A Feast for Dragons

was smashed against a wall,” said Roone.
    “No,” said Alleras. “It was Prince Rhaegar’s young son Aegon
whose head was dashed against the wall by the Lion of Lannister’s brave men. We
speak of Rhaegar’s sister, born on Dragonstone before its fall. The one they
called Daenerys.”
    “The Stormborn. I recall her now.” Mollander lifted
his tankard high, sloshing the cider that remained. “Here’s to her!” He gulped,
slammed his empty tankard down, belched, and wiped his mouth with the back of
his hand. “Where’s Rosey? Our rightful queen deserves another round of cider,
wouldn’t you say?”
    Armen the Acolyte looked alarmed. “Lower your voice, fool.
You should not even jape about such things. You never know who could be
listening. The Spider has ears everywhere.”
    “Ah, don’t piss your breeches, Armen. I was proposing a
drink, not a rebellion.”
    Pate heard a chuckle. A soft, sly voice called out from
behind him. “I always knew you were a traitor, Hopfrog.” Lazy Leo was slouching
by the foot of the old plank bridge, draped in satin striped in green and gold,
with a black silk half cape pinned to his shoulder by a rose of jade. The wine
he’d dribbled down his front had been a robust red, judging from the color of
the spots. A lock of his ash-blond hair fell down across one eye.
    Mollander bristled at the sight of him. “Bugger that. Go
away. You are not welcome here.” Alleras laid a hand upon his arm to calm him, whilst
Armen frowned. “Leo. My lord. I had understood that you were still confined to
the Citadel for . . .”
    “. . . three more days.” Lazy Leo shrugged. “Perestan says
the world is forty thousand years old. Mollos says five hundred thousand. What
are three days, I ask you?” Though there were a dozen empty tables on the
terrace, Leo sat himself at theirs. “Buy me a cup of Arbor gold, Hopfrog, and
perhaps I won’t inform my father of your toast. The tiles turned against me at
the Checkered Hazard, and I wasted my last stag on supper. Suckling pig in plum
sauce, stuffed with chestnuts and white truffles. A man must eat. What did you
lads have?”
    “Mutton,” muttered Mollander. He sounded none too pleased
about it. “We shared a haunch of boiled mutton.”
    “I’m certain it was filling.” Leo turned to Alleras. “A
lord’s son should be open-handed, Sphinx. I understand you won your copper
link. I’ll drink to that.”
    Alleras smiled back at him. “I only buy for friends. And I
am no lord’s son, I’ve told you that. My mother was a trader.”
    Leo’s eyes were hazel, bright with wine and malice. “Your
mother was a monkey from the Summer Isles. The Dornish will fuck anything with
a hole between its legs. Meaning no offense. You may be brown as a nut, but at
least you bathe. Unlike our spotted pig boy.” He waved a hand toward Pate.
    If I hit him in the mouth with my tankard, I could knock
out half his teeth, Pate thought. Spotted Pate the pig boy was the hero of
a thousand ribald stories: a good-hearted, empty-headed lout who always managed
to best the fat lordlings, haughty knights, and pompous septons who beset him.
Somehow his stupidity would turn out to have been a sort of uncouth cunning;
the tales always ended with Spotted Pate sitting on a lord’s high seat or
bedding some knight’s daughter. But those were stories. In the real world pig
boys never fared so well. Pate sometimes thought his mother must have hated him
to have named him as she did.
    Alleras was no longer smiling. “You will apologize.”
    “Will I?” said Leo. “How can I, with my throat so dry . . .”
    “You shame your House with every word you say,” Alleras told
him. “You shame the Citadel by being one of us.”
    “I know. So buy me some wine, that I might drown my shame.”
    Mollander said, “I would tear your tongue out by the roots.”
    “Truly? Then how would I tell you about the dragons?” Leo
shrugged again. “The mongrel has the right of it. The Mad King’s daughter is
alive, and she’s hatched herself three dragons.”
    “Three?” said Roone, astonished.
    Leo patted his hand. “More than two and less than four. I
would not try for my golden link just yet if I were you.”
    “You leave him be,” warned Mollander.
    “Such a chivalrous Hopfrog. As you wish. Every man off every
ship that’s sailed within a hundred leagues of Qarth is speaking of these
dragons. A few will even tell you that they’ve seen them. The Mage is inclined
to