A Feast for Dragons

best if he
takes no note of you at all.”
    The old man was some sort of merchant, Cat concluded after
watching him for a few days. His trade had to do with the sea, though she never
saw him set foot upon a ship. He spent his days sitting in a soup shop near the
Purple Harbor, a cup of onion broth cooling at his elbow as he shuffled papers
and sealing wax and spoke in sharp tones to a parade of captains, shipowners,
and other merchants, none of whom seemed to like him very much.
    Yet they brought him money: leather purses plump with gold
and silver and the square iron coins of Braavos. The old man would count it out
carefully, sorting the coins and stacking them up neatly, like with like. He
never looked at the coins. Instead he bit them, always on the left side of his
mouth, where he still had all his teeth. From time to time he’d spin one on the
table and listen to the sound it made when it came clattering to a stop.
    And when all the coins had been counted and tasted, the old
man would scrawl upon a parchment, stamp it with his seal, and give it to the
captain. Else he’d shake his head and shove the coins back across the table.
Whenever he did that, the other man would get red-faced and angry, or pale and
scared-looking.
    Cat did not understand. “They pay him gold and silver, but
he only gives them writing. Are they stupid?”
    “A few, mayhaps. Most are simply cautious. Some think to cozen
him. He is not a man easily cozened, however.”
    “But what is he
selling
them?”
    “He is writing each a binder. If their ships are lost in a
storm or taken by pirates, he promises to pay them for the value of the vessel
and all its contents.”
    “Is it some kind of wager?”
    “Of a sort. A wager every captain hopes to lose.”
    “Yes, but if they win …”
    “… they lose their ships, oftimes their very lives. The
seas are dangerous, and never more so than in autumn. No doubt many a captain
sinking in a storm has taken some small solace in his binder back in Braavos,
knowing that his widow and children will not want.” A sad smile touched his
lips. “It is one thing to write such a binder, though, and another to make good
on it.”
    Cat understood.
One of them must hate him. One of
them came to the House of Black and White and prayed for the god to take him
.
She wondered who it had been, but the kindly man would not tell her. “It is not
for you to pry into such matters,” he said. “Who are you?”
    “No one.”
    “No one asks no questions.” He took her hands. “If you
cannot do this thing, you need only say so. There is no shame in that. Some are
made to serve the Many-Faced God and some are not. Say the word, and I shall
lift this task from you.”
    “I will do it. I said I would. I will.”
    How
, though? That was harder.
    He had guards. Two of them, a tall thin man and a short
thick one. They went with him everywhere, from when he left his house in the
morning till he returned at night. They made certain no one got close to the
old man without his leave. Once a drunk almost staggered into him as he was
coming home from the soup shop, but the tall one stepped between them and gave
the man a sharp shove that knocked him to the ground. At the soup shop, the
short one always tasted the onion broth first. The old man waited until the
broth had cooled before he took a sip, long enough to be sure his guardsman had
suffered no ill effects.
    “He’s afraid,” she realized, “or else he knows that someone
wants to kill him.”
    “He does not know,” said the kindly man, “but he suspects.”
    “The guards go with him even when he slips out to make
water,” she said, “but he doesn’t go when they do. The tall one is the quicker.
I’ll wait till he is making water, walk into the soup shop, and stab the old
man through the eye.”
    “And the other guard?”
    “He’s slow and stupid. I can kill him too.”
    “Are you some butcher of the battlefield, hacking down every
man who stands in your way?”
    “No.”
    “I would hope not. You are a servant of the Many-Faced God,
and we who serve Him of Many Faces give his gift only to those who have been
marked and chosen.”
    She understood.
Kill him. Kill only him
.
    It took her three more days of watching before she found the
way, and another day of practicing with her finger knife. Red Roggo had taught
her how to use it, but she had not slit a purse since back before they took
away her eyes. She wanted to make certain that she still knew