A Feast for Dragons

thousand
golden dragons. He shook his head, laughed, signed. And again. And again. “So,”
he said as he was scrawling, “what will be my duties with the company?”
    “You are too ugly to be Bokkoko’s butt boy,” said Kasporio,
“but you might do as arrow fodder.”
    “Better than you know,” said Tyrion, refusing to rise to the
bait. “A small man with a big shield will drive the archers mad. A wiser man
than you once told me that.”
    “You will work with Inkpots,” said Brown Ben Plumm.
    “You will work
for
Inkpots,” said Inkpots.
“Keeping books, counting coin, writing contracts and letters.”
    “Gladly,” said Tyrion. “I love books.”
    “What else would you do?” sneered Kasporio. “Look at you.
You are not fit to fight.”
    “I once had charge of all the drains in Casterly Rock,”
Tyrion said mildly. “Some of them had been stopped up for years, but I soon had
them draining merrily away.” He dipped the quill in the ink again. Another dozen
notes, and he would be done. “Perhaps I could supervise your camp followers. We
can’t have the men stopped up, now can we?”
    That jape did not please Brown Ben. “Stay away from the
whores,” he warned. “Most o’ them are poxy, and they talk. You’re not the first
escaped slave to join the company, but that don’t mean we need to shout your
presence. I won’t have you parading about where you might be seen. Stay inside
as much as you can, and shit into your bucket. Too many eyes at the latrines.
And never go beyond our camp without my leave. We can dress you up in squire’s
steel, pretend you’re Jorah’s butt boy, but there’s some will see right through
that. Once Meereen is taken and we’re away to Westeros, you can prance about
all you like in gold and crimson. Till then, though …”
    “… I shall live beneath a rock and never make a sound.
You have my word on that.”
Tyrion of House Lannister
, he signed
once more, with a flourish. That was the last parchment. Three notes remained,
different from the rest. Two were written on fine vellum and made out by name.
For Kasporio the Cunning, ten thousand dragons. The same for Inkpots, whose
true name appeared to be Tybero Istarion.
“Tybero?”
said
Tyrion. “That sounds almost Lannister. Are you some long-lost cousin?”
    “Perhaps. I always pay my debts as well. It is expected of a
paymaster. Sign.”
    He signed.
    Brown Ben’s note was the last. That one had been inscribed
upon a sheepskin scroll.
One hundred thousand golden dragons, fifty
hides of fertile land, a castle, and a lordship. Well and well. This Plumm does
not come cheaply
. Tyrion plucked at his scar and wondered if he ought
to make a show of indignation. When you bugger a man you expect a squeal or
two. He could curse and swear and rant of robbery, refuse to sign for a time,
then give in reluctantly, protesting all the while. But he was sick of mummery,
so instead he grimaced, signed, and handed the scroll back to Brown Ben. “Your
cock is as big as in the stories,” he said. “Consider me well and truly fucked,
Lord Plumm.”
    Brown Ben blew on his signature. “My pleasure, Imp. And now,
we make you one o’ us. Inkpots, fetch the book.”
    The book was leather-bound with iron hinges, and large
enough to eat your supper off. Inside its heavy wooden boards were names and
dates going back more than a century. “The Second Sons are amongst the oldest
of the free companies,” Inkpots said as he was turning pages. “This is the
fourth book. The names of every man to serve with us are written here. When
they joined, where they fought, how long they served, the manner of their
deaths—all in the book. You will find famous names in here, some from your
Seven Kingdoms. Aegor Rivers served a year with us, before he left to found the
Golden Company. Bittersteel, you call him. The Bright Prince, Aerion Targaryen,
he was a Second Son. And Rodrik Stark, the Wandering Wolf, him as well. No, not
that ink. Here, use this.” He unstoppered a new pot and set it down.
    Tyrion cocked his head. “Red ink?”
    “A tradition of the company,” Inkpots explained. “There was
a time when each new man wrote his name in his own blood, but as it happens,
blood makes piss-poor ink.”
    “Lannisters love tradition. Lend me your knife.”
    Inkpots raised an eyebrow, shrugged, slipped his dagger from
its sheath, and handed it across hiltfirst.
It still hurts, Halfmaester,
thank you very much
, thought Tyrion, as he