A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

ships,’ Merry says, ‘and my girls unload the lads who sail them.’”
    â€œWhat about them fancy whores the singers sing about?” asked the youngest monkey, a red-haired boy with freckles who could not have been much more than six-and-ten. “Are they as pretty as they say? Where would I get one o’ them?”
    His shipmates looked at him and laughed. “Seven hells, boy,” said one of them. “Might be the captain could get hisself a courty-san, but only if he sold the bloody ship. That sort o’ cunt’s for lords and such, not for the likes o’ us.”
    The courtesans of Braavos were famed across the world. Singers sang of them, goldsmiths and jewelers showered them with gifts, craftsmen begged for the honor of their custom, merchant princes paid royal ransoms to have them on their arms at balls and feasts and mummer shows, and bravos slew each other in their names. As she pushed her barrow along the canals, Cat would sometimes glimpse one of them floating by, on her way to an evening with some lover. Every courtesan had her own barge, and servants to pole her to her trysts. The Poetess always had a book to hand, the Moonshadow wore only white and silver, and the Merling Queen was never seen without her Mermaids, four young maidens in the blush of their first flowering who held her train and did her hair. Each courtesan was more beautiful than the last. Even the Veiled Lady was beautiful, though only those she took as lovers ever saw her face.
    â€œI sold three cockles to a courtesan,” Cat told the sailors. “She called to me as she was stepping off her barge.” Brusco had made it plain to her that she was never to speak to a courtesan unless she was spoken to first, but the woman had smiled at her and paid her in silver, ten times what the cockles had been worth.
    â€œWhich one was this, now? The Queen o’ Cockles, was it?”
    â€œThe Black Pearl,” she told them. Merry claimed the Black Pearl was the most famous courtesan of all. “She’s descended from the dragons, that one,” the woman had told Cat. “The first Black Pearl was a pirate queen. A Westerosi prince took her for a lover and got a daughter on her, who grew up to be a courtesan. Her own daughter followed her, and
her
daughter after her, until you get to this one. What did she say to you, Cat?”
    â€œShe said ‘
I’ll take three cockles,’
and ‘
Do you have some hot sauce, little one?’
” the girl had answered.
    â€œAnd what did you say?”
    â€œI said, ‘
No, my lady,’
and, ‘
Don’t call me little one. My name is Cat.’
I should have hot sauce. Beqqo does, and he sells three times as many oysters as Brusco.”
    Cat told the kindly man about the Black Pearl too. “Her true name is Bellegere Otherys,” she informed him. It was one of the three things that she had learned.
    â€œIt is,” the priest said softly. “Her mother was Bellonara, but the first Black Pearl was a Bellegere as well.”
    Cat knew that the men off the
Brazen Monkey
would not care about the name of a courtesan’s mother, though. Instead, she asked them for tidings of the Seven Kingdoms, and the war.
    â€œWar?” laughed one of them. “What war? There is no war.”
    â€œNot in Gulltown,” said another. “Not in the Vale. The little lord’s kept us out of it, same as his mother did.”
    Same as his mother did.
The lady of the Vale was her own mother’s sister. “Lady Lysa,” she said, “is she . . . ?”
    â€œ. . . dead?” finished the freckled boy whose head was full of courtesans. “Aye. Murdered by her own singer.”
    â€œOh.”
It’s nought to me. Cat of the Canals never had an aunt. She never did.
Cat lifted her barrow and wheeled away from the
Brazen Monkey,
bumping over cobblestones.
“Oysters, clams, and cockles,”
she called.
“Oysters, clams, and cockles.”
She sold most of her clams to the porters off-loading the big wine cog from the Arbor, and the rest to the men repairing a Myrish trading galley that had been savaged by the storms.
    Farther down the docks she came on Tagganaro sitting with his back against a piling, next to Casso, King of Seals. He bought some mussels from her, and Casso barked and let her shake his flipper. “You come work with me, Cat,” urged Tagganaro as he was sucking