A Feast for Dragons

parchments was formidably high. Tyrion looked at
it and sighed. “I had understood you were a band of brothers. Is this the love a
brother bears a brother? Where is the trust? The friendship, the fond regard,
the deep affection that only men who have fought and bled together can ever
know?”
    “All in time,” said Brown Ben Plumm.
    “After you sign,” said Inkpots, sharpening a quill.
    Kasporio the Cunning touched his sword hilt. “If you would
like to start the bleeding now, I will happ’ly oblige you.”
    “How kind of you to offer,” said Tyrion. “I think not.”
    Inkpots placed the parchments before Tyrion and handed him
the quill. “Here is your ink. From Old Volantis, this. ’Twill last as long as
proper maester’s black. All you need do is sign and pass the notes to me. I’ll
do the rest.”
    Tyrion gave him a crooked grin. “Might I read them first?”
    “If you like. They are all the same, by and large. Except
for the ones at the bottom, but we’ll get to those in due course.”
    Oh, I am sure we will
. For most men, there
was no cost to joining a company, but he was not most men. He dipped the quill
into the inkpot, leaned over the first parchment, paused, looked up. “Would you
prefer me to sign
Yollo
or
Hugor Hill?”
    Brown Ben crinkled up his eyes. “Would you prefer to be
returned to Yezzan’s heirs or just beheaded?”
    The dwarf laughed and signed the parchment,
Tyrion of
House Lannister
. As he passed it left to Inkpots, he riffled through
the pile underneath. “There are … what, fifty? Sixty? I’d thought
there were five hundred Second Sons.”
    “Five hundred thirteen at present,” Inkpots said. “When you
sign our book, we will be five hundred fourteen.”
    “So only one in ten receives a note? That hardly seems fair.
I thought you were all share-and-share-alike in the free companies.” He signed
another sheet.
    Brown Ben chuckled. “Oh, all share. But not alike. The
Second Sons are not unlike a family …”
    “… and every family has its drooling cousins.” Tyrion
signed another note. The parchment crinkled crisply as he slid it toward the
paymaster. “There are cells down in the bowels of Casterly Rock where my lord
father kept the worst of ours.” He dipped his quill in the inkpot.
Tyrion
of House Lannister
, he scratched out, promising to pay the bearer of
the note one hundred golden dragons.
Every stroke of the quill leaves me
a little poorer … or would, if I were not a beggar to begin with
.
One day he might rue these signatures.
But not this day
. He
blew on the wet ink, slid the parchment to the paymaster, and signed the one
beneath. And again. And again. And again. “This wounds me deeply, I will have
you know,” he told them between signatures. “In Westeros, the word of a
Lannister is considered good as gold.”
    Inkpots shrugged. “This is not Westeros. On this side of the
narrow sea, we put our promises on paper.” As each sheet was passed to him, he
scattered fine sand across the signature to drink up excess ink, shook it off,
and set the note aside. “Debts written on the wind tend to
be … forgotten, shall we say?”
    “Not by us.” Tyrion signed another sheet. And another. He
had found a rhythm now. “A Lannister always pays his debts.”
    Plumm chuckled. “Aye, but a sellsword’s word is worthless.”
    Well, yours is
, thought Tyrion,
and
thank the gods for that
. “True, but I will not be a sellsword until
I’ve signed your book.”
    “Soon enough,” said Brown Ben. “After the notes.”
    “I am dancing as fast as I can.” He wanted to laugh, but
that would have ruined the game. Plumm was enjoying this, and Tyrion had no
intention of spoiling his fun.
Let him go on thinking that he’s bent me
over and fucked me up the arse, and I’ll go on buying steel swords with
parchment dragons
. If ever he went back to Westeros to claim his
birthright, he would have all the gold of Casterly Rock to make good on his
promises. If not, well, he’d be dead, and his new brothers could wipe their
arses with these parchments. Perhaps some might turn up in King’s Landing with
their scraps in hand, hoping to convince his sweet sister to make good on them.
And would that I could be a roach in the rushes to witness that
.
    The writing on the parchments changed about halfway down the
pile. The hundred-dragon notes were all for serjeants. Below them the amounts
suddenly grew larger. Now Tyrion was promising to pay the bearer one