A Dance With Dragons

Dondarrion would have been within his rights to pull him off the horse and spank him, but the Prince of Dragonflies had taken pity on the addlepated boy in the ill-fitting armor and accorded him the respect of taking up his challenge. One course was all that it required. Afterward Prince Duncan helped him to his feet and removed his helm. “A boy,” he had proclaimed to the crowd. “A bold boy.” Fifty-three years ago. How many men are still alive who were there at Blackhaven?
    “What name do you think they will give me, should I return to Dorne without Daenerys?” Prince Quentyn asked. “Quentyn the Cautious? Quentyn the Craven? Quentyn the Quail?”
    The Prince Who Came Too Late, the old knight thought … but if a knight of the Kingsguard learns nothing else, he learns to guard his tongue. “Quentyn the Wise,” he suggested. And hoped that it was true.

THE SPURNED SUITOR
     
     
    T he hour of ghosts was almost upon them when Ser Gerris Drinkwater returned to the pyramid to report that he had found Beans, Books, and Old Bill Bone in one of Meereen’s less savory cellars, drinking yellow wine and watching naked slaves kill one another with bare hands and filed teeth.
    “Beans pulled a blade and proposed a wager to determine if deserters had bellies full of yellow slime,” Ser Gerris reported, “so I tossed him a dragon and asked if yellow gold would do. He bit the coin and asked what I meant to buy. When I told him he slipped the knife away and asked if I was drunk or mad.”
    “Let him think what he wants, so long as he delivers the message,” said Quentyn.
    “He’ll do that much. I’ll wager you get your meeting too, if only so Rags can have Pretty Meris cut your liver out and fry it up with onions. We should be heeding Selmy. When Barristan the Bold tells you to run, a wise man laces up his boots. We should find a ship for Volantis whilst the port is still open.”
    Just the mention turned Ser Archibald’s cheeks green. “No more ships. I’d sooner hop back to Volantis on one foot.”
    Volantis, Quentyn thought. Then Lys, then home. Back the way I came, empty-handed. Three brave men dead, for what?
    It would be sweet to see the Greenblood again, to visit Sunspear and the Water Gardens and breathe the clean sweet mountain air of Yronwood in place of the hot, wet, filthy humors of Slaver’s Bay. His father would speak no word of rebuke, Quentyn knew, but the disappointment would be there in his eyes. His sister would be scornful, the Sand Snakes would mock him with smiles sharp as swords, and Lord Yronwood, his second father, who had sent his own son along to keep him safe …
    “I will not keep you here,” Quentyn told his friends. “My father laid this task on me, not you. Go home, if that is what you want. By whatever means you like. I am staying.”
    The big man shrugged. “Then Drink and me are staying too.”
    The next night, Denzo D’han turned up at Prince Quentyn’s door to talk terms. “He will meet with you on the morrow, by the spice market. Look for a door marked with a purple lotus. Knock twice and call for freedom.”
    “Agreed,” said Quentyn. “Arch and Gerris will be with me. He can bring two men as well. No more.”
    “If it please my prince.” The words were polite enough, but Denzo’s tone was edged with malice, and the eyes of the warrior poet gleamed bright with mockery. “Come at sunset. And see that you are not followed.”
    The Dornishmen left the Great Pyramid an hour shy of sunset in case they took a wrong turn or had difficulty finding the purple lotus. Quentyn and Gerris wore their sword belts. The big man had his warhammer slung across his broad back.
    “It is still not too late to abandon this folly,” Gerris said, as they made their way down a foetid alley toward the old spice market. The smell of piss was in the air, and they could hear the rumble of a corpse cart’s iron-rimmed wheels off ahead. “Old Bill Bone used to say that Pretty Maris could stretch out a man’s dying for a moon’s turn. We lied to them, Quent. Used them to get us here, then went over to the Stormcrows.”
    “As we were commanded.”
    “Tatters never meant for us to do it for real, though,” put in the big man. “His other boys, Ser Orson and Dick Straw, Hungerford, Will of the Woods, that lot, they’re still down in some dungeon thanks to us. Old Rags can’t have liked that much.”
    “No,” Prince Quentyn said, “but he likes gold.”
    Gerris laughed.