“Our prisoners,” suggested Dany. “The Westerosi who came over from the Windblown with the three Dornishmen. We still have them in cells, do we not? Use them.”
“Free them, you mean? Is that wise? They were sent here to worm their way into your trust, so they might betray Your Grace at the first chance.”
“Then they failed. I do not trust them. I will never trust them.” If truth be told, Dany was forgetting how to trust. “We can still use them. One was a woman. Meris. Send her back, as a… a gesture of my regard. If their captain is a clever man, he will understand.”
“The woman is the worst of all.”
“All the better.” Dany considered a moment. “We should sound out the Long Lances too. And the Company of the Cat.”
“Bloodbeard.” Ser Barristan’s frown deepened. “If it please Your Grace, we want no part of him. Your Grace is too young to remember the Ninepenny Kings, but this Bloodbeard is cut from the same savage cloth. There is no honor in him, only hunger… for gold, for glory, for blood.”
“You know more of such men than me, ser.” If Bloodbeard might be truly the most dishonorable and greedy of the sellswords, he might be the easiest to sway, but she was loath to go against Ser Barristan’s counsel in such matters. “Do as you think best. But do it soon. If Hizdahr’s peace should break, I want to be ready. I do not trust the slavers.” I do not trust my husband. “They will turn on us at the first sign of weakness.”
“The Yunkai’i grow weaker as well. The bloody flux has taken hold amongst the Tolosi, it is said, and spread across the river to the third Ghiscari legion.”
The pale mare. Daenerys sighed. Quaithe warned me of the pale mare’s coming. She told me of the Dornish prince as well, the sun’s son. She told me much and more, but all in riddles. “I cannot rely on plague to save me from my enemies. Set Pretty Meris free. At once.”
“As you command. Though… Your Grace, if I may be so bold, there is another road…”
“The Dornish road?” Dany sighed. The three Dornishmen had been at the feast, as befit Prince Quentyn’s rank, though Reznak had taken care to seat them as far as possible from her husband. Hizdahr did not seem to be of a jealous nature, but no man would be pleased by the presence of a rival suitor near his new bride. “The boy seems pleasant and well spoken, but…”
“House Martell is ancient and noble, and has been a leal friend to House Targaryen for more than a century, Your Grace. I had the honor of serving with Prince Quentyn’s great-uncle in your father’s seven. Prince Lewyn was as valiant a brother-in-arms as any man could wish for. Quentyn Martell is of the same blood, if it please Your Grace.”
“It would please me if he had turned up with these fifty thousand swords he speaks of. Instead he brings two knights and a parchment. Will a parchment shield my people from the Yunkai’i? If he had come with a fleet…”
“Sunspear has never been a sea power, Your Grace.”
“No.” Dany knew enough of Westerosi history to know that. Nymeria had landed ten thousand ships upon Dorne’s sandy shores, but when she wed her Dornish prince she had burned them all and turned her back upon the sea forever. “Dorne is too far away. To please this prince, I would need to abandon all my people. You should send him home.”
“Dornishmen are notoriously stubborn, Your Grace. Prince Quentyn’s forebears fought your own for the better part of two hundred years. He will not go without you.”
Then he will die here, Daenerys thought, unless there is more to him than I can see. “Is he still within?”
“Drinking with his knights.”
“Bring him to me. It is time he met my children.”
A flicker of doubt passed across the long, solemn face of Barristan Selmy. “As you command.”
Her king was laughing with Yurkhaz zo Yunzak and the other Yunkish lords. Dany did not think that he would miss her, but just in case she instructed her handmaids to tell him that she was answering a call of nature, should he inquire after her.
Ser Barristan was waiting by the steps with the Dornish prince. Martell’s square face was flushed and ruddy. Too much wine, the queen concluded, though he was doing his best to conceal that. Apart from the line of copper suns that ornamented his belt, the Dornishman was plainly dressed. They call him Frog, Dany recalled. She could see why. He was not a handsome man.
She smiled. “My prince. It is a long way down. Are you certain that you wish to do this?”
“If it would please Your Grace.”
“Then come.”
A pair of Unsullied went down the steps before them, bearing torches; behind came two Brazen Beasts, one masked as a fish, the other as a hawk. Even here in her own pyramid, on this happy night of peace and celebration, Ser Barristan insisted on keeping guards about her everywhere she went. The small company made the long descent in silence, stopping thrice to refresh themselves along the way. “The dragon has three heads,” Dany said when they were on the final flight. “My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes. I know why you are here.”
“For you,” said Quentyn, all awkward gallantry.
“No,” said Dany. “For fire and blood.”
One of the elephants trumpeted at them from his stall. An answering roar from below made her flush with sudden heat. Prince Quentyn looked up in alarm. “The dragons know when she is near,” Ser Barristan told him.
Every child knows its mother, Dany thought. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves… “They call to me. Come.” She took Prince Quentyn by the hand and led him to the pit where two of her dragons were confined. “Remain outside,” Dany told Ser Barristan, as the Unsullied were opening the huge iron doors. “Prince Quentyn will protect me.” She drew the Dornish prince inside with her, to stand above the pit.
The dragons craned their necks around, gazing at them with burning eyes. Viserion had shattered one chain and melted the others. He clung to the roof of the pit like some huge white bat, his claws dug deep into the burnt and crumbling bricks. Rhaegal, still chained, was gnawing on the carcass of a bull. The bones on the floor of the pit were deeper than the last time she had been down here, and the walls and floors were black and grey, more ash than brick. They would not hold much longer… but behind them was only earth and stone. Can dragons tunnel through rock, like the firewyrms of old Valyria? She hoped not.
The Dornish prince had gone as white as milk. “I… I had heard that there were three.”
“Drogon is hunting.” He did not need to hear the rest. “The white one is Viserion, the green is Rhaegal. I named them for my brothers.” Her voice echoed off the scorched stone walls. It sounded small—a girl’s voice, not the voice of a queen and conqueror, nor the glad voice of a new-made bride.
Rhaegal roared in answer, and fire filled the pit, a spear of red and yellow. Viserion replied, his own flames gold and orange. When he flapped his wings, a cloud of grey ash filled the air. Broken chains clanked and clattered about his legs. Quentyn Martell jumped back a foot.
A crueler woman might have laughed at him, but Dany squeezed his hand and said, “They frighten me as well. There is no shame in that. My children have grown wild and angry in the dark.”
“You… you mean to ride them?”
“One of them. All I know of dragons is what my brother told me when I was a girl, and some I read in books, but it is said that even Aegon the Conqueror never dared mount Vhagar or Meraxes, nor did his sisters ride Balerion the Black Dread. Dragons live longer than men, some for hundreds of years, so Balerion had other riders after Aegon died… but no rider ever flew two dragons.”
Viserion hissed again. Smoke rose between his teeth, and deep down in his throat they could see gold fire churning.
“They are… they are fearsome creatures.”
“They are dragons, Quentyn.” Dany stood on her toes and kissed him lightly, once on each cheek. “And so am I.”
The young prince swallowed. “I… I have the blood of the dragon in me as well, Your Grace. I can
trace my lineage back to the first Daenerys, the Targaryen princess who was sister to King Daeron the Good and wife to the Prince of Dorne. He built the Water Gardens for her.”
“The Water Gardens?” She knew little and less of Dorne or its history, if truth be told.
“My father’s favorite palace. It would please me to show them to you one day. They are all of pink marble, with pools and fountains, overlooking the sea.”
“They sound lovely.” She drew him away from the pit. He does not belong here. He should never have come. “You ought to return there. My court is no safe place for you, I fear. You have more enemies than you know. You made Daario look a fool, and he is not a man to forget such a slight.”
“I have my knights. My sworn shields.”
“Two knights. Daario has five hundred Stormcrows. And you would do well to beware of my lord husband too. He seems a mild and pleasant man, I know, but do not be deceived. Hizdahr’s crown derives from mine, and he commands the allegiance of some of the most fearsome fighters in the world. If one of them should think to win his favor by disposing of a rival…”
“I am a prince of Dorne, Your Grace. I will not run from slaves and sell swords.”
Then you truly are a fool, Prince Frog. Dany gave her wild children one last lingering look. She could hear the dragons screaming as she led the boy back to the door, and see the play of light against the bricks, reflections of their fires. If I look back, I am lost. “Ser Barristan will have summoned a pair of sedan chairs to carry us back up to the banquet, but the climb can still be wearisome.” Behind them, the great iron doors closed with a resounding clang. “Tell me of this other Daenerys. I know less than I should of the history of my father’s kingdom. I never had a maester growing up.” Only a brother.
“It would be my pleasure, Your Grace,” said Quentyn.
It was well past midnight before the last of their guests took their leave and Dany retired to her own apartments to join her lord and king. Hizdahr at least was happy, if somewhat drunk. “I keep my promises,” he told her, as Irri and Jhiqui were robing them for bed. “You wished for peace, and it is yours.”
And you wished for blood, and soon enough I must give it to you, Dany thought, but what she said was, “I am grateful.”
The excitement of the day had inflamed her husband’s passions. No sooner had her handmaids retired for the night than he tore the robe from her and tumbled her backwards into bed. Dany slid her arms around him and let him have his way. Drunk as he was, she knew he would not be inside her long.
Nor was he. Afterward he nuzzled at her ear and whispered, “Gods grant that we have made a son tonight.”
The words of Mirri Maz Duur rang in her head. When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before. The meaning was plain enough; Khal Drogo was as like to return from the dead as she was to bear a living child. But there are some secrets she could not bring herself to share, even with a husband, so she let Hizdahr zo Loraq keep his hopes.
Her noble husband was soon fast asleep. Daenerys could only twist and turn beside him. She wanted to shake him, wake him, make him hold her, kiss her, fuck her again, but even if he did, he would fall back to sleep again afterward, leaving her alone in the darkness. She wondered what Daario was doing. Was he restless as well? Was he thinking about her? Did he love her, truly? Did he hate her for marrying Hizdahr? I should never have taken him into my bed. He was only a sellsword, no fit consort for a queen, and yet…
I knew that all along, but I did it anyway. “My queen?” said a soft voice in the darkness.
Dany flinched. “Who is there?”
“Only Missandei.” The Naathi scribe moved closer to the bed. “This one heard you crying.”
“Crying? I was not crying. Why would I cry? I have my peace, I have my king, I have everything a queen might wish for. You had a bad dream, that was all.”
“As you say, Your Grace.” She bowed and made to go.
“Stay,” said Dany. “I do not wish to be alone.”
“His Grace is with you,” Missandei pointed out.
“His Grace is dreaming, but I cannot sleep. On the morrow I must bathe in blood. The price of peace.” She smiled wanly and patted the bed. “Come. Sit. Talk with me.”
“If it please you.” Missandei sat down beside her. “What shall we talk of?”
“Home,” said Dany. “Naath. Butterflies and brothers. Tell me of the things that make you happy, the things that make you giggle, all your sweetest memories. Remind me that there is still good in the world.”
Missandei did her best. She was still talking when Dany finally fell to sleep, to dream queer, half-formed dreams of smoke and fire.
The morning came too soon.
THEON
Day stole upon them just as Stannis had: unseen.
Winterfell had been awake for hours, its battlements and towers crammed with men in wool and mail and leather awaiting an attack that never came. By the time the sky began to lighten the sound of drums had faded away, though warhorns were heard thrice more, each time a little closer. And still the snow fell.
“The storm will end today,” one of the surviving stableboys was insisting loudly. “Why, it isn’t even winter.” Theon would have laughed if he had dared. He remembered tales Old Nan had told them of storms that raged for forty days and forty nights, for a year, for ten years… storms that buried castles and cities and whole kingdoms under a hundred feet of snow.
He sat in the back of the Great Hall, not far from the horses, watching Abel, Rowan, and a mousy brown-haired washerwoman called Squirrel attack slabs of stale brown bread fried in bacon grease. Theon broke his own fast with a tankard of dark ale, cloudy with yeast and thick enough to chew on. A few more tankards, and perhaps Abel’s plan might not seem quite so mad.
Roose Bolton entered, pale-eyed and yawning, accompanied by his plump and pregnant wife, Fat Walda. Several lords and captains had preceded him, amongst them Whoresbane Umber, Aenys Frey, and Roger Ryswell. Farther down the table Wyman Manderly sat wolfing down sausages and boiled eggs, whilst old Lord Locke beside him spooned gruel into his toothless mouth.
Lord Ramsay soon appeared as well, buckling on his sword belt as he made his way to the front of the hall. His mood is foul this morning. Theon could tell. The drums kept him awake all night, he guessed, or someone has displeased him. One wrong word, an ill-considered look, an ill-timed laugh, any of them could provoke his lordship’s wrath and cost a man a strip of skin. Please, m’lord, don’t look this way. One glance would be all it would take for Ramsay to know everything. He’ll see it written on my face. He’ll know. He always knows.
Theon turned to Abel. “This will not work.” His voice was pitched so low that even the horses could not have overheard. “We will be caught before we leave the castle. Even if we do escape, Lord Ramsay will hunt us down, him and Ben Bones and the girls.”
“Lord Stannis is outside the walls, and not far by the sound of it. All we need do is reach him.” Abel’s fingers danced across the strings of his lute. The singer’s beard was brown, though his long hair had largely gone to grey. “If the Bastard does come after us, he might live long enough to rue it.”
Think that, Theon thought. Believe that. Tell yourself it’s true. “Ramsay will use your women as his prey,” he told the singer. “He’ll hunt them down, rape them, and feed their corpses to his dogs. If they lead him a good chase, he may name his next litter of bitches after them. You he’ll flay. Him and Skinner and Damon Dance-for-Me, they will make a game of it. You’ll be begging them to kill you.” He clutched the singer’s arm with a maimed hand. “You swore you would not let me fall into his hands again. I have your word on that.” He needed to hear it again.
“Abel’s word,” said Squirrel. “Strong as oak.”
Abel himself only shrugged. “No matter what, my prince.”
<
br /> Up on the dais, Ramsay was arguing with his father. They were too far away for Theon to make out any of the words, but the fear on Fat Walda’s round pink face spoke volumes. He did hear Wyman Manderly calling for more sausages and Roger Ryswell’s laughter at some jape from one-armed Harwood Stout.
Theon wondered if he would ever see the Drowned God’s watery halls, or if his ghost would linger here at Winterfell. Dead is dead. Better dead than Reek. If Abel’s scheme went awry, Ramsay would make their dying long and hard. He will flay me from head to heel this time, and no amount of begging will end the anguish. No pain Theon had ever known came close to the agony that Skinner could evoke with a little flensing blade. Abel would learn that lesson soon enough. And for what? Jeyne, her name is Jeyne, and her eyes are the wrong color. A mummer playing a part. Lord Bolton knows, and Ramsay, but the rest are blind, even this bloody bard with his sly smiles. The jape is on you, Abel, you and your murdering whores. You’ll die for the wrong girl.
He had come this close to telling them the truth when Rowan had delivered him to Abel in the ruins of the Burned Tower, but at the last instant he had held his tongue. The singer seemed intent on making off with the daughter of Eddard Stark. If he knew that Lord Ramsay’s bride was but a steward’s whelp, well…
The doors of the Great Hall opened with a crash.
A cold wind came swirling through, and a cloud of ice crystals sparkled blue-white in the air. Through it strode Ser Hosteen Frey, caked with snow to the waist, a body in his arms. All along the benches men put down their cups and spoons to turn and gape at the grisly spectacle. The hall grew quiet.
Another murder.
Snow slid from Ser Hosteen’s cloaks as he stalked toward the high table, his steps ringing against the floor. A dozen Frey knights and men-at-arms entered behind him. One was a boy Theon knew—Big Walder, the little one, fox-faced and skinny as a stick. His chest and arms and cloak were spattered with blood.
The scent of it set the horses to screaming. Dogs slid out from under the tables, sniffing. Men rose from the benches. The body in Ser Hosteen’s arms sparkled in the torchlight, armored in pink frost. The cold outside had frozen his blood.
“My brother Merrett’s son.” Hosteen Frey lowered the body to the floor before the dais. “Butchered like a hog and shoved beneath a snowbank. A boy.”
Little Walder, thought Theon. The big one. He glanced at Rowan. There are six of them, he remembered. Any of them could have done this. But the washerwoman felt his eyes. “This was no work of ours,” she said.
“Be quiet,” Abel warned her.
Lord Ramsay descended from the dais to the dead boy. His father rose more slowly, pale-eyed, still-faced, solemn. “This was foul work.” For once Roose Bolton’s voice was loud enough to carry. “Where was the body found?”
“Under that ruined keep, my lord,” replied Big Walder. “The one with the old gargoyles.” The boy’s gloves were caked with his cousin’s blood. “I told him not to go out alone, but he said he had to find a man who owed him silver.”
“What man?” Ramsay demanded. “Give me his name. Point him out to me, boy, and I will make you a cloak of his skin.”
“He never said, my lord. Only that he won the coin at dice.” The Frey boy hesitated. “It was some White Harbor men who taught dice. I couldn’t say which ones, but it was them.”
“My lord,” boomed Hosteen Frey. “We know the man who did this. Killed this boy and all the rest. Not by his own hand, no. He is too fat and craven to do his own killing. But by his word.” He turned to Wyman Manderly. “Do you deny it?”
The Lord of White Harbor bit a sausage in half. “I confess…” He wiped the grease from his lips with his sleeve. “… I confess that I know little of this poor boy. Lord Ramsay’s squire, was he not? How old was the lad?”
“Nine, on his last nameday.”
“So young,” said Wyman Manderly. “Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey.”
Ser Hosteen slammed his foot into the tabletop, knocking it off its trestles, back into Lord Wyman’s swollen belly. Cups and platters flew, sausages scattered everywhere, and a dozen Manderly men came cursing to their feet. Some grabbed up knives, platters, flagons, anything that might serve as a weapon.
Ser Hosteen Frey ripped his longsword from its scabbard and leapt toward Wyman Manderly. The Lord of White Harbor tried to jerk away, but the tabletop pinned him to his chair. The blade slashed through three of his four chins in a spray of bright red blood. Lady Walda gave a shriek and clutched at her lord husband’s arm. “Stop,” Roose Bolton shouted. “Stop this madness.” His own men rushed forward as the Manderlys vaulted over the benches to get at the Freys. One lunged at Ser Hosteen with a dagger, but the big knight pivoted and took his arm off at the shoulder. Lord Wyman pushed to his feet, only to collapse. Old Lord Locke was shouting for a maester as Manderly flopped on the floor like a clubbed walrus in a spreading pool of blood. Around him dogs fought over sausages.
It took two score Dreadfort spearmen to part the combatants and put an end to the carnage. By that time six White Harbor men and two Freys lay dead upon the floor. A dozen more were wounded and one of the Bastard’s Boys, Luton, was dying noisily, crying for his mother as he tried to shove a fistful of slimy entrails back through a gaping belly wound. Lord Ramsay silenced him, yanking a spear from one of Steelshanks’s men and driving it down through Luton’s chest. Even then the rafters still rang with shouts and prayers and curses, the shrieks of terrified horses and the growls of Ramsay’s bitches. Steelshanks Walton had to slam the butt of his spear against the floor a dozen times before the hall quieted enough for Roose Bolton to be heard.
“I see you all want blood,” the Lord of the Dreadfort said. Maester Rhodry stood beside him, a raven on his arm. The bird’s black plumage shone like coal oil in the torchlight. Wet, Theon realized. And in his lordship’s hand, a parchment. That will be wet as well. Dark wings, dark words. “Rather than use our swords upon each other, you might try them on Lord Stannis.” Lord Bolton unrolled the parchment. “His host lies not three days’ ride from here, snowbound and starving, and I for one am tired of waiting on his pleasure. Ser Hosteen, assemble your knights and men-at-arms by the main gates. As you are so eager for battle, you shall strike our first blow. Lord Wyman, gather your White Harbor men by the east gate. They shall go forth as well.”
Hosteen Frey’s sword was red almost to the hilt. Blood spatters speckled his cheeks like freckles. He lowered his blade and said, “As my lord commands. But after I deliver you the head of Stannis Baratheon, I mean to finish hacking off Lord Lard’s.”
Four White Harbor knights had formed a ring around Lord Wyman, as Maester Medrick labored over him to staunch his bleeding. “First you must needs come
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