Aye, but why? Cersei is not like to care. Tyrion rattled his chains. “I know who you are, ser.” It had not been hard to puzzle out. The bear on his surcoat, the arms on his shield, the lost lordship he had mentioned. “I know what you are. And if you know who I am, you also know that I was the King’s Hand and sat in council with the Spider. Would it interest you to know that it was the eunuch who dispatched me on this journey?” Him and Jaime, but I’ll leave my brother out of it. “I am as much his creature as you are. We ought not be at odds.”
That did not please the knight. “I took the Spider’s coin, I’ll not deny it, but I was never his creature. And my loyalties lie elsewhere now.”
“With Cersei? More fool you. All my sister requires is my head, and you have a fine sharp sword. Why not end this farce now and spare us both?”
The knight laughed. “Is this some dwarf’s trick? Beg for death in hopes I’ll let you live?” He went to the door. “I’ll bring you something from the kitchens.”
“How kind of you. I’ll wait here.”
“I know you will.” Yet when the knight left, he locked the door behind him with a heavy iron key. The Merchant’s House was famous for its locks. As secure as a gaol, the dwarf thought bitterly, but at least there are those windows.
Tyrion knew that the chances of his escaping his chains were little and less, but even so, he felt obliged to try. His efforts to slip a hand through the manacle served only to scrap off more skin and leave his wrist slick with blood, and all his tugging or twisting could not pull the iron ring from the wall. Bugger this, he thought, slumping back as far as his chains would allow. His legs had begun to cramp. This was going to be a hellishly uncomfortable night. The first of many, I do not doubt.
The room was stifling, so the knight had opened the shutters to let in a cross breeze. Cramped into a corner of the building under the eaves, the chamber was fortunate in having two windows. One looked toward the Long Bridge and the black-walled heart of Old Volantis across the river. The other opened on the square below. Fishermonger’s Square, Mormont called it. As tight as the chains were, Tyrion found he could see out the latter by leaning sideways and letting the iron ring support his weight. Not as long a fall as the one from Lysa Arryn’s sky cells, but it would leave me just as dead. Perhaps if I were drunk …
Even at this hour the square was crowded, with sailors roistering, whores prowling for custom, and merchants going about their business. A red priestess scurried past, attended by a dozen acolytes with torches, their robes whisking about their ankles. Elsewhere a pair of cyvasse players waged war outside a tavern. A slave stood beside their table, holding a lantern over the board. Tyrion could hear a woman singing. The words were strange, the tune was soft and sad. If I knew what she was singing, I might cry. Closer to hand, a crowd was gathering around a pair of jugglers throwing flaming torches at each other.
His captor returned shortly, carrying two tankards and a roasted duck. He kicked the door shut, ripped the duck in two, and tossed half of it to Tyrion. He would have snatched it from the air, but his chains brought him up short when he tried to lift his arms. Instead the bird struck his temple and slid hot and greasy down his face, and he had to hunker down and stretch for it with fetters clanking. He got it on the third try and tore into it happily with his teeth. “Some ale to wash this down?”
Mormont handed him a tankard. “Most of Volantis is getting drunk, why not you?”
The ale was sweet as well. It tasted of fruit. Tyrion drank a healthy swallow and belched happily. The tankard was pewter, very heavy. Empty it and fling it at his head, he thought. If I am lucky, it might crack his skull. If I’m very lucky, it will miss, and he’ll beat me to death with his fists. He took another gulp. “Is this some holy day?”
“Third day of their elections. They last for ten. Ten days of madness. Torchlight marches, speeches, mummers and minstrels and dancers, bravos fighting death duels for the honor of their candidates, elephants with the names of would-be triarchs painted on their sides. Those jugglers are performing for Methyso.”
“Remind me to vote for someone else.” Tyrion licked grease from his fingers. Below, the crowd was flinging coins at the jugglers. “Do all these would-be triarchs provide mummer shows?”
“They do whatever they think will win them votes,” said Mormont. “Food, drink, spectacle … Alios has sent a hundred pretty slave girls out into the streets to lie with voters.”
“I’m for him,” Tyrion decided. “Bring me a slave girl.”
“They’re for freeborn Volantenes with enough property to vote. Precious few voters west of the river.”
“And this goes on for ten days?” Tyrion laughed. “I might enjoy that, though three kings is two too many. I am trying to imagine ruling the Seven Kingdoms with my sweet sister and brave brother beside me. One of us would kill the other two inside a year. I am surprised these triarchs don’t do the same.”
“A few have tried. Might be the Volantenes are the clever ones and us Westerosi the fools. Volantis has known her share of follies, but she’s never suffered a boy triarch. Whenever a madman’s been elected, his colleagues restrain him until his year has run its course. Think of the dead who might still live if Mad Aerys only had two fellow kings to share the rule.”
Instead he had my father, Tyrion thought. “Some in the Free Cities think that we’re all savages on our side of the narrow sea,” the knight went on. “The ones who don’t think that we’re children, crying out for a father’s strong hand.”
“Or a mother’s?” Cersei will love that. Especially when he presents her with my head. “You seem to know this city well.”
“I spent the best part of a year here.” The knight sloshed the dregs at the bottom of his tankard. “When Stark drove me into exile, I fled to Lys with my second wife. Braavos would have suited me better, but Lynesse wanted someplace warm. Instead of serving the Braavosi I fought them on the Rhoyne, but for every silver I earned my wife spent ten. By the time I got back to Lys, she had taken a lover, who told me cheerfully that I would be enslaved for debt unless I gave her up and left the city. That was how I came to Volantis … one step ahead of slavery, owning nothing but my sword and the clothes upon my back.”
“And now you want to run home.”
The knight drained the last of his ale. “On the morrow I’ll find us a ship. The bed is mine. You can have whatever piece of floor your chains will let you reach. Sleep if you can. If not, count your crimes. That should see you through till the morning.”
You have your crimes to answer for, Jorah Mormont, the dwarf thought, but it seemed wiser to keep that thought to himself.
Ser Jorah hung his sword belt on a bedpost, kicked off his boots, pulled his chain mail over his head, and stripped out of his wool and leather and sweat-stained undertunic to reveal a scarred, brawny torso covered with dark hair. If I could skin him, I could sell that pelt for a fur cloak, Tyrion thought as Mormont tumbled into the slightly smelly comfort of his sagging feather bed.
In no time at all the knight was snoring, leaving his prize alone with his chains. With both windows open wide, the light of the waning moon spilled across the bedchamber. Sounds drifted up from the square below: snatches of drunken song, the yowling of a cat in heat, the far-off ring of steel on steel. Someone’s about to die, thought Tyrion.
His wrist was throbbing where he’d torn the skin, and his fetters made it impossible for him to sit, let alone stretch out. The best he could do was twist sideways to lean against the wall, and before long he began to lose all feeling in his hands. When he moved to relieve the strain, sensation came flooding back as pain. He had to grind his teeth to keep from screaming. He wondered how much his father had hurt when the quarrel punched through his groin, what Shae had felt as he twisted the chain around her lying throat, what Tysha had been feeling as they raped her. His sufferings were nothing compared to their own, but that did not make him hurt any less. Just make it stop.
Ser Jorah had rolled onto one side, so all that Tyrion could see of him was a broad, hairy, muscular back. Even if I could slip these chains, I’d need to climb over him to reach his sword belt. Perhaps if I could ease the dagger loose … Or else he could try for the key, unlock the door, creep down the stairs and through the common room … and go where? I have no friends, no coin, I do not even speak the local tongue.
Exhaustion finally overwhelmed his pains, and Tyrion drifted off into a fitful sleep. But every time another cramp took root inside his calf and twisted, the dwarf would cry out in his sleep, trembling in his chains. He woke with every muscle aching, to find morning streaming through the windows bright and golden as the lion of Lannister. Below he could hear the cries of fishmongers and the rumble of iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestones.
Jorah Mormont was standing over him. “If I take you off the ring, will you do as you’re told?”
“Will it involve dancing? I might find dancing difficult. I cannot feel my legs. They may have fallen off. Elsewise, I am your creature. On my honor as a Lannister.”
“The Lannisters have no honor.” Ser Jorah loosed his chains anyway. Tyrion took two wobbly steps and fell. The blood rushing back into his hands brought tears to his eyes. He bit his lip and said, “Wherever we’re going, you will need to roll me there.”
Instead the big knight carried him, hoisting him by the chain between his wrists.
The common room of the Merchant’s House was a dim labyrinth of alcoves and grottoes built around a central courtyard where a trellis of flowering vines threw intricate patterns across the flagstone floor and green and purple moss grew between the stones. Slave girls scurried through light and shadow, bearing flagons of ale and wine and some iced green drink that smelled of mint. One table in twenty was occupied at this hour of the morning.
One of those was occupied by a dwarf. Clean-shaved and pink-cheeked, with a mop of chestnut hair, a heavy brow, and a squashed nose, he perched on a high stool with a wooden spoon in hand, contemplating a bowl of purplish gruel with red-rimmed eyes. Ugly little bastard, Tyrion thought.
The other dwarf felt his stare. When he raised his head and saw Tyrion, the spoon slipped from his hand.
“He saw me,” Tyrion warned Mormont. “What of it?”
“He knows me. Who I am.”
“Should I stuff you in a sack, so no one will see you?” The knight touched the hilt of his longsword. “If he means to try and take you, he is welcome to try.”
Welcome to die, you mean, thought Tyrion. What threat could he pose to a big man like you? He is only a dwarf.
Ser Jorah claimed a table in a quiet corner and ordered food and drink. They broke their fast with warm soft flatbread, pink fish roe, honey sausage, and fried locusts, washed down with a bittersweet black ale. Tyrion ate like a man half-starved. “You have a healthy appetite this morning,” the knight observed.
“I’ve heard the food in hell is wretched.” Tyrion glanced at the door, where a man had just come in: tall and stooped, his pointed beard dyed a splotchy purple. Some Tyroshi trader. A gust of sound came with him from outside; the cries of gulls, a woman’s laughter, the voices of the fishmongers. For half a heartbeat he thought he glimpsed Illyrio Mopatis, but it was only one of those white dwarf elephants passing the front door.
Mormont spread some fish roe across a slice of flatbread and took a bite. “Are you expecting someone?”
Tyrion shrugged. “You never know who the wind might blow in. My one true love, my father’s ghost, a duck.” He popped a locust into his mouth and crunched it. “Not bad. For a bug.”
“Last night the talk here was all of Westeros. Some exiled lord has hired the Golden Company to win back his lands for him. Half the captains in Volantis are racing upriver to Volon Therys to offer him their ships.”
Tyrion had just swallowed another locust. He almost choked on it. Is he mocking me? How much could he know of Griff and Aegon? “Bugger,” he said. “I meant to hire the Golden Company myself, to win me Casterly Rock.” Could this be some ploy of Griff’s, false reports deliberately spread? Unless … Could the pretty princeling have swallowed the bait? Turned them west instead of east, abandoning his hopes of wedding Queen Daenerys? Abandoning the dragons … would Griff allow that? “I’ll gladly hire you as well, ser. My father’s seat is mine by rights. Swear me your sword, and once I win it back I’ll drown you in gold.”
“I saw a man drowned in gold once. It was not a pretty sight. If you ever get my sword, it will be through your bowels.”
“A sure cure for constipation,” said Tyrion. “Just ask my father.” He reached for his tankard and took a slow swallow, to help conceal whatever might be showing on his face. It had to be a stratagem, designed to lull Volantene suspicions. Get the men aboard with this false pretext and seize the ships when the fleet is out to sea. Is that Griff’s plan? It might work. The Golden Company was ten thousand strong, seasoned and disciplined. None of them seamen, though. Griff will need to keep a sword at every throat, and should they come on Slaver’s Bay and need to fight …
The serving girl returned. “The widow will see you next, noble ser. Have you brought a gift for her?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Ser Jorah slipped a coin into the girl’s palm and sent her on her way.
Tyrion frowned. “Whose widow is this?”
“The widow of the waterfront. East of the Rhoyne they still call her Vogarro’s whore, though never to her face.”
The dwarf was not enlightened. “And Vogarro was … ?”
“An elephant, seven times a triarch, very rich, a power on the docks. Whilst other men built the ships and sailed them, he built piers and storehouses, brokered cargoes, changed money, insured shipowners against the hazards of the sea. He dealt in slaves as well. When he grew besotted with one of them, a bedslave trained at Yunkai in the way of seven sighs, it was a great scandal … and a greater scandal when he freed her and took her for his wife. After he died, she carried on his ventures. No freedman may dwell within the Black Wall, so she was compelled to sell Vogarro’s manse. She took up residence at the Merchant’s House. That was thirty-two years ago, and she remains here to this day. That’s her behind you, back by the courtyard, holding court at her customary table. No, don’t look. There’s someone with her now. When he’s done, it will be our turn.”
“And this old harridan will help you how?”
Ser Jorah stood. “Watch and see. He’s leaving.”
Tyrion hopped down off his chair with a rattle of iron. This should be enlightening.
There was something vulpine about the way the woman sat in her corner by the courtyard, something reptilian about her eyes. Her white hair was so thin that the pink of her scalp showed through. Under one eye she still bore faint scars where a knife had cut away her tears. The remnants of her morning meal littered the table—sardine heads, olive pits, chunks of flatbread. Tyrion did not fail to note how well chosen her “customary table” was; solid stone at her back, a leafy alcove to one side for entrances and exits, a perfect view of the inn’s front door, yet so steeped in shadow that she herself was nigh invisible.
The sight of him made the old woman smile. “A dwarf,” she purred, in a voice as sinister as it was soft. She spoke the Common Tongue with only a trace of accent. “Volantis has been overrun with dwarfs of late, it seems. Does this one do tricks?”
Yes, Tyrion wanted to say. Give me a crossbow, and I’ll show you my favorite. “No,” Ser Jorah answered.
“A pity. I once had a monkey who could perform all sorts of clever tricks. Your dwarf reminds me of him. Is he a gift?”
“No. I brought you these.” Ser Jorah produced his pair of gloves, and slapped them down on the table beside the other gifts the widow had received this morning: a silver goblet, an ornate fan carved of jade leaves so thin they were translucent, and an ancient bronze dagger marked with runes. Beside such treasures the gloves looked cheap and tawdry.
“Gloves for my poor old wrinkled hands. How nice.” The widow made no move to touch them.
“I bought them on the Long Bridge.”
“A man can buy most anything on the Long Bridge. Gloves, slaves, monkeys.” The years had bent her spine and put a crone’s hump upon her back, but the widow’s eyes were bright and black. “Now tell this old widow how she may be of service to you.”
“We need swift passage to Meereen.”
One word. Tyrion Lannister’s world turned upside down.
One word. Meereen. Or had he misheard?
One word. Meereen, he said Meereen, he’s taking me to Meereen. Meereen meant life. Or hope for life, at least.
“Why come to me?” the widow said. “I own no ships.”
“You have many captains in your debt.”
Deliver me to the queen, he says. Aye, but which queen? He isn’t selling me to Cersei. He’s giving me to Daenerys Targaryen. That’s why he hasn’t hacked my head off. We’re going east, and Griff and his prince are going west, the bloody fools.
Oh, it was all too much. Plots within plots, but all roads lead down the dragon’s gullet. A guffaw burst from his lips, and suddenly Tyrion could not stop laughing.
“Your dwarf is having a fit,” the widow observed. “My dwarf will be quiet, or I’ll see him gagged.”
Tyrion covered his mouth with his hands. Meereen!
The widow of the waterfront decided to ignore him. “Shall we have a drink?” she asked. Dust motes floated in the air as a serving girl filled two green glass cups for Ser Jorah and the widow. Tyrion’s throat was dry, but no cup was poured for him. The widow took a sip, rolled the wine round her mouth, swallowed. “All the other exiles are sailing west, or so these old ears have heard. And all those captains in my debt are falling over one another to take them there and leach a little gold from the coffers of the Golden Company. Our noble triarchs have pledged a dozen warships to the cause, to see the fleet safely as far as the Stepstones. Even old Doniphos has given his assent. Such a glorious adventure. And yet you would go the other way, ser.”
“My business is in the east.”
“And what business is that, I wonder? Not slaves, the silver queen has put an end to that. She has closed the fighting pits as well, so it cannot be a taste for blood. What else could Meereen offer to a Westerosi knight? Bricks? Olives? Dragons? Ah, there it is.” The old woman’s smile turned feral. “I have heard it said that the silver queen feeds them with the flesh of infants while she herself bathes in the blood of virgin girls and takes a different lover every night.”
Ser Jorah’s mouth had hardened. “The Yunkai’i are pouring poison in your ears. My lady should not believe such filth.”
“I am no lady, but even Vogarro’s whore knows the taste of falsehood. This much is true, though … the dragon queen has enemies … Yunkai, New Ghis, Tolos, Qarth … aye, and Volantis, soon enough. You would travel to Meereen? Just wait a while, ser. Swords will be wanted soon enough, when the warships bend their oars eastward to bring down the silver queen. Tigers love to bare their claws, and even elephants will kill if threatened. Malaquo hungers for a taste of glory, and Nyessos owes much of his wealth to the slave trade. Let Alios or Parquello or Belicho gain the triarchy, and the fleets will sail.”
Ser Jorah scowled. “If Doniphos is returned …”
“Vogarro will be returned first, and my sweet lord has been dead these thirty years.”
Behind them, some sailor was bellowing loudly. “They call this ale? Fuck. A monkey could piss better ale.”
“And you would drink it,” another voice replied.
Tyrion twisted around for a look, hoping against hope that it was Duck and Haldon he was hearing. Instead he saw two strangers … and the dwarf, who was standing a few feet away staring at him intently. He seemed somehow familiar.
The widow sipped daintily at her wine. “Some of the first elephants were women,” she said, “the ones who brought the tigers down and ended the old wars. Trianna was returned four times. That was three hundred years ago, alas. Volantis has had no female triarch since, though some women have the vote. Women of good birth who dwell in ancient palaces behind the Black Walls, not creatures such as me. The Old Blood will have their dogs and children voting before any freedman. No, it will be Belicho, or perhaps Alios, but either way it will be war. Or so they think.”