A Dance With Dragons

will want to return to your temple to pray for peace.”
    The Green Grace bowed. “I shall pray for you as well.”
    Another slap, thought Dany, color rising to her face.
    The rest was a tedium the queen knew well. She sat upon her cushions, listening, one foot jiggling with impatience. Jhiqui brought a platter of figs and ham at midday. There seemed to be no end to the petitioners. For every two she sent off smiling, one left red-eyed or muttering.
    It was close to sunset before Daario Naharis appeared with his new Stormcrows, the Westerosi who had come over to him from the Wind-blown. Dany found herself glancing at them as yet another petitioner droned on and on. These are my people. I am their rightful queen. They seemed a scruffy bunch, but that was only to be expected of sellswords. The youngest could not have been more than a year older than her; the oldest must have seen sixty namedays. A few sported signs of wealth: gold arm rings, silken tunics, silver-studded sword belts. Plunder. For the most part, their clothes were plainly made and showed signs of hard wear.
    When Daario brought them forward, she saw that one of them was a woman, big and blond and all in mail. “Pretty Meris,” her captain named her, though pretty was the last thing Dany would have called her. She was six feet tall and earless, with a slit nose, deep scars in both cheeks, and the coldest eyes the queen had ever seen. As for the rest …
    Hugh Hungerford was slim and saturnine, long-legged, long-faced, clad in faded finery. Webber was short and muscular, with spiders tattooed across his head and chest and arms. Red-faced Orson Stone claimed to be a knight, as did lanky Lucifer Long. Will of the Woods leered at her even as he took a knee. Dick Straw had cornflower-blue eyes, hair as white as flax, and an unsettling smile. Ginger Jack’s face was hidden behind a bristly orange beard, and his speech was unintelligible. “He bit off half his tongue in his first battle,” Hungerford explained to her.
    The Dornishmen seemed different. “If it please Your Grace,” said Daario, “these three are Greenguts, Gerrold, and Frog.”
    Greenguts was huge and bald as a stone, with arms thick enough to rival even Strong Belwas. Gerrold was a lean, tall youth with sun streaks in his hair and laughing blue-green eyes. That smile has won many a maiden’s heart, I’ll wager. His cloak was made of soft brown wool lined with sandsilk, a goodly garment.
    Frog, the squire, was the youngest of the three, and the least impressive, a solemn, stocky lad, brown of hair and eye. His face was squarish, with a high forehead, heavy jaw, and broad nose. The stubble on his cheeks and chin made him look like a boy trying to grow his first beard. Dany had no inkling why anyone would call him Frog. Perhaps he can jump farther than the others.
    “You may rise,” she said. “Daario tells me you come to us from Dorne. Dornishmen will always have a welcome at my court. Sunspear stayed loyal to my father when the Usurper stole his throne. You must have faced many perils to reach me.”
    “Too many,” said Gerrold, the handsome one with the sun-streaked hair. “We were six when we left Dorne, Your Grace.”
    “I am sorry for your losses.” The queen turned to his large companion. “Greenguts is a queer sort of name.”
    “A jape, Your Grace. From the ships. I was greensick the whole way from Volantis. Heaving and … well, I shouldn’t say.”
    Dany giggled. “I think that I can guess, ser. It is ser, is it not? Daario tells me that you are a knight.”
    “If it please Your Grace, we are all three knights.”
    Dany glanced at Daario and saw anger flash across his face. He did not know. “I have need of knights,” she said.
    Ser Barristan’s suspicions had awakened. “Knighthood is easily claimed this far from Westeros. Are you prepared to defend that boast with sword or lance?”
    “If need be,” said Gerrold, “though I will not claim that any of us is the equal of Barristan the Bold. Your Grace, I beg your pardon, but we have come before you under false names.”
    “I knew someone else who did that once,” said Dany, “a man called Arstan Whitebeard. Tell me your true names, then.”
    “Gladly … but if we may beg the queen’s indulgence, is there some place with fewer eyes and ears?”
    Games within games. “As you wish. Skahaz, clear my court.”
    The Shavepate roared out orders. His Brazen Beasts did the rest, herding the other Westerosi