A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dressed up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his fathers household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the murderers was still living in his fathers house, and the other had joined the queens soldiers as one of the Mothers Men. He wanted them both hanged.
I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.
When she told him, the boy rushed at her, but his feet tangled in his tokar and he went sprawling headlong on the purple marble. Strong Belwas was on him at once. The huge brown eunuch yanked him up one-handed and shook him like a mastiff with a rat. Enough, Belwas, Dany called. Release him. To the boy she said, Treasure that tokar, for it saved your life. You are only a boy, so we will forget what happened here. You should do the same. But as he left the boy looked back over his shoulder, and when she saw his eyes Dany thought, The Harpy has another Son.
By midday Daenerys was feeling the weight of the crown upon her head, and the hardness of the bench beneath her. With so many still waiting on her pleasure, she did not stop to eat. Instead she dispatched Jhiqui to the kitchens for a platter of flatbread, olives, figs, and cheese. She nibbled whilst she listened, and sipped from a cup of watered wine. The figs were fine, the olives even finer, but the wine left a tart metallic aftertaste in her mouth. The small pale yellow grapes native to these regions produced a notably inferior vintage. We shall have no trade in wine. Besides, the Great Masters had burned the best arbors along with the olive trees.
In the afternoon a sculptor came, proposing to replace the head of the great bronze harpy in the Plaza of Purification with one cast in Danys image. She denied him with as much courtesy as she could muster. A pike of unprecedented size had been caught in the Skahazadhan, and the fisherman wished to give it to the queen. She admired the fish extravagantly, rewarded the fisherman with a purse of silver, and sent the pike to her kitchens. A coppersmith had fashioned her a suit of burnished rings to wear to war. She accepted it with fulsome thanks; it was lovely to behold, and all that burnished copper would flash prettily in the sun, though if actual battle threatened, she would sooner be clad in steel. Even a young girl who knew nothing of the ways of war knew that.
The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Dany kicked them off and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep. Ser Barristan, she called, I know what quality a king needs most.
Courage, Your Grace?
Cheeks like iron, she teased. All I do is sit.
Your Grace takes too much on herself. You should allow your councillors to shoulder more of your burdens.
I have too many councillors and too few cushions. Dany turned to Reznak. How many more?
Three-and-twenty, if it please Your Magnificence. With as many claims. The seneschal consulted some papers. One calf and three goats. The rest will be sheep or lambs, no doubt.
Three-and-twenty. Dany sighed. My dragons have developed a prodigious taste for mutton since we began to pay the shepherds for their kills. Have these claims been proven?
Some men have brought burnt bones.
Men make fires. Men cook mutton. Burnt bones prove nothing. Brown Ben says there are red wolves in the hills outside the city, and jackals and wild dogs. Must we pay good silver for every lamb that goes astray between Yunkai and the Skahazadhan?
No, Magnificence. Reznak bowed. Shall I send these rascals away, or will you want them scourged?
Daenerys shifted on the bench. No man should ever fear to come to me. Some claims were false, she did not doubt, but more were genuine. Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more theyll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. Pay them for the value of their animals, she told Reznak, but henceforth claimants must present themselves at the Temple of the Graces and swear a holy oath before the gods of Ghis.
It shall be done. Reznak turned to the petitioners. Her Magnificence the Queen has consented to compensate each of you for the animals you have lost, he told them in the Ghiscari tongue. Present yourselves to my factors on the morrow, and you shall be paid in coin or kind, as you prefer.
The pronouncement was received in sullen silence. You would think they might be happier, Dany thought. They have what they came for. Is there no way to please these people?
One man lingered behind as the rest were filing outa squat man with a windburnt face, shabbily dressed. His hair was a cap of coarse red-black wire cropped about his ears, and in one hand he held a sad cloth sack. He stood with his head down, gazing at the marble floor as if he had quite forgotten where he was. And what does this one want? Dany wondered.
All kneel for Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Shackles, and Mother of Dragons, cried Missandei in her high, sweet voice.
As Dany stood, her tokar began to slip. She caught it and tugged it back in place. You with the sack, she called, did you wish to speak with us? You may approach.
When he raised his head, his eyes were red and raw as open sores. Dany glimpsed Ser Barristan sliding closer, a white shadow at her side. The man approached in a stumbling shuffle, one step and then another, clutching his sack. Is he drunk, or ill? she wondered. There was dirt beneath his cracked yellow fingernails.
What is it? Dany asked. Do you have some grievance to lay before us, some petition? What would you have of us?
His tongue flicked nervously over chapped, cracked lips. II brought
Bones? she said, impatiently. Burnt bones?
He lifted the sack, and spilled its contents on the marble.
Bones they were, broken bones and blackened. The longer ones had been cracked open for their marrow.
It were the black one, the man said, in a Ghiscari growl, the winged shadow. He come down from the sky andand
No. Dany shivered. No, no, oh no.
Are you deaf, fool? Reznak mo Reznak demanded of the man. Did you not hear my pronouncement? See my factors on the morrow, and you shall be paid for your sheep.
Reznak, Ser Barristan said quietly, hold your tongue and open your eyes. Those are no sheep bones.
No, Dany thought, those are the bones of a child.
JON
The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.
Snow, the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees.
Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goats long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sisters pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.
Snow, the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remainedand one the white wolf could no longer sense.
Snow, the moon insisted.
The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolfs pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.
Snow. An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf turned and bared his teeth. Snow! His fur rose bristling, as the woods dissolved around him. Snow, snow, snow! He heard the beat of wings. Through the gloom a raven flew.
It landed on Jon Snows chest with a thump and a scrabbling of claws. SNOW! it screamed into his face.
I hear you. The room was dim, his pallet hard. Grey light leaked through the shutters, promising another bleak cold day. Is this how you woke Mormont? Get your feathers out of my face. Jon wriggled an arm out from under his blankets to shoo the raven off. It was a big bird, old and bold and scruffy, utterly without fear. Snow, it cried, flapping to his bedpost. Snow, snow. Jon filled his fist with a pillow and let fly, but the bird took to the air. The pillow struck the wall and burst, scattering stuffing everywhere just as Dolorous Edd Tollett poked his head through the door. Beg pardon, he said, ignoring the flurry of feathers, shall I fetch mlord some breakfast?
Corn, cried the raven. Corn, corn.
Roast raven, Jon suggested. And half a pint of ale. Having a steward fetch and serve for him still felt strange; not long ago, it would have been him fetching breakfast for Lord Commander Mormont.
Three corns and one roast raven, said Dolorous Edd. Very good, mlord, only Hobbs made boiled eggs, black sausage, and apples stewed with prunes. The apples stewed with prunes are excellent, except for the prunes. I wont eat prunes myself. Well, there was one time when Hobb chopped them up with chestnuts and carrots and hid them in a hen. Never trust a cook, my lord. Theyll prune you when you least expect it.
Later. Breakfast could wait; Stannis could not. Any trouble from the stockades last night?
Not since you put guards on the guards, mlord.
Good. A thousand wildlings had been penned up beyond the Wall, the captives Stannis Baratheon had taken when his knights had smashed Mance Rayders patchwork host. Many of the prisoners were women, and some of the guards had been sneaking them out to warm their beds. Kings men, queens men, it did not seem to matter; a few black brothers had tried the same thing. Men were men, and these were the only women for a thousand leagues.
Two more wildlings turned up to surrender, Edd went on. A mother with a girl clinging to her skirts. She had a boy babe too, all swaddled up in fur, but he was dead.
Dead, said the raven. It was one of the birds favorite words. Dead, dead, dead.
They had free folk drifting in most every night, starved half-frozen creatures who had run from the battle beneath the Wall only to crawl back when they realized there was no safe place to run to. Was the mother questioned? Jon asked. Stannis Baratheon had smashed Mance Rayders host and made the King-Beyond-the-Wall his captivebut the wildlings were still out there, the Weeper and Tormund Giantsbane and thousands more.
Aye, mlord, said Edd, but all she knows is that she ran off during the battle and hid in the woods after. We filled her full of porridge, sent her to the pens, and burned the babe.
Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmured by one of the queens men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. There is power in a kings blood, the old maester had warned, and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this. The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames.
Jon pissed in darkness, filling his chamber pot as the Old Bears raven muttered complaints. The wolf dreams had been growing stronger, and he found himself remembering them even when awake. Ghost knows that Grey Wind is dead. Robb had died at the Twins, betrayed by men hed believed his friends, and his wolf had perished with him. Bran and Rickon had been murdered too, beheaded at the behest of Theon Greyjoy, who had once been their lord fathers wardbut if dreams did not lie, their direwolves had escaped. At Queenscrown, one had come out of the darkness to save Jons life. Summer, it had to be. His fur was grey, and Shaggydog is black. He wondered if some part of his dead brothers lived on inside their wolves.
He filled his basin from the flagon of water beside his bed, washed his face and hands, donned a clean set of black woolens, laced up a black leather jerkin, and pulled on a pair of well-worn boots. Mormonts raven watched with shrewd black eyes, then fluttered to the window. Do you take me for your thrall? When Jon folded back the window with its thick diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass, the chill of the morning hit him in the face. He took a breath to clear away the cobwebs of the night as the raven flapped away. That bird is too clever by half. It had been the Old Bears companion for long years, but that had not stopped it from eating Mormonts face once he died.