21. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 587-627

The Princess in the Tower

Arianne has been returned to Sunspear by Hotah, though Darkstar has escaped. She is kept in the Spear Tower, near the top, and although she is imprisoned, her surroundings are comfortable. She mourns the death of Arys and the mutilation of Myrcella's face, and wonders who had betrayed them.

She expects to be summoned by her father, but days, then weeks pass without hearing from Prince Doran. She asks one of her maids to smuggle a letter to Garin, and when she agrees, Arianne begins plotting to get messages to others who might help her. But when she gives the letter to her, the girl disappears and doesn't return. Her attempts to communicate with the others who wait on her fail.

Finally, so many days pass that she loses count of them. And then one morning she is awakened by Areo Hota, who tells her that Doran is ready to see her. She is taken to his solar, where he is sitting at a cyvasse table. He had ordered one put in her chambers, he says, and when she protests that she has no one to play the game with, he tells her that she should play it with herself: "Sometimes it is best to study a game before you attempt to play it." He is not really talking about cyvasse.

He asks why she did it, and she replies, "For the honor of our House," and chides him for his "meekness." She asks if he has caught Ser Gerold, and he tells her no. "You were a fool to make him part of this. Darkstar is the most dangerous man in Dorne. You and he have done us all harm." She asks, hesitantly about Myrcella, and is told that she is alive, "though Darkstar did his best.

"All eyes were on your white knight so no one seems quite certain just what happened, but it would appear that her horse shied away from his at the last instant, else he would have taken off the top of the girl's skull. As it is, the slash opened her cheek down to the bone and sliced off her right ear. Maester Caleotte was able to save her life, but no poultice nor potion will ever restore her face. She was my ward, Arianne. Betrothed to your own brother and under my protection. You have dishonored all of us." 

When she protests that it was the result of Hotah's interfering with her plot, he replies, "you would have crowned Myrcella queen, to raise a rebellion against her brother. Instead of an ear, she would have lost her life."  He explains to her the impossible odds against her plan's succeeding. He will not tell her who informed against her, and he tells her he could execute her friends for treason, though he won't. He has sent them all to various places instead.

"You and your cousins wanted war. You may get your wish. Another Kingsguard knight creeps toward Sunspear even as we speak. Ser Balon Swann is bringing me the Mountain's head." And when he gets there, he will of course want to see Myrcella and his sworn brother, Ser Arys. He could explain away Arys's death as an accident of some sort, but short of killing Myrcella there is no way to keep her from telling the truth. "No lie will save Dorne from the queen's wroth if her daughter should perish whilst in my care."

And then she argues with him about the succession, which she accuses him of trying to deprive her in favor of her brother Quentyn. She tells him she read his letter to Quentyn: "'One day you will sit where I sit and rule all Dorne,' you wrote him." He admits that he did plan for Quentyn to rule Dorne: "I had other plans for you." She bitterly lists the unsuitable marriages that had been proposed for her, including Gyles Rosby and Walder Frey. But he tells her he knew she would refuse them: "I dared not bring you any man you might accept. You were promised, Arianne."

She doesn't believe him, but he tells her that the secret was so great that he kept it even from her, for fear she would tell one of her friends. When she demands to know whom she has been betrothed to all these years, he says, "It makes no matter. He is dead." She assumes he must have been an old man, and asks what he died of. Doran replies, "It was a pot of molten gold."  He doesn't utter the name Viserys Targaryen.

He promises that she will succeed him. "Your brother Quentyn has a harder road to walk." She is fed up with his secrets, however, and says, "Tell me the rest, Father ... or else name Quentyn your heir and send for Hotah and his axe, and let me die beside my cousins." He replies that he has no intention of harming his brother's children: The older Sand Snakes, Obara, Nym, and Tyene are still in custody, but "lack for nothing but their freedom," and the younger ones are at the Water Gardens.

As for Quentyn, he has gone "on a long and perilous voyage, with an uncertain welcome at its end. He has gone to bring us back our heart's desire." And what is that, she asks.

"Vengeance." His voice was soft, as if he were afraid that someone might be listening. "Justice." Prince Doran pressed the onyx dragon into her palm with his swollen, gouty fingers, and whispered,  "Fire and blood."

Something tells me Daenerys is going to be getting a lot of unexpected company before long.

Alayne

It is moving day at the Eyrie, and Robert Arryn is determined not to go. He has thrown his chamber pot at Maester Colemon, so Sansa/Alayne is very carefully entering his room. If she can't persuade him to go, Ser Lothor Brune is going to have to carry him by force, which is likely to throw him into one of his fits. She tells him, "It's beautiful outside, Sweetrobin. The sun is shining bright, a perfect day for going down the mountain. The mules are waiting down at Sky with Mya."

But the mules are "smelly" and one of them tried to bite him once and he isn't going. "No one can hurt me so long as I stay here. The Eyrie is impregnable." She knows he's afraid, especially after his mother's fall, and the way down is "perilous enough to daunt anyone." But winter is coming and the Eyrie "would soon be inaccessible as well, and the way down grew more hazardous every day." Only a few servants remain, enough to get Lord Robert down safely.

She promises to tell him stories and give him lemon cakes when they have made the descent, but he demands, "a hundred lemon cakes and five tales!" She thinks, "I'd like to give you a hundred spankings and five slaps. You would not dare behave like this if Petyr were here." But she continues to sweet talk him into making the descent, and he agrees. While the servants are bathing and dressing him, she confers with Maester Colemon, who suggests that Robert could be drugged with milk of the poppy and lashed to the back of a mule. But she insists, "The Lord of the Eyrie cannot descend from his mountain tied up like a sack of barleycorn." Littlefinger, who has already made the descent and is on the other side of the Vale at a wedding, has warned her that "the full extent of Robert's frailty and cowardice" mustn't get widely known.

She tells Colemon to give Lord Robert a cup of sweetmilk to prevent his seizures, but the maester is reluctant: too many doses of sweetsleep apparently are harmful. Colemon also worries about the feast that is to be held at the end of the journey because Robert dislikes noise and strangers and music. She insists, however, "Music soothes him.... It's singing he can't abide, since Marillion killed his mother."

She goes to the winch room, where the huge buckets are being prepared to lower them the first six hundred feet down the mountain. Ser Lothor tells her that Lady Myranda Royce, Lord Nestor's daughter, will be accompanying them from Sky, the destination of the buckets. Alayne wonders why she would come so far up the mountain only to turn around and descend it. She has been warned by Littlefinger that Myranda is "shrewder than her father. Guard your tongue around her." But Robert likes Myranda, so that's a plus.

Mya Stone, who guides the mules, is also in the winch room, and she urges Alayne to hurry Robert up. "It's getting colder, can't you feel it? We need to get below Snow before the sun goes down.... If he bathes much longer, we'll be trapped up here all winter with nothing to eat but each other." Fortunately, he arrives shortly after that, though when Mya asks him to ride down with her, he says, "I want Alayne. You smell all stinky, like a mule."

As they are being lowered, "For a moment she found herself wondering how long it had taken her aunt to fall that distance, and what her last thought had been as the mountain rushed up to meet her." But she puts that out of her mind when the descending bucket bumps against the side of the mountain and Robert clings to her in fright.

Myranda is there to meet them, and she flatters Robert into a good mood. She asks Alayne how old she is, and Alayne tells her she is fourteen. "She had decided that Alayne Stone should be older than Sansa Stark." When Mya Stone arrives, she starts getting the mules ready for the single-file descent to the next level. It takes half an hour to get ready, and by the time they depart Robert is whining, "It's too cold. We should go back and wait till it's warmer."

While they can still ride side-by-side, Myranda gives Alayne the news: "Riverrun has yielded, but Dragonstone and Storm's End still hold for Lord Stannis." And there's a new High Septon, "and the Night's Watch has a boy commander, some bastard son of Eddard Stark's." Alayne blurts out, "Jon Snow?" but Myranda doesn't seem to take note of Alayne's surprise at hearing about the only brother she thinks she has left. And she reminds herself that Alayne Stone doesn't have any brothers, "baseborn or otherwise." Myranda is full of other gossip: She had been married, but her husband died while they were having sex, and she had once slept with Marillion. "Despite herself, Alayne found herself warming to the older girl. She had not had a friend to gossip with since poor Jeyne Poole."

They reach the most dangerous part of the passage, a narrow path, about a yard wide and eight yards long with a sheer drop on either side, and Robert begins to shake. They have to lead the mules across, and Mya goes first. But when she steps out onto the path, the wind lifts her cloak and she staggers for a moment until she gets her balance. So Alayne takes Robert's hand and tells him she's frightened and he must help her get across. The ruse works, though by the time they reach the other side, he has begun to shake and she has to hold him until he calms. Over the meal that awaits them, Myranda says, "So you're brave as well as beautiful."

Stone is the largest of the three waycastles on the descent, and snow has begun to fall by the time they leave it. Myranda suggests that they turn back and spend the night there, but Mya says they could get five feet of snow by then, so they should keep going. Fortunately, the last part of the journey is easier, and Robert falls asleep in the saddle.

When they get there, one of Littlefinger's guards tells her that her "father" has arrived and is waiting for her. She finds him drinking with three knights, who excuse themselves so she and Littlefinger can talk privately. She gives him a polite, daughterly kiss, but when they have gone, "He pulled her closer, caught her face between his hands, and kissed her for a long time." He tells her that Cersei is making a mess of things. "I always anticipated that she would beggar the realm and destroy herself, but I never expected she would do it quite so fast."

Then he tells her, "I have made a marriage contract for you." She protests that she is already married to Tyrion, but he says, "This is only a betrothal. The marriage must needs wait until Cersei is done and Sansa's safely widowed. And you must meet the boy and win his approval." She has been promised to Harrold Hardyng, one of Lady Waynwood's sons. Alayne is confused until Littlefinger lays out a complicated genealogy for her, the upshot of which is that Harrold Hardyng is the heir to Lord Robert Arryn. She says, "If Robert were to die...."

Petyr arched an eyebrow. "When Robert dies. Our poor brave Sweetrobin is such a sickly boy, it is only a matter of time. When Robert dies, Harry the Heir becomes Lord Harrold, Defender of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie. Jon Arryn's bannermen will never love me, nor our silly, shaking Robert, but they will love their Young Falcon ... and when they come together for his wedding, and you come in with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden's cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back ... why every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright. So those are your gifts from me, my sweet Sansa ... Harry, the Eyrie, and Winterfell. That's worth another kiss now, don't you think?"

12. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 312-343

Arya

Each night she repeats her list of people she wants dead, and one night the "kindly man" overhears it and asks her about it. After hedging for a bit she admits that it's the names of the people she would like to kill, and he asks her if that's why she came to the House of Black and White. If so, he tells her, she has "come to the wrong place."

She hasn't learned the kindly man's name, or that of the waif who, like her, lives underneath the temple. There is a cook named Umma, for whom Arya works, but Arya can't understand her when she speaks, and three acolytes and two serving men, but they're not given to communication. The kindly man is the only one who speaks the Common Tongue, and each day he asks her, "Who are you?"

"No one," she would answer, she who had been Arya of House Stark, Arya Underfoot, Arya Horseface. She had been Arry and Weasel too, and Squab and Salty, Nan the cupbearer, a grey mouse, a sheep, the ghost of Harrenhal ... but not for true, not in her heart of hearts. In there she was Arya of Winterfell, the daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn, who had once had brothers named Robb and Bran and Rickon, a sister named Sansa, a direwolf called Nymeria, a half brother named Jon Snow. In there she was someone ... but that was not the answer he wanted.

There are no services in the temple, but visitors come every day, and very occasionally someone would ask to see a priest and would be shown to either the kindly man or the waif. She is allowed free run of the building, except for the lowest level, which only the priests could enter. She works for the cook, and for the first time in a long while goes to sleep with a full stomach. In her conversations with the kindly man she is constantly reminded that she is being evasive, but he allows her to keep her secrets if she wishes. But if she stays in the temple, she must serve: "Valar dohaeris is how we say it here" -- all men must serve. And she must obey: "If you cannot obey, you must depart."

People come to the House of Black and White who are ready to die. They pray for however long they wish and then drink from the pool and lie down behind the effigy of whichever god they choose, never to wake. Their bodies are taken to the lowest level, but Arya doesn't know what happens to them there. Once while she was eating, she had a frightening thought and looked closely at the piece of meat on her for. "The kingly man saw the horror on her face. 'It is pork, child,' he told her, 'only pork.'"

She has kept a few things with her: a silver fork, a hat, and a pair of fingerless gloves the sailors on the Titan's Daughter had given her, her dagger and boots and belt and the clothes she had been wearing when she arrived at the temple, and Needle. She is practicing with the sword one day when the kindly man walks by her cell and tells her that she must get rid of her things. They belong to Arya of House Stark, he tells her. "There is no place for them here. There is no place for her. Hers is too proud a name, and we have no room for pride. We are servants here." If she can't become a servant of Him of Many Faces, she must leave. He tells her there is a ship sailing for Westeros tomorrow, and if she wishes she can get on it. But she replies, "I'll go if you don't want me, but I won't go there."

Challenged to renounce things, she can't sleep, and in the middle of the night she gathers them up, puts on her old clothes and slips outside for the first time since she came to the temple. At the edge of the canal she looks at the silver fork and thinks, "It's not my fork. It was salty that he gave it to." She tosses it into the water, and then throws the floppy hat and the gloves in after it. She looks at the handful of coins in her pouch and tosses them in, too. Then she throws in her boots and her dagger and swordbelt and takes off the rest of her clothes and tosses them in.

All she has left is Needle, and she tries to persuade herself to throw it in, too. But "Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa.... Needle was Jon Snow's smile." She had lost it and regained it. "The gods wanted me to have it." As she climbs the steps from the canal, she feels a loose stone underfoot. She works it loose and places the sword and its sheath behind the stone, then puts the stone back in place. She counts the steps so she'll know how to find it if she ever needs it again.

The next night the kindly man tells her the story of the founding of the temple, and arranges for the waif to tutor her in the language of Braavos. She becomes a novice in the House of Black and White. But she finds learning the language as tedious as she found sewing. They also play "the lying game," in which one asks questions of the other and tries to tell which answers are false and which are true. "The waif always seemed to know. Arya had to guess. Most of the time she guessed wrong." When, in response to Arya's question, the waif tells her that she is thirty-six years old, Arya pronounces this a lie, but the kindly man tells her otherwise: "The one you call waif is a woman grown who has spent her life serving Him of Many Faces." When Arya asks if she will come to look like her, he tells her "not unless you wish it. It is the poisons that have made her as you see her." Arya realizes that every evening the waif pours a flask into the black pool in the center of the temple.

Other men who are servants of the Many-Faced God visit the temple from time to time, and one evening Umma sends Arya to serve at the table for the visitors. The kindly man says she must stand very still at the table and "It would be best if you were blind and deaf as well. You may hear things, but you must let them pass in one ear and out the other. Do not listen." Arya obeys, but the talk is in the language of Braavos and she understood very little of it anyway.

The next day she asks the kindly man if the men were priests and if those were their real faces, but he replies only "What do you think, child?" She thinks that they weren't, and then asks if Jaqen H'ghar is a priest and if he will be coming back. But the kindly man professes not to know the name. She says she asked him "how he changed his face, and he said it was no harder than taking a new name, if you knew the way." She asks the kindly man if he will show her how to change her face, and he tells her to stick out her tongue and puff up her cheeks. "There. Your face is changed." But she tells him she meant by using magic. He replies, "All sorcery comes at a cost, child. Years of prayer and sacrifice and study are required to work a perfect glamor." He tells her to "practice making faces" and learn to "rule" her face. The next day she finds a mirror and begins to practice.

Soon she joins the acolytes in washing corpses. And for several months, "She served, washed the dead, made faces at the mirrors, learned the Braavosi tongue, and tried to remember that she was no one." But one day the kindly man sends for her and says that her accent is terrible, and that the only way she will learn to speak the language is by living among the people and speaking it "every day from dawn to dusk." She is to leave the temple and "find a fishmonger named Brusco" who needs "a girl to push his barrow and sell his cockles, clams, and mussels to the sailors off the ships." She will need a name, and they decide she will be Cat, the daughter of an oarmaster on a galley named Nymeria.

Alayne

Sansa, too, has changed identities, and has begun to think of herself as Alayne Stone, the illegitimate daughter of Lord Petyr Baelish, the better to keep up the life-saving masquerade. But now the Lords Declarant of the Vale have gathered to challenge Littlefinger's role as Lord Protector, and she is called on to maintain the role before a hostile group. Her hair has been died brown to hide Sansa Stark's distinctive auburn.

She goes in to breakfast with Lord Robert, who is whining because he has porridge and not the eggs and bacon he wants. But the presence of the Lords Declarant at the foot of the mountain has made it difficult for Mya Stone to bring them up from below. He also complains that he has heard Marillion singing in the night, and she tries to persuade him that it's impossible. She tells him that Marillion had felt so sorry for killing Lysa that "he walked into the sky. Alayne had not seen the body, no more than Robert had, but she did not doubt the fact of the singer's death." But Robert is having none of it, and he flings a spoon of porridge across the room, saying, "The lord wants eggs!"

Littlefinger enters at that point and proclaims, "The lord shall eat porridge and be thankful for it." Maester Colemon is with him and tells Robert that he needs to eat to build up his strength for the meeting with the bannermen. But Robert doesn't want to see them: "If they come, I'll make them fly." Littlefinger agrees that he would like for that to happen, but he "promised them safe conduct." There will be eight in all: the six Lords Declarant plus Lord Nestor Royce and Ser Lyn Corbray. Alayne is startled at the last, having heard from the guards that "Lyn Corbray was more dangerous than all six of the Lords Declarant put together."

Littlefinger admits that Corbray is not particularly well-disposed toward him: "He wanted Lysa's hand for himself." And Robert chimes in by saying he doesn't like Ser Lyn and to "send him back down." Littlefinger will not give in, and asks a serving woman to bring Robert another spoon so he can eat his porridge. Robert says, "Let my porridge fly!" and flings the whole bowl of it, hitting Maester Colemon and covering him with the contents. And then Robert falls into one of his fits, kicking Alayne in the stomach and knocking the wind out of her. Littlefinger orders a guardsman to take Robert away and leech him.

When Robert and the maester have gone, Littlefinger asks Alayne for a kiss, so she gives him "a quick dry peck upon the cheek" that he pronounces "dutiful." He gives her some instruction to relay to the cook, and tells her to change her clothes: "The Lords Declarant will not be pleased by the sight of my bastard daughter prancing about in my dead wife's clothes." She expresses her concern about the presence at the meeting of Bronze Yohn Royce, who had visited Winterfell and had also seen "Sansa Stark again at King's Landing, during the Hand's tourney." He assures her that Royce would have seen her as only one face in a thousand and won't remember her.

Alayne tends to her duties and after bathing and changing clothes is ready to meet the guests. When she meets Bronze Yohn Royce, he asks, "Do I know you, girl?" but Lord Nestor identifies her as "the Lord Protector's natural daughter." Lyn Corbray says, "Littlefinger's little finger has been busy." Lady Waynwood asks how old she is, and Alayne stammers "Four-fourteen," having decided to make Alayne a year older than Sansa. She adds that she is "no child, but a maiden flowered," which occasions a risqué reference to being "deflowered" from Lord Hunter and a "ripe for plucking" from Corbray. Lady Wynwood rebukes him: "The girl is young and gently bred, and has suffered enough horrors. Mind your tongue, ser." Corbray bristles at this, and Lady Wynwood suggests that Alayne take them to her father. "The sooner we are done with this, the better."

Littlefinger meets with them in his solar, where he says he has read their document and wishes they had asked him to sign it too. They are surprised by this, but he goes on, "As for these false friends and evil counselors, by all means let us root them out." The document has been designed as an attack on Littlefinger, but he has turned the tables on them. Symond Templeton speaks up: "We will have you gone," and Bronze Yohn says that Lord Robert will remain in the Vale, and he will "raise him up to be a knight that Jon Arryn would be proud of." Lady Waynwood says, "We speak with one voice here."

Littlefinger counters by saying that Robert loves Alayne and that he has asked two lords to send their sons to be raised with Robert. "My late wife seemed to think this was my proper seat," and that she had named him Lord Protector. Nestor Royce speaks up to say that Lysa Arryn "chose Lord Littlefinger, and entrusted her son to his care." And Littlefinger presses the point that Robert "is not a robust child, as all of you know well. The journey would tax him sorely. As his stepfather and Lord Protector, I cannot permit it."

But Bronze Yohn will not give in, and proclaims, "We shall have Lord Robert." And then Lyn Corbray says, "All this talk makes me ill. Littlefinger will talk you out of your smallclothes if you listen long enough. The only way to settle his sort is with steel," and he draws his sword. But Bronze Yohn bellows, "Put up your steel, ser! Are you a Corbray or a Frey? We are guests here." Lady Wynwood pronounces it "unseemly," and the others align themselves against Corbray. He storms out, saying they should have called themselves "the Six Old Women."

The others begin to express their apologies to Littlefinger, but he coldly says, "You brought him here. I would be well within my rights to call my guards and have all of you arrested."

Petyr sounded as angry as she had ever heard him. "I have read your declaration and heard your demands. Now hear mine. Remove your armies from this mountain. Go home and leave my son in peace. Misrule there has been, I will not deny it, but that was Lysa's work, not mine. Grant me but a year, and with Lord Nestor's help I promise that none of you shall have any cause for grievance.... It was not me who bared steel at a parley. You write of defending Lord Robert even as you deny him food. That must end." 

Alayne watches as the Lords Declarant begin to back down. Finally, Bronze Yohn says, "I like it not, but it would seem you have your year. Best use it well, my lord. Not all of us are fooled." A feast follows at which Lord Robert makes an appearance and behaves himself well, though Bronze Yohn and Lyn Corbray have already left.

Alayne lies awake in bed, wondering how Littlefinger had managed to make them turn such an about-face. Finally, she gets up and goes to his solar, where he is writing a letter. She asks, "What will happen in a year?"

He tells her that one or both of the oldest lords may die, and Lord Hunter will be murdered by his brothers. Lord Belmore can be bought off, and he can make friends with Templeton. Bronze Yohn by himself is not a real threat. As for Lyn Corbray, he will remain an enemy.

Then she realizes that Corbray is actually a part of Littlefinger's plot and asks how he will reward him for playing the role of enemy. He laughs at her acuteness: "With gold and boys and promises, of course. Ser Lyn is a man of simple tastes, my sweetling. All he likes is gold and boys and killing.

6. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 145-171

Sansa

Marillion, in one of the sky cells, is keeping everyone awake at night by singing, and she begs Littlefinger to make him stop. He assures Sansa that he promised the minstrel that he could sing, but it won't last much longer, because Lord Nestor Royce is ascending to the Eyrie tomorrow to investigate the supposed murder of Lysa Arryn by Marillion. Littlefinger has persuaded the singer to go along with the story.

Sansa is nervous about the possibility that Marillion will turn on them nevertheless, fearing that "if Lord Nestor looks in my eyes and sees how scared I am" he will suspect her. But Littlefinger tells her to "tell Lord Nestor the same tale that you told Lord Robert," Lysa's son. The problem is that Sansa (rightly) doesn't trust Littlefinger, even though he saved her from being pushed out the Moon Door by Lysa:

He saved Alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. But she was Sansa too ... and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle ... but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she'd known at King's Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei's ear. And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort, not Littlefinger. Littlefinger never lifted so much as his little finger for her.

But on the other hand, he was the one who got her away from King's Landing, and she has no place to go and no one to turn to but him. So she resigns herself to lying, especially about Marillion, who had tried to rape her.

Lord Nestor arrives in the afternoon, and after greeting him, Sansa is sent by Littlefinger to fetch little Lord Robert. The meeting is being held in the High Hall, which Sansa hasn't entered since Lysa's death. She "could hear the wind rattling at the Moon Door. I must not look at it, she told herself, else I'll start to shake as badly as Robert." When Lord Nestor asks about his mother, Robert says, "Marillion hurt my mother. He threw her out the Moon Door." And when asked if he saw it happen, he says, "Alayne saw it.... And my lord stepfather." Lord Nestor looks at her, and she tries to keep from shaking. Littlefinger says, "She still has nightmares of that day. Small wonder if she cannot bear to speak of it."

But she does speak of it, telling him that she was with Lysa "when Marillion ... pushed her." Robert interrupts to say, "He killed my mother. I want him to fly!" and begins to have a seizure. When it ends, Littlefinger says he should be taken to bed and bled, and Maester Colemon accompanies him. Lord Nestor says he had never liked Marillion and advised Lysa to get rid of him, and others accompanying him recalled that he sang songs that mocked them. Littlefinger says, "I should have been with her, but I never dreamt ... if I had not insisted ... it was I who killed her."

Sansa is surprised by this statement, not realizing that Littlefinger is claiming guilt to remove suspicion from himself. And succeeding: Lord Nestor's son, Albar Royce, says, "No, my lord, you must not blame yourself." His father asks for Marillion to be brought before him, and soon the jailer, Mord, appears with Marillion. "White silk gloves covered his hands, while a white silk bandage spared the lords the sight of his eyes." He falls to one knee and begs forgiveness, saying, "If I had eyes I should weep." He says he loved Lysa so much that when he found that she was pregnant with Lord Petyr's child, "a ... a madness seized me."

Sansa stares at Marillion's hands. One of the maids had said that Mord had chopped off three of his fingers, but the gloves make it impossible to tell. She wonders if the story is true. Marillion says that Littlefinger had let him keep his harp and his tongue. "Lady Lysa dearly loved my singing...." Lord Nestor orders him taken away: "It sickens me to look at him." Mord complies, and when he speaks, Sansa is surprised to see that the jailer has teeth made of gold. (Tyrion had promised to reward him.) Littlefinger says he has been too gentle with him: "If truth be told, I pity him. He killed for love." Lord Nestor says, "No man lingers long in the sky cells. The blue will call to him."

Littlefinger has Lord Nestor's retinue shown to their rooms, but invites him to have a cup of wine in his solar, and asks Sansa to serve. Lord Nestor tells him that his cousin, Bronze Yohn Royce, wants to question Marillion too, and others may accompany him. "My cousin means to remove you as Lord Protector," Nestor says. Littlefinger says he accepts that fact and can't stop him. Then he opens a chest and takes out a document that he says Lysa wanted Lord Nestor to have. It proclaims House Royce the hereditary Keepers of the Gates of the Moon, and Sansa is startled to see tears come to Nestor's eyes. Littlefinger tells him it's "a token of the love my lady bore you." Nestor observes that the signature is Littlefinger's, though the seal is that of House Arryn. "Lysa was murdered before the document could be presented for her signature," Littlefinger tells him, "so I signed as Lord Protector."

After a good deal of wine, Lord Nestor goes off to bed, and Littlefinger asks Sansa if she understands what happened. "You gave Lord Nestor the Gates of the Moon to be certain of his support," she says. He did, he says, and he did it because Nestor is aware that he is considered inferior to his cousin, Bronze Yohn. "He wants to believe that Lysa valued him above all her other bannermen," especially Bronze Yohn. She observes that Lord Robert could have signed and sealed it, but that he did, as Lord Protector, and when prompted by Littlefinger she says he did it because if he's removed as Lord Protector.... "...Lord Nestor's claim to the Gates will suddenly be called into question." He compliments her on seeing his plan, though it's "no more than I'd expect of mine own daughter."

Sansa is proud of herself for figuring it out, but still bothered by posing as Alayne. He tells her that they must keep up the fiction even in private, lest they be overheard by a servant or a guardsman. "I am tempted to say this is no game we play, daughter, but of course it is. The game of thrones." She says that Oswell Kettleblack knows the truth, because he rowed her from King's Landing when she escaped. He adds that his captain of guards, Ser Lothor Brune, does too, but both have been in his service for a long time and each of them keeps watch on the other. "Trust no one, I once told Eddard Stark, but he would not listen."

She goes off to bed, and in the middle of the night is wakened by Lord Robert climbing in bed with her. He asks if she is his mother now. "'I suppose I am,' she said. If a lie was kindly meant, there was no harm in it."

The Kraken's Daughter

Asha Greyjoy has just arrived on Harlaw, and is at Ten Towers, the castle of her uncle Lord Rodrik Harlaw, her mother's elder brother. "Lord Rodrik was seldom seen without a book in hand, be it in the privy, on the deck of his Sea Song, or whilst holding audience." And Asha finds him now in the Book Tower, which is "the fattest of the ten." He loves "written words, which so many ironborn found unmanly and perverse."

She gets quickly to the point: "Was my father murdered?" Her mother believes he was, he says, but all he knows is what they have been told: "Balon fell to his death when a rope bridge broke beneath him. A storm was rising, and the bridge was swaying and twisting with each gust of wind." She notes that her uncle Euron's ship had been away for three years and that it had returned on the day her father died. He corrects her: "The day after, we had heard. Silence was still out to sea when Balon died, or so it is claimed. Even so, I will agree that Euron's return was ... timely, shall we say?"

She had asked Rodrik to summon the ships of houses loyal to her, but there are only a few in the harbor. He says the rest have gone to Old Wyk: "I thought you would have heard. Aeron Damphair has called a kingsmoot." The other priests of the Drowned God have joined him. She asks if Euron has gone along with it, but he says Euron "does not confide in me." Nor does he know if Victarion, Aeron and Euron's other brother, has gone to the kingsmoot.

"I shall not go to Old Wyk," he tells her. "Nor should you." But she says she doesn't want to miss the first kingsmoot in ... "Four thousand years," he says, citing an old history, though another historian has said it may be half that.

"This dream of kingship is a madness in our blood. I told your father so the first time he rose, and it is more true now than it was then. It's land we need, not crowns. With Stannis Baratheon and Tywin Lannister contending for the Iron Throne, we have a rare chance to improve our lot. Let us take one side or the other, help them to victory with our fleets, and claim the lands we need from a grateful king."

Asha says she'll consider it, "once I sit the Seastone Chair." Her uncle gives a discouraging sigh and warns her, "No woman has ever ruled the ironborn." But the more he tries to dissuade her, the stubborner Asha gets. She wants him to come to what she calls "my queensmoot," and tells him it will be living history. "I prefer my history dead," he says. "Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood."

The conversation turns to Theon, and she says she isn't certain that he is dead. "We found parts of many bodies.... It seemed as though the northmen fought amongst themselves." He observes, "We had one king, then five. Now all I see are crows, squabbling over the corpse of Westeros." Once again, he pleads with her not to go to Old Wyk. If she stays, he says, he will name her heir to the Ten Towers. Ser Harras Harlaw will inherit the title of Lord of Harlaw, but he can rule from his castle at Grey Garden. "Do fealty to him for the castle and Ser Harras will protect you." But she persists: "It's my father's seat I want, not yours." He sends her away and turns to his book.

Outside, she is approached by a childhood boyfriend, Tristifer Botley, now Lord Botley. He tells her that Euron "has been buying friends at every hand" with the treasure he brought back in the Silence. And although Tristifer has the right to the title of Lord Botley, his uncle Germund calls himself by that name, with Euron's support. She promises to restore his lands when she takes the Seastone Chair. "He had not been the first boy she had ever kissed, but he was the first to undo the laces of her jerkin and slip a sweaty hand beneath to feel her budding breasts." He had been fostered at Pyke after Theon was taken hostage at Winterfell, but had been sent away when their maester "found them at their play."

She asks if he will come to the kingsmoot and support her, and he agrees, though Lord Blacktyde has said Euron will attack the people who attend. "I am your man forever, Asha. I would wed you. Your lady mother has given her consent." She tries to discourage him, but he swears that he has "never touched another woman." She tells him, "Go touch one ... or two, or ten. I have touched more men than I can count. Some with my lips, more with my axe." She tells him that she lost her virginity at sixteen and that he's "a sweet boy and always were, but I am no sweet girl."

When he pleads with her and seizes her arm, she pulls out her dirk and puts it at his throat. "I am your queen, not your wife. Remember that." And she leaves him "with a fat drop of blood slowly creeping down his neck."

32. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 1098-1128

Sansa

She is in the lofty and strange Eyrie, pretending to be Alayne Stone. It is a lonely place, with her only usual company her aunt, her elderly maid, and "the Lord Robert, eight going on three." Marillion is there, too, and he is still putting the moves on her, singing songs addressed to Sansa, to Lysa's irritation: "Her aunt was far from pleased. Lady Lysa doted on Marillion, and had banished two serving girls and even a page for telling lies about him." (Marillion swings both ways?) Littlefinger is often away, dealing with troubles in the Vale.

She gets up and opens the shutters to discover that it is snowing. She remembers happier times when it would snow at Winterfell, and gets up and dresses warmly. In the garden she starts to make snowballs, remembering a snowball fight with Arya, but there is no one to fight with. She decides to make a snow castle, and "before very long Sansa knew it was Winterfell."

Her maid calls down to ask if she wants breakfast, but Sansa says no. Lysa looks down briefly from her balcony, and Maester Colemon watches her for a while from the rookery. She is trying to build a bridge that will stay up when Littlefinger appears and tells her to pack the snow around a stick for support. He recognizes it as Winterfell, and says he used to dream of it. "In my dreams it was ever a dark place, and cold." Sansa replies that it was warm, heated by the hot springs, and that "inside the glass gardens it was always like the hottest day of summer."

She sets out to make the glass roof over the gardens, and he shows her how to create the frame from twigs. He pauses for a moment to observe that she is smiling, perhaps for the first time since her deliverance from King's Landing. Playfully, she tosses some snow at him. He says, "I told you that nothing could please me more than to help you with your castle. I fear that was a lie as well. Something else would please me more." He pulls her to him and kisses her.

She pulls away from him and protests for the sake of Lysa, but he persists: "I think you might be even more beautiful than your mother was your age." He reminds her of the drunken Marillion. But then they are interrupted by Lord Robert, who is carrying "the threadbare cloth doll he carried everywhere." When she tells him it is Winterfell, "The great castle of the north," Robert pretends to be a giant and, swinging the doll, knocks down parts of it. Sansa appeals to him to stop, and grabs the doll, ripping off its head.

Robert wails, and then begins to have a seizure, collapsing on the castle and knocking it to pieces. Littlefinger grabs the boy's wrists and shouts for the maester. Soon a crowd of servants, trained by Lysa to respond to any sound that indicates the boy is upset, arrives and the maester gives him some dreamwine and has him taken to the maester's chambers for a leeching. Sansa says she didn't mean to rip the doll, but Robert protests, "She killed him! I hate her! She's a bastard and I hate her!"

"My lord husband," Sansa thinks as he is led away. Then she angrily sticks the doll's head on a broken branch and puts it "atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle." Littlefinger laughs, and she leaves him there to return to her chambers. She hopes Lysa will banish her from the Eyrie, and vows to tell her that she doesn't want to marry Robert.

Late in the afternoon, Lysa sends Marillion to summon her. He tells her he is composing a song about "a baseborn girl so beautiful she bewitched every man who laid eyes upon her." She lets him accompany her to the High Hall, where he bars the doors and leaves the guards outside. Lysa is sitting on the dais, but Robert isn't there. Sansa curtsies to her, and Lysa says, "I saw what you did." Sansa says she didn't mean to rip the doll apart, but Lysa informs her that that's not what she saw: "I saw you kissing him."

"He kissed me," Sansa replies, but Lysa insists, "You threw yourself at him." Sansa persists in her defense, but Lysa won't hear it: "They all tried to take him from me. My lord father, my husand, your mother ... Catelyn most of all. She liked to kiss my Petyr too, oh yes she did." Sansa backs away and says, "My mother?" But Lysa rants on about how Catelyn tried to win Littlefinger, asking, "But you remember none of it, do you? ... Do you?" Sansa is confused, and protests that she wasn't born, and wonders if Lysa is "drunk, or mad?" Lysa rambles on about giving her virginity to Littlefinger. "He told me he loved me then, but he called me Cat, just before he fell back to sleep." Sansa is terrified, and asks if she may leave, but Lysa says no.

Then she tells Sansa that she was forced to marry Jon Arryn, who took her even though he knew she wasn't a virgin. She and Littlefinger, she says, "made a baby together, a precious little baby.... When they stole him from me, I made a promise to myself that I would never let it happen again." They wanted to send Robert to Dragonstone, she says, or to marry him to Cersei, but she prevented it. Sansa says what she thinks Lysa wants to hear: "I swear, I won't every kiss him again, or ... entice him." But Lysa takes this as a confession, and seizes Sansa by the wrist, calling out to command Marillion to sing a song, "The False and the Fair."

As he sings, Lysa drags Sansa toward "a white weirwood door set in the marble wall" and held in place by bronze bars. Sansa recognizes it as the Moon Door. Lysa commands her to raise the bars, and Sansa goes along, hoping that if she obeys Lysa will come to her senses. When the bars are removed, the wind blows the door open with a bang. Lysa begins to push her toward the door, and when they reach the opening tells her to look down. "There was nothing in front of her but empty air, and a waycastle six hundred feet below clinging to the side of the mountain."

Marillion continues to sing as Sansa struggles with Lysa at the door. Finally, Sansa grabs her aunt's hair as they teeter on the brink. Lysa shrieks, "Let go of my hair!" Outside, the guards have heard the disturbance and bang on the door, and Marillion stops singing. Then Littlefinger enters from the unguarded back way, and asks what Lysa is doing. Lysa grabs Sansa's hair and says, "She kissed you.... I was teaching her a lesson, that was all." Littlefinger says, "I think she understands now. Isn't that so, Alayne?" Sansa sobs that she does.

Lysa says that Sansa doesn't belong her, and Littlefinger assures her that they'll send her away. "Let her up, now. Let her away from the door." But Lysa cries, "NO!" grasping Sansa tighter.

Tears ran down her aunt's puffy red face. "I gave you my maiden's gift. I would have given you a son too, but they murdered him with moon tea, with tansy and mint and wormwood, a spoon of honey and a drop of pennyroyal. It wasn't me, I never knew, I only drank what Father gave me...."

So the tansy that Lord Hoster talked about in his final delirium was not a woman, as Catelyn thought, but an abortifacient.

Littlefinger moves closer, trying to quiet Lysa. "We don't want Alayne to know more than she should, do we? Or Marillion?" But Lysa refuses to let go of Sansa's hair. "I saw you kissing in the snow. She's just like her mother. Catelyn kissed you in the godswood, but she never meant it, she never wanted you." Littlefinger comes closer. "There's no cause for all these tears," he says, and the word reminds Lysa of the poison, the tears of Lys, that she says Littlefinger told her to put in Jon Arryn's wine. She wrote to Catelyn to say the Lannisters did it, just as he suggested. "We're together now, we're together after so long, so very long, why would you want to kiss herrrrrr?"

Littlefinger assures her that they will be together now, forever. Lysa asks, "Truly?" And Littlefinger replies, "Truly. Now unhand the girl and come give me a kiss." Lysa lets go of Sansa, who crawls away from the Moon Door and grasps a pillar firmly. Littlefinger lets Lysa hold him for a moment, then puts his hands on her arms and assures her, "I've only loved one woman, I promise you." Lysa wants him to swear it: "Only one?"

"Only Cat," he says, and pushes her out the Moon Door. Marillion gasps in surprise. Then Littlefinger goes to Sansa, sees that she's all right, and tells her, "Run let my guards in, then. Quick now, there's no time to lose. This singer's killed my lady wife."

Epilogue

Merrett Frey has come to ransom his nephew, Petry, known as Petyr Pimple. He had volunteered for the task, despite the derision of his father, Lord Walder. Merrett is waiting for the old man,who is almost ninety-two, to die, though when he thinks about it, he's not sure if his successor, whoever that may be among his many prodigy, will be better. It was Lord Walder who ordered the massacre of the Red Wedding, but the plot had been laid by Lame Lothar, along with Roose Bolton, even "down to which songs would be played." So there is likely to be a bloodbath among the sons when Lord Walder dies. Merrett himself is ninth in line of succession, and possessed of no particular skills or luck. After being beaned by a mace in a tourney, he has suffered from crippling headaches.

He thought his luck had changed when Roose Bolton chose his daughter, Fat Walda, for a wife, but his father soon disabused him of that notion: Bolton had chosen her because of her weight, because the promised dowry was his bride's weight in silver and not because Bolton liked the prospect of a connection with "Merrett Muttonhead." Even at the Red Wedding, he had been assigned the task of getting the Greatjon too drunk to fight, and he had failed at that.

But now if he could bring back Petyr Pimple, it might put him in favor with Petyr's father, Ser Ryman, the heir apparent to the Twins. The meeting with the outlaws holding Petyr has been set for Oldstones. He hears music and follows the sound to find a man we recognize as Tom Sevenstrings, playing on a woodharp. Then a harsh voice asks if he has brought the gold, and Merrett finds himself surrounded by outlaws. With them is a woman in a hooded cloak. The speaker, "a big bearded man with crooked green teeth and a broken nose," repeats his question, and Merrett tells him it's in his saddlebag and he'll produce it when he sees Petyr. But another of the outlaws simply steps forward, reaches in the saddlebag, and finds the money.

Panicked that they will take the money and keep Petyr too, Merrett asks which one of the men is Beric Dondarrion, thinking that because he had been a lord before he was an outlaw, Dondarrion "might still be a man of honor." A couple of the men claim to be Dondarrion, and then begin to quarrel over which of them really is. So he asks for his nephew -- "actually more a great half-nephew, but there was no need to go into that" -- and says he'll be gone. A man in a yellow cloak says he's in the godswood and he'll take Merrett to him.

"Petyr Pimple was hanging from the limb of an oak, a  noose tight around his long thin neck." Merrett protests that he wasn't supposed to be killed, and that he had kept his end of the bargain, but suddenly finds a noose around his own neck. "You'd never dare hang a Frey," he says, and the man in the yellow cloak replies, "That other one, the pimply boy, he said the same thing." Merrett says his father will pay more to ransom him, but Sevenstrings says Lord Walder isn't the kind to be fooled twice: "Next time he'll send a hundred swords instead of a hundred dragons, I fear." Then he offers to let Merrett go if he'll tell them where they can find Sandor Clegane.

Merrett has no idea, so the singer tells Lem to go ahead with the hanging. Merrett pleads, "I have children," and the one-eyed outlaw replies, "That Young Wolf never will." Merrett protests that Robb had shamed them with his marriage.

"It was vengeance, we had a right to our vengeance. It was war. Aegon, we called him Jinglebell, a poor lackwit never hurt anyone, Lady Stark cut his throat.... Stark's direwolf killed four of our wolfhounds and tore the kennelmaster's arm off his shoulder, even after we'd filled him full of quarrels..."

Lem, the man in the yellow cloak, says, "So you sewed his head on Robb Stark's neck after both o' them were dead." Merrett says it was his father's idea. "All I did was drink. You wouldn't kill a man for drinking." He remembers hearing that Beric Dondarrion always lets a man have a trial. "I only drank some wine ... you have no witness."

But they do, the singer says, and the woman comes forward and lowers his hood. Merrett can't believe what he's seeing: "No. No, I saw her die. She was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to ear. She was dead."

The gash in Catelyn's neck is hidden by her cloak, but her flesh is soft and "the color of curdled milk." She has lost half of her hair and what remains is white, and her face is "shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails." Her eyes are full of hatred.  Lem says she can't speak because the cut in her throat went too deep. He asks her if he took part in it, and she nods. Merrett is hoist in the air, "kicking and twisting, up and up and up."

27. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 927-959

Sansa

She is on board the Merling King, and has "been sick for most of the voyage ... sick with terror, sick with fever, or seasick." She has dreamed of Joffrey clawing at his throat, and of Tyrion, who, she tells Littlefinger, didn't kill Joffrey. Littlefinger says that he may not have killed Joffrey, but Tyrion had been married before and "when he grew bored with her, he made a gift of her to his father's guardsmen."

They near the Fingers, and Littlefinger tells her they will be going ashore. The ship is going on to Braavos, and they will stay at Littlefinger's "ancestral home" before leaving for the Eyrie, where he is to marry Lysa Arryn. This is all news to Sansa, who had hoped that she was going to Winterfell. But he reminds her that Winterfell has been destroyed and that she has no family left.

Sansa barely knows her aunt Lysa, but she assumes that she will treat her kindly in memory of Catelyn. "And the Vale of Arryn was beautiful, all the songs said so. Perhaps it would not be so terrible to stay here for a while." But the tower and the bleak and rocky setting where they land for their stay is not pleasant, as Littlefinger acknowledges when one of the servants tells him about their dinner: "Ah, cold salt mutton. I must be home. When I break my fast on gulls' eggs and seaweed soup, I'll be certain of it."

They make their way across a strand that is slick with seaweed and covered with sheep droppings. When they are settled, he tells her that she must conceal her identity: "If Sansa Stark should be seen in the Vale, the eunuch will know within a moon's turn, and that would create unfortunate ... complications." So she must pretend to be his illegitimate daughter, Alayne Stone, whose "mother was a gentlewoman of Braavos, daughter of a merchant prince." Sansa is embarrassed at being thought a bastard, but agrees to go along with it as a kind of game.

Sansa had decided that Ser Dontos must have killed Joffrey, but Littlefinger is amused at the idea. "No, all Dontos had to do was lead you from the castle ... and make certain you wore your silver hair net." He also reveals that he has operatives at work in the castle, and calls over his servant, an old man named Oswell. He is the father of three sons, he says, and all of a sudden Sansa realizes that he's a Kettleblack. Tyrion had dismissed Cersei's guards and sent Bronn to hire sellswords. When Littlefinger got word of it, he introduced Bronn to the Kettleblack brothers.

Sansa remembers that Ser Osmund had been near Joffrey that night, and jumps to a conclusion: "So one of the Kettleblacks put the poison in Joff's cup?" But Littlefinger says they are too untrustworthy to enlist in a plot. Sansa is stymied in her attempts to identify the poisoner, until Littlefinger says, "I will wager that at some point during the evening someone told you that your hair net was crooked and straightened it for you." The Queen of Thorns, Sansa remembers in surprise. "You cannot mean ... she wanted to take me to Highgarden, to marry me to her grandson...."

Willas Tyrell would have bored Sansa, Littlefinger says. When he went to Highgarden to negotiate the marriage of Margaery and Joffrey, the Queen of Thorns kept asking questions about the king. Littlefinger praised Joffrey, but let his servants tell the Tyrells' servants the truth about him. He also planted the idea of Loras Tyrell's joining the Kingsguard, which appealed to Mace Tyrell. "Lady Olenna was not about to let Joff harm her precious darling granddaughter," but her son wanted Margaery to marry a king. The king didn't have to be Joffrey, however. "We shall have another wedding soon, wait and see. Margaery will marry Tommen."

The intricacy of the plot astonishes Sansa, but she's grateful to be away from King's Landing. Finally, after eight days, Lysa arrives with her retinue, which includes a septon "and a handsome singer with a wisp of a mustache and long sandy curls" -- Marillion, who had come to the Eyrie with Tyrion and stayed on. Sansa is surprised at how homely Lysa is, and how much older than Catelyn she looks. Sansa curtsies deeply when she is presented to her, but "Lysa Arryn did not seem greatly pleased to see her," and is put out to learn that she's Littlefinger's bastard. But uppermost in her mind is marrying him, so she arranges for the wedding to take place immediately.

Lysa is so eager to be bedded by Littlefinger that she warns him, "after all these years of silence and whisperings, I mean to scream when you love me. I am going to scream so loud they'll hear me in the Eyrie!" And so she does. Sansa goes outside to escape the noises from the bridal chamber, and when she returns everyone in the tower is drunk, including Marillion, who introduces himself and then makes a serious pass at her. She fends him off as well as she can, but to no avail. She is in serious difficulty when Ser Lothar Brune, who had come to the tower with Littlefinger, appears and draws a dagger, telling Marillion to go, and giving him a cut to make the point. He tells her, "Lord Petyr said watch out for you."

When she heard Lothar's voice, Sansa had at first thought it was Sandor Clegane's. That night, she sleeps badly and dreams of her wedding night, in which Tyrion and the Hound are merged into a single person. The next morning, she is summoned to speak with her aunt -- Littlefinger has told Lysa who Sansa really is. Lysa tells her she looks like Catelyn, but when Sansa thanks her she is informed that it wasn't a compliment. "If truth be told, you look too much like Catelyn. Something must be done. We shall darken your hair before we bring you back to the Eyrie, I think."

Then Lysa tells her that she loathed Jon Arryn and was always in love with Littlefinger, but her father forbade his marrying her. She asks about her marriage to Tyrion and is glad to hear that it was never consummated. She assures Sansa that Tyrion will soon be dead and asks, "How would you like to marry your cousin, the Lord Robert." Sansa knows that Robert is a sickly boy, but politely says, "I ... can scarcely wait to meet him, my lady. But he is still a child, is he not."

Lysa says that Robert "is eight. And not robust." But she adds, "The seed is strong, my lord husband said before he died. His last words.... I see no reason why you should not be wed as soon as we know that your Lannister husband is dead. A secret wedding, to be sure." He likes to be read to, and to play games, "but you must always let him win."

Jon

They have relocated to the top of the Wall, leaving Castle Black to Maester Aemon and a handful of old or ill men unfit for the work of defense. Jon catches a few hours rest when he can in the warming shed.  The wildlings are regrouping and rebuilding, in the meantime firing arrows when they can. The Watch has a telescope, and Jon can identify some of the people he had known, including Dalla, who is immensely pregnant.

The wildlings are building a turtle, a kind of upside-down ship covered with mammoth hide, so they can approach the Wall. The Watch has run out of oil and pitch, and their supply of arrows is running low as well. There are no fletchers to make any more, and when Jon sent to Mole Town for help, the news came back that the village had been deserted. Jon wonders if it is time for them to leave as well.

Word comes that the turtle is on the move, and Jon has the warhorn blown to alert everyone. If the turtle manages to breach the gate, it will come down to hand-to-hand combat in the narrow tunnel far below. Jon knows that the men are waiting for his orders, and he sends some to the catapults and the scorpions, and tells the rest to ready their bows with fire arrows, though he knows they won't be much use against the turtle. Sure enough, their fire gutters out in the wet mammoth hide. One of the trebuchets is still out of order, and the wildlings have devised a route out of reach of the working one.

The only thing they can do now is try to crush the turtle when it arrives at the Wall. They have prepared barrels full of rocks and water which has frozen solid overnight. They roll them to the edge of the Wall and line them up above the gate. Jon leans out so far over the edge that he almost tips over, but Pyp catches him in time. Finally, they roll the barrel over, hear it bounce off the side of the Wall and then crash into the turtle. The men inside the turtle begin to scatter. They roll the next one over. "By the time they were done, the front of Mance's turtle was a crushed and splintered ruin, and wildlings were spilling out the other end and scrambling for their camp." They were safe for another day.

Jon goes down to Castle Black to get some sleep, and when he wakes four men are standing over him with a lantern. They order him to get up and go with them. They are dressed in the black of the Night's Watch, so he obeys, and when they get to the Lord Commander's solar he finds Maester Aemon with Ser Alliser Thorne and some other brothers. Thorne says, "Here's the turncloak now, my lord. Ned Stark's bastard, of Winterfell."

Jon protests that he is no turncloak, but the man seated behind the Old Bear's table says, "We shall see." When Thorne says, "Lord Snow, he likes to call himself," Jon protests that it was Thorne who started calling him that. He remembers that Mormont had sent Thorne to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, so he assumes that the others are from that castle and asks how many men they have brought to defend the Wall.

"It's me who'll ask the questions," the jowly man replied. "You've been charged with oathbreaking, cowardice, and desertion, Jon Snow. Do you deny that you abandoned your brothers to die on the Fist of the First Men and joined the wildling Mance Rayder, this self-styled King-beyond-the-Wall?"

Maester Aemon speaks up to say that he and Donal Noye had heard Jon's story and were satisfied that his explanations were true, but the man behind the table insists on hearing them for himself. So Jon begins his story of the mission with Qhorin Halfhand again, only to be interrupted by mockery from Ser Alliser Thorne. When Jon talks back to Thorne's insults, the man behind the desk tells him he is to address Thorne as ser, and himself as "m'lord." He is Janos Slynt, he tells Jon, and he is commander at Castle Black until Bowen  Marsh returns. He adds, "I will not suffer to hear an anointed knight like the good Ser Alliser mocked by a traitor's bastard." And then he asks Jon if he denies having slept with a wildling woman.

Jon will not dishonor the memory of Ygritte by denying it, and protests when Ser Alliser calls her an "unwashed whore." When Slynt says, "You admit to being an oathbreaker, then," Jon can only admit that he had broken his vows with Ygritte, as half of the Watch had done with the whores of Mole's Town. And he continues to protest that he never turned his cloak and had escaped the wildlings at the first opportunity.

Slynt then orders "the other prisoner" to be brought in. Jon doesn't recognize him at first, but it's Rattleshirt, who says that Jon is the one who killed Qhorin Halfhand. Slynt asks Jon if he is going to claim that Halfhand ordered Jon to kill him, and Jon can only reply, "He told me to do whatever they asked of me." Slynt and Thorne express their contempt for his answer, and they reject his further account of the situation in which he and Halfhand had found themselves. To prove his loyalty, Jon removes the glove and displays the hand he burned saving Mormont from the wight.

Septon Cellador now adds to the case against Jon by mentioning that he "refused to say his vows properly in the sept" but instead took them "before a heart tree. His father's gods, he said, but they are wildling gods as well." But Maester Aemon steps up to defend Jon:

"My lords, when Donal Noye was slain, it was this young man Jon Snow who took the Wall and held it, against all the fury of the north. He has proved himself valiant, loyal, and resourceful. Were it not for him, you would have found Mance Rayder sitting here when you arrived, Lord Slynt." 

But Slynt will have none of it. Jon's father died a traitor, and Jon will be hanged. He orders him taken to an ice cell. But when Ser Alliser seizes him, Jon grabs him by the throat and almost throttles him before the others can intervene. Thorne says, "You see for yourselves, brothers. The boy is a wildling."

24. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 809-856

Tyrion

Standing for the wedding makes Tyrion extremely uncomfortable, not least because he has drunk so much wine he needs to urinate. And he is seething with his recognition that Joffrey was the one who sent the assassin to kill Bran: Jaime would have taken care of the job himself, and Cersei would never have used a weapon that could be traced to her. But he still hasn't figured out a motive other than "Simple cruelty, perhaps." He wishes now that he hadn't indicated to Joffrey that he knew about the dagger. "My big mouth will be the death of me, I swear it."

After the ceremony, as they are riding back in the litter, Tyrion suggests to Sansa that they go to Casterly Rock for a while. It would get him away from Joffrey and Cersei, and he tells her about the places there he knew as a boy. But her responses to the suggestion are cold and distant: "Yes, my lord. As you wish."

He relieves himself and begins to change for the wedding feast, thinking gloomily about the coming reign of King Joffrey, especially after he comes of age:  "who would be mad enough to contest Joffrey's rule now, after what had befallen Stannis Baratheon and Robb Stark?" He decides to get very drunk at the feast. He goes to Sansa's bedchamber where "Shae had arranged her hair artfully in a delicate silver net winking with dark purple gemstones." Shae begs Sansa to let her accompany her to serve at the table. "I so want to see the pigeons fly out of the pie." But Sansa has to tell her that Cersei has already chosen the servers, and Tyrion adds that "the hall will be too crowded."

On the way to the feast, they exchange courtesies with other guests, and Lady Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, comes up to Sansa and says, "The wind has been at your hair." Then she reaches up and straightens Sansa's hair net.

Joffrey and Margaery ride into the throne room on a pair of white horses. Sansa and Tyrion are seated to the right of the king, next to Ser Garlan Tyrell and his wife, Leonette. There are a dozen others between them and Joffrey, which doesn't bother Tyrion at all, even though by rights, as the king's former Hand, he should have been much closer. The first of the seventy-seven courses, a soup of mushrooms and snails, is served. Tyrion thinks, "Seventy-seven dishes, while there are still starving children in this city, and men who would kill for a radish." Tyrion finishes the soup quickly, glad to have something on his stomach beside the wine he has been drinking all day. Sansa, however, only tastes it and pushes it away.

The first of the seven singers appears, and sings a song celebrating the aid of Renly's ghost in defeating Stannis. He also includes "The Rains of Castamere" among his songs. Then there is a dancing bear, Moon Boy chases Butterbumps on stilts, and a troupe of Pentoshi tumblers, as the other courses are served. Another singer appears, and again his songs include "The Rains of Castamere." Tyrion asks Sansa which singer she preferred, and she says, "I'm sorry, my lord. I was not listening."

She was not eating, either. "Sansa, is aught amiss?" He spoke without thinking, and instantly felt the fool. All her kin are slaughtered and she's wed to me, and I wonder what's amiss."

Pryomancers do tricks with fire and a juggler juggles swords and axes, and then another singer comes in with a ballad about the Battle of the Blackwater. Tyrion grumbles, "If I am ever Hand again, the first thing I'll do is hang all the singers," which makes Lady Lyonette laugh. The song goes on for seventy-seven verses, and by the time it ends, Grand Maester Pycelle has fallen asleep, and two of the guests get into a drunken fight in which one stabs the other.

Then Joffrey gets to his feet and calls out drunkenly, "Bring on my royal jousters!" The doors open and two dwarfs, one mounted on a dog and the other on a pig, enter, struggling with their lances and shields. The crowds hoots with laughter -- "even Lord Tywin looked mildly amused." Sansa, however, is not laughing, which pleases Tyrion. He decides not to blame the dwarfs and to be gracious about it and to give them each a purse of silver when it is all over. "And come the morrow, I will find whoever planned this little diversion and arrange for a different sort of thanks."

The combat of the dwarfs becomes more and more grotesque, and the laughter more raucous. "Joffrey was snorting wine from both nostrils." He proclaims one of the dwarfs champion, and then calls for a new challenger. He turns to Tyrion and calls out, "Uncle! You'll defend the honor of my realm, won't you? You can ride the pig!" Tyrion finds himself standing on the table saying to Joffrey, "I'll ride the pig ... but only if you ride the dog!" Joffrey is confused, and says, "Me? I'm no dwarf. Why me?" Whereupon Tyrion replies, "Why you're the only man in the hall that I'm certain of defeating!"

Laughter echoes through the hall and Joffrey's expression turns to one of "blind rage." Tyrion hops down from the table as Joffrey is helped down by Ser Osmund and Ser Meryn. Noticing Cersei's glare, Tyrion blows her a kiss. The musicians start to play again, and Tyrion calls for another cup of wine. But Ser Garlan alerts him that Joffrey is headed his way.

Joffrey is carrying the huge golden wedding chalice that he had been given, and he empties its contents on Tyrion's head. Ser Garlan says, "That was ill done, Your Grace." But Tyrion holds his temper and tries to defuse the situation: "Not every king would think to honor a humble servant by serving him from his own royal chalice. A pity the wine spilled." Joffrey's pride and humorlessness won't let him acknowledge Tyrion's graceful step-down: "It didn't spill.... And I wasn't serving you, either."

Margaery, however, is on top of the situation and steers him back to his seat, telling him another singer is about to perform. Lady Olenna Tyrell is there, too, and says, "I do so hope he plays us 'The Rains of Castamere.' It has been an hour. I've forgotten how it goes." Margaery says that Ser Addam wants to propose a toast, and Joffrey says he doesn't have any wine. He tells Tyrion to be his cupbearer, and Tyrion replies, "I would be most honored." Once again, Joffrey proves incapable of irony:

"It's not meant to be an honor!" Joffrey screamed. "Bend down and pick up my chalice." Tyrion did as he was bid, but as he reached for the handle Joff kicked the chalice through his legs. "Pick it up! Are you as clumsy as you are ugly?" He had to crawl under the table to find the thing. "Good, now fill it with wine." He claimed a flagon from a serving girl and filled the goblet three-quarters full. "No, on your knees, dwarf." Kneeling, Tyrion raised up the heavy cup, wondering if he was about to get a second bath. But Joffrey took the wedding chalice one-handed, drank deep, and set it on the table. "You can get up now, Uncle."

Joffrey and Cersei laugh as Tyrion struggles to stand, but Lord Tywin coolly directs Joffrey's attention to the great dove-filled pie that is now being brought in. "Your sword is needed."

Joffrey draws his sword, but Margaery suggests that "Widow's Wail was not meant for slicing pies," so Joffrey asks for Ser Ilyn Payne to bring his sword. Sansa breaks her long silence and asks, "What has Ser Ilyn done with my father's sword?" Tyrion thinks, "I should have sent Ice back to Robb Stark." When the sword cuts through the pie crust, the doves fly from it to everyone's delight.

The servers bring the guests slices of hot pigeon pie with spoonfuls of lemon cream. But neither Tyrion nor Sansa has an appetite for it, and Tyrion suggests that she get some fresh air while he changes into a dry doublet. But he attracts Joffrey's notice and is forbidden to leave. "Serve me my wine," Joffrey orders. Tyrion has to stand on a chair to reach the big chalice, and Joffrey downs the wine greedily, some of it running down his chin. Margaery tries to get him to go back to his place for another toast, but Joffrey notices Tyrion's untouched pigeon pie, thrusts his hand into it, and wolfs it down.

He begins to cough, and takes another swallow of wine. The coughing grows worse. Margaery cries out, "He's choking," and the Queen of Thorns calls out for someone to help. Ser Garlan pounds Joffrey on the back and Ser Osmund Kettleblack opens his collar. "Joffrey began to claw at his throat, his nails tearing bloody gouges in the flesh. Beneath the skin, the muscles stood out as hard as stone. Prince Tommen was screaming and crying."

Tyrion realizes, "He is going to die." There is chaos all around, people either shoving to get a better view of the dying king or hurrying to leave the hall. Joffrey's eyes meet Tyrion's, and Tryion realizes that he has Jaime's eyes. "The boy's only thirteen," he thinks. He turns and looks for Sansa, but she isn't there anymore. He sees the wedding chalice, which has fallen on the floor. There is still half an inch of wine in it. "Tyrion considered it for a moment, then poured it on the floor."

He hears Cersei's scream, and he goes toward her. She is cradling Joffrey's body, but when Lord Tywin asks her to let him go, she clings tighter, so that it takes two men of the Kingsguard to pry her fingers loose. Margaery Tyrell is being consoled by her mother, who says, "He choked on the pie. It was naught to do with you."

"He did not choke," Cersei says. "My son was poisoned." And she orders Loras Tyrell to arrest Tyrion and Sansa.

Sansa

Joffrey was still alive when Sansa fled the throne room, but now she hears a bell begin to toll. She had hidden a change of clothing in the godswood, and she struggles to get out of her wedding finery, which she stuffs into a hole in an oak tree. Ser Dontos had told her to dress warmly in dark clothing. She also removes the silver hair net, and notices that one of the black amethysts is missing. This causes a moment of panic that she can't explain to herself except  that Ser Dontos had told her the net was magic.

There is a noise, and she calls out "Who's there?" It is Dontos, who is staggering drunk. In response to her question about the amethysts, he assures her that they were just gemstones. She persists: "There was murder in them!" But he reassures her that Joffrey "choked on his pigeon pie." She accuses him of poisoning Joffrey with a stone that he took from the net, but he denies it and urges her to come away with him. "Your husband's been arrested."

She turns her suspicions on Tyrion, who she knew hated Joffrey, and wonders if he knew about the hair net, and "How could you make someone choke by putting an amethyst in their wine?" And then she realizes that if Tyrion had done it, she might be implicated as well.

She follows Dontos through the castle to a secret exit and then finds herself at the top of a sheer wall. Dontos tells her that a man with a boat it waiting below to row them to the ship. "There's a sort of ladder, a secret ladder, carved into the stone." (The reader's suspicions may be aroused by this detail: Littlefinger once conducted Sansa's father down the same secret steps.) Terrified, Sansa follows Dontos down the steps, clinging to the face of the wall. Fifty yards downriver, they find the waiting boat, which glides through the wreckage at the mouth of the river and out into Blackwater Bay.

When they reach the ship, a rope ladder is lowered and she climbs, followed by the oarsman. Ser Dontos stays in the boat. When she is helped on board, she hears a familiar voice say, "She's cold." And then she sees his face: Lord Petyr Baelish, Littlefinger, is standing there with Ser Lothor Brune. From the boat, Dontos calls out that he needs to row back and is waiting for his payment. Littlefinger tells Lothor to give Dontos his "reward," and Lothor signals to three men who step forward with crossbows and kill Dontos, then Lothor tosses a torch into the boat and sets it ablaze.

Sansa cries out in protest that Dontos had saved her, but Littlefinger says,

"He sold you for a promise of ten thousand dragons. Your disappearance will make them suspect you in Joffrey's death. The gold cloaks will hunt, and the eunuch will jingle his purse. Dontos ... well, you heard him. He sold you for gold, and when he'd drunk it up he would have sold you again. A bag of dragons buys a man's silence for a while, but a well-placed quarrel [i.e., arrow] buys it forever." He smiled sadly. "All he did he did at my behest. I dared not befriend you openly. When I heard how you saved his life at Joff's tourney, I knew he would be the perfect catspaw."

He quotes from the note she had been sent: "Come to the godswood tonight if you want to go home," and she realizes that it had always been Littlefinger's scheme. Moreover, it was Littlefinger who had engineered the jousting dwarfs at the wedding, over Joffrey's objection: "His Grace said, 'Why would I want some ugly dwarfs at my feast? I hate dwarfs.' I had to take him by the shoulder and whisper, 'Not as much as your uncle will.'"

Sansa says, "They think Tyrion poisoned Joffrey," and Littlefinger replies, "Widowhood will become you, Sansa." But though she realizes that she ought to feel good about being freed from her marriage to Tyrion, she is uneasy about it. He shows her to her cabin, and tells her that his rescuing her is his gambit in the game of thrones. Besides, he had loved her mother, and "In a better world," she might have been his daughter, not Ned Stark's. "Put Joffrey from your mind, sweetling. Dontos, Tyrion, all of them. They will never trouble you again. You are safe now, that's all that matters. You are safe with me, and sailing home."

Jaime

He hears the news of Joffrey's death at an inn on the way to King's Landing. "They rode hard the next day, at Jaime's insistence. His so was dead, and his sister needed him." He wonders why he feels so little emotion at his son's death, and acknowledges that he "had seen him born, that was true, though more for Cersei than the child. But he had never held him," and Joffrey always believed Robert Baratheon was his father. He is more than ever determined that he will marry Cersei openly.

He rides back to talk to Brienne, who is mourning for Catelyn and Robb far more deeply than he is for Joffrey.

The strength is gone from her. The woman had dropped a rock on Robin Ryger, battled a bear with a tourney sword, bitten off Vargo Hoat's ear, and fought Jaime to exhaustion ... but she was broken now, done. "I'll speak to my father about returning you to Tarth, if it please you," he told her. "Or if you would rather stay, I could perchance find some place for you at court." 

She rejects the latter offer.

They ride into the city, but he is so changed that no one recognizes him until they enter the Red Keep and Ser Meryn Trant rides up. Jaime chides Meryn, "How many monarchs have you lost since I left the city? Two, is it?" Then Ser Balon Swann notices Jaime's missing hand. Jaime tells him, "I fight with my left now. It makes for more of a contest." He asks where he can find his father, and is told that he is meeting with Mace Tyrell and Prince Oberyn, a combination that surprises Jaime. And he asks about Cersei, who is praying in the sept over Joffrey's body.

But his inquiries are interrupted when Loras Tyrell notices Brienne in their company. He strides toward her and asks why she killed Renly. Loras doesn't believe her story about the shadow, and challenges her to combat. Jaime intervenes, but Loras ignores him until Jaime pulls rank: "I am the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, you arrogant pup." And he tells him to put his sword away "or I'll take it from you and shove it up some place even Renly never found." Loras puts his sword away but demands that Brienne be arrested. Jaime has her put in a tower cell under guard, then turns and goes toward the sept.

At the door another unfamiliar member of the Kingsguard challenges him, and only after a rebuke recognizes him. He begs Jaime's pardon for the error and introduces himself as Ser Osmund Kettleblack. Jaime tells him to make sure that no one else enters the sept while he is there with his sister. Cersei is kneeling at the altar of the Mother, but rises and embraces him. She comments on how thin he is, and about his shaven head, then is shocked when he displays the stump where his hand once was.

She turns to Joffrey's bier and says that Tyrion killed him, "Just as he'd warned me. One day when I thought myself safe and happy he would turn my joy to ashes in my mouth, he said." She says, "You'll kill him for me, won't you? You'll avenge our son." But Jaime is not so quick to believe in Tyrion's guilt and says he wants to know more. She says he'll hear more at the trial. Then she kisses him and says, "I am not whole without you." He returns the kiss passionately, and though she protests that the septons might enter, "he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother's altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath." When he tears away her underclothes he sees that she is menstruating, but that proves no deterrent.

Afterward, he wipes away the blood on the altar with his sleeve and they replace the candles. She tells him they must be careful, but he says he's "sick of being careful." He wants to marry her, the way the Targaryens married brothers and sisters. But she is much more cautious, and reminds him that "Tommen's throne derives from Robert." She tells him he's scaring her, and when he touches her cheek with his stump, out of the habit of using his right hand, she recoils. Backing off, she tells him that they'll talk about it later, that she has to question Sansa's maids, and that he should go see his father.

"I crossed a thousand leagues to come to you," he says, "and lost the best part of me along the way. Don't tell me to leave." She replies, "Leave me," and turns away.

He goes to see his father, and is pleased to find him alone, not wanting "to flaunt his maimed hand for Mace Tyrell or the Red Viper." But when he shows it to his father, "Lord Tywin pushed himself out of his chair, breath hissing between his teeth. "Who did this?" Jaime tells him it was Vargo Hoat, and Tywin reports that Gregor Clegane has taken Harrenhal and "found Hoat sitting alone in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, half-made with pain and fever from a wound that festered. His ear, I'm told." This delights Jaime, who can't wait to tell Brienne, though he knows she won't find it as funny as he does. Hoat's feet and hands have been cut off, but he isn't dead yet because "Clegane seems amused by the way the Qohorik slobbers."

Jaime asks about Joffrey's death, and Tywin seems to think that Tyrion poisoned him. "It was meant to appear as though he choked on a morsel of food, but I had his throat slit open and the maesters could find no obstruction." Jaime observes that it seems "rather foolish" of Tyrion to have poisoned Joffrey "with a thousand people looking on," but Tywin assures him, "The king's justice will be done." Jaime doesn't much believe in the power of evidence in "this city of liars," and when Tywin repeats the belief that "Lord Renly was murdered by one of his own guards, some woman from Tarth," Jaime repeats his belief in Brienne's innocence.

Tywin looks at the stump again and says, "You cannot serve in the Kingsguard without a sword hand," but Jaime insists that he can and will. He has a duty to do so. But his father counters,

"You do." Lord Tywin rose as well. "A duty to House Lannister. You are the heir to Casterly Rock. That is where you should be. Tommen should accompany you, as your ward and squire. The Rock is where he'll learn to be a Lannister, and I want him away from his mother. I mean to find a new husband for Cersei. Oberyn Martell perhaps, once I convince Lord Tyrell that the match does not threaten Highgarden. And it is past time you were wed. The Tyrells are now insisting that Margaery be wed to Tommen, but if I were to offer you instead--" 

Jaime lets out a thunderous "NO!" He insists, "The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard! And that's all I mean to be!" Tywin maintains an icy silence, which Jaime endures for as long as he can stand, but when he breaks it with, "Father...," Tywin says, "You are not my son." If he wants to be "the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and only that," so be it. 

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

Bran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daenerys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tyrion

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

Sansa

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know about bad dreams," Tyrion replies.