A Feast for Dragons

would have been exquisitely ironic, that. Perhaps he would have had time for
a short, bitter chortle before being torn apart.
    No one ever told him the end that had been planned for them,
not in so many words, but it had not been hard to puzzle out, down beneath the
bricks of Daznak’s Pit, in the hidden world below the seats, the dark domain of
the pit fighters and the serving men who tended to them, quick and dead—the
cooks who fed them, the ironmongers who armed them, the barber-surgeons who
bled them and shaved them and bound up their wounds, the whores who serviced
them before and after fights, the corpse handlers who dragged the losers off
the sands with chains and iron hooks.
    Nurse’s face had given Tyrion his first inkling. After their
show, he and Penny had returned to the torchlit vault where the fighters
gathered before and after their matches. Some sat sharpening their weapons;
others sacrificed to queer gods, or dulled their nerves with milk of the poppy
before going out to die. Those who’d fought and won were dicing in a corner,
laughing as only men who have just faced death and lived can laugh.
    Nurse was paying out some silver to a pit man on a lost
wager when he spied Penny leading Crunch. The confusion in his eyes was gone in
half a heartbeat, but not before Tyrion grasped what it meant.
Nurse did
not expect us back
. He had looked around at other faces.
None
of them expected us back. We were meant to die out there
. The final
piece fell into place when he overheard an animal trainer complaining loudly to
the pitmaster. “The lions are hungry. Two days since they ate. I was told not
to feed them, and I haven’t. The queen should pay for meat.”
    “You take that up with her the next time she holds court,”
the pitmaster threw back at him.
    Even now, Penny did not suspect. When she spoke about the
pit, her chief worry was that more people had not laughed.
They would
have pissed
themselves laughing if the lions had been loosed
,
Tyrion almost told her. Instead he’d squeezed her shoulder.
    Penny came to a sudden halt. “We’re going the wrong way.”
    “We’re not.” Tyrion lowered his pails to the ground. The
handles had gouged deep grooves in his fingers. “Those are the tents we want,
there.”
    “The Second Sons?” A queer smile split Ser Jorah’s face. “If
you think to find help there, you don’t know Brown Ben Plumm.”
    “Oh, I do. Plumm and I have played five games of
cyvasse
.
Brown Ben is shrewd, tenacious, not unintelligent … but wary. He
likes to let his opponent take the risks whilst he sits back and keeps his options
open, reacting to the battle as it takes shape.”
    “Battle? What battle?” Penny backed away from him. “We have
to get
back
. The master needs clean water. If we take too long,
we’ll be whipped. And Pretty Pig and Crunch are there.”
    “Sweets will see that they are taken care of,” Tyrion lied.
More like, Scar and his friends would soon be feasting on ham and bacon and a
savory dog stew, but Penny did not need to hear that. “Nurse is dead and
Yezzan’s dying. It could be dark before anyone thinks to miss us. We will never
have a better chance than now.”
    “
No
. You know what they do when they catch
slaves trying to escape. You
know
. Please. They’ll never let us
leave the camp.”
    “We haven’t left the camp.” Tyrion picked up his pails. He
set off at a brisk waddle, never looking back. Mormont fell in beside him.
After a moment he heard the sounds of Penny hurrying after him, down a sandy
slope to a circle of ragged tents.
    The first guard appeared as they neared the horse lines, a
lean spearman whose maroon beard marked him as Tyroshi. “What do we have here?
And what have you got in those pails?”
    “Water,” said Tyrion, “if it please you.”
    “Beer would please me better.” A spearpoint pricked him in
the back—a second guard, come up behind them. Tyrion could hear King’s Landing
in his voice.
Scum from Flea Bottom
. “You lost, dwarf?” the
guard demanded.
    “We’re here to join your company.”
    A pail slipped from Penny’s grasp and overturned. Half the
water had spilled before she could right it once again.
    “We got fools enough in this company. Why would we want
three more?” The Tyroshi flicked at Tyrion’s collar with his spearpoint,
ringing the little golden bell. “A runaway slave is what I see. Three runaway
slaves. Whose collar?”
    “The Yellow Whale’s.” That from a third man,