keep her company, silks and silver and gemstones to adorn her, guards to protect her. And yet she seemed restive. She wanted to be with him more, she told him; she wanted to serve him and help him. "You help me most here, between the sheets," he told her one night after their loving as he lay beside her, his head pillowed against her breast, his groin aching with a sweet soreness. She made no reply, save with her eyes. He could see there that it was not what she'd wanted to hear. Sighing, Tyrion started to reach for the wine again, then remembered Lord Janos and pushed the flagon away. "It does seem my sister was telling the truth about Stark's death. We have my nephew to thank for that madness." "King Joffrey gave the command. Janos Slynt and Ser Ilyn Payne carried it out, swiftly, without hesitation . . ." ". . . almost as if they had expected it. Yes, we have been over this ground before, without profit. A folly." "With the City Watch in hand, my lord, you are well placed to see to it that His Grace commits no further . . . follies? To be sure, there is still the queen's household guard to consider . . ." "The red cloaks?" Tyrion shrugged. "Vylarr's loyalty is to Casterly Rock. He knows I am here with my father's authority. Cersei would find it hard to use his men against me . . . besides, they are only a hundred. I have half again as many men of my own. And six thousand gold cloaks, if Bywater is the man you claim." "You will find Ser Jacelyn to be courageous, honorable, obedient . . . and most grateful." "To whom, I wonder?" Tyrion did not trust Varys, though there was no denying his value. He knew things, beyond a doubt. "Why are you so helpful, my lord Varys?" he asked, studying the man's soft hands, the bald powdered face, the slimy little smile. "You are the Hand. I serve the realm, the king, and you." "As you served Jon Arryn and Eddard Stark?" "I served Lord Arryn and Lord Stark as best I could. I was saddened and horrified by their most untimely deaths." "Think how I feel. I'm like to be next." "Oh, I think not," Varys said, swirling the wine in his cup. "Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?" "It has crossed my mind a time or two," Tyrion admitted. "The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It's a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword." 70 "And yet he is no one," Varys said. "He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel." "That piece of steel is the power of life and death." "Just so . . . yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?" "Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords." "Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they? Whence came their swords? Why do they obey?" Varys smiled. "Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor's Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-soknowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or . . . another?" Tyrion cocked his head sideways. "Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?" Varys smiled. "Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less." "So power is a mummer's trick?" "A shadow on the wall," Varys murmured, "yet shadows can kill. And oft-times a very small man can cast a very large shadow." Tyrion smiled. "Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I'd feel sad about it." "I will take that as high praise." "What are you, Varys?" Tyrion found he truly wanted to know. "A spider, they say." "Spies and informers are seldom loved, my lord. I am but a loyal servant of the realm." "And a eunuch. Let us not forget that." "I seldom do." "People have called me a halfman too, yet I think the gods have been kinder to me. I am small, my legs are twisted, and women do not look upon me with any great yearning . . . yet I'm still a man. Shae is not the first to grace my bed, and one day I may take a wife and sire a son. If the gods are good, he'll look like his uncle and think like his father. You have no such hope to sustain you. Dwarfs are a jape of the gods . . . but men make eunuchs. Who cut you, Varys? When and why? Who are you, truly?" The eunuch's smile never flickered, but his eyes glittered with something that was not laughter. "You are kind to ask, my lord, but my tale is long and sad, and we have treasons to discuss." He drew a parchment from the sleeve of his robe. "The master of the King's Galley White Hart plots to slip anchor three days hence to offer his sword and ship to Lord Stannis." Tyrion sighed. "I suppose we must make some sort of bloody lesson out of the man?" "Ser Jacelyn could arrange for him to vanish, but a trial before the king would help assure the continued loyalty of the other captains." And keep my royal nephew occupied as well. "As you say. Put him down for a dose of Joffrey's justice." 71 Varys made a mark on the parchment. "Ser Horas and Ser Hobber Redwyne have bribed a guard to let them out of a postern gate, the night after next. Arrangements have been made for them to sail on the Pentoshi galley Moonrunner, disguised as oarsmen." "Can we keep them on those oars for a few years, see how they fancy it?" He smiled. "No, my sister would be distraught to lose such treasured guests. Inform Ser Jacelyn. Seize the man they bribed and explain what an honor it is to serve as a brother of the Night's Watch. And have men posted around the Moonrunner, in case the Redwynes find a second guard short of coin." "As you will." Another mark on the parchment. "Your man Timett slew a wineseller's son this evening, at a gambling den on the Street of Silver. He accused him of cheating at tiles." "Was it true?" "Oh, beyond a doubt." "Then the honest men of the city owe Timett a debt of gratitude. I shall see that he has the king's thanks." The eunuch gave a nervous giggle and made another mark. "We also have a sudden plague of holy men. The comet has brought forth all manner of queer priests, preachers, and prophets, it would seem. They beg in the winesinks and pot-shops and foretell doom and destruction to anyone who stops to listen." Tyrion shrugged. "We are close on the three hundredth year since Aegon's Landing, I suppose it is only to be expected. Let them rant." "They are spreading fear, my lord." "I thought that was your job." Varys covered his mouth with his hand. "You are very cruel to say so. One last matter. Lady Tanda gave a small supper last night. I have the menu and the guest list for your inspection. When the wine was poured, Lord Gyles rose to lift a cup to the king, and Ser Balon Swann was heard to remark, 'We'll need three cups for that.' Many laughed . . ." Tyrion raised a hand. "Enough. Ser Balon made a jest. I am not interested in treasonous table talk, Lord Varys." "You are as wise as you are gentle, my lord." The parchment vanished up the eunuch's sleeve. "We both have much to do. I shall leave you." When the eunuch had departed, Tyrion sat for a long time watching the candle and wondering how his sister would take the news of Janos Slynt's dismissal. Not happily, if he was any judge, but beyond sending an angry protest to Lord Tywin in Harrenhal, he did not see what Cersei could hope to do about it. Tyrion had the City Watch now, plus a hundredand-a-half fierce clansmen and a growing force of sellswords recruited by Bronn. He would seem well protected. Doubtless Eddard Stark thought the same. The Red Keep was dark and still when Tyrion left the Small Hall. Bronn was waiting in his solar. "Slynt?" he asked. "Lord Janos will be sailing for the Wall on the morning tide. Varys would have me believe that I have replaced one of Joffrey's men with one of my own. More likely, I have replaced Littlefinger's man with one belonging to Varys, but so be it." "You'd best know, Timett killed a man—" "Varys told me." 72 The sellsword seemed unsurprised. "The fool figured a one-eyed man would be easier to cheat. Timett pinned his wrist to the table with a dagger and ripped out his throat barehanded. He has this trick where he stiffens his fingers—" "Spare me the grisly details, my supper is sitting badly in my belly," Tyrion said. "How goes your recruiting?" "Well enough. Three new men tonight." "How do you know which ones to hire?" "I look them over. I question them, to learn where they've fought and how well they lie." Bronn smiled. "And then I give them a chance to kill me, while I do the same for them." "Have you killed any?" "No one we could have used." "And if one of them kills you?" "He'll be one you'll want to hire." Tyrion was a little drunk, and very tired. "Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe . . . an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast . . . would you do it? Without question?" "Without question? No." The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. "I'd ask how much." And why would I ever need your Allar Deem, Lord Slynt? Tyrion thought. I have a hundred of my own. He wanted to laugh; he wanted to weep; most of all, he wanted Shae. CHAPTER NINE ARYA The road was little more than two ruts through the weeds. The good part was, with so little traffic there'd be no one to point the finger and say which way they'd gone. The human flood that had flowed down the kingsroad was only a trickle here. The bad part was, the road wound back and forth like a snake, tangling with even smaller trails and sometimes seeming to vanish entirely only to reappear half a league farther on when they had all but given up hope. Arya hated it. The land was gentle enough, rolling hills and terraced fields interspersed with meadows and woodlands and little valleys where willows crowded close to slow shallow streams. Even so, the path was so narrow and crooked that their pace had dropped to a crawl. It was the wagons that slowed them, lumbering along, axles creaking under the weight of their heavy loads. A dozen times a day they had to stop to free a wheel that had stuck in a rut, or double up the teams to climb a muddy slope. Once, in the middle of a dense stand of oak, they came face-to-face with three men pulling a load of firewood in an ox cart, with no way for either to get around. There had been nothing for it but to wait while the foresters unhitched their ox, led him through the trees, spun the cart, hitched the ox up again, and started back the way they'd come. The ox was even slower than the wagons, so that day they hardly got anywhere at all. Arya could not help looking over her shoulder, wondering when the gold cloaks would catch them. At night, she woke at every noise to grab for Needle's hilt. They never made camp without putting out sentries now, but Arya did not trust them, especially the orphan boys. They might have done well enough in the alleys of King's Landing, but out here they 73 were lost. When she was being quiet as a shadow, she could sneak past all of them, flitting out by starlight to make her water in the woods where no one would see. Once, when Lommy Greenhands had the watch, she shimmied up an oak and moved from tree to tree until she was right above his head, and he never saw a thing. She would have jumped down on top of him, but she knew his scream would wake the whole camp, and Yoren might take a stick to her again. Lommy and the other orphans all treated the Bull like someone special now because the queen wanted his head, though he would have none of it. "I never did nothing to no queen," he said angrily. "I did my work, is all. Bellows and tongs and fetch and carry. I was s'posed to be an armorer, and one day Master Mott says I got to join the Night's Watch, that's all I know." Then he'd go off to polish his helm. It was a beautiful helm, rounded and curved, with a slit visor and two great metal bull's horns. Arya would watch him polish the metal with an oilcloth, shining it so bright you could see the flames of the cookfire reflected in the steel. Yet he never actually put it on his head. "I bet he's that traitor's bastard," Lommy said one night, in a hushed voice so Gendry would not hear. "The wolf lord, the one they nicked on Baelor's steps." "He is not," Arya declared. My father only had one bastard, and that's Jon. She stalked off into the trees, wishing she could just saddle her horse and ride home. She was a good horse, a chestnut mare with a white blaze on her forehead. And Arya had always been a good rider. She could gallop off and never see any of them, unless she wanted to. Only then she'd have no one to scout ahead of her, or watch behind, or stand guard while she napped, and when the gold cloaks caught her, she'd be all alone. It was safer to stay with Yoren and the others. "We're not far from Gods Eye," the black brother said one morning. "The kingsroad won't be safe till we're across the Trident. So we'll come up around the lake along the western shore, they're not like to look for us there." At the next spot where two ruts cut cross each other, he turned the wagons west. Here farmland gave way to forest, the villages and holdfasts were smaller and farther apart, the hills higher and the valleys deeper. Food grew harder to come by. In the city, Yoren had loaded up the wagons with salt fish, hard bread, lard, turnips, sacks of beans and barley, and wheels of yellow cheese, but every bite of it had been eaten. Forced to live off the land, Yoren turned to Koss and Kurz, who'd been taken as poachers. He would send them ahead of the column, into the woods, and come dusk they would be back with a deer slung between them on a pole or a brace of quail swinging from their belts. The younger boys would be set to picking blackberries along the road, or climbing fences to fill a sack with apples if they happened upon an orchard. Arya was a skilled climber and a fast picker, and she liked to go off by herself. One day she came across a rabbit, purely by happenstance. It was brown and fat, with long ears and a twitchy nose. Rabbits ran faster than cats, but they couldn't climb trees half so well. She whacked it with her stick and grabbed it by its ears, and Yoren stewed it with some mushrooms and wild onions. Arya was given a whole leg, since it was her rabbit. She shared it with Gendry. The rest of them each got a spoonful, even the three in manacles. Jaqen H'ghar thanked her politely for the treat, and Biter licked the grease off his dirty fingers with a blissful look, but Rorge, the noseless one, only laughed and said, "There's a hunter now. Lumpyface Lumpyhead Rabbitkiller." Outside a holdfast called Briarwhite, some field hands surrounded them in a cornfield, demanding coin for the ears they'd taken. Yoren eyed their scythes and tossed them a few coppers. "Time was, a man in black was feasted from Dorne to Winterfell, and even high 74 lords called it an honor to shelter him under their roofs," he said bitterly. "Now cravens like you want hard coin for a bite of wormy apple." He spat. "It's sweetcorn, better'n a stinking old black bird like you deserves," one of them answered roughly. "You get out of our field now, and take these sneaks and stabbers with you, or we'll stake you up in the corn to scare the other crows away." They roasted the sweetcorn in the husk that night, turning the ears with long forked sticks, and ate it hot right off the cob. Arya thought it tasted wonderful, but Yoren was too angry to eat. A cloud seemed to hang over him, ragged and black as his cloak. He paced about the camp restlessly, muttering to himself. The next day Koss came racing back to warn Yoren of a camp ahead. "Twenty or thirty men, in mail and half-helms," he said. "Some of them are cut up bad, and one's dying, from the sound of him. With all the noise he was making, I got right up close. They got spears and shields, but only one horse, and that's lame. I think they been there awhile, from the stink of the place." "See a banner?" "Spotted treecat, yellow and black, on a mud-brown field." Yoren folded a sourleaf into his mouth and chewed. "Can't say," he admitted. "Might be one side, might be t'other. If they're hurt that bad, likely they'd take our mounts no matter who they are. Might be they'd take more than that. I believe we'll go wide around them." It took them miles out of their way, and cost them two days at the least, but the old man said it was cheap at the price. "You'll have time enough on the Wall. The rest o' your lives, most like. Seems to me there's no rush to get there." Arya saw men guarding the fields more and more when they turned north again. Often they stood silently beside the road, giving a cold eye to anyone who passed. Elsewhere they patrolled on horses, riding their fence lines with axes strapped to their saddles. At one place, she spotted a man perched up in a dead tree, with a bow in his hand and a quiver hanging from the branch beside him. The moment he spied them, he notched an arrow to his bowstring, and never looked away until the last wagon was out of sight. All the while, Yoren cursed. "Him in his tree, let's see how well he likes it up there when the Others come to take him. He'll scream for the Watch then, that he will." A day later Dobber spied a red glow against the evening sky. "Either this road went and turned again, or that sun's setting in the north." Yoren climbed a rise to get a better look. "Fire," he announced. He licked a thumb and held it up. "Wind should blow it away from us. Still bears watching." And watch it they did. As the world darkened, the fire seemed to grow brighter and brighter, until it looked as though the whole north was ablaze. From time to time, they could even smell the smoke, though the wind held steady and the flames never got any closer. By dawn the fire had burned itself out, but none of them slept very well that night. It was midday when they arrived at the place where the village had been. The fields were a charred desolation for miles around, the houses blackened shells. The carcasses of burnt and butchered animals dotted the ground, under living blankets of carrion crows that rose, cawing furiously, when disturbed. Smoke still drifted from inside the holdfast. Its timber palisade looked strong from afar, but had not proved strong enough. Riding out in front of the wagons on her horse, Arya saw burnt bodies impaled on sharpened stakes atop the walls, their hands drawn up tight in front of their faces as if to fight off the flames that had consumed them. Yoren called a halt when they were still some distance off, and told Arya and the other boys to guard the wagons while he and Murch and 75 Cutjack went in on foot. A flock of ravens rose from inside the walls when they climbed through the broken gate, and the caged ravens in their wagons called out to them with quorks and raucous shrieks. "Should we go in after them?" Arya asked Gendry after Yoren and the others had been gone a long time. "Yoren said wait." Gendry's voice sounded hollow. When Arya turned to look, she saw that he was wearing his helm, all shiny steel and great curving horns. When they finally returned, Yoren had a little girl in his arms, and Murch and Cutjack were carrying a woman in a sling made of an old torn quilt. The girl was no older than two and she cried all the time, a whimpery sound, like something was caught in her throat. Either she couldn't talk yet or she had forgotten how. The woman's right arm ended in a bloody stump at her elbow, and her eyes didn't seem to see anything, even when she was looking right at it. She talked, but she only said one thing. "Please," she cried, over and over. "Please. Please." Rorge thought that was funny. He laughed through the hole in his face where his nose had been, and Biter started laughing too, until Murch cursed them and told them to shut up. Yoren had them fix the woman a place in the back of a wagon. "And be quick about it," he said. "Come dark, there'll be wolves here, and worse." "I'm scared," Hot Pie murmured when he saw the one-armed woman thrashing in the wagon. "Me too," Arya confessed. He squeezed her shoulder. "I never truly kicked no boy to death, Arry. I just sold my mommy's pies, is all." Arya rode as far ahead of the wagons as she dared, so she wouldn't have to hear the little girl crying or listen to the woman whisper, "Please." She remembered a story Old Nan had told once, about a man imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants. He was very brave and smart and he tricked the giants and escaped . . . but no sooner was he outside the castle than the Others took him, and drank his hot red blood. Now she knew how he must have felt. The one-armed woman died at evenfall. Gendry and Cutjack dug her grave on a hillside beneath a weeping willow. When the wind blew, Arya thought she could hear the long trailing branches whispering, "Please. Please. Please." The little hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she almost ran from the graveside. "No fire tonight," Yoren told them. Supper was a handful of wild radishes Koss found, a cup of dry beans, water from a nearby brook. The water had a funny taste to it, and Lommy told them it was the taste of bodies, rotting someplace upstream. Hot Pie would have hit him if old Reysen hadn't pulled them apart. Arya drank too much water, just to fill her belly with something. She never thought she'd be able to sleep, yet somehow she did. When she woke, it was pitch-black and her bladder was full to bursting. Sleepers huddled all around her, wrapped in blankets and cloaks. Arya found Needle, stood, listened. She heard the soft footfalls of a sentry, men turning in restless sleep, Rorge's rattling snores, and the queer hissing sound that Biter made when he slept. From a different wagon came the steady rhythmic scrape of steel on stone as Yoren sat, chewing sourleaf and sharpening the edge of his dirk. Hot Pie was one of the boys on watch. "Where you going?" he asked when he saw Arya heading for the trees. Arya waved vaguely at the woods. 76 "No you're not," Hot Pie said. He had gotten bolder again now that he had a sword on his belt, even though it was just a shortsword and he handled it like a cleaver. "The old man said for everyone to stay close tonight." "I need to make water," Arya explained. "Well, use that tree right there." He pointed. "You don't know what's out there, Arry. I heard wolves before." Yoren wouldn't like it if she fought with him. She tried to look afraid. "Wolves? For true?" "I heard," he assured her. "I don't think I need to go after all." She went back to her blanket and pretended to sleep until she heard Hot Pie's footsteps going away. Then she rolled over and slipped off into the woods on the other side of the camp, quiet as a shadow. There were sentries out this way too, but Arya had no trouble avoiding them. Just to make sure, she went out twice as far as usual. When she was sure there was no one near, she skinned down her breeches and squatted to do her business. She was making water, her clothing tangled about her ankles, when she heard rustling from under the trees. Hot Pie, she thought in panic, he followed me. Then she saw the eyes shining out from the wood, bright with reflected moonlight. Her belly clenched tight as she grabbed for Needle, not caring if she pissed herself, counting eyes, two four eight twelve, a whole pack . . . One of them came padding out from under the trees. He stared at her, and bared his teeth, and all she could think was how stupid she'd been and how Hot Pie would gloat when they found her half-eaten body the next morning. But the wolf turned and raced back into the darkness, and quick as that the eyes were gone. Trembling, she cleaned herself and laced up and followed a distant scraping sound back to camp, and to Yoren. Arya climbed up into the wagon beside him, shaken. "Wolves," she whispered hoarsely. "In the woods." "Aye. They would be." He never looked at her. "They scared me." "Did they?" He spat. "Seems to me your kind was fond o' wolves." "Nymeria was a direwolf." Arya hugged herself. "That's different. Anyhow, she's gone. Jory and I threw rocks at her until she ran off, or else the queen would have killed her." It made her sad to talk about it. "I bet if she'd been in the city, she wouldn't have let them cut off Father's head." "Orphan boys got no fathers," Yoren said, "or did you forget that?" The sourleaf had turned his spit red, so it looked like his mouth was bleeding. "The only wolves we got to fear are the ones wear manskin, like those who done for that village." "I wish I was home," she said miserably. She tried so hard to be brave, to be fierce as a wolverine and all, but sometimes she felt like she was just a little girl after all. The black brother peeled a fresh sourleaf from the bale in the wagon and stuffed it into his mouth. "Might be I should of left you where I found you, boy. All of you. Safer in the city, seems to me." "I don't care. I want to go home." "Been bringing men to the Wall for close on thirty years." Froth shone on Yoren's lips, like bubbles of blood. "All that time, I only lost three. Old man died of a fever, city boy got snakebit taking a shit, and one fool tried to kill me in my sleep and got a red smile for his trouble." He drew the dirk across his throat, to show her. "Three in thirty years." He spat out 77 the old sourleaf. "A ship now, might have been wiser. No chance o' finding more men on the way, but still . . . clever man, he'd go by ship, but me . . . thirty years I been taking this kingsroad." He sheathed his dirk. "Go to sleep, boy. Hear me?" She did try. Yet as she lay under her thin blanket, she could hear the wolves howling . . . and another sound, fainter, no more than a whisper on the wind, that might have been screams. CHAPTER TEN DAVOS The morning air was dark with the smoke of burning gods. They were all afire now, Maid and Mother, Warrior and Smith, the Crone with her pearl eyes and the Father with his gilded beard; even the Stranger, carved to look more animal than human. The old dry wood and countless layers of paint and varnish blazed with a fierce hungry light. Heat rose shimmering through the chill air; behind, the gargoyles and stone dragons on the castle walls seemed blurred, as if Davos were seeing them through a veil of tears. Or as if the beasts were trembling, stirring . . . "An ill thing," Allard declared, though at least he had the sense to keep his voice low. Dale muttered agreement. "Silence," said Davos. "Remember where you are." His sons were good men, but young, and Allard especially was rash. Had I stayed a smuggler, Allard would have ended on the Wall. Stannis spared him from that end, something else I owe him . . . Hundreds had come to the castle gates to bear witness to the burning of the Seven. The smell in the air was ugly. Even for soldiers, it was hard not to feel uneasy at such an affront to the gods most had worshiped all their lives. The red woman walked round the fire three times, praying once in the speech of Asshai, once in High Valyrian, and once in the Common Tongue. Davos understood only the last. "R'hllor, come to us in our darkness," she called. "Lord of Light, we offer you these false gods, these seven who are one, and him the enemy. Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is dark and full of terrors." Queen Selyse echoed the words. Beside her, Stannis watched impassively, his jaw hard as stone under the blue-black shadow of his tight-cropped beard. He had dressed more richly than was his wont, as if for the sept. Dragonstone's sept had been where Aegon the Conqueror knelt to pray the night before he sailed. That had not saved it from the queen's men. They had overturned the altars, pulled down the statues, and smashed the stained glass with warhammers. Septon Barre could only curse them, but Ser Hubard Rambton led his three sons to the sept to defend their gods. The Rambtons had slain four of the queen's men before the others overwhelmed them. Afterward Guncer Sunglass, mildest and most pious of lords, told Stannis he could no longer support his claim. Now he shared a sweltering cell with the septon and Ser Hubard's two surviving sons. The other lords had not been slow to take the lesson. The gods had never meant much to Davos the smuggler, though like most men he had been known to make offerings to the Warrior before battle, to the Smith when he launched a ship, and to the Mother whenever his wife grew great with child. He felt ill as he watched them burn, and not only from the smoke. Maester Cressen would have stopped this. The old man had challenged the Lord of Light and been struck down for his impiety, or so the gossips told each other. Davos knew the truth. He had seen the maester slip something into the wine cup. Poison. What else could it be? He 78 drank a cup of death to free Stannis from Melisandre, but somehow her god shielded her. He would gladly have killed the red woman for that, yet what chance would he have where a maester of the Citadel had failed? He was only a smuggler raised high, Davos of Flea Bottom, the Onion Knight. The burning gods cast a pretty light, wreathed in their robes of shifting flame, red and orange and yellow. Septon Barre had once told Davos how they'd been carved from the masts of the ships that had carried the first Targaryens from Valyria. Over the centuries, they had been painted and repainted, gilded, silvered, jeweled. "Their beauty will make them more pleasing to R'hllor," Melisandre said when she told Stannis to pull them down and drag them out the castle gates. The Maiden lay athwart the Warrior, her arms widespread as if to embrace him. The Mother seemed almost to shudder as the flames came licking up her face. A longsword had been thrust through her heart, and its leather grip was alive with flame. The Father was on the bottom, the first to fall. Davos watched the hand of the Stranger writhe and curl as the fingers blackened and fell away one by one, reduced to so much glowing charcoal. Nearby, Lord Celtigar coughed fitfully and covered his wrinkled face with a square of linen embroidered in red crabs. The Myrmen swapped jokes as they enjoyed the warmth of the fire, but young Lord Bar Emmon had turned a splotchy grey, and Lord Velaryon was watching the king rather than the conflagration. Davos would have given much to know what he was thinking, but one such as Velaryon would never confide in him. The Lord of the Tides was of the blood of ancient Valyria, and his House had thrice provided brides for Targaryen princes; Davos Seaworth stank of fish and onions. It was the same with the other lordlings. He could trust none of them, nor would they ever include him in their private councils. They scorned his sons as well. My grandsons will joust with theirs, though, and one day their blood may wed with mine. In time my little black ship will fly as high as Velaryon's seahorse or Celtigar's red crabs. That is, if Stannis won his throne. If he lost . . . Everything I am, I owe to him. Stannis had raised him to knighthood. He had given him a place of honor at his table, a war galley to sail in place of a smuggler's skiff. Dale and Allard captained galleys as well, Maric was oarmaster on the Fury, Matthos served his father on Black Betha, and the king had taken Devan as a royal squire. One day he would be knighted, and the two little lads as well. Marya was mistress of a small keep on Cape Wrath, with servants who called her m'lady, and Davos could hunt red deer in his own woods. All this he had of Stannis Baratheon, for the price of a few finger joints. It was just, what he did to me. I had flouted the king's laws all my life. He has earned my loyalty. Davos touched the little pouch that hung from the leather thong about his neck. His fingers were his luck, and he needed luck now. As do we all. Lord Stannis most of all. Pale flames licked at the grey sky. Dark smoke rose, twisting and curling. When the wind pushed it toward them, men blinked and wept and rubbed their eyes. Allard turned his head away, coughing and cursing. A taste of things to come, thought Davos. Many and more would burn before this war was done. Melisandre was robed all in scarlet satin and blood velvet, her eyes as red as the great ruby that glistened at her throat as if it too were afire. "In ancient books of Asshai it is written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him." She lifted her voice, so it carried out over the gathered host. "Azor Ahai, beloved of R'hllor! The 79 Warrior of Light, the Son of Fire! Come forth, your sword awaits you! Come forth and take it into your hand!" Stannis Baratheon strode forward like a soldier marching into battle. His squires stepped up to attend him. Davos watched as his son Devan pulled a long padded glove over the king's right hand. The boy wore a cream-colored doublet with a fiery heart sewn on the breast. Bryen Farring was similarly garbed as he tied a stiff leather cape around His Grace's neck. Behind, Davos heard a faint clank and clatter of bells. "Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black," Patchface sang somewhere. "I know, I know, oh, oh, oh." The king plunged into the fire with his teeth clenched, holding the leather cloak before him to keep off the flames. He went straight to the Mother, grasped the sword with his gloved hand, and wrenched it free of the burning wood with a single hard jerk. Then he was retreating, the sword held high, jade-green flames swirling around cherry-red steel. Guards rushed to beat out the cinders that clung to the king's clothing. "A sword of fire!" shouted Queen Selyse. Ser Axell Florent and the other queen's men took up the cry. "A sword of fire! It burns! It burns! A sword of fire!" Melisandre lifted her hands above her head. "Behold! A sign was promised, and now a sign is seen! Behold Lightbringer! Azor Ahai has come again! All hail the Warrior of Light! All hail the Son of Fire!" A ragged wave of shouts gave answer, just as Stannis's glove began to smolder. Cursing, the king thrust the point of the sword into the damp earth and beat out the flames against his leg. "Lord, cast your light upon us!" Melisandre called out. "For the night is dark and full of terrors," Selyse and her queen's men replied. Should I speak the words as well? Davos wondered. Do I owe Stannis that much? Is this fiery god truly his own? His shortened fingers twitched. Stannis peeled off the glove and let it fall to the ground. The gods in the pyre were scarcely recognizable anymore. The head fell off the Smith with a puff of ash and embers. Melisandre sang in the tongue of Asshai, her voice rising and falling like the tides of the sea. Stannis untied his singed leather cape and listened in silence. Thrust in the ground, Lightbringer still glowed ruddy hot, but the flames that clung to the sword were dwindling and dying. By the time the song was done, only charwood remained of the gods, and the king's patience had run its course. He took the queen by the elbow and escorted her back into Dragonstone, leaving Lightbringer where it stood. The red woman remained a moment to watch as Devan knelt with Bryen Farring and rolled up the burnt and blackened sword in the king's leather cloak. The Red Sword of Heroes looks a proper mess, thought Davos. A few of the lords lingered to speak in quiet voices upwind of the fire. They fell silent when they saw Davos looking at them. Should Stannis fall, they will pull me down in an instant. Neither was he counted one of the queen's men, that group of ambitious knights and minor lordlings who had given themselves to this Lord of Light and so won the favor and patronage of Lady—no, Queen, remember?—Selyse. The fire had started to dwindle by the time Melisandre and the squires departed with the precious sword. Davos and his sons joined the crowd making its way down to the shore and the waiting ships. "Devan acquitted himself well," he said as they went. "He fetched the glove without dropping it, yes," said Dale. 80 Allard nodded. "That badge on Devan's doublet, the fiery heart, what was that? The Baratheon sigil is a crowned stag." "A lord can choose more than one badge," Davos said. Dale smiled. "A black ship and an onion, Father?" Allard kicked at a stone. "The Others take our onion . . . and that flaming heart. It was an ill thing to burn the Seven." "When did you grow so devout?" Davos said. "What does a smuggler's son know of the doings of gods?" "I'm a knight's son, Father. If you won't remember, why should they?" "A knight's son, but not a knight," said Davos. "Nor will you ever be, if you meddle in affairs that do not concern you. Stannis is our rightful king, it is not for us to question him. We sail his ships and do his bidding. That is all." "As to that, Father," Dale said, "I mislike these water casks they've given me for Wraith. Green pine. The water will spoil on a voyage of any length." "I got the same for Lady Marya," said Allard. "The queen's men have laid claim to all the seasoned wood." "I will speak to the king about it," Davos promised. Better it come from him than from Allard. His sons were good fighters and better sailors, but they did not know how to talk to lords. They were lowborn, even as I was, but they do not like to recall that. When they look at our banner, all they see is a tall black ship flying on the wind. They close their eyes to the onion. The port was as crowded as Davos had ever known it. Every dock teemed with sailors loading provisions, and every inn was packed with soldiers dicing or drinking or looking for a whore . . . a vain search, since Stannis permitted none on his island. Ships lined the strand; war galleys and fishing vessels, stout carracks and fat-bottomed cogs. The best berths had been taken by the largest vessels: Stannis's flagship Fury rocking between Lord Steffon and Stag of the Sea, Lord Velaryon's silver-hulled Pride of Driftmark and her three sisters, Lord Celtigar's ornate Red Claw, the ponderous Swordfish with her long iron prow. Out to sea at anchor rode Salladhor Saan's great Valyrian amongst the striped hulls of two-dozen smaller Lysene galleys. A weathered little inn sat on the end of the stone pier where Black Betha, Wraith, and Lady Marya shared mooring space with a half-dozen other galleys of one hundred oars or less. Davos had a thirst. He took his leave of his sons and turned his steps toward the inn. Out front squatted a waist-high gargoyle, so eroded by rain and salt that his features were all but obliterated. He and Davos were old friends, though. He gave a pat to the stone head as he went in. "Luck," he murmured. Across the noisy common room, Salladhor Saan sat eating grapes from a wooden bowl. When he spied Davos, he beckoned him closer. "Ser knight, come sit with me. Eat a grape. Eat two. They are marvelously sweet." The Lyseni was a sleek, smiling man whose flamboyance was a byword on both sides of the narrow sea. Today he wore flashing cloth-ofsilver, with dagged sleeves so long the ends of them pooled on the floor. His buttons were carved jade monkeys, and atop his wispy white curls perched a jaunty green cap decorated with a fan of peacock feathers. Davos threaded his way through the tables to a chair. In the days before his knighthood, he had often bought cargoes from Salladhor Saan. The Lyseni was a smuggler himself, as well as a trader, a banker, a notorious pirate, and the self-styled Prince of the Narrow Sea. When a 81 pirate grows rich enough, they make him a prince. It had been Davos who had made the journey to Lys to recruit the old rogue to Lord Stannis's cause. "You did not see the gods burn, my lord?" he asked. "The red priests have a great temple on Lys. Always they are burning this and burning that, crying out to their R'hllor. They bore me with their fires. Soon they will bore King Stannis too, it is to be hoped." He seemed utterly unconcerned that someone might overhear him, eating his grapes and dribbling the seeds out onto his lip, flicking them off with a finger. "My Bird of a Thousand Colors came in yesterday, good ser. She is not a warship, no, but a trader, and she paid a call on King's Landing. Are you sure you will not have a grape? Children go hungry in the city, it is said." He dangled the grapes before Davos and smiled. "It's ale I need, and news." "The men of Westeros are ever rushing," complained Salladhor Saan. "What good is this, I ask you? He who hurries through life hurries to his grave." He belched. "The Lord of Casterly Rock has sent his dwarf to see to King's Landing. Perhaps he hopes that his ugly face will frighten off attackers, eh? Or that we will laugh ourselves dead when the Imp capers on the battlements, who can say? The dwarf has chased off the lout who ruled the gold cloaks and put in his place a knight with an iron hand." He plucked a grape, and squeezed it between thumb and forefinger until the skin burst. Juice ran down between his fingers. A serving girl pushed her way through, swatting at the hands that groped her as she passed. Davos ordered a tankard of ale, turned back to Saan, and said, "How well is the city defended?" The other shrugged. "The walls are high and strong, but who will man them? They are building scorpions and spitfires, oh, yes, but the men in the golden cloaks are too few and too green, and there are no others. A swift strike, like a hawk plummeting at a hare, and the great city will be ours. Grant us wind to fill our sails, and your king could sit upon his Iron Throne by evenfall on the morrow. We could dress the dwarf in motley and prick his little cheeks with the points of our spears to make him dance for us, and mayhaps your goodly king would make me a gift of the beautiful Queen Cersei to warm my bed for a night. I have been too long away from my wives, and all in his service." "Pirate," said Davos. "You have no wives, only concubines, and you have been well paid for every day and every ship." "Only in promises," said Salladhor Saan mournfully. "Good ser, it is gold I crave, not words on papers." He popped a grape into his mouth. "You'll have your gold when we take the treasury in King's Landing. No man in the Seven Kingdoms is more honorable than Stannis Baratheon. He will keep his word." Even as Davos spoke, he thought, This world is twisted beyond hope, when lowborn smugglers must vouch for the honor of kings. "So he has said and said. And so I say, let us do this thing. Even these grapes could be no more ripe than that city, my old friend." The serving girl returned with his ale. Davos gave her a copper. "Might be we could take King's Landing, as you say," he said as he lifted the tankard, "but how long would we hold it? Tywin Lannister is known to be at Harrenhal with a great host, and Lord Renly . . ." "Ah, yes, the young brother," said Salladhor Saan. "That part is not so good, my friend. King Renly bestirs himself. No, here he is Lord Renly, my pardons. So many kings, my tongue grows weary of the word. The brother Renly has left Highgarden with his fair young queen, his flowered lords and shining knights, and a mighty host of foot. He marches up your road of roses toward the very same great city we were speaking of." 82 "He takes his bride?" The other shrugged. "He did not tell me why. Perhaps he is loath to part with the warm burrow between her thighs, even for a night. Or perhaps he is that certain of his victory." "The king must be told." "I have attended to it, good ser. Though His Grace frowns so whenever he does see me that I tremble to come before him. Do you think he would like me better if I wore a hair shirt and never smiled? Well, I will not do it. I am an honest man, he must suffer me in silk and samite. Or else I shall take my ships where I am better loved. That sword was not Lightbringer, my friend." The sudden shift in subject left Davos uneasy. "Sword?" "A sword plucked from fire, yes. Men tell me things, it is my pleasant smile. How shall a burnt sword serve Stannis?" "A burning sword," corrected Davos. "Burnt," said Salladhor Saan, "and be glad of that, my friend. Do you know the tale of the forging of Lightbringer? I shall tell it to you. It was a time when darkness lay heavy on the world. To oppose it, the hero must have a hero's blade, oh, like none that had ever been. And so for thirty days and thirty nights Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes, until the sword was done. Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst asunder." "Being a hero, it was not for him to shrug and go in search of excellent grapes such as these, so again he began. The second time it took him fifty days and fifty nights, and this sword seemed even finer than the first. Azor Ahai captured a lion, to temper the blade by plunging it through the beast's red heart, but once more the steel shattered and split. Great was his woe and great was his sorrow then, for he knew what he must do." "A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes." "Now do you see my meaning? Be glad that it is just a burnt sword that His Grace pulled from that fire. Too much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns." Salladhor Saan finished the last grape and smacked his lips. "When do you think the king will bid us sail, good ser?" "Soon, I think," said Davos, "if his god wills it." "His god, ser friend? Not yours? Where is the god of Ser Davos Seaworth, knight of the onion ship?" Davos sipped his ale to give himself a moment. The inn is crowded, and you are not Salladhor Saan, he reminded himself. Be careful how you answer. "King Stannis is my god. He made me and blessed me with his trust." "I will remember." Salladhor Saan got to his feet. "My pardons. These grapes have given me a hunger, and dinner awaits on my Valyrian. Minced lamb with pepper and roasted gull stuffed with mushrooms and fennel and onion. Soon we shall eat together in King's Landing, yes? In the Red Keep we shall feast, while the dwarf sings us a jolly tune. When you speak to King Stannis, mention if you would that he will owe me another thirty thousand dragons 83 come the black of the moon. He ought to have given those gods to me. They were too beautiful to burn, and might have brought a noble price in Pentos or Myr. Well, if he grants me Queen Cersei for a night I shall forgive him." The Lyseni clapped Davos on the back, and swaggered from the inn as if he owned it. Ser Davos Seaworth lingered over his tankard for a good while, thinking. A year ago, he had been with Stannis in King's Landing when King Robert staged a tourney for Prince Joffrey's name day. He remembered the red priest Thoros of Myr, and the flaming sword he had wielded in the melee. The man had made for a colorful spectacle, his red robes flapping while his blade writhed with pale green flames, but everyone knew there was no true magic to it, and in the end his fire had guttered out and Bronze Yohn Royce had brained him with a common mace. A true sword of fire, now, that would be a wonder to behold. Yet at such a cost . . . When he thought of Nissa Nissa, it was his own Marya he pictured, a good-natured plump woman with sagging breasts and a kindly smile, the best woman in the world. He tried to picture himself driving a sword through her, and shuddered. I am not made of the stuff of heroes, he decided. If that was the price of a magic sword, it was more than he cared to pay. Davos finished his ale, pushed away the tankard, and left the inn. On the way out he patted the gargoyle on the head and muttered, "Luck." They would all need it. It was well after dark when Devan came down to Black Betha, leading a snow-white palfrey. "My lord father," he announced, "His Grace commands you to attend him in the Chamber of the Painted Table. You are to ride the horse and come at once." It was good to see Devan looking so splendid in his squire's raiment, but the summons made Davos uneasy. Will he bid us sail? he wondered. Salladhor Saan was not the only captain who felt that King's Landing was ripe for an attack, but a smuggler must learn patience. We have no hope of victory. I said as much to Maester Cressen, the day I returned to Dragonstone, and nothing has changed. We are too few, the foes too many. If we dip our oars, we die. Nonetheless, he climbed onto the horse. When Davos arrived at the Stone Drum, a dozen highborn knights and great bannermen were just leaving. Lords Celtigar and Velaryon each gave him a curt nod and walked on while the others ignored him utterly, but Ser Axell Florent stopped for a word. Queen Selyse's uncle was a keg of a man with thick arms and bandy legs. He had the prominent ears of a Florent, even larger than his niece's. The coarse hair that sprouted from his did not stop him hearing most of what went on in the castle. For ten years Ser Axell had served as castellan of Dragonstone while Stannis sat on Robert's council in King's Landing, but of late he had emerged as the foremost of the queen's men. "Ser Davos, it is good to see you, as ever," he said. "And you, my lord." "I made note of you this morning as well. The false gods burned with a merry light, did they not?" "They burned brightly." Davos did not trust this man, for all his courtesy. House Florent had declared for Renly. "The Lady Melisandre tells us that sometimes R'hllor permits his faithful servants to glimpse the future in flames. It seemed to me as I watched the fire this morning that I was looking at a dozen beautiful dancers, maidens garbed in yellow silk spinning and swirling before a great king. I think it was a true vision, ser. A glimpse of the glory that awaits His Grace after we take King's Landing and the throne that is his by rights." 84 Stannis has no taste for such dancing, Davos thought, but he dared not offend the queen's uncle. "I saw only fire," he said, "but the smoke was making my eyes water. You must pardon me, ser, the king awaits." He pushed past, wondering why Ser Axell had troubled himself. He is a queen's man and I am the king's. Stannis sat at his Painted Table with Maester Pylos at his shoulder, an untidy pile of papers before them. "Ser," the king said when Davos entered, "come have a look at this letter." Obediently, he selected a paper at random. "It looks handsome enough, Your Grace, but I fear I cannot read the words." Davos could decipher maps and charts as well as any, but letters and other writings were beyond his powers. But my Devan has learned his letters, and young Steffon and Stannis as well. "I'd forgotten." A furrow of irritation showed between the king's brows. "Pylos, read it to him." "Your Grace." The maester took up one of the parchments and cleared his throat. "All men know me for the trueborn son of Steffon Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End, by his lady wife Cassana of House Estermont. I declare upon the honor of my House that my beloved brother Robert, our late king, left no trueborn issue of his body, the boy Joffrey, the boy Tommen, and the girl Myrcella being abominations born of incest between Cersei Lannister and her brother Jaime the Kingslayer. By right of birth and blood, I do this day lay claim to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Let all true men declare their loyalty. Done in the Light of the Lord, under the sign and seal of Stannis of House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms." The parchment rustled softly as Pylos laid it down. "Make it Ser Jaime the Kingslayer henceforth," Stannis said, frowning. "Whatever else the man may be, he remains a knight. I don't know that we ought to call Robert my beloved brother either. He loved me no more than he had to, nor I him." "A harmless courtesy, Your Grace," Pylos said. "A lie. Take it out." Stannis turned to Davos. "The maester tells me that we have one hundred seventeen ravens on hand. I mean to use them all. One hundred seventeen ravens will carry one hundred seventeen copies of my letter to every corner of the realm, from the Arbor to the Wall. Perhaps a hundred will win through against storm and hawk and arrow. If so, a hundred maesters will read my words to as many lords in as many solars and bedchambers . . . and then the letters will like as not be consigned to the fire, and lips pledged to silence. These great lords love Joffrey, or Renly, or Robb Stark. I am their rightful king, but they will deny me if they can. So I have need of you." "I am yours to command, my king. As ever." Stannis nodded. "I mean for you to sail Black Betha north, to Gulltown, the Fingers, the Three Sisters, even White Harbor. Your son Dale will go south in Wraith, past Cape Wrath and the Broken Arm, all along the coast of Dorne as far as the Arbor. Each of you will carry a chest of letters, and you will deliver one to every port and holdfast and fishing village. Nail them to the doors of septs and inns for every man to read who can." Davos said, "That will be few enough." "Ser Davos speaks truly, Your Grace," said Maester Pylos. "It would be better to have the letters read aloud." "Better, but more dangerous," said Stannis. "These words will not be kindly received." 85 "Give me knights to do the reading," Davos said. "That will carry more weight than anything I might say." Stannis seemed well satisfied with that. "I can give you such men, yes. I have a hundred knights who would sooner read than fight. Be open where you can and stealthy where you must. Use every smuggler's trick you know, the black sails, the hidden coves, whatever it requires. If you run short of letters, capture a few septons and set them to copying out more. I mean to use your second son as well. He will take Lady Marya across the narrow sea, to Braavos and the other Free Cities, to deliver other letters to the men who rule there. The world will know of my claim, and of Cersei's infamy." You can tell them, Davos thought, but will they believe? He glanced thoughtfully at Maester Pylos. The king caught the look. "Maester, perhaps you ought get to your writing. We will need a great many letters, and soon." "As you will." Pylos bowed, and took his leave. The king waited until he was gone before he said, "What is it you would not say in the presence of my maester, Davos?" "My liege, Pylos is pleasant enough, but I cannot see the chain about his neck without mourning for Maester Cressen." "Is it his fault the old man died?" Stannis glanced into the fire. "I never wanted Cressen at that feast. He'd angered me, yes, he'd given me bad counsel, but I did not want him dead. I'd hoped he might be granted a few years of ease and comfort. He had earned that much, at least, but"—he ground his teeth together—"but he died. And Pylos serves me ably." "Pylos is the least of it. The letter . . . What did your lords make of it, I wonder?" Stannis snorted. "Celtigar pronounced it admirable. If I showed him the contents of my privy, he would declare that admirable as well. The others bobbed their heads up and down like a flock of geese, all but Velaryon, who said that steel would decide the matter, not words on parchment. As if I had never suspected. The Others take my lords, I'll hear your views." "Your words were blunt and strong." "And true." "And true. Yet you have no proof. Of this incest. No more than you did a year ago." "There's proof of a sort at Storm's End. Robert's bastard. The one he fathered on my wedding night, in the very bed they'd made up for me and my bride. Delena was a Florent, and a maiden when he took her, so Robert acknowledged the babe. Edric Storm, they call him. He is said to be the very image of my brother. If men were to see him, and then look again at Joffrey and Tommen, they could not help but wonder, I would think." "Yet how are men to see him, if he is at Storm's End?" Stannis drummed his fingers on the Painted Table. "It is a difficulty. One of many." He raised his eyes. "You have more to say about the letter. Well, get on with it. I did not make you a knight so you could learn to mouth empty courtesies. I have my lords for that. Say what you would say, Davos." Davos bowed his head. "There was a phrase at the end. How did it go? Done in the Light of the Lord . . ." "Yes." The king's jaw was clenched. "Your people will mislike those words." "As you did?" said Stannis sharply. 86 "If you were to say instead, Done in the sight of gods and men, or By the grace of the gods old and new . . ." "Have you gone devout on me, smuggler?" "That was to be my question for you, my liege." "Was it now? It sounds as though you love my new god no more than you love my new maester." "I do not know this Lord of Light," Davos admitted, "but I knew the gods we burned this morning. The Smith has kept my ships safe, while the Mother has given me seven strong sons." "Your wife has given you seven strong sons. Do you pray to her? It was wood we burned this morning." "That may be so," Davos said, "but when I was a boy in Flea Bottom begging for a copper, sometimes the septons would feed me." "I feed you now." "You have given me an honored place at your table. And in return I give you truth. Your people will not love you if you take from them the gods they have always worshiped, and give them one whose very name sounds queer on their tongues." Stannis stood abruptly. "R'hllor. Why is that so hard? They will not love me, you say? When have they ever loved me? How can I lose something I have never owned?" He moved to the south window to gaze out at the moonlit sea. "I stopped believing in gods the day I saw the Windproud break up across the bay. Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship, I vowed. In King's Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men." "If you do not believe in gods—" "—why trouble with this new one?" Stannis broke in. "I have asked myself as well. I know little and care less of gods, but the red priestess has power." Yes, but what sort of power? "Cressen had wisdom." "I trusted in his wisdom and your wiles, and what did they avail me, smuggler? The storm lords sent you packing. I went to them a beggar and they laughed at me. Well, there will be no more begging, and no more laughing either. The Iron Throne is mine by rights, but how am I to take it? There are four kings in the realm, and three of them have more men and more gold than I do. I have ships . . . and I have her. The red woman. Half my knights are afraid even to say her name, did you know? If she can do nothing else, a sorceress who can inspire such dread in grown men is not to be despised. A frightened man is a beaten man. And perhaps she can do more. I mean to find out." "When I was a lad I found an injured goshawk and nursed her back to health. Proudwing, I named her. She would perch on my shoulder and flutter from room to room after me and take food from my hand, but she would not soar. Time and again I would take her hawking, but she never flew higher than the treetops. Robert called her Weakwing. He owned a gyrfalcon named Thunderclap who never missed her strike. One day our great-uncle Ser Harbert told me to try a different bird. I was making a fool of myself with Proudwing, he said, and he was right." Stannis Baratheon turned away from the window, and the ghosts who moved upon the southern sea. "The Seven have never brought me so much as a sparrow. It is time I tried another hawk, Davos. A red hawk." 87 CHAPTER ELEVEN THEON There was no safe anchorage at Pyke, but Theon Greyjoy wished to look on his father's castle from the sea, to see it as he had seen it last, ten years before, when Robert Baratheon's war galley had borne him away to be a ward of Eddard Stark. On that day he had stood beside the rail, listening to the stroke of the oars and the pounding of the master's drum while he watched Pyke dwindle in the distance. Now he wanted to see it grow larger, to rise from the sea before him. Obedient to his wishes, the Myraham beat her way past the point with her sails snapping and her captain cursing the wind and his crew and the follies of highborn lordlings. Theon drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray, and looked for home. The shore was all sharp rocks and glowering cliffs, and the castle seemed one with the rest, its towers and walls and bridges quarried from the same grey-black stone, wet by the same salt waves, festooned with the same spreading patches of dark green lichen, speckled by the droppings of the same seabirds. The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them. Drear, dark, forbidding, Pyke stood atop those islands and pillars, almost a part of them, its curtain wall closing off the headland around the foot of the great stone bridge that leapt from the cliff-top to the largest islet, dominated by the massive bulk of the Great Keep. Farther out were the Kitchen Keep and the Bloody Keep, each on its own island. Towers and outbuildings clung to the stacks beyond, linked to each other by covered archways when the pillars stood close, by long swaying walks of wood and rope when they did not. The Sea Tower rose from the outmost island at the point of the broken sword, the oldest part of the castle, round and tall, the sheer-sided pillar on which it stood half-eaten through by the endless battering of the waves. The base of the tower was white from centuries of salt spray, the upper stories green from the lichen that crawled over it like a thick blanket, the jagged crown black with soot from its nightly watchfire. Above the Sea Tower snapped his father's banner. The Myraham was too far off for Theon to see more than the cloth itself, but he knew the device it bore: the golden kraken of House Greyjoy, arms writhing and reaching against a black field. The banner streamed from an iron mast, shivering and twisting as the wind gusted, like a bird struggling to take flight. And here at least the direwolf of Stark did not fly above, casting its shadow down upon the Greyjoy kraken. Theon had never seen a more stirring sight. In the sky behind the castle, the fine red tail of the comet was visible through thin, scuttling clouds. All the way from Riverrun to Seagard, the Mallisters had argued about its meaning. It is my comet, Theon told himself, sliding a hand into his fur-lined cloak to touch the oilskin pouch snug in its pocket. Inside was the letter Robb Stark had given him, paper as good as a crown. "Does the castle look as you remember it, milord?" the captain's daughter asked as she pressed herself against his arm. "It looks smaller," Theon confessed, "though perhaps that is only the distance." The Myraham was a fat-bellied southron merchanter up from Oldtown, carrying wine and cloth and seed to trade for iron ore. Her captain was a fat-bellied southron merchanter as well, and 88 the stony sea that foamed at the feet of the castle made his plump lips quiver, so he stayed well out, farther than Theon would have liked. An ironborn captain in a longship would have taken them along the cliffs and under the high bridge that spanned the gap between the gatehouse and the Great Keep, but this plump Oldtowner had neither the craft, the crew, nor the courage to attempt such a thing. So they sailed past at a safe distance, and Theon must content himself with seeing Pyke from afar. Even so, the Myraham had to struggle mightily to keep itself off those rocks. "It must be windy there," the captain's daughter observed. He laughed. "Windy and cold and damp. A miserable hard place, in truth . . . but my lord father once told me that hard places breed hard men, and hard men rule the world." The captain's face was as green as the sea when he came bowing up to Theon and asked, "May we make for port now, milord?" "You may," Theon said, a faint smile playing about his lips. The promise of gold had turned the Oldtowner into a shameless lickspittle. It would have been a much different voyage if a longship from the islands had been waiting at Seagard as he'd hoped. Ironborn captains were proud and willful, and did not go in awe of a man's blood. The islands were too small for awe, and a longship smaller still. If every captain was a king aboard his own ship, as was often said, it was small wonder they named the islands the land of ten thousand kings. And when you have seen your kings shit over the rail and turn green in a storm, it was hard to bend the knee and pretend they were gods. "The Drowned God makes men," old King Urron Redhand had once said, thousands of years ago, "but it's men who make crowns." A longship would have made the crossing in half the time as well. The Myraham was a wallowing tub, if truth be told, and he would not care to be aboard her in a storm. Still, Theon could not be too unhappy. He was here, undrowned, and the voyage had offered certain other amusements. He put an arm around the captain's daughter. "Summon me when we make Lordsport," he told her father. "We'll be below, in my cabin." He led the girl away aft, while her father watched them go in sullen silence. The cabin was the captain's, in truth, but it had been turned over to Theon's use when they sailed from Seagard. The captain's daughter had not been turned over to his use, but she had come to his bed willingly enough all the same. A cup of wine, a few whispers, and there she was. The girl was a shade plump for his taste, with skin as splotchy as oatmeal, but her breasts filled his hands nicely and she had been a maiden the first time he took her. That was surprising at her age, but Theon found it diverting. He did not think the captain approved, and that was amusing as well, watching the man struggle to swallow his outrage while performing his courtesies to the high lord, the rich purse of gold he'd been promised never far from his thoughts. As Theon shrugged out of his wet cloak, the girl said, "You must be so happy to see your home again, milord. How many years have you been away?" "Ten, or close as makes no matter," he told her. "I was a boy of ten when I was taken to Winterfell, as a ward of Eddard Stark." A ward in name, a hostage in truth. Half his days a hostage . . . but no longer. His life was his own again, and nowhere a Stark to be seen. He drew the captain's daughter close and kissed her on her ear. "Take off your cloak." She dropped her eyes, suddenly shy, but did as he bid her. When the heavy garment, sodden with spray, fell from her shoulders to the deck, she gave him a little bow and smiled anxiously. She looked rather stupid when she smiled, but he had never required a woman to be clever. "Come here," he told her. She did. "I have never seen the Iron Islands." 89 "Count yourself fortunate." Theon stroked her hair. It was fine and dark, though the wind had made a tangle of it. "The islands are stern and stony places, scant of comfort and bleak of prospect. Death is never far here, and life is mean and meager. Men spend their nights drinking ale and arguing over whose lot is worse, the fisherfolk who fight the sea or the farmers who try and scratch a crop from the poor thin soil. If truth be told, the miners have it worse than either, breaking their backs down in the dark, and for what? Iron, lead, tin, those are our treasures. Small wonder the ironmen of old turned to raiding." The stupid girl did not seem to be listening. "I could go ashore with you," she said. "I would, if it please you . . ." "You could go ashore," Theon agreed, squeezing her breast, "but not with me, I fear." "I'd work in your castle, milord. I can clean fish and bake bread and churn butter. Father says my peppercrab stew is the best he's ever tasted. You could find me a place in your kitchens and I could make you peppercrab stew." "And warm my bed by night?" He reached for the laces of her bodice and began to undo them, his fingers deft and practiced. "Once I might have carried you home as a prize, and kept you to wife whether you willed it or no. The ironmen of old did such things. A man had his rock wife, his true bride, ironborn like himself, but he had his salt wives too, women captured on raids." The girl's eyes grew wide, and not because he had bared her breasts. "I would be your salt wife, milord." "I fear those days are gone." Theon's finger circled one heavy teat, spiraling in toward the fat brown nipple. "No longer may we ride the wind with fire and sword, taking what we want. Now we scratch in the ground and toss lines in the sea like other men, and count ourselves lucky if we have salt cod and porridge enough to get us through a winter." He took her nipple in his mouth, and bit it until she gasped. "You can put it in me again, if it please you," she whispered in his ear as he sucked. When he raised his head from her breast, the skin was dark red where his mouth had marked her. "It would please me to teach you something new. Unlace me and pleasure me with your mouth." "With my mouth?" His thumb brushed lightly over her full lips. "It's what those lips were made for, sweetling. If you were my salt wife, you'd do as I command." She was timid at first, but learned quickly for such a stupid girl, which pleased him. Her mouth was as wet and sweet as her cunt, and this way he did not have to listen to her mindless prattle. Once I would have kept her as a salt wife in truth, he thought to himself as he slid his fingers through her tangled hair. Once. When we still kept the Old Way, lived by the axe instead of the pick, taking what we would, be it wealth, women, or glory. In those days, the ironborn did not work mines; that was labor for the captives brought back from the hostings, and so too the sorry business of farming and tending goats and sheep. War was an ironman's proper trade. The Drowned God had made them to reave and rape, to carve out kingdoms and write their names in fire and blood and song. Aegon the Dragon had destroyed the Old Way when he burned Black Harren, gave Harren's kingdom back to the weakling rivermen, and reduced the Iron Islands to an insignificant backwater of a much greater realm. Yet the old red tales were still told around driftwood fires and smoky hearths all across the islands, even behind the high stone halls of Pyke. Theon's father numbered among his titles the style of Lord Reaper, and the Greyjoy words boasted that We Do Not Sow. 90 It had been to bring back the Old Way more than for the empty vanity of a crown that Lord Balon had staged his great rebellion. Robert Baratheon had written a bloody end to that hope, with the help of his friend Eddard Stark, but both men were dead now. Mere boys ruled in their stead, and the realm that Aegon the Conqueror had forged was smashed and sundered. This is the season, Theon thought as the captain's daughter slid her lips up and down the length of him, the season, the year, the day, and I am the man. He smiled crookedly, wondering what his father would say when Theon told him that he, the last-born, babe and hostage, he had succeeded where Lord Balon himself had failed. His climax came on him sudden as a storm, and he filled the girl's mouth with his seed. Startled, she tried to pull away, but Theon held her tight by the hair. Afterward, she crawled up beside him. "Did I please milord?" "Well enough," he told her. "It tasted salty," she murmured. "Like the sea?" She nodded. "I have always loved the sea, milord." "As I have," he said, rolling her nipple idly between his fingers. It was true. The sea meant freedom to the men of the Iron Islands. He had forgotten that until the Myraham had raised sail at Seagard. The sounds brought old feelings back; the creak of wood and rope, the captain's shouted commands, the snap of the sails as the wind filled them, each as familiar as the beating of his own heart, and as comforting. I must remember this, Theon vowed to himself. I must never go far from the sea again. "Take me with you, milord," the captain's daughter begged. "I don't need to go to your castle. I can stay in some town, and be your salt wife." She reached out to stroke his cheek. Theon Greyjoy pushed her hand aside and climbed off the bunk. "My place is Pyke, and yours is on this ship." "I can't stay here now." He laced up his breeches. "Why not?" "My father," she told him. "Once you're gone, he'll punish me, milord. He'll call me names and hit me." Theon swept his cloak off its peg and over his shoulders. "Fathers are like that," he admitted as he pinned the folds with a silver clasp. "Tell him he should be pleased. As many times as I've fucked you, you're likely with child. It's not every man who has the honor of raising a king's bastard." She looked at him stupidly, so he left her there. The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big cog stayed well out from them, tacking. Theon moved to the bow for a better view. He saw the castle first, the stronghold of the Botleys. When he was a boy it had been timber and wattle, but Robert Baratheon had razed that structure to the ground. Lord Sawane had rebuilt in stone, for now a small square keep crowned the hill. Pale green flags drooped from the squat corner towers, each emblazoned with a shoal of silvery fish. Beneath the dubious protection of the fish-ridden little castle lay the village of Lordsport, its harbor aswarm with ships. When last he'd seen Lordsport, it had been a smoking wasteland, the skeletons of burnt longships and smashed galleys littering the stony shore like the bones of dead leviathans, the houses no more than broken walls and cold ashes. After ten years, few traces of the war remained. The smallfolk had built new hovels with the stones of the old, and cut fresh sod for their roofs. A new inn had risen beside the landing, twice the 91 size of the old one, with a lower story of cut stone and two upper stories of timber. The sept beyond had never been rebuilt, though; only a seven-sided foundation remained where it had stood. Robert Baratheon's fury had soured the ironmen's taste for the new gods, it would seem. Theon was more interested in ships than gods. Among the masts of countless fishing boats, he spied a Tyroshi trading galley off-loading beside a lumbering Ibbenese cog with her black-tarred hull. A great number of longships, fifty or sixty at the least, stood out to sea or lay beached on the pebbled shore to the north. Some of the sails bore devices from the other islands; the blood moon of Wynch, Lord Goodbrother's banded black warhorn, Harlaw's silver scythe. Theon searched for his uncle Euron's Silence. Of that lean and terrible red ship he saw no sign, but his father's Great Kraken was there, her bow ornamented with a grey iron ram in the shape of its namesake. Had Lord Balon anticipated him and called the Greyjoy banners? His hand went inside his cloak again, to the oilskin pouch. No one knew of his letter but Robb Stark; they were no fools, to entrust their secrets to a bird. Still, Lord Balon was no fool either. He might well have guessed why his son was coming home at long last, and acted accordingly. The thought did not please him. His father's war was long done, and lost. This was Theon's hour—his plan, his glory, and in time his crown. Yet if the longships are hosting . . . It might be only a caution, now that he thought on it. A defensive move, lest the war spill out across the sea. Old men were cautious by nature. His father was old now, and so too his uncle Victarion, who commanded the Iron Fleet. His uncle Euron was a different song, to be sure, but the Silence did not seem to be in port. It's all for the good, Theon told himself. This way, I shall be able to strike all the more quickly. As the Myraham made her way landward, Theon paced the deck restlessly, scanning the shore. He had not thought to find Lord Balon himself at quayside, but surely his father would have sent someone to meet him. Sylas Sourmouth the steward, Lord Botley, perhaps even Dagmer Cleftjaw. It would be good to look on Dagmer's hideous old face again. It was not as though they had no word of his arrival. Robb had sent ravens from Riverrun, and when they'd found no longship at Seagard, Jason Mallister had sent his own birds to Pyke, supposing that Robb's were lost. Yet he saw no familiar faces, no honor guard waiting to escort him from Lordsport to Pyke, only smallfolk going about their small business. Shorehands rolled casks of wine off the Tyroshi trader, fisherfolk cried the day's catch, children ran and played. A priest in the seawater robes of the Drowned God was leading a pair of horses along the pebbled shore, while above him a slattern leaned out a window in the inn, calling out to some passing Ibbenese sailors. A handful of Lordsport merchants had gathered to meet the ship. They shouted questions as the Myraham was tying up. "We're out of Oldtown," the captain called down, "bearing apples and oranges, wines from the Arbor, feathers from the Summer Isles. I have pepper, woven leathers, a bolt of Myrish lace, mirrors for milady, a pair of Oldtown woodharps sweet as any you ever heard." The gangplank descended with a creak and a thud. "And I've brought your heir back to you." The Lordsport men gazed on Theon with blank, bovine eyes, and he realized that they did not know who he was. It made him angry. He pressed a golden dragon into the captain's palm. "Have your men bring my things." Without waiting for a reply, he strode down the gangplank. "Innkeeper," he barked, "I require a horse." 92 "As you say, m'lord," the man responded, without so much as a bow. He had forgotten how bold the ironborn could be. "Happens as I have one might do. Where would you be riding, m'lord?" "Pyke." The fool still did not know him. He should have worn his good doublet, with the kraken embroidered on the breast. "You'll want to be off soon, to reach Pyke afore dark," the innkeeper said. "My boy will go with you and show you the way." "Your boy will not be needed," a deep voice called, "nor your horse. I shall see my nephew back to his father's house." The speaker was the priest he had seen leading the horses along the shoreline. As the man approached, the smallfolk bent the knee, and Theon heard the innkeeper murmur, "Damphair." Tall and thin, with fierce black eyes and a beak of a nose, the priest was garbed in mottled robes of green and grey and blue, the swirling colors of the Drowned God. A waterskin hung under his arm on a leather strap, and ropes of dried seaweed were braided through his waist-long black hair and untrimmed beard. A memory prodded at Theon. In one of his rare curt letters, Lord Balon had written of his youngest brother going down in a storm, and turning holy when he washed up safe on shore. "Uncle Aeron?" he said doubtfully. "Nephew Theon," the priest replied. "Your lord father bid me fetch you. Come." "In a moment, Uncle." He turned back to the Myraham. "My things," he commanded the captain. A sailor fetched him down his tall yew bow and quiver of arrows, but it was the captain's daughter who brought the pack with his good clothing. "Milord." Her eyes were red. When he took the pack, she made as if to embrace him, there in front of her own father and his priestly uncle and half the island. Theon turned deftly aside. "You have my thanks." "Please," she said, "I do love you well, milord." "I must go." He hurried after his uncle, who was already well down the pier. Theon caught him with a dozen long strides. "I had not looked for you, Uncle. After ten years, I thought perhaps my lord father and lady mother might come themselves, or send Dagmer with an honor guard." "It is not for you to question the commands of the Lord Reaper of Pyke." The priest's manner was chilly, most unlike the man Theon remembered. Aeron Greyjoy had been the most amiable of his uncles, feckless and quick to laugh, fond of songs, ale, and women. "As to Dagmer, the Cleftjaw is gone to Old Wyk at your father's behest, to roust the Stonehouses and the Drumms." "To what purpose? Why are the longships hosting?" "Why have longships ever hosted?" His uncle had left the horses tied up in front of the waterside inn. When they reached them, he turned to Theon. "Tell me true, nephew. Do you pray to the wolf gods now?" Theon seldom prayed at all, but that was not something you confessed to a priest, even your father's own brother. "Ned Stark prayed to a tree. No, I care nothing for Stark's gods." "Good. Kneel." The ground was all stones and mud. "Uncle, I—" 93 "Kneel. Or are you too proud now, a lordling of the green lands come among us?" Theon knelt. He had a purpose here, and might need Aeron's help to achieve it. A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed. "Bow your head." Lifting the skin, his uncle pulled the cork and directed a thin stream of seawater down upon Theon's head. It drenched his hair and ran over his forehead into his eyes. Sheets washed down his cheeks, and a finger crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine. The salt made his eyes burn, until it was all he could do not to cry out. He could taste the ocean on his lips. "Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were," Aeron Greyjoy intoned. "Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel. Nephew, do you still know the words?" "What is dead may never die," Theon said, remembering. "What is dead may never die," his uncle echoed, "but rises again, harder and stronger. Stand." Theon stood, blinking back tears from the salt in his eyes. Wordless, his uncle corked the waterskin, untied his horse, and mounted. Theon did the same. They set off together, leaving the inn and the harbor behind them, up past the castle of Lord Botley into the stony hills. The priest ventured no further word. "I have been half my life away from home," Theon ventured at last. "Will I find the islands changed?" "Men fish the sea, dig in the earth, and die. Women birth children in blood and pain, and die. Night follows day. The winds and tides remain. The islands are as our god made them." Gods, he has grown grim, Theon thought. "Will I find my sister and my lady mother at Pyke?" "You will not. Your mother dwells on Harlaw, with her own sister. It is less raw there, and her cough troubles her. Your sister has taken Black Wind to Great Wyk, with messages from your lord father. She will return e'er long, you may be sure." Theon did not need to be told that Black Wind was Asha's longship. He had not seen his sister in ten years, but that much he knew of her. Odd that she would call it that, when Robb Stark had a wolf named Grey Wind. "Stark is grey and Greyjoy's black," he murmured, smiling, "but it seems we're both windy." The priest had nothing to say to that. "And what of you, Uncle?" Theon asked. "You were no priest when I was taken from Pyke. I remember how you would sing the old reaving songs standing on the table with a horn of ale in hand." "Young I was, and vain," Aeron Greyjoy said, "but the sea washed my follies and my vanities away. That man drowned, nephew. His lungs filled with seawater, and the fish ate the scales off his eyes. When I rose again, I saw clearly." He is as mad as he is sour. Theon had liked what he remembered of the old Aeron Greyjoy. "Uncle, why has my father called his swords and sails?" "Doubtless he will tell you at Pyke." "I would know his plans now." "From me, you shall not. We are commanded not to speak of this to any man." "Even to me?" Theon's anger flared. He'd led men in war, hunted with a king, won honor in tourney melees, ridden with Brynden Blackfish and Greatjon Umber, fought in the Whispering Wood, bedded more girls than he could name, and yet this uncle was treating him 94 as though he were still a child of ten. "If my father makes plans for war, I must know of them. I am not 'any man,' I am heir to Pyke and the Iron Islands." "As to that," his uncle said, "we shall see." The words were a slap in the face. "We shall see? My brothers are both dead. I am my lord father's only living son." "Your sister lives." Asha, he thought, confounded. She was three years older than Theon, yet still . . . "A woman may inherit only if there is no male heir in the direct line," he insisted loudly. "I will not be cheated of my rights, I warn you." His uncle grunted. "You warn a servant of the Drowned God, boy? You have forgotten more than you know. And you are a great fool if you believe your lord father will ever hand these holy islands over to a Stark. Now be silent. The ride is long enough without your magpie chatterings." Theon held his tongue, though not without struggle. So that is the way of it, he thought. As if ten years in Winterfell could make a Stark. Lord Eddard had raised him among his own children, but Theon had never been one of them. The whole castle, from Lady Stark to the lowliest kitchen scullion, knew he was hostage to his father's good behavior, and treated him accordingly. Even the bastard Jon Snow had been accorded more honor than he had. Lord Eddard had tried to play the father from time to time, but to Theon he had always remained the man who'd brought blood and fire to Pyke and taken him from his home. As a boy, he had lived in fear of Stark's stern face and great dark sword. His wife was, if anything, even more distant and suspicious. As for their children, the younger ones had been mewling babes for most of his years at Winterfell. Only Robb and his baseborn half-brother Jon Snow had been old enough to be worth his notice. The bastard was a sullen boy, quick to sense a slight, jealous of Theon's high birth and Robb's regard for him. For Robb himself, Theon did have a certain affection, as for a younger brother . . . but it would be best not to mention that. In Pyke, it would seem, the old wars were still being fought. That ought not surprise him. The Iron Islands lived in the past; the present was too hard and bitter to be borne. Besides, his father and uncles were old, and the old lords were like that; they took their dusty feuds to the grave, forgetting nothing and forgiving less. It had been the same with the Mallisters, his companions on the ride from Riverrun to Seagard. Patrek Mallister was not too ill a fellow; they shared a taste for wenches, wine, and hawking. But when old Lord Jason saw his heir growing overly fond of Theon's company, he had taken Patrek aside to remind him that Seagard had been built to defend the coast against reavers from the Iron islands, the Greyjoys of Pyke chief among them. Their Booming Tower was named for its immense bronze bell, rung of old to call the townsfolk and farmhands into the castle when longships were sighted on the western horizon. "Never mind that the bell has been rung just once in three hundred years," Patrek had told Theon the day after, as he shared his father's cautions and a jug of green-apple wine. "When my brother stormed Seagard," Theon said. Lord Jason had slain Rodrik Greyjoy under the walls of the castle, and thrown the ironmen back into the bay. "If your father supposes I bear him some enmity for that, it's only because he never knew Rodrik." They had a laugh over that as they raced ahead to an amorous young miller's wife that Patrek knew. Would that Patrek were with me now. Mallister or no, he was a more amiable riding companion than this sour old priest that his uncle Aeron had turned into. 95 The path they rode wound up and up, into bare and stony hills. Soon they were out of sight of the sea, though the smell of salt still hung sharp in the damp air. They kept a steady plodding pace, past a shepherd's croft and the abandoned workings of a mine. This new, holy Aeron Greyjoy was not much for talk. They rode in a gloom of silence. Finally Theon could suffer it no longer. "Robb Stark is Lord of Winterfell now," he said. Aeron rode on. "One wolf is much like the other." "Robb has broken fealty with the Iron Throne and crowned himself King in the North. There's war." "The maester's ravens fly over salt as soon as rock. This news is old and cold." "It means a new day, Uncle." "Every morning brings a new day, much like the old." "In Riverrun, they would tell you different. They say the red comet is a herald of a new age. A messenger from the gods." "A sign it is," the priest agreed, "but from our god, not theirs. A burning brand it is, such as our people carried of old. It is the flame the Drowned God brought from the sea, and it proclaims a rising tide. It is time to hoist our sails and go forth into the world with fire and sword, as he did." Theon smiled. "I could not agree more." "A man agrees with god as a raindrop with the storm." This raindrop will one day be a king, old man. Theon had suffered quite enough of his uncle's gloom. He put his spurs into his horse and trotted on ahead, smiling. It was nigh on sunset when they reached the walls of Pyke, a crescent of dark stone that ran from cliff to cliff, with the gatehouse in the center and three square towers to either side. Theon could still make out the scars left by the stones of Robert Baratheon's catapults. A new south tower had risen from the ruins of the old, its stone a paler shade of grey, and as yet unmarred by patches of lichen. That was where Robert had made his breach, swarming in over the rubble and corpses with his warhammer in hand and Ned Stark at his side. Theon had watched from the safety of the Sea Tower, and sometimes he still saw the torches in his dreams, and heard the dull thunder of the collapse. The gates stood open to him, the rusted iron portcullis drawn up. The guards atop the battlements watched with strangers' eyes as Theon Greyjoy came home at last. Beyond the curtain wall were half a hundred acres of headland hard against the sky and the sea. The stables were here, and the kennels, and a scatter of other outbuildings. Sheep and swine huddled in their pens while the castle dogs ran free. To the south were the cliffs, and the wide stone bridge to the Great Keep. Theon could hear the crashing of waves as he swung down from his saddle. A stableman came to take his horse. A pair of gaunt children and some thralls stared at him with dull eyes, but there was no sign of his lord father, nor anyone else he recalled from boyhood. A bleak and bitter homecoming, he thought. The priest had not dismounted. "Will you not stay the night and share our meat and mead, Uncle?" "Bring you, I was told. You are brought. Now I return to our god's business." Aeron Greyjoy turned his horse and rode slowly out beneath the muddy spikes of the portcullis. A bentback old crone in a shapeless grey dress approached him warily. "M'lord, I am sent to show you to chambers." "By whose bidding?" 96 "Your lord father, m'lord." Theon pulled off his gloves. "So you do know who I am. Why is my father not here to greet me?" "He awaits you in the Sea Tower, m'lord. When you are rested from your trip." And I thought Ned Stark cold. "And who are you?" "Helya, who keeps this castle for your lord father." "Sylas was steward here. They called him Sourmouth." Even now, Theon could recall the winey stench of the old man's breath. "Dead these five years, m'lord." "And what of Maester Qalen, where is he?" "He sleeps in the sea. Wendamyr keeps the ravens now." It is as if I were a stranger here, Theon thought. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. "Show me to my chambers, woman," he commanded. Bowing stiffly, she led him across the headland to the bridge. That at least was as he remembered; the ancient stones slick with spray and spotted by lichen, the sea foaming under their feet like some great wild beast, the salt wind clutching at their clothes. Whenever he'd imagined his homecoming, he had always pictured himself returning to the snug bedchamber in the Sea Tower, where he'd slept as a child. Instead the old woman led him to the Bloody Keep. The halls here were larger and better furnished, if no less cold nor damp. Theon was given a suite of chilly rooms with ceilings so high that they were lost in gloom. He might have been more impressed if he had not known that these were the very chambers that had given the Bloody Keep its name. A thousand years before, the sons of the River King had been slaughtered here, hacked to bits in their beds so that pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland. But Greyjoys were not murdered in Pyke except once in a great while by their brothers, and his brothers were both dead. It was not fear of ghosts that made him glance about with distaste. The wall hangings were green with mildew, the mattress musty-smelling and sagging, the rushes old and brittle. Years had come and gone since these chambers had last been opened. The damp went bone-deep. "I'll have a basin of hot water and a fire in this hearth," he told the crone. "See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes." "Yes, m'lord. As you command." She fled. After some time, they brought the hot water he had asked for. It was only tepid, and soon cold, and seawater in the bargain, but it served to wash the dust of the long ride from his face and hair and hands. While two thralls lit his braziers, Theon stripped off his travel-stained clothing and dressed to meet his father. He chose boots of supple black leather, soft lambswool breeches of silvery-grey, a black velvet doublet with the golden kraken of the Greyjoys embroidered on the breast. Around his throat he fastened a slender gold chain, around his waist a belt of bleached white leather. He hung a dirk at one hip and a longsword at the other, in scabbards striped black-and-gold. Drawing the dirk, he tested its edge with his thumb, pulled a whetstone from his belt pouch, and gave it a few licks. He prided himself on keeping his weapons sharp. "When I return, I shall expect a warm room and clean rushes," he warned the thralls as he drew on a pair of black gloves, the silk decorated with a delicate scrollwork tracery in golden thread. Theon returned to the Great Keep through a covered stone walkway, the echoes of his footsteps mingling with the ceaseless rumble of the sea below. To get to the Sea Tower on its 97 crooked pillar, he had to cross three further bridges, each narrower than the one before. The last was made of rope and wood, and the wet salt wind made it sway underfoot like a living thing. Theon's heart was in his mouth by the time he was halfway across. A long way below, the waves threw up tall plumes of spray as they crashed against the rock. As a boy, he used to run across this bridge, even in the black of night. Boys believe nothing can hurt them, his doubt whispered. Grown men know better. The door was grey wood studded with iron, and Theon found it barred from the inside. He hammered on it with a fist, and cursed when a splinter snagged the fabric of his glove. The wood was damp and moldy, the iron studs rusted. After a moment the door was opened from within by a guard in a black iron breastplate and pot-helm. "You are the son?" "Out of my way, or you'll learn who I am." The ma "You blush red as a maid, Theon. A question was asked. Is it the gold price you paid, or the iron?" "The gold," Theon admitted. His father slid his fingers under the necklace and gave it a yank so hard it was like to take Theon's head off, had the chain not snapped first. "My daughter has taken an axe for a lover," Lord Balon said. "I will not have my son bedeck himself like a whore." He dropped the broken chain onto the brazier, where it slid down among the coals. "It is as I feared. The green lands have made you soft, and the Starks have made you theirs." "You're wrong. Ned Stark was my gaoler, but my blood is still salt and iron." Lord Balon turned away to warm his bony hands over the brazier. "Yet the Stark pup sends you to me like a well-trained raven, clutching his little message." "There is nothing small about the letter I bear," Theon said, "and the offer he makes is one I suggested to him." "This wolf king heeds your counsel, does he?" The notion seemed to amuse Lord Balon. "He heeds me, yes. I've hunted with him, trained with him, shared meat and mead with him, warred at his side. I have earned his trust. He looks on me as an older brother, he—" "No." His father jabbed a finger at his face. "Not here, not in Pyke, not in my hearing, you will not name him brother, this son of the man who put your true brothers to the sword. Or have you forgotten Rodrik and Maron, who were your own blood?" "I forget nothing." Ned Stark had killed neither of his brothers, in truth. Rodrik had been slain by Lord Jason Mallister at Seagard, Maron crushed in the collapse of the old south tower . . . but Stark would have done for them just as quick had the tide of battle chanced to sweep them together. "I remember my brothers very well," Theon insisted. Chiefly he remembered Rodrik's drunken cuffs and Maron's cruel japes and endless lies. "I remember when my father was a king too." He took out Robb's letter and thrust it forward. "Here. Read it . . . Your Grace." Lord Balon broke the seal and unfolded the parchment. His black eyes flicked back and forth. "So the boy would give me a crown again," he said, "and all I need do is destroy his enemies." His thin lips twisted in a smile. "By now Robb is at the Golden Tooth," Theon said. "Once it falls, he'll be through the hills in a day. Lord Tywin's host is at Harrenhal, cut off from the west. The Kingslayer is a captive at Riverrun. Only Ser Stafford Lannister and the raw green levies he's been gathering remain to oppose Robb in the west. Ser Stafford will put himself between Robb's army and Lannisport, which means the city will be undefended when we descend on it by sea. If the gods are with us, even Casterly Rock itself may fall before the Lannisters so much as realize that we are upon them." Lord Balon grunted. "Casterly Rock has never fallen." "Until now." Theon smiled. And how sweet that will be. His father did not return the smile. "So this is why Robb Stark sends you back to me, after so long? So you might win my consent to this plan of his?" "It is my plan, not Robb's," Theon said proudly. Mine, as the victory will be mine, and in time the crown. "I will lead the attack myself, if it please you. As my reward I would ask that you grant me Casterly Rock for my own seat, once we have taken it from the Lannisters." With the Rock, he could hold Lannisport and the golden lands of the west. It would mean wealth and power such as House Greyjoy had never known. 99 "You reward yourself handsomely for a notion and a few lines of scribbling." His father read the letter again. "The pup says nothing about a reward. Only that you speak for him, and I am to listen, and give him my sails and swords, and in return he will give me a crown." His flinty eyes lifted to meet his son's. "He will give me a crown," he repeated, his voice growing sharp. "A poor choice of words, what is meant is—" "What is meant is what is said. The boy will give me a crown. And what is given can be taken away." Lord Balon tossed the letter onto the brazier, atop the necklace. The parchment curled, blackened, and took flame. Theon was aghast. "Have you gone mad?" His father laid a stinging backhand across his cheek. "Mind your tongue. You are not in Winterfell now, and I am not Robb the Boy, that you should speak to me so. I am the Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke, King of Salt and Rock, Son of the Sea Wind, and no man gives me a crown. I pay the iron price. I will take my crown, as Urron Redhand did five thousand years ago." Theon edged backward, away from the sudden fury in his father's tone. "Take it, then," he spat, his cheek still tingling. "Call yourself King of the Iron islands, no one will care . . . until the wars are over, and the victor looks about and spies the old fool perched off his shore with an iron crown on his head." Lord Balon laughed. "Well, at the least you are no craven. No more than I'm a fool. Do you think I gather my ships to watch them rock at anchor? I mean to carve out a kingdom with fire and sword . . . but not from the west, and not at the bidding of King Robb the Boy. Casterly Rock is too strong, and Lord Tywin too cunning by half. Aye, we might take Lannisport, but we should never keep it. No. I hunger for a different plum . . . not so juicy sweet, to be sure, yet it hangs there ripe and undefended." Where? Theon might have asked, but by then he knew.