A Feast for Dragons

Winding Walls, a pillow girl called down
from a balcony. She was dressed in jewels and oil. He took a look at her,
hunched his shoulders, and pushed on, into the teeth of the wind. We men are
so weak. Our bodies betray even the noblest of us. He thought of King
Baelor the Blessed, who would fast to the point of fainting to tame the lusts
that shamed him. Must he do the same?
    A short man stood in an arched doorway grilling chunks of
snake over a brazier, turning them with wooden tongs as they crisped. The
pungent smell of his sauces brought tears to the knight’s eyes. The best snake
sauce had a drop of venom in it, he had heard, along with mustard seeds and
dragon peppers. Myrcella had taken to Dornish food as quick as she had to her
Dornish prince, and from time to time Ser Arys would try a dish or two to
please her. The food seared his mouth and made him gasp for wine, and burned
even worse coming out than it did going in. His little princess loved it,
though.
    He had left her in her chambers, bent over a gaming table opposite
Prince Trystane, pushing ornate pieces across squares of jade and carnelian and
lapis lazuli. Myrcella’s full lips had been slightly parted, her green eyes
narrowed with concentration. Cyvasse, the game was called. It had come
to the
Planky
Town
on a trading
galley from Volantis, and the orphans had spread it up and down the Greenblood.
The Dornish court was mad for it.
    Ser Arys just found it maddening. There were ten different
pieces, each with its own attributes and powers, and the board would change
from game to game, depending on how the players arrayed their home squares.
Prince Trystane had taken to the game at once, and Myrcella had learned it so
she could play with him. She was not quite one-and-ten, her betrothed
three-and-ten; even so, she had been winning more oft than not of late.
Trystane did not seem to mind. The two children could not have looked more
different, him with his olive skin and straight black hair, her pale as milk
with a mop of golden curls; light and dark, like Queen Cersei and King Robert.
He prayed Myrcella would find more joy in her Dornish boy than her mother had
found with her storm lord.
    It made him feel uneasy to leave her, though she should be
safe enough within the castle. There were only two doors that gave access to
Myrcella’s chambers in the Tower of the Sun, and Ser Arys kept two men on each;
Lannister household guards, men who had come with them from King’s Landing,
battle-tested, tough, and loyal to the bone. Myrcella had her maids and Septa
Eglantine as well, and Prince Trystane was attended by his sworn shield, Ser
Gascoyne of the Greenblood. No one will trouble her, he told himself, and
in a fortnight we shall be safely away.
    Prince Doran had promised as much. Though Arys had been
shocked to see how aged and infirm the Dornish prince appeared, he did not
doubt the prince’s word. “I am sorry I could not see you until now, or meet
Princess Myrcella,” Martell had said when Arys was admitted to his solar, “but
I trust that my daughter Arianne has made you welcome here in Dorne, ser.”
    “She has, my prince,” he’d answered, and prayed that no
blush would dare betray him.
    “Ours is a harsh land, and poor, yet not without its
beauties. It grieves us that you have seen no more of Dorne than Sunspear, but
I fear that neither you nor your princess would be safe beyond these walls. We
Dornish are a hot-blooded people, quick to anger and slow to forgive. It would
gladden my heart if I could assure you that the Sand Snakes were alone in
wanting war, but I will not tell you lies, ser. You have heard my smallfolk in
the streets, crying out for me to call my spears. Half my lords agree with
them, I fear.”
    “And you, my prince?” the knight had dared to ask.
    “My mother taught me long ago that only madmen fight wars
they cannot win.” If the bluntness of the question had offended him, Prince
Doran hid it well. “Yet this peace is fragile . . . as fragile as your
princess.”
    “Only a beast would harm a little girl.”
    “My sister Elia had a little girl as well. Her name was
Rhaenys. She was a princess too.” The prince sighed. “Those who would plunge a
knife into Princess Myrcella do not bear her any malice, no more than Ser Amory
Lorch did when he killed Rhaenys, if indeed he did. They seek only to force my
hand. For if Myrcella should be slain in Dorne whilst under my protection, who
would believe my denials?”
    “No