A Feast for Dragons

say to that. He was only a
captain of guards, and still a stranger to this land and its seven-faced god,
even after all these years. Serve. Obey. Protect. He had sworn those
vows at six-and-ten, the day he wed his axe. Simple vows for simple men, the bearded priests had said. He had not been trained to counsel grieving
princes.
    He was still groping for some words to say when another
orange fell with a heavy splat, no more than a foot from where the prince was
seated. Doran winced at the sound, as if somehow it had hurt him. “Enough,” he
sighed, “it is enough. Leave me, Areo. Let me watch the children for a few more
hours.”
    When the sun set the air grew cool and the children went
inside in search of supper, still the prince remained beneath his orange trees,
looking out over the still pools and the sea beyond. A serving man brought him
a bowl of purple olives, with flatbread, cheese, and chickpea paste. He ate a
bit of it, and drank a cup of the sweet, heavy strongwine that he loved. When
it was empty, he filled it once again. Sometimes in the deep black hours of the
morning sleep found him in his chair. Only then did the captain roll him down
the moonlit gallery, past a row of fluted pillars and through a graceful
archway, to a great bed with crisp cool linen sheets in a chamber by the sea.
Doran groaned as the captain moved him, but the gods were good and he did not
wake.
    The captain’s sleeping cell adjoined his prince’s. He sat
upon the narrow bed and found his whetstone and oilcloth in their niche, and
set to work. Keep your longaxe sharp, the bearded priests had told him,
the day they branded him. He always did.
    As he honed the axe, Hotah thought of Norvos, the high city
on the hill and the low beside the river. He could still recall the sounds of
the three bells, the way that Noom’s deep peals set his very bones to
shuddering, the proud strong voice of Narrah, sweet Nyel’s silvery laughter.
The taste of wintercake filled his mouth again, rich with ginger and pine nuts
and bits of cherry, with nahsa to wash it down, fermented goat’s milk
served in an iron cup and laced with honey. He saw his mother in her dress with
the squirrel collar, the one she wore but once each year, when they went to see
the bears dance down the Sinner’s Steps. And he smelled the stench of burning
hair as the bearded priest touched the brand to the center of his chest. The
pain had been so fierce that he thought his heart might stop, yet Areo Hotah
had not flinched. The hair had never grown back over the axe.
    Only when both edges were sharp enough to shave with did the
captain lay his ash-and-iron wife down on the bed. Yawning, he pulled off his
soiled clothes, tossed them on the floor, and stretched out on his
straw-stuffed mattress. Thinking of the brand had made it itch, so he had to
scratch himself before he closed his eyes. I should have gathered up the
oranges that fell, he thought, and went to sleep dreaming of the tart sweet
taste of them, and the sticky feel of the red juice on his fingers.
    Dawn came too soon. Outside the stables the smallest of the
three horse litters stood ready, the cedarwood litter with the red silk
draperies. The captain chose twenty spears to accompany it, out of the thirty
who were posted at the
Water
Gardens
;
the rest would stay to guard the grounds and children, some of whom were the
sons and daughters of great lords and wealthy merchants.
    Although the prince had spoken of departing at first light,
Areo Hotah knew that he would dawdle. Whilst the maester helped Doran Martell to
bathe and bandaged up his swollen joints in linen wraps soaked with soothing
lotions, the captain donned a shirt of copper scales as befit his rank, and a
billowing cloak of dun-and-yellow sandsilk to keep the sun off the copper. The
day promised to be hot, and the captain had long ago discarded the heavy
horsehair cape and studded leather tunic he had worn in Norvos, which were like
to cook a man in Dorne. He had kept his iron halfhelm, with its crest of
sharpened spikes, but now he wore it wrapped in orange silk, weaving the cloth
in and around the spikes. Elsewise the sun beating down on the metal would have
his head pounding before they saw the palace.
    The prince was still not ready to depart. He had decided to
break his fast before he went, with a blood orange and a plate of gull’s eggs
diced with bits of ham and fiery peppers. Then nought would do but he must say
farewell to several of the