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Roone’s
shoulder to keep from falling. The Citadel was no great distance as the raven
flies, but none of them were ravens and Oldtown was a veritable labyrinth of a
city, all wynds and crisscrossing alleys and narrow crookback streets.
“Careful,” Pate heard Armen say as the river mists swallowed up the four of
them, “the night is damp, and the cobbles will be slippery.”
    When they were gone, Lazy Leo considered Pate sourly across
the table. “How sad. The Sphinx has stolen off with all his silver, abandoning
me to Spotted Pate the pig boy.” He stretched, yawning. “How is our lovely
little Rosey, pray?”
    “She’s sleeping,” Pate said curtly.
    “Naked, I don’t doubt.” Leo grinned. “Do you think she’s
truly worth a dragon? One day I suppose I must find out.”
    Pate knew better than to reply to that.
    Leo needed no reply. “I expect that once I’ve broken in the
wench, her price will fall to where even pig boys will be able to afford her.
You ought to thank me.”
    I ought to kill you, Pate thought, but he was not
near drunk enough to throw away his life. Leo had been trained to arms, and was
known to be deadly with bravo’s blade and dagger. And if Pate should somehow
kill him, it would mean his own head too. Leo had two names where Pate had only
one, and his second was Tyrell. Ser Moryn Tyrell, commander of the City
Watch of Oldtown, was Leo’s father. Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden and Warden
of the South, was Leo’s cousin. And Oldtown’s Old Man, Lord Leyton of the
Hightower, who numbered “Protector of the Citadel” amongst his many titles, was
a sworn bannerman of House Tyrell. Let it go, Pate told himself. He
says these things just to wound me.
    The mists were lightening to the east. Dawn, Pate
realized. Dawn has come, and the alchemist has not. He did not know
whether he should laugh or cry. Am I still a thief if I put it all back and
no one ever knows? It was another question that he had no answer for, like
those that Ebrose and Vaellyn had once asked him.
    When he pushed back from the bench and got to his feet, the
fearsomely strong cider all went to his head at once. He had to put a hand on
the table to steady himself. “Leave Rosey be,” he said, by way of parting.
“Just leave her be, or I may kill you.”
    Leo Tyrell flicked the hair back from his eye. “I do not
fight duels with pig boys. Go away.”
    Pate turned and crossed the terrace. His heels rang against
the weathered planks of the old bridge. By the time he reached the other side,
the eastern sky was turning pink. The world is wide, he told himself. If
I bought that donkey, I could still wander the roads and byways of the Seven
Kingdoms, leeching the smallfolk and picking nits out of their hair. I could
sign on to some ship, pull an oar, and sail to Qarth by the Jade Gates to see
these bloody dragons for myself. I do not need to go back to old Walgrave and
the ravens.
    Yet somehow his feet turned back toward the Citadel.
    When the first shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds to
the east, morning bells began to peal from the Sailor’s Sept down by the
harbor. The Lord’s Sept joined in a moment later, then the Seven Shrines from
their gardens across the Honeywine, and finally the Starry Sept that had been
the seat of the High Septon for a thousand years before Aegon landed at King’s
Landing. They made a mighty music. Though not so sweet as one small
nightingale.
    He could hear singing too, beneath the pealing of the bells.
Each morning at first light the red priests gathered to welcome the sun outside
their modest wharfside temple. For the night is dark and full of terrors. Pate had heard them cry those words a hundred times, asking their god R’hllor
to save them from the darkness. The Seven were gods enough for him, but he had
heard that Stannis Baratheon worshiped at the nightfires now. He had even put
the fiery heart of R’hllor on his banners in place of the crowned stag. If
he should win the Iron