A Feast for Dragons

had been raised to
knighthood, after the tourney at King’s Landing. He could still recall the
touch of King Aegon’s sword upon his shoulder, light as a maiden’s kiss. His
words had caught in his throat when he spoke his vows. At the feast that night
he had eaten ribs of wild boar, prepared the Dornish way with dragon peppers,
so hot they burned his mouth. Forty-seven years, and the taste still lingered
in his memory, yet he could not have said what he had supped on ten days ago if
all seven kingdoms had depended on it.
Boiled dog, most like. Or some
other foul dish that tasted no better
.
    Not for the first time, Selmy wondered at the strange fates
that had brought him here. He was a knight of Westeros, a man of the stormlands
and the Dornish marches; his place was in the Seven Kingdoms, not here upon the
sweltering shores of Slaver’s Bay.
I came to bring Daenerys home
.
Yet he had lost her, just as he had lost her father and her brother.
Even
Robert. I failed him too
.
    Perhaps Hizdahr was wiser than he knew.
Ten years ago
I would have sensed what Daenerys meant to do. Ten years ago I would have been
quick enough to stop her
. Instead he had stood befuddled as she leapt
into the pit, shouting her name, then running uselessly after her across the
scarlet sands.
I am become old and slow
. Small wonder Naharis
mocked him as Ser Grandfather.
Would Daario have moved more quickly if
he had been beside the queen that day?
Selmy thought he knew the
answer to that, though it was not one he liked.
    He had dreamed of it again last night: Belwas on his knees
retching up bile and blood, Hizdahr urging on the dragonslayers, men and women
fleeing in terror, fighting on the steps, climbing over one another, screaming
and shouting. And Daenerys …
    Her hair was aflame. She had the whip in her hand and
she was shouting, then she was on the dragon’s back, flying
. The sand
that Drogon stirred as he took wing had stung Ser Barristan’s eyes, but through
a veil of tears he had watched the beast fly from the pit, his great black
wings slapping at the shoulders of the bronze warriors at the gates.
    The rest he learned later. Beyond the gates had been a solid
press of people. Maddened by the smell of dragon, horses below reared in
terror, lashing out with iron-shod hooves. Food stalls and palanquins alike
were overturned, men knocked down and trampled. Spears were thrown, crossbows
were fired. Some struck home. The dragon twisted violently in the air, wounds
smoking, the girl clinging to his back. Then he loosed the fire.
    It had taken the rest of the day and most of the night for
the Brazen Beasts to gather up the corpses. The final count was two hundred
fourteen slain, three times as many burned or wounded. Drogon was gone from the
city by then, last seen high over the Skahazadhan, flying north. Of Daenerys Targaryen,
no trace had been found. Some swore they saw her fall. Others insisted that the
dragon had carried her off to devour her.
They are wrong
.
    Ser Barristan knew no more of dragons than the tales every
child hears, but he knew Targaryens. Daenerys had been
riding
that dragon, as Aegon had once ridden Balerion of old.
    “She might be flying home,” he told himself, aloud.
    “No,” murmured a soft voice behind him. “She would not do
that, ser. She would not go home without us.”
    Ser Barristan turned. “Missandei. Child. How long have you
been standing there?”
    “Not long. This one is sorry if she has disturbed you.” She
hesitated. “Skahaz mo Kandaq wishes words with you.”
    “The Shavepate? You spoke with him?” That was rash, rash.
The enmity ran deep between Shakaz and the king, and the girl was clever enough
to know that. Skahaz had been outspoken in his opposition to the queen’s
marriage, a fact Hizdahr had not forgotten. “Is he here? In the pyramid?”
    “When he wishes. He comes and goes, ser.”
    Yes. He would
. “Who told you he wants words
with me?”
    “A Brazen Beast. He wore an owl mask.”
    He wore an owl mask when he spoke to you. By now he
could be a jackal, a tiger, a sloth
. Ser Barristan had hated the masks
from the start and never more than now. Honest men should never need to hide
their faces. And the Shavepate …
    What could he be thinking?
After Hizdahr had
given command of the Brazen Beasts to his cousin Marghaz zo Loraq, Skahaz had
been named Warden of the River, with charge of all the ferries, dredges, and
irrigation ditches along the Skahazadhan for fifty