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swore Brienne had . . . although . . .”
    â€œYes?” Jaime prompted, sensing a doubt.
    â€œThe gorget was cut through. One clean stroke, through a steel gorget. Renly’s armor was the best, the finest steel. How could she do that? I tried myself, and it was not possible. She’s freakish strong for a woman, but even the Mountain would have needed a heavy axe. And why armor him and
then
cut his throat?” He gave Jaime a confused look. “If not her, though . . . how could it be a
shadow?
”
    â€œAsk her.” Jaime came to a decision. “Go to her cell. Ask your questions and hear her answers. If you are still convinced that she murdered Lord Renly, I will see that she answers for it. The choice will be yours. Accuse her, or release her. All I ask is that you judge her fairly, on your honor as a knight.”
    Ser Loras stood. “I shall. On my honor.”
    â€œWe are done, then.”
    The younger man started for the door. But there he turned back. “Renly thought she was absurd. A woman dressed in man’s mail, pretending to be a knight.”
    â€œIf he’d ever seen her in pink satin and Myrish lace, he would not have complained.”
    â€œI asked him why he kept her close, if he thought her so grotesque. He said that all his other knights wanted things of him, castles or honors or riches, but all that Brienne wanted was to die for him. When I saw him all bloody, with her fled and the three of them unharmed . . . if she’s innocent, then Robar and Emmon . . .” He could not seem to say the words.
    Jaime had not stopped to consider that aspect of it. “I would have done the same, ser.” The lie came easy, but Ser Loras seemed grateful for it.
    When he was gone, the Lord Commander sat alone in the white room, wondering. The Knight of Flowers had been so mad with grief for Renly that he had cut down two of his own Sworn Brothers, but it had never occurred to Jaime to do the same with the five who had failed Joffrey.
He was my son, my secret son . . . What am I, if I do not lift the hand I have left to avenge mine own blood and seed?
He ought to kill Ser Boros at least, just to be rid of him.
    He looked at his stump and grimaced.
I must do something about that
. If the late Ser Jacelyn Bywater could wear an iron hand, he should have a gold one.
Cersei might like that. A golden hand to stroke her golden hair, and hold her hard against me
.
    His hand could wait, though. There were other things to tend to first. There were other debts to pay.

SANSA
    T he ladder to the forecastle was steep and splintery, so Sansa accepted a hand up from Lothor Brune.
Ser Lothor
, she had to remind herself; the man had been knighted for his valor in the Battle of the Blackwater. Though no proper knight would wear those patched brown breeches and scuffed boots, nor that cracked and water-stained leather jerkin. A square-faced stocky man with a squashed nose and a mat of nappy grey hair, Brune spoke seldom.
He is stronger than he looks, though
. She could tell by the ease with which he lifted her, as if she weighed nothing at all.
    Off the bow of the
Merling King
stretched a bare and stony strand, windswept, treeless, and uninviting. Even so, it made a welcome sight. They had been a long while clawing their way back on course. The last storm had swept them out of sight of land, and sent such waves crashing over the sides of the galley that Sansa had been certain they were all going to drown. Two men had been swept overboard, she had heard old Oswell saying, and another had fallen from the mast and broken his neck.
    She had seldom ventured out on deck herself. Her little cabin was dank and cold, but Sansa had been sick for most of the voyage . . . sick with terror, sick with fever, or seasick . . . she could keep nothing down, and even sleep came hard. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Joffrey tearing at his collar, clawing at the soft skin of his throat, dying with flakes of pie crust on his lips and wine stains on his doublet. And the wind keening in the lines reminded her of the terrible thin sucking sound he’d made as he fought to draw in air. Sometimes she dreamed of Tyrion as well. “He did nothing,” she told Littlefinger once, when he paid a visit to her cabin to see if she were feeling any better.
    â€œHe did not kill Joffrey, true, but the dwarf’s hands are far from clean. He had a wife before you, did you know that?”
    â€œHe told