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

Daenerys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 556-589

Jon

Jon and the wildlings are moving through the Gift, and they come upon a somewhat familiar location: a tower in the middle of a lake near a deserted village. Ygritte is amazed at the size of the tower, and when Jon tells her there are towers three times its height at Winterfell, and one taller than the Wall in Oldtown, she doesn't believe him. He wishes he could take her to Winterfell, but she says she would be content to come back here and live in this tower: "Would you want that, Jon Snow? After?"

The word "after" haunts him, because to Ygritte it means "After the war. After the conquest. After the wildlings break the Wall...." -- things that he is sworn to prevent. But her entire world view is antithetical to his:

"The gods made the earth for all men t' share. Only when the kings come with their crowns and steel swords, they claimed it was all theirs. My trees, they said, you can't eat them apples. My stream, you can't fish here. My wood, you're not t' hunt. My earth, my water, my castle, my daughter, keep your hands away or I'll chop 'em off, but maybe if you kneel t' me I'll let you have a sniff. You call us thieves, but at least a thief has t' be brave and clever and quick. A kneeler only has t' kneel." 

When Jon tries to argue with her, she answers with her usual line: "You know nothing, Jon Snow." It is her response to his attempt to persuade her that Mance Rayder can't win his war against the people on this side of the Wall: "I don't doubt that you're all very brave, but when it comes to battle, discipline beats valor every time. In the end Mance will fail as all the Kings-beyond-the-Wall have failed before him. And when he does, you'll die. All of you."

She refuses to hear him, and he knows from that point that his duty is going to prevail over their love. He is also aware that if he is forced to kill one of his own, a brother of the Night's Watch, he is doomed to remain with the wildlings. And he knows that Castle Black is defenseless except for the Wall, and as far as he can guess is sadly undermanned, with only the weakest and least-trained men left to guard it. "If the Magnar takes Castle Black unawares, it will be red slaughter, boys butchered in their beds before they know they are under attack." He has to find a way to warn them, and he worries what will happen to Ygritte when his betrayal is discovered.

He has also lost Ghost, and wonders if he really went to Castle Black or if he has joined a pack on the other side of the Wall. "He had no sense of the direwolf, not even in his dreams. It made him feel as if part of himself had been cut off."

It is dark and a storm is raging when they reach the village by the lake. He can see the tower when the lightning flashes. They have also spotted a fire in the ruins of the inn. A scout goes ahead and reports that it is "An old man with a horse." Jon knows that Styr will kill the old man and that he mustn't do anything to prevent it, so he finds shelter in the ruins of a cottage. Ygritte joins him there, and he tells her that he recognizes the tower. She says some of the Thenns say they have heard noises coming from it, like shouting. He says that they should go out to investigate the noise -- having recognized the tower, he knows about the causeway, too. When the lightning comes again, he points out the gilding on the top of the tower, and tells her the story of Queen Alysanne.

Jon is summoned by the Magnar, and Ygritte comes with him. Styr commands Jon to kill the old man, and he reluctantly draws Longclaw as the man begs for mercy. He hesitates, and Ygritte urges him, "You must. T' prove you are no crow, but one o' the free folk." But Jon picks up on the last phrase and refuses to follow through: "'You command Thenns,' Jon told [Styr], 'not free folk.'" Styr replies, "I see no free folk. I see a crow and a crow wife."

"I'm no crow wife!" Ygritte says, and takes her own knife and slits the man's throat. Then she shouts, "You know nothing, Jon Snow!" and throws the knife at his feet. Jon expects to be attacked by the Thenns, but at that moment there is a blinding flash of lightning and a wolf attacks. Jon thinks it's Ghost at first, but another flash reveals to him that the wolf is gray. He lashes out with Longclaw and manages at the same time to grab the mane of the old man's frightened horse and leap onto its back. Desperately clinging to the horse, he rides off through the storm. A spear flies past him, but the sounds of pursuit behind him grow more faint.

He rides as long as he can, not knowing what direction he's headed, and when the storm is ended and he finally stops he feels "a deep throbbing ache in his right thigh." He realizes that his leg has been pierced by an arrow, and when he tries to pull it out, the pain is too great. Then he thinks about the wolf attack: "Like a grey wind.... Could Robb have returned to the north?" But the pain makes it hard to concentrate on "the wolf, the old man, Ygritte, any of it...." He dismounts, and the wounded leg gives under him. He is bleeding profusely, and knows that the arrow has to come out. "Jon pushed back his bloody breeches to get a better grip, grimaced, and slowly drew the shaft through his leg. How he got through that without fainting he never knew."

He washes the wound in the stream the horse is drinking from, and binds his leg. He studies the arrow, but can't tell whether its fletching was gray or white. "Ygritte fletched her arrows with pale grey goose feathers. Did she loose a shaft at me as I fled?  Jon could not blame her for that." He rests for a while as the horse grazes, wondering how he had been able to leap on her back while carrying a sword in one hand. The sky has cleared, and he finds his way north by looking at the stars. He heads for the Wall and Castle Black. "I am going home, he told himself. But if that was true, why did he feel so hollow?"

Daenerys

She has ridden out with Ser Jorah to see the forces arrayed against hers to defend the city of Yunkai. They number about five thousand, she estimates, and Jorah confirms the number, pointing out that the flanks of the army are made up of mercenaries. The center is composed of Yunkai soldiers. He says they can be defeated easily, but at the risk of bloodshed on their side: "Astapor was complacent and vulnerable. Yunkai is forewarned." Daenerys decides to parley not only with the Yunkai slavers, but also with the two groups of sellswords, each separately: "The Stormcrows at midday, the Second Sons two hours later."

She returns to the camp to talk to Grey Worm, who had been designated the leader of the Unsullied after she set them free and told them to select officers. She had abolished the practice of having the Unsullied select new names each day, and Grey Worm had elected to keep the name he had drawn on the day he was set free, thinking it a lucky one. She tells him that they are to spare the life of any slave soldier who surrenders. "The fewer slain, the more remain to join us after."

After freeing the slaves of Astapor, she had left the city in the charge of "a council of former slaves led by a healer, a scholar, and a priest." But tens of thousands of the newly freed had chosen to follow her. They are "more burden than benefit," but she can't bring herself to turn them away since she had been the one to set them free.

She confers with Missandei about the Yunkai, and learns that they speak a dialect of Valyrian and that the slavers who rule the city are called the Wise Masters. Ser Jorah arrives with three captains of the Stormcrows, whose spokesman seems to be a Ghiscari named Prendahl na Ghezn. She learns of his contempt for the other group of sellswords, the Second Sons, and tells him that if he leaves the Yunkai and joins her, "you shall keep the gold the Yunkai'i paid you and claim a share of the plunder besides, with greater rewards later when I come into my kingdom. Fight for the Wise Masters, and your wages will be death."

Prendahl rejects the offer and insults Daenerys in the bargain, but she tells him to go back and present the offer to his men and to report his decision the next day. As they leave, one of the captains, a flamboyant Tyroshi named Daario Naharis, glances back at her "and inclined his head in polite farewell."

The commander of the Second Sons arrives two hours later. He is a Braavosi named Mero, but calls himself the Titan's Bastard. He makes indecent proposals to her but she parries them and makes him an offer to join her side, too. She can tell that his sexual swagger angers Ser Jorah, but says that she will await his answer tomorrow. Mero likes the wine she has served him and she sends him away with a wagon full of it. When he is gone, Arstan Whitebeard advises her not to trust him: "That one has an evil reputation, even in Westeros.... He will drink three toasts to your health tonight and rape you on the morrow." Jorah agrees, saying that under Mero's leadership the Second Sons have become "near as bad as the Brave Companions." But Daenerys says she doesn't want him for his reputation but for his numbers.

The Yunkai delegation is led by a man named Grazdan mo Eraz, who blusters, "I am told you have freed your eunuchs. Freedom means as much to an Unsullied as a hat to a haddock." He says they will re-enslave the survivors of the battle and retake Astapor, and sell Daenerys into prostitution: "There are pleasure houses in Lys and Tyrosh where men would pay handsomely to bed the last Targaryen." She shouldn't waste her effort on conquering Yunkai when she "will need every man to regain your father's throne in far Westeros. Yunkai wishes you only well in that endeavor. And to prove the truth of that, I have brought you a gift."

She opens the chest that is placed before her, which is full of gold coins. "Very pretty," she says. "I wonder how many chests like this I shall find when I take your city?" She says she has a gift in return: She gives him three days, at the end of which he is to free all of the city's slaves and allow them to take whatever they want from their masters as payment for their years of enslavement. Each of them is to "be given a weapon, and as much food, clothing, coin, and goods as he or she can carry." Then the Unsullied will enter the city and make sure that everyone has been freed. And if they have been, Yunkai and its people will be unharmed.

When Grazdan says she is mad, she says, "Dracarys," and the three dragons reply, with Drogon spitting fire that sets his robe aflame. Whitebeard douses the fire with a flagon of water. When Grazdan protests that he was under safe conduct, she says she'll buy him a new robe if he meets her demands about freeing the slaves. "Elsewise, Drogon will give you a warmer kiss."

When he is gone, she tells Ser Jorah to call the bloodriders, and when they are all assembled tells them that they will attack at an hour past midnight. "The Stormcrows will be arguing about my offer. The Second Sons will be drunk on the wine I gave Mero. And the Yunkai'i believe they have three days." The Unsullied will attack from right and left and the horsemen will move in a wedge through the center. When she asks what they think of the plan, Ser Jorah says, "I think you are Rhaegar Targaryen's sister," and Arstan agrees, "and a queen as well."

At midnight, Ser Jorah comes to her with the news that the Unsullied had caught Daario Naharis trying to sneak into the camp. When he is brought to her the Tyroshi informs her that he and the Stormcrows are hers, and presents her with the heads of the other two captains. At her request, he swears his sword to her service. Then she sends him back to lead the Stormcrows in an attack on the rear of the Yunkish forces.

When he is gone, Ser Jorah protests her decision, saying she can't trust a man like Naharis. But she sees the sexual jealousy behind his opinion, remembering the prophecy: "And I shall be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love." She asks if he is "the only man I should ever trust?"

"You have been a better friend to me than any I have known, a better brother than Viserys ever was. You are the first of my Queensguard, the commander of my army, my most valued counselor, my good right hand. I honor and respect and cherish you -- but I do not desire you, Jorah Mormont, and I am weary of your trying to push every other man in the world away from me, so I must needs rely on you and you alone. It will not serve, and it will not make me love you any better."

When she sends him off to prepare for the battle, she is filled with doubt and uncertainty and remembers that "Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me." She turns to her dragons and calls them her children, "my three fierce children."

She calls for Whitebeard and asks him to tell her about her brother Rhaegar. He says that "He was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him all his days." As he is elaborating on her brother's melancholy, the dragons hear the sound of horses and begin to roar. Ser Jorah enters to report on the victory, which had gone as Daenerys had foreseen. They "have several thousand captives" and their own losses amount to "A dozen. If that many."

The next day they march to the city, and on the third the gates open and the freed slaves emerge. Missandei tells them "that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons." People begin to cry out the word "Mhysa!" When Daenerys asks what it means, Missandei tells her, "It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means 'Mother.'"