A Feast for Dragons

splashing and shouting at
each other in high, shrill voices. “It was not so long ago that you were one of
the children in those pools, Obara,” the prince said, when she took one knee
before his rolling chair.
    She snorted. “It has been twenty years, or near enough to
make no matter. And I was not here long. I am the whore’s whelp, or had you
forgotten?” When he did not answer, she rose again and put her hands upon her
hips. “My father has been murdered.”
    “He was slain in single combat during a trial by battle,”
Prince Doran said. “By law, that is no murder.”
    “He was your brother. ”
    “He was.”
    “What do you mean to do about his death?”
    The prince turned his chair laboriously to face her. Though
he was but two-and-fifty, Doran Martell seemed much older. His body was soft
and shapeless beneath his linen robes, and his legs were hard to look upon. The
gout had swollen and reddened his joints grotesquely; his left knee was an
apple, his right a melon, and his toes had turned to dark red grapes, so ripe
it seemed as though a touch would burst them. Even the weight of a coverlet
could make him shudder, though he bore the pain without complaint. Silence
is a prince’s friend, the captain had heard him tell his daughter once. Words
are like arrows, Arianne. Once loosed, you cannot call them back. “I have
written to Lord Tywin—”
    “ Written? If you were half the man my father was—”
    “I am not your father.”
    “That I knew.” Obara’s voice was thick with contempt.
    “You would have me go to war.”
    “I know better. You need not even leave your chair. Let me avenge my father. You have a host in the Prince’s Pass. Lord Yronwood has
another in the Boneway. Grant me the one and Nym the other. Let her ride the
kingsroad, whilst I turn the marcher lords out of their castles and hook round
to march on Oldtown.”
    “And how could you hope to hold Oldtown?”
    “It will be enough to sack it. The wealth of Hightower—”
    “Is it gold you want?”
    “It is blood I want.”
    “Lord Tywin shall deliver us the Mountain’s head.”
    “And who will deliver us Lord Tywin’s head? The Mountain has
always been his pet.”
    The prince gestured toward the pools. “Obara, look at the
children, if it please you.”
    “It does not please me. I’d get more pleasure from driving
my spear into Lord Tywin’s belly. I’ll make him sing ‘The Rains of Castamere’
as I pull his bowels out and look for gold.”
    “Look,” the prince repeated. “I command you.”
    A few of the older children lay facedown upon the smooth
pink marble, browning in the sun. Others paddled in the sea beyond. Three were
building a sand castle with a great spike that resembled the
Spear
Tower
of the
Old
Palace
. A score or more
had gathered in the big pool, to watch the battles as smaller children rode
through the waist-deep shallows on the shoulders of the larger and tried to
shove each other into the water. Every time a pair went down, the splash was
followed by a roar of laughter. They watched a nut-brown girl yank a towheaded
boy off his brother’s shoulders to tumble him headfirst into the pool.
    “Your father played that same game once, as I did before
him,” said the prince. “We had ten years between us, so I had left the pools by
the time he was old enough to play, but I would watch him when I came to visit
Mother. He was so fierce, even as a boy. Quick as a water snake. I oft saw him
topple boys much bigger than himself. He reminded me of that the day he left
for King’s Landing. He swore that he would do it one more time, else I would
never have let him go.”
    “ Let him go?” Obara laughed. “As if you could have
stopped him. The Red Viper of Dorne went where he would.”
    “He did. I wish I had some word of comfort to—”
    “I did not come to you for comfort. ” Her voice was
full of scorn. “The day my father came to claim me, my mother did not wish for
me to go. ‘She is a girl,’ she said, ‘and I do not think that she is yours. I
had a thousand other men.’ He tossed his spear at my feet and gave my mother
the back of his hand across the face, so she began to weep. ‘Girl or boy, we
fight our battles,’ he said, ‘but the gods let us choose our weapons.’ He
pointed to the spear, then to my mother’s tears, and I picked up the spear. ‘I
told you she was mine,’ my father said, and took me. My mother drank herself to
death within the year. They say that she was