4. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 83-111

The Merchant's Man

Quentyn Martell is on a stinking ship, pretending to be the servant of Gerris Drinkwater, who is playing the role of a wineseller. Gerris fits the role of master better: He is tall and handsome, with an arrogant swagger. Prince Quentyn, on the other hand, is plain and stocky. Gerris is attempting to find passage from Volantis to Meereen, in support of Quentyn's plan to win the hand of Daenerys.

They have been in Volantis for twenty days, trying to persuade the captains of various ships to take them, but no one wants to brave the war being waged in Slaver's Bay. Finally, the captain of the ill-smelling Adventure agrees to take them for thrice his usual fee. Quentyn is suspicious of the captain, and they make no commitment. Their voyage started off badly: They lost three of their company aboard the Meadowlark when it was attacked by pirates.

As they walk through the market square in Volantis, they come upon a pair of dwarfs, putting on a show: They are dressed in wooden armor and jousting, one riding a pig, the other a large dog. Gerris wants to stop and watch this amusement, but Quentyn is in no mood. They go to the Merchant's House, where a quartet of sellswords are trying to recruit men for their army, the Windblown, which has been hired by Yunkai.

At their room, they are admitted by the third surviving member of the party, Ser Archibald Yronwood, an enormous man, who has been urging them to make the journey overland. Quentyn is still considering the possibility of the Adventure, but Gerris has turned against it after considering the prospect of having to "endure that stench for months on end." He says a new idea has just occurred to him.

Jon

Jon has summoned Gilly, to whom he says, "I have something hard to tell you." She asks if it's about Mance Rayder, who is threatened with execution, but he says that it's about Mance's son, whom Gilly is nursing. She pleads with Jon not to let Melisandre burn the child, as she has threatened to do in part of her dragon-summoning ritual. He says that the only way to do that is for her to leave with Mance's child, but she must leave her own behind: "Take both boys and the queen's men will ride after you and drag you back. The boy will still burn ... and you with him." He promises that he will find a wet nurse for her son and raise him at Castle Black.

She leaves, and Samwell Tarly appears a few minutes later, carrying a stack of books. Jon shows him a letter that Maester Aemon has drafted for him to King Tommen. He remembers Tommen, heavily padded, as a little boy fighting Bran with wooden swords: "Yet Bran's dead, and pudgy pink-faced Tommen is sitting on the Iron Throne, with a crown nestled among his golden curls." Sam observes that Jon hasn't signed the letter. Jon admits that he is worried about the implications: "No letter will make the Lannisters love us better. Not once they hear that we've been helping Stannis." But in the end he agrees to sign it.

Sam says that he saw Gilly almost in tears as he was arriving, and Jon says he is sending her and "the boy" away -- not indicating that the boy is Mance's son, not hers. He asks Sam about what he has learned from his reading about the Others. Much of it is what they already know: The Others are vulnerable to obsidian, or dragonglass, and their thralls must be burned. "Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are." But he has also read an account that speak of Others being slain by "dragonsteel." Jon wonders if this means Valyrian steel, and Sam says that was his guess, too. He needs more time to research it.

Jon breaks the news that Sam doesn't have more time: He is going with Gilly, along with Maester Aemon. If Melisandre needs royal blood for her spells, Aemon Targaryen fits the profile. Sam is to take Aemon to Oldtown, and either send Gilly on to his family at Horn Hill or Aemon will find a position as servant at the Citadel, where Sam is to study to become Jon's new maester. Sam's various fears come rushing out, but Jon shuts him up, forcing himself to be stern with his friend and with himself: "Kill the boy, Jon thought. The boy in you, and the one in him. Kill the both of them, you bloody bastard."  Sam leaves in distress, and Jon reflects on how difficult it was to follow the advice Maester Aemon had given him: "Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born." He goes outside, where he hears that Stannis has sent a pair of men, Ser Richard Horpe and Ser Justin Massey, south on the kingsroad. He decides to let Stannis have his secrets.

In the morning he sees off Sam, Aemon, and Gilly before dawn. When they have left, he goes to meet with Bedwyck, a small man facetiously known as Giant, whom he has sent for. He tells Giant that he is garrisoning Icemark, one of the castles on the Wall, and putting him in charge of it, particularly to watch for climbers. When Giant asks if he is garrisoning all the castles he says yes, "but for the moment, it will just be Icemark and Greyguard." He intends to put Janos Slynt in charge of Greyguard.

Slynt, whom Jon had commanded to meet him at first light, doesn't show up until half the morning is gone. And when Jon tells him he is putting him at Greyguard, he is surprised, and then angry:

Slynt's face had turned the color of a prune. His meaty jowls began to quiver. "Do you think I cannot see what you are going? Janos Slynt is not a man to be gulled so easily. I was charged with the defense of King's Landing when you were soiling your swaddling clothes. Keep your ruin, bastard."

Jon tells him, "That was a command, not an offer," but Slynt continues to refuse.

Jon bides his time, and the next morning finds Slynt at breakfast with Ser Alliser Thorne. Jon enters accompanied by his supporters, and tells Slynt that he has had Slynt's horse made read for his ride to Greyguard. When Slynt defies him again, Jon asks if he is refusing the order, and Slynt replies, "You can stick your order up your bastard's arse." Jon orders Slynt taken to the Wall and hanged.

Slynt is dragged out, protesting, as the residents of Castle Black, including Stannis, come out to watch. Then Jon calls out, "Stop." He orders Dolorous Edd to fetch a block, and draws Longclaw. When he chops off Slynt's head, he looks at Stannis. "For an instant their eyes met. Then the king nodded and went back inside his tower."

23. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 658-684

Jaime

Riverrun has capitulated, but Brynden Tully has escaped. No one is happy except Edmure: "For a man who was going to spend the rest of his life a prisoner, Edmure was entirely too pleased with himself." But in the face of Jaime's threats, he admits that they had raised the portcullis just enough to allow the Blackfish to swim under it. Emmon Frey, the new Lord of Riverrun, frets that the Blackfish will summon allies and attempt to take the castle back. Jaime assures him that won't happen, though he's not entirely sure of it.

When the others are gone, a guard brings Lady Westerling and her daughter, Jeyne. He notices a wound on Jeyne's forehead, and is told that she refused to give up the crown that Robb Stark had made for her. Lady Westerling starts to slap her daughter, but Jaime prevents her. Then he asks Jeyne if she is pregnant. Jeyne tries to leave, but the guard restrains her, and her mother assures Jaime that she isn't: "I made certain of that, as your lord father bid me."

Jaime dismisses Jeyne, but Lady Westerling stays behind. He tells her that House Westerling has been pardoned, and her brother Rolph has been made Lord of Castamere, but Lady Westerling wants to see Jeyne and her sister married, as Tywin had promised: "Lords or heirs, he swore to me, not younger sons nor household knights." Jaime assures her that will be taken care of, in Jeyne's case after two years have passed so there can be no suspicion that any child she might have is Robb's.

Lady Westerling also makes a case for her sons, especially for Raynald, who had gone with the Stark party to the Red Wedding, unaware of what would happen, and whose whereabouts are now unknown. She thinks he may be a captive of the Freys, but Jaime points out that he might be dead. She claims that Tywin had promised that Raynald would marry someone from Casterly Rock, "if all went as we hoped." Jaime's distaste for the whole business is evident, and he mentions that his late uncle Gerion had a natural daughter named Joy. But Lady Westerling is appalled: "You want a Westerling to wed a bastard?"

"No more than I want Joy to marry the son of some scheming turncloak bitch. She deserves better." Jaime would happily have strangled the woman with her seashell necklace. Joy was a sweet child, albeit a lonely one; her father had been Jaime's favorite uncle. "Your daughter is worth ten of you, my lady. You'll leave with Edmure and Ser Forley on the morrow. Until then, you would do well to stay out of my sight." 

The next day, a company departs, taking Edmure to Casterly Rock and the Westerlings to their home. Jaime speaks to the leader of the company, Ser Forley Prester, and warns him to keep a good eye on Edmure, whom the Blackfish might try to rescue, but also on Jeyne, who as Robb's widow is "twice as dangerous as Edmure if she were ever to escape us."

He then rides to the camp of the Freys, where he gets the news that Ser Ryman Frey has been captured and hanged by the outlaws. His son, Edwyn, delivers the news, but is evidently not particularly upset at his father's death. Jaime tells him that when he gets back to the Twins, he is to tell Lord Walder that all the captives from the Red Wedding are to be delivered to King Tommen. He asks about Raynald Westerling, but learns that he may have died trying to save Robb's direwolf, Grey Wind, during the massacre. He was shot with arrows, but jumped into the river. His body was never identified.

That night, he has his ritual fight with Ilyn Payne, and drinking with him afterward talks about Cersei's infidelities with the Kettleblacks. He wonders what he should do with Cersei, and Payne motions with his finger across his neck. But Jaime thinks that would be too great a loss for Tommen. "If I were to kill his mother, he would hate me for it ... and that sweet little wife of his would find a way to turn that hatred to the benefit of Highgarden." He doesn't like the smile Ser Ilyn gives him.

The next day he has a report that the troops searching for Brynden Tully had been attacked by wolves, a pack "led by a she-wolf of monstrous size." Jaime wonders if it could "be the same beast that had mauled Joffrey near the crossroads." He tends to other business involving the takeover of Riverrun, and finds himself feeling "curiously content. The war was all but won. Dragonstone had fallen and Storm's End would soon enough, he could not doubt, and Stannis was welcome to the Wall." If he can find the Blackfish, he can return to King's Landing, and he daydreams about wresting control from Cersei.

The Tully garrison is dismissed, sent away with three days' worth of food after swearing not to take up arms against Lord Emmon or the Lannisters, though Jaime doubts that those vows will hold. Two of the Tully men, the master-at-arms and the captain of guards, take the black. He sends Raff the Sweetling, one of Gregor Clegane's men, as an escort for them, though he warns Raff to see to it that they get there unharmed.

One morning he wakes and discovers it is snowing. "Snow in the riverlands. If it was snowing here, it could well be snowing on Lannisport as well. Winter is marching south, and half our granaries are empty.... He found himself wondering what his father would do to feed the realm, before he remembered that Tywin Lannister was dead." There is a knock on his door, and Riverrun's maester tells him there has been a raven from King's Landing.

Qyburn's words were terse and to the point, Cersei's fevered and fervent. Come at once, she said. Help me. Save me. I need you now as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come at once.

Jaime tells the maester there is no answer, wads the letter up, and gives it to him to throw in the fire.

Samwell

As they near Oldtown, they are attacked by marauding ironmen, but they manage to fend them off. Sam learns from a friendly ship that escorts the Cinnamon Wind to the port about the fall of the Shield Islands, and the failure of "the bitch queen in King's Landing" to come to their aid. Sam is distressed: "If King's Landing loses Oldtown and the Arbor, the whole realm will fall to pieces." He worries now about his plan to send Gilly and the baby to Horn Hill, but decides it is the safest thing to do.

When they reach Oldtown, he tells Gilly that he has to leave her to go to the Citadel with Jon's letters and arrange for Maester Aemon's body to be delivered to them, then arrange for transportation for her and the baby to Horn Hill. Kojja Mo agrees that Gilly may stay on board the Cinnamon Wind until he returns.

He makes his way to the Seneschal's Court in the Citadel, where he is told to wait. He sits there for hours until finally someone speaks to him and says he needs to bribe his way in. He introduces himself: "Alleras, by some called Sphinx." Sam remembers what Maester Aemon said to him in his last delirium: "The sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler." He asks Alleras if he knows what that means, but he doesn't. Alleras asks what his business is with Archmaester Theobald, and Sam says Maester Aemon had said Norren was the seneschal. Alleras explains that the seneschal changes every year, but picks up on Sam's reference to Aemon, who was famous as not only the oldest living maester but also the oldest man in Westeros.

Sam wonders how much he should tell Alleras, but finally gives in and tells him the entire story of why he is there. He winds up by telling him that Aemon had said the Citadel must send Daenerys a maester and "bring her home to Westeros before it is too late." When he is finished, Alleras says not to bother with Archmaester Theobald but to come with him. He takes Sam to Archmaester Marwyn.

As they arrive at Marwyn's chambers, Sam encounters someone he recognizes from his youth: Leo Tyrell. He tells Tyrell, "I am Sam, from Horn Hill. Lord Randyll's son." Tyrell gives him a cold look and asks if he is "still a craven," but Sam remembers Jon's exhortation and lies: "I went beyond the Wall and fought in battles. They call me Sam the Slayer." Tyrell starts to laugh, but the door opens and Marwyn orders him and the Sphinx in.

Marwyn looks "more like a dockside thug than a maester." In the middle of the room, Sam notices a tall black candle that gives off an "unpleasantly bright" light and does strange things to the colors in the room. It "was three feet tall and slender as a sword, ridged and twisted." Sam starts to ask, and another man in the room says it's obsidian. He is "a pale, fleshy, pasty-faced young fellow with round shoulders, soft hands, close-set eyes, and food stains on his robes." Marwyn tells him, "Call it dragonglass.... It burns but is not consumed." Sam asks what feeds its flame.

"What feeds a dragon's fire?" Marwyn seated himself upon a stool. "All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire. The sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man's dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles." 

He asks Sam to tell his story again. "I know much of it and more, but some small parts may have escaped my notice."



When Sam is done, Marwyn says it's a good thing Aemon died, because otherwise "the grey sheep," the other archmaesters at the Citadel, "might have had to kill him." In response to Sam's shock, Marwyn says, "Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around?" The archmaesters have no use for magic or dragons, he says. That's "why Aemon Targaryen was allowed to waste his life upon the Wall, when by rights he should have been raised to archmaester."

Marwyn declares that he will go to Daenerys in place of Aemon, and that Sam must "stay and forge your chain. If I were you, I would do it quickly. A time will come when you'll be needed on the Wall." He tells the "pasty-faced" novice to find Sam a cell there. He can help with the ravens. Sam asks what about the other archmaesters, and Marwyn says to flatter and toady to them. "Tell them that Aemon commanded you to put yourself into their hands.... But say nothing of prophecies or dragons, unless you fancy poison in your porridge." And he instructs the Sphinx to look after Sam.

Marwyn departs, and when he is gone Alleras confesses that Marwyn knew Sam was coming and sent him to intercept him. When Sam asks how Marwyn knew these things, Alleras nods at the glass candle. The "pasty-faced" novice then leads Sam to his new cell. "There was something about the pale, soft youth that he misliked, but he did not want to seem discourteous," so he introduces himself as Samwell Tarly.

The other says his name is Pate, whom we last saw 670 pages ago, falling unconscious after his encounter with the alchemist.

18. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 504-528

Cat of the Canals

Arya has fully adapted to her new life selling fish, though she still dreams of being a wolf. "The wolf dreams belonged to Arya of House Stark. Try as she might, though, she could not rid herself of Arya." But in any case the wolf dreams were better the ones in which "she was always looking for her mother, stumbling through a wasted land of mud and blood and fire."

She still returns to the temple and to the kindly man, who instructs her, "Learn three new things before you come back to us." She reports to him on the doings of the city, and during the dark of the moon spends three days serving in the temple, washing the dead or helping the cook. She usually sells her shellfish at the Ragman's Harbor, where ships from all over the world dock. She gets to know sailors and thieves, whores and courtesans, and she sometimes hears news from home, such as the death of Lysa Arryn. Then she has to tell herself, "It's nought to me. Cat of the Canals never had an aunt."

In one of the brothels she find Dareon, playing and singing love songs. This makes her angry, because he has broken his vows to the Night's Watch. She has heard from the whores about the time Sam confronted Dareon and wound up being thrown into the canal. When she finishes selling her shellfish at the brothel, Dareon leaves with her, on his way to an inn where he has promised to sing. She asks about Sam and whether he ever found passage to Oldtown, but Dareon doesn't know.

She goes home and gives Brusco the money she has made, as well as a pair of boots that he says are too small for him. She reminds him that it's the dark of the moon, so he sends her off to the House of Black and White. There she bathes away the fish smell and ceases being Cat for a while. She helps the waif preparing the potions she uses, learning that sweetsleep is a gentle poison and that the tears of Lys is crueler. She chews on her lip while asking a question, and the waif slaps her: "It is Arya of House Stark who chews on her lip whenever she is thinking. Are you Arya of House Stark?" She replies, "I am no one." But then she asks, "Who are you?" and the waif replies with a story in which Arya detects some lies.

The kindly man appears and asks for the three new things she has learned. She tells him two of them about waterfront people she knows, and when he asks for the third replies without hesitation:

"Dareon is dead. The black singer who was sleeping at the Happy Port. He was really a deserter from the Night's Watch. Someone slit his throat and pushed him into a canal, but they kept his boots."

The kindly man asks, "Who could have done this thing, I wonder?" She replies, "Arya of House Stark." He observes that he thought she had left Braavos, then sends the waif for "a cup of wine for me and warm milk for our friend Arya, who has returned to us so unexpectedly."

She drinks the warm milk. "It smelled a little burnt and had a bitter aftertaste." Then she goes to bed and dreams that she is a wolf without a pack, prowling the canals. When she wakes in the morning, she is blind.

Samwell

Maester Aemon is dead aboard the Cinnamon Wind, which is off the coast of Dorne. The ship is becalmed. Sam had hoped that he might make it to Oldtown where the archmaesters could save him, for Aemon's recovery when he heard Xhondo's talk of dragons had seemed remarkable. He longed to go see Daenerys for himself, but the stormy passage had taken its toll, and he began giving Sam instructions on what to tell the archmaesters at the Citadel.

Sam must tell them about "the wights and the white walkers, the creeping cold," and that Melisandre is mistaken: "Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that at the Citadel. Make them listen. They must send her a maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught, protected." Otherwise, his talk was confused: "He spoke of dreams and never named the dreamer, of a glass candle that could not be lit and eggs that would not hatch. He said the sphinx was the riddle, not the riddler, whatever that meant."

Sam tells Gilly that Jon shouldn't have sent Aemon on the voyage. "If he had stayed at Castle Black, he might have lived another ten years." But Gilly says that Melisandre "might have burned him.... She wanted king's blood for her fires. Val knew she did. Lord Snow too. That was why they made me take Dalla's babe away and leave my own behind in his place." Sam thinks that Aemon will still have to be burned, according to the funeral traditions of the Targaryens, but that he will be the one to do it. But the captain won't allow it to be done on board, so the body has been preserved in a cask of rum until it reaches Oldtown.

Gilly suggests that Dalla's child should be named for Maester Aemon. "Dalla brought him forth during battle, as the swords sang all around her. That should be his name. Aemon Battleborn. Aemon Steelsong." Sam agrees, though Gilly reminds him that he can't be named officially until he's two. She has left the baby with the captain's daughter, Kojja Mo, and she and Sam have been drinking rum as part of a Summer Islander celebration of the dead. She leans close to Sam and kisses him, and he returns the kiss.

Suddenly, he finds himself making love to Gilly, though his mind keeps telling him that he's breaking his vows. They are in the women's cabin. "Others came in, men and women both, and his listened to them kissing and laughing and mating with one another. Summer Islanders. That's how they mourn. They answer life with death." When he wakes the next morning he is in his own hammock and has a splitting headache. But the wind has arisen, and the ship is under way.

Sam is helping pay for their passage by working, and he spends the day miserably going through his chores and trying to avoid encountering Gilly, telling himself he should have jumped overboard. "I have always been a craven, but I was never an oathbreaker till now." Finally, at the end of his watch, Xhondo grabs him and takes him to Kojja Mo. She points at the land visible in the distance:

"There is the coast of Dorne. Sand and rocks and scorpions, and no good anchorage for hundreds of leagues. You can swim there if you like, and walk to Oldtown. You will need to cross the deep desert and climb some mountains and swim the Torentine. Or else you could go to Gilly."

He protests, but she is unmoved. "All you Westerosi make a shame of loving. There is no shame in loving." He protests that he took a vow, but she says Gilly knows that. "She knows why you wear the black, why you go to Oldtown. She knows she cannot keep you. She wants you for a little while, is all." He has a choice: Go to her, or swim for it.

He goes to her.

14. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 377-409

Samwell

They have arrived in Braavos, but things have not gone well. Dareon tends to disappear into the taverns and brothels, leaving Sam to tend to Gilly, the baby, and the dying Maester Aemon, whose mind and memory are failing along with his body. They are broke, thanks to Dareon's dissipations and Sam's hiring a healer who told him only that Aeron "is an old man, and death is in his lungs," and sold him half a flask of dreamwine. Now Sam is worried about buying passage on a ship to Oldtown.

Aeron has grown obsessed with learning more about the dragons that the sailors tell tales about. He tells Sam that he knows he won't make it to Oldtown, and he urges him to go down to the docks and learn everything he can about the dragons, which he sees in his dreams. So Sam dutifully leaves him in Gilly's care and ventures out into the night. But rather than inquire about the dragons, he goes in search of Dareon.

Some of the city's swaggering bravos begin to bully him, and to ask why he is dressed in black. A girl, "a scruffy, skinny creature in big boots," tells them, "He's in the Night's Watch, stupid, from Westeros," and that one of his brothers is "down at the Happy Port, signing songs to the Sailor's Wife." She offers to sell Sam some clams -- her oysters are all gone -- but he doesn't have any money. When the bravos continue to make a nuisance of themselves, she draws a knife and they depart. She tells Sam he can have the remaining clams for free, and asks if he is sailing to the Wall. He says he's going to Oldtown and asks who she is. She replies, "I used to be someone, but now I'm not. You can call me Cat, if you like."

This chance encounter of Sam and Arya, who have never met before but have so much in common, is tantalizing, but goes nowhere. He says he is "Samwell, of House Tarly," but she provides her cover story: "My father was the oarmaster on Nymeria." She asks what ship he is sailing on, and when he says he had passage on the Lady Ushanora, she says, "She left days and days ago." Sam knows that: He had been unable to persuade the captain to wait until Maester Aemon was able to sail, and the captain had kept their passage money as well.

Not wanting to get into this with the girl, he asks about the brother she says she had seen, and she tells him the Happy Port is near the Mummer's Ship. He knows where it is, and runs off to find Dareon. When he enters the brothel, he finds a drunken Dareon with a woman on his lap that he says is his wife, and offers to pay for a woman for Sam, who is shocked at Dareon's flouting of his vows. When Sam persists in scolding him, Dareon takes his cloak and throws it at Sam, telling him to use it to keep Aeron warm.

Sam hits him, and they fight until someone pulls him off of Dareon, knocks him down, and throws him into the canal. He panics and thinks he's going to drown, but he is rescued by a Summer Islander named Xhondo. He tells Sam he's a mate on the Cinnamon Wind and, having overheard Sam tell Dareon that Aemon wants to know more about the dragons, says, "Xhondo knows these dragons."

Jaime

Cersei is sending him to end the standoff at Riverrun and to bring about some order at Harrenhal, but Jaime doesn't want to go, arguing that his place is there guarding the king. Besides, where Riverrun is concerned, "I swore an oath to Lady Stark, never again to take up arms against the Starks or Tullys." She wants Osmund Kettleblack to command the Kingsguard in his absence, but he insists on Loras Tyrell. All he can think of is Tyrion's "...she's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know...."

After a fight with Cersei in which she slaps him, he rides off to do her bidding, with Ser Ilyn Payne at his side. He had insisted on Ser Ilyn going with him, along with Ser Addam Marbrand, and Cersei hadn't objected. When they reach the castle of the Hayfords, Jaime sends his squire to fetch his new hand, which "was wrought of gold, very lifelike, with inlaid nails of mother-of-pearl, its fingers and thumb half closed so as to slip around a goblet's stem. I cannot fight, but I can drink, Jaime reflected." At dinner everyone admired the golden hand, but when he knocked over a goblet of wine with it, Jaime became angry.

That night, he goes out to find Ilyn Payne, and practices fighting with his left hand. "By the time they lowered their swords he was bruised and battered, but the wine had burned away and his head was clear." He tells Ilyn they will fight every day "till I am as good with my left hand as ever I was with the right." The tongueless Ser Ilyn opens his mouth and makes "a clacking sound," which Jaime realizes is a laugh. "Something twisted in his gut." He has chosen Ser Ilyn because he can't talk about how inept Jaime is now.

As they ride on, they see more and more of the devastation the war has brought to the countryside, and Jaime wonders if Brienne had come this way in her search for Sansa. Finally, they reach Harrenhal, where the men Gregor Clegane had left are in charge. "About the best that could be said for Gregor's men was that they were not quite as vile and violent a bunch as the Brave Companions." One  of them, known as Shitmouth, tells Jaime that Clegane had left Polliver in charge, but that he had been killed by Sandor Clegane who "had some boy with him, a ragged peasant lad."

Jaime has the captives brought out, along with Vargo Hoat's head. When Jaime asks what happened to the rest of Hoat, Shitmouth tells him, "Rotted, ser. And et." Clegane had fed Hoat's hands and feet and then his arms and legs to the captives -- and to what was left of Hoat. "Father, Jaime thought, your dogs have both gone mad." He puts Ser Bonifer Hasty in charge of Harrenhal, and tells the rest of them that they will ride with him to Riverrun. They protest that they had been promised gold, and Jaime tells them to take it up with Cersei.

He sets the captives free, and tells Ser Bonifer that he'll take Clegane's followers off his hands. Bonifer wants to get rid of the serving girl named Pia as well, who had been prostituted and had her teeth knocked out and her nose broken. Jaime remembers that Qyburn had sent Pia to his room to service him when he was there last, before Clegane had ruined her face. He agrees to take her with them as a washerwoman.

When he goes to look for Ilyn Payne, Jaime finds Ser Ronnet Connington standing by the bear pit. Connington explains that he wanted to see where Brienne fought the bear, and makes some jokes about how ugly she is. Jaime doesn't laugh at the jokes, and is surprised when Connington tells him he was betrothed to her. It was a match very much to his advantage, in terms of land, but when he saw her her he couldn't go through with it. "Connington glanced into the pit. 'The bear was less hairy than that freak, I'll--" Jaime smashes him across the mouth with his golden hand and says, "You are speaking of a highborn lady, ser. Call her by her name. Call her Brienne."

8. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 199-225

Brienne

Brienne begins to recognize places she had traversed with Jaime and Cleos Frey -- or at least to think she does, though all the places begin to look the same. Podrick notices her uneasiness, and when she tells him there may be outlaws about, he assures her he has a longsword and can fight them. Brienne questions how well, but she admires  the boy's spirit and has continued to train him.

They come upon a farmer and his wife pulling an oxcart -- their ox has been taken by soldiers. They are carrying eggs to the wedding of Lord Mooton's daughter to Dickon, the son of Lord Randyll Tarly, at Maidenpool. At the gates of Maidenpool the guards threaten to take not only the eggs but also the farmer's wife until Brienne intervenes. She is about to fight with the guards when Ser Hyle Hunt appears and brings the guards in line.

Brienne and Podrick enter the city behind the couple with the eggs, and Ser Hyle accompanies them. She is acquainted with Ser Hyle, and would just as soon get rid of him, but he knows the town and is able to give her directions to the Stinking Goose. She is surprised to see how much of Maidenpool has been rebuilt, and Ser Hyle gives the credit to Tarly, whom they find in the fishmarket, presiding over trials and hanging or otherwise punishing the convicted.

Tarly frowns when he sees Brienne, but otherwise shows no sign of recognition. When he finishes with the trials, he beckons to Ser Hyle and Brienne follows. He asks her if she killed Renly, and having already answered the question from Hyle and his guards, she stammers her response. But Tarly is more focused on chiding Brienne for her audacity in behaving in an unfeminine manner and threatens to send her back to Tarth. She has Podrick bring her the authorization from the king to search for Sansa.

She tells Tarly of her plans to go to the Eyrie, but he informs her that Lysa is dead -- "Some singer pushed her off a mountain" -- and that Littlefinger is in charge of the Eyrie, though he expects the lord of the Vale to get rid of him as an "upjumped jackanapes whose only skill is counting coppers." He gives her back the papers and tells her to go on her way, and for Ser Hyle to go back to guard the gate.

After Tarly leaves, Hyle offers to show her to the Stinking Goose, but she curtly orders him to go back to his gate. Before he does, he tells her of some of Renly's other men who had died at the Blackwater, and Brienne remembers what Catelyn had called them: "The knights of summer. And now it was autumn and they were falling like leaves...." She turns and strides off, with Podrick leading the horses behind her. She sends him to the stables and to find an inn where they can spend the night. Before he goes, he asks her what Ser Hyle did to her that makes her so cold to him. "At Highgarden, when King Renly called his banners, some men played a game with me. Ser Hyle was one of them. It was a cruel game, hurtful and unchivalrous." She points out where the east gate is and tells him to meet her there.

At the Stinking Goose, which fits its name, she asks the woman behind the bar for Nimble Dick, and learns that his name is Dick Crabb and that he comes there every night. While she waits for him, she recalls the game Ser Hyle and his friends had played when she came to Highgarden to fight on behalf of Renly. They started giving her gifts and flirting with her, but she is suspicious and spurns their attentions. Then Lord Randyll Tarly sends for her and tells her what his son Dickon had heard: Hyle and some of his other friends had started a game: "Each man was required to buy into the contest with a golden dragon, the whole sum to go to whoever claimed her maidenhead."

Tarly had put a stop to their game, but he blamed her:

"Your being here encouraged them. If a woman will behave like a camp follower, she cannot object to being treated like one. A war host is no place for a maiden. If you have any regard for your virtue or the honor of your House, you will take off that mail, return home, and beg your father to find a husband for you."


"I came to fight," she insisted. "To be a knight." 


"The gods made men to fight, and women to bear children," said Randyll Tarly. "A woman's war is in the birthing bed."

A man enters the Stinking Goose, and the woman at the bar signals to Brienne. She tells him she heard of his encounter with a fool, and asks if there was a girl with him. He says there were two girls, and she immediately wonders if the other one was Arya. But he says he never saw the women, but heard him say that he wanted passage for three on a ship. He tells her that he sent the fool to a smuggler's cove. He keeps asking for more money, and finally says that he sent the fool to a place called the Whispers on Crackclaw Point. Finally, she offers him six dragons if they find her "sister," two if they find only the fool, and none if they find no one. He agrees to take her there and arranges to meet her at the east gate at dawn.

Samwell

Sam is seasick. "He did not want to be a maester, with a heavy chain wrapped around his neck, cold against his skin. He did not want to leave his brothers, the only friends he'd ever had. And he certainly did not want to face the father who had sent him to the Wall to die." But he reckons that the others will be better  off: Gilly will have a safe place to raise her baby, Maester Aemon will be in a more comfortable place, and the singer Dareon will get to travel around the Seven Kingdoms, singing songs to recruit men for the Watch, a replacement for Yoren. He tries to cheer up Gilly by talking about what an interesting place Braavos is, the place where they will change ships to sail for Oldtown, but she continues to be miserable, and the baby's loose bowels raise a stench in the cabin.

Maester Aemon spends most of his time on deck, swathed in furs. When Dareon wonders why the old blind man keeps staring out to sea, Aemon overhears him and says that when he last sailed this way, he had sight, and the sounds of the sea and the gulls recall what he saw. And so the days pass: "Dareon sang, Sam retched, Gilly cried and nursed her babe, Maester Aemon slept and shivered, and the winds grew colder and more blustery with every passing day."

When the seas grow rougher and it starts to rain, Sam suggests that Maester Aemon might be more comfortable below, but Aemon replies, "The rain feels good against my face, Sam. It feels like tears. Let me stay a while longer, I pray you. It has been a long time since last I wept." So Sam decides to stay with the old man, until a storm arises, and he has to carry Aemon, who is soaked, down to the cabin. He finds that Aemon is chilled through, and asks Gilly to get in bed with him.

The weather gets worse. "They never saw the sun. The days were grey and the nights black, except when lightning lit the sky above the peaks of Skagos. All of them were starved yet none could eat." Dareon begins to drink heavily. There is a respite of eight days and seven nights of better weather, and then the storms return, only worse. He hears the crew blaming the bad journey on having a wildling woman on board who had "Fucked her own father.... We'll all drown unless we get rid of her, and that abomination she whelped." Dareon turns against Gilly as well.

Gilly's weeping keeps Sam up at night, and finally he asks Maester Aemon if there is something he can give her to keep her from being afraid. Aemon tells him, "It is not fear you hear.... That is the sound of grief, and there is no potion for that." Sam doesn't understand what she's grieving for, and Aemon explains that the baby Gilly is nursing is no her own: It is Dalla's child. "Gilly did not leave the child willingly, I am certain. What threats the Lord Commander made, what promises, I can only guess ... but threats and promises there surely were."

Sam is astonished: Jon would never do that. Aemon agrees: "Jon would never. Lord Snow did."

He wanted to scream. He wanted to howl and sob and shake and curl up in a little ball and whimper. He switched the babes, he told himself. He switched the babes to protect the little prince, to keep him away from Lady Melisandre's fires, away from her red god. If she burns Gilly's boy, who will care? No one but Gilly. He was only Craster's whelp, an abomination born of incest, not the son of the King-beyond-the-Wall. He's no good for a hostage, no good for a sacrifice, no good for anything, he doesn't even have a name. 

Sam goes on deck, where Dareon observes that the stars are coming out and maybe the worst is over. But Sam replies, "The worst isn't done. The worst is just beginning, and there are no happy endings." 

3. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 56-86

Brienne

Dutifully searching for Sansa, she asks everyone she meets if they've seen "A highborn maid and very beautiful, with blue eyes and auburn hair. She may have been traveling with a portly knight of forty years, or perhaps with a fool. She is heading northeast, from Rosby to Duskendale, when she spots someone she hasn't asked yet, "a skinny boy on a piebald horse at the end of the village," but by the time she catches up to where he was, he has vanished.

She begins to wonder if Jaime has sent her on a wild goose chase, and to realize how enormous the task is: "She has no home to run to, no father, no mother, no brothers. She might be in the next town, or on a ship to Asshai; one seemed as likely as the other." She is also subject to the indignities of being a woman dressed in armor. "Had Brienne been a man, she would have been called big; for a woman, she was huge. Freakish was the word she had heard all her life."

She comes across a pair of hedge knights feasting on trout they have caught, and they offer her some, after the usual confusion over her gender. One of them is a braggart, Ser Creighton Longbough, who boasts about conquests he almost certainly had little or no part in, and the other is Ser Illifer the Penniless. She hesitates at first to join them, but she's bigger and better armed than either. Ser Illifer notices the shield she is carrying and calls it "a liar's shield," because the house that it represents has been killed off. It was one Jaime had taken from the armory at Harrenhal, and she had found it with the rest of the things he had prepared for her journey. She tells them that she had lost her own shield.

Ser Illifer has recognized her, however: "A woman freakish big and freakish strong who hides her own true colors. Creigh, behold the Maid o' Tarth, who opened Renly's royal throat for him." She protests once again that she didn't kill Renly, and when prompted, swears by the Seven, which satisfies Creighton and Illifer, who says, "Well, if she's lied, the gods will sort her out." And says she can take the first watch that evening.

While they are sleeping, she thinks about leaving them and riding on, but feels it would be dishonorable to leave them undefended. And when Illifer relieves her, she fights sleep, her mind wandering over the mystery of whether Sansa really helped Tyrion to murder Joffrey, but succumbs to weariness. When she wakes, the hedge knights are already up and preparing a squirrel for breakfast. "Hedge knights, she thought, old and vain and plump and nearsighted, yet decent men for all that. It cheered her to know that there were still decent men in the world."


She asks if anyone passed by while she was asleep, and Creighton says there were a few, including a "farm boy on a piebald horse," and boasts that he scared off some men who were eying their horses. They ride on together, and encounter a group on a religious pilgrimage, accompanying a wagon full of skulls and bones. They call themselves "sparrows," and are taking the bones to King's Landing "to Blessed Baelor, and [to] seek succor and protection from the king." The bones, they say, are those of murdered septons and septas. They ask Brienne and the men to accompany them, and Illifer says he will if he gets paid for it. They turn him down, so the trio continue on their way to Duskendale.

They next catch up with a merchant and his servants, accompanied by another hedge knight, who calls himself Ser Shadrich of the Shady Glen. "Some call me the Mad Mouse," and he shows Brienne the fierce, red-eyed white mouse on his shield. She tells them that she is looking for her sister, and gives her the usual description. Shadrich takes her aside and tells her he knows who her "sister" is: "You are not the only hunter in the woods. I seek for Sansa Stark as well." She hides her surprise and dismay, and pretends that she has never heard of "this Sansa Stark." He tells her that Varys "has offered a plump bag of gold for this girl you've never heard of," but if she will help him find her, he'll split the reward with her. He also recognizes her description of Dontos: "I pray your sister and her drunken fool are not mistaken for the Stark girl and Ser Dontos. That could be most unfortunate."

They reach an inn at nightfall, and Brienne pays for rooms for herself and Creighton and Illifer. Jaime has generously supplied money for her journey, as well as a parchment commanding others to help her, "signed in a childish hand by Tommen, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the first Men, and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms." The merchant, whose name is Hibald, stops at the inn, too. In the common room, Brienne is subjected to stares. "Despite chainmail, cloak, and jerkin, she felt naked." She overhears talk about how Jaime lost his hand, and corrects the rumor that it was "chewed off by a direwolf." The talk elicits her sympathy for Jaime: "His maiming had been monstrously cruel. It was one thing to slay a lion, another to hack his paw off and leave him broken and bewildered."

The talk depresses her, and she retreats to her room, where she takes out the sword Jaime had given her and named Oathkeeper. She recalls how it was forged from Sansa's father's sword, Ice: "'You'll be defending Ned Stark's daughter with Ned Stark's own steel,' Jaime had promised." She kneels and prays to the Crone to show her the way to Sansa. "She had failed Renly, had failed Lady Catelyn. She must not fail Jaime." She hears the others come up to bed, and when the inn grows quiet she makes her way down to the stables and rides off alone.

Samwell

He has been reading for a long time in the cache of books he has found, and realizes that he should go see about Maester Aemon. So he takes a stack of books and scrolls and climbs up to the surface, where he sees men working to replace the switchback stairs that had burned during the attack by the wildlings. Dolorous Edd spots him and says that Jon wants to speak to him.

On his way to Jon's quarters, he encounters Gilly, who seems upset about something. When he enters Jon's solar, his office, Jon is reading a parchment and Mormon's raven is on his shoulder. When the raven spies him it cries out "Corn, corn!" and flies to him. Sam feeds it some kernels, but the raven pecks so hard at his hand that it breaks the skin, causing Sam to grow weak at the sight of blood.

Jon beckons him over to read the parchment, and Sam recognizes that it's a letter to King Tommen written in Maester Aemon's hand. Jon recalls when Tommen and Bran fought with wooden swords at Winterfell: "Yet Bran's dead, and pudgy pink-faced Tommen is sitting on the Iron Throne, with a crown nestled amongst his golden curls." Sam wants to tell Jon that Bran isn't dead, but is restrained by the oath he swore.

The letter is a plea for reinforcements, noting that the Night's Watch remains independent of domestic quarrels, and that even though Stannis's troops are there, "we are not his men...." Jon admits that he "gave Stannis food, shelter, and the Nightfort, plus leave to settle some free folk in the Gift," and Sam comments, "Lord Tywin will say it was too much." "Stannis says it's not enough," Jon replies, reflecting on how hard it is to please kings. Sam worries that if Tywin thinks their aid to Stannis is a betrayal, "it could mean the end of the Night's Watch." Sam has helped Stannis by sending ravens to the lords of the north, pleading for their support, but "the silence had been thunderous." And he notes that "The Lannisters have northmen of their own. Lord Bolton and his bastard."  


Jon signs the letter, seals it, and gives it to Sam for Maester Aemon to dispatch for King's  Landing. Sam says he will, then asks why Gilly was so upset. "Val sent her to plead for Mance again," Jon says. He told her that the decision on what to do about Mance was up to Stannis, and that he promised to speak to the king, though privately he doubts that it will do any good. Sam says Pyp has heard that Melisandre wants to burn Mance. Jon says he has heard it too: "King's blood, to wake a dragon." But Mance isn't royal, Jon says. "He has never worn a crown nor sat a throne. He's a brigand, nothing more."


And then he says, "I am sending Gilly away.... Her and the boy." Sam thinks it would be good to get her away from the Wall. But he changes the subject to what he has been reading: There was another boy who was named Lord Commander. "Osric Stark was ten when he was chosen, but he served for sixty years," he tells Jon, adding that this makes him only the "fifth youngest." But Jon is more interested in what the books say about the Others. Sam says he has found mentions of dragonglass used as a weapon, and stories about the Others riding dead animals. "The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true." There are also mentions of "giant ice spiders," he says. And that the dead must be burned or else they "rise again as their thralls."


Jon observes that they already knew these things. Sam says there was an account of Others being killed "with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it." Jon and Sam agree this might be a reference to Valyrian steel. Jon asks, "Did you find who the Others are, where they come from, what they want?" Sam says he needs more time to research in the books.


"There is no more time," Jon tells him. "You need to get your things together, Sam." He is sending him and Maester Aemon to Oldtown. Sam is astonished, not only for himself, but also because Aemon is one hundred two years old. But Jon explains that the risk is greater for Aemon if he stays at the wall. Stannis knows that Aemon is a Targaryen, and that if Melisandre needs royal blood for her spells, there's no better source. Sam realizes the danger immediately. Jon explains:

"Dareon will join you at Eastwatch. My hope is that his songs will win some men for us in the south. The Blackbird will deliver you to Braavos. From there you'll arrange your own passage to Oldtown. If you still mean to claim Gilly's babe as your bastard, send her and the child on to Horn Hill. Elsewise, Aemon will find a servant's place for her at the Citadel."

Sam is unnerved by the prospect of sailing such a long distance, and also by the possibility that he will have to take Gilly to Horn Hill himself, and meet his father there. He suggests that he doesn't really need to go at all, that Dareon could take Gilly to Oldtown instead. And he still needs to practice his archery, which Jon has commanded all members of the Watch to do. But Jon has something else in mind: "I need you to become my new maester."


Sam is appalled: "My lord, the Citadel ... they make you cut up corpses there." And he can't wear a chain around his neck. But Jon is firm: "You can. You will. Maester Aemon is old and blind. His strength is leaving him. Who will take his place when he dies?" He is puzzled at Sam's reluctance: "I was certain this would please you. There are so many books at the Citadel that no man can hope to read them all. You would do well there, Sam. I know you would." But all Sam can think about is that a maester must be a healer, and he faints at the sight of blood.


Jon reminds him that he is the one who killed an Other, who saw the wights and survived. And when Sam continues to dither, he grows firm: "Be quiet. You lied and schemed and plotted to make me Lord Commander. You will obey me. You'll go to the Citadel and forge a chain, and if you have to cut up corpses, so be it. At least in Oldtown the corpses won't object." But Sam keeps retreating into excuses: His father will dislike it because "the life of a maester is a life of servitude," and he can't disobey his father.


But Jon resorts to command. "It was Lord Snow who faced him now, grey eyes as hard as ice." He tells Sam that he has no father, that he belongs to the Night's Watch. He will leave an hour before sunrise. "And here's another order. From this day forth, you will not call yourself a craven. You've faced more things this past year than most men face in a lifetime. You can face the Citadel, but you'll face it as a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch. I can't command you to be brave, but I can command you to hide your fears." Sam says he'll try, and Jon replies, "You won't try. You will obey." And when Sam asks if Maester Aemon knows of this plan, Jon replies, "It was as much his idea as mine."


When he leaves, Sam thinks of hiding, but instead he takes the letter to Maester Aemon, and blurts out his fear of his father. Aemon says his own father objected, but it was his grandfather who sent him to the Citadel. "The chain is heavy, Sam, but my grandsire had the right of it. So does your Lord Snow."


The next morning he helps Maester Aemon to the wagon in which he will ride, and is joined by Gilly and the baby. She has been crying. When Jon appears, Aemon tells him that he has left a book for him and marked a passage of interest. "Knowledge is a weapon, Jon. Arm yourself well before you ride forth to battle." Gilly urges him to find another wet nurse: "The boy ... Dalla's boy ... the little prince, I mean ... you find him some good woman, so he grows up big and strong." Jon promises that he will, and Gilly goes on, "Don't you name him. Don't you do that till he's past two years. It's ill luck to name them when they're still on the breast." And she grows angry when Jon calls her "my lady": "I'm a mother, not a lady. I'm Craster's wife and Craster's daughter, and a mother."


As Sam gets on his horse, he thinks, "This may be the last I ever see of Castle Black.... As much as he had once hated Castle Black, it was tearing him apart to leave it."

30. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 1027-1061

Arya

They come across an inn that Arya reconizes: She and Sansa had been there, with Septa Mordane. Once again, as Sandor Clegane tells her to take care of the horses and goes inside, she thinks of escaping, but doesn't.  And in the inn are some faces she recognizes: Polliver and the Tickler, men on her list. They recognize the Hound, and Arya worries that they will recognize her, too. They don't, although the Tickler gives her a long, scrutinizing look.

With them is a boy, a squire, who recognizes the Hound as Gregor Clegane's brother, and begins to mock him: "Is this the lost puppy Ser Gregor spoke of? ... The one who piddled in the bushes and ran off?" He is referring to Sandor's desertion during the fiery battle at King's Landing. The threat of conflict makes the innkeeper and the local customers disappear from the barroom.

Polliver tells the Hound that if he's looking for Gregor, he has been summoned to the city. "King Joffrey's dead, you know.... Poisoned at his own wedding feast." Arya hears this and wants to be happy, "but if Robb was dead, too, what did it matter?" Polliver goes on to say that Tyrion and "his little wife" killed Joffrey, and when he explains that Tyrion had married Sansa, Arya doesn't believe it. He goes on to tell of the capture of Harrenhal, and that Edmure Tully is being held hostage to force the surrender of Riverrun. He also says that Arya Stark has been found and is going to marry "Bolton's bastard," which is certainly news to Arya.

Sandor laughs at this last bit, of course. Then he asks if there are ships at Saltpans, which they can't answer. The Tickler, however, wonders if Sandor is planning to leave the country without seeing his brother, and suggests that they should take him to Harrenhal with them. Suddenly the fight begins. Sandor has drunk too much wine on an empty stomach, but he holds off Polliver. Arya beans the squire with a wine cup, and when she sees the Tickler pull a dagger tries to throw one at him, too, but misses.

As Polliver and the Tickler close in on Clegane, Arya looks around for another weapon, but her arm is seized by the squire, who has recovered. He has a sword in one hand and her arm in the other, but her hands are free and she pulls his knife from its sheath and stabs him in the belly. Clegane has been backed into a corner, but he manages to break free and kill Polliver. The Tickler is taken off guard for a moment. His weapon is smaller than Clegane's, but he ignores Arya, who stabs him not once but repeatedly, while asking the questions that the Tickler had asked while torturing his victims: "Is there gold hidden in the village? ... Is there silver? ... Is there food? Where is Lord Beric?" and so on until  Clegane has to pull her off of him.

The Hound is bleeding profusely and dragging one leg. But he seizes the squire, who has pulled the knife from his belly and now begs for mercy. Clegane observed that the squire is as good as dead with his stomach wound, though it will take a long time for him to die. He turns to Arya and says, "This one is yours, she-wolf. You do it." Arya goes to Polliver and undoes his swordbelt, in which she finds Needle, the dagger he had taken from her. The Hound asks if she remembers where the heart is, and she stabs the squire in it.

He tells her they need to head to Saltpans and find a ship that will take them to the Vale. "Maybe Lady Lysa will marry you to her little Robert. There's a match I'd like to see." But his laugh ends in a groan, and he needs her help to mount his horse. They ride to the banks of the Trident, whose flood has ebbed, and find a place to camp. He has her boil some wine and find a clean stick that he can bite down on while she pours it into his wounds: first his neck, then his thigh, and finally "over the raw red flesh where his ear had been." He faints from the pain.

She binds his wounds while he's unconscious. Then she sits and recites the list of names, this time leaving out Polliver and the Ticker -- and, she realizes, the Hound. She tries to remember Mycah and what he had done to him, but can't even remember what he looked like. Finally she whispers, "The Hound," and then, "Valar morghulis." She falls asleep and dreams that she is "a wolf again, chasing a riderless horse up a hill with a pack behind her." But Clegane wakes her "just as they were closing for the kill."

He is weak and can barely stay on his horse, and soon stops for rest and falls asleep. He is feverish and the wound in his thigh smells funny to her. She thinks again of killing him, and draws Needle. But he wakes, and asks her if she remembers where the heart is. He tries to provoke her: "I killed your butcher's boy. I cut him near in half and laughed about it afterward." But she realizes that instead of laughing he is sobbing.

"And the little bird, your pretty sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her. I took the bloody song, she never gave it. I meant to take her too. I should have I should have fucked her bloody and ripped her heart out before leaving her for that dwarf." A spasm of pain twisted his face. "Do you mean to make me beg, bitch? Do it!" 

She saddles her horse as he calls out, "A real wolf would finish a wounded animal." She replies, "You shouldn't have hit me with an axe.... You should have saved my mother." She turns and rides away.

At Saltpans there are three ships, but she realizes she doesn't have the money. She sells the horse for less than it's worth, and heads for one of the ships. She finds the captain and tells him she wants "to go north, to the Wall." But he tells her she doesn't have enough money, and even if she did, the ship is heading for home, to Braavos.

She suddenly remembers the iron coin Jaqen H'ghar had given her, and presses it into his hand and says "Valar morghulis." "'Valar dohaeris,' he replied, touching his brow with two fingers. 'Of course you shall have a cabin.'"

Samwell

Gilly is nursing Dalla's baby. On their long trek, Gilly and Sam had been overtaken by a company of black riders coming from the Shadow Tower to the west, and among them had been survivors of the attack on the Fist of the First Men. Sam had been so glad to see Dywen and Dolorous Edd among them that he wept.

They brought with them the news of the victory of Stannis's forces over the wildlings and the capture of Mance Rayder. But Sam was shocked when they reached Castle Black and witnessed the destruction and death, even though the towers bristled with banners from House Baratheon, House Florent, and many others, including one with a fiery heart that Sam didn't recognize.

Pyp and Grenn greeted him with delight, and explained that Stannis had arrived with Melisandre, having left the queen at Eastwatch with the fleet. Jon greeted him as well, and was pleased to see Gilly. But there is a sadness to him that Sam quickly learns the cause of: "He grieves for his wildling girl, an for his brothers." And although he has captured the Horn of Winter, Ser Alliser and Janos Slynt still regard him as a turncloak.

Jon observes the irony: "Craster had no love for Mance, nor Mance for Craster, but now Craster's daughter is feeding Mance's son." Val, who is with them too, says, "I've heard the queen's men saying that the red woman means to give Mance to the fire, as soon as he is strong enough." Jon tells her that Mance's desertion from the Night's Watch was a capital offense, and the Watch normally would have hanged him for that by now. But the decision now lies in Stannis's hands because "he's the king's captive, and no one knows the king's mind but the red woman."

Val wants to see Mance, but only Maester Aemon, who is treating his wounds, is allowed to be with him now. Jon promises to try to persuade them to let her visit. Sam follows Jon when he leaves, and Jon says, "You're more than fond of Gilly, aren't you?" Sam admits as much: "She ... she made me braver, Jon. Not brave, but ... braver." But when Jon reminds him of his vows, he knows that she can't stay with him. He wonders if he could write to his father and say that he had gotten Gilly pregnant, and ask if she could stay with his mother and sisters at Horn Hill. Jon approves of the idea in theory, but adds that Gilly had better be able to carry off the pretense convincingly: "From what you've told me of Lord Randyll, I doubt he would take kindly to being deceived."

Jon is heading to the practice yard, and Sam worries that Jon's leg is not healed enough for the exercise. But Jon has nothing else to do because he has been removed from duty under suspicion of being a turncloak. Sam protests that he should be treated as a hero for seizing the Horn and capturing Mance's son. Jon replies, "All I did was protect Val and the babe against looters when the wildlings fled, and keep them there until the rangers found us." Ser Alliser blames him for not killing Mance when he had the opportunity.

Ser Alliser's continued animosity toward Jon is exacerbated by his inability to become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. "With his noble birth, his knighthood, and his long years in the Watch, Ser Alliser Thorne might have been a strong challenger for the Lord Commander's title, but almost all the men he'd trained during his years as master-at-arms despised him." In the voting for the title, he had placed sixth on the first day and lost votes on the second. He has withdrawn in support of Lord Janos Slynt.

So Jon is now just "the bastard who killed Qhorin Halfhand and bedded with a spearwife." They call him a warg, too, but he says, "How can I be a warg without a wolf, I ask you?" Ghost is still missing, and Jon doesn't even dream of him anymore. "All my dreams are of the crypts, of the stone kings on their thrones. Sometimes I hear Robb's voice, and my father's, as if they were at a feast. But there's a wall between us, and I know that no place has been set for me."

Sam has taken a pledge not to reveal that Bran is alive, and at times like these, he wishes he could console Jon with that information: "He's with friends, and they're going north on a giant elk to find a three-eyed crow in the depths of the haunted forest." But it sounds so crazy to him now that he almost doesn't believe it himself. Still he swore three times to keep that secret: once to Bran, once to Jojen Reed, and once to Coldhands. So he changes to subject to the Lord Commander's position, assuring Jon that Janos Slynt will never be named to it. Jon is convinced otherwise, however, and takes out his frustrations in sword practice. He tells Sam to excuse him: "I need to his someone very hard with a sword." He spends his days in the practice yard training the younger recruits because no one has named a new master-at-arms.

Sam hopes that he is right and Jon is wrong. A candidate must receive two-thirds of the votes of the Sworn Brothers to be named Lord Commander, and no one has come near. Slynt is still behind Ser Denys Mallister of the Shadow Tower and Cotter Pyke of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, though he has been gaining votes steadily. Sam has been keeping careful track of the vote count.

There is another vote that night after supper, before which another candidate, Bowen Marsh, withdraws his name in favor of Janos Slynt. Sam looks around for Jon, but he isn't there. Sam assists Maester Aemon in counting the votes. Slynt is third, behind Ser Denys and Cotter Pyke, but the former's count is down ten votes from the previous day, and the latter's is down twenty votes. Later, Sam tells Pyp and Grenn that they should try to persuade one of them to withdraw, to prevent Slynt from winning. Pyp points out that Sam is "A lord's son, the maester's steward, and Sam the Slayer." He should be the one to do the persuading. But Sam says he's "too craven to face them."

Jon

Jon is in the midst of sparring with Satin when Melisandre, accompanied by half a dozen soldiers, appears and tells him that Stannis wants to speak with him. He excuses himself, changes into fresh clothes, and meets her at the base of the Wall. As they ride up in the cage, he senses how warm she is. "She even smells red," he thinks. And when the wind blows her robes, he asks if she is cold. She touches his cheek with her hand and he feels the warmth: "'That is how life should feel,' she told him. 'Only death is cold.'"

She presents him to Stannis as "the Bastard of Winterfell," and Jon notes how gaunt and clenched his manner is.

Jon found himself remembering something Donal Noye once said about the Baratheon brothers. Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, but brittle, the  way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. Uneasily he knelt, wondering why this brittle king had need of him.

Stannis addresses him as "Lord Snow," eliciting Jon's usual protest, "I am no lord, sire," and adding that he is aware of the reputation as turncloak, coward, murderer and oathbreaker that has preceded him. Stannis adds that he is supposed to be a warg and a skinchanger, too. Jon admits that he had a direwolf named Ghost, but he hasn't seen him for a long time. He explains about Qhorin Halfhand and Ygritte, too, "but I swear to you on my father's name that I never turned my cloak."

Stannis says he believes him, which startles Jon into asking why. "I know Janos Slynt. And I knew Ned Stark as well. Your father was no friend of mine, but only a fool would doubt his honor or his honest. You have his look." He also tells him he knows about the dragonglass dagger and that Jon held the gate at Castleblack. Jon says that Ghost found the dagger, and Donal Noye held the gate. Stannis persists in his attempts to praise Jon, noting the seizing of "this magic horn" and the capture of Rayder's wife and son. Again, Jon demurs: Rayder's wife died, and Val is her sister, and she and the baby didn't need capturing after Stannis's troops succeeded and the skinchanger "went mad when the eagle burned." He turns to Melisandre and says that the last is said to have been her doing.

He presents Stannis with Val's request to see Mance. Stannis says, "You rode with these wildlings. Is there any honor in them, do you think?" Jon says it's "their own sort of honor." Stannis quizzes him on Rayder, whom Jon believes to have honor, and on Rattleshirt, whom Jon calls "Treacherous and blood-thirsty," and on Tormund, who escaped. "Tormund Giantsbane seemed to me the sort of man who would make a good friend and a bad enemy, Your Grace," Jon replies.

Then Stannis asks, "What of you?" and when he answers, "I am a man of the Night's Watch," replies, "Words. Words are wind." Then he asks, "Why do you think I abandoned Dragonstone and sailed to the Wall, Lord Snow?" Again Jon protests that he is no lord, and says that he must have come because they sent for him, although he doesn't know why he took so long about it. This amuses Stannis, who gives the credit to Davos Seaworth, who said "I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne." And this is where he'll find his foe, he says.

But he needs Jon's help, he now says. The north is in chaos after Robb's death. "What is needed is a Lord of Winterfell. A loyal Lord of Winterfell." There isn't a Winterfell anymore, Jon says, after Theon Greyfoy destroyed it. But Stannis says the building can be rebuilt. What he needs now is "a son of Eddard Stark" to win the northmen to his banner. Jon realizes what Stannis is proposing, and protests that he is a Snow, not a Stark. But Melisandre points out, "A king can remove the taint of bastardy with a stroke, Lord Snow." When she uses the epithet Alliser Thorne had given him, it suddenly sounds real. But he protests that he made his vow to the Night's Watch. "I knelt before a heart tree and swore to hold no lands and father no children." Melisandre protests, "R'hllor is the only true god. A vow sworn to a tree has no more power than one sworn to your shoes."

The temptation begins to take hold, and he recalls when he was "too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard," that he used to dream of being Lord of Winterfell. But later, he realized that Winterfell would go to the legitimate descendants of Eddard Stark, and to dream of having the title himself "seemed disloyal, as if he were betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths." Robb, Bran, Rickon, Sansa and Arya are gone now, he thinks. And all he has to do is break his vows to the Night's Watch, and one other thing: "To claim his father's castle, he must turn against his father's gods."

Stannis continues: Melisandre has seen the revival of the scattered wildlings in her fires. "This Tormund Thunderfist is likely re-forming them even now, and planning some new assault. And the more we bleed each other, the weaker we shall all be when the real enemy falls upon us."  Jon is aware of that, too. And now Stannis tells him that he has been talking with Mance Rayder and with Rattleshirt and others of the wildling captives. And he proposes to let the wildlings settle on this side of the Wall if they will "swear me their fealty, pledge to keep the king's peace and the king's laws, and take the Lord of Light as their god." Together, they will form an alliance against the Others.

Jon is aware of the realities, of the volatility and unruliness of the wildlings as subjects and neighbors. "Yet when he weighed Ygritte's red hair against the cold blue eyes of the wights, the choice was easy." He agrees to Stannis's plan. But then Stannis proposes to seal the new alliance with a marriage: "I mean to wed my Lord of Winterfell to this wildling princess," meaning Val. Jon laughs at the idea of any of the free folk entering into an arranged marriage. But Stannis insists that "she is part of the price you must pay, if you want your father's name and your father's castle."

Jon asks for time to think it over. Stannis agrees, impatiently, and tells him not to discuss it with anyone else. "But when you return, you need only bend your knee, lay your sword at my feet, and pledge yourself to my service, and you shall rise again as Jon Stark, the Lord of Winterfell."

23. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 755-808

Bran

He has seen the deaths of Robb and Grey Wind in a dream when he was one with Summer, and he is trying not to think about it. He hasn't told Jojen or Meera either.

They have reached the Nightfort at the Wall, which Bran remembers as the scene of some of the scariest stories told by Old Nan. Maester Luwin had cautioned him not to put too much credence in her stories, but when he asked his uncle Benjen about them, he said only that the Nightfort had been abandoned by the Watch for two hundred years.

The place is full of noises that Bran doesn't like. "Even Summer was not at ease here. Bran slipped inside his skin, just for an instant, to get the smell of the place. He did not like that either." Still Jojen had had a green dream about the place, and was determined to check it out, even though there was no gate through the Wall there. It had been sealed when the Watch abandoned it.

Bran has argued that they should have followed Jon, whom he saw through Summer's eyes when the wolf attacked the wildlings and Jon escaped. "We should have found the kingsroad and gone to Castle Black." But Jojen insisted that that course was too dangerous. Summer had almost been killed during the attack on the wildlings: When an arrow struck the wolf, the pain had been so great that Bran was driven out of Summer's skin, and it had returned every time Bran tried to become the wolf again. He was afraid Summer was dying, but the wolf finally returned with an arrow in his leg that Meera drew and treated with some herbs. Summer still limped, but less each day.

Meera suggests that they should try another castle, but Bran points out that the only ones whose gates haven't been sealed are Castle Black and the two at the extreme ends of the Wall, Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. So Meera proposes to climb to the top of the Wall and see if she can spot anything from there. The prospect of climbing the Wall only makes Bran regret his paralysis more.

Meera's climb is made easier by the steps that the Watch had carved into the Wall's side at the Nightfort, though the ice makes them treacherous and there are times when she has to get down on hands and knees to make the ascent. When she reaches the top and disappears from view, Jojen suggests that they explore the Nightfort.

It is full of rats, running through the cellars and tunnels. It was the oldest and largest of the castles at the Wall, and they spend half a day exploring the crumbling towers. "Sometimes Summer would hear sounds that Bran seemed deaf to, or bare his teeth at nothing, the fur on the back of his neck bristling," but none of the ghosts of Old Nan's stories made an appearance.

Meera returns as the sun is setting, and tells them that she saw the haunted forest and the hills beyond. "I even saw an eagle circling. I think he saw me too. I waved at him." But there is no way down the other side of the wall, and certainly no way for Bran to make it over. She asks Jojen again if he is certain this is the place he saw in his dream, and he assures her that there is a gate there. But the only one Bran knows of is blocked by rubble and ice.

As it gets dark, they decide to bed down in the ruins of the kitchens, an octagon with a broken dome and a weirwood growing up through the floor. "It was a queer kind of tree, skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with him here, at least." But he remembers Old Nan's stories about the Rat Cook who baked a prince in a pie.

Next to the weirwood there is a well, twelve feet in diameter, with steps going down the side into its depths. They can't see any water at the bottom. Hodor says his name into the well and is startled by the way the echo reverberates, then picks up a broken piece of slate from the floor and drops it in. Bran calls out for him not to do that, but too late. "You might have hurt something, or ... or woken something up."

Far, far, far below, they heard the sound as the stone found water. It wasn't a splash, not truly. It was more a gulp, as if whatever was below had opened a quivering gelid mouth to swallow Hodor's stone. Faint echoes traveled up the well, and for a moment Bran thought he heard something moving, thrashing about in the water. 

They cook and eat a fish that Meera had caught in the last stream they had crossed, then bed down for the night. Bran is unable to sleep, but makes himself close his eyes. Then he hears a noise that starts as a scuffling sound and then becomes footsteps. He doesn't want to wake Meera or Jojen because he thinks it might just be his imagination, stirred by memories of Old Nan's stories. But the sounds get louder and he realizes that they are coming from the well. And as they get louder he hears "a high thin whimpering sound, like someone in pain, and heavy muffled breathing."

Finally he drags himself across the floor and wakes Meera, who hears the sound too. She grabs her frog spear and her net and moves toward the well. Jojen and Hodor are still asleep, and Bran doesn't want Meera to fight the thing alone, and Summer is far away. He slips his consciousness into Hodor and tries to stand and grab Hodor's longsword. But the thing in the well starts to scream, and Bran loses control of Hodor and finds himself back on the floor.

The thing is caught in Meera's net and she is stabbing at it with her frog spear. The thing falls and calls out, "No, no, don't, please, DON'T...." In response to Meera's question, "'I'm SAM,' the black thing sobbed. 'Sam, Sam, I'm Sam, let me out, you stabbed me...." Jojen has fed the fire and the flames illuminate the room, revealing Sam Tarly struggling in the net, and Gilly and the crying baby bundled up, emerging from the well.

It's Bran who recognizes that Sam is wearing the black of the Night's Watch. Sam confirms it: "I'm a crow, please. Let me out of this." Bran asks, "Are you the three-eyed crow?" although he can't quite believe it. Sam says he doesn't think so, and Meera tells him to stop struggling with the net and she'll untangle him. Jojen asks Gilly who she is and where she comes from. She says, "From Craster's," and asks Jojen, "Are you the one?"

Gilly explains that Coldhands had said Sam wasn't "The one he was sent to find," and Sam, now untangling from the net and trying to catch his breath, says that he said there would be people in the castle. "I didn't know you'd throw a net on me or stab me in the stomach." He asks if he is bleeding, and Meera checks and says he's wearing mail. "I never got near your skin."

Bran asks if Sam is "really a brother of the Night's Watch," and Sam says he's only a steward who took care of the ravens, but lost them. "I got us lost too. I couldn't even find the Wall. It's a hundred leagues long and seven hundred feet high, and I couldn't find it!" Jojen asks how he got through the wall, and Sam says there's a gate: "A hidden gate, as old as the Wall itself. The Black Gate, he called it." The gate is at the bottom of the well, but it will open only for a member of the Night's Watch who has sworn his vow.

Jojen asks who "he" is, "This ... Coldhands?" Gilly explains that that wasn't really his name, just what she and Sam called him. "His hands were cold as ice, but he saved us from the dead men, him and his ravens, and he brought us here on his elk." Much confusion about the elk and the ravens ensues, but Sam finally clarifies that the man is waiting for them, and that he can't come through the Wall himself. And Jojen clarifies that it's Bran who is the one the man is waiting for.

Sam suddenly realizes that Bran is "Jon Snow's brother. The one who fell...." Jojen tries to deny it, but Bran just tells Sam to keep it secret. Sam tells him that Jon "was the best friend I ever had," but he has disappeared. Bran replies that Summer had seen Jon with some wildlings, but he escaped and probably went to Castle Black.

Summer appears then, frightening Gilly, but Bran reassures her. Sam is not afraid, because he knows that the Starks have wolves, and he has met Ghost. He pulls off a glove and lets Summer lick his fingers, which makes Bran decide that they should all go through the Black Gate with Sam.

Gilly stays behind with the baby as the others make the descent. As they get lower into the well, Bran can see the Black Gate, except it isn't black: "It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it." They reach the gate and Bran thinks of the face, "If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that."

When Sam stands before it, the face opens its eyes, which are white and blind. It asks, "Who are you?" and Sam replies with the words of the oath of the Watch. The mouth of the door opens and admits them. As Hodor goes through with Bran on his back, he fails to duck enough: "The door's upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran's head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear."

Daenerys

They have moved on to a third city, Meereen, which is "as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. The city's hero rides out in front of it, daring them to attack, and Daenerys's bloodriders are ready to take him on. She forbids it, however, saying that their place is at her side. Ser Jorah agrees with her: "Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm."

But Arstan Whitebeard is of another mind: "This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men and plants the seeds of doubt in ours." Daenerys tells Arstan and Jorah to stop squabbling. She's aware of some problems: Though she has more than eighty thousand followers after the fall of the first two cities, less than a fourth of them are soldiers. "The rest ... well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving." The Meereen had burned the fields in expectation of their arrival, leaving them with nothing to forage upon.

And they had done something that troubles her more: "they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen." The atrocity had made her the more determined to conquer the city.

Brown Ben Plumm, the new commander of the Second Sons, who had joined forces with her at Yunkai, says the champion of Meereen is Oznak zo Pahl, whose uncle is the richest man in the city. Daario Naharis now volunteers to take care of Oznak, but she holds him back. Instead, she sends for Strong Belwas, who had once been a slave in the fighting pits of Meereen. If he wins, it will embarrass Meereen, and if he loses it will not be such a great triumph. Besides, "Belwas was the man she could most easily spare."

Belwas dallies with Oznak, but in the end he is holding the champion's head aloft. Dario delights in the victory, but Ser Jorah calls it "without meaning.... We will not win Meereen by killing its defenders one at a time." Daenerys agrees, and turns her attention to ways to conquer the city. Ser Jorah says he hasn't seen any weaknesses in the landward walls, so she asks about attacking it by river or sea. They only have three ships, however.

Ser Jorah now offers a suggestion that he knows Daenerys will not like: "I say, let this city be. You cannot free every slave in the world, Khaleesi. Your war is in Westeros." They should simply pass the city by and march westward to Pentos, biding their time until the dragons are large enough to be useful in warfare. Even her bloodriders see the sense in the plan: Rakharo says, "when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes."

But Daenerys remembers the children mounted as signposts, and is unwilling to leave them unavenged. Finally, Brown Ben Plumm has an idea: They can attack the city through the sewers. He escaped from Meereen that way, though he has never forgotten the smell and is not about to volunteer to go back through them the other way.

She decides that she needs to think about it some more and sends them away. But what she really thinks about is Daario, who has captured her fancy by bringing her a flower every night when he made his report. "And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did." The restlessness he stirs in her makes her have Missandei bring her her horse to go out riding. She is accompanied by Missandei and by Arstan, for whom she feels no sexual attraction.

They ride through the camps taking notice of the drilling of the Unsullied and of the freedmen, some of whom call her "Mother" and reach out to touch her. Then a tall man in ragged clothes grabs her wrist and pulls her from her saddle. He pulls out his sword and she recognizes Mero, the former captain of the Second Sons. She cries for help, but Mero cuts down the freedman who steps forward.

Then Arstan leaps from his horse, wielding his hardwood staff. He knocks Mero down and with moves too fast for her to follow, parries Mero's sword strikes until he breaks Mero's leg and then knocks him unconscious. Freedmen gather around the fallen man and attack him with knives and stones.

Arstan kneels and apologizes for being so slow to recognize Mero, who had shaved his beard and hair. They return to her tent, where Ser Jorah arrives with news of his reconnoiter along the river wall. But she scolds him for not letting her know that Mero had escaped, and tells him that Arstan killed him. She wants Arstan to be knighted, but to her surprise both men object. Arstan tells her that he "was a knight in Westeros." He hasn't lied to her, but he has withheld the truth. And then Ser Jorah recognizes him: "Mero shaved his beard, but you grew one, didn't you? No wonder you looked so bloody familiar." He tells Daenerys,

"I saw him perhaps a dozen times ... from afar most often, standing with his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold." He laid the point of his sword against the old man's neck. "Khaleesi, before you kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert Baratheon." 

Daenerys demands the full truth from Arstan, now Barristan, and he tells her that Jorah is correct. "I might be serving in King's Landing still if the vile boy upon the Iron Throne had not cast me aside, it shames me to admit." But Joffrey's conduct opened his eyes: "That was when I knew I must find my true king, and die in his service--" Jorah offers to provide that death now, but Barristan continues, saying that he had fought against Robert Baratheon at the Triden, at the time when Mormont was on Robert's side.

He disguised himself after leaving Westeros because Varys's spies were watching Viserys closely. And they are still watching her: "since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises." When Daenerys turns to look at Mormont, Ser Jorah admits it, but he says, "it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love...." She interrupts him furiously, and her dragons start emitting smoke and fire. "I should say the word and burn the two of them," she thinks. But instead she orders both Barristan and Ser Jorah out.

When she calms down a little, she thinks about how both of them had saved her life. And she decides what to do with them.

Tyrion

Tyrion has told Sansa about the deaths of Robb and Catelyn, and was surprised at the stoic way she received the news until he heard her sobbing by herself later: "Even her tears she hoards to herself." Now he sneaks down into the cellars where the dragon skulls are kept and Shae is waiting for hm. He has hired Shae to be one of Sansa's maids, but he still has to contrive to meet her in secret.

Sansa

She wakes from a dream that she was back in Winterfell with Lady and her family was safe and sound. Now she faces the reality, "All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now." Shae and Brella prepare her bath. The wedding is at noon in the Great Sept of Baelor and the feast, with seventy-seven courses, in the evening. But first she has to breakfast with the queen.

Tyrion arrives with Podrick Payne as she is dressing, and goes in to change too. Sansa braces herself for the ordeal and they go down to breakfast, where presents are presented to the groom. Joffrey receives them all graciously until Tyrion presents their gift: "a huge old book called Lives of Four Kings, bound in leather and gorgeously illuminated." Joffrey leafs through it and then pushes it across the table: "My father had no time for books.... If you read less, Uncle Imp, perhaps lady Sansa would have a baby in her belly by now." The court laughs because Joffrey laughs. Sansa worries that Tyrion will say something to anger the king, but he simply drinks another cup of wine.

Mace Tyrell presents Joffrey with a three-foot-tall golden chalice with seven sides, each ornamented with a different gemstone representing the seven great houses, including a pearl direwolf for House Stark. Joffrey remarks that they'll need to chip the wolf off, and Sansa pretends not to hear. The last gift is from Lord Tywin: a longsword. Joffrey decides that he will name it Widow's Wail, and he takes the sword and hacks the book Tyrion had given him to pieces. Ser Garlan Tyrell observes that there were only four copies of the book in existence. "Now there are three," Joffrey replies, and says, "You and Lady Sansa owe me a better present, Uncle Imp. This one is all chopped to pieces."

Tyrion says, "Perhaps a knife, sire. To match your sword. A dagger of the same fine Valyrian steel ... with a dragonbone hilt, say?" He is describing the dagger used in the attempt on Bran Stark's life, and he gets a "sharp look" from Joffrey, who says he would prefer "a gold hit with rubies in it. Dragonbone is too plain."

As Tyrion and Sansa are walking to the wedding, they meet up with Prince Oberyn and his mistress, Ellaria. Shae has told Sansa that Ellaria "was almost a whore when he found her, m'lady ... and now she's near a princess." Oberyn and Tyrion talk about the book Joffrey has destroyed. Oberyn thinks that the book was too kind to King Viserys, who "poisoned his own nephew to gain the throne and then did nothing once he had it."

When they reach their litter, Tyrion asks Sansa to draw the curtains. She protests that the day is lovely, but he says that the citizens are likely to throw things at them if they see him. She says she is sorry for Joffrey's destruction of the book, but perhaps the dagger would please him better. Tyrion says, "Joff quarreled with your brother Robb at Winterfell. Tell me, was there ill feeling between Bran and His Grace as well?" She doesn't think so, but he presses on: "Sansa, do you know what happened to Bran at Winterfell?" She says only that he fell, and "He was always climbing things." He starts to talk about Catelyn's accusation that Tyrion had tried to have Bran killed. "She accused me falsely. I never harmed your brother Bran. And I mean no harm to you." But she can't figure out why he is talking to her about these things, and when he says, "You have never asked me how Robb died, or your lady mother," she says she "would sooner not know. It would give me bad dreams."

"I know about bad dreams," Tyrion replies.