A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

along beside the septon and his donkey, tongue lolling from his mouth. The quiet stretched and stretched, until finally she said, “How old were you when they marched you off to war?”
    â€œWhy, no older than your boy,” Meribald replied. “Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. Willam said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he’d stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape.”
    â€œThe War of the Ninepenny Kings?” asked Hyle Hunt.
    â€œSo they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was.”

SAMWELL
    S am stood before the window, rocking nervously as he watched the last light of the sun vanish behind a row of sharp-peaked rooftops.
He must have gotten drunk again,
he thought glumly.
Or else he’s met another girl.
He did not know whether to curse or weep. Dareon was supposed to be his brother.
Ask him to sing, and no one could be better. Ask him to do aught else . . .
    The mists of evening had begun to rise, sending grey fingers up the walls of the buildings that lined the old canal. “He promised he’d be back,” Sam said. “You heard him too.”
    Gilly looked at him with eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Her hair hung about her face, unwashed and tangled. She looked like some wary animal peering through a bush. It had been days since they’d last had a fire, yet the wildling girl liked to huddle near the hearth, as if the cold ashes still held some lingering warmth. “He doesn’t like it here with us,” she said, whispering so as not to wake the babe. “It’s sad here. He likes it where the wine is, and the smiles.”
    Yes,
thought Sam,
and the wine is everywhere but here.
Braavos was full of inns, alehouses, and brothels. And if Dareon preferred a fire and a cup of mulled wine to stale bread and the company of a weeping woman, a fat craven, and a sick old man, who could blame him?
I could blame him. He said he would be back before the gloaming; he said he would bring us wine and food.
    He looked out the window once more, hoping against hope to see the singer hurrying home. Darkness was falling across the secret city, creeping through the alleys and down the canals. The good folk of Braavos would soon be shuttering their windows and sliding bars across their doors. Night belonged to the bravos and the courtesans.
Dareon’s new friends,
Sam thought bitterly. They were all the singer could talk about of late. He was trying to write a song about one courtesan, a woman called the Moonshadow who had heard him singing beside the Moon Pool and rewarded him with a kiss. “You should have asked her for silver,” Sam had said. “It’s coin we need, not kisses.” But the singer only smiled. “Some kisses are worth more than yellow gold, Slayer.”
    That made him angry too. Dareon was not supposed to be making up songs about courtesans. He was supposed to be singing about the Wall and the valor of the Night’s Watch. Jon had hoped that perhaps his songs might persuade a few young men to take the black. Instead he sang of golden kisses, silvery hair, and red, red lips. No one ever took the black for red, red lips.
    Sometimes his playing would wake the babe too. Then the child would begin to wail, Dareon would shout at him to be quiet, Gilly would weep, and the singer would storm out and not return for days. “All that weeping makes me want to slap her,” he complained, “and I can scarce sleep for her sobbing.”
    You would weep as well if you had a son and lost him,
Sam almost said. He could not blame Gilly for her grief. Instead, he blamed Jon Snow and wondered when Jon’s heart had turned to stone. Once he asked Maester Aemon that very question, when Gilly was down at the canal fetching water for them. “When you raised him up to be the lord commander,” the old man answered.
    Even now, rotting here in this cold room beneath the eaves, part of Sam did not want to believe that Jon had done what Maester Aemon thought.
It must be true, though. Why else would Gilly weep so much?
All he had to do was ask her whose child she was nursing at her breast, but he did