A Feast for Dragons

might have been Westerosi.
Are
they buying? Or did they just turn up for the show?
    “Who will open for this pair?”
    “Three hundred,” bid a matron on an antique palanquin.
    “Four,” called a monstrously fat Yunkishman from the litter
where he sprawled like a leviathan. Covered all in yellow silk fringed with
gold, he looked as large as four Illyrios. Tyrion pitied the slaves who had to
carry him.
At least we will be spared that duty. What joy to be a dwarf
.
    “And one,” said a crone in a violet
tokar
.
The auctioneer gave her a sour look but did not disallow the bid.
    The slave sailors off the
Selaesori Qhoran
, sold
singly, had gone for prices ranging from five hundred to nine hundred pieces of
silver. Seasoned seamen were a valuable commodity. None had put up any sort of
fight when the slavers boarded their crippled cog. For them this was just a
change of owner. The ship’s mates had been free men, but the widow of the
waterfront had written them a binder, promising to stand their ransom in such a
case as this. The three surviving fiery fingers had not been sold yet, but they
were chattels of the Lord of Light and could count on being bought back by some
red temple. The flames tattooed upon their faces were their binders.
    Tyrion and Penny had no such reassurance.
    “Four-fifty,” came the bid.
    “Four-eighty.”
    “Five hundred.”
    Some bids were called out in High Valyrian, some in the
mongrel tongue of Ghis. A few buyers signaled with a finger, the twist of a
wrist, or the wave of a painted fan.
    “I’m glad they are keeping us together,” Penny whispered.
    The slave trader shot them a look. “No talk.”
    Tyrion gave Penny’s shoulder a squeeze. Strands of hair,
pale blond and black, clung to his brow, the rags of his tunic to his back.
Some of that was sweat, some dried blood. He had not been so foolish as to
fight the slavers, as Jorah Mormont had, but that did not mean he had escaped
punishment. In his case it was his mouth that earned him lashes.
    “Eight hundred.”
    “And fifty.”
    “And one.”
    We’re worth as much as a sailor
, Tyrion
mused. Though perhaps it was Pretty Pig the buyers wanted.
A
well-trained pig is hard to find
. They certainly were not bidding by
the pound.
    At nine hundred pieces of silver, the bidding began to slow.
At nine hundred fifty-one (from the crone), it stopped. The auctioneer had the
scent, though, and nothing would do but that the dwarfs give the crowd a taste
of their show. Crunch and Pretty Pig were led up onto the platform. Without
saddles or bridles, mounting them proved tricky. The moment the sow began to
move Tyrion slid off her rump and landed on his own, provoking gales of
laughter from the bidders.
    “One thousand,” bid the grotesque fat man.
    “And one.” The crone again.
    Penny’s mouth was frozen in a rictus of a smile.
Well
trained for your amusement
. Her father had a deal to answer for, in
whatever small hell was reserved for dwarfs.
    “Twelve hundred.” The leviathan in yellow. A slave beside
him handed him a drink.
Lemon, no doubt
. The way those yellow
eyes were fixed upon the block made Tyrion uncomfortable.
    “Thirteen hundred.”
    “And one.” The crone.
    My father always said a Lannister was worth ten times
as much as any common man
.
    At sixteen hundred the pace began to flag again, so the
slave trader invited some of the buyers to come up for a closer look at the
dwarfs. “The female’s young,” he promised. “You could breed the two of them,
get good coin for the whelps.”
    “Half his nose is gone,” complained the crone once she’d had
a good close look. Her wrinkled face puckered with displeasure. Her flesh was
maggot white; wrapped in the violet
tokar
, she looked like a
prune gone to mold. “His eyes don’t match neither. An ill-favored thing.”
    “My lady hasn’t seen my best part yet.” Tyrion grabbed his
crotch, in case she missed his meaning.
    The hag hissed in outrage, and Tyrion got a lick of the whip
across his back, a stinging cut that drove him to his knees. The taste of blood
filled his mouth. He grinned and spat.
    “Two thousand,” called a new voice, back of the benches.
    And what would a sellsword want with a dwarf?
Tyrion pushed himself back to his feet to get a better look. The new bidder was
an older man, white-haired yet tall and fit, with leathery brown skin and a
close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard. Half-hidden under a faded purple cloak
were a longsword and a brace of