A Dance With Dragons

the king wanted? You wouldn’t have gotten hurt. What would that have cost m’lord, to climb up on our dog and ride a tilt to please the boy? It was just a bit of fun. They would have laughed at you, that’s all.”
    “They would have laughed at me,” said Tyrion. I made them laugh at Joff instead. And wasn’t that a clever ploy?
    “My brother says that is a good thing, making people laugh. A noble thing, and honorable. My brother says … he …” The tears fell then, rolling down her face.
    “I am sorry about your brother.” Tyrion had said the same words to her before, back in Volantis, but she was so far gone in grief back there that he doubted she had heard them.
    She heard them now. “Sorry. You are sorry.” Her lip was trembling, her cheeks were wet, her eyes were red-rimmed holes. “We left King’s Landing that very night. My brother said it was for the best, before someone wondered if we’d had some part in the king’s death and decided to torture us to find out. We went to Tyrosh first. My brother thought that would be far enough, but it wasn’t. We knew a juggler there. For years and years he would juggle every day by the Fountain of the Drunken God. He was old, so his hands were not as deft as they had been, and sometimes he would drop his balls and chase them across the square, but the Tyroshi would laugh and throw him coins all the same. Then one morning we heard that his body had been found at the Temple of Trios. Trios has three heads, and there’s a big statue of him beside the temple doors. The old man had been cut into three parts and pushed inside the threefold mouths of Trios. Only when the parts were sewn back together, his head was gone.”
    “A gift for my sweet sister. He was another dwarf.”
    “A little man, aye. Like you, and Oppo. Groat. Are you sorry about the juggler too?”
    “I never knew your juggler existed until this very moment … but yes, I am sorry he is dead.”
    “He died for you. His blood is on your hands.”
    The accusation stung, coming so hard on the heels of Jorah Mormont’s words. “His blood is on my sister’s hands, and the hands of the brutes who killed him. My hands …” Tyrion turned them over, inspected them, coiled them into fists. “… my hands are crusted with old blood, aye. Call me kinslayer, and you won’t be wrong. Kingslayer, I’ll answer to that one as well. I have killed mothers, fathers, nephews, lovers, men and women, kings and whores. A singer once annoyed me, so I had the bastard stewed. But I have never killed a juggler, nor a dwarf, and I am not to blame for what happened to your bloody brother.”
    Penny picked the cup of wine he’d poured for her and threw it in his face. Just like my sweet sister. He heard the galley door slam but never saw her leave. His eyes were stinging, and the world was a blur. So much for befriending her.
    Tyrion Lannister had scant experience with other dwarfs. His lord father had not welcomed any reminders of his son’s deformities, and such mummers as featured little folk in their troupes soon learned to stay away from Lannisport and Casterly Rock, at the risk of his displeasure. Growing up, Tyrion heard reports of a dwarf jester at the seat of the Dornish Lord Fowler, a dwarf maester in service on the Fingers, and a female dwarf amongst the silent sisters, but he never felt the least need to seek them out. Less reliable tales also reached his ears, of a dwarf witch who haunted a hill in the riverlands, and a dwarf whore in King’s Landing renowned for coupling with dogs. His own sweet sister had told him of the last, even offering to find him a bitch in heat if he cared to try it out. When he asked politely if she were referring to herself, Cersei had thrown a cup of wine in his face. That was red, as I recall, and this is gold. Tyrion mopped at his face with a sleeve. His eyes still stung.
    He did not see Penny again until the day of the storm.
    The salt air lay still and heavy that morning, but the western sky was a fiery red, streaked with lowering clouds that glowed as bright as Lannister crimson. Sailors were dashing about battening hatches, running lines, clearing the decks, lashing down everything that was not already lashed down. “Bad wind coming,” one warned him. “No-Nose should get below.”
    Tyrion remembered the storm he’d suffered crossing the narrow sea, the way the deck had jumped beneath his feet, the hideous creaking sounds the ship had made, the taste of