clash of king 1 -20

Across half one cheek and well down her neck, her flesh was stiff and
dead, the skin cracked and flaking, mottled black and grey and stony to the touch.

Their droppings speckled the gargoyles that rose twelve feet tall on
either side of him, a hellhound and a wyvern, two of the thousand that brooded over the walls
of the ancient fortress.

Shuffling along the gallery, they passed before a row of tall arched windows with
commanding views of the outer bailey, the curtain wall, and the fishing village beyond.

On his head was a mock helm
fashioned from an old tin bucket, with a rack of deer antlers strapped to the crown and hung
with cowbells.

“He is a child still,” Stannis declared, his anger ringing loud in the empty hall, “a
thieving child who thinks to snatch the crown off my brow.

Arya
was pretty sure that some of the other men were killers too, the three in the manacles for sure,
but the queen wasn’t looking for them, so it wasn’t the same.

She remembered how the breeze sent the
fistfuls of dirty brown hair skittering across the paving stones, toward the sept where her
father had died.

He had stopped to catch his breath and ease the
pain in his hip when he heard the scuff of boots on stone, and came face-to-face with Ser
Davos Seaworth, descending.

Their droppings speckled the gargoyles that rose twelve feet tall on
either side of him, a hellhound and a wyvern, two of the thousand that brooded over the walls
of the ancient fortress.

It was here the ravens
came, after long flight.

Past the sprawl of the camp, the anchorage was crowded with ships.

Before Lord Stannis had knighted him, he had
been the most notorious and elusive smuggler in all the Seven Kingdoms.

If you were to
betroth Shireen to him—”
“The boy is weak and sickly,” Lord Stannis objected.

Little enough, yet it had kept the
garrison alive long enough for Eddard Stark to reach Storm’s End and break the siege.

He was a maester, trained and chained in the great Citadel of
Oldtown.

His
mouth would have given despair to even the drollest of fools; it was a mouth made for frowns
and scowls and sharply worded commands, all thin pale lips and clenched muscles, a mouth
that had forgotten how to smile and had never known how to laugh.

Even the sea was closed against them,
watched day and night by Redwyne galleys flying the burgundy banners of the Arbor.

“About the dragons.

“It is always summer under the sea,” he intoned.

The comet’s tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of
Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky.

With
fumbling hands, the old man lit a candle and carried it to the workroom beneath the rookery
stair, where his ointments, potions, and medicines stood neatly on their shelves.

Lord Bar Emmon, that plump boy of fourteen, was swathed in purple velvet trimmed
with white seal, Ser Axell Florent remained homely even in russet and fox fur, pious Lord
Sunglass wore moonstones at throat and wrist and finger, and the Lysene captain Salladhor
Saan was a sunburst of scarlet satin, gold, and jewels.

The child had her lord father’s square jut of jaw and her mother’s unfortunate ears,
along with a disfigurement all her own, the legacy of the bout of greyscale that had almost
claimed her in the crib.

Her hair was not the orange or strawberry color of common red-haired men, but a deep
burnished copper that shone in the light of the torches.

See how it unfurls across the
heavens like a dragon’s hot breath, and you the Lord of Dragonstone.

The alchemists of Lys knew the way of it, though, and the Faceless Men
of Braavos . . . and the maesters of his order as well, though it was not something talked about
beyond the walls of the Citadel.

That Lysene pirate Salladhor Saan will be there with the latest tally of
what I owe him, and Morosh the Myrman will caution me with talk of tides and autumn gales,
while Lord Sunglass mutters piously of the will of the Seven.

“Her
fool is with her.”

In the
yard, archers were firing at practice butts to the call of “Notch, draw, loose.”

They’re not my brothers, Arya thought as she bent to yank up her breeches, but she knew
better than to say so.

Had he known what drivel filled his head, he would have shouted.

Cressen had thought him another corpse, but when
Jommy grabbed his ankles to drag him off to the burial wagon, the boy coughed water and sat
up.

On the
bottom shelf behind a row of salves in squat clay jars he found a vial of indigo glass, no larger
than his little finger.

With his every lurching step, the bells rang, each with a different voice, clanga-
dang bong-dong ring-a-ling clong clong clong.

He jerked his head with each word, the bells in his
antlers sending up a clangor.

With
fumbling hands, the old man lit a candle and carried it to the workroom beneath the rookery
stair, where his ointments, potions, and medicines stood neatly on their shelves.

A well-worn
green cloak, stained by salt and spray and faded from the sun, draped his thin shoulders, over
brown doublet and breeches that matched brown eyes and hair.

He raised dyed green hands in front of his face and squealed at her to get
away.

His small beard was well-peppered with grey, and he wore a
leather glove on his maimed left hand.

Two years
past, he had fallen and shattered a hip, and it had never mended properly.

Perhaps once he could evoke gales of
laughter with a quip, but the sea had taken that power from him, along with half his wits and
all his memory.

On his head was a mock helm
fashioned from an old tin bucket, with a rack of deer antlers strapped to the crown and hung
with cowbells.

Blood
dribbled from his nostrils.

Shireen giggled.

He leaned against the battlement, the sea crashing beneath him, the black
stone rough beneath his fingers.

The fool turned his patched and piebald head to watch Pylos climb the steep iron steps to
the rookery.

A well-worn
green cloak, stained by salt and spray and faded from the sun, draped his thin shoulders, over
brown doublet and breeches that matched brown eyes and hair.

A pair of guardsmen opened the heavy red doors before him, unleashing a sudden blast
of noise and light.

As if in answer, Stannis kept his own whiskers cropped tight and short.

“Look at that sword
Lumpyhead’s got there,” Lommy said one morning as they made their plodding way past
orchards and wheat fields.

He juggles and riddles and does magic, and he can
sing prettily in four tongues.

His flesh was wrinkled and spotted, the skin so papery thin that he could
see the web of veins and the shape of bones beneath.

The lord had used
a butcher’s cleaver, the better to cut clean and true.

Across half one cheek and well down her neck, her flesh was stiff and
dead, the skin cracked and flaking, mottled black and grey and stony to the touch.

Lord
Stannis’s Fury, a triple-decked war galley of three hundred oars, looked almost small beside
some of the big-bellied carracks and cogs that surrounded her.

Seated in the chair was a man in a tight-laced leather jerkin and breeches of
roughspun brown wool.

CHAPTER ONE
ARYA
At Winterfell they had called her “Arya Horseface” and she’d thought nothing could be
worse, but that was before the orphan boy Lommy Greenhands had named her “Lumpyhead.”

The alchemists of Lys knew the way of it, though, and the Faceless Men
of Braavos . . . and the maesters of his order as well, though it was not something talked about
beyond the walls of the Citadel.

A dozen crystals, no larger than seeds, rattled across the parchment he’d been
reading.

He sits in council and jests with Littlefinger, and at tourneys he dons his splendid
suit of armor and allows himself to be knocked off his horse by a better man.

He spat out the name like poison on
his tongue.

“Must the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms beg for help from widow women and
usurpers?” a woman’s voice asked sharply.

“Here we eat fish,” the fool declared happily, waving a cod about like a
scepter.

Arya chewed her lip sullenly.

A well-worn
green cloak, stained by salt and spray and faded from the sun, draped his thin shoulders, over
brown doublet and breeches that matched brown eyes and hair.

Wearily, he tottered off to his bed.

It was made
from a certain plant that grew only on the islands of the Jade Sea, half a world away.

And how they trembled, these hands of
his that had once been so sure and deft .

Shireen was unconvinced.

The maester did not believe in omens.

He disentangled his fingers from Shireen’s.

They went crashing down together amidst the rushes
in a tangle of arms and legs, while a sudden gale of laughter went up around them.

When he laughed he brayed like the donkeys they
were riding.

Of late, when he woke from
restless dreams in which the red woman figured disturbingly, he often did not know where he
was.

“They are larger than other ravens, and more clever, bred to carry only the most
important messages.

His
mouth would have given despair to even the drollest of fools; it was a mouth made for frowns
and scowls and sharply worded commands, all thin pale lips and clenched muscles, a mouth
that had forgotten how to smile and had never known how to laugh.

Leaning
heavily on his cane, Cressen climbed the last few steps and hobbled beneath the gateway
teeth.

It was the fashion
in the Free City of Volantis to tattoo the faces of slaves and servants; from neck to scalp the
boy’s skin had been patterned in squares of red and green motley.

He
secreted the strangler seeds in one of them, threw open his door, and called, “Pylos?

Clutching for his cane, he rose
unsteady to his feet.

Cressen’s fingers went
to the chain about his neck, each link forged from a different metal, each symbolizing his
mastery of another branch of learning; the maester’s collar, mark of his order.

They are
carved of stone, child.

Cressen beckoned her closer.

Yoren had taken grown men from the dungeons as well, thieves and poachers and rapers
and the like.

The morning air was hazy with the smoke
of cookfires, as three thousand men sat down to break their fasts beneath the banners of their
lords.

At her throat, the ruby shimmered redly.

When he came close enough, she lunged, right
between his legs, so hard that if her wooden sword had had a point it would have come out
between his butt cheeks.

Cressen’s fingers went
to the chain about his neck, each link forged from a different metal, each symbolizing his
mastery of another branch of learning; the maester’s collar, mark of his order.

The child’s mouth gaped open.