A Feast for Crows

which some lord’s badge had been ripped. “Who is it wants t’ know?”

“King Robert.” She put a silver stag on the barrel between them. Robert’s head was on one side, the stag on the other.

“Does he now?” The man took the coin and spun it, smiling. “I like to see a king dance, hey-nonny hey-nonny hey-nonny-ho. Mighten be I saw this fool of yours.”

“Was there a girl with him?”

“Two girls,” he said at once.

“Two girls?” Could the other one be Arya?

“Well,” the man said, “I never seen the little sweets, mind you, but he was wanting passage for three.”

“Passage where?”

“T’other side o’ the sea, as I recall.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

“A fool.” He snatched the spinning coin off the table as it began to slow, and made it vanish. “A frightened fool.”

“Frightened why?”

He shrugged. “He never said, but old Nimble Dick knows the smell o’ fear. He come here most every night, buying drinks for sailors, making japes, singing little songs. Only one night some men come in with that hunter on their teats, and your fool went white as milk and got quiet till they left.” He edged his stool closer to hers. “That Tarly’s got soldiers crawling over the docks, watching every ship that comes or goes. Man wants a deer, he goes t’ the woods. He wants a ship, he goes t’ the docks. Your fool didn’t dare. So I offered him some help.”

“What sort of help?”

“The sort that costs more than one silver stag.”

“Tell me, and you’ll have another.”

“Let’s see it,” he said. She put another stag on the barrel. He spun it, smiled, scooped it up. “A man who can’t go t’ the ships need for the ships t’ come t’ him. I told him I knew a place where that might happen. A hidden place, like.”

Gooseprickles rose along Brienne’s arms. “A smugglers’ cove. You sent the fool to smugglers.”

“Him and them two girls.” He chuckled. “Only thing, well, the place I sent them, been no ships there for a while. Thirty years, say.” He scratched his nose. “What’s this fool to you?”

“Those two girls are my sisters.”

“Are they, now? Poor little things. Had a sister once meself. Skinny girl with knobby knees, but then she grew a pair o’ teats and a knight’s son got between her legs. Last I saw her she was off for King’s Landing t’ make a living on her back.”

“Where did you send them?”

Another shrug. “As t’ that, I can’t recall.”

“Where?” Brienne slapped another silver stag down.

He flicked the coin back at her with his forefinger. “Someplace no stag ever found… though a dragon might.”

Silver would not get the truth from him, she sensed. Gold might, or it might not. Steel would be more certain. Brienne touched her dagger, then reached into her purse instead. She found a golden dragon and put in on the barrel. “Where?”

The ragged man snatched up the coin and bit it. “Sweet. Puts me in mind o’ Crackclaw Point. Up north o’ here, ’tis a wild land o’ hills and bogs, but it happens I was born and bred there. Dick Crabb, I’m named, though most call me Nimble Dick.”

She did not offer her own name. “Where in Crackclaw Point?”

“The Whispers. You heard o’ Clarence Crabb, o’ course.”

“No.”

That seemed to surprise him. “Ser Clarence Crabb, I said. I got his blood in me. He was eight foot tall, and so strong he could uproot pine trees with one hand and chuck them half a mile. No horse could bear his weight, so he rode an aurochs.”

“What does he have to do with this smugglers’ cove?”

“His wife was a woods witch. Whenever Ser Clarence killed a man, he’d fetch his head back home and his wife would kiss it on the lips and bring it back t’ life. Lords, they were, and wizards, and famous knights and pirates. One was king o’ Duskendale. They gave old Crabb good counsel. Being they was just heads, they couldn’t talk real loud, but they never shut up neither. When you’re a head, talking’s all you got to pass the day. So Crabb’s keep got named the Whispers. Still is, though it’s been a ruin for a thousand years. A lonely place, the Whispers.” The man walked the coin deftly across his knuckles. “One dragon by hisself gets lonely. Ten, now…”

“Ten dragons are a fortune. Do you take me for a fool?”

“No, but I can take you to one.” The coin danced one way, and back the other. “Take you to the Whispers, m’lady.”

Brienne did not like the way his fingers played with that gold coin. Still… “Six dragons if we find my sister. Two if we only find the fool. Nothing if nothing is what we find.”

Crabb shrugged. “Six is good. Six will serve.”

Too quick. She caught his wrist before he could tuck the gold away. “Do not play me false. You’ll not find me easy meat.”

When she let go, Crabb rubbed his wrist. “Bloody piss,” he muttered. “You hurt my hand.”

“I am sorry for that. My sister is a girl of three-and-ten. I need to find her before—”

“—before some knight gets in her slit. Aye, I hear you. She’s good as saved. Nimble Dick is with you now. Meet me by east gate at first light. I need t’ see this man about a horse.”

SAMWELL

The sea made Samwell Tarly greensick.

It was not all his fear of drowning, though that was surely some of it. It was the motion of the ship as well, the way the decks rolled beneath his feet. “I have a queasy belly,” he confessed to Dareon the day they sailed from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. The singer slapped him on the back and said, “With a belly big as yours, Slayer, that is a lot of quease.”

Sam tried to keep a brave face on him, for Gilly’s sake if little else. She had never seen the sea before. When they were struggling through the snows after fleeing Craster’s Keep, they had come on several lakes, and even those had been a wonder to her. As Blackbird slipped away from shore the girl began to tremble, and big salt tears rolled down her cheeks. “Gods be good,” Sam heard her whisper. Eastwatch vanished first, and the Wall grew smaller and smaller in the distance, until it finally disappeared. The wind was coming up by then. The sails were the faded grey of a black cloak that had been washed too often, and Gilly’s face was white with fear. “This is a good ship,” Sam tried to tell her. “You don’t have to be afraid.” But she only looked at him, held her baby tighter, and fled below.

Sam soon found himself clutching tightly to the gunwale and watching the sweep of the oars. The way they all moved together was somehow beautiful to behold, and better than looking at the water. Looking at the water only made him think of drowning. When he was small his lord father had tried to teach him how to swim by throwing him into the pond beneath Horn Hill. The water had gotten in his nose and in his mouth and in his lungs, and he coughed and wheezed for hours after Ser Hyle pulled him out. After that he never dared go in any deeper than his waist.

The Bay of Seals was a lot deeper than his waist, and not so friendly as that little fishpond below his father’s castle. Its waters were grey and green and choppy, and the wooded shore they followed was a snarl of rocks and whirlpools. Even if he could kick and crawl that far somehow, the waves were like to smash him up against some stone and break his head to pieces.

“Looking for mermaids, Slayer?” asked Dareon when he saw Sam staring off across the bay. Fair-haired and hazel-eyed, the handsome young singer out of Eastwatch looked more like some dark prince than a black