22. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 628-657

Brienne

Stunned and in pain, Brienne is being carried bound, "like a sack of oats," over the hindquarters of a horse. She hears Podrick calling out to her faintly, but then he falls silent. She drifts off into a dream in which she is being tormented by Biter, while others, such as Nimble Dick, Catelyn Stark, and Lord Renly, look on.

Finally the horse comes to a stop and she is taken from the horse. A girl gives her something to drink and tells her that her arm is broken, along with several ribs. The last thing she remembers from the fight is Biter attacking her, and she asks about him. The girl tells her, "He's dead. Gendry shoved a spearpoint through the back of his neck."

She gets a better look at the girl, who resembles Willow, back at the inn, and concludes that it's her sister, the innkeeper. The girl admits as much, and says her name is Jeyne Heddle. Brienne asks her to loosen the ropes tying her hands, but she says she can't. Then Gendry appears -- once again Brienne takes him at first for Renly -- and says, "M'lady means for you to answer for your crimes."

Brienne remembers the earlier mentions of a "Lady Stoneheart," and asks if she is the one he refers to. "Some call her that," he says. "Some call her other things. The Silent Sister. Mother Merciless. The Hangwoman." Brienne struggles to rise, but instead she faints into more dreams of struggle and capture.

When she wakes again, Jeyne is giving her a cup of onion broth. She asks for Gendry, but is told that he has returned to the inn to take care of Willow and the children. Then she gets a look at one of the men standing around her: "A yellow greatcloak was plastered to his shoulders, sodden and filthy. From his shoulders rose a steel dog's head, its teeth bared in a snarl." She protests that she had killed him, but the man now wearing the Hound's helmet says, "You got that backwards. It'll be me killing you. I'd do it now, but m'lady wants to see you hanged."

When Brienne protests that they shared bread and salt with Jeyne's sister, Jeyne replies, "Guest right don't mean so much as it used to.... Not since m'lady come back from the wedding. Some o' them swinging down by the river figured they was guests too."

They get back on the horses, and this time a leather hood covers Brienne's head. She passes out again and dreams of being back on Tarth, waiting for her betrothed. Blood pours from her mouth when she tries to speak: She has bitten off her tongue. Her betrothed mocks her, and when he turns away she sees that he is Jaime. She tries to call out for him, but her mouth is full of blood.

When she wakes again, she doesn't know where she is. Her clothes and armor are gone and she is wearing a thin woolen shift. Her arm is in a splint and her face is covered with bandages. When she stands and calls out, an old man in rags moves and says her name. He tells her they are being held in a cave, and asks if she is hungry. He tells her she has been suffering with a fever, but when he feels her forehead assures her that it has broken. Biter's savaging of her face had led to an infection. "We had to cut away some of the flesh. Your face will not be pretty, I fear.... My lady, that creature chewed off half your cheek."

She asks why bother to treat her wounds and splint her arm if she's just going to be hanged, and he admits to the irony of her situation. She had "fought bravely at the inn.... Whatever else you may have done, you won those wounds honorably, in the best of causes." She asks who they are, and he admits that they were once the king's men, and then they were a brotherhood, but now, "I do not know who we are, if truth be told, nor where we might be going."

She realizes then that he is the red wizard, Thoros of Myr, and that he was one of Dondarrion's band. But he tells her Lord Dondarrion is "gone out of the world" and "A grimmer shadow leads us in his place." He brings her food, and she asks about the others who were with her. Septon Merribald has been allowed to go on his way, he tells her, but "The others are here, awaiting judgment." She pleads for Podrick, who is "just a boy," but Thoros tells her that he has said he is a squire -- "The Imp's squire. He has fought in battles, by his own admission. He has even killed, to hear him tell it." She argues for pity and justice.

"Justice." Thoros smiled wanly. "I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us, or so we told ourselves. We were king's men, knights, and heroes ... but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all."

Then he hears others coming. "Our lady sends for you."

Four men appear, one of them wearing the Hound's helmet. She realizes now that it had been Rorge she killed, and that he had taken the helmet from him. Thoros is dismayed to hear this: "Is this true? A dead man's helm? Have we fallen that low?" Lem argues, "The sight of it will make my foes afraid." They escort her out of the cave and into a larger one centered on a firepit where outlaws are gathered. The only face Brienne recognizes is Jeyne Heddle's.

Behind a trestle table in a cleft in the rock sits "a woman all in grey, cloaked and hooded. In her hands was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords." The one-eyed man presents her as "The Kingslayer's whore," to which Brienne protests.  A younger outlaw is holding her sword, Oathkeeper, which he places on the table in front of the hooded woman. Its pommel is in the shape of a lion's head. Thoros then places on the table the letter with Tommen's seal, which Lady Stoneheart takes to read.

Brienne protests that the sword was given her by Jaime because he "swore an oath to Catelyn Stark," but she is interrupted by the man in the yellow cloak: "...before his friends cut her throat for her, that must have been." Brienne realizes that her cause is hopeless, but she continues to explain that Jaime had promised to return Catelyn's daughters, and that he sent her out to find them. But Lem mocks all of her arguments, and then produces her companions. "Hyle Hunt had been beaten so badly that his face was swollen almost beyond recognition." Podrick supports him, and apologizes to Brienne for what has happened. 

Brienne turns to Lady Stoneheart and pleads that her companions had nothing to do with "Whatever treachery you think I may have done." She asks her to let them go. But the woman in gray says nothing for a moment, then reaches for her throat and produces sounds, "part croak, part wheeze, part death rattle." Brienne doesn't understand, but one of the men interprets the sound as a question about the sword's name. Brienne says it is Oathkeeper, but the woman hisses something that is interpreted as "Call it Oathbreaker.... It was made for treachery and murder. She names it False Friend. Like you."

Brienne asks to whom she has been unfaithful, and the interpreter says, "To her.... Can it be that my lady has forgotten that you once swore her your service?" Suddenly realizing that he means that Lady Stoneheart is Catelyn Stark, Brienne protests, "That cannot be.... She's dead." Lady Stoneheart lowers her hood and reveals the decayed face of Lady Catelyn. Thoros explains that she had been dead three days when they found her in the river. It was Beric Dondarrion who gave her the "kiss of life."

Brienne swears by the Seven, by her sword, that she had never betrayed Catelyn, who then produces more sounds that Lemoncloak interprets: "She says that you must prove your faith.... All she asks from you is Jaime Lannister." Brienne argues once again for Jaime's good faith, but to no avail: "The sword or the noose, she says. Choose, she says. Choose."

Brienne refuses, and she understands the next thing Lady Stoneheart croaks: "Hang them."

They are taken outside and strung to the trees. Brienne makes a last plea for Podrick, and as the noose tightens around her own throat she sees him struggling. "She screamed a word."

Cersei

Cersei is playing her part as she sits below the Iron Throne and in front of the assembled court protests the High Septon's decision. But Septa Moelle is insistent "that the young queen and her ladies cannot be released until and unless their innocence has been proved." The septa repeats the charges against Megga Tyrell and Elinor Tyrell -- "lewdness, fornication, and conspiracy to commit high treason" -- and the lesser one against Alla Tyrell -- "witnessing their shame and helping them conceal it" -- and finally against Queen Margaery -- all of the above "as well as adultery and high treason." Cersei feigns dismay at "such calumnies." But the septa's report of Ser Osney's confession causes a gasp and a buzz in the assemblage.

Once again, Cersei protests: "Margaery is a maiden!" But the septa says that she examined Margaery, Megga, and Elinor herself, as did other septas. The maidenheads of all of them were "not intact." Lord Merryweather asks, "Would you have us believe that all of these noble people lied to us?" But Septa Moelle says she can only attest to what she discovered in her examinations.  Cersei tries not to laugh, and says, "Grand Maester Pycelle, you shall accompany Septa Moelle back to Beloved Baelor's Sept, and return to us with the truth about our Margaery's maidenhead." Pycelle follows through: There's no need for him to do so. "Queen Margaery is no maiden. She has required me to make her moon tea, not once, but many times."

Cersei delights in the uproar that follows. But she rises with a stern face, has the gold cloaks clear the hall, and the Kingsguard exit with her. Secretly she rejoices in her triumph of the prophecy of Maggy the Frog: "No golden shrouds, no valonqar, I am free of your croaking malice at last." Her small council gathers around her in dismay, and Ser Harys Swyft predicts "blood in the streets" when Mace Tyrell hears the news. Cersei tells them that she will go to Baelor's Sept and see if there is anything she can do. 

Then she goes to Tommen with some blank arrest warrants for him to sign and seal. When he is gone, she fills in the names and gives them to Ser Osfryd Kettleblack to have the gold cloaks deliver them. He tells her that a crowd is gathering at Baelor's Sept. She hadn't expected this, though she knows the "smallfolk" love Margaery. She tells him to let the High Septon's own knights take care of the crowd, but to close the city gates. "No one is to enter or leave King's Landing without my leave, until all this is done and settled." The warrants are served, and by the end of the day all of the accused are in the dungeons except the Redwyne twins, who are supposed to be found falsely accused. They are "given comfortable chambers in a tower."

The next day she goes with Taena Merryweather to Baelor's Sept. Taena worries that Margaery may demand trial by combat, but Cersei has anticipated even that: A member of the royal family must be defended by one of the Kingsguard, and Margaery's brother, Ser Loras, is gravely wounded, while others are away, and Osmund is the brother of the accuser. That leaves only the elderly Boros Blount and Meryn Trant, "and Ser Meryn has been feeling ill of late. Remind me to tell him that when we return to the castle." Taena says she hopes she never offends Cersei.

The crowd at the sept is not particularly menacing, it turns out, and she is ushered in to the presence of the High Septon, though she has to wait until he finishes his prayers. She asks to see Margaery, and he agrees, though he asks her to come to seem him afterward. "We must pray together, you and I." Margaery is barefoot and shivering,, dressed in a "roughspun shift." She complains that the septas come every hour to ask her to confess, so she is unable to sleep. And she is astonished when Cersei tells her that her cousins have been accused as well.

Cersei tells her there will have to be a trial, and that the knights of the Kingsguard will defend her if she chooses a trial by combat. And suddenly Margaery gets wise to what is going on. She runs through the members of the Kingsguard herself, and "her brown eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'Blount or Trant,' she said at last. 'It would have to be one of them. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Osney Kettleblack would cut either one to pieces.'" When Margaery orders her to leave, Cersei is provoked at at having been seen through so easily, and assures Margaery that she only wants to help her.

"To help me to my grave. I asked for you to leave. Will you make me call my gaolers and have you dragged away, you vile, scheming, evil bitch?"

Cersei makes a dignified retreat.

Four septas escort her to a subterranean audience chamber where the High Septon is waiting. She suggests that instead of being tried by the court, over which Tommen would have to preside, Margaery might be tried by the Faith. He agrees, saying he had had the same thought. "A sacred court of seven judges shall sit upon this case. Three shall be of your female sex. A maiden, a mother, and a crone. Who could be more suited to judge the wickedness of women?" He also agrees that if she chooses trial by combat, it should be one of the Kingsguard.

"Cersei covered her face with her hands, as if in grief. When she raised her head again, a tear glistened in one eye." Then she says she'll return to the castle and take Ser Osney Kettleblack with her to be questioned by the small council. And she is shocked when he says "No." He will take her to Ser Osney, he says, and she begins to worry. He conducts her to a chamber protected with an iron door, which he unlocks.

Within, Osney Kettleblack hung naked from the ceiling, swinging from a pair of heavy iron chains. He had been whipped. His back and shoulders [had] been laid almost bare, and cuts and welts crisscrossed his legs and arse as well.

The High Septon explains to her that he had seldom "heard a man so pleased to be so guilty." So he has had him whipped to find out the truth: "Osney Kettleblack is guilty of treason and murder, and the wages of treason are death." Ser Osney now says he never touched Margaery Tyrell, but that he had had sex with Cersei: "She's the queen I fucked, the one sent me to kill the old Septon. He never had no guards. I just come in when he was sleeping and pushed a pillow down across his face."

Cersei makes a run for it. The elderly High Septon is no match for her, nor are the old septas who had escorted her. As she is trying to escape she remembers that Taena Merryweather is there: "Taena knows it all. If they take her too, and whip her...." But finally she is caught, overpowered, stripped, and thrust naked into a cell. And like Margaery she is awakened every hour by a septa who says, "I am come to hear you tell of all your murders and fornications."

A night and a day passes with only the hourly visits of the septa demanding confession. Finally, on the morning of the second day, Qyburn appears. He tells her, "You are to be tried before a holy court of seven, for murder, treason, and fornication." Margaery is to be tried by the same court, he says, and he has handed over the Blue Bard to the High Septon. "My whisperers tell me that they are whipping him, but so far he is still singing the same sweet song we taught him."

But Qyburn has been removed from the king's council, which is being run by Harys Swyft and Pycell. They have removed Osfryd Kettleblack as head of the City Watch, and have sent a raven to Casterly Rock, asking Kevan Lannister to become regent. "Mace Tyrell has abandoned the siege of Storm's End and is marching back to the city with his army, and Randyll Tarly is reported on his way down from Maidenpool as well." Lord Merryweather and his wife have fled. (Cersei is glad to hear that they let Taena go.) And Aurane Waters has left with his fleet. "Ser Harys fears he means to join Lord Stannis. Pycelle believes that he is sailing to the Stepstones, to set himself up as a pirate."

Cersei says, "I am lost, Qyburn." And when he hears that only a member of the Kingsguard can defend her, he doesn't disagree. But she asks him to send word to Jaime of her plight, and to write three times, "I love you." Qyburn agrees, but reminds her that her brother has no sword hand anymore. "If he should champion you and lose...."

We will leave this world together, as we once came into it. "He will not lose. Not Jaime. Not with my life at stake."

19. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 529-560

Cersei

Sweet Cersei has returned from Dragonstone with the welcome news that Stannis's former citadel has fallen. This means that Cersei can devote the fleet's attention to the Shield Islands and the Mander, where the ironmen have been conducting raids. And word now has it that Euron's forces are preparing to attack Oldtown.

But the attack on Dragonstone has been costly: A thousand men have fallen, and Ser Loras is seriously wounded. Cersei hides her pleasure at this news and listens as Aurane Waters tells the full story. Then she goes to find Margaery and tells her that her brother is a hero, but first he was wounded in the thigh with an arrow and then some ribs were broken by a blow from a mace. But worst of all, "He was doused with boiling oil." The maesters believe he will not survive.

"Dying is not dead," Margaery replies, and won't listen to Cersei's assurances that the burns are too severe. Cersei retreats to her room, where she prides herself on doing something that her father would have approved of. She will raise a statue to Ser Loras, and everyone will be grateful. "As for his lady mother, if the gods are good this news will kill her." Taena arrives in the morning, after a sunrise that "was the prettiest that Cersei had seen in years," to tell her they had grieved all night but that Margaery still refuses to believe that Loras will die.

Ser Osmund comes a little later to tell her that four men have come to her with news about Tyrion, and one of them has brought a head. She sees the one with the head first, but it isn't Tyrion's, and she has the man hauled off for Qyburn to deal with. Another of the men claims that Tyrion is hiding in a brothel in Oldtown, "pleasuring men with his mouth." The second says he is in "a mummer's show in Braavos," and the third claims he's a hermit in the riverlands. Cersei suggests that each of them lead some of her knights to the dwarf and if it proves true they will be rewarded. "If not ... well, my knights have little patience for deception, nor fools who send them chasing after shadows. A man could lose his tongue." The men suddenly decide "that perhaps it might have been some other dwarf they saw."

She then goes to court, where she deals with various pleas, and meets a delegation from the Faith. She is displeased to see Lancel Lannister among the "pious fools," and that the High Septon has not attended in person. She is also annoyed that the Warrior's Sons have taken in on themselves to "battle wickedness" by preaching and praying against the local brothels.

"These sinners feed the royal coffers," the queen said bluntly, "and their pennies help pay the wages of my gold cloaks and build galleys to defend our shores. There is trade to be considered as well. If King's Landing had no brothels, the ships would go to Duskendale or Gulltown. His High Holiness promised me peace in my streets. Whoring helps to keep that peace. Common men deprived of whores are apt to turn to rape. Henceforth let His High Holiness do his praying in the sept where it belongs." 

Pycelle reports that Gyles Rosby is gravely ill, but Cersei scoffs at the report: "Lord Gyles has had that cough for years, and it never killed him before." She suggests that someone is trying to do him in, perhaps the Tyrells, perhaps Pycelle himself. She huffs, "You will return to Lord Gyles and inform him that he does not have my leave to die."

Finally all the tedious business is done, and she goes to have supper with Tommen, who is upset about Ser Loras's condition. He also says that Margaery says he should go to court and listen, which is the last straw for Cersei. Margaery talks too much, Cersei says. "For half a groat I'd gladly have her tongue torn out." To her surprise, Tommen grows angry and says, "Don't you touch her. I'm the king, not you." Furiously, she hauls Tommen by the ear to the door and tells Ser Boros Blount, who is standing guard, to take Tommen to his bedchamber and bring the whipping boy, Pate, to him. "This time I want Tommen to whip the boy himself. He is to continue until the boy is bleeding from both cheeks. If His Grace refuses, or says one word of protest, summon Qyburn and tell him to remove Pate's tongue, so His Grace can learn the cost of insolence."

When she goes to bed, she thinks about Lady Falyse, whom Qyburn has put in the black cells. She has received word of the death of Lady Tanda and of Lollys's ascension to Lady Stokeworth, with Bronn as her lord. And then she dreams of the visit she and Jeyne Farman and Melara Hetherspoon had made to the sorceress, Maggy the Frog. Jeyne had been so frightened she ran away, and Cersei reflects, "She was the wise one, though." Jeyne was still alive, married, and mother of a dozen children.

The old woman had tasted their blood and said they could each ask three questions. Cersei had asked when she would marry Prince Rhaegar, and Maggy had replied, "Never. You will wed the king." And that she would be queen "until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear." And when she asked if she and the king will have children, Maggy said, "Oh, aye. Six-and-ten for him, and three for you." Their crowns and their shrouds will be gold, "And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white neck and choke the life from you." Cersei didn't know what a valonqar is, and Maggy didn't tell her. But she had heard enough and told Melara to leave with her.

Melara hadn't had her three questions, however, and insisted on asking if she will marry Jaime. But Maggy said she won't marry anyone: "Your death is here tonight, little one." Cersei was eager to get away, so she picked up a potion from a table and threw it in the old woman's eyes. Maggy cursed her, but now in the dream Cersei hears again "The valonqar shall wrap his hands about your throat." And Tyrion's face leers down at her as his fingers dig into her throat. She wakes to find the coverlet wrapped around her neck, and sends her maid, Dorcas, to fetch Pycelle. She asks him for something to help her sleep without dreaming.

She breakfasts with Tommen, and feels better, then sends for Qyburn, whom she asks if Falyse is still alive. "Alive, yes. Perhaps not entirely ... comfortable." She asks if perhaps they should produce her, in an attempt to thwart Bronn, but Qyburn tells her, "I fear that Lady Falyse is no longer capable of ruling Stokeworth. Or, indeed, of feeding herself." He has learned quite a bit from her, however. So Cersei changes the subject. She asks him about her dream and about the sorceress: "The smallfolk used to call her Maggy." Qyburn asks, "Maegi?" and tells her that "Bloodmagic is the darkest kind of sorcery." Melara, whose death the maegi had foretold, "was one-and-ten, healthy as a little horse and safe within the Rock. Yet she soon fell down a well and drowned."

Qyburn asks if she is still grieving for her childhood friend, but Cersei can't even remember what she looked like. What she wants to know is if the prophecy the maegi made about her, about "another queen, who would take from me all I loved," can be prevented. Qyburn says that it can, and when she asks how, says, "I think Your Grace knows how."

And yes, she does. Several ways, in fact. She begins laying her plot by asking Ser Osmund Kettleblack if his brother Osney could defeat Ser Boros Blount in combat. He assures her that Osney could.

Brienne

They are traveling on, and they begin to find corpses hanging from the trees. Ser Hyle Hunt says what they are all thinking: "These are the men who raided Saltpans." But Brienne is more concerned about who had hanged them: "The noose was the preferred method of execution for Beric Dondarrion and his band of outlaws, it was said."

Finally they reach the inn that Septon Meribald knew was along the route, and they hear the sound of a forge. There are children in the inn yard, and Brienne introduces herself, Meribald, Podrick, and Ser Hyle. One of the children runs off to the forge and the hammering stops. A girl on the porch says her name is Willow and asks if they want beds. She tells them her sister Jeyne runs the inn, and they don't have many guests. "It's mostly sparrows on the roads these days, or worse." A boy's voice explains, "Thieves.... Robbers."

Brienne turns and sees the boy who had spoken, and gasps, "My lord?" For a moment she has taken the boy for Renly Baratheon. But he is, of course, Gendry, and she realizes that "Lord Renly's eyes had always been warm and welcoming, full of laughter, whereas this boy's eyes brimmed with anger and suspicion." When Septon Meribald asks if they have rooms for them, he says no, but Willow says yes. "They have food, Gendry. The little ones are hungry." The children, she explains, have just turned up there, sometimes having been brought by sparrows.

She and Podrick share a room. Septon Meribald will be going his own way from there on, Brienne plans to rise early and leave before Ser Hyle awakes. But when Podrick asks where they are going, she doesn't have an answer: East would take them to the Vale of Arryn, west to Riverrun, and north to Winterfell. Or, she thinks, she could just give up the quest, go south to King's Landing, confess her failure to Jaime, and take a ship home to Tarth.

The inn is full of children, and while they are waiting for dinner, Ser Hyle sits down by the fire with Brienne and proposes that they get married. She tells him to get lost. When dinner is served, Septon Meribald says grace, but notices that Gendry doesn't join in the prayer. When Meribald asks if Gendry doesn't love the gods, he says, "Not your gods," and leaves without eating. One little boy says that Gendry's god is the Lord of Light, and Willow hits him with her spoon to shut him up.

Brienne wraps some food in a cloth and takes it out to the forge for Gendry, telling Podrick to stay behind. She watches Gendry at the forge and thinks, "He has Renly's eyes and Renly's hair, but not his build. Lord Renly was more lithe than brawny ... not like his brother Robert, whose strength was fabled." He is sullen when she speaks to him, but she persists. She knows from his speech that he was born in King's Landing, and she says, "You have black hair and blue eyes, and you were born in the shadow of the Red Keep. Has no one ever remarked upon your face? ... In King's Landing you must have seen King Robert."

But before she can pursue her questioning, riders arrive. She counts seven of them, and tells Gendry, "you'll want a sword, and armor. These are not your friends. They're no one's friends." Then they see that the lead rider is wearing a helmet with "an iron snout and rows of steel teeth, snarling." Gendry says, "Him." But she says it isn't the Hound, just his helmet. Willow comes to the porch with a crossbow, but the lead rider threatens her obscenely. So Brienne steps forward with Oathkeeper drawn.

She has recognized her old tormentor, Rorge, and provokes him deliberately: "Shagwell said they cut your manhood off when they took your nose." He charges with his battleaxe, but she is the better fighter, and she cuts him down. "'Sapphires, she whispered at him, as she gave her blade a hard twist that made him shudder." But when she steps back to let him fall, she is attacked by Biter and loses her grip on Oathkeeper. He is on top of her, and she gropes for her dagger. He repeated slams her head into the ground, but she is able to slit his belly. Still, he gets the dagger out of her grip and breaks her forearm as he tries to wrench her head off.

Then he bites her cheek and tears off a mouthful of flesh. "He is eating me, she realized, but she had no strength left to fight him any longer. He opens his mouth again, and then his tongue sticks out at her, dripping blood. "His tongue is a foot long, Brienne thought, just before the darkness took her. Why, it looks almost like a sword."

13. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 344-376

Cersei

King Tommen wants to sit on the Iron Throne, but Cersei is not having any rebelliousness, partly because she suspects that Lady Margaery is putting him up to it. She threatens to send for his whipping boy, Pate, "and have him beaten till he bleeds." He confesses that it was Margaery's suggestion, and Cersei probes until he admits that she suggested he attend council meetings too: "She says I have to learn to be king." She says he would just be bored and fall asleep. "The rule was hers; Cersei did not mean to give it up until Tommen came of age. I waited, so can he. I waited half my life."

This little quarrel puts her in a bad mood until Grand Maester Pycelle arrives with some good news: "Wyman Manderly has done as you commanded, and beheaded Lord Stannis's onion knight." Even then, Cersei is skeptical that Davos has really been killed, but Pycell says that his head and hands have been mounted on the walls of White Harbor and that one of the hands has Davos's shortened fingers.

After an annoying meeting the envoy from Braavos, Noho Dimittis, who is pressing for repayment of the debt and claims that all Lord Gyles does is cough at him, Cersei returns to her apartments to bathe and change for dinner. She is accompanied by Ser Osmund Kettleblack, whom she presses on the matter of his brother Osney's seduction of Lady Margaery. The problem, he tells Cersei, is that Osney and Margaery are never alone together. But when he says that there are often men about her, Cersei thinks she can do something with that and asks what men. Osmund says she likes "singers and jugglers and such," and that Ser Tallad is often there, along with the Redwyne twins and Jalabhar Xho.

As they pass by the ruins of the Tower of the Hand, she sees that across the yard Margaery and her group are cheering a squire who has been jousting with the quintain. Then she realizes that the boy is Tommen. When she reaches him, he is being helped from his horse by Loras Tyrell, who praises Tommen and says he must continue to practice. Cersei's arrival puts a chill on the celebration of Tommen, but she says when he is grown he will be as great a champion as his father.

Margaery asks what tourneys Robert won that Tommen should know about, causing Cersei to flush: She had been thinking about Tommen's real father, Jaime, when she spoke. She says that Robert defeated Prince Rhaegar at the tourney of the Trident and named her "his queen of love and beauty," then hurriedly leaves, asking Osmund to help Tommen with his armor and Ser Loras to accompany her. She berates Loras for putting Tommen at risk and says that any training he receives should be conducted by the master-at-arms -- which, Loras reminds her, they currently don't have. "She did not want Tommen growing close to Loras Tyrell. The Knight of Flowers was no sort of man for any boy to emulate." (Again, Loras's homosexuality is only hinted at.) She says she'll look into the matter of appointing a new master-at-arms, but in the meantime, his job is to protect Tommen. "No more."

Lord Qyburn is waiting for her in her solar. He has various reports for her, including the slave revolt that has spread from Astapor to Meereen, and numerous reports of dragons. She says they must mean harpies -- "'It is harpies in Meereen.' She remembered that from somewhere." And why should she care about slave revolts, since they don't have slaves in Westeros? There is also a report from Dorne that Prince Doran has imprisoned Ser Daemon Sand and that the daughter of the Knight of Spottswood has been betrothed to the elderly Lord Estermont. Both of them were close to Doran's daughter, Arianne, Qyburn says, but again Cersei doesn't know why she should be bothered by this.

Finally, there is another "trifling matter." A puppet show has become popular in King's Landing in which puppet lions ruling a kingdom devour a stag but at the end are devoured by a dragon. "The ending took the puppet show from simple insolence to treason," Cersei realizes, so she orders spies sent to the shows and the names of any "men of note" taken down. They can fine the ones who have money, put out an eye of anyone who doesn't, and cut off the heads of the puppeteers. Qyburn asks if he can imprison a couple of the puppeteers, especially a woman, and she agrees.

She is soaking in her bath when Jaime enters with Tommen. The king insists on being allowed to train and that Ser Loras should be his trainer: "Margaery says that everyone has to do what the king says. I want my white courser saddled on the morrow so Ser Loras can teach me how to joust. I want a kitten too, and I don't want to eat beets." Jaime laughs, but Cersei doesn't. Tommen is afraid when she tells him to come closer, but he does, and she promises him that he will learn to joust, but not from Loras because "knights of the Kingsguard have more important duties than playing with a child." When she calls on Jaime to agree he says, sarcastically, "Riding around the city walls, for an instance." Finally, Tommen gives in when she promises him a kitten.

When he's gone, Jaime asks, "Are you drunk, or merely stupid?" They fight about Ser Loras, and Cersei is incensed that she is getting so much resistance: "No one had ever balked her lord father. When Tywin Lannister spoke, men obeyed. When Cersei spoke, they felt free to counsel her, to contradict her, even refuse her." Finally, she orders him out. She has ordered an expensive new dress because "her wretched washerwomen had shrunk several of her old gowns so they no longer fit," but she took the price of the new gowns out of the washerwomen's wages.

Her guests include Lady Falyse, whose mother, Lady Tanda, has suffered a broken hip in a fall from a horse. Ser Balman Byrch explains that the saddle girth broke, and that the stableboy should have seen that it was worn. He talks about the "sparrows" they encountered on the road, and Cersei observes that the new High Septon will have to deal with them once he's chosen. There had been a leading candidate for the position until the sparrows found him in a brothel.

Ser Balman then brings up the unpleasant subject of the naming of Lollys's son: Tyrion. He assures Cersei that neither he nor Falyse had any role in it. "Lollys is a simple creature, and her husband is given to black humors." Cersei decides to use it to enlist them in her cause, and talks about her fear that the Imp will attack her next, and that Bronn is working on his behalf. "I ... I would sleep more easily of a night if I were to hear that Ser Bronn had suffered a ... a mishap ... whilst hunting, perhaps." Ser Balman gets the message.

Cersei checks in on Tommen after dinner and is surprised to find three black kittens asleep in bed with him. Ser Meryn Trant, on guard, says that Margaery had given them to him, and he had been unable to decide which one to keep. Cersei wishes they weren't black, which is unlucky. And she is reminded of the murder of Rhaegar's daughter, who might have been hers if King Aerys hadn't thwarted Tywin's plan to marry Cersei to Rhaegar. "Next to Rhaegar, even her beautiful Jaime had seemed no more than a callow boy." The day she met Rhaegar was the day she had visited Maggy the Frog. "She had only done it to show Jeyne and Melara that the lioness fears nothing." They had laughed at the old woman's prophecies, but at the end of the tourney Tywin had informed her that Aerys had rejected the idea of betrothing her to Rhaegar.

Brienne


Hyle Hunt decides to take the heads of Shagwell, Pyg, and Timeon with them as they journey back the way they came. But by the time they reach Maidenpool, the stench of the heads has Brienne and Podrick keeping their distance from Hunt, who gives them to a guard and tells him to mount them on the wall above the gate. Randyll Tarly is astonished when he hears that Brienne had killed all three of them, but he sticks to his conviction that she has no business carrying on like a knight: "It's time you took off that mail and donned proper clothes again," he says, telling her to find a ship in the harbor that will take her to Tarth.


Brienne refuses, of course, and insists on continuing her search for Sansa. She suggests seeking out Sandor Clegane, but Tarly scoffs at the idea. Clegane has joined the outlaws, he says, and they have eluded his efforts to track them down and kill them. "We've hanged dozens of outlaws, but the leaders still elude us. Clegane, Dondarrion, the red priest, and now this woman Stoneheart ... how do you propose to find them, when I cannot?" He decides that if he can't stop her, he'll let her try, but when she asks if she and Podrick might stay there for the night he refuses. "No man deserves to be cursed with such as you. Live or die, Lady Brienne, do not return to Maidenpool whilst I rule here."


There are no rooms for them at any of the inns, but Podrick suggests they see if they can find a place to sleep that night on one of the ships in the harbor. They finally find shelter on a galley that has suffered damage in a storm and is waiting until the captain can get enough money together to have her repaired. Brienne spends a restless night dreaming about the men she had killed.


They have agreed to meet Hyle Hunt at the Stinking Goose in the morning, and they breakfast there -- to Hunt's dismay when he arrives: "Gods, I hope you did not eat the food here," he says. He has inquired about Clegane and tells them he was last seen at Saltpans before riding west along the Trident. He hasn't joined the outlaws, but in fact the outlaws are looking for him. Saltpans, he suggests, would be the best place to start looking for the Hound. There is a septon named Meribald who knows the territory intimately and is leaving tomorrow to go in the direction of Saltpans. Hunt says he's going with him. "You and Podrick can go wherever you bloody well like."


Brienne suspects that Lord Randyll has put him up to this, but he tells her he has been dismissed from Tarly's service. He has decided to become a hedge knight, and if he happens to find Sansa Stark, so much the better. Brienne gives in and she and Podrick join up with Hunt and Septon Meribald, "a septon without a sept, only one step up from a begging brother in the hierarchy of the faith." He has a donkey laden with "Food for the poor and hungry of the riverlands," he tells her. He also has a large dog, who is called Dog. Meribald is barefoot, and says he hasn't worn shoes for twenty years; he has "the biggest feet that Brienne had ever seen, bare and black and hard as horn."


They make their way through the marshlands, where Meribald is well-known by the people who live there, and he tells them about how bad the wolves have grown lately. "They say the pack is led by a monstrous she-wolf, a stalking shadow grim and grey and huge." (The reader remembers Nymeria, Arya's direwolf, driven away at the Trident.) He warns them not to go out onto the mudflats by themselves, or the mud may swallow them up. And he tells them of the "broken men" who have gone off to fight in some lord or other's wars and finally are so undone by their experiences that they desert and find themselves living "from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man.... In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them ... but he should pity them as well."


Brienne realizes that Meribald himself had been one of the broken men.

11. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 280-311

Brienne

Nimble Dick Crabb is leading Brienne and Podrick to what she hopes is Dontos Hollard, waiting for a ship with Sansa. He reveals his less-savory tendencies along the way by searching her saddlebags for money when she isn't looking. Podrick's outcry alerts her, but aside from warning him not to do it again, there isn't much she can do. "Brienne hoped he was a better guide than he was a thief."

The weather grows rainy and miserable as they proceed, and weariness and doubt begin to take a toll on Brienne. As they near a small castle overlooking the sea, Podrick notices that they are being followed by a man on horseback. They skirt the castle and travel on, riding through a gloomy forest, and make camp at the edge of a bog.

The next day the woods begin to thin out and Nimble Dick says they are nearing the narrow sea and their goal. The rider they thought was following them seems to have disappeared, but Brienne is prepared to fight him if need be. She has yet to kill a man in battle and feels "queasy" about doing so, but when they stop for the night she takes out her sword and sharpens it.

The next they come upon their goal: "an ancient, tumbledown castle, abandoned and overgrown on the edge of a cliff." It is called "the Whispers," Nimble Dick has told them, because it contains a collection of heads from men executed there, who speak to each other. He says if they listen they can hear them, and Podrick says he does. Brienne, too, hears a "faint, soft murmuring that seemed to be coming from the ground as much as from the castle." But as they grow closer to it, she realizes that it's the sound of the sea, which has eaten caves and tunnels in the cliffs below them.

They make their way around the castle to a rotted gate that collapses when Brienne tugs on it. Inside the castle, the forest has grown up, and there is a rusted iron portcullis that resists being opened. But farther along they find a postern gate behind a blackberry bush. "The berries had all been picked, and half the bush had been hacked down to cut a path to the door. The sight of the broken branches filled Brienne with disquiet. 'Someone's been through here, and recently.'" Crabb says it must have been "Your fool and those girls," but Brienne thinks even Dontos Hollard wouldn't bring them to a place like this.

The situation makes her so uneasy that she tells Podrick to bring her the sword Oathkeeper. With Crabb following, she slips through the postern into the ruined and overgrown castle and discovers the ashes from a recent fire. "Someone was trying to keep warm last night. Or else they were trying to send a signal to a passing ship." Before she can shush him, Nimble Dick calls out a "Hallooooo."

A man appears, and then another and another. She recognizes them, especially the third: Shagwell. The others are Pyg and Timeon, members of the Bloody Mummers who had tormented her. Shagwell is the fool Crabb had met, and he still wears faded and dirty motley. He also has "a triple morningstar, three spiked balls chained to a wooden haft," and he uses it to take out one of Nimble Dick's knees, and when he cries out in pain, to smash his face in. Shagwell begins to taunt Brienne with obscenities.

She realizes that these are the three for whom Shagwell was trying to book passage. Timeon tells her that Vargo Hoat's ear grew infected after she bit it off, and that Gregor Clegane "killed him piece by piece. A hand one day, a foot the next, lopped off neat and clean," until the Mountain was summoned to King's Landing and finished him off before he left. Brienne tries to keep them talking, and tells them she is looking for Sansa. "Then it's the Hound you want," Timeon tells her, explaining that Sandor Clegane was "the one that's got the Stark girl."

Pyg and Shagwell are edging closer, backing her toward the cliff. She makes a sudden move on Pyg, cutting him in the thigh and then, when he falls, stabbing him in the throat. Timeon's spear grazes her cheek, and she finds herself with him in front and Shagwell behind her. As she is trying to choose which one to attack, a stone comes through the air and hits Shagwell in the head. She concentrates on Timeon, who wounds her in the shoulder. But she slices off an ear and runs the sword into his belly. As he reaches for a dagger in his belt, she cuts off his hand, thinking, "That one was for Jaime." He begs her to finish him off, and she does.

Shagwell is recovering from being hit by the stone when another one fells him. It is Podrick, who shouts, "I told you I could fight!" Shagwell cries out, "I yield," and tries to crawl away, but Brienne tells him to dig a grave. He protests that he doesn't have a spade. "'You have two hands.' One more than you left Jaime." It takes the rest of the day for Shagwell to dig deep enough, and as Brienne is lowering Nimble Dick Crabb into the hole, Shagwell makes his move with a jagged chunk of rock. But Brienne has a dagger up her sleeve and she stabs him with it repeatedly, saying "Laugh," with each stab.

Before she covers Crabb with dirt, she tosses two dragons into the grave -- payment for finding the fool, she explains to Podrick. Then someone laughs behind them, and she draws Oathkeeper prepared for more Bloody Mummers. But it is Hyle Hunt, who says that Randyll Tarly had him follow her. He helps her finish burying Crabb.

The Queenmaker

Arianne Martel, with her attendants, arrives at the dry well at Shandystone, where her milk brother, Garin, and Ser Gerold Dayne, a knight known as Darkstar, are waiting. Darkstar is, she thinks, the handsomest man in Dorne, and she worries about what will happen when Arys is there and sees his effect on her. By the campfire they talk about the sailors' tales: "a slave revolt in Astapor, dragons in Qarth, grey plague in Yi Ti." They are there because of Arianne's plot to crown Myrcella queen, which Dayne doubts will succeed, calling it "a hollow gesture. She will never sit the Iron Throne. Nor will you get the war you want. The lion is not so easily provoked."

As the moon rises, Ser Arys Oakheart arrives with Myrcella, who proves unaware of the plot when Arianne's retinue kneel and address her as "Your Grace." She asks Arianne, "Why do they call me queen? Did something bad happen to Tommen?" Arianne says that Tommen has fallen in with "evil men" who "conspired with him to steal your throne." Myrcella is still confused, but Arianne tells her that because Myrcella is a year older than Tommen, "the Iron Throne by rights is yours." She presents her attendants, Ser Andrey Dalt, known as Drey; Lady Sylva Santagar; Garin and Darkstar Dayne.

Ser Arys takes Arianne aside and tells her that Myrcella doesn't know much about the plot, but he has her trust. And that Tywin Lannister has been murdered and Cersei "has assumed the regency." Arianne thinks that might make it easier for the Seven Kingdoms to accept Myrcella as queen, and likes it that "Lannisters are killing Lannisters, how sweet."

He was able to spirit Myrcella away by putting it out that she had "redspots," which deters Maester Caleotte from attending her because he has never had the disease, which can be fatal to adults but not to children under ten. One of Myrcella's maids is posing as her, and at a distance, with the prescribed salve on her face, can be mistake for her. Arys has had one of his men dress in his armor and will stay with the maid in Myrcella's chamber for the few days that it will take to get Myrcella out of reach of Arianne's father.

So they set out by night. "Arianne and Ser Arys took the lead, with Myrcella on a frisky mare between them. Garin followed close behind with Spotted Sylva, whilst her two Dornish knights took the rear." Arianne thinks that it's a good omen that there are seven in the company. "Once I crown Myrcella and free the Sand Snakes, all Dorne will rally to my banners," she thinks. She will assume the rule in Dorne, and send her father in retirement to the Water Gardens.

They are headed for the river, the Greenblood, which Arianne hoped to reach before dawn, but Myrcella grew tired and had to rest. Darkstar urges her to pick up the pace: "We have no tents, and by day the sands are cruel." The heat increases, but finally they sight the river. The plan is to follow the Greenblood to the fork with another river, the Vaith, and then to cross the sands to Hellholt, where Myrcella will be crowned.

They reach the waiting boat, but Arianne wonders why there is no crew on the deck. Then the door on the boat opens and Areo Hotah emerges with his longaxe. They come to a halt, and Arianne tells them to flee and for Arys to protect the princess. But Hotah thumps his axe on the deck and a dozen armed guardsmen join him. "'Yield, my princess,' the captain called, 'else we must slay all but the child and yourself, by your father's word.'"

Garin and Drey signal their surrender, but Arys Oakheart cries out "You will not take her whilst I still draw breath." Arianne thinks, "You reckless fool," when she sees his defiance, and Darkstar tells Arys to put up his sword. Arianne tries to speak, but it's too late: "Ser Arys Oakheart gave her one last longing look, then put his golden spurs into his horse and charged." Arrows from crossbows pierce his shield and a spear hits his horse's flank, but he keeps charging. Arianne can hear Myrcella screaming.

Hotah's longaxe took his right arm off at the shoulder, spun away spraying blood, and came flashing back again in a terrible two-handed slash that removed the head of Arys Oakheart and sent it spinning through the air.

Arianne hears Hotah shout, "After him. He must not escape. After him!" And she sees Myrcella on the ground, her face in her hands, wailing, with "blood streaming through her fingers." Arianne doesn't understand what is happening in the confusion of men scrambling onto horses, and thinks it's some kind of nightmare. Guardsmen tie her hands behind her back, and Arianne asks Hotah how her father could have known. He says, "Someone told.... Someone always tells."

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

Brienne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

Samwell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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