A Feast for Dragons

leagues, but the Shavepate
had refused that ancient and honorable office, as Hizdahr called it, preferring
to retire to the modest pyramid of Kandaq.
Without the queen to protect
him, he takes a great risk coming here
. And if Ser Barristan were seen
speaking with him, suspicion might fall on the knight as well.
    He did not like the taste of this. It smelled of deceit, of
whispers and lies and plots hatched in the dark, all the things he’d hoped to
leave behind with the Spider and Lord Littlefinger and their ilk. Barristan
Selmy was not a bookish man, but he had often glanced through the pages of the
White Book, where the deeds of his predecessors had been recorded. Some had
been heroes, some weaklings, knaves, or cravens. Most were only men—quicker and
stronger than most, more skilled with sword and shield, but still prey to
pride, ambition, lust, love, anger, jealousy, greed for gold, hunger for power,
and all the other failings that afflicted lesser mortals. The best of them
overcame their flaws, did their duty, and died with their swords in their
hands. The worst …
    The worst were those who played the game of thrones
.
“Can you find this owl again?” he asked Missandei.
    “This one can try, ser.”
    “Tell him I will speak with … with our
friend … after dark, by the stables.” The pyramid’s main doors were
closed and barred at sunset. The stables would be quiet at that hour. “Make
certain it is the same owl.” It would not serve to have the wrong Brazen Beast
hear of this.
    “This one understands.” Missandei turned as if to go, then
paused a moment and said, “It is said that the Yunkai’i have ringed the city
all about with scorpions, to loose iron bolts into the sky should Drogon
return.”
    Ser Barristan had heard that too. “It is no simple thing to
slay a dragon in the sky. In Westeros, many tried to bring down Aegon and his
sisters. None succeeded.”
    Missandei nodded. It was hard to tell if she was reassured.
“Do you think that they will find her, ser? The grasslands are so vast, and
dragons leave no tracks across the sky.”
    “Aggo and Rakharo are blood of her blood … and who
knows the Dothraki sea better than Dothraki?” He squeezed her shoulder. “They
will find her if she can be found.”
If she still lives
. There
were other khals who prowled the grass, horselords with
khalasar
s
whose riders numbered in the tens of thousands. But the girl did not need to
hear that. “You love her well, I know. I swear, I shall keep her safe.”
    The words seemed to give the girl some comfort.
Words
are wind, though
, Ser Barristan thought.
How can I protect the
queen when I am not with her?
    Barristan Selmy had known many kings. He had been born
during the troubled reign of Aegon the Unlikely, beloved by the common folk,
had received his knighthood at his hands. Aegon’s son Jaehaerys had bestowed
the white cloak on him when he was three-and-twenty, after he slew Maelys the
Monstrous during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. In that same cloak he had
stood beside the Iron Throne as madness consumed Jaehaerys’s son Aerys.
Stood,
and saw, and heard, and yet did nothing
.
    But no. That was not fair. He did his duty. Some nights, Ser
Barristan wondered if he had not done that duty too well. He had sworn his vows
before the eyes of gods and men, he could not in honor go against
them … but the keeping of those vows had grown hard in the last years
of King Aerys’s reign. He had seen things that it pained him to recall, and
more than once he wondered how much of the blood was on his own hands. If he
had not gone into Duskendale to rescue Aerys from Lord Darklyn’s dungeons, the
king might well have died there as Tywin Lannister sacked the town. Then Prince
Rhaegar would have ascended the Iron Throne, mayhaps to heal the realm.
Duskendale had been his finest hour, yet the memory tasted bitter on his
tongue.
    It was his failures that haunted him at night, though.
Jaehaerys,
Aerys, Robert. Three dead kings. Rhaegar, who would have been a finer king than
any of them. Princess Elia and the children. Aegon just a babe, Rhaenys with her
kitten
. Dead, every one, yet he still lived, who had sworn to protect
them. And now Daenerys, his bright shining child queen.
She is not dead.
I will not believe it
.
    Afternoon brought Ser Barristan a brief respite from his
doubts. He spent it in the training hall on the pyramid’s third level, working
with his boys, teaching them the art of