A Feast for Dragons

alive . . .”
    “I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living
sort in blood.”
    “Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?”
    “How else? Though not till I’m done reading.” Lord Rodrik
went to the window. “You have not asked about your lady mother.”
    I was afraid. “How is she?”
    “Stronger. She may yet outlive us all. She will certainly
outlive you, if you persist in this folly. She eats more than she did when she
first came here, and oft sleeps through the night.”
    “Good.” In her final years on Pyke, Lady Alannys could not
sleep. She would wander the halls at night with a candle, looking for her sons. “Maron?” she would call shrilly. “Rodrik, where are you? Theon, my
baby, come to Mother.” Many a time Asha had watched the maester draw
splinters from her mother’s heels of a morning, after she had crossed the swaying
plank bridge to the
Sea
Tower
on
bare feet. “I will see her in the morning.”
    “She will ask for word of Theon.”
    The Prince of Winterfell. “What have you told her?”
    “Little and less. There was naught to tell.” He hesitated.
“You are certain that he is dead?”
    “I am certain of nothing.”
    “You found a body?”
    “We found parts of many bodies. The wolves were there before
us . . . the four-legged sort, but they showed scant reverence for their
two-legged kin. The bones of the slain were scattered, cracked open for their
marrow. I confess, it was hard to know what happened there. It seemed as though
the northmen fought amongst themselves.”
    “Crows will fight over a dead man’s flesh and kill each
other for his eyes.” Lord Rodrik stared across the sea, watching the play of
moonlight on the waves. “We had one king, then five. Now all I see are crows,
squabbling over the corpse of Westeros.” He fastened the shutters. “Do not go
to Old Wyk, Asha. Stay with your mother. We shall not have her long, I fear.”
    Asha shifted in her seat. “My mother raised me to be bold.
If I do not go, I will spend the rest of my life wondering what might have
happened if I had.”
    “If you do go, the rest of your life may be too short for
wondering.”
    “Better that than fill the remainder of my days complaining
that the Seastone Chair by rights was mine. I am no Gwynesse.”
    That made him wince. “Asha, my two tall sons fed the crabs
of Fair Isle. I am not like to wed again. Stay, and I shall name you heir to
the Ten Towers. Be content with that.”
    “Ten Towers?” Would that I could. “Your cousins will
not like that. The Knight, old Sigfryd, Hotho Humpback . . .”
    “They have lands and seats of their own.”
    True enough. Damp, decaying Harlaw Hall belonged to
old Sigfryd Harlaw the Silverhair; humpbacked Hotho Harlaw had his seat at the
Tower
of
Glimmering
, on a crag above the western coast. The
Knight, Ser Harras Harlaw, kept court at Grey Garden; Boremund the Blue ruled
atop Harridan Hill. But each was subject to Lord Rodrik. “Boremund has three sons,
Sigfryd Silverhair has grandsons, and Hotho has ambitions,” Asha said. “They
all mean to follow you, even Sigfryd. That one intends to live forever.”
    “The Knight will be the Lord of Harlaw after me,” her uncle
said, “but he can rule from Grey Garden as easily as from here. Do fealty to
him for the castle and Ser Harras will protect you.”
    “I can protect myself. Nuncle, I am a kraken. Asha, of House Greyjoy. ” She pushed to her feet. “It’s my father’s seat I want, not
yours. Those scythes of yours look perilous. One could fall and slice my head
off. No, I’ll sit the Seastone Chair.”
    “Then you are just another crow, screaming for carrion.”
Rodrik sat again behind his table. “Go. I wish to return to Archmaester Marwyn
and his search.”
    “Let me know if he should find another page.” Her uncle was
her uncle. He would never change. But he will come to Old Wyk, no matter
what he says.
    By now her crew would be eating in the hall. Asha knew she
ought to join them, to speak of this gathering on Old Wyk and what it meant for
them. Her own men would be solidly behind her, but she would need the rest as
well, her Harlaw cousins, the Volmarks, and the Stonetrees. Those are the
ones I must win. Her victory at Deepwood Motte would serve her in good
stead, once her men began to boast of it, as she knew they would. The crew of
her Black Wind took a perverse pride in the deeds of their woman
captain. Half of them loved her like a