Read Online A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin - Free Book Online Page B

sister.”
    â€œObara?”
    â€œTyene. Obara is too loud. Tyene is so sweet and gentle that no man will suspect her. Obara would make Oldtown our father’s funeral pyre, but I am not so greedy. Four lives will suffice for me. Lord Tywin’s golden twins, as payment for Elia’s children. The old lion, for Elia herself. And last of all the little king, for my father.”
    â€œThe boy has never wronged us.”
    â€œThe boy is a bastard born of treason, incest, and adultery, if Lord Stannis can be believed.” The playful tone had vanished from her voice, and the captain found himself watching her through narrowed eyes. Her sister Obara wore her whip upon her hip and carried a spear where any man could see it. Lady Nym was no less deadly, though she kept her knives well hidden. “Only royal blood can wash out my father’s murder.”
    â€œOberyn died during single combat, fighting in a matter that was none of his concern. I do not call that murder.”
    â€œCall it what you will. We sent them the finest man in Dorne, and they are sending back a bag of bones.”
    â€œHe went beyond anything I asked of him. ‘Take the measure of this boy king and his council, and make note of their strengths and weaknesses,’ I told him, on the terrace. We were eating oranges. ‘Find us friends, if there are any to be found. Learn what you can of Elia’s end, but see that you do not provoke Lord Tywin unduly,’ those were my words to him. Oberyn laughed, and said, ‘When have I provoked any man . . .
unduly?
You would do better to warn the Lannisters against provoking me.’ He wanted justice for Elia, but he would not wait—”
    â€œHe waited ten-and-seven years,” the Lady Nym broke in. “Were it you they’d killed, my father would have led his banners north before your corpse was cold. Were it you, the spears would be falling thick as rain upon the marches now.”
    â€œI do not doubt it.”
    â€œNo more should you doubt this, my prince—my sisters and I shall not wait ten-and-seven years for
our
vengeance.” She put her spurs into the mare and she was off, galloping toward Sunspear with her tail in hot pursuit.
    The prince leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes, but Hotah knew he did not sleep.
He is in pain.
For a moment he considered calling Maester Caleotte up to the litter, but if Prince Doran had wanted him, he would have called himself.
    The shadows of the afternoon were long and dark and the sun was as red and swollen as the prince’s joints before they glimpsed the towers of Sunspear to the east. First the slender Spear Tower, a hundred-and-a-half feet tall and crowned with a spear of gilded steel that added another thirty feet to its height; then the mighty Tower of the Sun, with its dome of gold and leaded glass; last the dun-colored Sandship, looking like some monstrous dromond that had washed ashore and turned to stone.
    Only three leagues of coast road divided Sunspear from the Water Gardens, yet they were two different worlds. There children frolicked naked in the sun, music played in tiled courtyards, and the air was sharp with the smell of lemons and blood oranges. Here the air smelled of dust, sweat, and smoke, and the nights were alive with the babble of voices. In place of the pink marble of the Water Gardens, Sunspear was built from mud and straw, and colored brown and dun. The ancient stronghold of House Martell stood at the easternmost end of a little jut of stone and sand, surrounded on three sides by the sea. To the west, in the shadows of Sunspear’s massive walls, mud-brick shops and windowless hovels clung to the castle like barnacles to a galley’s hull. Stables and inns and winesinks and pillow houses had grown up west of those, many enclosed by walls of their own, and yet more hovels had risen beneath
those
walls.
And so and so and so, as the bearded priests would