A Dance With Dragons

beyond count … this is what you’d have the poor widow believe? That you are a true and chivalrous Westerosi knight crossing half the world to come to the aid of this … well, she is no maiden, though she may still be fair.” She laughed again. “Do you think your dwarf will please her? Will she bathe in his blood, do you think, or content herself with striking off his head?”
    Ser Jorah hesitated. “The dwarf is—”
    “—I know who the dwarf is, and what he is.” Her black eyes turned to Tyrion, hard as stone. “Kinslayer, kingslayer, murderer, turncloak. Lannister. ” She made the last a curse. “What do you plan to offer the dragon queen, little man?”
    My hate, Tyrion wanted to say. Instead he spread his hands as far as the fetters would allow. “Whatever she would have of me. Sage counsel, savage wit, a bit of tumbling. My cock, if she desires it. My tongue, if she does not. I will lead her armies or rub her feet, as she desires. And the only reward I ask is I might be allowed to rape and kill my sister.”
    That brought the smile back to the old woman’s face. “This one at least is honest,” she announced, “but you, ser … I have known a dozen Westerosi knights and a thousand adventurers of the same ilk, but none so pure as you would paint yourself. Men are beasts, selfish and brutal. However gentle the words, there are always darker motives underneath. I do not trust you, ser.” She flicked them off with her fan, as if they were no more than flies buzzing about her head. “If you want to get to Meereen, swim. I have no help to give you.”
    Then seven hells broke out at once.
    Ser Jorah started to rise, the widow snapped her fan closed, her scarred man slid out of the shadows … and behind them a girl screamed. Tyrion spun just in time to see the dwarf rushing toward him. She’s a girl, he realized all at once, a girl dressed up in man’s clothes. And she means to gut me with that knife.
    For half a heartbeat Ser Jorah, the widow, and the scarred man stood still as stone. Idlers watched from nearby tables, sipping ale and wine, but no one moved to interfere. Tyrion had to move both hands at once, but his chains had just enough give for him to reach the flagon on the table. He closed his fist around it, spun, dashed its contents into the face of the charging dwarf girl, then threw himself to one side to avoid her knife. The flagon shattered underneath him as the floor came up to smack him in the head. Then the girl was on him once again. Tyrion rolled on one side as she buried the knife blade in the floorboards, yanked it free, raised it again …
    … and suddenly she was rising off the floor, legs kicking wildly as she struggled in Ser Jorah’s grasp. “No!” she wailed, in the Common Tongue of Westeros. “Let go !” Tyrion heard her tunic rip as she fought to free herself.
    Mormont had her by the collar with one hand. With the other he wrenched the dagger from her grasp. “Enough.”
    The landlord made his appearance then, a cudgel in his hand. When he saw the broken flagon, he uttered a blistering curse and demanded to know what had happened here. “Dwarf fight,” replied the Tyroshi with the purple beard, chuckling.
    Tyrion blinked up at the dripping girl twisting in the air. “Why?” he demanded. “What did I ever do to you?”
    “They killed him.” All the fight went out of her at that. She hung limply in Mormont’s grasp as her eyes filled with tears. “My brother. They took him and they killed him.”
    “Who killed him?” asked Mormont. “Sailors. Sailors from the Seven Kingdoms. There were five of them, drunk. They saw us jousting in the square and followed us. When they realized I was a girl they let me go, but they took my brother and killed him. They cut his head off. ”
    Tyrion felt a sudden shock of recognition. They saw us jousting in the square. He knew who the girl was then. “Did you ride the pig?” he asked her. “Or the dog?”
    “The dog,” she sobbed. “Oppo always rode the pig.”
    The dwarfs from Joffrey’s wedding. It was their show that had started all the trouble that night. How strange, to encounter them again half a world away. Though perhaps not so strange as that. If they had half the wits of their pig, they would have fled King’s Landing the night Joff died, before Cersei could assign them some share of blame in her son’s death. “Let her down, ser,” he told Ser Jorah Mormont. “She won’t do us any harm.”
    Ser