A Feast for Dragons

or
death, best borrow
.
    He did not have to like it, though. And come spring, when
the time came to repay all that gold, he would like it even less. Tycho
Nestoris had impressed him as cultured and courteous, but the Iron Bank of
Braavos had a fearsome reputation when collecting debts. Each of the Nine Free
Cities had its bank, and some had more than one, fighting over every coin like
dogs over a bone, but the Iron Bank was richer and more powerful than all the
rest combined. When princes defaulted on their debts to lesser banks, ruined
bankers sold their wives and children into slavery and opened their own veins.
When princes failed to repay the Iron Bank, new princes sprang up from nowhere
and took their thrones.
    As poor plump Tommen may be about to learn
.
No doubt the Lannisters had good reason for refusing to honor King Robert’s
debts, but it was folly all the same. If Stannis was not too stiff-necked to
accept their terms, the Braavosi would give him all the gold and silver he
required, coin enough to buy a dozen sellsword companies, to bribe a hundred
lords, to keep his men paid, fed, clothed, and armed.
Unless Stannis is
lying dead beneath the walls of Winterfell, he may just have won the Iron
Throne
. He wondered if Melisandre had seen
that
in her
fires.
    Jon sat back, yawned, stretched. On the morrow he would
draft orders for Cotter Pyke.
Eleven ships to Hardhome. Bring back as
many as you can, women and children first
. It was time they set sail.
Should
I go myself, though, or leave it to Cotter?
The Old Bear had led a
ranging.
Aye. And never returned
.
    Jon closed his eyes. Just for a moment …
     … and woke, stiff as a board, with the Old Bear’s
raven muttering, “
Snow, Snow,”
and Mully shaking him. “M’lord,
you’re wanted. Beg pardon, m’lord. A girl’s been found.”
    “A girl?” Jon sat, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the
back of his hands. “Val? Has Val returned?”
    “Not Val, m’lord. This side of the Wall, it were.”
    Arya
. Jon straightened. It had to be her.
    “Girl,” screamed the raven.
“Girl, girl.”
    “Ty and Dannel came on her two leagues south of Mole’s Town.
They were chasing down some wildlings who scampered off down the kingsroad.
Brought them back as well, but then they come on the girl. She’s highborn,
m’lord, and she’s been asking for you.”
    “How many with her?” He moved to his basin, splashed water
on his face. Gods, but he was tired.
    “None, m’lord. She come alone. Her horse was dying under
her. All skin and ribs it was, lame and lathered. They cut it loose and took
the girl for questioning.”
    A grey girl on a dying horse
. Melisandre’s
fires had not lied, it would seem. But what had become of Mance Rayder and his
spearwives? “Where is the girl now?”
    “Maester Aemon’s chambers, m’lord.” The men of Castle Black
still called it that, though by now the old maester should be warm and safe in
Oldtown. “Girl was blue from the cold, shivering like all get out, so Ty wanted
Clydas to have a look at her.”
    “That’s good.” Jon felt fifteen years old again.
Little
sister
. He rose and donned his cloak.
    The snow was still falling as he crossed the yard with
Mully. A golden dawn was breaking in the east, but behind Lady Melisandre’s
window in the King’s Tower a reddish light still flickered.
Does she
never sleep? What game are you playing, priestess? Did you have some other task
for Mance?
    He wanted to believe it would be Arya. He wanted to see her face
again, to smile at her and muss her hair, to tell her she was safe.
She
won’t be safe, though. Winterfell is burned and broken and there are no more
safe places
.
    He could not keep her here with him, no matter how much he
might want to. The Wall was no place for a woman, much less a girl of noble
birth. Nor was he about to turn her over to Stannis or Melisandre. The king
would only want to marry her to one of his own men, Horpe or Massey or Godry
Giantslayer, and the gods alone knew what use the red woman might want to make
of her.
    The best solution he could see would mean dispatching her to
Eastwatch and asking Cotter Pyke to put her on a ship to someplace across the
sea, beyond the reach of all these quarrelsome kings. It would need to wait
until the ships returned from Hardhome, to be sure.
She could return to
Braavos with Tycho Nestoris. Perhaps the Iron Bank could help find some noble
family to foster her
. Braavos was the nearest of the Free