A Dance With Dragons

thick waist and heavy bosom, clad in ornate armor. Her sculpted black steel breastplate was inlaid in gold and showed a harpy rising with chains dangling from her claws. A pair of slave soldiers lifted her to shoulder height on a shield.
    “Three thousand.” The brown-skinned man pushed through the crowd, his fellow sellswords shoving buyers aside to clear a path. Yes. Come closer. Tyrion knew how to deal with sellswords. He did not think for a moment that this man wanted him to frolic at feasts. He knows me. He means to take me back to Westeros and sell me to my sister. The dwarf rubbed his mouth to hide his smile. Cersei and the Seven Kingdoms were half a world away. Much and more could happen before he got there. I turned Bronn. Give me half a chance, might be I could turn this one too.
    The crone and the girl on the shield gave up the chase at three thousand, but not the fat man in yellow. He weighed the sellswords with his yellow eyes, flicked his tongue across his yellow teeth, and said, “Five thousand silvers for the lot.”
    The sellsword frowned, shrugged, turned away.
    Seven hells. Tyrion was quite certain that he did not want to become the property of the immense Lord Yellowbelly. Just the sight of him sagging across his litter, a mountain of sallow flesh with piggy yellow eyes and breasts big as Pretty Pig pushing at the silk of his tokar was enough to make the dwarf’s skin crawl. And the smell wafting off him was palpable even on the block.
    “If there are no further bids—”
    “Seven thousand,” shouted Tyrion.
    Laughter rippled across the benches. “The dwarf wants to buy himself,” the girl on the shield observed.
    Tyrion gave her a lascivious grin. “A clever slave deserves a clever master, and you lot all look like fools.”
    That provoked more laughter from the bidders, and a scowl from the auctioneer, who was fingering his whip indecisively as he tried to puzzle out whether this would work to his benefit.
    “Five thousand is an insult!” Tyrion called out. “I joust, I sing, I say amusing things. I’ll fuck your wife and make her scream. Or your enemy’s wife if you prefer, what better way to shame him? I’m murder with a cross-bow, and men three times my size quail and tremble when we meet across a cyvasse table. I have even been known to cook from time to time. I bid ten thousand silvers for myself! I’m good for it, I am, I am. My father told me I must always pay my debts.”
    The sellsword in the purple cloak turned back. His eyes met Tyrion’s across the rows of other bidders, and he smiled. A warm smile, that, the dwarf reflected. Friendly. But my, those eyes are cold. Might be I don’t want him to buy us after all.
    The yellow enormity was squirming in his litter, a look of annoyance on his huge pie face. He muttered something sour in Ghiscari that Tyrion did not understand, but the tone of it was plain enough. “Was that another bid?” The dwarf cocked his head. “I offer all the gold of Casterly Rock.”
    He heard the whip before he felt it, a whistle in the air, thin and sharp. Tyrion grunted under the blow, but this time he managed to stay on his feet. His thoughts flashed back to the beginnings of his journey, when his most pressing problem had been deciding which wine to drink with his midmorning snails. See what comes of chasing dragons. A laugh burst from his lips, spattering the first row of buyers with blood and spit.
    “You are sold,” the auctioneer announced. Then he hit him again, just because he could. This time Tyrion went down.
    One of the guards yanked him back to his feet. Another prodded Penny down off the platform with the butt of his spear. The next piece of chattel was already being led up to take their place. A girl, fifteen or sixteen, not off the Selaesori Qhoran this time. Tyrion did not know her. The same age as Daenerys Targaryen, or near enough. The slaver soon had her naked. At least we were spared that humiliation.
    Tyrion gazed across the Yunkish camp to the walls of Meereen. Those gates looked so close … and if the talk in the slave pens could be believed, Meereen remained a free city for the nonce. Within those crumbling walls, slavery and the slave trade were still forbidden. All he had to do was reach those gates and pass beyond, and he would be a free man again.
    But that was hardly possible unless he abandoned Penny. She’d want to take the dog and the pig along.
    “It won’t be so terrible, will it?” Penny whispered.