31. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 814-834

The Sacrifice

The storm has not abated, and Stannis's troops are snowbound on the edge of a pair of frozen lakes in which they have not even been able to catch fish through holes cut in the ice. Now the followers of R'hllor have determined that a sacrifice needs to be made to the red god and are erecting stakes for "An offering of blood and fire, the queen's men called it." The victims are to be four starving men who had turned to cannibalism.

As he is led to the stake, one of them men begins to hurl obscene insults at his captors, but is finally silenced by having his throat cut. Asha Greyjoy realizes that the man intentionally brought about his death to be spared the torment of burning.

Stannis arrives for the burning, accompanied by Arnolf Karstark, who had joined them with his own small army eight days earlier. He is expected to hold Winterfell once it is taken. Stannis gives the word for the sacrifice to proceed, and Asha forces herself to watch. When the screaming has stopped, Stannis withdraws. One of the queen's men, Clayton Suggs, approaches Asha and threatens that she'll be next to burn: She has "king's blood" that will please R'hllor. Justin Massey approaches as Asha is responding to Suggs, and laughs at her suggestion that the red god might prefer "one of his own. A faithful man who will sing his praises as the flames lick at his cock." Suggs smirks at the burned men chained to their stakes and leaves.

Massey invites Asha to share some horsemeat with him, noting that it may not be available much longer: "We had eight hundred horses when we marched from Deepwood Motte. Last night the count was sixty-four." She accompanies him to the longhall, where she takes a look at the men: The southerners are pale and sickly, obvious victims of the ordeal, while the northmen are healthier, better prepared for the cold. One of the men says they will resume the march in three days, but Massey replies, "If we march, we will die by the hundreds." And assuming they reach Winterfell, the men are too weak to mount an attack.

An argument arises, "the same argument as last night and the night before. Press on and die, stay here and die, fall back and die." Arnolf Karstark, at the high table, proclaims that they will take Winterfell and "be bathing in the blood of Freys and Boltons," which gets a noisy assent from the northmen, but only silence from the southerners. Massey is having none of it: "Gods be good, are all you Karstarks mad?" He stalks out.

Asha decides to follow him, as one of the few who would defend her if they took a mind to burn her at the stake, but when she gets outside she finds herself lost in the snowdrifts. She makes her way back by accident to where the men were burned, hearing only the sound of a frightened horse somewhere. There she is accosted by Clayton Suggs again. He threatens again to burn her, but as they are exchanging words she hears the sound of the horse. She asks him if he hears it, and he says, "Bloody hell. Riders," and draws his sword.

Suddenly the riders are on them. Suggs stands his ground and tells her to run and warn Stannis, but she notices that two of the riders are wearing the black of the Night's Watch. She calls out, "Who are you?" and a voice she recognizes answers, "Friends." It is Tristifer Botley, who says, "We looked for you at Winterfell, but found only Crowfood Umber beating drums and blowing horns." The Maid is with him, along with others from the dungeons at Deepwood. They had been ransomed by Tycho Nestoris, the representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos, who needed a guide to find Stannis.

The banker then tells Asha that he has "brought a gift" for her. "A girl and an old man, thought Asha, as the two were dumped rudely in the snow before her." She is disgusted at the sight and smell of the old man, until he speaks and she recognizes him as Theon.

Victarion

Victarion's ships capture a Ghiscari galley whose captain has the latest news from Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen is dead, he says. But Moqorro assures Victarion that she is alive; he has seen her in his fires, so Victarion has the captain's tongue cut out. The galley is renamed Red God's Wroth and added to Victarion's fleet. Three ships go missing in a storm that comes up, but they capture another one a few days later and change its name from Dove to Shrike.

The crew fears and hates Moqorro, but Victarion has anyone who speaks against the wizard flogged, and increasingly relies on Moqorro's visions. Sure enough, his prediction that they will encounter and capture two more vessels comes true. They also learn that dysentery has been widespread among the troops besieging Meereen, but the story that Daenerys is dead persists. This time Victarion has the storytellers beheaded.

The hand Victarion healed feels stronger than ever, though it looks like "pork crackling from elbow to fingertips" and sometimes gives off smoke. Then the three ships that had gone missing are found, as Moqorro had predicted they would be, so Victarion's faith in him grows. "Two gods are with me now," he boasts to the dusky woman -- his own Drowned God and the red god R'hllor.

They capture more ships, and this time hear that Daenerys "flew away upon her dragon, beyond the Dothraki sea." Victarion demands to know where this sea is, and plans to sail it, but the fisherman who tells him about it makes the mistake of saying, "The Dothraki sea is made of grass, fool." Victarion throttles him with his burned hand.

They continue to encounter and seize ships, slaughtering their crews and freeing the slaves who rowed them. One ship carries "twenty perfumed boys and four score girls destined for the pleasure houses of Lys." Victarion has the boys bound in chains and thrown into the sea: "They were unnatural creatures, and the ship smelled better once cleansed of their presence." He picks the seven most beautiful girls, and puts them aboard a fishing boat they had captured, cutting it loose and then setting it on fire, saying, "With this gift of innocence and beauty, we honor both the gods."

That night he brings out the great horn inscribed with Valyrian glyphs, which had been sounded at the kingsmoot. He tells Moqorro,

"The sound it made ... it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one." 

Moqorro asks what happened to the man who blew it, and Victarion tells him that he seemed to have been burned to death from within. Moqorro says it is named Dragonbinder and reads one of the inscriptions: "No mortal man shall sound me and live." Another inscription reads, "Blood for fire, fire for blood."

Victarion mustn't sound the horn himself, Moqorro tells him, for it doesn't matter who blows it. "The dragons will come to the horn's master. You must claim the horn. With blood."

28. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 741-768

The Iron Suitor

Victarion Greyjoy set out from the Shield Islands with ninety-three ships, and picked up half a dozen more along the way. Only about half of them remain as they draw near their goal. In Volantis, he had seen how the fever to conquer Daenerys had taken hold, and he is now determined to reach her before the Volantene fleet does. He is hoping that the storms will be as destructive to the Volantenes as they were to his ships.

He knows that Euron plans to claim Daenerys as his own, but Victarion has decided to defy his brother and take her for himself: "They had sailed too far and lost too much for Victarion to turn west without his prize." In his cabin he is tended to by Euron's gift, a "dusky woman" whose tongue Euron had cut out before presenting her to Victarion. The young maester, known as Kerwin, also arrives to dress the wound he had suffered to his hand in a swordfight. The wound is gangrenous, but in no uncertain terms Victarion rejects Kerwin's suggestion that he may have to amputate the hand.

As the dusky woman is binding the wound again, he gets word that the captain of the ship Grief has come on board with a man reputed to be a wizard. It is Moqorro, the red priest on the Selaesori Qhoran, thought to be dead after the storm that attacked the ship. He has been rescued, clinging to a spar after ten days adrift -- a claim that Victarion rejects as impossible. When Moqorro reveals himself as a priest of R'hllor there is much mockery and a call to "Send him down to the Drowned God before he brings a curse upon us." But Victarion thinks that perhaps the Drowned God sent Moqorro to them for a reason.

Victarion asks why they think he's a wizard, and is told that Moqorro claimed Victarion would die unless he agreed to see the priest. A spasm of pain from his hand makes Victarion stagger and almost fall, and he decides to have Moqorro taken to his cabin. When they enter, the dusky woman turns toward them and then hisses like a snake at the sight of Moqorro. Victarion knocks her down with his good hand.

Moqorro tells Victarion that he has seen him in the flames, "stern and fierce" but "blind to the tentacles that grasp you at wrist and neck and ankle, the black strings that make you dance." Victarion scoffs at the vision, but when Moqorro asks to see the wounded hand he shows it to him. Moqorro  tells him that he can heal it.

"I will need a blade. Silver would be best, but iron will serve. A brazier as well. I must needs light a fire. There will be pain. Terrible pain, such as you have never known. But when we are done, your hand will be returned to you." 

Victarion submits to the treatment, and the crew hears strange sounds of laughter, singing, and wailing coming from the cabin. At sunset Victarion comes out on deck, raises "a charred and blackened hand," and orders them to cut the throat of Maester Kerwin and throw him overboard. When they do that, he says, they will have fair winds all the way to Meereen. He bases that on what Moqorro has seen in his fires. Moqorro had also seen Daenerys's marriage in the fires, but Victarion isn't bothered by that: "She would not be the first woman Victarion Greyjoy had made a widow."

Tyrion

Yezzan zo Qaggaz is dying of "the pale mare," a dysentery-like disease that has been decimating the Yunkai'i. The slavemaster Nurse has already died, though with help from the poison mushrooms Tyrion has carried with him since Pentos.  Tyrion is now trying to figure out a way of escaping, but is hindered by the slave collar with its tinkling bells.

When Sweets, the hermaphrodite, sends them to fetch water for Yezzan, Tyrion tells Penny that Yezzan has nephews who will inherit his slaves, and that they may decide to put them on the auction block again. But the nephews have disappeared when the disease showed up in Yezzan's camp. Tyrion orders Scar, the sergeant of Yezzan's guard, to fetch the water, but is backhanded for his request. This gives him the opportunity to explain that he and Penny are too weak to carry the water Yezzan needs, so Scar suggests that they get their "bear," Jorah Mormont, to assist them.

Mormont is in terrible shape, having resisted at every opportunity that presented itself, but he follows Tyrion and Penny to the well. As they walk, Tyrion observes the preparations that are being made in case of the dragon's return, the weapons being trained at the sky. From his own studies of dragon lore, Tyrion knows the futility of these preparations: The only real vulnerability a dragon has is its eyes; the scales of the belly are too tough.

They find a line a quarter of a mile long at the well. Tyrion takes the opportunity to listen to the gossip, which is of course about Daenerys's disappearance and presumed death. He and Penny are recognized as the dwarfs who had jousted for the queen, and are pressed for information about her. But Tyrion had been more surprised to find her escorted by Barristan Selmy. He had almost tried to make contact with Barristan, but he was uncertain how he might have been received by the old knight. Unfortunately, they were being chained up after their performance while the dragon was making its appearance, so they have nothing to tell about it.

On their way back with the water, Tyrion and Penny carrying two pails and Mormont carrying four, Tyrion claims to know a shortcut. He has grown used to playing on Penny's innocence, and has even kept secret from her what he has learned: that they were going to set the lions loose on them. He figured it out when he and Penny returned from the pit and saw the look on Nurse's face: "Nurse did not expect us back. He had looked around at other faces. None of them expected us back. We were meant to die out there." And then he overheard an animal trainer talking about how hungry the lions were.

But it is Penny's turn to catch on: They are going the wrong way. They are heading for the camp of the Second Sons. Mormont warns him, "If you think to find help there, you don't know Brown Ben Plumm." But Tyrion assures him that he does. Penny frets about the dog and the pig, but Tyrion assures her that Sweets will take care of them, knowing full well that if he does anything Sweets will eat them. He and Mormont set off for Plumm's camp, and Penny reluctantly follows.

One of the men at the camp recognizes Tyrion and Penny as the dwarfs Plumm had tried to buy, so he lets the three of them enter. When they are taken to Plumm, Tyrion explains that Yezzan is dying, and that he has taken the opportunity to join him.

"House Plumm is sworn to Casterly Rock, and as it happens I know a bit of its history. Your branch sprouted from a stone spit across the narrow sea, no doubt. A younger son of Viserys Plumm, I'll wager. The queen's dragons were fond of you, were they not?"

Plumm is amused by Tyrion's self-assurance, as the dwarf goes on to warn him that if he takes his head and sends it to Cersei, she will deny that it's his and withhold his reward. He "was born a second son," he tells Plumm, and wants to join up. When one of Plumm's men says they need fighters, not mummers, Tyrion says he's brought a fighter, and indicates Mormont, whose "face might have been unrecognizable in its battered state, but his voice was unchanged." Plumm recognizes Mormont when he speaks, but it is Tyrion who takes charge of the situation, challenging Plumm to a game of cyvasse and asking for some wine: "My throat is dry as an old bone, and I can see that I have a deal of talking to do."

20. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 524-548

Tyrion

He has given in, and is riding the pig, whose name is Pretty, jousting against Penny on the deck of the Selaesori Qhoran. The ship has been becalmed in the Gulf of Grief for twelve days, and the crew is restless and looking for a scapegoat. Penny has begged him to help her entertain the crew, lest they turn on them. But Tyrion has also decided that he and Penny will perform the jousting act as a means to approach Daenerys.

Ser Jorah scoffs at this idea: "Daenerys Targaryen is no silly child to be diverted by japs and tumbles. She will deal with you justly." But Tyrion, who knows the history of Jorah's relationship with Daenerys, asks how he intends to approach her. "You think Daenerys will execute me and pardon you, but the reverse is just as likely. Maybe you should hope on that pig, Ser Jorah."

Jorah gives him a blow that knocks him across the deck, and tells Tyrion to stay away from him for the rest of the voyage. Tyrion is rinsing the blood out of his mouth when he feels the ship move: The wind has come up. But when he goes on deck he looks to the west and thinks, "I have never seen a sky that color." Moqorro joins him and says it is "God's wroth."

Banished from Jorah's presence, Tyrion joins Penny in her cabin as the storm begins to hurl the ship about. To his surprise, Penny kisses him. He has no desire for her, and when he looks at her he realizes that she really has none for him. She tells him that she was afraid they would drown, and she has never kissed a man before. In case she is hoping for more, he tells her he is married. The excuse works because, he realizes, she is "still young enough to believe such blatant lies."

The storm lasts into the night, sweeping three members of the crew overboard, blinding the cook when hot grease is tossed in his eyes, and breaking both of the captain's legs when he falls from the sterncastle to the main deck. When it dies down, Tyrion goes to the deck and discovers that they are in the eye of the storm. The wind returns and this time it splits the mast. Tyrion clings for life to a rope, as splinters from the mast stab him in the neck and the thigh.
The
When the storm is over, the ship is just barely afloat, and nine men have died, including Moqorro, who had been on deck praying to R'hllor. The next day the captain dies and three days later the cook. They drift for nineteen days until a ship is sighted. Unfortunately, Ser Jorah informs him, it's a slaver.

The Turncloak

Snow begins to fall heavily at Winterfell, which puts Stannis's troops at a severe disadvantage, as Roose Bolton cheerfully announces. Theon has been considering escape, now that his usefulness to the Boltons is over, but he has no place to go. "The nearest thing to a home that remained to him was here, amongst the bones of Winterfell. A ruined man, a ruined castle. This is my place."

Jeyne/Arya hasn't been seen in the hall since the wedding, but Theon goes in every night to help her bathe, since she has no handmaids. He has seen the bruises Ramsay has left on her, and would like to help her escape, but he knows that when Ramsay tires of tormenting his wife, he will turn on Theon again.

He eats by himself, since no one cares for the company of Theon Turncloak. But one evening a woman sits down by him. She is one of the women accompanying the singer Abel. She asks him to tell her how he captured Winterfell, and if he had a secret way to get in. He doesn't tell her anything, but she persists, telling him her name is Rowan. Instantly he suspects that this is one of Ramsay's tricks: "He wants me to run, so he can punish me." So he gets up and leaves.

He walks through the ruins of Winterfell and finds his way to the battlements on the inner wall where he sees the snow piling up everywhere. "Stannis Baratheon is out there somewhere, freezing," he thinks. He makes his way to the godswood, where the hot springs keep the snow from accumulating. Even though they are not his gods, he finds himself praying but he isn't sure for what: "Strength? Courage? Mercy?" He hears the sound of a faint sobbing, and thinks it must be Jeyne: "Who else could it be? Gods do not weep. Or do they?" There must be ghosts in Winterfell, and he is one of them.

In the kitchen, cooks are making stew and the dogs are gathered for the scraps. He has some stew, and listens in the hall as Roose Bolton's scouts report that Stannis's march has slowed. Then Lady Barbrey Dustin enters and calls for him. She wants to know how to get to the crypts. He leads her there, and on the way he recognizes the place where Bran Stark had fallen. He had been hunting that day, and when they returned they were told that Bran wasn't expected to live. He thinks, "The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could."

It takes half an hour for Lady Dustin's men to uncover the entrance to the crypts and to batter down the frozen door with an axe. As he descends into the crypts, Lady Dustin comments that Lady Arya is weeping. Theon tells himself to be careful of another trap, but she says, "Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that." The northmen "love the Starks," she says, and they haven't forgotten how Ramsay Bolton's previous wife ate her fingers to keep from starving. "What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl."

Theon keeps silent until they reach the first level of the crypts. She asks if he knows the names of the lords buried there, and he recalls some of them. She asks for Ned Stark's tomb, and he tells her it's at the end. As they pass one tomb she notices that the king buried there is missing his sword. Theon is "disquieted" at this fact: "He had always heard that the iron in the sword kept the spirits of the dead locked within their tombs."

Suddenly he finds himself asking, "My lady, why do you hate the Starks?" She replies, "For the same reason you love them." He stumbles trying to answer, protesting that he took their castle and had Bran and Rickon killed, but she persists, "Why do you love the Starks?" And he admits, "I wanted to be one of them." And she replies, "We have more in common than you know."

When they reach Lord Rickard's tomb, she observes that his sword is missing too. And he points out that Brandon's is gone as well. "He would hate that," she says, and then tells Theon that Brandon, Ned's brother, had taken her virginity. She had hoped to marry him, but Rickard Stark pledged him to Catelyn Tully, ambitious to unite his house with one in the south. Her father had though she would marry Eddard, but after Brandon's death, he married Catelyn. So she married Lord Dustin, but he died when Ned Stark called out his banners in support of Robert Baratheon's rebellion.

"He told me that my lord had died an honorable death, that his body had been laid to rest beneath the red mountains of Dorne. He brought his sister's bones back north, though, and there she rests ... but I promise you, Lord Eddard's bones will never rest beside hers. I mean to feed them to my dogs."

Theon doesn't understand, and she explains that Catelyn had Eddard's bones sent north, but when Balon Greyjoy took Moat Cailin, their progress to Winterfell had been interrupted. "I have been watching ever since. Should those bones ever emerge from the swamps, they will get no farther than Barrowton."

When they return from the crypt, she warns him that he must repeat nothing of what she has said. He says, "Hold my tongue or lose it." And she replies, "Roose has trained you well."

16. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 420-447

Reek

Bolton is returning with his fellow hunters, and the hounds almost knock Theon off his feet as he hurries, as fast as his fetters will allow him, to greet his master. Bolton comments on how bad Reek smells, and he apologizes. But then Bolton says he has brought him a gift and throws him a rotting, maggot-covered head.

He is left to take care of Ramsay Bolton's horse, and Little Walder commands him to do the same for his and his cousin's horses. But Big Walder (actually the smaller of the two) says he can take care of his own: "Little Walder had become Lord Ramsay's best boy and grew more like him every day, but the smaller Frey was made of different stuff and seldom took part in his cousin's games and cruelties."

In the stables, Theon asks Big Walder whose head it was. He is told it had belonged to an old man driving some goats on the road, and Bolton had killed him because he called him "Lord Snow," a reminder of his bastard name.

A feast is being held after the sixteen-day hunt, and Reek is kept chained outside the hall because his smell would spoil the feasters' appetites. He is able to watch Ramsay through the doors. The dogs have the run of the hall, however. He has been told that the dogs are "all named after peasant girls Ramsay had hunted, raped, and killed back when he'd still been a bastard, running with the first Reek."

In the middle of the feast, Roose Bolton arrives and orders everyone out. Ramsay orders Reek unchained and taken out, but Roose says for him to stay. He is left alone in the hall with Bolton father and son, and listens as they discuss the coming wedding, and Wyman Manderly's slow progress toward it. Ramsay complains that the feast he had been holding "should have been in Barrow Hall, not this pisspot of a castle," which belongs to a petty lord named Harwood Stout. But his father reminds him that Barrow Hall belongs to Lady Dustin, who "cannot abide" Ramsay. He has to stay on the good side of Barbrey Dustin, and he is concerned about what might happen if Bran or Rickon Stark is discovered.

Hearing of this last possibility, Theon struggles to think like Reek:

Ned Stark's sons are all dead, Reek thought. Robb was murdered at the Twins, and Bran and Rickon ... we dipped the heads in tar.... His own head was pounding. He did not want to think about anything that had happened before he knew his name.

But Ramsay and Roose Bolton know the truth, and are determined to conceal it and to make sure that Theon continues to be blamed for the murder of the Stark boys. Roose also warns his son to try to act like a Bolton: "Tales are told of you, Ramsay. I hear them everywhere. People fear you." Ramsays says, of course, "Good," but Roose insists that he conceal his cruelties better: "A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule. Make it yours."

Then he delivers his news: Stannis has taken Deepwood Motte and restored it to the Glovers, and the mountain clans have joined in supporting him. Ramsay is delighted to hear of this opportunity to crush their foe, and urges his father to let him attack Deepwood. Roose says he must marry first, and Ramsay wants to proceed with it: "We have a girl, we have a tree, and we have lords enough to witness. I'll wed her on the morrow, plant a son between her legs, and march before her maiden's blood has dried."

But Roose wants the wedding to take place at Winterfell. That will get Stannis's attention, and that of the clansmen who are following him, who "will not abandon the daughter of their precious Ned to such as you." They will march on Winterfell, and the Boltons will conquer them there. And Roose wants to take Reek from him: "if you have not ruined him beyond redemption, he may yet be of some use to us."

Ramsay reluctantly unchains Theon and rides with Roose to Barrow Hall, which is less than a mile away. As they ride, Roose Bolton comments on Reek's stench, and tells him, "I knew the first Reek. He stank, though not for want of washing. I have never known a cleaner creature, truth be told.... The smell was something he was born with." Ramsay's mother had asked for a servant for her son, and he had given him Reek as a joke, "but he and Ramsay became inseparable. I do wonder, though ... was it Ramsay who corrupted Reek, or Reek Ramsay?"

He tells Theon the story of Ramsay's conception: Roose had been hunting a fox and come upon the beautiful young wife of an old miller. He hanged the miller for getting married without his permission, and raped the wife "beneath the tree where he was swaying." A year later she appears at the Dreadfort with the baby, saying that her husband's brother had turned them out of the mill. So he cut the brother's tongue out and gave her the mill. Roose also tells Theon that he had a legitimate son, Domeric, but that Ramsay poisoned him. Theon observes that Roose has a new wife, Walda Frey, who could give him sons, but Roose predicts that Ramsay will kill them, too.

Theon asks why Roose wanted him. "I'm not even a man, I'm broken and ... the smell." Roose says he'll smell better after a bath and change of clothes, but this terrifies Theon: "I have ... wounds, I ... and these clothes, Lord Ramsay gave them to me, he ... he said that I was never to take them off, save at his command." Roose says, "I mean you no harm, you know. I owe you much and more." Theon thinks, "This is a trap, he is playing with you, the son is just a shadow of the father," but he can't help asking what Roose owes him, and gets a reply: "The north. The Starks were done and doomed the night that you took Winterfell."

When they reach Barrow Hall, Roose takes him inside and introduces him to its mistress, Lady Barbrey Dustin, who is appalled at the smell. Roose tells her, "He has been with Ramsay. Lady Barbrey, allow me to present the rightful Lord of the Iron Islands, Theon of House Greyjoy." Terrified that Ramsay will hear this, Theon falls to his knees:

"I'm not him, I'm not the turncloak, he died at Winterfell. My name is Reek." He had to remember his name. "It rhymes with freak." 

Tyrion

He and Ser Jorah have booked passage on the Salaesori Qhoran, and so has the dwarf Penny, along with her dog and her pig. Jorah has removed his chains as long as they are on the ship, whose passengers include a red priest, Moqorro, who holds sway over most of the crew.

Penny has stayed below for a week, and when Tyrion spots her peeking out at the deck where Moqorro is holding a service to R'hllor, she shies away. Though the crew thinks rubbing a dwarf's head is good luck, they also think having a woman on board is bad. Tyrion pities her because of the fate visited on her brother, being mistaken for him and having his head chopped off, but she keeps her distance from him.

When Moqorro finishes his services, Tyrion goes to talk to him. The high priest, Benerro, had specially chosen Moqorro as a kind of missionary to Daenerys. Tyrion asks him what he sees in the flames, and Moqorro tells him, "Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all." Tyrion is flattered by being important enough to be part of Moqorro's visions.

He asks Moqorro about the ship's name, and the priest tells him that "Qhoran" is the title of a counselor or steward, and that "selaesori" means "fragrant." So the ship's name means "fragrant steward." (Tyrion is unaware, of course, of Quaithe's warning to Daenerys, "Beware the perfumed seneschal.") 

When he goes below, he tells Jorah that he had caught sight of Penny, whose name Tyrion hates because she and her brother, Oppo, had taken as their stage names the two smallest coins, Penny and Groat. But Jorah reveals to us that it was Tyrion who insisted that they bring Penny with them, afraid of what might befall her if she stayed in Volantis. Otherwise, Jorah is indifferent to her fate, and tells Tyrion that she is his responsibility. Tyrion thinks, "The man is cold, brooding, sullen, deaf to humor. And those are his good points." But he has learned of Jorah's passion for Daenerys, and feels some sympathy for him.

Life on the open sea bores Tyrion, who hates to sleep because of his bad dreams. He thinks of ending it all by jumping overboard, "But what if there is a hell and my father's waiting for me?" There is nothing to do but read and reread the three books on board, and he's rereading one of them, "about the erotic adventures of a young slave girl in a Lysene pillow house," at his table in the galley where he dines, when Penny enters.

He asks her to sit down and eat with him, but she apologizes for interrupting and starts to leave. He asks, "Do you mean to spend your whole life running away?" This causes her to get angry, and to say that he is the reason she and her brother had to run away. If he had obeyed Joffrey's command and jousted with them at the wedding feast, she says, thinks might have turned out differently. When he says that people would have laughed at him, she retorts, "My brother says that is a good thing, making people laugh." But speaking of her brother makes her cry.

Tyrion's apology only makes her angrier. She says that they fled King's Landing because her brother had been afraid they would be blamed in Joffrey's death. They went to Tyrosh, where they knew a juggler, another dwarf, but he had been murdered and his head taken too. Tyrion apologizes again, but she insists, "His blood is on your hands."

It is Tyrion's turn to get angry, and he says, "His blood is on my sister's hands, and the hands of the brutes who killed him." He admits that he has "killed mothers, fathers, nephews, lovers, men and women, kings and whores. A singer once annoyed me, so I had the bastard stewed. But I have never killed a juggler, nor a dwarf, and I am not to blame for what happened to your bloody brother." Penny picks up a cup of wine and throws it in his face, then leaves.

Days pass without seeing her again, but then a storm comes up. Remembering the misery of being below in his cabin during the stormy crossing of the narrow sea, he determines to stay on deck. "If the gods wanted him, he would sooner die by drowning than choking on his own vomit." He winds up soaked but exhilarated, especially when he goes to the cabin and finds Jorah Mormont lying in a pool of vomit. After drinking a good deal of rum and playing several games of cyvasse with the ship's cook, he goes on deck where he finds Penny.

He turns to leave her alone, but she speaks to him and apologizes for throwing the wine in his face and for her accusations that he killed her brother and the man in Tyrosh. She says that she thought she wanted to die, but the storm made her realize that she wanted to live. He thinks, "I have been there too. Something else we have in common."

She asks if he really did stew a singer. He says he doesn't cook, but she asks why he wanted him dead. "He wrote a song about me," he says, remembering the words. He asks about her family, and she says that her mother was not a dwarf but her father was. They're dead now, and she has no family left. She worries about what will happen to her now. "I have no trade, just the jousting show, and that needs two."

Tyrion flinches from what he perceives to be a suggestion that he might team with her in the act. But she continues to reminisce, telling about how the Sealord of Braavos once "laughed so hard that he gave each of us a ... a grand gift." He asks if Cersei had found them in Braavos, but she says it was a man, "Osmund. No, Oswald. Something like that." He came to them in Pentos. He tells her that now they're going to Meereen. She corrects him, "Qarth, you mean. We're bound for Qarth, by way of New Ghis." No, he insists, she will be performing for the dragon queen in Meereen. He assures her that Daenerys is kind-hearted and will find a place for her at court. "And you will be there too," she says. He agrees, "I will."

They strike up a friendship, and she introduces him to her pig, Pretty. They start taking meals together. He tries, and fails, to teach her cyvasse. And finally she asks him "if he would like to tilt with her." He turns her down, and later wonders if she meant something else by "tilt." He would have turned her down for that, too, "but he might not have been so brusque."

That night he can't sleep and goes on deck. The sky is red in the northeast, and he asks Moqorro why. "The sky is always red above Valyria," Moqorro tells him. They are closer than the crew would like to the volcanic region where the ancient kingdom had been destroyed. Tyrion's uncle Gerion Lannister had sailed for Valyria when Tyrion was eighteen, and never returned.

There is supposedly a curse on the Valyrian coast that afflicts any ship that sights it. But Moqorro tells Tyrion that he has ordered the captain to sail the shortest course: "Others seek Daenerys too." Tyrion wonders if Griff has changed his plans about sailing west, and asks Moqorro if he has seen them in his fires.

"Only their shadows," Moqorro said. "One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood." 

It sounds like the kraken, the sigil of Euron and House Greyjoy.