A Feast for Dragons

across
his broad back.
    “It is still not too late to abandon this folly,” Gerris
said, as they made their way down a foetid alley toward the old spice market.
The smell of piss was in the air, and they could hear the rumble of a corpse
cart’s iron-rimmed wheels off ahead. “Old Bill Bone used to say that Pretty
Maris could stretch out a man’s dying for a moon’s turn. We
lied
to them, Quent. Used them to get us here, then went over to the Stormcrows.”
    “As we were commanded.”
    “Tatters never meant for us to do it for real, though,” put
in the big man. “His other boys, Ser Orson and Dick Straw, Hungerford, Will of
the Woods, that lot, they’re still down in some dungeon thanks to us. Old Rags
can’t have liked that much.”
    “No,” Prince Quentyn said, “but he likes gold.”
    Gerris laughed. “A pity we have none. Do you trust this
peace, Quent? I don’t. Half the city is calling the dragonslayer a hero, and
the other half spits blood at the mention of his name.”
    “Harzoo,” the big man said.
    Quentyn frowned. “His name was Harghaz.”
    “Hizdahr, Humzum, Hagnag, what does it matter? I call them
all Harzoo. He was no dragonslayer. All he did was get his arse roasted black
and crispy.”
    “He was brave.”
Would I have the courage to face that
monster with nothing but a spear?
    “He died bravely, is what you mean.”
    “He died screaming,” said Arch.
    Gerris put a hand on Quentyn’s shoulder. “Even if the queen
returns, she’ll still be married.”
    “Not if I give King Harzoo a little smack with my hammer,”
suggested the big man.
    “Hizdahr,” said Quentyn. “His name is Hizdahr.”
    “One kiss from my hammer and no one will care what his name
was,” said Arch.
    They do not see
. His friends had lost sight
of his true purpose here.
The road leads through her, not to her.
Daenerys is the means to the prize, not the prize itself
. “ ‘The
dragon has three heads,’ she said to me. ‘My marriage need not be the end of
all your hopes,’ she said. ‘I know why you are here. For fire and blood.’ I
have Targaryen blood in me, you know that. I can trace my lineage back—”
    “Fuck your lineage,” said Gerris. “The dragons won’t care
about your blood, except maybe how it tastes. You cannot tame a dragon with a
history lesson. They’re monsters, not maesters. Quent, is this truly what you
want to do?”
    “This is what I have to do. For Dorne. For my father. For
Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry.”
    “They’re dead,” said Gerris. “They won’t care.”
    “All dead,” Quentyn agreed. “For what? To bring me here, so
I might wed the dragon queen. A grand adventure, Cletus called it. Demon roads
and stormy seas, and at the end of it the most beautiful woman in the world. A
tale to tell our grandchildren. But Cletus will never father a child, unless he
left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have
his wedding. Their deaths should have some meaning.”
    Gerris pointed to where a corpse slumped against a brick
wall, attended by a cloud of glistening green flies. “Did his death have
meaning?”
    Quentyn looked at the body with distaste. “He died of the
flux. Stay well away from him.” The pale mare was inside the city walls. Small
wonder that the streets seemed so empty. “The Unsullied will send a corpse cart
for him.”
    “No doubt. But that was not my question. Men’s lives have
meaning, not their deaths. I loved Will and Cletus too, but this will not bring
them back to us. This is a mistake, Quent. You cannot trust in sellswords.”
    “They are men like any other men. They want gold, glory,
power. That’s all I am trusting in.”
That, and my own destiny. I am a
prince of Dorne, and the blood of dragons is in my veins
.
    The sun had sunk below the city wall by the time they found
the purple lotus, painted on the weathered wooden door of a low brick hovel
squatting amidst a row of similar hovels in the shadow of the great
yellow-and-green pyramid of Rhazdar. Quentyn knocked twice, as instructed. A
gruff voice answered through the door, growling something unintelligible in the
mongrel tongue of Slaver’s Bay, an ugly blend of Old Ghiscari and High
Valyrian. The prince answered in the same tongue. “Freedom.”
    The door opened. Gerris entered first, for caution’s sake,
with Quentyn close behind him and the big man bringing up the rear. Within, the
air was hazy with bluish smoke, whose sweet smell