A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

a chance to win a higher place in this world if
you work hard. If you won’t work hard, you’ll be beaten. And what do they call
you?”
    Arya dared not say her true name, but Arry was no good either, it was a boy’s
name and they could see she was no boy. “Weasel,” she said, naming the first
girl she could think of. “Lommy called me Weasel.”
    â€œI can see why,” sniffed Goodwife Amabel. “That hair is a fright and a nest
for lice as well. We’ll have it off, and then you’re for the
kitchens.”
    â€œI’d sooner tend the horses.” Arya liked horses, and maybe if she was in the
stables she’d be able to steal one and escape.
    Goodwife Harra slapped her so hard that her swollen lip broke open all over
again. “And keep that tongue to yourself or you’ll get worse. No one asked
your views.”
    The blood in her mouth had a salty metal tang to it. Arya dropped her gaze and
said nothing.
If I still had Needle, she

wouldn’t dare hit me,
she thought sullenly.
    â€œLord Tywin and his knights have grooms and squires to tend their horses, they
don’t need the likes of you,” Goodwife Amabel said. “The kitchens are snug
and clean, and there’s always a warm fire to sleep by and plenty to eat. You
might have done well there, but I can see you’re not a clever girl. Harra, I
believe we should give this one to Weese.”
    â€œIf you think so, Amabel.” They gave her a shift of grey roughspun wool and a
pair of ill-fitting shoes, and sent her off.
    Weese was understeward for the Wailing Tower, a squat man with a fleshy
carbuncle of a nose and a nest of angry red boils near one corner of his plump
lips. Arya was one of six sent to him. He looked them all over with a gimlet
eye. “The Lannisters are generous to those as serve them well, an honor none
of your sort deserve, but in war a man makes do with what’s to hand. Work hard
and mind your place and might be one day you’ll rise as high as me. If you
think to presume on his lordship’s kindness, though, you’ll find
me
waiting after m’lord has gone, y’see.” He strutted up and down before them,
telling them how they must never look the highborn in the eye, nor speak until
spoken to, nor get in his lordship’s way. “My nose never lies,” he boasted.
“I can smell defiance, I can smell pride, I can smell disobedience. I catch a
whiff of any such stinks, you’ll answer for it. When I sniff you, all I want to
smell is fear.”

DAENERYS
    O n the walls of Qarth, men beat gongs to herald her coming, while others
blew curious horns that encircled their bodies like great bronze snakes. A
column of camelry emerged from the city as her honor guards. The riders wore
scaled copper armor and snouted helms with copper tusks and long black silk
plumes, and sat high on saddles inlaid with rubies and garnets. Their camels
were dressed in blankets of a hundred different hues.
    â€œQarth is the greatest city that ever was or ever will be,” Pyat Pree
had told her, back amongst the bones of Vaes Tolorro. “It is the center of the
world, the gate between north and south, the bridge between east and west,
ancient beyond memory of man and so magnificent that Saathos the Wise put out
his eyes after gazing upon Qarth for the first time, because he knew that all
he saw thereafter should look squalid and ugly by comparison.”
    Dany took the warlock’s words well salted, but the magnificence of the great
city was not to be denied. Three thick walls encircled Qarth, elaborately
carved. The outer was red sandstone, thirty feet high and decorated with
animals: snakes slithering, kites flying, fish swimming, intermingled with
wolves of the red waste and striped zorses and monstrous elephants. The middle
wall, forty feet high, was grey granite alive with scenes of war: the clash of
sword and shield and spear, arrows in flight,

heroes at battle and babes being butchered, pyres of the dead. The innermost
wall was fifty feet of black marble, with carvings that made Dany blush until
she told herself that she was being a fool. She was no maid; if she could look
on the grey wall’s scenes of slaughter, why should she avert her eyes from the
sight of men and women giving pleasure to one another?
    The outer gates were banded with copper, the middle with iron; the innermost
were