A Feast for Dragons

children who had become especial favorites: the Dalt
boy and Lady Blackmont’s brood and the round-faced orphan girl whose father had
sold cloth and spices up and down the Greenblood. Doran kept a splendid Myrish
blanket over his legs as he spoke with them, to spare the young ones the sight
of his swollen, bandaged joints.
    It was midday before they got under way; the prince in his
litter, Maester Caleotte riding on a donkey, the rest afoot. Five spearmen
walked ahead and five behind, with five more flanking the litter to either
side. Areo Hotah himself took his familiar place at the left hand of the
prince, resting his longaxe on a shoulder as he walked. The road from Sunspear
to the
Water
Gardens
ran beside
the sea, so they had a cool fresh breeze to soothe them as they made their way
across a sparse red-brown land of stone and sand and twisted stunted trees.
    Halfway there, the second Sand Snake caught them.
    She appeared suddenly upon a dune, mounted on a golden sand
steed with a mane like fine white silk. Even ahorse, the Lady Nym looked
graceful, dressed all in shimmering lilac robes and a great silk cape of cream
and copper that lifted at every gust of wind, and made her look as if she might
take flight. Nymeria Sand was five-and-twenty, and slender as a willow. Her
straight black hair, worn in a long braid bound up with red-gold wire, made a
widow’s peak above her dark eyes, just as her father’s had. With her high
cheekbones, full lips, and milk-pale skin, she had all the beauty that her
elder sister lacked . . . but Obara’s mother had been an Oldtown whore, whilst
Nym was born from the noblest blood of old Volantis. A dozen mounted spearmen
tailed her, their round shields gleaming in the sun. They followed her down the
dune.
    The prince had tied back the curtains on his litter, the
better to enjoy the breeze blowing off the sea. Lady Nym fell in beside him,
slowing her pretty golden mare to match the litter’s pace. “Well met, Uncle,”
she sang out, as if it had been chance that brought her here. “May I ride with
you to Sunspear?” The captain was on the opposite side of the litter from Lady
Nym, yet he could hear every word she said.
    “I would be glad of it,” Prince Doran replied, though he did
not sound glad to the captain’s ears. “Gout and grief make poor
companions on the road.” By which the captain knew him to mean that every
pebble drove a spike through his swollen joints.
    “The gout I cannot help,” she said, “but my father had no
use for grief. Vengeance was more to his taste. Is it true that Gregor Clegane
admitted slaying Elia and her children?”
    “He roared out his guilt for all the court to hear,” the
prince admitted. “Lord Tywin has promised us his head.”
    “And a Lannister always pays his debts,” said Lady Nym, “yet
it seems to me that Lord Tywin means to pay us with our own coin. I had a bird
from our sweet Ser Daemon, who swears my father tickled that monster more than
once as they fought. If so, Ser Gregor is as good as dead, and no thanks to
Tywin Lannister.”
    The prince grimaced. Whether it was from the pain of gout or
his niece’s words, the captain could not say. “It may be so.”
    “May be? I say ’tis.”
    “Obara would have me go to war.”
    Nym laughed. “Yes, she wants to set the torch to Oldtown.
She hates that city as much as our little sister loves it.”
    “And you?”
    Nym glanced over a shoulder, to where her companions rode a
dozen lengths behind. “I was abed with the Fowler twins when the word reached
me,” the captain heard her say. “You know the Fowler words? Let Me Soar! That is all I ask of you. Let me soar, Uncle. I need no mighty host, only one
sweet sister.”
    “Obara?”
    “Tyene. Obara is too loud. Tyene is so sweet and gentle that
no man will suspect her. Obara would make Oldtown our father’s funeral pyre,
but I am not so greedy. Four lives will suffice for me. Lord Tywin’s golden
twins, as payment for Elia’s children. The old lion, for Elia herself. And last
of all the little king, for my father.”
    “The boy has never wronged us.”
    “The boy is a bastard born of treason, incest, and adultery,
if Lord Stannis can be believed.” The playful tone had vanished from her voice,
and the captain found himself watching her through narrowed eyes. Her sister
Obara wore her whip upon her hip and carried a spear where any man could see
it. Lady Nym was no less deadly, though she kept her knives well