A Dance With Dragons

on stilts, slaves in chains … they may have troops of blind men and palsied children too, I would not put it past them.”
    “Oh, I know,” said Tyrion. “The Second Sons are on the losing side. They need to turn their cloaks again and do it now.” He grinned. “Leave that to me.”

THE KINGBREAKER
     
     
    A pale shadow and a dark, the two conspirators came together in the quiet of the armory on the Great Pyramid’s second level, amongst racks of spears, sheaves of quarrels, and walls hung with trophies from forgotten battles.
    “Tonight,” said Skahaz mo Kandaq. The brass face of a blood bat peered out from beneath the hood of his patchwork cloak. “All my men will be in place. The word is Groleo. ”
    “Groleo.” That is fitting, I suppose. “Yes. What was done to him … you were at court?”
    “One guardsman amongst forty. All waiting for the empty tabard on the throne to speak the command so we might cut down Bloodbeard and the rest. Do you think the Yunkai’i would ever have dared present Daenerys with the head of her hostage?”
    No, thought Selmy. “Hizdahr seemed distraught.”
    “Sham. His own kin of Loraq were returned unharmed. You saw. The Yunkai’i played us a mummer’s farce, with noble Hizdahr as chief mummer. The issue was never Yurkhaz zo Yunzak. The other slavers would gladly have trampled that old fool themselves. This was to give Hizdahr a pretext to kill the dragons.”
    Ser Barristan chewed on that. “Would he dare?”
    “He dared to kill his queen. Why not her pets? If we do not act, Hizdahr will hesitate for a time, to give proof of his reluctance and allow the Wise Masters the chance to rid him of the Stormcrow and the bloodrider. Then he will act. They want the dragons dead before the Volantene fleet arrives.”
    Aye, they would. It all fit. That did not mean Barristan Selmy liked it any better. “That will not happen.” His queen was the Mother of Dragons; he would not allow her children to come to harm. “The hour of the wolf. The blackest part of night, when all the world’s asleep.” He had first heard those words from Tywin Lannister outside the walls of Duskendale. He gave me a day to bring out Aerys. Unless I returned with the king by dawn of the following day, he would take the town with steel and fire, he told me. It was the hour of the wolf when I went in and the hour of the wolf when we emerged. “Grey Worm and the Unsullied will close and bar the gates at first light.”
    “Better to attack at first light,” Skahaz said. “Burst from the gates and swarm across the siege lines, smash the Yunkai’i as they come stumbling from their beds.”
    “No.” The two of them had argued this before. “There is a peace, signed and sealed by Her Grace the queen. We will not be the first to break it. Once we have taken Hizdahr, we will form a council to rule in his place and demand that the Yunkai’i return our hostages and withdraw their armies. Should they refuse, then and only then will we inform them that the peace is broken, and go forth to give them battle. Your way is dishonorable.”
    “Your way is stupid,” the Shavepate said. “The hour is ripe. Our freed-men are ready. Hungry.”
    That much was true, Selmy knew. Symon Stripeback of the Free Brothers and Mollono Yos Dob of the Stalwart Shields were both eager for battle, intent on proving themselves and washing out all the wrongs they had suffered in a tide of Yunkish blood. Only Marselen of the Mother’s Men shared Ser Barristan’s doubts. “We discussed this. You agreed it would be my way.”
    “I agreed,” the Shavepate grumbled, “but that was before Groleo. The head. The slavers have no honor.”
    “We do,” said Ser Barristan.
    The Shavepate muttered something in Ghiscari, then said, “As you wish. Though we will rue your old man’s honor before this game is done, I think. What of Hizdahr’s guards?”
    “His Grace keeps two men by him when he sleeps. One on the door of his bedchamber, a second within, in an adjoining alcove. Tonight it will be Khrazz and Steelskin.”
    “Khrazz,” the Shavepate grumbled. “That I do not like.”
    “It need not come to blood,” Ser Barristan told him. “I mean to talk to Hizdahr. If he understands we do not intend to kill him, he may command his guards to yield.”
    “And if not? Hizdahr must not escape us.”
    “He will not escape.” Selmy did not fear Khrazz, much less Steelskin. They were only pit fighters. Hizdahr’s fearsome