A Dance with Dragons

by George R. R. Martin

  captains and two score of his sailors. We can crawl over every inch of those ships.”

  It was good counsel. “Yes, make it so.” Westeros. Home. But if she left, what would happen to her city? Meereen was never your city, her brother’s voice seemed to whisper. Your cities are across the sea. Your Seven Kingdoms, where your enemies await you. You were born to serve them blood and fire.

  Ser Barristan cleared his throat and said, “This warlock that the merchant spoke of…”

  “Pyat Pree.” She tried to recall his face, but all she could see were his lips. The wine of the warlocks had turned them blue. Shade-of-the-evening, it was called. “If a warlock’s spell could kill me, I would be dead by now. I left their palace all in ashes.” Drogon saved me when they would have drained my life from me. Drogon burned them all.

  “As you say, Your Grace. Still. I will be watchful.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “I know you will. Come, walk me back down to the feast.”

  The next morning Dany woke as full of hope as she had been since first she came to Slaver’s Bay. Daario would soon be at her side once more, and together they would sail for Westeros. For home. One of her young hostages brought her morning meal, a plump shy girl named Mezzara, whose father ruled the pyramid of Merreq, and Dany gave her a happy hug and thanked her with a kiss.

  “Xaro Xhoan Daxos has offered me thirteen galleys,” she told Irri and Jhiqui as they were dressing her for court.

  “Thirteen is a bad number, Khaleesi,” murmured Jhiqui, in the Dothraki tongue. “It is known.”

  “It is known,” Irri agreed. “Thirty would be better,” Daenerys agreed. “Three hundred better still. But thirteen may suffice to carry us to Westeros.”

  The two Dothraki girls exchanged a look. “The poison water is accursed, Khaleesi,” said Irri. “Horses cannot drink it.”

  “I do not intend to drink it,” Dany promised them.

  Only four petitioners awaited her that morning. As ever, Lord Ghael was the first to present himself, looking even more wretched than usual. “Your Radiance,” he moaned, as he fell to the marble at her feet, “the armies of the Yunkai’i descend on Astapor. I beg you, come south with all your strength!”

  “I warned your king that this war of his was folly,” Dany reminded him. “He would not listen.”

  “Great Cleon sought only to strike down the vile slavers of Yunkai.”

  “Great Cleon is a slaver himself.”

  “I know that the Mother of Dragons will not abandon us in our hour of peril. Lend us your Unsullied to defend our walls.”

  And if I do, who will defend my walls? “Many of my freedmen were slaves in Astapor. Perhaps some will wish to help defend your king. That is their choice, as free men. I gave Astapor its freedom. It is up to you to defend it.”

  “We are all dead, then. You gave us death, not freedom.” Ghael leapt to his feet and spat into her face.

  Strong Belwas seized him by the shoulder and slammed him down onto the marble so hard that Dany heard Ghael’s teeth crack. The Shavepate would have done worse, but she stopped him.

  “Enough,” she said, dabbing at her cheek with the end of her tokar. “No one has ever died from spittle. Take him away.”

  They dragged him out feet first, leaving several broken teeth and a trail of blood behind. Dany would gladly have sent the rest of the petitioners away… but she was still their queen, so she heard them out and did her best to give them justice.

  Late that afternoon Admiral Groleo and Ser Barristan returned from their inspection of the galleys. Dany assembled her council to hear them. Grey Worm was there for the Unsullied, Skahaz mo Kandaq for the Brazen Beasts. In the absence of her bloodriders, a wizened jaqqa rhan called Rommo, squint-eyed and bowlegged, came to speak for her Dothraki. Her freedmen were represented by the captains of the three companies she had formed—Mollono Yos Dob of the Stalwart Shields, Symon Stripeback of the Free Brothers, Marselen of the Mother’s Men. Reznak mo Reznak hovered at the queen’s elbow, and Strong Belwas stood behind her with his huge arms crossed. Dany would not lack for counsel.

  Groleo had been a most unhappy man since they had broken up his ship to build the siege engines that won Meereen for her. Dany had tried to console him by naming him her lord admiral, but it was a hollow honor; the Meereenese fleet had sailed for Yunkai when Dany’s host approached the city, so the old Pentoshi was an admiral without ships. Yet now he was smiling through his ragged salt-streaked beard in a way that the queen could scarce remember.

  “The ships are sound, then?” she said, hoping.

  “Sound enough, Your Grace. They are old ships, aye, but most are well maintained. The hull of the Pureborn Princess is worm-eaten. I’d not want to take her beyond the sight of land. The Narraqqa could stand a new rudder and lines, and the Banded Lizard has some cracked oars, but they will serve. The rowers are slaves, but if we offer them an honest oarsman’s wage, most will stay with us. Rowing’s all they know. Those who leave can be replaced from my own crews. It is a long hard voyage to Westeros, but these ships are sound enough to get us there, I’d judge.”

  Reznak mo Reznak gave a piteous moan. “Then it is true. Your Worship means to abandon us.” He wrung his hands. “The Yunkai’i will restore the Great Masters the instant you are gone, and we who have so faithfully served your cause will be put to the sword, our sweet wives and maiden daughters raped and enslaved.”

  “Not mine,” grumbled Skahaz Shavepate. “I will kill them first, with mine own hand.” He slapped his sword hilt.

  Dany felt as if he had slapped her face instead. “If you fear what may follow when I leave, come with me to Westeros.”

  “Wherever the Mother of Dragons goes, the Mother’s Men will go as well,” announced Marselen, Missandei’s remaining brother.

  “How?” asked Symon Stripeback, named for the tangle of scars that ridged his back and shoulders, a reminder of the whippings he had suffered as a slave in Astapor. “Thirteen ships… that’s not enough. A hundred ships might not be enough.”

  “Wooden horses are no good,” objected Rommo, the old jaqqa rhan. “Dothraki will ride.”

  “These ones could march overland along the shore,” suggested Grey Worm. “The ships could keep pace and resupply the column.”

  “That might serve until you reached the ruins of Bhorash,” said the Shavepate. “Beyond that, your ships would need to turn south past Tolos and the Isle of Cedars and sail around Valyria, whilst the foot continued on to Mantarys by the old dragon road.”

  “The demon road, they call it now,” said Mollono Yos Dob. The plump commander of the Stalwart Shields looked more like a scribe than a soldier, with his inky hands and heavy paunch, but he was as clever as they came. “Many and more of us would die.”

  “Those left behind in Meereen would envy them their easy deaths,” moaned Reznak. “They will make slaves of us, or throw us in the pits. All will be as it was, or worse.”

  “Where is your courage?” Ser Barristan lashed out. “Her Grace freed you from your chains. It is for you to sharpen your swords and defend your own freedom when she leaves.”

  “Brave words, from one who means to sail into the sunset,” Symon Stripeback snarled back. “Will you look back at our dying?”

  “Your Grace—”

  “Magnificence—”

  “Your Worship—”

  “Enough.” Dany slapped the table. “No one will be left to die. You are all my people.” Her dreams of home and love had blinded her. “I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.”

  Groleo was aghast. “We must accept these ships. If we refuse this gift…”

  Ser Barristan went to one knee before her. “My queen, your realm has need of you. You are not wanted here, but in Westeros men will flock to your banners by the thousands, great lords and noble knights. ‘She is come,’ they will shout to one another, in glad voices. ‘Prince Rhaegar’s sister has come home at last.’
”

  “If they love me so much, they will wait for me.” Dany stood. “Reznak, summon Xaro Xhoan Daxos.”

  She received the merchant prince alone, seated on her bench of polished ebony, on the cushions Ser Barristan had brought her. Four Qartheen sailors accompanied him, bearing a rolled tapestry upon their shoulders. “I have brought another gift for the queen of my heart,” Xaro announced. “It has been in my family vaults since before the Doom that took Valyria.”

  The sailors unrolled the tapestry across the floor. It was old, dusty, faded… and huge. Dany had to move to Xaro’s side before the patterns became plain. “A map? It is beautiful.” It covered half the floor. The seas were blue, the lands were green, the mountains black and brown. Cities were shown as stars in gold or silver thread. There is no Smoking Sea, she realized. Valyria is not yet an island.

  “There you see Astapor, and Yunkai, and Meereen.” Xaro pointed at three silver stars beside the blue of Slaver’s Bay. “Westeros is… somewhere down there.” His hand waved vaguely toward the far end of the hall. “You turned north when you should have continued south and west, across the Summer Sea, but with my gift you shall soon be back where you belong. Accept my galleys with a joyful heart, and bend your oars westward.”

  Would that I could. “My lord, I will gladly have those ships, but I cannot give you the promise that you ask.” She took his hand. “Give me the galleys, and I swear that Qarth will have the friendship of Meereen until the stars go out. Let me trade with them, and you will have a good part of the profits.”

  Xaro’s glad smile died upon his lips. “What are you saying? Are you telling me you will not go?”

  “I cannot go.”

  Tears welled from his eyes, creeping down his nose, past emeralds, amethysts, and black diamonds. “I told the Thirteen that you would heed my wisdom. It grieves me to learn that I was wrong. Take these ships and sail away, or you will surely die screaming. You cannot know how many enemies you have made.”

  I know one stands before me now, weeping mummer’s tears. The realization made her sad.

  “When I went to the Hall of a Thousand Thrones to beg the Pureborn for your life, I said that you were no more than a child,” Xaro went on, “but Egon Emeros the Exquisite rose and said, ‘She is a foolish child, mad and heedless and too dangerous to live.’ When your dragons were small they were a wonder. Grown, they are death and devastation, a flaming sword above the world.” He wiped away the tears. “I should have slain you in Qarth.”

  “I was a guest beneath your roof and ate of your meat and mead,” she said. “In memory of all you did for me, I will forgive those words… once… but never presume to threaten me again.”

  “Xaro Xhoan Daxos does not threaten. He promises.”

  Her sadness turned to fury. “And I promise you that if you are not gone before the sun comes up, we will learn how well a liar’s tears can quench dragonfire. Leave me, Xaro. Quickly.”

  He went but left his world behind. Dany seated herself upon her bench again to gaze across the blue silk sea, toward distant Westeros. One day, she promised herself.

  The next morning Xaro’s galleas was gone, but the “gift” that he had brought her remained behind in Slaver’s Bay. Long red streamers flew from the masts of the thirteen Qartheen galleys, writhing in the wind. And when Daenerys descended to hold court, a messenger from the ships awaited her. He spoke no word but laid at her feet a black satin pillow, upon which rested a single bloodstained glove.

  “What is this?” Skahaz demanded. “A bloody glove…”

  “… means war,” said the queen.

  JON

  “Careful of the rats, my lord.” Dolorous Edd led Jon down the steps, a lantern in one hand. “They make an awful squeal if you step on them. My mother used to make a similar sound when I was a boy. She must have had some rat in her, now that I think of it. Brown hair, beady little eyes, liked cheese. Might be she had a tail too, I never looked to see.”

  All of Castle Black was connected underground by a maze of tunnels that the brothers called the wormways. It was dark and gloomy underneath the earth, so the wormways were little used in summer, but when the winter winds began to blow and the snows began to fall, the tunnels became the quickest way to move about the castle. The stewards were making use of them already. Jon saw candles burning in several wall niches as they made their way along the tunnel, their footsteps echoing ahead of them.

  Bowen Marsh was waiting at a junction where four wormways met. With him he had Wick Whittlestick, tall and skinny as a spear. “These are the counts from three turns ago,” Marsh told Jon, offering him a thick sheaf of papers, “for comparison with our present stores. Shall we start with the granaries?”

  They moved through the grey gloom beneath the earth. Each storeroom had a solid oaken door closed with an iron padlock as big as a supper plate. “Is pilferage a problem?” Jon asked.

  “Not as yet,” said Bowen Marsh. “Once winter comes, though, your lordship might be wise to post guards down here.”

  Wick Whittlestick wore the keys on a ring about his neck. They all looked alike to Jon, yet somehow Wick found the right one for every door. Once inside, he would take a fist-sized chunk of chalk from his pouch and mark each cask and sack and barrel as he counted them while Marsh compared the new count to the old.

  In the granaries were oats and wheat and barley, and barrels of coarse ground flour. In the root cellars strings of onions and garlic dangled from the rafters, and bags of carrots, parsnips, radishes, and white and yellow turnips filled the shelves. One storeroom held wheels of cheese so large it took two men to move them. In the next, casks of salt beef, salt pork, salt mutton, and salt cod were stacked ten feet high. Three hundred hams and three thousand long black sausages hung from ceiling beams below the smokehouse. In the spice locker they found peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon, mustard seeds, coriander, sage and clary sage and parsley, blocks of salt. Elsewhere were casks of apples and pears, dried peas, dried figs, bags of walnuts, bags of chestnuts, bags of almonds, planks of dry smoked salmon, clay jars packed with olives in oil and sealed with wax. One storeroom offered potted hare, haunch of deer in honey, pickled cabbage, pickled beets, pickled onions, pickled eggs, and pickled herring.

  As they moved from one vault to another, the wormways seemed to grow colder. Before long Jon could see their breath frosting in the lantern light. “We’re beneath the Wall.”

  “And soon inside it,” said Marsh. “The meat won’t spoil in the cold. For long storage, it’s better than salting.”

  The next door was made of rusty iron. Behind it was a flight of wooden steps. Dolorous Edd led the way with his lantern. Up top they found a tunnel as long as Winterfell’s great hall though no wider than the wormways. The walls were ice, bristling with iron hooks. From each hook hung a carcass: skinned deer and elk, sides of beef, huge sows swinging from the ceiling, headless sheep and goats, even horse and bear. Hoarfrost covered everything.

  As they did their count, Jon peeled the glove off his left hand and touched the nearest haunch of venison. He could feel his fingers sticking, and when he pulled them back he lost a bit of skin. His fingertips were numb. What did you expect? There’s a mountain of ice above your head, more tons than even Bowen Marsh could count. Even so, the room felt colder than it should.

  “It is worse than I feared, my lord,” Marsh announced when he was done. He sounded gloomier than Dolorous Edd.

  Jon had just been thinking that all the meat in the world surrounded them. You know nothing, Jon Snow. “How so? This seems a deal of food to me.”

  “It was a long summer. The harvests were bountiful, the lords generous. We had enough laid by to see us through three years of winter. Four, with a bit of scrimping. Now, though, if we must go on feeding all these king’s men and queen’s men and wildlings… Mole’s Town alone has a thousand useless mouths, and still they come. Three more turned up yesterday at the gates, a dozen the day before. It cannot go on. Settling them on the Gift,
that’s well and good, but it is too late to plant crops. We’ll be down to turnips and pease porridge before the year is out. After that we’ll be drinking the blood of our own horses.”

  “Yum,” declared Dolorous Edd. “Nothing beats a hot cup of horse blood on a cold night. I like mine with a pinch of cinnamon sprinkled on top.”

  The Lord Steward paid him no mind. “There will be sickness too,” he went on, “bleeding gums and loose teeth. Maester Aemon used to say that lime juice and fresh meat would remedy that, but our limes were gone a year ago and we do not have enough fodder to keep herds afoot for fresh meat. We should butcher all but a few breeding pairs. It’s past time. In winters past, food could be brought up the kingsroad from the south, but with the war… it is still autumn, I know, but I would advise we go on winter rations nonetheless, if it please my lord.”

  The men will love that. “If we must. We’ll cut each man’s portion by a quarter.” If my brothers are complaining of me now, what will they say when they’re eating snow and acorn paste?

  “That will help, my lord.” The Lord Steward’s tone made it plain that he did not think that it would help enough.

  Dolorous Edd said, “Now I understand why King Stannis let the wildlings through the Wall. He means for us to eat them.”

  Jon had to smile. “It will not come to that.”

  “Oh, good,” said Edd. “They look a stringy lot, and my teeth are not as sharp as when I was younger.”

  “If we had sufficient coin, we could buy food from the south and bring it in by ship,” the Lord Steward said.

  We could, thought Jon, if we had the gold, and someone willing to sell us food. Both of those were lacking. Our best hope may be the Eyrie. The Vale of Arryn was famously fertile and had gone untouched during the fighting. Jon wondered how Lady Catelyn’s sister would feel about feeding Ned Stark’s bastard. As a boy, he often felt as if the lady grudged him every bite.

  “We can always hunt if need be,” Wick Whittlestick put in. “There’s still game in the woods.”

  “And wildlings, and darker things,” said Marsh. “I would not send out hunters, my lord. I would not.”

  No. You would close our gates forever and seal them up with stone and ice. Half of Castle Black agreed with the Lord Steward’s views, he knew. The other half heaped scorn on them. “Seal our gates and plant your fat black arses on the Wall, aye, and the free folk’ll come swarming o’er the Bridge o’ Skulls or through some gate you thought you’d sealed five hundred years ago,” the old forester Dywen had declared loudly over supper, two nights past. “We don’t have the men to watch a hundred leagues o’ Wall. Tormund Giantsbutt and the bloody Weeper knows it too. Ever see a duck frozen in a pond, with his feet in the ice? It works the same for crows.” Most rangers echoed Dywen, whilst the stewards and builders inclined toward Bowen Marsh.

  But that was a quandary for another day. Here and now, the problem was food. “We cannot leave King Stannis and his men to starve, even if we wished to,” Jon said. “If need be, he could simply take all this at swordpoint. We do not have the men to stop them. The wildlings must be fed as well.”

  “How, my lord?” asked Bowen Marsh.

  Would that I knew. “We will find a way.”

  By the time they returned to the surface, the shadows of the afternoon were growing long. Clouds streaked the sky like tattered banners, grey and white and torn. The yard outside the armory was empty, but inside Jon found the king’s squire awaiting him. Devan was a skinny lad of some twelve years, brown of hair and eye. They found him frozen by the forge, hardly daring to move as Ghost sniffed him up and down. “He won’t hurt you,” Jon said, but the boy flinched at the sound of his voice, and that sudden motion made the direwolf bare his teeth. “No!” Jon said. “Ghost, leave him be. Away.” The wolf slunk back to his ox bone, silence on four feet.

  Devan looked as pale as Ghost, his face damp with perspiration. “M-my lord. His Grace c-commands your presence.” The boy was clad in Baratheon gold and black, with the flaming heart of a queen’s man sewn above his own.

  “You mean requests,” said Dolorous Edd. “His Grace requests the presence of the lord commander. That’s how I’d say it.”

  “Leave it be, Edd.” Jon was in no mood for such squabbles.

  “Ser Richard and Ser Justin have returned,” said Devan. “Will you come, my lord?”

  The wrong-way rangers. Massey and Horpe had ridden south, not north. Whatever they had learned did not concern the Night’s Watch, but Jon was curious all the same. “If it would please His Grace.” He followed the young squire back across the yard. Ghost padded after them until Jon said, “No. Stay!” Instead the direwolf ran off.

  In the King’s Tower, Jon was stripped of his weapons and admitted to the royal presence. The solar was hot and crowded. Stannis and his captains were gathered over the map of the north. The wrong-way rangers were amongst them. Sigorn was there as well, the young Magnar of Thenn, clad in a leather hauberk sewn with bronze scales. Rattleshirt sat scratching at the manacle on his wrist with a cracked yellow fingernail. Brown stubble covered his sunken cheeks and receding chin, and strands of dirty hair hung across his eyes. “Here he comes,” he said when he saw Jon, “the brave boy who slew Mance Rayder when he was caged and bound.” The big square-cut gem that adorned his iron cuff glimmered redly. “Do you like my ruby, Snow? A token o’ love from Lady Red.”

  Jon ignored him and took a knee. “Your Grace,” announced the squire Devan, “I’ve brought Lord Snow.”

  “I can see that. Lord Commander. You know my knights and captains, I believe.”

  “I have that honor.” He had made it a point to learn all he could of the men around the king. Queen’s men, all. It struck Jon as odd that there were no king’s men about the king, but that seemed to be the way of it. The king’s men had incurred Stannis’s ire on Dragonstone if the talk Jon heard was true.

  “There is wine. Or water boiled with lemons.”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  “As you wish. I have a gift for you, Lord Snow.” The king waved a hand at Rattleshirt. “Him.”

  Lady Melisandre smiled. “You did say you wanted men, Lord Snow. I believe our Lord of Bones still qualifies.”

  Jon was aghast. “Your Grace, this man cannot be trusted. If I keep him here, someone will slit his throat for him. If I send him ranging, he’ll just go back over to the wildlings.”

  “Not me. I’m done with those bloody fools.” Rattleshirt tapped the ruby on