A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle
shuttered window overhead, mingled with the deeper voice of the man she was entertaining. She was the oldest of the serving wenches at the Quill and Tankard, forty if she was a day, but still pretty in a fleshy sort of way. Rosey was her daughter, fifteen and freshly flowered. Emma had decreed that Roseyâs maidenhead would cost a golden dragon. Pate had saved nine silver stags and a pot of copper stars and pennies, for all the good that would do him. He would have stood a better chance of hatching a real dragon than saving up enough coin to make a golden one.
âYou were born too late for dragons, lad,â Armen the Acolyte told Roone. Armen wore a leather thong about his neck, strung with links of pewter, tin, lead, and copper, and like most acolytes he seemed to believe that novices had turnips growing from their shoulders in place of heads. âThe last one perished during the reign of King Aegon the Third.â
âThe last dragon in
Westeros,
â insisted Mollander.
âThrow the apple,â Alleras urged again. He was a comely youth, their Sphinx. All the serving wenches doted on him. Even Rosey would sometimes touch him on the arm when she brought him wine, and Pate had to gnash his teeth and pretend not to see.
âThe last dragon in Westeros
was
the last dragon,â said Armen doggedly. âThat is well known.â
âThe
apple,
â Alleras said. âUnless you mean to eat it.â
âHere.â Dragging his clubfoot, Mollander took a short hop, whirled, and whipped the apple sidearm into the mists that hung above the Honeywine. If not for his foot, he would have been a knight like his father. He had the strength for it in those thick arms and broad shoulders. Far and fast the apple flew . . .
. . . but not as fast as the arrow that whistled after it, a yard-long shaft of golden wood fletched with scarlet feathers. Pate did not see the arrow catch the apple, but he heard it. A soft
chunk
echoed back across the river, followed by a splash.
Mollander whistled. âYou cored it. Sweet.â
Not half as sweet as Rosey.
Pate loved her hazel eyes and budding breasts, and the way she smiled every time she saw him. He loved the dimples in her cheeks. Sometimes she went barefoot as she served, to feel the grass beneath her feet. He loved that too. He loved the clean fresh smell of her, the way her hair curled behind her ears. He even loved her toes. One night sheâd let him rub her feet and play with them, and heâd made up a funny tale for every toe to keep her giggling.
Perhaps he would do better to remain on this side of the narrow sea. He could buy a donkey with the coin heâd saved, and he and Rosey could take turns riding it as they wandered Westeros. Ebrose might not think him worthy of the silver, but Pate knew how to set a bone and leech a fever. The smallfolk would be grateful for his help. If he could learn to cut hair and shave beards, he might even be a barber.
That would be enough,
he told himself,
so long as I had Rosey.
Rosey was all that he wanted in the world.
That had not always been so. Once he had dreamed of being a maester in a castle, in service to some open-handed lord who would honor him for his wisdom and bestow a fine white horse on him to thank him for his service. How high heâd ride, how nobly, smiling down at the smallfolk when he passed them on the road . . .
One night in the Quill and Tankardâs common room, after his second tankard of fearsomely strong cider, Pate had boasted that he would not always be a novice. âToo true,â Lazy Leo had called out. âYouâll be a former novice, herding swine.â
He drained the dregs of his tankard. The torchlit terrace of the Quill and Tankard was an island of light in a sea of mist this morning. Downriver, the distant beacon of the Hightower floated in the damp of night like a hazy orange moon, but the light did little to lift his spirits.
The alchemist should have come by now.
Had it all been some cruel jape, or had something happened to the man? It would not have been the first time that good fortune had turned sour on Pate. He had once counted himself lucky to be chosen to help old Archmaester Walgrave with the ravens, never dreaming that before long he would also be fetching the manâs meals, sweeping out his chambers, and dressing him every morning. Everyone said that Walgrave had forgotten more of ravencraft than most maesters ever knew, so
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher