A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

flowing green samite with one breast bared,
silvered sandals on her feet, with a belt of black-and-white pearls about her
waist.
For all the help they offered, I could have gone naked. Perhaps I
should have.
She drank deep.
    Descendants of the ancient kings and queens of Qarth, the Pureborn commanded
the Civic Guard and the fleet of ornate galleys that ruled the straits between
the seas. Daenerys Targaryen had wanted that fleet, or part of it, and some of
their soldiers as well. She made the traditional sacrifice in the Temple of
Memory, offered the traditional bribe to the Keeper of the Long List, sent the
traditional persimmon to the Opener of the Door, and finally received the
traditional blue silk slippers summoning her to the Hall of a Thousand
Thrones.
    The Pureborn heard her pleas from the great wooden seats of their ancestors,
rising in curved tiers from a marble floor to a high-domed ceiling painted with
scenes of Qarth’s vanished glory. The chairs were immense, fantastically
carved, bright with goldwork and studded with amber, onyx, lapis, and jade,
each one different from all the others, and each striving to be the most
fabulous. Yet the men who sat in them seemed so listless and world-weary that
they might have been asleep.
They listened, but they did not hear, or
care,
she thought.
They are Milk Men indeed. They never meant to help
me. They came because they were curious. They came because they were bored, and
the dragon on my

shoulder interested them more than I did.
    â€œTell me the words of the Pureborn,” prompted Xaro Xhoan Daxos. “Tell me
what they said to sadden the queen of my heart.”
    â€œThey said no.” The wine tasted of pomegranates and hot summer days. “They
said it with great courtesy, to be sure, but under all the lovely words, it was
still no.”
    â€œDid you flatter them?”
    â€œShamelessly.”
    â€œDid you weep?”
    â€œThe blood of the dragon does not weep,” she said testily.
    Xaro sighed. “You ought to have wept.” The Qartheen wept often and easily; it
was considered a mark of the civilized man. “The men we bought, what did they
say?”
    â€œMathos said nothing. Wendello praised the way I spoke. The Exquisite refused
me with the rest, but he wept afterward.”
    â€œAlas, that Qartheen should be so faithless.” Xaro was not himself of the
Pureborn, but he had told her whom to bribe and how much to offer. “Weep, weep,
for the treachery of men.”
    Dany would sooner have wept for her gold. The bribes she’d tendered to Mathos
Mallarawan, Wendello Qar Deeth, and Egon Emeros the Exquisite might have bought
her a ship, or hired a score of sellswords. “Suppose I sent Ser Jorah to
demand the return of my gifts?” she asked.
    â€œSuppose a Sorrowful Man came to my palace one night and killed you as you
slept,” said Xaro. The Sorrowful Men were an ancient sacred guild of
assassins, so named because they always

whispered, “I am so sorry,” to their victims before they killed them. The
Qartheen were nothing if not polite. “It is wisely said that it is easier to
milk the Stone Cow of Faros than to wring gold from the Pureborn.”
    Dany did not know where Faros was, but it seemed to her that Qarth was full of
stone cows. The merchant princes, grown vastly rich off the trade between the
seas, were divided into three jealous factions: the Ancient Guild of Spicers,
the Tourmaline Brotherhood, and the Thirteen, to which Xaro belonged. Each vied
with the others for dominance, and all three contended endlessly with the
Pureborn. And brooding over all were the warlocks, with their blue lips and
dread powers, seldom seen but much feared.
    She would have been lost without Xaro. The gold that she had squandered to
open the doors of the Hall of a Thousand Thrones was largely a product of the
merchant’s generosity and quick wits. As the rumor of living dragons had spread
through the east, ever more seekers had come to learn if the tale was
true—and Xaro Xhoan Daxos saw to it that the great and the humble alike
offered some token to the Mother of Dragons.
    The trickle he started soon swelled to a flood. Trader captains brought lace
from Myr, chests of saffron from Yi Ti, amber and dragonglass out of Asshai.
Merchants offered bags of coin, silversmiths rings and chains. Pipers piped for
her, tumblers tumbled, and jugglers