32. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 835-859

The Ugly Little Girl

Arya is serving at a meeting of the priests of the Many-Faced God, after which the kindly man tells her that the priest whose face is disfigured by sores and other signs of the plague wants to speak with her. He goes through the familiar routine, asking her, "Who are you?" and when she answers "No one," calling her a liar. "You are Arya of House Stark, who bites her lip and cannot tell a lie." She insists that she was Arya once, but that she isn't anymore.

Then he tells her, "You would kill for your own purposes, for your own pleasures. Do you deny it?" When she hesitates in her answer, he slaps her. Silently, she repeats her mantra, her list of the people she wants to see dead. He tells her that she is "too proud to serve," but sets her a task to prove her humility: "Give a man a certain gift.... No one you love, no one you hate, no one you have ever known. Will you kill him?" She says yes, and the next day she returns to the house of the fishmonger Brusco.

She soon sees the man she is supposed to kill. He is past fifty: "He has lived too long, she tried to tell herself. Why should he have so many years when my father had so few?" Then she remembers that she is Cat of the Canals, not Arya Stark, and has no father. She decides that the man is evil, but when she says that to the kindly man at the House of Black and White, he tells her, "He is a man like any other, with light in him and darkness." She dislikes his hands in particular, which look to her like white spiders.

She watches him for several days and decides that he is some kind of merchant, but he turns out to be an insurance broker. The kindly man explains that if a merchant's "ships are lost in a storm or taken by pirates, he promises to pay them for the value of the vessel and all its contents." She decides that he must have failed to pay someone's claim and that they have prayed for the man's death. But the kindly man won't tell her who has such a grudge.

She notices that the man has two guards, who keep people from getting too close and who taste his food before he eats. She suggests that she should wait until one of the guards leaves to urinate, stab the old man in the eye, and kill the other guard too. But the kindly man insists, "You are a servant of the Many-Faced God, and we who serve Him of Many faces give his gift only to those who have been marked and chosen." She realizes that she is not to kill anyone else in the process of killing the old man.

When she thinks she is ready to act, the kindly man says that she needs a different face: If Cat of the Canals kills him, that will cause trouble for Brusco and his family. She follows the kindly man down to a place in the temple she has never been: "the secret chambers where only the priests were permitted." They go down so far that she realizes she must be beneath the canals. Finally they reach a chamber, and by the light of the kindly man's lantern she sees a thousand faces hanging on the walls. She tells herself they are masks, but she realizes that they are in fact skins.

He tells her to sit and not to move. "This will hurt, ... but pain is the price of power." She closes her eyes and feels the knife, and then the blood flowing down her face. She is given a cup of something very tart to drink, and then the face is pulled over her own. "The leather scraped across her brow, dry and stiff, but as her blood soaked into it, it softened and turned supple." She feels hands choking her and hears "a noise, a hideous, crunching noise, accompanied by blinding pain. A face floated in front of her, fat, bearded, brutal, his mouth twisted in rage."

But then the priest speaks to her and tells her to breathe. When she does, the pain and the sensation of choking passes. She raises her hand to her face, but it feels unchanged. But the waif tells her that to others it looks different: "To others, your nose and jaw are broken.... One side of your face is caved in where your cheekbone shattered, and half your teeth are missing." The kindly man tells Arya that the person whose face she wears was beaten brutally by her father, and that she came to them asking for death. Arya thinks, "You should have killed him."

The next morning she makes her way through Braavos to the Purple Harbor where the old man does his business. She waits there until she sees a shipowner who has done business with the old man before. She follows him till she sees her opportunity to cut her way into the man's purse and steal his gold. He calls out "Thief!" as she dodges away, tripping him up in the process. Gold coins spill as she runs off into the alleys she knows well. She waits for an hour until until she knows the shipowner will have picked up all the coins and made his way to the insurance broker. Then she goes back to the House of Black and White.

The kindly man is waiting, and she gives him a gold coin. "I took one of his," she tells him, "but I left him one of ours." She has seen the old man bite into coins to test them. The kindly man realizes what she has done: The shipowner had paid the old man with the coin she had given him. "Soon after that the man's heart gave out. Is that the way of it? Very sad."

She is given back the face of Arya Stark and made an acolyte. The kindly man tells her, "On the morrow you will go to Izembaro to begin your first apprenticeship." He asks again who she is, and she replies, "No one."

Cersei

Cersei is pacing her cell, trying to steel herself for the ordeal she faces, telling herself, "A little walk and I'll be home, I'll be back with Tommen, in my own chambers inside Maegor's Holdfast." Then the septas come with shears and a straight razor. "When her locks and curls were piled up around her feet, one of the novices soaped her head and the silent sister scraped away the stubble with a razor." Then she is told to remove her shift, and her body and pubic hair are shaved too.

She is given a robe to cover her as they move through the sept, but she is denied sandals and walks barefoot through the crowd of worshipers who have gathered in the Great Sept of Baelor. A member of the Warrior's Sons kneels before her and introduces himself as Ser Theodan the True; he tells her that he is in command of her escort. She looks at the men in the escort and notices her former lover, Lancel Lannister.

The door opens and she steps outside, welcoming the stench of the city because it signals the end of her captivity in the sept. "It came to her suddenly that she had stood in this very spot before, on the day Lord Eddard Stark had lost his head." There seem to be as many people gathered in the plaza as there were on that day. Then Septa Unella steps forward and announces that Cersei "has committed grievous falsehoods and fornications." She is followed by Septa Moelle, who says that the queen has been ordered "to demonstrate her repentance by putting aside all pride and artifice and presenting herself as the gods made her before the good people of the city." Septa Scolera finishes by proclaiming Cersei's "walk of atonement."

Cersei recalls how, after her grandfather's death, Tywin Lannister had humiliated his own father's mistress by forcing her to walk naked through the streets of Lannisport. Cersei hadn't witnessed it herself, but she remembers mocking stories about how the woman had begged and pleaded and tried to cover her nakedness. She resolves not to have such stories told about her. "I am a lioness. I will not cringe for them," she thinks, and removes her robe.

She holds her head high as she descends the steps, though the wind is cold. The escort fans out around her, and a woman in the crowd cries out, "Whore!" She is flanked by Unella and Moelle, but Septa Scolera walks behind, ringing a bell and calling out, "shame upon the sinner, shame, shame." She hears street vendors selling meat pies, people yelling out things, and sees a rotten vegetable fly through the air, though it misses her. She steps in something slick, but Unella keeps her from falling and warns her to watch where she's going.

A man is eating some meat on a skewer and offers it to her. She turns away in disgust, but he flings it at her, striking her on the thigh and leaving a smear down her leg. As she leaves the plaza and begins the descent of Visenya's hill, the road becomes steeper and dirtier and she has to walk through puddles that she tells herself are rainwater but are probably horse piss. Obscenities are shouted, and more things are being thrown from the windows and balconies along the way. A dead cat is thrown and bursts open on the cobblestones, "spattering her lower legs with entrails and maggots."

She slips and falls halfway down the hill, and scrapes her knee. The captain of the escort tells her to move faster because the crowd is getting out of hand, then grabs her arm and pulls her after him. She steps on something sharp and begins to leave a trail of bloody footprints. People mock her sagging breasts, and she begins seeing familiar faces in the crowd: Tywin, Ned Stark, Sansa, Tyrion, and Joffrey. When she falls again she begs Septa Moelle for mercy, but Septa Unella says it's not much farther, and she realizes that she is at the foot of Aegon's High Hill, at the top of which is the castle.

The jeers and obscenities grow worse as she climbs, but she tells herself they are just words and she is "beautiful, the most beautiful woman in all Westeros."

She did not feel beautiful, though. She felt old, used, filthy, ugly. There were stretch marks on her belly from the children she had borne, and her breasts were not as firm as they had been when she was younger. Without a gown to hold them up, they sagged against her chest. I should not have done this. I was their queen, but now they've seen, they've seen, they've seen. I should never have let them see. Gowned and crowned, she was a queen. Naked, bloody, limping, she was only a woman, not so very different from their wives, more like their mothers than their pretty little maiden daughters. What have I done?

Then she has a vision of the hag who had predicted that she will be cast down by someone "younger and more beautiful." She begins to cry, and to try to cover her nakedness with her hands, and breaks into a run. She stumbles, falls, and begins to crawl, "scrambling uphill on all fours like a dog as the good folks of King's Landing made way for her, laughing and jeering and applauding her."

Finally she is there, at the gates, where Ser Boros Blount and Ser Meryn Trant are moving toward her. Ser Kevan is there, too, and she begs to see Tommen. But Kevan harshly says, "Not here. No son should have to bear witness to his mother's shame," and orders her covered up. A giant of a man picks her up in his arms and carries her. She realizes that he is wearing a white cloak. Then Qyburn appears and tells her that the man is Ser Robert Strong, the latest member of the Kingsguard. But when Cersei addresses him, he remains silent. Qyburn explains that "Ser Robert has taken a holy vow of silence.... He has sworn that he will not speak until all of His Grace's enemies are dead and evil has been driven from the realm."

22. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 579-604

Jon

As if he didn't have enough to deal with, Queen Selyse descends upon Jon with her retinue, so he meets her with a company of Night's Watch: "It would never do to come before this queen without a retinue of his own, if half of what they said about her was true. She might mistake him for a stableboy and hand him the reins of her horse." Even so, when he kneels before her she asks to see the lord commander, and he has to inform her, "My brothers chose me for that honor. I am Jon Snow."

She introduces him to Axell Florent, whose reputation has preceded him -- unfortunately. But more importantly, she brings with her Tycho Nestoris, of the Iron Bank of Braavos, who has come there to meet with Stannis. She asks to be taken to Melisandre, and Jon obliges. But on the way they encounter the giant, Wun Wun, who startles the queen's party but bows politely before her. "Even kneeling, he loomed over them." Selyse is unimpressed and asks, "Lord Snow, what is this bestial creature doing on our side of the Wall?" She doesn't like it when Jon says, "Wun Wun is a guest of the Night's Watch, as you are."

As Selyse and her company depart in a huff, Jon halts the banker, who agrees to talk with Jon in his solar. Tycho explains that he has come to Stannis about the debts that the Iron Throne has refused to pay. If Stannis is less obdurate about the debts, the bank might consider dealing with him. Jon tells Tycho that Stannis is away, marching on the Boltons, but he can supply horses and provisions to get him to Deepwood Motte and from there to go in search of Stannis, though he thinks to himself, "And you may well find his head upon a spike."

But Jon also wants a favor from the bank. He would like to borrow the three ships Tycho has at his disposal as well as enough gold to see the Watch through till spring. They haggle for an hour over the terms, helped along by the wine that Satin, Jon's steward, brings them. "By the time Jon Snow signed the parchment the Braavosi drew up, both of them were half-drunk and quite unhappy. Jon thought that a good sign." He intends to use the ships to rescue the people Mother Mole has led to Hardhome.

He conducts Tycho to the mess hall, where Ser Axell joins them and asks Jon about "this wildling princess His Grace King Stannis wrote of." Jon has persistently tried to correct the error of calling Val a princess, but to no avail. He also doesn't want to reveal that she has gone on a diplomatic errand for him. When Jon persists in keeping Val's whereabouts secret, though he knows that rumors of her departure have leaked out, Axell gets huffy: "My lord, have you forgotten who I am?" He can speak to the queen and "have this wildling girl delivered naked to the hall for our inspection." Jon says he doubts that the queen would violate the rules of hospitality in that way and takes his leave.

Back in his solar he reads over the agreement he had made with Tycho, regretting its necessity -- "when the choice is debt or death, best borrow" -- and wondering how the Iron Bank will deal with the reluctance of Cersei to repay: "When princes failed to repay the Iron Bank, new princes sprang up from nowhere and took their thrones. As poor plump Tommen may be about to learn," Jon thinks.

He dozes off in his chair, and is awakened by the news, "A girl's been found." He thinks of Val at first, but then remembers Melisandre's vision of a girl, supposedly Arya, riding a dying horse toward the Wall. She has been taken to Maester Aemon's chambers, and as he walks there he wonders what he can do to save her if it does prove to be Arya.

For a moment he thinks it is his sister, but she is almost as old as he is. And she soon reveals herself to be Alys Karstark, fleeing from a marriage to her cousin Cregan. He remembers meeting her some ten years ago at Winterfell with her father, whom Robb had beheaded for killing prisoners. She asks if there is a blood feud between her and Jon, but he assures her that when a man joins the Watch he puts all feuds behind him. She is glad to hear this because she has no one else to turn to "but the last son of Eddard Stark." Although she is the rightful heir to the family castle, Karstark, a marriage would deny her that right.

Jon tells her that he has nothing to offer her in the way of support, but he will write to Stannis requesting that he protect her. But she laughs bitterly and says, "Stannis will be dead before he gets your message." Arnolf Karstark is headed to Winterfell to support Roose Bolton. "Lord Stannis is marching to a slaughter." She kneels and begs Jon to protect her.

The Blind Girl

As for the real Arya Stark, she is better off than either Alys or the faux Arya, Jeyne Poole, except that she's blind. She still dreams wolf dreams, and she still recites her prayer for the deaths of her tormentors (most of whom are in fact already dead). And she still serves in the temple in Braavos, having learned to rely on her remaining sense: "Hear, smell, taste, feel, she reminded herself. There are many ways to know the world for those who cannot see."

She can even sense the presence of the kindly man by scent: "Men had a different smell than women, and there was a hint of orange in the air" from the orange peels he likes to chew. He asks her his usual question, "And who are you this morning?" And she replies with her usual answer, "No one," to which he says, "A lie." She is "that blind beggar girl." She has taken the name Beth, from a girl she once knew at Winterfell.

Then he asks if she would like her sight back. Perhaps tomorrow, she replies. "Not today." He asks where she went begging last night, and she tells him, "The Inn of the Green Eel." And he asks another usual question: "what three new things do you know that you did not know when last you left us." She replies with the scraps of gossip she has heard, but thinks, "It is snowing in the riverlands, in Westeros," which she has learned through her wolf dreams. "But he would have asked her how she knew that, and she did not think that he would like her answer."

She goes about her daily chores, using a stick to aid her. Every evening the waif brings her a cup of a bitter potion to drink, and Arya asks how long she will be blind. The waif's reply is, "Until darkness is as sweet to you as light, ... or until you ask us for your eyes. Ask and you shall see." But she holds off asking because she knows she will be sent away then. The waif has taken charge of her training since she became blind, and has trained her in poisons and potions and in the language of Braavos. She has lost her accent, but the kindly man wants her to learn High Valyrian and the languages of Lys and Pentos, too.

She also plays the lying game with the waif, learning to detect a lie by the sound of the words when it is spoken to her. Her training with Syrio Forel has helped her keep her balance when she encounters unfamiliar terrain. But she has endured cuts and bruises and burns while moving around the temple and the city, though many fewer now than when she started. One of her duties is to find the dead people in the temple on the mornings after they had drunk from the pool that puts an end to their lives. She helps lay out the bodies, and to sort through the coins and possessions of the dead.

One day she is doing this when she hears the door open behind her. She calls out, "Who is there?" but the answer, in a "deep, harsh, cold" voice is "No one." Then she feels movement and reaches out for her stick, holding it up to protect her face. There is a blow of wood on wood that almost knocks the stick out of her hand. She slashes back with her stick but misses, and the voice taunts her, "Are you blind?" She listens and when she hears a sound strikes out and makes contact. The voice says, "Good." The battle continues, and she receives more blows and makes fewer hits.

When it's over she returns to her task with the bodies, remembering when she was Cat, selling fish on the street. She liked that life the best, but after she killed Dareon, the singer who had deserted Samwell and Maester Aemon, the kindly man and the waif had given her the potion that blinded her.

The kindly man had told her that they would have taken her eyes from her anyway, to help her to learn to use her other senses, but not for half a year. Blind acolytes were common in the House of Black and White, but few as young as she. The girl was not sorry, though. Dareon had been a deserter from the Night's Watch; he had deserved to die.

But the kindly man disagreed that she had the right to take a life. In the temple, he explained, "We are but death's instruments, not death himself. When you slew the singer, you took god's powers on yourself. We kill men, but we do not presume to judge them. Do you understand?" She said yes, but thought no. And he told her she was lying. "And that is why you must now walk in darkness until you see the way. Unless you wish to leave us. You need only ask, and you may have your eyes back." So she didn't ask.

In the evening she goes out to beg, and before she does, the waif disguises her by making her ugly. She had never cared for being pretty, even though her mother and her sister had urged her to try. "But they were all dead now, even Arya, everyone but her half-brother, Jon. Some nights she heard talk of him, in the taverns and brothels of the Ragman's Harbor. The Black Bastard of the Wall, one man had called him." She knows her way to the various places where she begs, and tonight goes to a tavern called Pynto's. The cats at Pynto's recognize her from when she was Cat of the Canals.

The next morning when she tells the kindly man the three things she has learned, she says the Sealord had seized a slave ship called the Goodheart, which was carrying hundreds of slaves. "They were wildlings from Westeros, from a place called Hardhome," she says, and they had been taken by two slave ships. On the way back they had run into storms, and the Goodheart had put in to Braavos for repairs. The other ship may have made it to Lys, and if so there may be more slavers sent to Hardhome.

The kindly man asks what is the third thing she has learned, and she tells him she knows he's the one who has been hitting her when she lays out the corpses. She gives him a rap on the knuckles with her stick. He asks "how would a blind girl know that?" She thinks, "I saw you," but says, "I gave you three. I don't need to give you four."

That evening when the waif gives her the potion it is different. And in the morning she sees "a tallow candle burning where no candle had been the night before, its uncertain flame swaying back and forth like a whore at the Happy Port. She had never seen anything so beautiful."

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

Cat of the Canals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samwell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He goes to her.

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

Samwell

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jaime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

4. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 87-115

Arya

She is aboard the Titan's Daughter, heading for Braavos, which the captain's son tells her is home.

But that was stupid. Her home was gone, her parents dead, and all her brothers slain but Jon Snow on the Wall. That was where she had wanted to go. She told the captain as much, but even the iron coin did not sway him. Arya never seemed to find the places she set out to reach. Yoren had sworn to deliver her to Winterfell, only she had ended up in Harrenhal and Yoren in his grave. When she escaped Harrenhal for Riverrun, Lem and Anguy and Tom o' Sevens took her captive and dragged her to the hollow hill instead. Then the Hound had stolen her and dragged her to the Twins. Arya had left him dying by the river and gone ahead to Saltpans, hoping to take passage for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, only....

Only now she was going to Braavos, which might not be so bad, she guesses, since Syrio Forel and Jaqen H'ghar had been from Braavos.

She has a new name: Salty, because she had come aboard at Saltpans. And now they are approaching the colossus, the Titan of Braavos, which she had heard about in Old Nan's stories, except in them it was a living giant, and in fact it's only a statue. The thought of Old Nan reminds her of Winterfell, but she puts it out of mind: "All men must die," she tells herself, remembering the Braavosi phrase Valar morghulis, which had gained her passage on the ship. She has learned a few more Braavosi words and phrases on the ship, some of them from Denyo, the captain's youngest son.

She asks Denyo if the Titan is the god of Braavos, and he tells her, "All gods are honored in Braavos," where there are temples of various religions. But for Arya, none of the gods have any meaning, since they didn't protect her family from harm. In her mind she recites once again the list of people she wants dead, but there are only six left, now that Joffrey and Polliver and the Tickler are dead, and she had left the Hound dying without giving him the coup de grâce he had asked for.

As they get closer to Braavos, the gigantic statue bestriding the entrance to the harbor becomes visible. Suddenly it gives out "a mighty roar," startling Arya. The ship sails between its legs and she looks up to see faces peering out of the murder holes above it. They pass by what Denyo tells her is "The Arsenal of Braavos," which is "bristling with scorpions, spitfires, and trebuchets," and pass countless ships and docks and quays. She is surprised that the city has no walls, but Denyo tells her, "Our galleys are our walls. We need no other."

The captain, Ternesio Terys, appears and tells her that a boat will take her ashore. She had wanted to stay with the ship, but he has no need for her on the crew. So she finds herself in a boat gliding among the many islands that compose the city, along canals crossed by bridges. "They have no trees, she realized. Braavos is all stone, a grey city in a green sea." In the distance she sees "a massive  grey stone roadway of some kind, supported by three tiers of mighty arches marching away south into the haze." The boatman, Yorko Terys, explains that it is an aqueduct that "brings fresh water from the mainland."

They pass by a variety of temples, including one to R'hllor, with whom Arya is familiar from her encounter with Thoros of Myr.  Finally Yorko deposits at a dock with steps leading to a temple with a black tile roof. Bidding her "Valar dohaeris," he rows away. She tells herself, "I am a wolf, and will not be afraid," pats the hilt of Needle, and takes the steps two at a time to the doors at the top. The left-hand door is pale weirwood that reminds her of the heart tree at Winterfell. The right-hand door is ebony, and in the center of each is a carved moon face. She tries to open them, but they don't budge, then pounds on them. Finally she takes out the iron coin and says "Valar morghulis," and the doors open.

When the doors close behind her, it takes a while for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. She hears whispering and weeping and other sounds, including water. Statues of all sorts of gods surround her. When she reaches the center of the temple she finds a pool of water ten feet across, and a young man weeping by it. He dips his fingers in the water and sucks them. She decides he must be thirsty, so she takes a stone cup, dips it in the pool, and gives it to him. He says, "Valar morghulis" and she replies, "Valar dohaeris." Then he drinks from the cup and stands up, revealing a blood stain below his belt. "You're stabbed," she says, but he doesn't answer. He goes to an alcove in the wall, and she realizes that there are people in other alcoves who are dead or dying.

She startles when someone touches her, then realizes it's a small girl with hollow cheeks, who speaks to her in a language she doesn't recognize. Arya asks if she knows the Common Tongue and a voice behind her says, "I do." It is a tall man in a hooded robe like the one the little girl is wearing: the right side is black and the left side is white. He tells her she is in the House of Black and White. She says she is looking for Jaqen H'ghar, but he doesn't know the name. Then he asks for hers. When she says "Salty," he says, "No.... Tell me your name." She tries Squab, and Nan, and Weasel, and Arry, but he knows they aren't her real name. Finally she says, "I am Arya, of House Stark."

He accepts that as her real name, and says, "the House of Black and White is no place for Arya, of House Stark." She has no place to go, she says. "Do you fear death?" he asks, and when she says no, he lowers his cowl. "Beneath he had no face; only a yellowed skull with a few scraps of skin still clinging to the cheeks, and a white worm wriggling from one empty eye socket." He croaks, "Kiss me, child."

Arya decides not to be frightened, so she kisses him where his nose would be, then takes the worm and starts to eat it. It fades away before she can put it in her mouth. "The yellow skull was melting too, and the kindliest old man that she had ever seen was smiling down at her." He says no one has ever tried to eat the worm before and asks if she is hungry.

"Yes, she thought, but not for food."

Cersei

She and Tommen are on their way to Tywin's funeral. She is fussing at him for wanting to ride his horse and throw pennies to people, for opening the curtains to the litter, for not sitting up straight, and then getting annoyed because he is so obedient: "A king had to be strong. Joffrey would have argued." He observes that there aren't many people in the street, and she blames it on the rain though she knows that there was no love for Tywin Lannister in the city.

There aren't many mourners at the Great Sept of Baelor, either. The morning service is for the aristocracy, and Cersei knows she will have to return for the evening service for the common people, "so that the smallfolk might see her mourn. The mob must have its show. It was a nuisance. She had offices to fill, a war to win, a realm to rule. Her father would have understood that."

The elderly High Septon meets them, wearing the crystal-and-gold crown that Tywin had given him to replace the one that was lost when the mob tore the previous High Septon to pieces on the day Myrcella sailed for Dorne. Cersei realizes to her annoyance that this High Septon had been appointed by Tyrion. She examines his expression to try to discover what Tyrion might have told him about her.

At least I will not be expected to don mourning for Tyrion. I shall dress in crimson silk and cloth-of-gold for that, and wear rubies in my hair. The man who brought her the dwarf's head would be raised to lordship, she had proclaimed, no matter how mean or low his birth or station. Ravens were carrying her promise to every part of the Seven Kingdoms, and soon enough word would cross the narrow sea to the Nine Free Cities and the lands beyond. Let the Imp run to the ends of the earth, he will not escape me. 

Jaime is standing vigil at the head of Lord Tywin's bier. She leads Tommen up to kneel by the body, telling him, "Weep quietly.... You are a king, not a squalling child. Your lords are watching you." The body is dressed in splendid armor, but Cersei is bothered by the expression on her father's face: "The corners of her father's lips curved upward ever so slightly, giving him a look of vague bemusement." She blames Pycelle for the preparation of the corpse. "He had been a great man," she thinks. "I shall be greater, though. A thousand years from now, when the maesters write about this time, you shall be remembered only as Queen Cersei's sire."

Tommen interrupts her thoughts by asking her, "What smells so bad?" She thinks, "My lord father," but she says, "Death." Tommen begins to fidget and her knees begin to ache as the service goes on. She sees her Uncle Kevan kneeling with his son Lancel beside him, and thinks Lancel looks worse than her father does. Lord Gyles is coughing and covering his nose with a red silk handkerchief, and she realizes that he can smell it, too. Pycelle's eyes are closed, and she vows to have him whipped if he has fallen asleep. She sees Margaery Tyrell, Tommen's future wife, and notices how much like her brother, the Knight of Flowers, she looks. She wonders "if they had other things in common," and reflects on how many ladies she has in attendance on her. This is yet another glance at Loras Tyrell's homosexuality, but also a segue into Cersei's wondering which of Margaery's attendants she can recruit to spy on her.

By the time the service ends the smell has grown stronger, and she thinks she hears someone say "privy," but can't locate the offender. Lady Falyse approaches her outside and says that her sister Lollys has gone into labor and that her mother wants to name the child, if it's a boy, Tywin. Cersei is furious at the idea: "Your lackwit sister gets herself raped by half of King's Landing, and Tanda thinks to honor the bastard with my lord father's name? I think not." Falyse looks like she has been slapped.

Then she encounters the aged-looking Lancel, and comments on his coming marriage to one of the Freys, but he is unhappy. "It is cruel, Cersei. Your Grace knows that I love--." She cuts him off and finishes the sentence, "--House Lannister." Lancel goes on about how the High Septon had helped him when he was ill, and how he said Lancel was spared "for some holy purpose, so I might atone for my sins." Cersei wonders, "What has this mewling fool told the High Septon? And what will he tell his little Frey when they lie together in the dark?" She regrets having slept with Lancel, but not so much that he will talk about it -- she could always denounce it as a lie, "the braggadocio of a callow boy smitten by her beauty" -- as that he'll talk about having gotten Robert Baratheon drunk on drugged wine before the hunt in which he was killed.

She gets some good news from Lady Merryweather, who is from Myr, and tells her that she has written to her friends in the Free Cities, telling them so seize Tyrion if he should appear there. Cersei is intrigued by the beautiful and voluptuous woman. "This one is ambitious, and her lord is proud but poor." She calls her by her first name, Taena, and says, "I know that we shall be great friends." But they are interrupted by Mace Tyrell, who says, "We shall never see his like again." Cersei thinks, "You are looking at his like, fool." And then he tells her that Tywin had promised the office of master of coin to his uncle Garth, and that he's on his way to take up the position. She puts a stop to this quickly, telling him, "I have asked Lord Gyles Rosby to serve as our new master of coin, and he has done me the honor of accepting." Tyrell is taken aback, and sputters that "your lord father assured me...." But his mother, Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns," intervenes:

"It would seem that Lord Tywin did not share his plans with our regent, I can't imagine why. Still, there 'tis, no use hectoring Her Grace. She is quite right, you must write Lord Leyton before Garth boards a ship. You know the sea will sicken him and make his farting worse." Lady Olenna gave Cersei a toothless smile. "Your council chambers will smell sweeter with Lord Gyles, though I daresay that coughing would drive me to distraction. We all adore dear old uncle Garth, but the man is flatulent, that cannot be gainsaid. I do abhor foul smells." Her wrinkled face wrinkled up even more. "I caught a whiff of something unpleasant in the holy sept, in truth. Maybe you smelled it too?" 

Cersei lies and says she didn't, and vows to get rid of Lady Olenna as soon as possible. She retrieves Tommen and asks Lord Gyles to share the litter with them. When she offers him the job of master of coin that he has supposedly already accepted, "he began coughing so violently that she feared he might die right then and there." After he accepts, she tells him, "should the question arise, you joined the council yesterday." He coughs "into a square of red silk, as if to hide the blood in his spittle. Cersei pretended not to notice." She can get someone else when he dies, and perhaps recall Littlefinger, who is already having trouble with the lords of the Vale.

Back in her rooms, she is visited by Qyburn, who tells her that when Tyrion and Varys disappeared, a jailer named Rugen also vanished. She knows this, but he adds that under Rugen's chamber pot there was a loose stone that covered a hiding place for valuables. The hole was empty, but Qyburn dug in it and finds an old gold coin bearing "the sigil of House Gardener," the precusor of Highgarden. Cersei wonders if this indicates that Mace Tyrell had been secretly plotting with Tyrion. She warns Qyburn not to tell anyone about it, and pockets the coin.

Qyburn has more news: "The poison on the Viper's spear was manticore venom from the east." Cersei says that Pycelle ruled that out because manticore venom kills instantly. But Qyburn says the poison had been "thickened somehow, so as to draw out the Mountain's dying." It may have been the result of a spell. Cersei scoffs at the idea of magic, but Qyburn proceeds, saying that Ser Gregor's "veins have turned black from head to heel, his water is clouded with pus, and the venom has eaten a hole in his side as large as my fist. It is a wonder that the man is still alive, if truth be told." Cersei complains that his screaming frightens Tommen and wakens her sometimes. She thinks they should call in Ilen Payne to put an end to him. But Qyburn wants to move Ser Gregor to the dungeons, where his screaming won't be so troublesome, and he can "tend to him more freely." In short, he wants to know more about this poison.

Cersei gets the point, and asks why the Citadel took away his chain. Qyburn calls the archmaesters "craven" and cites Marwyn, the ones the novices referred to as the Mage, as calling them "The grey sheep." Qyburn wanted to do some unconventional experimentation:

"For hundreds of years the men of the Citadel have opened the bodies of the dead, to study the nature of life. I wished to understand the nature of death, so I opened the bodies of the living. For that crime the grey sheep shamed me and forced me into exile ... but I understand the nature of life and death better than any man in Oldtown." 

Cersei is, to say the least, "intrigued." She lets Qyburn take charge of the Mountain, reminding him that she needs the head to send to Dorne. She tells him she will provide him with the finances he needs and that he should buy some new robes. "Need I say that it will go ill for you if any word of your ... labors ... should pass beyond these walls?" Her secrets are safe with him, he assures her.

Her mind goes back to the gold coin from Highgarden and what link it might have to her father's death. She wonders if Tyrion has anything to do with the swift decomposition of Tywin's body, and if there's a possibility that he influenced Pycelle or the High Septon to bring it about. But her suspicions are interrupted by the arrival of her uncle Kevan to dine with her. Before she can ask him to become the Hand, he anticipates the offer, noting that Jaime has refused the job. She needs someone older anyway, she says, and he points out that Mace Tyrell is older. "Never," she says, adding, "The Tyrells overreach themselves." He admits that Tyrell would be a bad choice as hand, but cautions her against making an enemy of him. He has heard about the encounter over the position of master of coin, and says she was "unwise to shame him in front of half the court."

But as for the matter of becoming the Hand, he will do it only "so long as you name me regent as well as Hand and take yourself back to Casterly Rock." Tywin had told him of his plans to send her "back to the Rock and find a new husband for you." Her anger grows, but she controls it. He persists: "Open your eyes and look about you, Cersei. The kingdom is in ruins. Tywin might have been able to set matters aright, but...." She says she will set it aright with his help, but he persists, and the argument rages until she shouts "The king is my son!" and he replies, "from what I saw of Joffrey, you are as unfit a mother as you are a ruler."

She flings a cup of wine in his face. He rises with "a ponderous dignity" and asks her leave to go, warning, "You would be wise not to take me lightly, Your Grace ... and wiser still not to make of me a foe." She asks if this is a threat, and he says he is counseling her. "If you will not yield the regency to me, name me your castellan for Casterly Rock and make either Mathis Rowan or Randyll Tarly the Hand of the King." Both of them are bannermen for the Tyrells, which only adds to Cersei's suspicions. But he makes the point that by making either of them hers, she strengthens herself and weakens Highgarden. At the same time he realizes that his advice is futile: "You may make Moon Boy your Hand for all I care. My brother is dead, woman. I am going to take him home."


She wonders how much Mace Tyrell had paid him. And as he leaves, he reveals that he knows that Jaime is Tommen's father.

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

Arya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samwell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

25. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 857-893

Davos

Davos watches as Melisandre leads a sunset ceremony glorifying R'hllor. Queen Selyse and Ser Axell Florent join in the responses enthusiastically, King Stannis not so much. "He is with them, but not of them, Davos thought." As for Davos, he is silently praying to the Mother to keep his son Devan safe.

Now Ser Andrew Estermont gives him the signal that it is time for them to move. A plot is afoot, and Davos thinks of his companions in it, "they will all be dead men soon, if this night's work goes badly." He has warned them that Melisandre may have foreseen their plans, and one of them advises killing her. But Davos knows from experience that this is precisely the sort of thing Melisandre sees first. When another protests about the clandestine nature of what they are about to do, Davos says, "I don't need men of honor now. I need smugglers."

Davos and Ser Andrew go to Maester Pylos's schoolroom, where the maester tells Edric Storm that he is to go with them. Pylos helps Edric into a hooded cloak, but when Davos asks if Pylos is going with the boy, he says no. Davos admires the maester's courage. When Edric is told that he is being taken to a ship, he asks if Princess Shireen is coming with them. When he's told she isn't, he asks to see her, but Davos explains that there isn't time.

Edric protests that he wants to see King Stannis, but Davos replies, "I am his Hand, I speak with his voice. Must I go to the king and tell him that you would not do as you were told? Do you know how angry that will make him?" And he shows Edric his lopped-off fingers as a demonstration of what happens when the king gets angry. Edric agrees to go with Davos.

The conspirators have tied up the guards, and all goes smoothly as Davos escorts Edric to the waiting boat, telling him, "It's the start of your life's great adventure. May the Warrior defend you." Edric replies, "And may the Father judge you justly, Lord Davos." He goes with the men to the boat that will take him to the ship.

Davos now steels himself and goes to see Stannis, not knowing what the king's reaction will be. The Chamber of the Painted Table is empty when he enters, so he lights a fire and waits. Finally Stannis arrives with Melisandre. They are arguing about Melisandre's vision of the deaths of the three kings, and Davos is able to tell Stannis that her vision has come true: Joffrey is dead. The news had been brought by Lyseni traders.

"They must send for me now," Stannis says, but Melisandre reminds him that Tommen will succeed to the throne, and that now is the time to wake the dragons. "'Give me this boy,' she whispered, 'and I will give you your kingdom.'" But Davos tells Stannis that the boy is gone: "He is aboard a Lyseni galley, safely out to sea." He watches Melisandre's reaction and "saw the flicker of dismay there, the sudden uncertainty. She did not see it!"

Melisandre says, "You will bring him back, my lord. You will." But Davos replies, "The boy is out of my reach.... And out of your reach as well, my lady." She glares at him, but Stannis sounds "more tired than angry" when he questions Davos's loyalty. Davos replies,

"Four of my sons died for you on the Blackwater. I might have died myself. You have my loyalty, always." Davos Seaworth had thought long and hard about the words he said next; he knew his life depended on them. "Your Grace, you made me swear to give you honest counsel and swift obedience, to defend your realm against your foes, to protect your people. Is not Edric Storm one of your people? One of those I swore to protect? I kept my oath. How could that be treason?"

At Stannis's prompting, Melisandre argues once again that Edric Storm had "the power of kingsblood in his veins." But Davos persists in his contention that a king protects his people, causing Stannis to ask, "Must I learn a king's duty from an onion smuggler?"

Davos kneels and offers his head, asking Stannis to hear him out first. Stannis draws the sword Lightbringer and tells Davos to be quick about it. So Davos produces the letter about the attack on the Night's Watch and begins to read it "by the light of the magic sword."

Jon

Jon has a dream in which he is rejected by the dead in the crypt at Winterfell,who tell him, "You are no Stark." He hears sounds of feasting in the Great Hall, and knows that he isn't welcome there. He calls out to Ygritte to forgive him as the crypt grows darker, and he sees "only a direwolf, grey and ghastly, spotted with blood, his golden eyes shining sadly through the dark." He wakes to remember that the wolf had been gray, not white like Ghost, and wonders if the Thenns had hunted Bran down and killed him.

Then he hears a horn, and goes out to see his fellow members of the Watch heading toward the Wall. "It is Mance, he thought. He has come at last. That was good. We will fight a battle, and then we'll rest. Alive or dead, we'll rest." He goes to wait for the winch to take him to the top of the Wall with others. When Satin asks him if it's Mance Rayder, Jon says, "We can hope so," knowing that a battle with wildlings was preferable to an encounter with the Others and the wights.

When he reaches the top of the Wall he can tell that it's Mance and his forces because of the torches. "The Others did not light torches." Donal Noye orders the trebuchets to fling barrels of flaming pitch, and Jon sees the mammoths moving below, a hundred of them. When the sentry's horn sounds, the wildlings answer with their own horns, as well as drums and pipes.

Pyp cries out that they're at the gate, which is the only way the wildlings have of breaching the Wall. The gate is only the entrance to a crooked and narrow tunnel, with three locked and chained iron grates within, each "protected by a murder hole." The gate itself is wood, nine inches thick, but the mammoths and giants could demolish it.

As the wildlings gather at the base of the Wall, jars of lamp oil are set ablaze and tipped over the edge, followed by a big barrel of pitch. They can hear the screams from below. Noye commands the archers to release arrows into the darkness. Then he calls for two bowmen and two spearmen to join him in the tunnel below, to defend it if they break through the gate. And he puts Jon in charge of the Wall, to Jon's surprise.

The battle rages through the night, and the trebuchets do so much work that one of them finally breaks down. Jon takes up a longbow, feeling how stiff his fingers are. "His fever was back as well, and his leg would tremble uncontrollably, sending a white-hot knife of pain right through him." Dawn breaks, and then they get a glimpse of the foe.

Beneath the trees were all the wildlings in the world, raiders and giants, wargs and skinchangers, mountain men, salt sea sailors, ice river cannibals, cave dwellers with dyed faces, dog chariots from the Frozen Shore, Hornfoot men with their soles like boiled leather, all the queer wild folk Mance had gathered to break the Wall. 

Then the mammoths, ridden by giants, begin their attack on the gate, pushing a ram mounted on wheels.

The sheer numbers of the wildlings frighten the men on the Wall, so Jon calls out to them, "The Wall will stop them. The Wall defends itself.... Mance wants to unman us with his numbers. Does he think we're stupid? ... The chariots, the horsemen, all those fools on foot ... what are they going to do to us up here? Any of you ever see a mammoth climb a wall?" The laughter that follows the question gives him the impetus to carry on with his speech, and he has the men with the warhorns "sound for battle." He calls on the archers to aim for the giants with the ram. He laughs, "like a drunk or a madman, and his men laughed with him."

He gives out orders to various men as the wildlings begin to show their lack of discipline. The wildling archers waste their arrows shooting at the men atop the Wall, seven hundred feet above. Jon keeps control of his archers, telling them precisely when to shoot. He gives similar orders to the men at the catapults which fling "a hundred spiked steel caltrops." The wildlings are caught in a death trap. "The ram was down and done, he saw, the giants who'd pushed it dead or dying." A mammoth is running loose, trampling wildlings. Jon orders Grenn and Pyp to drop barrels of burning oil on the men below.

The mammoths begin to flee, and the center of the attack collapses, causing the flanks to fall back too. Cheers go up from the men of the Watch, and suddenly Jon feels the pain and weariness. He asks Pyp to help him to the lift, and puts Grenn in charge of the Wall. He wants to eat and to rest, and to get something for the pain, but when they reach the ground he first wants to check on the tunnel and Donal Noye.

He waits as Pyp goes for Maester Aemon who has the key to the grates. They make their way through the narrow tunnel until they can see light on the other side, which Jon realizes is bad. Pyp observes that there is blood on the floor. The last twenty feet of the tunnel had been the scene of a bloodbath. The door had been torn from its hinges and a giant had crawled through, killing Donal and his four men. But Donal had stabbed the giant in the throat before dying. Jon recognizes the giant as "Mag the mighty. The king of the giants."

Jon squeezes through the carnage and finds a dead mammoth and three more dead giants. He returns to tell them that they need to block the tunnel with rubble and ice and anything else they can find. "Ser Wynton will need to take command, he's the last knight left, but he needs to move now, the giants will be back before we know it."

But Maester Aemon says that Ser Wynton is too old and senile to remember even this crucial advice. Jon must be in charge until the garrison returns.

"Donal chose you, and Qhorin Halfhand before him. Lord Commander Mormont made you his steward. You are a son of Winterfell, a nephew of Benjen Stark. It must be you or no one. The Wall is yours, Jon Snow."

Arya


The grief is so profound that it overshadows everything, even the lump on her head left by the flat of the Hound's axe. She wants to curl up and sleep through her depression, but he won't let her do it. When she does sleep, she dreams of wolves: "A great pack of wolves, with her at the head." But he continues to wake her and force her to take part in their travels. They have found another horse, that she has named Craven "because Sandor said she'd likely run off from the Twins the same as them."

He no longer keeps a close watch on her, though she still tells herself, "One night I'll kill him in his sleep," and could easily ride away on the new horse. But she has no place to go unless she can find her way back to Lady Smallwood's or rejoin Beric's outlaws. But she has decided "None of them wanted her around. They were never my pack, not even Hot Pie and Gendry. I was stupid to think so, just a stupid little girl, and no wolf at all."

She has asked Clegane where they are going, but he said only "Away."

She could feel the fury in him, she could see it in his face, the way his mouth would tighten and twist, the looks he gave her. Whenever he took his axe to chop some wood for a fire, he would slide into a cold rage, hacking savagely at the tree or the deadfall or the broken limb, until they had twenty times as much kindling and firewood as they'd needed.

One day they come across a survivor of the massacre of the northmen at the twins. He is feverish and dying of an infected wound in his shoulder. He asks for wine, but the Hound tells him, "I can give you water, and the gift of mercy." He accepts, and Arya brings him water in the Hound's helmet, and the Hound provides the mercy with his dagger, gently driving it through his heart. Arya asks if they will bury him, but the Hound says, "Leave him for the wolves and wild dogs. Your brothers and mine." On his body, Clegane finds some money and a dagger. He keeps the former and gives her the latter.

They reach the Mountains of the Moon, and turn eastward. He tells her, "You have an aunt in the Eyrie. Might be she'll want to ransom your scrawny arse, though the gods know why." But Arya wants to go back to the Twins, arguing that they don't know if her mother is dead and they should rescue her. The Hound refuses. When Arya falls asleep that night she dreams that she is with the wolf pack. They are feasting on the bodies of the dead at the Twins, and she picks up her mother's scent. Then she sees her: "something pale and white drifting down the river, turning where it brushed against a snag." She drags the body to the shore. "Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us." But men arrive and she and the other wolves flee.

The next morning, Clegane says, "This thing about your mother...." But Arya answers, "I know she's dead. I saw her in a dream." He looks at her for a long time, then nods and they ride on. They find a village where they get food and shelter. But the villagers tell him that the way to the Eyrie is too dangerous. "If you don't freeze or starve, the shadowcats will get you, or the cave bears. There's the clans as well." The ones that went away to the war are back, and more fierce than ever.

The Hound decides that they should stay there, but the village elder tells him he can't. They will only be extra mouths to feed when winter sets in. And he has been recognized as "King Joffrey's dog," so they don't want him there to attract trouble. So they leave and turn south. He decides that they'll go to Riverrun. "Maybe the Blackfish wants to buy himself a she-wolf." But she doesn't really know her uncle, and "Every time she made for Riverrun, she ended up someplace worse."

She suggests they go to the Wall because her brother is there, but he argues that it's a thousand leagues away, and they would have to fight their way through "thousands of bloody buggering northmen." She responds, "Have you lost your belly for fighting?" He looks like he is going to hit her, but the rabbit they are roasting is done and he eats instead. "I don't give a rat's arse for you or your brother. I have a brother too."