23. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 605-631

Let's see, where were we...?

A Ghost in Winterfell

The body of one of Ramsay Bolton's men is found, buried in the snow at the base of the inner wall, with a broken neck. Though the consensus is that the death was accidental, it stirs talk that Stannis may have already found a way to get his men inside Winterfell. The snowstorm has raged for days, making it impossible to see what is happening outside the walls. Ramsay is merciless in prosecuting dissent, including suggestions that Stannis is anything but starving and frozen out there in the wilderness beyond Winterfell. But as supplies dwindle, morale worsens.

One evening, as Theon is finishing his meager ration of porridge, a woman named Holly, one of the "washerwomen" accompanying the singer Abel, accosts him and asks to see the crypts. Theon suspects that Abel is looking for a way to get out of the castle, and since Theon is known to have found his way in to conquer Winterfell, he surely must know the escape route. He tells Holly to leave him alone.

He goes outside, and decides to take a look from the walls where Bolton had punished one of the dissenters by having him thrown off into a snowbank. The man broke a leg and was shot by a bowman, left to freeze to death. Theon thinks briefly of jumping, of taking his chances, but knows that Ramsay would hunt him down and inflict worse torments.

The next day, another man is found naked and frozen to death, and then a crossbowman is found with his head bashed in. The former death is attributed to drink, the latter to a kick from a horse, but Theon has his doubts. And the deaths begin to unnerve Bolton's lords, who argue that they should stop waiting for Stannis and go out to meet him, while others argue the opposite, pointing out that the scouts they have sent to reconnoiter have all disappeared. Lord Wyman Manderly even seems to go out of his way to pick a fight with Ser Aenys Frey, and when Roose Bolton is forced to make peace between them, Theon thinks he sees a glint of something like fear in Bolton's eyes.

That night, the roof of the stable collapses under the weight of snow, killing twenty-six horses and two men. Lord Bolton orders the remaining horses brought inside the Great Hall, compounding the stench and filth. And when the men have finished digging out the dead horses and butchering them for food, another body is found.

This one could not be waved away as some drunken tumble or the kick of a horse. The dead man was one of Ramsay's favorites, the squat, scrofulous, ill-favored man-at-arms called Yellow Dick. Whether his dick had actually been yellow was hard to determine, as someone had sliced it off and stuffed it in his mouth so forcefully they had broken three of his teeth.

Roose Bolton tries to hush this death up, but the story spreads, and Ramsay Bolton vows to flay the murderer and have him eat his own skin.

Escaping from the stench of the hall and the taunts of Ramsay's men, Theon goes outside into the snow, walking the pathways cut through snowbanks that now loom chest high. There he encounters a man in a hooded cloak who addresses him as "Theon Turncloak. Theon Kinslayer." Theon denies the epithets: "I'm not. I never ... I was ironborn." The man persists in his denunciation, and all that Theon, who wonders if this might be the murderer stalking Winterfell, can offer in his defense is that he is at Ramsay Bolton's mercy now: He shows the man his maimed hand and says, "Lord Ramsay is not done with me." The man laughs and says he will leave Theon to him.

Theon climbs to the battlements and looks out on the nothingness, thinking,

The world is gone. King's Landing, Riverrun, Pyke, and the Iron Islands, all the Seven Kingdoms, every place that he had ever known, every place that he had ever read about or dreamed of, all gone. Only Winterfell remained. He was trapped here, with the ghosts. The old ghosts from the crypts and the younger ones that he had made himself, Mikken and Farlen, Gynir Rednose Aggar, Gelmarr the Grim, the miller's wife from Acorn Water and her two young sons, and all the rest. My work. My ghosts. They are all here, and they are angry. He thought of the crypts and those missing swords.

When he returns to his chambers, he is summoned by Lord Bolton, whom he finds with Lady Dustin, Roger Ryswell, and Aenys Frey. Roose Bolton comes to the point: Theon has been seen wandering the castle. Theon explains that he can't sleep, and that he is familiar with Winterfell from childhood. When Bolton points out that someone has been killing his men, Theon says he wouldn't do such a thing. Then Lady Dustin asks him to remove his gloves. He hesitates, but shows them that his left hand is missing two fingers and his right one. Aenys Frey observes that Theon could still hold a dagger with his right hand, but Lady Dustin scoffs, "He hardly has the strength to hold a spoon." Ryswell agrees that Theon isn't the killer, and Roose Bolton is inclined to agree.

They proceed to discuss who might be behind the murders, including Lord Wyman Manderly. Lady Dustin and Ryswell point out that almost everyone in the north, their own houses included, has a grudge against the Freys for the Red Wedding. Finally, Roose dismisses Theon, who goes out to walk the walls some more, trying to get tired enough to sleep.

Suddenly there is the sound of a horn, followed by the beat of a drum. But no one can see through the veil of falling snow. When one of the Freys suggests they ride out and meet the enemy -- everyone assumes the horn and drum have been sounded by Stannis -- Theon hopes they will: "Ride out into the snow and die. Leave Winterfell to me and the ghosts." Then he hopes that Roose Bolton will give him a sword and let him fight: "Then at least he might die a man's death, sword in hand."

Theon makes his way to the godswood, where the hot springs have continued to melt the snow. He can hear the drumming, but he also hears the leaves of the trees whispering his name. He kneels and begs to be allowed to "die as Theon, not Reek." A leaf falls and brushes his face: "It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. '...Bran,' the tree murmured." The face carved in the tree suddenly seems to be Bran's, and he begins to plead aloud that it hadn't been Bran and Rickon that he killed. "They were only miller's sons, from the mill by the Acorn Water."

Then someone speaks: "Who are you talking to?" He turns around and sees three of the washerwomen: Holly, Rowan, and an older woman whose name he doesn't know. They repeat the words he has spoken, his confession that he needed two heads to prove that he had captured Bran and Rickon, because otherwise he would have been laughed at. He sees that Holly has a knife, and he asks her to kill him. He realizes that they are the killers.

Rowan says, "You prayed, and the gods sent us. You want to die as Theon? We'll give you that. A nice quick death, 'twill hardly hurt at all.... But not till you've sung for Abel. He's waiting for you."

Tyrion

Tyrion and Penny are being sold at slave auction as "A pair of dwarfs, well trained for your amusement." The dog and the pig are being thrown in as part of the deal. When the bidding for them slows, they are ordered to put on a show for the bidders, and Tyrion takes a pratfall from the back of the pig that renews the competition. Finally, they are sold to an enormously fat man in yellow.

They are in the Yunkish camp within sight of the walls of Meereen. The overseer tells them that they are now "the property of the noble and valorous Yezzan zo Qaggaz, scholar and warrior, revered amongst the Wise Masters of Yunkai." The overseer himself, says that they should call him "Nurse," because he looks after the "special treasures" of Yezzan the way a nurse does the children under her charge.

Then Jorah Mormont is brought to the block, struggling against the handlers. He has been so badly beaten that he is almost unrecognizable, and the auctioneer suggests he should be bought as a contender in the fighting pits which were being reopened after Daenerys's marriage to Hizdahr. The bidding is not going well -- no one seems to want the obviously untamed Ser Jorah -- and he is about to be sold to an old woman who buys up fighters cheaply when Tyrion decides to intervene. He tells Nurse that Jorah is part of the act: He plays a bear in an act in which Tyrion is a knight who saves the fair maiden Penny. "I dance about and hit him in the balls. Very funny." So Nurse goes to tell Yezzan, who offers the winning bid.

Mormont is brought to the cart and thrown in with Tyrion and Penny, but he is no longer struggling. "All the fight went out of him when he heard that his queen had wed, Tyrion realized." They are taken to Yezzan's pavilion in the Yunkish camps, which form a crescent around the city of Meereen. Ships had brought the lumber for six giant trebuchets that tower over the camps. But Tyrion also sees evidence of the disease that has spread through the camps: "Disease could wipe out an army quicker than any battle, he had heard his father say once," and he resolves to try to escape as soon as possible.

Tyrion and Penny are housed inside Yezzan's vast pavilion, which is covered with lemon-colored silk. They are fitted with collars around their necks, and Penny cries because hers is so heavy. There are also bells attached to the collars. Mormont is chained to a stake outside the tent. Tyrion and Penny join "Yezzan's other treasures: a boy with twisted, hairy 'goat legs,' a two-headed girl out of Mantarys, a bearded woman, and a willowy creature called Sweets who dressed in moonstones and Myrish lace," and who demonstrates her private parts for them: "I'm both, and master loves me best." She warns them that Nurse "is the only true monster here." As for their master, Yezzan, he is slowly dying, and anyone who can make him forget that elicits his generosity.

That night they are called on to entertain Yezzan and his guests who include Yurkhaz zo Yunzak, the Yunkish supreme commander, and Brown Ben Plumm, whom Tyrion had seen at the auction. Plumm had in fact bid on the dwarfs against Yezzan, and although Tyrion knew that Plumm might be planning to take him back to Westeros and to Cersei, he figured he would rather take his chances with him than with Yezzan.

The act goes over well, and afterward the dwarfs are called on to serve the guests, Tyrion pouring wine and Penny water. Then someone mentions that Tyrion had boasted of his prowess at cyvasse, and he winds up playing against Brown Ben Plumm, who first wagers that if he wins, Yezzan should give Tyrion to him. But Yezzan says that if he can defeat Tyrion, he will pay Plumm the price he paid for him, in gold. Tyrion wins easily, but Yezzan has fallen asleep. Nevertheless, he was pleased by their performance, Nurse tells them. "To celebrate the signing of the peace, you shall have the honor of jousting in the Great Pit of Daznak. Thousands will come see you! Tens of thousands! And, oh, how we shall laugh!" 

20. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 524-548

Tyrion

He has given in, and is riding the pig, whose name is Pretty, jousting against Penny on the deck of the Selaesori Qhoran. The ship has been becalmed in the Gulf of Grief for twelve days, and the crew is restless and looking for a scapegoat. Penny has begged him to help her entertain the crew, lest they turn on them. But Tyrion has also decided that he and Penny will perform the jousting act as a means to approach Daenerys.

Ser Jorah scoffs at this idea: "Daenerys Targaryen is no silly child to be diverted by japs and tumbles. She will deal with you justly." But Tyrion, who knows the history of Jorah's relationship with Daenerys, asks how he intends to approach her. "You think Daenerys will execute me and pardon you, but the reverse is just as likely. Maybe you should hope on that pig, Ser Jorah."

Jorah gives him a blow that knocks him across the deck, and tells Tyrion to stay away from him for the rest of the voyage. Tyrion is rinsing the blood out of his mouth when he feels the ship move: The wind has come up. But when he goes on deck he looks to the west and thinks, "I have never seen a sky that color." Moqorro joins him and says it is "God's wroth."

Banished from Jorah's presence, Tyrion joins Penny in her cabin as the storm begins to hurl the ship about. To his surprise, Penny kisses him. He has no desire for her, and when he looks at her he realizes that she really has none for him. She tells him that she was afraid they would drown, and she has never kissed a man before. In case she is hoping for more, he tells her he is married. The excuse works because, he realizes, she is "still young enough to believe such blatant lies."

The storm lasts into the night, sweeping three members of the crew overboard, blinding the cook when hot grease is tossed in his eyes, and breaking both of the captain's legs when he falls from the sterncastle to the main deck. When it dies down, Tyrion goes to the deck and discovers that they are in the eye of the storm. The wind returns and this time it splits the mast. Tyrion clings for life to a rope, as splinters from the mast stab him in the neck and the thigh.
The
When the storm is over, the ship is just barely afloat, and nine men have died, including Moqorro, who had been on deck praying to R'hllor. The next day the captain dies and three days later the cook. They drift for nineteen days until a ship is sighted. Unfortunately, Ser Jorah informs him, it's a slaver.

The Turncloak

Snow begins to fall heavily at Winterfell, which puts Stannis's troops at a severe disadvantage, as Roose Bolton cheerfully announces. Theon has been considering escape, now that his usefulness to the Boltons is over, but he has no place to go. "The nearest thing to a home that remained to him was here, amongst the bones of Winterfell. A ruined man, a ruined castle. This is my place."

Jeyne/Arya hasn't been seen in the hall since the wedding, but Theon goes in every night to help her bathe, since she has no handmaids. He has seen the bruises Ramsay has left on her, and would like to help her escape, but he knows that when Ramsay tires of tormenting his wife, he will turn on Theon again.

He eats by himself, since no one cares for the company of Theon Turncloak. But one evening a woman sits down by him. She is one of the women accompanying the singer Abel. She asks him to tell her how he captured Winterfell, and if he had a secret way to get in. He doesn't tell her anything, but she persists, telling him her name is Rowan. Instantly he suspects that this is one of Ramsay's tricks: "He wants me to run, so he can punish me." So he gets up and leaves.

He walks through the ruins of Winterfell and finds his way to the battlements on the inner wall where he sees the snow piling up everywhere. "Stannis Baratheon is out there somewhere, freezing," he thinks. He makes his way to the godswood, where the hot springs keep the snow from accumulating. Even though they are not his gods, he finds himself praying but he isn't sure for what: "Strength? Courage? Mercy?" He hears the sound of a faint sobbing, and thinks it must be Jeyne: "Who else could it be? Gods do not weep. Or do they?" There must be ghosts in Winterfell, and he is one of them.

In the kitchen, cooks are making stew and the dogs are gathered for the scraps. He has some stew, and listens in the hall as Roose Bolton's scouts report that Stannis's march has slowed. Then Lady Barbrey Dustin enters and calls for him. She wants to know how to get to the crypts. He leads her there, and on the way he recognizes the place where Bran Stark had fallen. He had been hunting that day, and when they returned they were told that Bran wasn't expected to live. He thinks, "The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could."

It takes half an hour for Lady Dustin's men to uncover the entrance to the crypts and to batter down the frozen door with an axe. As he descends into the crypts, Lady Dustin comments that Lady Arya is weeping. Theon tells himself to be careful of another trap, but she says, "Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that." The northmen "love the Starks," she says, and they haven't forgotten how Ramsay Bolton's previous wife ate her fingers to keep from starving. "What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl."

Theon keeps silent until they reach the first level of the crypts. She asks if he knows the names of the lords buried there, and he recalls some of them. She asks for Ned Stark's tomb, and he tells her it's at the end. As they pass one tomb she notices that the king buried there is missing his sword. Theon is "disquieted" at this fact: "He had always heard that the iron in the sword kept the spirits of the dead locked within their tombs."

Suddenly he finds himself asking, "My lady, why do you hate the Starks?" She replies, "For the same reason you love them." He stumbles trying to answer, protesting that he took their castle and had Bran and Rickon killed, but she persists, "Why do you love the Starks?" And he admits, "I wanted to be one of them." And she replies, "We have more in common than you know."

When they reach Lord Rickard's tomb, she observes that his sword is missing too. And he points out that Brandon's is gone as well. "He would hate that," she says, and then tells Theon that Brandon, Ned's brother, had taken her virginity. She had hoped to marry him, but Rickard Stark pledged him to Catelyn Tully, ambitious to unite his house with one in the south. Her father had though she would marry Eddard, but after Brandon's death, he married Catelyn. So she married Lord Dustin, but he died when Ned Stark called out his banners in support of Robert Baratheon's rebellion.

"He told me that my lord had died an honorable death, that his body had been laid to rest beneath the red mountains of Dorne. He brought his sister's bones back north, though, and there she rests ... but I promise you, Lord Eddard's bones will never rest beside hers. I mean to feed them to my dogs."

Theon doesn't understand, and she explains that Catelyn had Eddard's bones sent north, but when Balon Greyjoy took Moat Cailin, their progress to Winterfell had been interrupted. "I have been watching ever since. Should those bones ever emerge from the swamps, they will get no farther than Barrowton."

When they return from the crypt, she warns him that he must repeat nothing of what she has said. He says, "Hold my tongue or lose it." And she replies, "Roose has trained you well."

18. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 473-499

Daenerys

Daenerys has come out to see the Astapori refugee camp, and is nauseated by the filth and disease. Ser Barristan urges her to turn back, but is, as usual, resolute. The refugees, many of them calling her "Mother," cry out for her help, but she has done all she can, sending out healers and even attempting a quarantine of the sick, but to no avail. Over the protests of Barristan and others in her retinue, she decides to nurse as many as she can, and they grudgingly join her. She also sends for the Unsullied, who have no fear of illness or death, to aid in the task.

Eventually, she returns, weary and depressed, to her pyramid, where Missandei helps her bathe before Reznak mo Reznak and the Green Grace arrive to discuss the wedding plans. She balks at some of the traditional rituals, including an inspection of her "female parts" by the women of Hizdahr's family, but agrees to be married in the Temple of the Graces instead of in a Westerosi ritual. At first she refuses to wash Hizdahr's feet, but agrees to do so if he will wash hers. But as it turns out, Hizdahr claims no more allegiance to tradition than she does.

However, he tells her that to establish peace, Yunkai will have to resume the slave trade. She observes that this is already a fait accompli: "The Yunkai'i resumed their slaving before I was two leagues from their city," and she didn't turn back. But he says the people of New Ghis don't trust her: "They would see us wed, and they would see me crowned as king, to rule beside you."

She is pondering how to reply when Barristan brings the news that the Stormcrows have returned and that the Yunkai'i are marching toward Meereen. Hizdahr protests that she is dining, but Daenerys tells him that she must speak with Daario and has Barristan show Hizdahr out. Then she changes into something more attractive to greet Daario.

He describes for her the strength of the forces moving toward Meereen by land and sea, but mentions that they have also gained some supporters: "Some Westerosi too, a score or more. Deserters from the Windblown, unhappy with the Yunkai'i." On the other hand, Brown Ben Plumm and the Second Sons have turned their cloaks and now support the Yunkai'i. Daenerys wonders if Plumm is one of the three treasons she was to experience, and if marrying Hizdahr will put an end to all of these attacks.

The news of Plumm's desertion causes an uproar, but Daenerys silences it. Then she orders the gates of the city closed, which means leaving the Astapori refugees to fend for themselves. She dismisses everyone but Daario, using the pretext that he has a wound that needs to be seen to.

Her handmaids tend to his wound, and then she sends them away, leaving her alone with Daario.

The Prince of Winterfell

Theon is helping Jeyne Poole prepare for her marriage to Ramsay Bolton. When she tells him that she "will be a better wife than the real Arya could have been," he recognizes the danger that she faces if she doesn't think of herself as Arya, just as he forces himself to think that he is Reek. He tells her that she is "Arya Underfoot. Your sister used to call you Arya Horseface." But Jeyne tells him that she is the one who made up that nickname. "Her face was long and horsey. Mine isn't. I was pretty."

She asks if Ramsay thinks she is pretty, and Theon lies, saying, "He's told me so." But she knows whom she's marrying: "They say he likes to hurt people," she says, and that he hurt Theon. But Theon claims he made him angry and that "Lord Ramsay is a ... a sweet man, and kindly." Then she begs him to help her: They could run away together, she says desperately, "I could be your wife, or your ... your whore ... whatever you wanted. You could be my man." But Theon begs her to try to please Ramsay and not to talk "about being someone else." He thinks, "Jeyne, her name is Jeyne, it rhymes with pain." He notices that her eyes are brown whereas Arya's were gray, and worries that someone will notice.

He has been chosen to give the bride away because, as Lady Dustin tells him, "You were her father's ward, the nearest thing she has to living kin." He realizes that if he is seen to accept her as Arya, the northmen gathered for the wedding "would have no grounds to question her legitimacy." And even those who suspected that she wasn't really Arya "would be wise enough to keep those misgivings to themselves." He is part of the deception, which is why he has been dressed as a lord instead of in his usual rags. When it's over, he will become Reek again, he realizes. "Unless the gods were good, and Stannis Baratheon descended on Winterfell and put all of them to the sword, himself included. That was the best he could hope for." 

The ceremony is taking place in the godswood, which Theon remembers from childhood. The hot springs make it a warm oasis in the midst of the snow, and it shrouds the faces of the guests in mist. The trees are full of ravens, and Theon thinks, "Maester Luwin's birds. Luwin was dead, and his maester's tower had been put to the torch, yet the ravens lingered." Ramsay Bolton is standing by the heart tree as he delivers Jeyne/Arya to him. She gives him a final look, pleading for him to do something, before she gives herself to Bolton.

Theon lingers as the wedding party leaves, and he hears a voice whisper, "Theon."

His head snapped up. "Who said that?" All he could see were the trees and the fog that covered them. The voice had been as faint as rustling leaves, as cold as hate. A god's voice, or a ghost's. How many died the day that he took Winterfell? How many more the day he lost it? The day that Theon Greyjoy died, to be reborn as Reek. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with shriek.

He hurries away from the godswood to the Great Hall.

In the yard, among the ruins of Winterfell, dead men were hanging from ropes. The castle had been full of squatters when Bolton and his company arrived, and those who resisted had been hanged. Those who agreed to help repair the gates and put a new roof on the Great Hall were told they would be spared. But after the work was finished, Bolton hanged them anyway. "True to his word, he showed them mercy and did not flay a one."

He makes his way into the warmth of the hall, where a bard named Abel is singing. As he passes through the crowd, he hears someone call him, "Theon Turncloak," and someone spits. "He was the traitor who had taken Winterfell by treachery, slain his foster brothers, delivered his own people to be flayed at Moat Cailin, and given his foster sister to Lord Ramsay's bed. Roose Bolton might make use of him, but true northmen must despise him."

Nevertheless, he has a seat on the dais at the high table, next to Lady Dustin. He looks at Jeyne and sees the fear in her eyes, and thinks, "I could beg her for the honor of a dance and cut her throat. That would be a kindness, wouldn't it?" And then, if the gods are kind, Ramsay would kill him. "Theon was not afraid to die. Underneath the Dreadfort, he had learned there were far worse things than death. Ramsay had taught him that lesson, finger by finger and toe by toe, and it was not one that he was ever like to forget."

Lady Dustin notices that Theon isn't eating, which is hard for him since Ramsay had broken so many of his teeth. She points out Wyman Manderly, who is wolfing down his food, "the very picture of the jolly fat man." She calls him "craven," and observes, "His son died at the Red Wedding, yet he's shared his bread and salt with Freys, welcomed them beneath his roof, promised one his granddaughter." But she knows Manderly would betray them all, and so does Roose Bolton, she says. She points out how Roose doesn't eat or drink anything until Manderly has taken some of it first. And she tells Theon, "Roose plays with men. You and me, these Freys, Lord Manderly, his plump new wife, even his bastard, we are but his playthings."

Some maesters enter the hall, and deliver news to Roose Bolton, who rises to tell the assembly that Stannis has left Deepwood Motte and could be at Winterfell in a fortnight, while Crowfood Umber is traveling down the kingsroad and the Karstarks are on the way from the east. He tells the lords to join him in his solar while Ramsay and his bride consummate the marriage.

When Lady Dustin leaves, Theon decides it is time to go, but one of Ramsay's attendants grabs him: "Ramsay says you're to bring his bride to his bed." Theon is terrified, but knows he has to obey. Jeyne is sitting alone, and Theon goes to her, realizing that she has drunk a good deal of wine. "Perhaps she hoped that if she drank enough, the ordeal would pass her by." Accompanied by some of Ramsay's men, he leads Jeyne up the stairs to the bedchamber.

Lord Ramsay is seated there when they enter, and he tells everyone but "Reek" to leave them. Then he tells Theon to undress "Ned Stark's little daughter." Theon starts to unlace her gown, but Ramsay tells him it will take too long: "Cut it off her." With the dagger in his hand, Theon thinks of killing Ramsay, but fears that he will fail and that Ramsay will flay the hand that held the dagger. Jeyne is trembling and he has to hold her still. When the gown falls, Ramsay tells him to take off her underclothes as well. When she is naked, he realizes how young she is. "Sansa's age. Arya would be even younger."

Ramsay asks what he thinks of her. She is pitiful, and there is "a spiderweb of faint thin lines across her back where someone had whipped her." But he says she is beautiful. Ramsay asks if he'd like to fuck her first: "The Prince of Winterfell should have that right, as all lords did in the days of old." He tells her to get on the bed and spread her legs, and then orders Theon, "Get her ready for me." Theon stammers, "I ... do you mean ... m'lord, I have no ... I...." (Although never stated outright, it is evident that Theon has been castrated.) Ramsay tells him to use his mouth. "And be quick about it. If she's not wet by the time I'm done disrobing, I will cut off that tongue of yours and nail it to the wall."

Theon does as he's told.

16. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 420-447

Reek

Bolton is returning with his fellow hunters, and the hounds almost knock Theon off his feet as he hurries, as fast as his fetters will allow him, to greet his master. Bolton comments on how bad Reek smells, and he apologizes. But then Bolton says he has brought him a gift and throws him a rotting, maggot-covered head.

He is left to take care of Ramsay Bolton's horse, and Little Walder commands him to do the same for his and his cousin's horses. But Big Walder (actually the smaller of the two) says he can take care of his own: "Little Walder had become Lord Ramsay's best boy and grew more like him every day, but the smaller Frey was made of different stuff and seldom took part in his cousin's games and cruelties."

In the stables, Theon asks Big Walder whose head it was. He is told it had belonged to an old man driving some goats on the road, and Bolton had killed him because he called him "Lord Snow," a reminder of his bastard name.

A feast is being held after the sixteen-day hunt, and Reek is kept chained outside the hall because his smell would spoil the feasters' appetites. He is able to watch Ramsay through the doors. The dogs have the run of the hall, however. He has been told that the dogs are "all named after peasant girls Ramsay had hunted, raped, and killed back when he'd still been a bastard, running with the first Reek."

In the middle of the feast, Roose Bolton arrives and orders everyone out. Ramsay orders Reek unchained and taken out, but Roose says for him to stay. He is left alone in the hall with Bolton father and son, and listens as they discuss the coming wedding, and Wyman Manderly's slow progress toward it. Ramsay complains that the feast he had been holding "should have been in Barrow Hall, not this pisspot of a castle," which belongs to a petty lord named Harwood Stout. But his father reminds him that Barrow Hall belongs to Lady Dustin, who "cannot abide" Ramsay. He has to stay on the good side of Barbrey Dustin, and he is concerned about what might happen if Bran or Rickon Stark is discovered.

Hearing of this last possibility, Theon struggles to think like Reek:

Ned Stark's sons are all dead, Reek thought. Robb was murdered at the Twins, and Bran and Rickon ... we dipped the heads in tar.... His own head was pounding. He did not want to think about anything that had happened before he knew his name.

But Ramsay and Roose Bolton know the truth, and are determined to conceal it and to make sure that Theon continues to be blamed for the murder of the Stark boys. Roose also warns his son to try to act like a Bolton: "Tales are told of you, Ramsay. I hear them everywhere. People fear you." Ramsays says, of course, "Good," but Roose insists that he conceal his cruelties better: "A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule. Make it yours."

Then he delivers his news: Stannis has taken Deepwood Motte and restored it to the Glovers, and the mountain clans have joined in supporting him. Ramsay is delighted to hear of this opportunity to crush their foe, and urges his father to let him attack Deepwood. Roose says he must marry first, and Ramsay wants to proceed with it: "We have a girl, we have a tree, and we have lords enough to witness. I'll wed her on the morrow, plant a son between her legs, and march before her maiden's blood has dried."

But Roose wants the wedding to take place at Winterfell. That will get Stannis's attention, and that of the clansmen who are following him, who "will not abandon the daughter of their precious Ned to such as you." They will march on Winterfell, and the Boltons will conquer them there. And Roose wants to take Reek from him: "if you have not ruined him beyond redemption, he may yet be of some use to us."

Ramsay reluctantly unchains Theon and rides with Roose to Barrow Hall, which is less than a mile away. As they ride, Roose Bolton comments on Reek's stench, and tells him, "I knew the first Reek. He stank, though not for want of washing. I have never known a cleaner creature, truth be told.... The smell was something he was born with." Ramsay's mother had asked for a servant for her son, and he had given him Reek as a joke, "but he and Ramsay became inseparable. I do wonder, though ... was it Ramsay who corrupted Reek, or Reek Ramsay?"

He tells Theon the story of Ramsay's conception: Roose had been hunting a fox and come upon the beautiful young wife of an old miller. He hanged the miller for getting married without his permission, and raped the wife "beneath the tree where he was swaying." A year later she appears at the Dreadfort with the baby, saying that her husband's brother had turned them out of the mill. So he cut the brother's tongue out and gave her the mill. Roose also tells Theon that he had a legitimate son, Domeric, but that Ramsay poisoned him. Theon observes that Roose has a new wife, Walda Frey, who could give him sons, but Roose predicts that Ramsay will kill them, too.

Theon asks why Roose wanted him. "I'm not even a man, I'm broken and ... the smell." Roose says he'll smell better after a bath and change of clothes, but this terrifies Theon: "I have ... wounds, I ... and these clothes, Lord Ramsay gave them to me, he ... he said that I was never to take them off, save at his command." Roose says, "I mean you no harm, you know. I owe you much and more." Theon thinks, "This is a trap, he is playing with you, the son is just a shadow of the father," but he can't help asking what Roose owes him, and gets a reply: "The north. The Starks were done and doomed the night that you took Winterfell."

When they reach Barrow Hall, Roose takes him inside and introduces him to its mistress, Lady Barbrey Dustin, who is appalled at the smell. Roose tells her, "He has been with Ramsay. Lady Barbrey, allow me to present the rightful Lord of the Iron Islands, Theon of House Greyjoy." Terrified that Ramsay will hear this, Theon falls to his knees:

"I'm not him, I'm not the turncloak, he died at Winterfell. My name is Reek." He had to remember his name. "It rhymes with freak." 

Tyrion

He and Ser Jorah have booked passage on the Salaesori Qhoran, and so has the dwarf Penny, along with her dog and her pig. Jorah has removed his chains as long as they are on the ship, whose passengers include a red priest, Moqorro, who holds sway over most of the crew.

Penny has stayed below for a week, and when Tyrion spots her peeking out at the deck where Moqorro is holding a service to R'hllor, she shies away. Though the crew thinks rubbing a dwarf's head is good luck, they also think having a woman on board is bad. Tyrion pities her because of the fate visited on her brother, being mistaken for him and having his head chopped off, but she keeps her distance from him.

When Moqorro finishes his services, Tyrion goes to talk to him. The high priest, Benerro, had specially chosen Moqorro as a kind of missionary to Daenerys. Tyrion asks him what he sees in the flames, and Moqorro tells him, "Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all." Tyrion is flattered by being important enough to be part of Moqorro's visions.

He asks Moqorro about the ship's name, and the priest tells him that "Qhoran" is the title of a counselor or steward, and that "selaesori" means "fragrant." So the ship's name means "fragrant steward." (Tyrion is unaware, of course, of Quaithe's warning to Daenerys, "Beware the perfumed seneschal.") 

When he goes below, he tells Jorah that he had caught sight of Penny, whose name Tyrion hates because she and her brother, Oppo, had taken as their stage names the two smallest coins, Penny and Groat. But Jorah reveals to us that it was Tyrion who insisted that they bring Penny with them, afraid of what might befall her if she stayed in Volantis. Otherwise, Jorah is indifferent to her fate, and tells Tyrion that she is his responsibility. Tyrion thinks, "The man is cold, brooding, sullen, deaf to humor. And those are his good points." But he has learned of Jorah's passion for Daenerys, and feels some sympathy for him.

Life on the open sea bores Tyrion, who hates to sleep because of his bad dreams. He thinks of ending it all by jumping overboard, "But what if there is a hell and my father's waiting for me?" There is nothing to do but read and reread the three books on board, and he's rereading one of them, "about the erotic adventures of a young slave girl in a Lysene pillow house," at his table in the galley where he dines, when Penny enters.

He asks her to sit down and eat with him, but she apologizes for interrupting and starts to leave. He asks, "Do you mean to spend your whole life running away?" This causes her to get angry, and to say that he is the reason she and her brother had to run away. If he had obeyed Joffrey's command and jousted with them at the wedding feast, she says, thinks might have turned out differently. When he says that people would have laughed at him, she retorts, "My brother says that is a good thing, making people laugh." But speaking of her brother makes her cry.

Tyrion's apology only makes her angrier. She says that they fled King's Landing because her brother had been afraid they would be blamed in Joffrey's death. They went to Tyrosh, where they knew a juggler, another dwarf, but he had been murdered and his head taken too. Tyrion apologizes again, but she insists, "His blood is on your hands."

It is Tyrion's turn to get angry, and he says, "His blood is on my sister's hands, and the hands of the brutes who killed him." He admits that he has "killed mothers, fathers, nephews, lovers, men and women, kings and whores. A singer once annoyed me, so I had the bastard stewed. But I have never killed a juggler, nor a dwarf, and I am not to blame for what happened to your bloody brother." Penny picks up a cup of wine and throws it in his face, then leaves.

Days pass without seeing her again, but then a storm comes up. Remembering the misery of being below in his cabin during the stormy crossing of the narrow sea, he determines to stay on deck. "If the gods wanted him, he would sooner die by drowning than choking on his own vomit." He winds up soaked but exhilarated, especially when he goes to the cabin and finds Jorah Mormont lying in a pool of vomit. After drinking a good deal of rum and playing several games of cyvasse with the ship's cook, he goes on deck where he finds Penny.

He turns to leave her alone, but she speaks to him and apologizes for throwing the wine in his face and for her accusations that he killed her brother and the man in Tyrosh. She says that she thought she wanted to die, but the storm made her realize that she wanted to live. He thinks, "I have been there too. Something else we have in common."

She asks if he really did stew a singer. He says he doesn't cook, but she asks why he wanted him dead. "He wrote a song about me," he says, remembering the words. He asks about her family, and she says that her mother was not a dwarf but her father was. They're dead now, and she has no family left. She worries about what will happen to her now. "I have no trade, just the jousting show, and that needs two."

Tyrion flinches from what he perceives to be a suggestion that he might team with her in the act. But she continues to reminisce, telling about how the Sealord of Braavos once "laughed so hard that he gave each of us a ... a grand gift." He asks if Cersei had found them in Braavos, but she says it was a man, "Osmund. No, Oswald. Something like that." He came to them in Pentos. He tells her that now they're going to Meereen. She corrects him, "Qarth, you mean. We're bound for Qarth, by way of New Ghis." No, he insists, she will be performing for the dragon queen in Meereen. He assures her that Daenerys is kind-hearted and will find a place for her at court. "And you will be there too," she says. He agrees, "I will."

They strike up a friendship, and she introduces him to her pig, Pretty. They start taking meals together. He tries, and fails, to teach her cyvasse. And finally she asks him "if he would like to tilt with her." He turns her down, and later wonders if she meant something else by "tilt." He would have turned her down for that, too, "but he might not have been so brusque."

That night he can't sleep and goes on deck. The sky is red in the northeast, and he asks Moqorro why. "The sky is always red above Valyria," Moqorro tells him. They are closer than the crew would like to the volcanic region where the ancient kingdom had been destroyed. Tyrion's uncle Gerion Lannister had sailed for Valyria when Tyrion was eighteen, and never returned.

There is supposedly a curse on the Valyrian coast that afflicts any ship that sights it. But Moqorro tells Tyrion that he has ordered the captain to sail the shortest course: "Others seek Daenerys too." Tyrion wonders if Griff has changed his plans about sailing west, and asks Moqorro if he has seen them in his fires.

"Only their shadows," Moqorro said. "One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood." 

It sounds like the kraken, the sigil of Euron and House Greyjoy.