A Feast for Dragons

about it.”
    The butcher’s wagon was outside, waiting in the alley. The
driver gave the mule a lick and rumbled through, iron-rimmed wheels
clacking
loudly over bricks. The quartered carcass of an ox filled the wagon bed, along
with two dead sheep. Half a dozen men entered afoot. Five wore the cloaks and
masks of Brazen Beasts, but Pretty Meris had not troubled to disguise herself.
“Where is your lord?” he asked Meris.
    “I have no
lord,”
she answered. “If you mean
your fellow prince, he is near, with fifty men. Bring your dragon out, and he
will see you safe away, as promised. Caggo commands here.”
    Ser Archibald was giving the butcher’s wagon the sour eye.
“Will that cart be big enough to hold a dragon?” he asked.
    “Should. It’s held two oxen.” The Corpsekiller was garbed as
a Brazen Beast, his seamed, scarred face hidden behind a cobra mask, but the
familiar black
arakh
slung at his hip gave him away. “We were
told these beasts are smaller than the queen’s monster.”
    “The pit has slowed their growth.” Quentyn’s readings had
suggested that the same thing had occurred in the Seven Kingdoms. None of the
dragons bred and raised in the Dragonpit of King’s Landing had ever approached
the size of Vhagar or Meraxes, much less that of the Black Dread, King Aegon’s
monster. “Have you brought sufficient chains?”
    “How many dragons do you have?” said Pretty Meris. “We have
chains enough for ten, concealed beneath the meat.”
    “Very good.” Quentyn felt light-headed. None of this seemed
quite real. One moment it felt like a game, the next like some nightmare, like
a bad dream where he found himself opening a dark door, knowing that horror and
death waited on the other side, yet somehow powerless to stop himself. His
palms were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his legs and said, “There will be
more guards outside the pit.”
    “We know,” said Gerris.
    “We need to be ready for them.”
    “We are,” said Arch.
    There was a cramp in Quentyn’s belly. He felt a sudden need
to move his bowels, but knew he dare not beg off now. “This way, then.” He had
seldom felt more like a boy. Yet they followed; Gerris and the big man, Meris
and Caggo and the other Windblown. Two of the sellswords had produced crossbows
from some hiding place within the wagon.
    Beyond the stables, the ground level of the Great Pyramid
became a labyrinth, but Quentyn Martell had been through here with the queen,
and he remembered the way. Under three huge brick arches they went, then down a
steep stone ramp into the depths, through the dungeons and torture chambers and
past a pair of deep stone cisterns. Their footsteps echoed hollowly off the
walls, the butcher’s cart rumbling behind them. The big man snatched a torch
down from a wall sconce to lead the way.
    At last a pair of heavy iron doors rose before them,
rust-eaten and forbidding, closed with a length of chain whose every link was
as thick around as a man’s arm. The size and thickness of those doors was
enough to make Quentyn Martell question the wisdom of this course. Even worse,
both doors were plainly dinted by something inside trying to get out. The thick
iron was cracked and splitting in three places, and the upper corner of the
left-hand door looked partly melted.
    Four Brazen Beasts stood guarding the door. Three held long
spears; the fourth, the serjeant, was armed with short sword and dagger. His
mask was wrought in the shape of a basilisk’s head. The other three were masked
as insects.
    Locusts
, Quentyn realized. “Dog,” he said.
    The serjeant stiffened.
    That was all it took for Quentyn Martell to realize that
something had gone awry. “Take them,” he croaked, even as the basilisk’s hand
darted for his shortsword.
    He was quick, that serjeant. The big man was quicker. He
flung the torch at the nearest locust, reached back, and unslung his warhammer.
The basilisk’s blade had scarce slipped from its leather sheath when the
hammer’s spike slammed into his temple, crunching through the thin brass of his
mask and the flesh and bone beneath. The serjeant staggered sideways half a
step before his knees folded under him and he sank down to the floor, his whole
body shaking grotesquely.
    Quentyn stared transfixed, his belly roiling. His own blade
was still in its sheath. He had not so much as reached for it. His eyes were
locked on the serjeant dying before him, jerking. The fallen torch was on the
floor,