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."

2. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 31-59

Daenerys

Despite the insistence of Ser Barristan that she doesn't need to do so, and the fears of her handmaids Irri and Jhiqui that "It is bad luck to touch the dead," Daenerys insists on seeing the body of one of the Unsullied who has been found dead. He is a victim of the assassins known as the Sons of the Harpy, who are waging a guerrilla war against Daenerys's regime. The dead man is known as Stalwart Shield, and although he is a eunuch, his body was found in a brothel. Grey Worm, the captain of her Unsullied, tells her that eunuchs often go to brothels just to be held by the women: "Even those who lack a man's parts may still have a man's heart."

Ser Barristan informed Daenerys that this is a type of warfare for which even the Unsullied are ill-trained, being used to the battlefield rather than to terrorist acts. She realizes that maintaining her hold over Meereen will be more complicated than she had thought. She returns to her quarters in the Great Pyramid and walks restlessly on her terrace, pondering this face. Her dragons Viserion and Rhaegal are there, but they have been growing wilder lately -- and growing in size as well. She thinks, "I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?"

Irri and Jhiqui help her prepare for an audience with the Meereenese public, which involves donning the Ghiscari tokar, a clumsy fringed garment that is wound around the body and makes walking difficult. "It was not a garment meant for any man who meant to work. The tokar was a master's garment, a sign of wealth and power." It also includes a headdress that looks rather like a pair of floppy rabbit ears. Daenerys wanted to get rid of the tokar, but Galazza Galare, the high priestess known as the Green Grace advised her that it would be a public relations disaster to do so. "These Meereenese were a sly and stubborn people who resisted her at every turn," so Daenerys conceded this point.

She is attended by her seneschal, Reznak mo Reznak, a flattering, perfumed courtier, and by the head of her city watch, Skahaz mo Kandaq, who has shaved his head as a sign of acceptance of Daenerys's new regime. He is known as the Shavepate. Daenerys doesn't fully trust these advisers: "The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei?"

In the meeting hall, she is announced by Missandei, the scribe she had rescued from slavery in Astapor, and the first person to present his request to her is an Astapori, "a former slave who called himself Lord Ghael, though no one seemed to know what he was lord of." He gives her a pair of slippers from the current king at Astapor, Cleon the Great. She puts them on, but they pinch her feet. He urges her to join in an attack on Yunkai, which reverted to slavery after Daenerys left. But Daenerys knows that Astapor is no better, and suggests that Cleon find a way to feed his people before making war.

Reznak next introduces a wealthy merchant named Hizdahr zo Loraq. When she conquered Meereen, she closed the fighting pits where men battled to the death; Hizdahr owns most of them, and want her to reopen them. She has already refused the request five times, and makes it a sixth. She repeats Hizdahr's earlier arguments to him: The pits are historic, they are part of the religious ritual of blood sacrifice to the gods of Ghis, they are a demonstration of athletic skill, reopening them would win her good will, they draw visitors and trade to Meereen, they satisfy people's innate blood lust, and they serve as a venue for trial by combat as part of the system of justice.

Hizdahr compliments her recital: "I see that you are eloquent as well as beautiful." Reznak also whispers to her that they are a significant source of tax revenue. But Daenerys refuses him again. Still, she observes to herself that Reznak and the Green Grace had been urging her to marry a Meereenese noble to solidify her authority over the city, and she thinks it might be worth taking a good look at Hizdahr.

The next petitioner is Grazdan zo Galare, a cousin of the Green Grace. "The priestess was a voice for peace, acceptance, and obedience to lawful authority," so Daenerys knows she should be careful in listening to and answering him. He wants a share of the profits of some of his former slaves, women who had been trained in weaving at his household and who now have opened a shop of their own. Daenerys asks him the name of the slave who taught the women to weave, and he can't remember it. She orders that he not only have no share in their profits, but that he buy them the finest loom available: "That is for forgetting the name of the old woman."

She tells Reznak to call on a freedman next, and to alternate between former masters and former slaves from now on. The cases she hears are a parade of grievances, and Daenerys thinks, "I am queen over a city built on dust and death." She grows tired, her crown grows heavy, and the bench she sits on grows hard: "I have too many councillors and too few cushions." Finally, there is a throng of claimants for compensation for livestock killed by her dragons.

Some claims were false, she did not doubt, but more were genuine. Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they'll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. "Pay them for the value of their animals," she told Reznak, "but henceforth claimants must present themselves at the Temple of the Graces and swear a holy oath before the gods of Ghis."

The claimants file out, grumbling, but one man, holding a sack, remains behind. Missandei proclaims an end to the hearing, but Daenerys notices the man and asks what he wants. He opens the sack and empties the bones, saying, "It were the black one...." Reznak tells him to get his compensation tomorrow, but Barristan tells him to shut up. Those aren't sheep bones, he says.

"No, Dany thought, those are the bones of a child."

Jon

Jon is dreaming he is Ghost, racing through a moonlit forest. As he races, the moon calls out, "Snow."

Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained ... and one the white wolf could no longer sense.

The moon continues calling out, "Snow, snow, snow!" until finally Lord Commander Mormont's raven wakes Jon. His steward, Dolorous Edd Tollett enters to ask if he wants breakfast. Jon asks him if there has been any trouble with the wildlings penned in the stockade, many of whom were women who were being sneaked out by the guards to sleep with them. Dolorous Edd says no, but there were more wildlings arriving.

Jon remembers his wolf dream, which like others of its kind had been stronger than ever before. Ghost knows of Grey Wind's death, he realizes, but he also knows that Summer and Shaggydog, Bran and Rickon's direwolves, are still alive. It was Summer who saved his life at Queenscrown, and he wonders "if some part of his dead brothers lived on inside their wolves."

On his way to the King's Tower, he meets Samwell Tarly, who has just delivered a letter to Stannis. Jon asks Sam about his longbow practice, and Sam says he's been reading up on it, but he gets blisters when he practices. At the entrance to the king's quarters, he is forced by the guards to surrender his weapons. Inside, Stannis is poring over a map; Melisandre is sitting by the fire. Stannis is angry because he has sent out ravens to all of the Stark bannermen asking for their support, but only the Karstarks have come around to his support. Jon knows this is because Rickard Karstark has no choice, having alienated both the Starks and the Lannisters.

Stannis angrily probes Jon about ways to enlist the support of the bannermen and of the wildlings, but receives no satisfactory answers from him. He is already vexed with Jon for refusing his offer to make Jon legitimate and the lord of Winterfell. Jon now tells him that he is sending Gilly and her baby south from Eastwatch, and he continues to refuse to cede the abandoned castles along the Wall to Stannis. In fact, he asks Stannis for men to garrison them. They don't need to join the Watch, "so long as they obey my officers as they would your own."

Stannis retorts that Jon is "only lord commander by my sufferance. You would do well to remember that." When Jon replies that he was chosen by his brothers, Stannis says that Alliser Thorne and Janos Slynt dispute that. "Your Grace knows that I was fairly chosen," Jon replies. "The Wall is mine." Stannis threatens that if any of the castles on the Wall fall to the enemy, Jon's head will follow, and orders him out.

Melisandre says she will accompany Jon to his chambers, and as they go down the steps says, "His Grace is growing fond of you." Jon replies, "I can tell. He only threatened to behead me twice." She tells him that she has seen Jon in her fires, and that he has enemies:

"It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold."

And her final words to him are the same as Ygritte's: "you know nothing, Jon Snow."

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."

31. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 1062-1097

Tyrion

There is a rattling of keys at his cell door and he thinks that the time has come. But it's Jaime, whom he hasn't seen since his brother returned, gaunt and mutilated. Tyrion's shock at the sight of him turns into "hysterical laughter," for which he apologizes: "Jaime, I am so sorry, but ... gods be good, look at the two of us. Handless and Noseless, the Lannister boys."

After some fraternal banter, Jaime tells him that he's to be beheaded tomorrow. But now it's 3 a.m. and Jaime has come to rescue him, with the help of Varys, who has provided a potion to put the guards to sleep. "Varys has agents in the Free Cities who will see that you do not lack for funds," Jaime says. Cersei will send agents after him, no doubt, and Tyrion should probably take a different name. This makes Tyrion comment that "when the Faceless Men come to kill me, I'll say, 'No, you have the wrong man, I'm a different dwarf with a hideous facial scar.'"

When Tyrion thanks him, Jaime says he owed it to him. He's reluctant to say why, but when Tyrion presses him on the nature of the debt, Jaime confesses that Tyrion's first wife, Tysha, was not a whore. She was in fact the daughter of a crofter. Their father had objected that she was lowborn, and that she had only married Tyrion for his money: "he said that you required a sharp lesson. That you would learn from it, and thank me later...."

Remembering how Tysha was raped by the guards, Tyrion is infuriated by Jaime's "I never knew he would do that. You must believe me." He snarls back, "Why should I believe you about anything, ever? She was my wife!" And he slaps Jaime backhanded, as hard as he can. Cursing Jaime and Cersei and their father, he walks away, but is forced to stop and let Jaime open the gates for him. "Give me the keys and go," he says. "I will find Varys on my own." Then he turns and asks Jaime if he can fight with his left hand. "Rather less well than you," Jaime replies. Tyrion says, "Good. Then we will be well matched if we should ever meet again. The cripple and the dwarf."

But Jaime has one more question for Tyrion: Did he kill Joffrey? His brother's doubt eats at Tyrion, who tells him, "Joffrey would have been a worse king than Aerys ever was. He stole his father's dagger and gave it to a footpad to slit the throat of Brandon Stark, did you know that?" Jaime admits that he had guessed as much, but still wants to know the answer to his question.

"You poor stupid blind crippled fool. Must I spell every little thing out for you? Very well. Cersei is a lying whore, she's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know. And I am the monster they all say I am. Yes, I killed your vile son."

Jaime turns and walks away, and Tyrion goes to find Varys. When he does, he tells the eunuch he should kill him for not helping him before the trial, but Varys points out that he would never find his way out of the tunnels. So Tyrion asks what has become of Sansa, and Varys is forced to confess that he has found no trace of her, and that Ser Dontos has disappeared as well. (Given Varys's powers as a spy, it's more likely that he is in on Littlefinger's plot.)

Tyrion must descend deeper into the dungeons, Varys tells him., and Tyrion thinks, "I arrived here a King's Hand, riding through the gates at the head of my own sworn me, ... and I leave like a rat scuttling through the dark, holding hands with a spider." Finally they reach a place with a mosaic of a three-headed dragon on the floor, and Tyrion recalls that Shae had described it to him once. They are, he realizes, under the Tower of the Hand. He sees a ladder, and realizes that it must lead to the Hand's bedroom. He insists on knowing the way, and Varys reluctantly tells him. Tyrion begins to climb.

When he reaches the top, he can hear the guards talking about his coming execution, and realizes how Varys's "little birds" gain their information. Finally he reaches the entrance to the Hand's chamber and discovers that it is through the fireplace. As he enters the room, a woman calls out, "M'lord?" It is Shae, who begins to apologize when she sees him: "I never meant those things I said, the queen made me. Please. Your father frightens me so." She is wearing his father's chain of office, the linked golden hands. He asks her whether she ever really enjoyed being with him, and when she answers, "More than anything ... my giant of Lannister," he thinks, "That was the worst thing you could have said, sweetling." He strangles her with the chain.

Then he takes Lord Tywin's dagger from the bedside table and a crossbow that was hanging on the wall. He slips into the hallway and goes to the privy, where he knows his father must be. Tywin betrays no surprise or fear when Tyrion opens the door, but tries to persuade him to put down the crossbow and go with him to his chambers, where he will arrange for Tyrion to take the black instead of being executed. Tyrion declines, but asks his father what he did with Tysha.

Tywin says he doesn't really know. "I suppose the steward sent her on her way. I never thought to ask." Tyrion asks where that would be, and when his father answers, "Wherever whores go," he fires the crossbow. At first incredulous that Tyrion has shot him, Tywin gasps, "You ... you are no ... no son of mine."

"Now that's where you're wrong, Father. Why, I believe I'm you writ small. Do me a kindness now, and die quickly. I have a ship to catch."

Samwell

Stannis is losing patience with the process of choosing a Lord Commander. "I have captives to dispose of, a realm to order, a war to fight," he tells the assembled Night's Watch. Janos Slynt tries to wheedle Stannis into endorsing his candidacy, but Stannis is having none of it, recalling Slynt's reputation for corruption. But what Stannis really wants is for the black brothers to cede their control of the Gift to him, and they are shocked by the request. And further shocked when he says he wants all of the abandoned castles along the Wall for his garrisons, leaving them only Eastwatch, Castle Black, and the Shadow Tower. "Garrison them as you always have, but I must take the others for my garrisons if we are to hold the Wall."

Melisandre proclaims that Stannis is the return of Azor Ahai, "the warrior of fire. In him the prophecies are fulfilled. The red comet blazed across the sky to herald his coming, and he bears Lightbringer, the red sword of heroes." Sam notices that Stannis looks "desperately uncomfortable" with this proclamation, but he doesn't contradict it. Then he dismisses the brothers, all except for Maester Aemon and Sam.

As uneasy as Sam usually is in Stannis's presence, he becomes more so when Stannis singles him out as "the one that killed the creature in the snow," and Melisandre calls him "Sam the Slayer." When Sam confirms that the dagger that killed the Other was dragonglass, Stannis says, "On Dragonstone, where I had my seat, there is much of this obsidian to be seen in the old tunnels beneath the mountain." He has ordered his castellan to begin mining it. Sam mentions that the dragonglass shattered when he tried to use it on the wights, and Melisandre says, "Necromancy animates these wights, yet they are still only dead flesh. Steel and fire will serve for them. The ones you call the Others are something more." Stannis calls them "Demons made of snow and ice and cold.... the ancient enemy."

Stannis also asks about their passage through the Black Gate at the Nightfort, which he plans to make his seat. Sam tells him that it would only open for a member of the Night's Watch, and Stannis says Sam will show him the gate. Sam is not even certain that it's still there. Then Maester Aemon asks if he can see the sword Lightbringer, with Sam serving as his eyes. Stannis agrees.

"It glows," said Sam in a hushed voice. "As if it were on fire. There are no flames, but the steel is yellow and red and orange, all flashing and glimmering, like sunshine on water, but prettier. I wish you could see it, Maester."

The maester assures Sam that he has seen it as "A sword full of sunlight." When Stannis sheathes it, it is as if the room grows dark, even though the sun is shining through the windows.

When Sam and Maester Aemon return to the maester's quarters, Aemon comments that he felt no heat from the sword. Sam says, "The air around it was shimmering, the way it does above a hot brazier." But the scabbard is wood and leather, the maester says, having heard it when the sword was drawn, and Sam confirms that it wasn't burnt or blackened. When the maester tells Sam he has no need of him until the time for voting, Sam brings up the danger of Janos Slynt's winning. Maester Aemon says that his position prevents him from favoring one contender over another, but he hints that Sam is under no such obligation. So Sam summons up his reserve of bravery and decides to try to sway the voting.

He goes first to Cotter Pyke, because he is "the scarier of the two commanders," and Sam wants to face him before his courage weakens. Pyke thinks Sam is doing the maester's bidding, and Sam doesn't disabuse him of the notion, but he insists that there's no way he will give up his candidacy in favor of Ser Denys Mallister, though he doesn't really want the job. "I fight best with a deck beneath me, not a horse, and Castle Black is too far from the sea. But I'll be buggered with a red-hot sword before I turn the Night's Watch over to that preening eagle from the Shadow Tower."

So Sam goes to Ser Denys, who is courtly and elegant, and also falls under the impression that Sam is speaking for Maester Aemon. But he also refuses to consider his chief rival: "No, loath as I am to disappoint Maester Aemon, I could not in honor stand aside for Pyke of Eastwatch," whom he regards as ill-bred. As for the other candidates, he also considers them inferior, describing Janos Slynt as "venal and corrupt."

And then Sam introduces another possibility: "Lord Commander Mormont trusted him. So did Donal Noye and Qhorin Halfhand. Though he's not as highly born as you, he comes from old blood. He was castle-born and castle-raised, and he learned sword and lance from a knight and letters from a maester of the Citadel. His father was a lord, and his brother a king." Ser Denys recognizes that Sam is talking about Jon Snow, and says, "He is very young, but ... mayhaps." And then Sam slips in a lie: If they don't reach a decision tonight, he says, Stannis will name Cotter Pyke.

When he leaves Ser Denys, Sam is struck by the audacity of what he has just done, and has a moment of terror. But then he realizes how foolish his fear is: "How could he be so frightened of Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister, when he had seen a raven eating Small Paul's face?" So he returns to Pyke and drops the hint about voting for Jon, and the lie that Stannis plans to name Ser Denys if the vote doesn't succeed.

Jon

Stannis's offer to make him Lord of Winterfell has kept him awake all night, and now he gets a clout on the head from the trainee with whom he is sparring. It makes him remember when he was a little boy sparring with Robb. They had pretended to be famous heroes, but one time Jon had proclaimed himself Lord of Winterfell, and Robb replied, "You can't be Lord of Winterfell, you're bastard-born. My lady mother says you can't ever be the Lord of Winterfell." The memory so enrages him suddenly that he goes berserk on his opponent and has to be pulled off of him by two other trainees.

He comes to his senses and apologizes, then retreats to the armory by himself. But there he remembers Lady Catelyn's habitual coldness toward him. He tries to soak away the physical pain in a hot stone tub, but that reminds him of the hot pools in the godswood at Winterfell.

The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said ... but to save the castle, Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman's hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods.

And then he hears voices: Alliser Thorne and Bowen Marsh, discussing with Othell Yarwyck whom Tywin Lannister would prefer as Lord Commander, with Thorne putting in his plea for Slynt. He sits up in the bath, alerting them to his presence, then dries, dresses, and leaves. He realizes that the possibility is strong that Thorne will persuade others to decide for Slynt, "And what does that leave me, if not Winterfell?" He sits down to ponder his dilemma, realizing how deeply he had always wanted Winterfell, and imagining himself with Val, raising Mance's son and Gilly's there.

And then he senses a hunger: "It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought." Suddenly he realizes what is happening, as Ghost appears out of the woods, "leaner than he had been, but bigger as well," and races toward him. "When he reached Jon he leapt,and they wrestled amidst brown grass and long shadows as the stars came out above them."

He looks into the direwolf's eyes, and finds the answer to his dilemma.

He takes Ghost with him to the hall, thinking that they will but eat, but he finds the turmoil of electioneering going on instead. "His brothers crowded the benches and the tables, but more were standing and shouting than were sitting, and no one was eating. There was no food." He is puzzled, but then Pyp spots him and ghost, and gives out a shrill whistle. The hall grows quiet as Jon and the wolf enter.

Thorne breaks the silence: "The turncloak graces us with his presence at last." And Slynt says, "Look! The beast that tore the life from Halfhand. A warg walks among us, brothers, A WARG! This ... this creature is not fit to lead us!  This beastling is not fit to live!" Ghost bares his teeth, but Jon just asks what's going on. Maester Aemon is the one who tells him that his name has been put forth for Lord Commander."

Jon thinks it's a joke, and asks who nominated him. Dolorous Edd confesses to having done it. But Slynt sputters more of his outrage as both Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister speak up to say that Jon's candidacy is legitimate. Ser Alliser jumps on a table and calls for quiet, saying that Stannis has posted men at the doors to keep them there until they choose. He says that Othell Yarwyck, whom he and Bowen Marsh had been lobbying to vote for Slynt earlier, has something to say.

Yarwyck announces that he is withdrawing his candidacy, and was going to say they should vote for Slynt, which gets a hearty endorsement on Thorne's part. But now, he says, "I don't recall why I thought Slynt would be such a good choice," especially since Stannis had expressed his distaste for him. So he shrugs and says, "Pick who you want, just so it's not me." Slynt turns purple.

There is a call for the kettle, a big black pot into which the voting tokens are deposited by the voters. Sam and Clydas haul it out, but when the lid is removed a huge raven flies out of it. Sam shouts, "I know that bird! That's Lord Mormont's raven!" The raven flies to the table near Jon and caws, "Snow, snow, snow," then perches on Jon's shoulder. Ser Alliser speaks up to claim that Sam had trained the raven to do that trick. "They all say snow, go up to the rookery and her for yourselves. Mormont's bird had more words than that." Whereupon the raven asks Jon for corn, and when it doesn't get any, says "Kettle? Kettle? Kettle?"

The voting takes place, and when the results are announce, Jon is surrounded by friends. Cotter Pyke says, "if you muck this up, I'm going to rip your liver out and eat it with onions." Ser Denys says, more graciously, "Do not make me die regretful. Your uncle was a great man. Your lord father and his father as well. I shall expect full as much of you." The raven screams "Supper," and it is brought in. Pyp asks Sam how he got the raven to do the trick, and Sam says he didn't do it. "When it flew out of the kettle I almost wet myself."

Jon has a swallow of wine. "But only one. The Wall was his, the night was dark, and he had a king to face."

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."