A Feast for Dragons

thousands of swords.”
    “The queen’s freedmen are as yet unblooded. The sellswords I
do not trust. Unsullied are brave soldiers … but not warriors. Not
knights
.”
He paused. “What happened when you tried to take the dragons? Tell me.”
    The Dornishmen exchanged a look. Then Drinkwater said,
“Quentyn told the Tattered Prince he could control them. It was in his blood,
he said. He had Targaryen blood.”
    “Blood of the dragon.”
    “Yes. The sellswords were supposed to help us get the
dragons chained up so we could get them to the docks.”
    “Rags arranged for a ship,” said Yronwood. “A big one, in
case we got both dragons. And Quent was going to ride one.” He looked at his
bandaged hands. “The moment we got in, though, you could see none of it was
going to work. The dragons were too wild. The chains … there were
bits of broken chain everywhere,
big
chains, links the size of
your head mixed in with all these cracked and splintered bones. And Quent,
Seven save him, he looked like he was going to shit his smallclothes. Caggo and
Meris weren’t blind, they saw it too. Then one of the crossbowmen let fly.
Maybe they meant to kill the dragons all along and were only using us to get to
them. You never know with Tatters. Any way you hack it off, it weren’t clever.
The quarrel just made the dragons angry, and they hadn’t been in such a good
mood to start with. Then … then things got bad.”
    “And the Windblown blew away,” said Ser Gerris. “Quent was
screaming, covered in flames, and they were gone. Caggo, Pretty Meris, all but
the dead one.”
    “Ah, what did you expect, Drink? A cat will kill a mouse, a
pig will wallow in shit, and a sellsword will run off when he’s needed most.
Can’t be blamed. Just the nature of the beast.”
    “He’s not wrong,” Ser Barristan said. “What did Prince
Quentyn promise the Tattered Prince in return for all this help?”
    He got no answer. Ser Gerris looked at Ser Archibald. Ser
Archibald looked at his hands, the floor, the door.
    “Pentos,” said Ser Barristan. “He promised him Pentos. Say
it. No words of yours can help or harm Prince Quentyn now.”
    “Aye,” said Ser Archibald unhappily. “It was Pentos. They
made marks on a paper, the two of them.”
    There is a chance here
. “We still have
Windblown in the dungeons. Those feigned deserters.”
    “I remember,” said Yronwood. “Hungerford, Straw, that lot.
Some of them weren’t so bad for sellswords. Others, well, might be they could
stand a bit of dying. What of them?”
    “I mean to send them back to the Tattered Prince. And you
with them. You will be two amongst thousands. Your presence in the Yunkish
camps should pass unnoticed. I want you to deliver a message to the Tattered
Prince. Tell him that I sent you, that I speak with the queen’s voice. Tell him
that we’ll pay his price if he delivers us our hostages, unharmed and whole.”
    Ser Archibald grimaced. “Rags and Tatters is more like to
give the two of us to Pretty Meris. He won’t do it.”
    “Why not? The task is simple enough.”
Compared to
stealing dragons
. “I once brought the queen’s father out of
Duskendale.”
    “That was Westeros,” said Gerris Drinkwater.
    “This is Meereen.”
    “Arch cannot even hold a sword with those hands.”
    “He ought not need to. You will have the sellswords with
you, unless I mistake my man.”
    Gerris Drinkwater pushed back his mop of sun-streaked hair.
“Might we have some time to discuss this amongst ourselves?”
    “No,” said Selmy.
    “I’ll do it,” offered Ser Archibald, “just so long as
there’s no bloody boats involved. Drink will do it too.” He grinned. “He don’t
know it yet, but he will.”
    And that was done.
    The simple part, at least
, thought Barristan
Selmy, as he made the long climb back to the summit of the pyramid. The hard
part he’d left in Dornish hands. His grandfather would have been aghast. The Dornishmen
were knights, at least in name, though only Yronwood impressed him as having
the true steel. Drinkwater had a pretty face, a glib tongue, and a fine head of
hair.
    By the time the old knight returned to the queen’s rooms
atop the pyramid, Prince Quentyn’s corpse had been removed. Six of the young
cupbearers were playing some child’s game as he entered, sitting in a circle on
the floor as they took turns spinning a dagger. When it wobbled to a stop they
cut a lock of hair off whichever of them the blade was