A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

By midday Daenerys was feeling the weight of the crown upon her head, and the hardness of the bench beneath her. With so many still waiting on her pleasure, she did not stop to eat. Instead she dispatched Jhiqui to the kitchens for a platter of flatbread, olives, figs, and cheese. She nibbled whilst she listened, and sipped from a cup of watered wine. The figs were fine, the olives even finer, but the wine left a tart metallic aftertaste in her mouth. The small, pale yellow grapes native to these regions produced a notably inferior vintage.
We shall have no trade in wine,
Dany realized as she sipped. Besides, the Great Masters had burned the best arbors along with the olive trees.
    In the afternoon a sculptor came, proposing to replace the head of the great bronze harpy in the Plaza of Purification with one cast in Dany’s image. She denied him with as much courtesy as she could muster, struggling not to shudder. A pike of unprecedented size had been caught in the Skahazadhan, and the fisherman wished to give it to the queen. She admired the fish extravagantly, rewarded the fisherman with a plump purse of silver, and sent the pike down to her kitchens. A coppersmith had fashioned her a suit of burnished rings to wear to war. She accepted it with fulsome thanks; it was lovely to behold, and all that burnished copper would flash prettily in the sun, though if actual battle threatened she would sooner be clad in steel. Even a young girl who knew nothing of the ways of war knew
that.
    The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Dany kicked them off, and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep. “Ser Barristan,” she called, “I know what quality a king needs most.”
    â€œCourage, Your Grace?”
    â€œNo,” she teased, “cheeks like iron. All I do is sit.”
    â€œYour Grace takes too much on herself. You should allow your councillors to shoulder more of your burdens.”
    â€œI have too many councillors. What I need is cushions.” Dany turned to Reznak. “How many more?”
    â€œThree and twenty, if it please Your Magnificence. With as many claims.” The seneschal consulted some papers. “One calf and three goats. The rest will be sheep or lambs, no doubt.”
    â€œThree and twenty.” Dany sighed. “My dragons have developed a prodigious taste for mutton since we began to pay the shepherds for their kills. Have these claims been proven?”
    â€œSome men have brought burnt bones.”
    â€œMen make fires. Men cook mutton. Burnt bones prove nothing. Brown Ben says there are red wolves in the hills outside the city, and jackals and wild dogs. Must we pay good silver for every lamb that goes astray between Yunkai and the Skahazadhan?”
    â€œNo, Magnificence.” Reznak bowed. “Shall I send these rascals away, or will you want them scourged?”
    Daenerys shifted on the bench. The ebony felt hard beneath her. “No man should ever fear to come to me. Pay them.” Some claims were false, she did not doubt, but more were genuine. Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs, as before.
The more they eat the larger they will grow,
Ser Barristan had warned her,
and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat.
Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. “Pay them for the value of their animals,” she told Reznak, “but henceforth claimants must present themselves at the Temple of the Graces, and swear a holy oath before the gods of Ghis.”
    â€œIt shall be done.” Reznak turned to the petitioners. “Her Magnificence the Queen has consented to compensate each of you for the animals you have lost,” he told them in the Ghiscari tongue. “Present yourselves to my factors on the morrow, and you shall be paid in coin or kind, as you prefer.”
    The pronouncement was received in sullen silence.
You would think they might be happier,
Dany thought, annoyed.
They have what they came for. Is there no way to please these people?
    One man lingered behind as the rest were filing out; a squat man with a windburnt face, shabbily dressed. His hair was a cap of coarse red-black wire cropped about his ears, and in one hand he held a sad cloth sack. He