length of the Small Hall, boots ringing on the stone. He clattered up the steps, threw open the door… and came face-to-face with a tall, lantern-jawed man in black breastplate and gold cloak. Strapped to the stump of his right wrist was an iron hand. “Janos,” he said, deep-set eyes glinting under a prominent brow ridge and a shock of salt-and-pepper hair. Six gold cloaks moved quietly into the Small Hall behind him as Janos Slynt backed away.
“Lord Slynt,” Tyrion called out, “I believe you know Ser Jacelyn Bywater, our new Commander of the City Watch.”
“We have a litter waiting for you, my lord,” Ser Jacelyn told Slynt. “The docks are dark and distant, and the streets are not safe by night. Men.”
As the gold cloaks ushered out their onetime commander, Tyrion called Ser Jacelyn to his side and handed him a roll of parchment. “It’s a long voyage, and Lord Slynt will want for company. See that these six join him on the Summer’s Dream.”
Bywater glanced over the names and smiled. “As you will.”
“There’s one,” Tyrion said quietly. “Deem. Tell the captain it would not be taken amiss if that one should happen to be swept overboard before they reach Eastwatch.”
“I’m told those northern waters are very stormy, my lord.” Ser Jacelyn bowed and took his leave, his cloak rippling behind him. He trod on Slynt’s cloth-of-gold cape on his way.
Tyrion sat alone, sipping at what remained of the fine sweet Dornish wine. Servants came and went, clearing the dishes from the table. He told them to leave the wine. When they were done, Varys came gliding into the hall, wearing flowing lavender robes that matched his smell. “Oh, sweetly done, my good lord.”
“Then why do I have this bitter taste in my mouth?” He pressed his fingers into his temples. “I told them to throw Allar Deem into the sea. I am sorely tempted to do the same with you.”
“You might be disappointed by the result,” Varys replied. “The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. Might I trouble you for a taste of the wine that Lord Slynt enjoyed so much?”
Tyrion waved at the flagon, frowning.
Varys filled a cup. “Ah. Sweet as summer.” He took another sip. “I hear the grapes singing on my tongue.”
“I wondered what that noise was. Tell the grapes to keep still, my head is about to split. It was my sister. That was what the oh-so-loyal Lord Janos refused to say. Cersei sent the gold cloaks to that brothel.”
Varys tittered nervously. So he had known all along.
“You left that part out,” Tyrion said accusingly.
“Your own sweet sister,” Varys said, so grief-stricken he looked close to tears. “It is a hard thing to tell a man, my lord. I was fearful how you might take it. Can you forgive me?”
“No,” Tyrion snapped. “Damn you. Damn her.” He could not touch Cersei, he knew. Not yet, not even if he’d wanted to, and he was far from certain that he did. Yet it rankled, to sit here and make a mummer’s show of justice by punishing the sorry likes of Janos Slynt and Allar Deem, while his sister continued on her savage course. “In future, you will tell me what you know, Lord Varys. All of what you know.”
The eunuch’s smile was sly. “That might take rather a long time, my good lord. I know quite a lot.”
“Not enough to save this child, it would seem.”
“Alas, no. There was another bastard, a boy, older. I took steps to see him removed from harm’s way… but I confess, I never dreamed the babe would be at risk. A baseborn girl, less than a year old, with a whore for a mother. What threat could she pose?”
“She was Robert’s,” Tyrion said bitterly. “That was enough for Cersei, it would seem.”
“Yes. It is grievous sad. I must blame myself for the poor sweet babe and her mother, who was so young and loved the king.”
“Did she?” Tyrion had never seen the dead girl’s face, but in his mind she was Shae and Tysha both. “Can a whore truly love anyone, I wonder? No, don’t answer. Some things I would rather not know.” He had settled Shae in a sprawling stone-and-timber manse, with its own well and stable and garden; he had given her servants to see to her wants, a white bird from the Summer Isles to keep her company, silks and silver and gemstones to adorn her, guards to protect her. And yet she seemed restive. She wanted to be with him more, she told him; she wanted to serve him and help him. “You help me most here, between the sheets,” he told her one night after their loving as he lay beside her, his head pillowed against her breast, his groin aching with a sweet soreness. She made no reply, save with her eyes. He could see there that it was not what she’d wanted to hear.
Sighing, Tyrion started to reach for the wine again, then remembered Lord Janos and pushed the flagon away. “It does seem my sister was telling the truth about Stark’s death. We have my nephew to thank for that madness.”
“King Joffrey gave the command. Janos Slynt and Ser Ilyn Payne carried it out, swiftly, without hesitation…”
“… almost as if they had expected it. Yes, we have been over this ground before, without profit. A folly.”
“With the City Watch in hand, my lord, you are well placed to see to it that His Grace commits no further… follies? To be sure, there is still the queen’s household guard to consider…”
“The red cloaks?” Tyrion shrugged. “Vylarr’s loyalty is to Casterly Rock. He knows I am here with my father’s authority. Cersei would find it hard to use his men against me… besides, they are only a hundred. I have half again as many men of my own. And six thousand gold cloaks, if Bywater is the man you claim.”
“You will find Ser Jacelyn to be courageous, honorable, obedient… and most grateful.”
“To whom, I wonder?” Tyrion did not trust Varys, though there was no denying his value. He knew things, beyond a doubt. “Why are you so helpful, my lord Varys?” he asked, studying the man’s soft hands, the bald powdered face, the slimy little smile.
“You are the Hand. I serve the realm, the king, and you.”
“As you served Jon Arryn and Eddard Stark?”
“I served Lord Arryn and Lord Stark as best I could. I was saddened and horrified by their most untimely deaths.”
“Think how I feel. I’m like to be next.”
“Oh, I think not,” Varys said, swirling the wine in his cup. “Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?”
“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. “The king, the priest, the rich man — who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.”
“And yet he is no one,” Varys said. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.”
“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.”
“Just so… yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?”
“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.”
“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they? Whence came their swords? Why do they obey?” Varys smiled. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-so-knowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark, do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or… another?”
Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?”
Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”
“So power is a mummer’s trick?”
“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
Tyrion smiled. “Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.”
“I will take that as high praise.”
“What are you, Varys?” Tyrion found he truly wanted to know. “A spider, they say.”
“Spies and informers are seldom loved, my lord. I am but a loyal servant of the realm.”
“And a eunuch. Let us not forget that.”
“I seldom do.”
“People have called me a halfman too, yet I think the gods have been kinder to me. I am small, my legs are twisted, and women do not look upon me with any great yearning… yet I’m still a man. Shae is not the first to grace my bed, and one day I may take a wife and sire a son. If the gods are good, he’ll look like his uncle and think like his father. You have no such hope to sustain you. Dwarfs are a jape of the gods… but men make eunuchs. Who cut you, Varys? When and why? Who are you, truly?”
The eunuch’s smile never flickered, but his eyes glittered with something that was not laughter. “You are kind to ask, my lord, but my tale is long and sad, and we have treasons to discuss.” He drew a parchment from the sleeve of his robe. “The master of the King’s Galley White Hart plots to slip anchor three days hence to offer his sword and ship to Lord Stannis.”
Tyrion sighed. “I suppose we must make some sort of bloody lesson out of the man?”
“Ser Jacelyn could arrange for him to vanish, but a trial before the king would help assure the continued loyalty of the other captains.”
And keep my royal nephew occupied as well. “As you say. Put him down for a dose of Joffrey’s justice.”
Varys made a mark on the parchment. “Ser Horas and Ser Hobber Redwyne have bribed a guard to let them out a postern gate, the night after next. Arrangements have been made for them to sail on the Pentoshi galley Moonrunner, disguised as oarsmen.”
“Can we keep them on those oars for a few years, see how they fancy it?” He smiled. “No, my sister would be distraught to lose such treasured guests. Inform Ser Jacelyn. Seize the man they bribed and explain what an honor it is to serve as a brother of the Night’s Watch. And have men posted around the Moonrunner, in case the Redwynes find a second guard short of coin.”
“As you will.” Another mark on the parchment. “Your man Timett slew a wineseller’s son this evening, at a gambling den on the Street of Silver. He accused him of cheating at tiles.”
“Was it true?”
“Oh, beyond a doubt.”
“Then the honest men of the city owe Timett a debt of gratitude. I shall see that he has the king’s thanks.”
The eunuch gave a nervous giggle and made another mark. “We also have a sudden plague of holy men. The comet has brought forth all manner of queer priests, preachers, and prophets, it would seem. They beg in the winesinks and pot-shops and foretell doom and destruction to anyone who stops to listen.”
Tyrion shrugged. “We are close on the three hundredth year since Aegon’s Landing, I suppose it is only to be expected. Let them rant.”
“They are spreading fear, my lord.”
“I thought that was your job.”
Varys covered his mouth with his hand. “You are very cruel to say so. One last matter. Lady Tanda gave a small supper last night. I have the menu and the guest list for your inspection. When the wine was poured, Lord Gyles rose to lift a cup to the king, and Ser Balon Swann was heard to remark, ‘We’ll need three cups for that.’ Many laughed…”
Tyrion raised a hand. “Enough. Ser Balon made a jest. I am not interested in treasonous table talk, Lord Varys.”
“You are as wise as you are gentle, my lord.” The parchment vanished up the eunuch’s sleeve. “We both have much to do. I shall leave you.”
When the eunuch had departed, Tyrion sat for a long time watching the candle and wondering how his sister would take the news of Janos Slynt’s dismissal. Not happily, if he was any judge, but beyond sending an angry protest to Lord Tywin in Harrenhal, he did not see what Cersei could hope to do about it. Tyrion had the City Watch now, plus a hundred-and-a-half fierce clansmen and a growing force of sellswords recruited by Bronn. He would seem well protected.
Doubtless Eddard Stark thought the same.
The Red Keep was dark and still when Tyrion left the Small Hall. Bronn was waiting in his solar. “Slynt?” he asked.
“Lord Janos will be sailing for the Wall on the morning tide. Varys would have me believe that I have replaced one of Joffrey’s men with one of my own. More likely, I have replaced Littlefinger’s man with one belonging to Varys, but so be it.”
“You’d best know, Timett killed a man—”
“Varys told me.”
The sellsword seemed unsurprised. “The fool figured a one-eyed man would be easier to cheat. Timett pinned his wrist to the table with a dagger and ripped out his throat barehanded. He has this trick where he stiffens his fingers—”
“Spare me the grisly details, my supper is sitting badly in my belly,” Tyrion said. “How goes your recruiting?”
“Well enough. Three new men tonight.”
“How do you know which ones to hire?”
“I look them over. I question them, to learn where they’ve fought and how well they lie.” Bronn smiled. “And then I give them a chance to kill me, while I do the same for them.”
“Have you killed any?”
“No one we could have used.”
“And if one of them kills you?”
“He’ll be one you’ll want to hire.”
Tyrion was a little drunk, and very tired. “Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe… an infant girl, say, still at her mother’s breast… would you do it? Without question?”
“Without question? No.” The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. “I’d ask how much.”
And why would I ever need your Allar Deem, Lord Slynt? Tyrion thought. I have a hundred of my own. He wanted to laugh; he wanted to weep; most of all, he wanted Shae.
ARYA
The road was little more than two ruts through the weeds.
The good part was, with so little traffic there’d be no one to point the finger and say which way they’d gone. The human flood that had flowed down the kingsroad was only a trickle here.
The bad part was, the road wound back and forth like a snake, tangling with even smaller trails and sometimes seeming to vanish entirely only to reappear half a league farther on when they had all but given up hope. Arya hated it. The land was gentle enough, rolling hills and terraced fields interspersed with meadows and woodlands and little valleys where willows crowded close to slow shallow streams. Even so, the path was so narrow and crooked that their pace had dropped to a crawl.
It was the wagons that slowed them, lumbering along, axles creaking under the weight of their heavy loads. A dozen times a day they had to stop to free a wheel that had stuck in a rut, or double up the teams to climb a muddy slope. Once, in the middle of a dense stand of oak, they came face-to-face with three men pulling a load of firewood in an ox cart, with no way for either to get around. There had been nothing for it but to wait while the foresters unhitched their ox, led him through the trees, spun the cart, hitched the ox up again, and started back the way they’d come. The ox was even slower than the wagons, so that day they hardly got anywhere at all.
Arya could not help looking over her shoulder, wondering when the gold cloaks would catch them. At night, she woke at every noise to grab for Needle’s hilt. They never made camp without putting out sentries now, but Arya did not trust them, especially the orphan boys. They might have done well enough in the alleys of King’s Landing, but out here they were lost. When she was being quiet as a shadow, she could sneak past all of them, flitting out by starlight to make her water in the woods where no one would see. Once, when Lommy Greenhands had the watch, she shimmied up an oak and moved from tree to tree until she was right above his head, and he never saw a thing. She would have jumped down on top of him, but she knew his scream would wake the whole camp, and Yoren might take a stick to her again.
Lommy and the other orphans all treated the Bull like someone special now because the queen wanted his head, though he would have none of it. “I never did nothing to no queen,” he said angrily. “I did my work, is all. Bellows and tongs and fetch and carry. I was s’posed to be an armorer, and one day Master Mott says I got to join the Night’s Watch, that’s all I know.” Then he’d go off to polish his helm. It was a beautiful helm, rounded and curved, with a slit visor and two great metal bull’s horns. Arya would watch him polish the metal with an oilcloth, shining it so bright you could see the flames of the cookfire reflected in the steel. Yet he never actually put it on his head.
“I bet he’s that traitor’s bastard,” Lommy said one night, in a hushed voice so Gendry would not hear. “The wolf lord, the one they nicked on Baelor’s steps.”
“He is not,” Arya declared. My father only had one bastard, and that’s Jon. She stalked off into the trees, wishing she could just saddle her horse and ride home. She was a good horse, a chestnut mare with a white blaze on her forehead. And Arya had always been a good rider. She could gallop off and never see any of them, unless she wanted to. Only then she’d have no one to scout ahead of her, or watch behind, or stand guard while she napped, and when the gold cloaks caught her, she’d be all alone. It was safer to stay with Yoren and the others.
“We’re not far from Gods Eye,” the black brother said one morning. “The kingsroad won’t be safe till we’re across the Trident. So we’ll come up around the lake along the western shore, they’re not like to look for us there.” At the next spot where two ruts cut cross each other, he turned the wagons west.
Here farmland gave way to forest, the villages and holdfasts were smaller and farther apart, the hills higher and the valleys deeper. Food grew harder to come by. In the city, Yoren had loaded up the wagons with salt fish, hard bread, lard, turnips, sacks of beans and barley, and wheels of yellow cheese, but every bite of it had been eaten. Forced to live off the land, Yoren turned to Koss and Kurz, who’d been taken as poachers. He would send them ahead of the column, into the woods, and come dusk they would be back with a deer slung between them on a pole or a brace of quail swinging from their belts. The younger boys would be set to picking blackberries along the road, or climbing fences to fill a sack with apples if they happened upon an orchard.
Arya was a skilled climber and a fast picker, and she liked to go off by herself. One day she came across a rabbit, purely by happenstance. It was brown and fat, with long ears and a twitchy nose. Rabbits ran faster than cats, but they couldn’t climb trees half so well. She whacked it with her stick and grabbed it by its ears, and Yoren stewed it with some mushrooms and wild onions. Arya was given a whole leg, since it was her rabbit. She shared it with Gendry. The rest of them each got a spoonful, even the three in manacles. Jaqen H’ghar thanked her politely for the treat, and Biter licked the grease off his dirty fingers with a blissful look, but Rorge, the noseless one, only laughed and said, “There’s a hunter now. Lumpyface Lumpyhead Rabbitkiller.”
Outside a holdfast called Briarwhite, some fieldhands surrounded them in a cornfield, demanding coin for the ears they’d taken. Yoren eyed their scythes and tossed them a few coppers. “Time was, a man in black was feasted from Dorne to Winterfell, and even high lords called it an honor to shelter him under their roofs,” he said bitterly. “Now cravens like you want hard coin for a bite of wormy apple.” He spat.
“It’s sweetcorn, better’n a stinking old black bird like you deserves,” one of them answered roughly. “You get out of our field now, and take these sneaks and stabbers with you, or we’ll stake you up in the corn to scare the other crows away.”
They roasted the sweetcorn in the husk that night, turning the ears with long forked sticks, and ate it hot right off the cob. Arya thought it tasted wonderful, but Yoren was too angry to eat. A cloud seemed to hang over him, ragged and black as his cloak. He paced about the camp restlessly, muttering to himself.
The next day Koss came racing back to warn Yoren of a camp ahead. “Twenty or thirty men, in mail and halfhelms,” he said. “Some of them are cut up bad, and one’s dying, from the sound of him. With all the noise he was making, I got right up close. They got spears and shields, but only one horse, and that’s lame. I think they been there awhile, from the stink of the place.”
“See a banner?”
“Spotted treecat, yellow and black, on a mud-brown field.”
Yoren folded a sourleaf into his mouth and chewed. “Can’t say,” he admitted. “Might be one side, might be t’other. If they’re hurt that bad, likely they’d take our mounts no matter who they are. Might be they’d take more than that. I believe we’ll go wide around them.” It took them miles out of their way, and cost them two days at the least, but the old man said it was cheap at the price. “You’ll have time enough on the Wall. The rest o’ your lives, most like. Seems to me there’s no rush to get there.”
Arya saw men guarding the fields more and more when they turned north again. Often they stood silently beside the road, giving a cold eye to anyone who passed. Elsewhere they patrolled on horses, riding their fence lines with axes strapped to their saddles. At one place, she spotted a man perched up in a dead tree, with a bow in his hand and a quiver hanging from the branch beside him. The moment he spied them, he notched an arrow to his bowstring, and never looked away until the last wagon was out of sight. All the while, Yoren cursed. “Him in his tree, let’s see how well he likes it up there when the Others come to take him. He’ll scream for the Watch then, that he will.”
A day later Dobber spied a red glow against the evening sky. “Either this road went and turned again, or that sun’s setting in the north.”