A Feast for Dragons

a
simple man. “How many men are needed?”
    “I will leave that for you to decide. It may be that a few
good men will serve us better than a score. I want this done as quickly and as
quietly as possible, with no blood spilled.”
    “Quick and quiet and bloodless, aye. What is your command?”
    “You will find my brother’s daughters, take them into
custody, and confine them in the cells atop the
Spear
Tower
.”
    “The Sand Snakes?” The captain’s throat was dry. “All . . .
all eight, my prince? The little ones, also?”
    The prince considered. “Ellaria’s girls are too young to be
a danger, but there are those who might seek to use them against me. It would
be best to keep them safe in hand. Yes, the little ones as well . . . but first
secure Tyene, Nymeria, and Obara.”
    “As my prince commands.” His heart was troubled. My
little princess will mislike this. “What of Sarella? She is a woman grown,
almost twenty.”
    “Unless she returns to Dorne, there’s naught I can do about
Sarella save pray that she shows more sense than her sisters. Leave her to her
. . . game. Gather up the others. I shall not sleep until I know that they are
safe and under guard.”
    “It will be done.” The captain hesitated. “When this is
known in the streets, the common folk will howl.”
    “All Dorne will howl,” said Doran Martell in a tired voice.
“I only pray Lord Tywin hears them in King’s Landing, so he might know what a
loyal friend he has in Sunspear.”

----
    Brienne
    I am looking for a maid of three-and-ten,” she
told the grey-haired goodwife beside the village well. “A highborn maid and
very beautiful, with blue eyes and auburn hair. She may have been traveling
with a portly knight of forty years, or perhaps with a fool. Have you seen
her?”
    “Not as I recall, ser,” the goodwife said, knuckling her
forehead. “But I’ll keep my eye out, that I will.”
    The blacksmith had not seen her either, nor the septon in
the village sept, the swineherd with his pigs, the girl pulling up onions from
her garden, nor any of the other simple folk that the Maid of Tarth found
amongst the daub-and-wattle huts of Rosby. Still, she persisted. This is the
shortest road to Duskendale, Brienne told herself. If Sansa came this
way, someone must have seen her. At the castle gates she posed her question
to two spearmen whose badges showed three red chevronels on ermine, the arms of
House Rosby. “If she’s on the roads these days she won’t be no maid for long,”
said the older man. The younger wanted to know if the girl had that auburn hair
between her legs as well.
    I will find no help here. As Brienne mounted up
again, she glimpsed a skinny boy atop a piebald horse at the far end of the
village. I have not talked with that one, she thought, but he vanished
behind the sept before she could seek him out. She did not trouble to chase
after him. Most like he knew no more than the others had. Rosby was scarce more
than a wide place in the road; Sansa would have had no reason to linger here.
Returning to the road, Brienne headed north and east past apple orchards and
fields of barley, and soon left the village and its castle well behind. It was
at Duskendale that she would find her quarry, she told herself. If she came
this way at all.
    “I will find the girl and keep her safe,” Brienne had
promised Ser Jaime, back at King’s Landing. “For her lady mother’s sake. And
for yours.” Noble words, but words were easy. Deeds were hard. She had lingered
too long and learned too little in the city. I should have set out earlier .
. . but to where? Sansa Stark had vanished on the night King Joffrey died,
and if anyone had seen her since, or had any inkling where she might have gone,
they were not talking. Not to me, at least.
    Brienne believed the girl had left the city. If she were
still in King’s Landing, the gold cloaks would have turned her up. She had to
have gone elsewhere . . . but elsewhere is a big place. If I were a maiden
newly flowered, alone and afraid, in desperate danger, what would I do? she
had asked herself. Where would I go? For her, the answer came easy. She
would make her way back to Tarth, to her father. Sansa’s father had been
beheaded whilst she watched, however. Her lady mother was dead too, murdered at
the Twins, and Winterfell, the great Stark stronghold, had been sacked and
burned, its people put to the sword. She has no home to run to, no father,
no mother, no brothers. She