A Dance With Dragons
hooks.
Nurse’s face had given Tyrion his first inkling. After their show, he and Penny had returned to the torchlit vault where the fighters gathered before and after their matches. Some sat sharpening their weapons; others sacrificed to queer gods, or dulled their nerves with milk of the poppy before going out to die. Those who’d fought and won were dicing in a corner, laughing as only men who have just faced death and lived can laugh.
Nurse was paying out some silver to a pit man on a lost wager when he spied Penny leading Crunch. The confusion in his eyes was gone in half a heartbeat, but not before Tyrion grasped what it meant. Nurse did not expect us back. He had looked around at other faces. None of them expected us back. We were meant to die out there. The final piece fell into place when he overheard an animal trainer complaining loudly to the pitmaster. “The lions are hungry. Two days since they ate. I was told not to feed them, and I haven’t. The queen should pay for meat.”
“You take that up with her the next time she holds court,” the pitmaster threw back at him.
Even now, Penny did not suspect. When she spoke about the pit, her chief worry was that more people had not laughed. They would have pissed themselves laughing if the lions had been loosed, Tyrion almost told her. Instead he’d squeezed her shoulder.
Penny came to a sudden halt. “We’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re not.” Tyrion lowered his pails to the ground. The handles had gouged deep grooves in his fingers. “Those are the tents we want, there.”
“The Second Sons?” A queer smile split Ser Jorah’s face. “If you think to find help there, you don’t know Brown Ben Plumm.”
“Oh, I do. Plumm and I have played five games of cyvasse. Brown Ben is shrewd, tenacious, not unintelligent … but wary. He likes to let his opponent take the risks whilst he sits back and keeps his options open, reacting to the battle as it takes shape.”
“Battle? What battle?” Penny backed away from him. “We have to get back. The master needs clean water. If we take too long, we’ll be whipped. And Pretty Pig and Crunch are there.”
“Sweets will see that they are taken care of,” Tyrion lied. More like, Scar and his friends would soon be feasting on ham and bacon and a savory dog stew, but Penny did not need to hear that. “Nurse is dead and Yezzan’s dying. It could be dark before anyone thinks to miss us. We will never have a better chance than now.”
“ No. You know what they do when they catch slaves trying to escape. You know. Please. They’ll never let us leave the camp.”
“We haven’t left the camp.” Tyrion picked up his pails. He set off at a brisk waddle, never looking back. Mormont fell in beside him. After a moment he heard the sounds of Penny hurrying after him, down a sandy slope to a circle of ragged tents.
The first guard appeared as they neared the horse lines, a lean spear-man whose maroon beard marked him as Tyroshi. “What do we have here? And what have you got in those pails?”
“Water,” said Tyrion, “if it please you.”
“Beer would please me better.” A spearpoint pricked him in the back—a second guard, come up behind them. Tyrion could hear King’s Landing in his voice. Scum from Flea Bottom. “You lost, dwarf?” the guard demanded.
“We’re here to join your company.”
A pail slipped from Penny’s grasp and overturned. Half the water had spilled before she could right it once again.
“We got fools enough in this company. Why would we want three more?” The Tyroshi flicked at Tyrion’s collar with his spearpoint, ringing the little golden bell. “A runaway slave is what I see. Three runaway slaves. Whose collar?”
“The Yellow Whale’s.” That from a third man, drawn by their voices—a skinny stubble-jawed piece of work with teeth stained red from sourleaf. A serjeant, Tyrion knew, from the way the other two deferred to him. He had a hook where his right hand should have been. Bronn’s meaner bastard shadow, or I’m Baelor the Beloved. “These are the dwarfs Ben tried to buy,” the serjeant told the spearmen, squinting, “but the big one … best bring him too. All three.”
The Tyroshi gestured with his spear. Tyrion moved along. The other sell sword—a stripling, hardly more than a boy, with fuzz on his cheeks and hair the color of dirty straw—scooped up Penny under one arm. “Ooh, mine has teats,” he said, laughing. He slipped a
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