CASTLE BLACK – THE WALL

The long awaited caravan from Old Town trundled through the frozen swamp inside Castle Black's gates. Its wheels dug deep into sludge, weighed by down overflowing sacks of grain and dwarf potatoes. In the cold they had turned to rock and bumped up against each other, clanging like swords. A maester held the reins on his six oxen. Each of their huge, sawn-off horns were coated in a thick sheen of ice while their tan fur was patchy and thick. There was a misery about their grey-glass eyes, the rickety squeals from the cart's axle and the general stink of the shit-stained beasts – the maester included.

Lord Commander Thorne languished on the wooden platform tacked onto the front of the castle with one hand on his sword's pommel and the other wrapped around the railing. With no Valyrian steel to spare, he'd replaced his blade with a long cut of black glass brought specially from Dragonstone. It was fitted to his old standard by a Wildling smith, who had then set about fashioning similar weapons for his men. An inch too long, the glass rose above the sheath, watching the world.

The blustering wind barely raised a curl of Thorne's greasy hair from the lines that cut across his forehead. They had strengthened into dark channels over the frigid months, almost as if each battle had left a fresh mark. A scar for a pine branch that tore down his cheek. A burn at the back of his neck from the close pass of a torch. Grey flesh recovering from an especially long night... His flock of Crows gathered, drawn out of the sprawling outbuildings that clustered to Castle Black like starving calves. One structure had recently fallen in under the weight of snow and now sat to the side as the first victim of Winter. Unable to rebuild it, the men scavenged its wood for their fires.

"Three weeks late and look at the fucking state of it." Thorne cursed the cart under his breath. "Where's the rest?" He demanded of the maester, as he came to a stop below. Thorne leaned over the balcony accompanied by a soft crack of ice.

The maester cooed at the restless oxen before tilting his head up to eye the Commander. The combined height of the castle and The Wall looming behind the angry figure made Thorne every bit as impressive as his reputation warned. The maester cast a second, wary glance to the assembly of watchmen who had paused their mindless tasks to observe the exchange. True, their Commander was a bit of a short-tempered bastard but they liked nothing more than to see him turn his ire on the world beyond their nest.

"Rest of, what?" The maester scoffed. "This here is several months of supplies, as the Dragon Queen requested and not exactly what I'd call, 'paid for'. Actually, I'd like to make use of your rookery soon as it can be arranged. There was some doubt as to the state of the road. I have crossed more amiable swamps."

Thorne was only interested in one item and it was very clearly lacking. "Wildfire..." He hissed.

"Joking!" The maester shook his head as though the Lord Commander were mad. Mind you, they all were in the North. "On a road like this? I like my skin as it is – dragged over my hide."

"You came 'round Highgarden way. Road is well enough if yer use the glass lined amphora. It was all in the letter."

"Far too expensive and heavy. The citadel is sending the wildfire by ship which will serve your needs perfectly well. Up to you lot how you get it from port to castle. Blow up as many wagons as you please. We've been more than generous considering the circumstance. Can't say that anyone's particularly happy with all that nonsense in the capital. Do you lot up here have any idea how many corpses they have piled outside the walls? Damn rotting things are stinking out half the realm. If this is her idea of 'peace' I'd hate to see a war." He was genuinely alarmed. "They call that place, 'The Blood Tide' now."

"The wildfire is for us, not the queen."

"Which is why it's headed to your ports. Well on its way, actually. You'll just have to wait. Manufacturing such a volatile tool of war takes time – and money. Both of which are running a bit short. Pirates, you see. They make terrible treasurers."

Silence stirred. The ox shuffled against their leathers, bled raw. A few black birds staking out the castle walls brandished their wings at the scent of blood. It dirtied the air, drawing their eye.

"Haven't yer lot of Southern bastards heard yet?" Thorne's voice curled through the world. "The ports are gone. East and West. Fallen in'ter the flamin' sea."

The maester shrugged, entirely missing the fear that dripped from the fresh stalactites under the railing where Thorne stood. "Not my problem. Wildling raids are nothing new."

Without warning, Thorne tightened his hand on the rail, dipped his enormous frame and then vaulted clear over. He dropped through the air and landed like an ancient forest cat, his gaze unbroken. His boots crunched through the first layer of frost then cut into the mud. He stopped beside the fool, reached up and dragged the man from the cart.

The maester's arse hit the ground with a smack of bone. His hands flailed out but Thorne re-adjusted his grip on the squirming creature and took him by the back of his neck where he could get a good fist-full of robes. Though the maester called in terror to the watching Crows, none of them so much as shifted in his direction. Rather, many were amused by the rags of the Citadel sliding through the filth leaving bits of thread in the ice. For once, they were above the creatures that held the keys to the world. They were the ones looking on passively as fear screamed. All they felt was a flicker of satisfaction. Bring on the Winter snows, they thought, if it means the death of lies.

Thorne dragged the maester across the courtyard and into a gaping tunnel. A metal archway had been built to adorn its entrance. Long ago its finer features had rusted leaving bloody stains on the veneer. Wolfish dogs tied to the edges yapped and tugged at their chains. Their howls were followed by the scattered laughter of their masters played cards in the shadow of the tunnel.

The tunnel was a monstrous thing – winding through the outer buildings before plunging directly through the wall of ice.

The maester squealed as his hands grazed against the rough ice floor while the wolves salivated at his bleeding, pale flesh. He felt the world close in as the passage narrowed. Facing the wrong way, he could not see where he was being taken. As the courtyard reduced to a distant archway of light, his throat filled with a sinking horror. Yes. He could feel it in the air. The tunnel was part of The Wall. "No..." He begged. "No please!"

Thorne did not stop until he came face to face with the first of three iron gates that separated the living from the dead. The guards on watch turned freshly oiled wheels more than twice their size. The savage barrier moved without protest. Its silent levitation left the drip of water from its base deafening against the stone.

Once through, the iron slammed at the maester's feet – his view of the vanishing tunnel entrance now obscured by bars. At the second gate, he felt a definite chill creep along the ground and by the third and final gate, there was a thick mist sitting around him, shifting unnaturally, lit only by the torches affixed to both sides of the passage by enclosed metal claws. He did not need to see this open to know what lay in wait…

The howl of cold overwhelmed him. Flurries of snow wrestled together, rolling across his robes. Others caught in his eyes and melted, forcing him to cry false tears. This was – it was savage!

"You – you can't kill me." The maester whimpered, tearing his nails through the snow as Thorne strode casually out into the Lands of Always Winter. "Think what you are doing. I am a maester at the citadel. As Lord Commander you are bound to do me no harm. To afford me service as per-"

"I ain' gonna to touch you." Thorne released the maester. When the snivelling creature went to stand, Thorne pulled his sword out and pushed the tip to the man's throat. It was a miserable sheet of skin that had served most of its hours in candlelight. The maester shivered away from the tip, sensing his delicacy. "However, it appears to me that Southern folk like your grand maesters in the citadel and all their hoards of feather-wielding shrunken cocks fail to appreciate the precarious situation the realm finds itself in and thus I find the likes of you and your kin lack the urgency required of the situation. Consider tonight an education. Another link for your chain. Hell, if you are still 'ere in the morning, I'll have one of the Wildling's fashion you one out of dragonglass."

"Wait." The maester clambered to his feet with cascades of powdered snow falling from his robes.

"I'm all out of, 'waiting'..." Thorne snarled, without looking back. "And so is that frozen fuck of a king."

The gate slammed sending tiny avalanches of snow from the tops of the nearby pines.


The maester scratched ravenously at the gate all night, pawing over the iron with the desperation of a starved fox digging at an empty warren. At dusk the air filled with a hundred ravens. They soared as one creature, dipping and changing course towards the East as if something had set them on a path against their natural will. When the moon rose it called silver shadows onto the uneven field of ice between The Wall and the Haunted Forest. No man's land… It was both an eternity of white and the edge of a blade.

The world beyond The Wall never quite settled on darkness. Layered rivers of mist magnified first the waning moonlight, then the starlight. He had never seen the sky naked. The Hightower's monstrous flame diluted the realm of the Storm god. Its golden halo filled the horizon every night and was always echoed by the silhouette of the hills drenched in candlelight. They embraced Oldtown, thick with houses. This new, inky pitch of the North was more beautiful than the maester could have imagined but it also shared a dreadful depth not unlike the ocean – both of which dallied with the gods' abyss. The maester marvelled at the expanse and realised that both 'wonder' and 'fear' were the primary drives of humanity – the post holes through which religion strung its fence.

He was not alone with the sky. There were other things stirring… When he closed his eyes, the maester thought their murmurings conspired against his flesh...


SUNSPEAR – DORNE

The milkglass spear toppled down the steps, smacking into the stone. Clunk – clunk – clunk. Then it rolled away to the edge of the room, dragging with it a smear of Margaery's freshly spilled blood. Its shaft wore the carnage like a shroud while the legendary Valyrian sword, 'Blackfyre' repelled it like a curse. The beast of a sword gleamed proudly at the murder – awoken from its long sleep.

Quentyn took his new Queen of Flowers by the shoulders and flipped her onto her back. Every part of her body trembled uncontrollably as blood drained away in thick rivers, following the gaps between the tiles. Speechless, her clear blue eyes screamed furiously at the prince but his image was fading from her world. Soon, she felt as if she were cast adrift. Wandering the Narrow Sea. Margaery's mind clung to the fragments of herself but the pieces were slipping away...

The Dornish prince rested the flat edge of the blade against his palm then stared at it, as though he expected something to happen. The dark metal surface plucked a few strands of firelight from the room, playing with them on its surface. The embers died without a breath of magic. "Really, a shame," he finally admitted, returning his attention to Margaery. Her injury left her limp on the floor – alive but powerless to his will. "Blood magic," he continued, holding up Blackfyre, "demands the heart from all of us. I would have liked to leave yours in its place but the gods are a depraved lot."

Quentyn stepped astride her body and hovered the tip of the old Valyrian sword above her chest in preparation for a final, fatal blow. "Do not fear death," he tried to soothe her. "It is a thing that waits for us all, even the gods die in their thousand-year slumbers. They sleep, even now, beneath us and dream – oh the things a god must dream… Sometimes I wonder at the terror in the darkness." He idolised their terrible bodies, entwined in the underworld with roots and tendrils coiled around the world's throat. "After you," Quentyn whispered earnestly, "I shall name a great city and fill its walls with flowers. The most magnificent," he promised her. "'The Rose of Dorne'. How beautiful it will look in the morning su-"

The milkglass spear erupted from Quentyn's chest, pushing a fleshy piece of his heart into the air. His blood sprayed across Margaery in dark, black swathes that finished as a shower. Stunned, Quentyn dropped Blackfyre to the ground. It hit the tiles beside Margaery's head – blade shivering in the air. Crimson beads careened off into nowhere like a king's ransom tipped into the sea.

Quentyn looked down to his ruined chest where his flesh had parted and the fabric torn around the tip of the spear. He brought his hands up to touch the cold surface of the milkglass, razor sharp even after several thousand year collecting dust in his bedroom. He traced his fingertips along the edge, marvelling at his own destruction. His heart tried to pulse, shuddering between the weapon and his fingers. Quentyn's morbid attention broke when his childhood friend stepped out from the shadows. The young man cried furiously. His tanned skin blushed with unchecked emotion. Desolation ruined his youthful eyes but there was something of the boy from the Red Mountains at their edges, banished to the tiny flecks of amber.

With the ghost of a smile and in staggered breaths, Quentyn asked, "Strange, I – always thought – you loved – me..." The words struggled through his punctured lung until his heart stilled. When he tried to draw breath he felt himself drown instead. A heavy weight swallowed where his heart once raged. He wasted an idle moment of thought on the dynasty his death threatened to collapse. Would the great empire of Dorne descend into turmoil without a natural heir? With nothing but cousins of cousins would it consume itself, like vipers kept in a sand pit or might some other House rise out of the mountains and finally conquer what so many had lusted over? When all those thoughts drifted off, Quentyn was left with the man who had slain him. Were they not boys moments ago, playing in the forest? Yes. He remembered the crisp mountain air and the light filtering through the towering canopy. Freezing water danced across their ankles as they fished the stream and the familiar coil of darkness unravelled across his eyes as the three of them descended into the deep caves that riddled the mountains. Darkness. It was coming back for him. Quickening. The flames in the palace torches shivered. He fixed himself on them. Imagined them as eyes and slithers of the sun.

The servant lifted his gaze hopelessly to the ceiling. Jewelled stars and enamelled monsters adorned the false heavens. Quentyn's demons... He liked to display them in all their finery but in the end he was a sad fool like the rest, embellishing the old stories with colour and grace that was never present in their first whisperings. In truth, the gods did not care for the deaths of their followers, nor did they raise a murmur of comfort at their last breath.

"Endlessly..." The servant answered Quentyn's accusation of love, as if the words had been shaken from his own hollow corpse. Love was the poorest currency in Dorne. The barter of actors and idiots. "Always – but this, you went too far, my Prince. So far I could not follow."

He could not bring himself to look at Quentyn as the Prince of Dorne fell to his knees and collapsed, face first, onto the stone floor. He listened as the gasps died to shivers and then, finally, nothing at all. Only when he was certain that his prince was dead did the servant carefully dip his head. Tears that he had held back splashed onto the floor.

Part of him wanted to kneel at Quentyn's side and weep but there was no time to mourn. The princess let out a wracking moan, dragging him back to the present. Her left arm lay beside her, limp from the terrible injury. Creeping over her shoulder was the edge of a deep gash. The rest, he knew, was held together by her weight pressing on the tiled floor.

"Sh… You must be quiet." The servant insisted urgently to Margaery. "If anyone discovers us with the prince's body, they won't hesitate to kill the both of us. For you," he added, more softly, "that may well be a mercy." He was ashamed to admit that part of him had considered remaining in the shadows and allowing Quentyn to indulge in his deluded prophecies then quietly clean up whatever was left. Something had held him back from that course. Moved his arm and the spear with it.

Margaery's world faded. The sound left first followed by her vision, reducing from the outside until unconsciousness took hold and all was lost to the dark tide.


BEAR ISLAND – THE BAY OF ICE

A swirl of flame roared up from the blackened corpse of a shipwreck jutting out from the ice. Alive with a malevolent surge of magic, it refused to die. The wind whipping around its violent spiral gathered a drift of smoke, turning the flat expanse of black filth into a restless mimic of the ocean. The remainder of the shipwrecks stretching across Bear Island's Northern flank had collapsed into a river of coals. In many places they had melted right through the ice and sunk away leaving dark slices of open water.

High on one of the island's snow-locked shelves, Jorah Mormont lay beside the remains of the fire with his friend at his left shoulder. He stared at the sky. Obscured by tails of smoke, the stars tried to push through the daylight. The moon graced the blue, as so often it did in defiance of the romantic stories. Its pale face, blemished and deformed, shimmered behind the heat lifting off the burning island. Jorah could hear the flames coming closer. An uncontrolled wildfire jumped from pine to pine. Eventually it would encircle the island and trap him on a stone pyre. He considered doing nothing. Laying on the cold, wet ground. Closing his eyes to the bloodshed and the cries of his queen's dragon.

His head rolled to the side. Dawn stuck out from the ash, gleaming white in the furious heat. It was as though the blade had drunk in the flames and turned itself into the morning star. A trick of the light – or the mark of something altogether darker…

Jorah came to his knees and reached over the embers. Their heat scorched through his armour but the handle of the sword was cold to the touch. He gripped it with both hands and dragged it out from the bone and soot. Behind, the dragon moved its injured wing and pushed a veil of ash into Jorah's face. When it settled, he found himself staring over the cliff edge – out toward the frozen bay to the receding army of the dead. They were chasing his people, hunting them down like hounds set upon the deer.

"Enough..." He promised the faceless wind. "Enough!" He challenged the gods.


The Weirwood threaded through Bear Island's ancient cliff erupted with a sudden rush of flame. In a sweep of unbearable heat, its crown of leaves transformed into arcs of dancing fire, burning dark as blood. A loose gust of wind picked the leaves free only to send them in a tumble through the air. They danced as stars, twinkling out against the cold. Their remains destroyed themselves on the ice sheet, smearing collisions of ash in front of Jorah.

He listened to the wind howl around the caverns and forests of his burning home. He had no wish to look at the ruination so for him it existed solely as a mournful cry, fading into the white. In amongst the raucous, Viserion picked his way down the crumbling rock – tearing bits of the grey cliff with him. From a distance, he looked like a bat scaling a cave wall except for the thick trail of smoke leaking from his nostrils.

On the Southern side of the frozen bay, the ice was paler – thinner and fresh from its creation in a snap storm. Sometimes Jorah heard it crack uneasily beneath his feet or caught a glimpse of silver in the waters below where the fish smashed their scaled bodies against the hard surface in confusion. In front, unsteady bergs, not quite set, groaned against the larger shelf. Jorah's heart quickened. While the Bay of Ice had turned solid before, it was only after months of darkness. This sudden bridge of ice linking Bear Island to the Westerosi shore had been fashioned by the Night King's hoard. It was unnatural. Precarious…

He did not bother to sheath Dawn as he strode out in pursuit of the dead army. His face, hands and clothes were all stained with ash from sleeping too close to Dorin's pyre. The snow in his hair had melted away leaving whiter streaks dividing his face like cell bars. Impervious to reason, he continued to plod through the snowy world like a solitary bear. The footsteps he left behind were marred by blood leaking from wounds the leather and armour concealed. He closed his eyes to bring himself focus but his mind wandered straight to a forest of black-barked pine with four feet of frost creeping up their bases. Giants of the old world, they stood against time. Age tapped at their door as the broken branches and long claws of ice hanging from their spines. He imagined himself as one of them. A faceless relic, succumbing to the snow. There, he may find his peace. The stillness he had chased across the vast horrors of the world.

The hot breath of a dragon roared at Jorah's face. Jorah opened his eyes to a jaw full of fangs and the glow at the back of Viserion's throat. The dragon howled, inching closer with his claws scratching at the ice sheet.

Jorah stopped dead. He waited for Viserion to lower his snout and hiss a pair of tangled smoke trails from his nostrils. The dragon shifted his head from side to side, letting each of his eyes take a gander at the warrior.

"What?!" Jorah demanded of Viserion. "What is it that you want?" He shrugged dramatically, then brandished his sword at the dragon. Snow that had collected on the blade flew off in a fury. "You want me to go back? I cannot go back. There is nothing to go back to." Still, the dragon would not move, blocking Jorah's path when he tried to sidestep. "To your mother then? Go! If you like. You are the one with wings, my friend. Leave! I'll not call after you." It cowered at his words like a child. "Do what you wish but you will let me pass!" Jorah warned the dragon.

Jorah charged forward to challenge Viserion's resolve. The dragon dipped his head and nudged Jorah square in the chest with as much gentleness as a beast his size could muster. Jorah lost his footing and found himself flung backwards across the ice. The sword fell from his hand and spun off in a shard of light. Almost at once, Viserion sat his huge body down in submission.

"I'll kill them all if I have to..." Jorah breathed, staring at the sky. He knew very well that the dragon was right. To chase the army of the dead alone was the business of a fool but then, madness came in many forms.

He dragged himself to his knees and crawled over to Viserion. "Sh… Alright – I'm sorry..." He offered his hand, petting the dragon along the shield of bone between his eyes. It made a soft murmur of approval. "Let me have a look at this wing otherwise it's a long walk back to your mother."


SUNSPEAR – DORNE

Margaery awoke.

She had been laid on her side with searing pain flowing from the wound on her back. Thick, tight bandages encircled her chest as if she were a snake with a fresh dress of scales. The bloodied Targaryen sword lay where it had fallen on the ground nearby but the ancient milkglass spear had been cleaned and re-set in its position on the wall. Innocent.

Her gaze raped the shadows for the man who had saved her and found the servant sat on the low steps with his head between his knees, shaking. Hours had passed. The sun no longer shone directly through the windows which faced the sea. Instead, the great orb had wandered onto the other side of the palace, considering the Western horizon.

The servant looked up when he heard her shuffle against the stone. He had made an effort to wipe himself down but there remained splashes of blood on his face. "For certain I imagined that you were dead." He said, wiping his face on his sleeve.

All she managed to do in reply was roll onto her side. She tried desperately not to think of what had happened to her body. Most of her scars up until this point had been carved into her heart. This, she presumed, would be born for all to see. "So did I." She admitted. "If not for you, I'd only be good for leaf litter." The joke bit back, searing her with another tug at her back. The wound hurt more than she could have imagined. A white hot burning.

"A fate we both share if we don't do something about getting out of this room." He replied. "I have bought us some time with the guards, nothing more. They fear to distrub Quentyn but sooner or later, one of the Prince's minders are going to demand entrance. After they discover that their Prince is dead? I don't know." He shook his head, barely able to grasp what he had done. "What have I done?" The man muttered, falling into a trembling panic. "The city… I – what if I have brought ruin on us all? The whole miserable kingdom… This is my home. I have cursed it."

"Don't you – have a – plan?" Margaery whispered.

"Plan? Plan..." He repeated, utterly bemused by what the Fates had brought him. "Beyond escaping this room? All plans Dorne once had have died with my prince. I have brought us to war. Me – a – a nobody has set the city to flame." The weight of it threatened to crush him. He looked to the widowed queen, struggling for breath on the floor. "Do you think you can stand?"


"W-what about a ship?" Margaery asked, as they slid through one of the discrete doors that linked the hidden parts of the palace together. They were moving inside the walls where the bare, unembellished rock cut against their skin. The narrow series of passages were connected by treacherous steps leading up and down into blackness into all the secret places of the palace. Their centres dipped from the wear of a hundred generations.

He held a small torch in one hand while keeping his other low on Margaery's back, letting her press her weight against him. He'd kept the sword. It looked ungainly and stupid on his hip as its blade knocked against the stone sending sparks into the pitch. A king's ransom, that is what Valyrian steel was worth and right now it was their only leverage in a world that wanted to murder them.

"You'd never make it past The Gallows before someone caught you up. Dorne's ships are the fastest in the realm. They'll expect you to run. The water will be the first place they look."

"I can't stay in Dorne..." Margaery protested. "My child is due any day. This is not a condition I can easily hide with."

The servant stopped and faced her. The fire of his torch licked between them. There was darkness in the suggestion of his eyes. He could think of only one place to hide a woman of royal birth where no honourable man would seek to look.

"No..." She denied firmly, sensing the threads of his mind weave together. "I won't do it. I'll die before you put me in a Dornish whorehouse."

"There are armies circling this city, waiting at the fingers of the dunes to fight for their right to rule. It has always been this way in Dorne. Any or all of them would see you as a prize, either to fuck or to kill. What are you going to do when the gates open?"

"And the brothels will be the very first place the warlords make after they've finished raping the women of this city." She shook her head. "There are Tyrell guards in the city. Find them."

"My Lady I am not your subject. I – I don't know what I am."


At the end of the passage they came across a sewer grate. Water rushed beneath, following an ancient aqueduct that fed various places in the city. Near the end of its run the pressure dropped and the water shallowed to shoulder-height. Gentle eddies curled at the edges and the drip of the walls echoed around them. The heart of the water remained a force which Margaery eyed warily, unsure if she had the strength to fight its will.

Carefully, they lowered their bodies into the flow which immediately tried to carry them away toward the nearby sea. The servant reached out across the rough surface of the water, catching Margaery by her wrist. He struggled to keep his torch out of the water and soon failed. It was extinguished and lost to the darkness – nothing but a sodden piece of driftwood.

There was no need for a light to guide the way. The motion of the water was enough. Every now and then it moved them beneath other grates which were open to the city. Afternoon sunlight poured down through iron bars while dust kicked up from the streets meandered across the stark beams of light like a fine mist.

Certain that they were unnoticed and a long way from the palace, Margaery asked, "How do you know where these tunnels lead?" The water was so cold that it dulled the pain in her wound. Blissful but transient. She knew that there was a better than even chance that the injury might still kill her. Men in Renley's camp had died by their thousand of lesser scratches.

"We used to – visit the city – when we were children – the prince and I..." the servant replied, staggering through his difficulty navigating the tunnel. The water was so deep that a single misstep could lead to him being whisked away. "Palace life was excruciating after a childhood of forests and limestone caves." His silent tears fell into the water, unnoticed. "Naturally – we explored. There wasn't a shadow in the palace that we didn't chase. Until we found these tunnels, of course." A pause ensued as they parted to opposing sides of the tunnel, avoiding the spotlight where they passed under another grate. This one lay beneath the market place and all its noise. The last thing they needed was for some industrious idiot to spot them and raise the alarm. "The waterways fan out under the whole city. Some of them stretch into the dunes where they collapse and fill with sand. Others drain into the harbour with great force. I think they are part of the foundation city – the city before the Nymeria's conquest. All we see of it now are the bones."

"What was it like," Margaery asked, to distract herself from the pain and the child fussing alarmingly inside her stomach, "before the conquest?"

"Similar to the hell that befall your realm in the early Targaryen years… A mystery." He clarified. "The culture of the Sunspear was buried or hacked off the walls by Nymeria's guards but there are fragments of it that survive in the mountain settlements. Starfall, perhaps, is all that's left of our world. There are some truly beautiful places, hidden out of sight. Gardens full of ancient First Men stones. Statues to gods we've long forgotten. The Prince… He fell in love with lost trinkets. The complete desecration of our history is why the Torrentine Kings hate the Martells. They're blood traitors. The Prince was different. A bridge between worlds, exactly as his parents intended when they sent him to the mountains. If only he weren't mad..."

Blood traitors… The words sat uneasily in Margaery's ear. The scholars of Oldtown who imagined war would bring the people of Westeros together were stunned by the renewing of ancient pacts and tribal allegiances. From the safety of their ivory towers they had forgotten the basic craving of brotherhood and blood. If war truly was coming to the whole realm so too was the revival of its old Houses. There would be no king or queen left with a head after this mayhem played to its end. "Is this an opinion you share?"

"I am not sure how many choices Mors Martell had when ten thousand ships came over the horizon. We Dornish were not a great nation – we were a segregated collection of tribes who liked to war when the weather turned bad and trade when the rains came. The mountain cities wanted to fight Nymeria and her invaders but the unprotected coast sued for peace. Perhaps now the Torrentine will have its chance to avenge the ancient slight. Either way, it is best that you disappear. This isn't about you or even Doran's deal with the dragon. This realm's wounds cut right to the rock."

"Disappear or die?"

"If I wished to kill you, I'd have left you to my Prince."

"That's – not what I meant..." Margaery amended cautiously. "I am not without friends."

There was a flicker of malevolent amusement in his laugh. No doubt he learned it from the Prince. "You believe that the victor of our war will seek to marry you and preserve the alliance with the dragon queen?"

"No?"

"The Dornish want war. They'd rather be free and dead than a jewel in another Targaryen crown. There are Dornish swords melted into the Iron Throne. Many say they are the sharpest. Wait – we are here."

The man tugged Margaery into a narrow, shallower channel that tilted slightly up hill. Roots dangled down through large cracks above where an ill-placed orchard had torn apart the pipe roof. There was a layer of sand in the water and with the accompanying debris, it imitated a natural stream with a few tiny fish hugging the patches of light where the sun streamed in.

"We're under the ruined forum," he explained, helping Margaery navigate a collapsed section. "After the building burned to the ground, princess Meria had the fruit trees planted in the ashes left by the first Targaryen war. If only you'd had a chance to see it from the surface. The orchard sits among the fallen treasures with its lemons dripping like tears on a tragedy."

Margaery hesitated as the tunnel opened up into a large, semi-circular room lit by a thousand more cracks. From its shallow water grew spindly trees, stretching desperately towards the light where they squashed themselves through the gaps in the ceiling and presumably branched out into the sun. Thousands of roots hung down in layers of shivering curtains bound together by industrious webs while enormous, ornately carved columns lay on their sides, destroyed and in pieces. The severed heads of old gods peeked from the water, pale and dead. She did not linger on their hollow eyes and tightly curled hair. "And what is this?"

"Old store houses. Don't stray into the anterooms. They are unstable – everything here is breaking apart." The servant touched the damp wall with a reverence that made Margaery wonder if this wasn't a house of memories. "You can stay here while I make arrangements. If I find your men I'll bring them to you but I offer no promises. Try not to move," he added, helping her onto the dry island at the other end of the room where the light streamed in. He did not like the look of her bloody bandages any more than the weight of her belly. "There is a healer nearby. I'll seek him first. He tends to the local whorehouse." He paused to eye the water at his ankles. "Quentyn used to say that they buried the babies down here in the waters so that they'd sleep in the sea."

A dark shiver ran right through Margaery's spine. "No – wait." She reached for him, "You can't leave me on my own..."

The servant had already retreated to the entrance of the room where he moved like one of the shadows. "I have to." He replied. "Trust me."

Margaery did not.


BRAAVOS – ESSOS

"I want to know which line I crossed to end up part of this fucking disaster of a conquest..." Tycho lamented, eroding into madness from the relentless pain and cold – though he could not tell where his injury began and the ice took over. His arms lay flapped out uselessly either side of him, leaving Tycho the spitting image of a filthy half-god, tossed from the heavenly realms above with his finer clothes torn about their hems and stained with old bird shit. "Tried to do the right thing." His mutterings continued. The fire in the corner barely raised itself above a flick of gold. Ash slept with her body curled around it, tail kicking in her sleep. "Back a dragon. Can't lose those odds… My colleagues were all half-wits, tossing their nerve into the bay because of a bit of rubble on the marble floors. Well – I'll tell you something – something real that you ain't heard – that great old building has come apart more than once. More than fucking once!"

"Shut up!" Daario tossed a shell across the tiny room, hitting Tycho in the face.

Tommen stilled Daario's arm as he fetched a rock to follow it. "He's not well."

"I've met people who lost an arm and half their arse who make less noise." Nevertheless, Tommen refused to let go of Daario until he'd lowered the projectile. "I don't know why you're in such high fucking spirits," Daario added, wiping ash from his eyes. "You're a head with a price tag thanks to the ambitious overreach of your mother. Sorry..." He flinched, seeing the young boy avert his gaze.

"Truth is not the worst thing to have happened to me this week – or even this evening." Tommen replied, to which they both finally laughed. Even Tycho chuckled but that was to himself and possibly because of a crab he'd found hiding in a crook of the wall. "Can you hear that?"

Daario allowed his head to fall to the side, exposing his ear to the cold wind snarling around the cracks and loose boards in the door. "There's a lot of ice in the bay rubbing up against the island." It made a terrible scratching sound riddled with mournful groaning as if it were alive, in pain and dying against the rock.

"No – are you sure?" Tommen rocked forward onto his knees and crawled closer to the door. The chill from the world outside painted the edges of the stone white with a billion miniature crystals.

"Who the shit knows what's out in this place. Something has gone seriously wrong in Braavos. The hills re on fire and the city is covered in a thick sheet of snow. His mates," Daario nodded at Tycho, "probably migrated South to Norvos. Just our luck we're the only morons left in the city."

"Do you have any idea how far away fucking Norvos is?" Tycho dragged his head up to rant in Daario's general direction. "God damn Westerosians think they can wander about like everything's the Kingsroad. Half this place is smoking swamp. You want to walk through that? Cursed by every dead thing that's ever died."

Daario scoffed. "What does it sound like?"

Tommen tilted his head closer to the crack in the wooden door. He could see a glimpse of pearl-light hitting the coral on the island. "Someone talking in the distance. What if one of the sailors survived the wreck? If they fell into the water they-"

"-will be dead very soon." Daario finished Tommen's sentence. "I've sailed through seas like this before. The cold kills. It's painful at first – like burning but then calm takes over and the victims of the ice simply drop off into sleep. If there is someone out there it is too late for us to do anything for them. The night will have their soul – and ours if we try."

Regardless, Tommen kept his face pressed against the door. Shadows crossed his limited view then smudges of white as stray snowflakes tumbled through the evening. Quiet returned. The voice on the wind died away. Tommen closed his eyes to the sound of the wash against the rock. In the darkness he could hear everything – the tiniest agitation in the velvet night.

Part of the decrepit roof of their shelter caved in all at once with a terrifying crack. The three of them rolled off to the outskirts of the room in shock as a thick tide of sawdust, stone and terracotta covered everything inside the building. The most dangerous planks of hardwood were too long for the drop and got themselves caught in the turret. They held fast, crossing over each other like old branches locked in a forest canopy. Roof tiles shattered on their backs, pulverised and rained as dust.

"Bloody hell!" Daario screeched, covered in a red haze from the tiles. "Oh sh-" He threw himself to the side, scraping his body across the sharp interior of the building as a corpse crashed to the ground where he'd been sitting. The pile of flesh and bone smacked against the rock. Daario shook the building from his hair and leaned over the body. "One of the sailors!"

It was – and it wasn't.

The moment Daario wiped the filth from his eyes, he realised the horror. His mind flashed backwards to Yin – to the city sleeping in the cliffs and the hoard of possessed dead that raged from the desert. The sailor's corpse had a face crossed with scars. Most, open and pale, were littered with rubble where pieces of the roof had caught in the wound. His eyes were iridescent, shining with unnatural blue light that fixed upon Daario with such malice that he thought he could feel the creature's hand reach in and touch his heart. "G-get out! GET OUT!" He reeled around, fishing frantically for Tommen who he plucked from the wall and shoved towards the door. Next he dragged Tycho awkwardly to his one good leg.

Tommen's hand fumbled the plank of wood barricading them in. It clamoured to the ground. The sound merged with the storm of the collapsing roof which was still falling down in pieces. Even the walls had started to collapse – shedding stone and tilting inwards.

Whatever the curse was that had taken possession of the sailor, it seemed tenuous. There were moments when it tried to pursue them but all it gained from its feet was an awkward stumble.

"The ice..." Daario breathed. "It's set the flesh hard." He did not get the chance to finish his thought as Tommen threw the door open and they piled out into the night. "The boat. There!" They raced the short distance to the water's edge and piled into the ungainly row boat. One of its oars snapped in half when they tried to shove off from the dock. Tommen held Tycho back from the edge while Daario pushed them off into the ice-locked bay. A foot – two – ten… Only when the gap of black water expanded did they pause to catch their shaking breath. On the island, the watchtower finally shrieked and collapsed into a heap.

"Here." Tommen passed Daario the oars, then tried to calm Tycho down. The banker had developed a sudden fascination with the surface of the water and peered over the side, giving the boat an uncomfortable lean. Ash sat in a dark crook of the boat, hissing and snuffling her way into a shadow. "What the hell is that thing?" He asked, looking to the island where the sailor's body emerged from the room and stared dumbly towards their escape.

"Something dead." Daario replied, shifting his focus to the mainland of Braavos.

"How can it be dead? The dead can't walk! This is crazy."

"Oh – they can. Walk. Kill. Die all over again. Boy, I have seen them in their thousands. If that cunt is anything like those last bastards we have to get out of here before it gets used to the afterlife."

"There!" Tycho pointed drunkenly towards a passage through the ice towards the shore. "Best way to go."

It probably wasn't wise to follow the word of the delirious but Daario didn't have much else to go on so he navigated the boat towards the building on the other side of the water and rowed for all he was worth. It may have been his imagination but he could have sworn that the temperature was dropping rapidly and the ice thickening. It was an unnatural, bitter cold that moved like breath across everything.

"Grab that rope." Daario nodded to one wrapped around a pylon on the jetty as they drew near.

Tommen climbed over Tycho and reached out, using the rope to drag the boat up alongside the dock. It was obviously not the normal sort of boat for the size of the jetty, leaving them several feet too low beneath the platform. "You'll have to give me a hand with Tycho," Tommen added, after he'd climbed onto the wooden platform. By the time Tycho had been pulled up to the safety of the dock, a thick layer of mist had rolled itself out across the ground. "I know what this is," whispered Tommen, staring at the enormous building. "I've seen its likeness in grandfather's books. The House of Black and White."

An unusual still locked the world around them as they stared up at split door. One side was fashioned from dark, black Ironwood. The other, bone-pale Weirwood. The rest of the building sat behind it like the jaws and body of a lion, waiting for prey to step across the threshold.

"What are we doing just standing here?" Daario breathed, mist spilling from his lips. He climbed the three steps to the door and pushed. It was not locked. Without effort, it gave way immediately, all but floating across the stone floor – silent, like everything else in Braavos. "No locks."

"It is a house of worship," Tycho pointed out. "And assassins."

"Fine. But I would have felt better about a lock." Daario added, nervously glancing back at the evening bay of ice. The sailor had not followed them but who knew what else might be waiting in the night?

Inside, the temple was lit by a single flame burning out of a stone-filled garden at the centre of the room. There was no oil or wood to keep it alive. It breathed soundlessly, wrestling with a gust of cold air until Tommen closed the door.

"A vein of natural gas runs beneath the islands," Tycho explained, stumbling forward until he collapsed onto the ground near the fire. "There are many of them in the wealthy houses. Beautiful, no?" He reached his hands toward it in search of warmth. Tommen slapped the banker's hand away.

Daario averted his eyes to the rest of the temple. It was a forest of pillars packed so tightly that the shadows played tricks. Each one repeated itself into nausea, trailing away into nowhere. Ash padded into the temple. Her claws scraped against the stone as she headed to the sprawling water feature buried deep in the heart of the building.

"Where's the dragon going?" Asked Tommen, wanting to follow but weighed down by Tycho.

"Who knows. Dragons do as they please." Daario replied. "I don't think we should stay here..." He added. There was a filthy feeling in the air. "This is a place of death. If we're to die in Braavos I'd rather not lock myself in a tomb."

"And where else can we go?" Tommen dropped Tycho against a pillar where he howled in agony at his leg. The flesh was turning black. "We have no ship. No crew. The city is deserted and even if we could scale the mountains with him," he nodded at Tycho, "they are burning. Face it, we are trapped between ice and fire. All we can do is wait – see if the flames die off and the ice softens in the sunlight."

Daario was shaking his head. "You don't understand, boy. If there are dead things out there, they won't stop because the sun fucks up. We cannot stay here."

In the pause between their words, Daario could hear the echo of wax dripping somewhere deep inside the temple. A few minutes later, it was replaced by the crack of ice. Tommen stood up. He knew that sound now. They all turned to the unlocked doors knowing that they offered no protection.

"D-do you think there are more of them?" Tommen stammered.

Daario nodded. "There's always more." He replied.

Tycho dragged himself from pillar to pillar, crawling over the tiles leaving a nasty stain behind.

"Where the hell does he think he's going?" Daario muttered, unsheathing Brightroar in case something untoward came through the doors.

"Vaults..." Tycho hissed, snakelike.

"Great idea but we're not in your bank," Daario crouched beside him, trying to cut through his delirium. He used the flat edge of Brightroar to lift Tycho's chin. The banker's eyes were bloodshot – all his veins crossing his eyeballs in angry rivers. His pupils expanded to fill the void, pressing right up against the thin sliver of his irises. "Tycho?"

"The vaults were never in the bank..." He replied, almost smiling. "They are older than the bank. Deeper. The first thing the freemen cut out of the limestone."

Daario eyed the temple around them with its pale columns of polished limestone. "Do you mean that the vaults are here?"

He laughed again, filling the cavernous ceiling with manic echoes. "What god fearing king would dare steal from the keepers of Death? Of course the vaults of Braavos are here..."


KING'S LANDING – WESTEROS

The night was thick with cloud and fog with King's Landing hidden under a shadow. Varys perched at the edge of the dying gardens in the Keep and stared out over Blackwater Bay towards the monstrous island of Dragonstone. The jagged mountain that formed its heart pushed a filthy trail of smoke into the air, lazily puffing away like one of the Queen's dragons. Every now and then a lick of gold reached out and splattered over its crown. Tonight, it did something different. Down the Southern flank, several ribbons of blue fire spread like lightening, feeding off the gases under the rock. Varys had read of such things in the Shadowlands but in Westeros the demonic sight had the people talking of curses and gods.

It did not distract the pirates. Varys assumed that they had seen worse on their travels across the festering corners of the world. For gold, he presumed, they'd wade into the Lion's den and sleep in his jaws.

"Delaying will serve you no good," Loras Tyrell strolled up beside him. He too liked the quiet of the gardens. "The Golden Company's ships have appeared on the horizon. If we do not pay half up front they will sack the city for their trouble."

"At this moment there is peace between us because we have not chosen to test the pirates' loyalty." Varys pointed out. "To try and fail, in this case, would do us a great deal of harm."

Loras arched his eyebrow at Varys. It was unusual to see the Spider hesitate. "I have no illusions," Loras assured him, "that I am a paper king but what I do have is complete faith in your powers of darkness, Varys. Fail in this task and you'll be nailed to the city walls as surely as the rest of us. So, don't fail..."

Varys swallowed hard at the Dragonmount and scent of rot in the air.


Varys arrived on the island early, catching the pirates in the haze of drink from the night before. They laid over the rocks around the shore with their feet in the salt water and bits of seaweed caught in their hair like filthy pieces of driftwood. In the morning light, the Dragonmount's ire was masked but Varys could still feel the island shivering under foot. It was alive, breathing and shifting where its limbs touched the sea. There were fresh cracks in the severe walls of the castle. He wondered how much of it had already been consigned to the waves.

"You have come alone?" Asked Eli Lugg, striding easily over the uneven black rock. He was as sober as the dawn with a Valyrian coin riding heavy in his pocket. He knew that the Spider would come to him eventually. The fool had dared to come alone.

"We are friends, are we not?" Replied Varys, sliding his hands into his gaping sleeves. The sea wind kicked at his robes, catching their silk threads on the ravenous shore, cutting it to thread.

Lugg smiled warmly. "Oh yes… The very best of friends." He warned. "The Golden Company are nearly here and you, I imagine, have come for money to pay them. Frightened they'll slit your throat? I would be. They've got a real lust for it these days." Daario had said that Varys would come to them and here he was… "No honour left in those bastards. Not a single fucking drop of it."

"And I suppose you are brimming with-"

Lugg stepped uncomfortably close, silencing Varys with a Valyrian coin held up between them in his filthy fingers. "I worked out what you've been up to."

Varys fixed his gaze upon the coin, suppressing his panic beneath a calm veneer. He could do nothing about the beads of sweat forming in the cracks of his bald head.

"Mmm mad bugger, you are. Playing games with creatures that do not understand the rules. You'll fuck us all and I'll never get my cut of the gold." Lugg filed his other hand with a sharp, curved dagger. Its blade had nicks out of the steel where plenty of throats had been cut against the stone. "How about you and I play a game instead."

Varys raised both his hand as the wind quickened at his back, attempting to force him over the rocks. The arms of his robes filled like sails as he tried to back away from the pirate's threats.

"Nothing to say?" Lugg tossed the coin at Varys. It hit him the face and fell to the rock where it was lost among the thousands jagged pieces of the lava flow. "Victarion will take your money and use it to build himself an army. No amount of appeasement will keep him from the Capital. What do you do? You feed him wealth which he uses against you. The price you pay for time is fatal, my friend. Victarion is not a stupid man. Pirates aren't fucking stupid… He won't sail South until he's good and ready – gold or not. So keep your fucking gold, Varys and pay me instead. I'll keep the fuckers honest so long as the deal is between you and me."

"You want your money..." Varys slowly lowered his hands, realising that this was a business deal, like any other.

"I want my gods damn money and one more thing."

Varys was prepared to listen, returning his hands to his pockets. "I am listening."

"Daario. If he returns from this fool's errand – you make it so he doesn't."

"Treasure and a crown. A fair price for peace, one might say."