A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

found …”
    “… drawn in blood.” Daenerys knew the way of it by now. The Sons of the Harpy did their butchery by night, and over each kill they left their mark. “Grey Worm, why was this man alone? Had he no partner?” By her command, when the Unsullied walked the streets of Meereen by night they always walked in pairs.
    “My queen,” replied the captain, “your servant Stalwart Shield had no duty last night. He had gone to a … a certain place … to drink, and have companionship.”
    “A certain place? What do you mean?”
    “A house of pleasure, Your Grace.”
    A brothel. Half of her freedmen were from Yunkai, where the Wise Masters had been famed for training bedslaves. The way of the seven sighs. Brothels had sprouted up like mushrooms all over Meereen. It is all they know. They need to survive. Food was more costly every day, whilst the price of flesh grew cheaper. In the poorer districts between the stepped pyramids of Meereen’s slaver nobility, there were brothels catering to every conceivable erotic taste, she knew. Even so … “What could a eunuch hope to find in a brothel?”
    “Even those who lack a man’s parts may still have a man’s heart, Your Grace,” said Grey Worm. “This one has been told that your servant Stalwart Shield sometimes gave coin to the women of the brothels to lie with him and hold him.”
    The blood of the dragon does not weep. “Stalwart Shield,” she said, dry-eyed. “That was his name?”
    “If it please Your Grace.”
    “It is a fine name.” The Good Masters of Astapor had not allowed their slave soldiers even names. Some of her Unsullied reclaimed their birth names after she had freed them; others chose new names for themselves. “Is it known how many attackers fell upon Stalwart Shield?”
    “This one does not know. Many.”
    “Six or more,” said Ser Barristan. “From the look of his wounds, they swarmed him from all sides. He was found with an empty scabbard. It may be that he wounded some of his attackers.”
    Dany said a silent prayer that somewhere one of the Harpy’s Sons was dying even now, clutching at his belly and writhing in pain. “Why did they cut open his cheeks like that?”
    “Gracious queen,” said Grey Worm, “his killers had forced the genitals of a goat down the throat of your servant Stalwart Shield. This one removed them before bringing him here.”
    They could not feed him his own genitals. The Astapori left him neither root nor stem. “The Sons grow bolder,” Dany observed. Until now, they had limited their attacks to unarmed freedmen, cutting them down in the streets or breaking into their homes under the cover of darkness to murder them in their beds. “This is the first of my soldiers they have slain.”
    “The first,” Ser Barristan warned, “but not the last.”
    I am still at war, Dany realized, only now I am fighting shadows. She had hoped for a respite from the killing, for some time to build and heal.
    Shrugging off the lion pelt, she knelt beside the corpse and closed the dead man’s eyes, ignoring Jhiqui’s gasp. “Stalwart Shield shall not be forgotten. Have him washed and dressed for battle and bury him with cap and shield and spears.”
    “It shall be as Your Grace commands,” said Grey Worm.
    “Send men to the Temple of the Graces and ask if any man has come to the Blue Graces with a sword wound. And spread the word that we will pay good gold for the short sword of Stalwart Shield. Inquire of the butchers and the herdsmen, and learn who has been gelding goats of late.” Perhaps some goatherd would confess. “Henceforth, no man of mine walks alone after dark.”
    “These ones shall obey.”
    Daenerys pushed her hair back. “Find these cowards for me. Find them, so that I might teach the Harpy’s Sons what it means to wake the dragon.”
    Grey Worm saluted her. His Unsullied closed the shroud once more, lifted the dead man onto their shoulders, and bore him from the hall. Ser Barristan Selmy