A Feast for Dragons

daggers.
    “Twenty-five hundred.” A female voice this time; a girl,
short, with a thick waist and heavy bosom, clad in ornate armor. Her sculpted
black steel breastplate was inlaid in gold and showed a harpy rising with
chains dangling from her claws. A pair of slave soldiers lifted her to shoulder
height on a shield.
    “Three thousand.” The brown-skinned man pushed through the
crowd, his fellow sellswords shoving buyers aside to clear a path.
Yes.
Come closer
. Tyrion knew how to deal with sellswords. He did not think
for a moment that this man wanted him to frolic at feasts.
He knows me.
He means to take me back to Westeros and sell me to my sister
. The
dwarf rubbed his mouth to hide his smile. Cersei and the Seven Kingdoms were
half a world away. Much and more could happen before he got there.
I
turned Bronn. Give me half a chance, might be I could turn this one too
.
    The crone and the girl on the shield gave up the chase at
three thousand, but not the fat man in yellow. He weighed the sellswords with
his yellow eyes, flicked his tongue across his yellow teeth, and said, “Five
thousand silvers for the lot.”
    The sellsword frowned, shrugged, turned away.
    Seven hells
. Tyrion was quite certain that
he did not want to become the property of the immense Lord Yellowbelly. Just
the sight of him sagging across his litter, a mountain of sallow flesh with piggy
yellow eyes and breasts big as Pretty Pig pushing at the silk of his
tokar
was enough to make the dwarf’s skin crawl. And the smell wafting off him was
palpable even on the block.
    “If there are no further bids—”
    “Seven thousand,” shouted Tyrion.
    Laughter rippled across the benches. “The dwarf wants to buy
himself,” the girl on the shield observed.
    Tyrion gave her a lascivious grin. “A clever slave deserves
a clever master, and you lot all look like fools.”
    That provoked more laughter from the bidders, and a scowl
from the auctioneer, who was fingering his whip indecisively as he tried to
puzzle out whether this would work to his benefit.
    “Five thousand is an insult!” Tyrion called out. “I joust, I
sing, I say amusing things. I’ll fuck your wife and make her scream. Or your
enemy’s wife if you prefer, what better way to shame him? I’m murder with a
crossbow, and men three times my size quail and tremble when we meet across a
cyvasse
table. I have even been known to cook from time to time. I bid
ten
thousand silvers for myself! I’m good for it, I am, I am. My father told me I
must always pay my debts.”
    The sellsword in the purple cloak turned back. His eyes met
Tyrion’s across the rows of other bidders, and he smiled.
A warm smile,
that
, the dwarf reflected.
Friendly. But my, those eyes are
cold. Might be I don’t want him to buy us after all
.
    The yellow enormity was squirming in his litter, a look of
annoyance on his huge pie face. He muttered something sour in Ghiscari that Tyrion
did not understand, but the tone of it was plain enough. “Was that another
bid?” The dwarf cocked his head. “I offer all the gold of Casterly Rock.”
    He heard the whip before he felt it, a whistle in the air,
thin and sharp. Tyrion grunted under the blow, but this time he managed to stay
on his feet. His thoughts flashed back to the beginnings of his journey, when
his most pressing problem had been deciding which wine to drink with his
midmorning snails.
See what comes of chasing dragons
. A laugh
burst from his lips, spattering the first row of buyers with blood and spit.
    “You are sold,” the auctioneer announced. Then he hit him
again, just because he could. This time Tyrion went down.
    One of the guards yanked him back to his feet. Another
prodded Penny down off the platform with the butt of his spear. The next piece
of chattel was already being led up to take their place. A girl, fifteen or
sixteen, not off the
Selaesori Qhoran
this time. Tyrion did not
know her.
The same age as Daenerys Targaryen, or near enough
.
The slaver soon had her naked.
At least we were spared that humiliation
.
    Tyrion gazed across the Yunkish camp to the walls of
Meereen. Those gates looked so close … and if the talk in the slave
pens could be believed, Meereen remained a free city for the nonce. Within
those crumbling walls, slavery and the slave trade were still forbidden. All he
had to do was reach those gates and pass beyond, and he would be a free man
again.
    But that was hardly possible unless he abandoned Penny.
She’d
want