A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Dontos.”
    â€œTrue enough. Young Dontos was the son of Ser Steffon Hollard, the twin brother of Ser Symon, who had died of a fever some years before and had no part in the Defiance. Aerys would have taken the boy’s head off nonetheless, but Ser Barristan asked that his life be spared. The king could not refuse the man who’d saved him, so Dontos was taken to King’s Landing as a squire. To my knowledge he never returned to Duskendale, and why should he? He held no lands here, had neither kin nor castle. If Dontos and this northern girl helped murder our sweet king, it seems to me that they would want to put as many leagues as they could betwixt themselves and justice. Look for them in Oldtown, if you must, or across the narrow sea. Look for them in Dorne, or on the Wall. Look
elsewhere.
” He rose. “I hear my ravens calling. You will forgive me if I bid you good morrow.”
    The walk back to the inn seemed longer than the walk to the Dun Fort, though perhaps that was only her mood. She would not find Sansa Stark in Duskendale, that seemed plain. If Ser Dontos had taken her to Oldtown or across the narrow sea, as the maester seemed to think, Brienne’s quest was hopeless.
What was there for her in Oldtown?
she asked herself.
The maester never knew her, no more than he knew Hollard. She would not have gone to strangers.
    In King’s Landing, Brienne had found one of Sansa’s former maids doing washing in a brothel. “I served with Lord Renly before m’lady Sansa, and both turned traitor,” the woman Brella complained bitterly. “No lord will touch me now, so I have to wash for whores.” But when Brienne asked about Sansa, she said, “I’ll tell you what I told Lord Tywin. That girl was always praying. She’d go to sept and light her candles like a proper lady, but near every night she went off to the godswood. She’s gone back north, she has. That’s where her
gods
are.”
    The north was huge, though, and Brienne had no notion which of her father’s bannermen Sansa might have been most inclined to trust.
Or would she seek her own blood instead?
Though all of her siblings had been slain, Brienne knew that Sansa still had an uncle and a bastard half brother on the Wall, serving in the Night’s Watch. Another uncle, Edmure Tully, was a captive at the Twins, but
his
uncle Ser Brynden still held Riverrun. And Lady Catelyn’s younger sister ruled the Vale.
Blood calls to blood.
Sansa might well have run to one of them. Which one, though?
    The Wall was too far, surely, and a bleak and bitter place besides. And to reach Riverrun the girl would need to cross the war-torn riverlands and pass through the Lannister siege lines. The Eyrie would be simpler, and Lady Lysa would surely welcome her sister’s daughter . . .
    Ahead, the alley bent. Somehow Brienne had taken a wrong turn. She found herself in a dead end, a small muddy yard where three pigs were rooting round a low stone well. One squealed at the sight of her, and an old woman drawing water looked her up and down suspiciously. “What would you be wanting?”
    â€œI was looking for the Seven Swords.”
    â€œBack the way you come. Left at the sept.”
    â€œI thank you.” Brienne turned to retrace her steps, and walked headfirst into someone hurrying round the bend. The collision knocked him off his feet, and he landed on his arse in the mud. “Pardons,” she murmured. He was only a boy; a scrawny lad with straight, thin hair and a sty beneath one eye. “Are you hurt?” She offered a hand to help him up, but the boy squirmed back away from her on heels and elbows. He could not have been more than ten or twelve, though he wore a chain mail byrnie and had a longsword in a leather sheath slung across his back. “Do I know you?” Brienne asked. His face seemed vaguely familiar, though she could not think from where.
    â€œNo. You don’t. You never . . .” He scrambled to his feet. “F-f-forgive me. My lady. I wasn’t looking. I mean, I was, but down. I was looking down. At my feet.” The boy took to his heels, plunging headlong back the way he’d come.
    Something about him roused all of Brienne’s suspicions, but she was not about to chase him through the streets of Duskendale.
Outside the gates this morning, that was where I saw him,
she realized.
He was riding a piebald rounsey.
And it seemed as if she