A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five

by George R. R. Martin

  “You took a great risk, my lord,” Davos said. “If the Freys had seen through your deception …”

  “I took no risk at all. If any of the Freys had taken it upon themselves to climb my gate for a close look at the man with the onion in his mouth, I would have blamed my gaolers for the error and produced you to appease them.”

  Davos felt a shiver up his spine. “I see.”

  “I hope so. You have sons of your own, you said.”

  Three, thought Davos, though I fathered seven.

  “Soon I must return to the feast to toast my friends of Frey,” Manderly continued. “They watch me, ser. Day and night their eyes are on me, noses sniffing for some whiff of treachery. You saw them, the arrogant Ser Jared and his nephew Rhaegar, that smirking worm who wears a dragon’s name. Behind them both stands Symond, clinking coins. That one has bought and paid for several of my servants and two of my knights. One of his wife’s handmaids has found her way into the bed of my own fool. If Stannis wonders that my letters say so little, it is because I dare not even trust my maester. Theomore is all head and no heart. You heard him in my hall. Maesters are supposed to put aside old loyalties when they don their chains, but I cannot forget that Theomore was born a Lannister of Lannisport and claims some distant kinship to the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me.” The fat man’s fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. “My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder’s bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter … but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.”

  Something about the way Lord Wyman said that chilled Davos to the bone. “If it is justice that you want, my lord, look to King Stannis. No man is more just.”

  Robett Glover broke in to add, “Your loyalty does you honor, my lord, but Stannis Baratheon remains your king, not our own.”

  “Your own king is dead,” Davos reminded them, “murdered at the Red Wedding beside Lord Wyman’s son.”

  “The Young Wolf is dead,” Manderly allowed, “but that brave boy was not Lord Eddard’s only son. Robett, bring the lad.”

  “At once, my lord.” Glover slipped out the door.

  The lad? Was it possible that one of Robb Stark’s brothers had survived the ruin of Winterfell? Did Manderly have a Stark heir hidden away in his castle? A found boy or a feigned boy? The north would rise for either, he suspected … but Stannis Baratheon would never make common cause with an imposter.

  The lad who followed Robett Glover through the door was not a Stark, nor could he ever hope to pass for one. He was older than the Young Wolf’s murdered brothers, fourteen or fifteen by the look of him, and his eyes were older still. Beneath a tangle of dark brown hair his face was almost feral, with a wide mouth, sharp nose, and pointed chin. “Who are you?” Davos asked.

  The boy looked to Robett Glover.

  “He is a mute, but we have been teaching him his letters. He learns quickly.” Glover drew a dagger from his belt and gave it to the boy. “Write your name for Lord Seaworth.”

  There was no parchment in the chamber. The boy carved the letters into a wooden beam in the wall. W … E … X. He leaned hard into the X. When he was done he flipped the dagger in the air, caught it, and stood admiring his handiwork.

  “Wex is ironborn. He was Theon Greyjoy’s squire. Wex was at Winterfell.” Glover sat. “How much does Lord Stannis know of what transpired at Winterfell?”

  Davos thought back on the tales they’d heard. “Winterfell was captured by Theon Greyjoy, who had once been Lord Stark’s ward. He had Stark’s two young sons put to death and mounted their heads above the castle walls. When the northmen came to oust him, he put the entire castle to sword, down to the last child, before he himself was slain by Lord Bolton’s bastard.”

  “Not slain,” said Glover. “Captured, and carried back to the Dreadfort. The Bastard has been flaying him.”

  Lord Wyman nodded. “The tale you tell is one we all have heard, as full of lies as a pudding’s full of raisins. It was the Bastard of Bolton who put Winterfell to the sword … Ramsay Snow, he was called then, before the boy king made him a Bolton. Snow did not kill them all. He spared the women, roped them together, and marched them to the Dreadfort for his sport.”

  “His sport?”

  “He is a great hunter,” said Wyman Manderly, “and women are his favorite prey. He strips them naked and sets them loose in the woods. They have a half day’s start before he sets out after them with hounds and horns. From time to time some wench escapes and lives to tell the tale. Most are less fortunate. When Ramsay catches them he rapes them, flays them, feeds their corpses to his dogs, and brings their skins back to the Dreadfort as trophies. If they have given him good sport, he slits their throats before he skins them. Elsewise, t’other way around.”

  Davos paled. “Gods be good. How could any man—”

  “The evil is in his blood,” said Robett Glover. “He is a bastard born of rape. A Snow, no matter what the boy king says.”

  “Was ever snow so black?” asked Lord Wyman. “Ramsay took Lord Hornwood’s lands by forcibly wedding his widow, then locked her in a tower and forgot her. It is said she ate her own fingers in her extremity … and the Lannister notion of king’s justice is to reward her killer with Ned Stark’s little girl.”

  “The Boltons have always been as cruel as they were cunning, but this one seems a beast in human skin,” said Glover.

  The Lord of White Harbor leaned forward. “The Freys are no better. They speak of wargs and skinchangers and assert that it was Robb Stark who slew my Wendel. The arrogance of it! They do not expect the north to believe their lies, not truly, but they think we must pretend to believe or die. Roose Bolton lies about his part in the Red Wedding, and his bastard lies about the fall of Winterfell. And yet so long as they held Wylis I had no choice but to eat all this excrement and praise the taste.”

  “And now, my lord?” asked Davos.

  He had hoped to hear Lord Wyman say, And now I shall declare for King Stannis, but instead the fat man smiled an odd, twinkling smile and said, “And now I have a wedding to attend. I am too fat to sit a horse, as any man with eyes can plainly see. As a boy I loved to ride, and as a young man I handled a mount well enough to win some small acclaim in the lists, but those days are done. My body has become a prison more dire than the Wolf’s Den. Even so, I must go to Winterfell. Roose Bolton wants me on my knees, and beneath the velvet courtesy he shows the iron mail. I shall go by barge and litter, attended by a hundred knights and my good friends from the Twins. The Freys came here by sea. They have no horses with them, so I shall present each of them with a palfrey as a guest gift. Do hosts still give guest gifts in the south?”

  “Some do, my lord. On the day their guest departs.”

  “Perhaps you understand, then.” Wyman Manderly lurched ponderously to his feet. “I have been building warships for more than a year. Some you saw, but there are as many more hidden up the White Knife. Even with the losses I have suffered, I still command more heavy horse than any other lord north of the Neck. My walls are strong, and my vaults are full of silver. Oldcastle and Widow’s Watch will take their lead from me. My bannermen include a dozen petty lords and a hundred landed knights. I can deliver King Stannis the allegiance of all the lands east of the White Knife, from Widow’s Watch and Ramsgate to the Sheepshead Hills and the headwaters of the Broken Branch. All this I pledge to do if you will meet my price.”

  “I can bring your terms to the king, but—”

  Lord Wyman cut him off. “If you will meet my price, I said. Not Stannis. It’s not a king I need but a smuggler.”
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br />   Robett Glover took up the tale. “We may never know all that happened at Winterfell, when Ser Rodrik Cassel tried to take the castle back from Theon Greyjoy’s ironmen. The Bastard of Bolton claims that Greyjoy murdered Ser Rodrik during a parley. Wex says no. Until he learns more letters we will never know half the truth … but he came to us knowing yes and no, and those can go a long way once you find the right questions.”

  “It was the Bastard who murdered Ser Rodrik and the men of Winterfell,” said Lord Wyman. “He slew Greyjoy’s ironmen as well. Wex saw men cut down trying to yield. When we asked how he escaped, he took a chunk of chalk and drew a tree with a face.”

  Davos thought about that. “The old gods saved him?”

  “After a fashion. He climbed the heart tree and hid himself amongst the leaves. Bolton’s men searched the godswood twice and killed the men they found there, but none thought to clamber up into the trees. Is that how it happened, Wex?”

  The boy flipped up Glover’s dagger, caught it, nodded.

  Glover said, “He stayed up in the tree a long time. He slept amongst the branches, not daring to descend. Finally he heard voices down beneath him.”

  “The voices of the dead,” said Wyman Manderly.

  Wex held up five fingers, tapped each one with the dagger, then folded four away and tapped the last again.

  “Six of them,” asked Davos. “There were six.”

  “Two of them Ned Stark’s murdered sons.”

  “How could a mute tell you that?”

  “With chalk. He drew two boys … and two wolves.”

  “The lad is ironborn, so he thought it best not to show himself,” said Glover. “He listened. The six did not linger long amongst the ruins of Winterfell. Four went one way, two another. Wex stole after the two, a woman and a boy. He must have stayed downwind, so the wolf would not catch his scent.”

  “He knows where they went,” Lord Wyman said.

  Davos understood. “You want the boy.”

  “Roose Bolton has Lord Eddard’s daughter. To thwart him White Harbor must have Ned’s son … and the direwolf. The wolf will prove the boy is who we say he is, should the Dreadfort attempt to deny him. That is my price, Lord Davos. Smuggle me back my liege lord, and I will take Stannis Baratheon as my king.”

  Old instinct made Davos Seaworth reach for his throat. His fingerbones had been his luck, and somehow he felt he would have need of luck to do what Wyman Manderly was asking of him. The bones were gone, though, so he said, “You have better men than me in your service. Knights and lords and maesters. Why would you need a smuggler? You have ships.”

  “Ships,” Lord Wyman agreed, “but my crews are rivermen, or fisherfolk who have never sailed beyond the Bite. For this I must have a man who’s sailed in darker waters and knows how to slip past dangers, unseen and unmolested.”

  “Where is the boy?” Somehow Davos knew he would not like the answer. “Where is it you want me to go, my lord?”

  Robett Glover said, “Wex. Show him.”

  The mute flipped the dagger, caught it, then flung it end over end at the sheepskin map that adorned Lord Wyman’s wall. It struck quivering. Then he grinned.

  For half a heartbeat Davos considered asking Wyman Manderly to send him back to the Wolf’s Den, to Ser Bartimus with his tales and Garth with his lethal ladies. In the Den even prisoners ate porridge in the morning. But there were other places in this world where men were known to break their fast on human flesh.

  DAENERYS

  Each morning, from her western ramparts, the queen would count the sails on Slaver’s Bay.

  Today she counted five-and-twenty, though some were far away and moving, so it was hard to be certain. Sometimes she missed one, or counted one twice. What does it matter? A strangler only needs ten fingers. All trade had stopped, and her fisherfolk did not dare put out into the bay. The boldest still dropped a few lines into the river, though even that was hazardous; more remained tied up beneath Meereen’s walls of many-colored brick.

  There were ships from Meereen out in the bay too, warships and trading galleys whose captains had taken them to sea when Dany’s host first laid siege to the city, now returned to augment the fleets from Qarth, Tolos, and New Ghis.

  Her admiral’s counsel had proved worse than useless. “Let them see your dragons,” Groleo said. “Let the Yunkishmen have a taste of fire, and the trade will flow again.”

  “Those ships are strangling us, and all my admiral can do is talk of dragons,” Dany said. “You are my admiral, are you not?”

  “An admiral without ships.”

  “Build ships.”

  “Warships cannot be made from brick. The slavers burned every stand of timber within twenty leagues of here.”

  “Then ride out two-and-twenty leagues. I will give you wagons, workers, mules, whatever you require.”

  “I am a sailor, not a shipwright. I was sent to fetch Your Grace back to Pentos. Instead you brought us here and tore my Saduleon to pieces for some nails and scraps of wood. I will never see her like again. I may never see my home again, nor my old wife. It was not me who refused the ships this Daxos offered. I cannot fight the Qartheen with fishing boats.”

  His bitterness dismayed her, so much so that Dany found herself wondering if the grizzled Pentoshi could be one of her three betrayers. No, he is only an old man, far from home and sick at heart. “There must be something we can do.”

  “Aye, and I’ve told you what. These ships are made of rope and pitch and canvas, of Qohorik pine and teak from Sothoros, old oak from Great Norvos, yew and ash and spruce. Wood, Your Grace. Wood burns. The dragons—”

  “I will hear no more about my dragons. Leave me. Go pray to your Pentoshi gods for a storm to sink our foes.”

  “No sailor prays for storms, Your Grace.”

  “I am tired of hearing what you will not do. Go.”

  Ser Barristan remained. “Our stores are ample for the moment,” he reminded her, “and Your Grace has planted beans and grapes and wheat. Your Dothraki have harried the slavers from the hills and struck the shackles from their slaves. They are planting too, and will be bringing their crops to Meereen to market. And you will have the friendship of Lhazar.”

  Daario won that for me, for all that it is worth. “The Lamb Men. Would that lambs had teeth.”

  “That would make the wolves more cautious, no doubt.”

  That made her laugh. “How fare your orphans, ser?”

  The old knight smiled. “Well, Your Grace. It is good of you to ask.” The boys were his pride. “Four or five have the makings of knights. Perhaps as many as a dozen.”

  “One would be enough if he were as true as you.” The day might come soon when she would have need of every knight. “Will they joust for me? I should like that.” Viserys had told her stories of the tourneys he had witnessed in the Seven Kingdoms, but Dany had never seen a joust herself.

  “They are not ready, Your Grace. When they are, they will be pleased to demonstrate their prowess.”

  “I hope that day comes quickly.” She would have kissed her good knight on the cheek, but just then Missandei appeared beneath the arched doorway. “Missandei?”

  “Your Grace. Skahaz awaits your pleasure.”

  “Send him up.”

  The Shavepate was accompanied by two of his Brazen Beasts. One wore a hawk mask, the other the likeness of a jackal. Only their eyes could be seen behind the brass. “Your Radiance, Hizdahr was seen to enter the pyramid of Zhak last evening. He did not depart until well after dark.”

  “How many pyramids has he visited?” asked Dany.

  “Eleven.”

  “And how long since the last murder?”

  “Six-and-twenty days.” The Shavepate’s eyes brimmed with fury. It had been his notion to have the Brazen Beasts follow her betrothed and take note of all his actions.

  “So far Hizdahr has made good on his promises.”

  “How? The Sons of the Harpy have put down their knives, but why
? Because the noble Hizdahr asked sweetly? He is one of them, I tell you. That’s why they obey him. He may well be the Harpy.”

  “If there is a Harpy.” Skahaz was convinced that somewhere in Meereen the Sons of the Harpy had a highborn overlord, a secret general commanding an army of shadows. Dany did not share his belief. The Brazen Beasts had taken dozens of the Harpy’s Sons, and those who had survived their capture had yielded names when questioned sharply … too many names, it seemed to her. It would have been pleasant to think that all the deaths were the work of a single enemy who might be caught and killed, but Dany suspected that the truth was otherwise. My enemies are legion. “Hizdahr zo Loraq is a persuasive man with many friends. And he is wealthy. Perhaps he has bought this peace for us with gold, or convinced the other highborn that our marriage is in their best interests.”

  “If he is not the Harpy, he knows him. I can find the truth of that easy enough. Give me your leave to put Hizdahr to the question, and I will bring you a confession.”

  “No,” she said. “I do not trust these confessions. You’ve brought me too many of them, all of them worthless.”

  “Your Radiance—”

  “No, I said.”

  The Shavepate’s scowl turned his ugly face even uglier. “A mistake. The Great Master Hizdahr plays Your Worship for a fool. Do you want a serpent in your bed?”

  I want Daario in my bed, but I sent him away for the sake of you and yours. “You may continue to watch Hizdahr zo Loraq, but no harm is to come to him. Is that understood?”

  “I am not deaf, Magnificence. I will obey.” Skahaz drew a parchment scroll from his sleeve. “Your Worship should have a look at this. A list of all the Meereenese ships in the blockade, with their captains. Great Masters all.”