A Dance With Dragons

Daenerys makes her peace with the necessity of the marriage. She tells herself, “It [Meereen] will never be my city. It will never be my home” (661). The people she freed in Astapor and Meereen will go back to being enslaved. Quentyn and his party arrive in Meereen as Daenerys prepares for her wedding day. Quentyn makes his bid for Daenerys by showing her an old treaty between the Martells and the Targaryens to unite forces by marrying Viserys (Daenerys’s brother) to Princess Arianne Martell. She laughs him out of court because he has no army with him, and she needs a noble from Meereen to placate her enemies. Daenerys feels spooked when she realizes that Quentyn may be part of the fulfillment of the prophecy she received in the House of the Undying—or perhaps he and his two nights are the three betrayers mentioned in the same prophecy. She isn’t sure how to take the prophecy.

Later, at Daenerys’s request, a reluctant Barristan Selmy tells Daenerys stories about her mother Queen Rhaella and her father Aerys II. Her mother was a dutiful woman who rejected a potential lover, a landed knight. Aerys II was smitten with the Lannister girl. On the girl’s wedding night, Aerys took the right of first night (whereby the lord claims the right to have sex with his bannerman’s new wife), angering her Lannister kinfolk. That encounter was the most contemporary root of the hatred between Lannisters and Targaryens. When Robert’s Rebellion began, the Lannisters took Robert’s side in part because of their desire for vengeance. Daenerys arrives at the temple where the wedding is scheduled to take place. She imagines for a moment that Daario will gallop up to rescue her. She and Hizdahr marry.

Queen Selyse, Stannis’s haughty wife, arrives at Castle Black with her own men and Princess Shireen Baratheon, Stannis’s only heir and daughter. She intends to continue on to the Nightfort, the big, old Night’s Watch castle Jon agreed to give Stannis as his seat in exchange for help in garrisoning the Wall. Jon’s problems as lord commander are multiplying. One of Selyse’s men asks him to produce Val, the sister-in-law of Mance Rayder—a princess in the eyes of Selyse—who is still on her mission beyond the Wall.

An official of the Iron Bank of Braavos arrives. Tommen has refused to pay its debts to the bank, so the banker is hoping Stannis will make good on the debt. When a ruler refuses to pay the Iron Bank, the ruler almost always dies or falls in a revolt, likely at the hands of the Iron Bank. Jon gets a loan from the Iron Bank to buy food to get through the winter and ships to bring home the stranded wildlings who are gathering at Hardhome before wights and enslavers get them all. Getting the loan is so easy that Jon begins to suspect that there must be something the banker knows that Jon does not.

A gray girl on a gray horse shows up as Melisandre prophesied, but it is Alys Karstark, not Arya. Alys is running from an unwanted marriage designed to seal an alliance of the Karstarks to the Boltons. The Karstarks declared for Stannis and are supposed to join up with him in the battle at Castle Winterfell. Alys tells him that the Karstarks plan to turn their coats and attack Stannis instead.

Arya is now Blind Beth, a beggar who uses her senses to gain information that may be useful to the Faceless Men, the order of assassins she wants to enter. When she first came to them asking to become an acolyte, they rejected her because her only goal was personal vengeance. After she pleaded, the kindly man, one of the order, let her stay. He is a harsh teacher who sends her out to learn three things in the city each day. When she does well, he praises her. When she does not, he strikes her with his stick. Each night, she takes a potion that gives her blindness, forcing her to learn to be more observant to people and places. During the day, she serves in the temple of the Many-Faced God by claiming and cleaning corpses of people who come to the temple for a quick and peaceful death.

One day at the docks, she overhears stories about enslavers kidnapping wildlings at Hardhome to sell them in the Free Cities. She hears stories about Jon and feels sad that he will never know her as she is now. As far as she knows, he is the last of her siblings left. Arya slowly hones her senses to the satisfaction of the kindly man. One day, she uses the eyesight of a cat during her meeting with the kindly man. She strikes him and refuses to explain how she knew where he was. Her service in the temple of the Many-Faced God is over, and she will now become an apprentice to the Faceless Men. At night, she ranges through Westeros through the mind of her direwolf Nymeria.

At Winterfell, Theon has a hard life. The memories of people he betrayed haunt him. People who remember him despise and taunt him because he is a turncoat and violated the family relationship he had with the Starks as a ward. Roose Bolton’s coalition is falling apart as they wait for Stannis to arrive. Men begin to disappear or turn up dead, and many of them have their pants down. People begin to feel fearful that something or someone uncanny is loose in the castle. Abel, a so-so bard accompanied by women who do sex work, shows up. Abel is actually Mance Rayder, and he and the women with him keep trying to learn from Theon how to get out of Castle Winterfell. No one is allowed to leave in expectation of the siege, and it is snowing heavily, in any event. Because he carefully observes the people around him, Theon works out that Abel/Mance and the women are behind the killings.

The enslavers put Tyrion, Penny, and Jorah up for sale at an auction. Tyrion recognizes among the bidders Ben Plumm, commander of the Second Sons, who have abandoned Daenerys at this point. Plumm runs up the bidding for Tyrion; Tyrion fears Plumm means to send him to Cersei, so Tyrion uses his wit and humor and hints that he is a Lannister to get a Yunkish lord to buy them. Meanwhile, the slave fighting pits are open in Meereen. Tyrion and Penny are scheduled to put on a joust in front of Daenerys and Hizdahr at the pits during a show to celebrate the peace.

Jaime Lannister is in central Westeros negotiating to bring the remainder of rebels who supported Robb Stark back under the control of the Iron Throne. Brienne, Maid of Tarth, whom he tasked with finding Catelyn Stark’s daughters, arrives. She tells him she has found one of the girls, but he must come with her to prevent the Hound (Sandor Clegane) from killing the girl.

Jon secures the support of the Thenns by marrying Alys Karstark to the Magnar (prince) of the Thenns. Her angry uncle Cregan arrives and is furious and offended. Jon receives word that the ships he secured from the Iron Bank are at Hardhome. Val returns with Tormund Giantsbane, a power among the wildlings. Jon is finally seeing some success as he attempts to use his power to do what’s best for the free folk, Westeros, and the North. Sending out Val was a risk that seems to have paid off, and he hopes arranging the marriage between Alys and the Magnar will strengthen the tattering alliance between the North and the free folk. Selyse and the men of the Night’s Watch believe he has overstepped his role as lord commander by making political decisions.

Daenerys regrets her marriage to Hizdahr but knows she had no choice. She sends Daario away as a hostage to Yunkai. She shows Quentyn Martell the dragons in her pyramid and tells him that Meereen is no place for a person like him. He should go home while he can.

Abel and the women with him convince Theon to free Jeyne and take her to Stannis, whom they claim is mere days away from Castle Winterfell. Bolton’s forces—Freys, Manderlys, and Northerners—turn on each other. Manderly finally says out loud that he despises them. The disagreement turns physical when one of the Freys cuts Manderly. Roose Bolton puts a stop to the fight when he announces that they should save it for Stannis, who is now close enough for them to strike. Theon and Jeyne flee just as the army departs to face Stannis.

Daenerys goes to the fighting pits with Hizdahr. The fighting of enslaved people battling each other and animals to the death sickens her. The last straw is when Hizdahr tells her that they will watch two people with dwarfism (Tyrion and Penny, unbeknownst to her) fight against lions. She stops this fight. Hizdahr pushes her to eat spiced and honeyed locusts, a delicacy, but she refuses. One of her guards eats many of them and becomes gravely ill—the locusts are poisoned. Drogon turns up, attracted by the smell of blood and meat. People at the pit panic as he feeds on the body of one of the fighters. Others try to fight off Drogon without success. Daenerys runs to him and calls his name to assert her power over him. To observers, it looks as if he sets her on fire and burns her to death, but she flies away from the pit on Drogon’s back.

Val returns with Tormund Giantsbane, who comes to terms with Jon to settle the free folk in castles of the Night’s Watch. Selyse finally meets Val and is displeased that Jon did not require the free folk to accept R’hllor before coming to an agreement with them. When Jon tells the Night’s Watch that he has recruited wildlings to garrison entire castles, many call his actions treason to his face.

Cersei tires of being in the Faith of the Seven’s jail and finally confesses to any crimes she cannot plausibly deny. The High Sparrow, leader of the Faith, says she must face trial for these crimes. Kevan Lannister, her uncle, is Tommen’s regent. He says she might be able to escape harsh punishment if she agrees to do a walk of penance through the city. The walk might allow her to name a champion to fight for her in a trial by combat later. If the Faith’s court tries her, she will surely be found guilty. Margaery, Tommen’s queen, will be tried in the Faith’s court for her crimes. The Faith is favorably disposed toward her in part because her family brought an army to prevent her arrest by the Faith’s militia, the Warrior’s Sons. Cersei is frustrated. She realizes the Tyrells have outmaneuvered her and are swallowing up seats and influence at court. Cersei wishes she were a man. If she were a man, she could defend herself with arms and avoid being weak. She is puzzled why everyone—the septas, her uncle, the Tyrells—are against her.