The Song Of Ice and Fire (570 page)

“A sweet man,” Gerris said afterward, as he and Quentyn made their way down to the foot of the pier where their hired
hathay
waited. The air hung hot and heavy, and the sun was so bright that both of them were squinting.

“This is a sweet city,” Quentyn agreed.
Sweet enough to rot your teeth
. Sweet beets were grown in profusion hereabouts, and were served with almost every meal. The Volantenes made a cold soup of them, as thick and rich as purple honey. Their wines were sweet as well. “I fear our happy voyage will be short, however. That sweet man does not mean to take us to Meereen. He was too quick to accept your offer. He’ll take thrice the usual fee, no doubt, and once he has us aboard and out of sight of land, he’ll slit our throats and take the rest of our gold as well.”

“Or chain us to an oar, beside those wretches we were smelling. We need to find a better class of smuggler, I think.”

Their driver awaited them beside his
hathay
. In Westeros, it might have been called an oxcart, though it was a deal more ornate than any cart that
Quentyn had ever seen in Dorne, and lacked an ox. The
hathay
was pulled by a dwarf elephant, her hide the color of dirty snow. The streets of Old Volantis were full of such.

Quentyn would have preferred to walk, but they were miles from their inn. Besides, the innkeep at the Merchant’s House had warned him that traveling afoot would taint them in the eyes of foreign captains and the native-born Volantenes alike. Persons of quality traveled by palanquin, or in the back of a
hathay
 … and as it happened the innkeep had a cousin who owned several such contrivances and would be pleased to serve them in this matter.

Their driver was one of the cousin’s slaves, a small man with a wheel tattooed upon one cheek, naked but for a breechclout and a pair of sandals. His skin was the color of teak, his eyes chips of flint. After he had helped them up onto the cushioned bench between the cart’s two huge wooden wheels, he clambered onto the elephant’s back. “The Merchant’s House,” Quentyn told him, “but go along the wharves.” Beyond the waterfront and its breezes, the streets and alleys of Volantis were hot enough to drown a man in his own sweat, at least on this side of the river.

The driver shouted something at his elephant in the local tongue. The beast began to move, trunk swaying from side to side. The cart lurched along behind her, the driver hooting at sailors and slaves alike to clear the way. It was easy enough to tell one from the other. The slaves were all tattooed: a mask of blue feathers, a lightning bolt that ran from jaw to brow, a coin upon the cheek, a leopard’s spots, a skull, a jug. Maester Kedry said there were five slaves for every free man in Volantis though he had not lived long enough to verify his estimate. He had perished on the morning the corsairs swarmed aboard the
Meadowlark
.

Quentyn lost two other friends that same day—Willam Wells with his freckles and his crooked teeth, fearless with a lance, and Cletus Yronwood, handsome despite his lazy eye, always randy, always laughing. Cletus had been Quentyn’s dearest friend for half his life, a brother in all but blood. “Give your bride a kiss for me,” Cletus had whispered to him, just before he died.

The corsairs had come aboard in the darkness before the dawn, as the
Meadowlark
was anchored off the coast of the Disputed Lands. The crew had beaten them off, at the cost of twelve lives. Afterward the sailors stripped the dead corsairs of boots and belts and weapons, divvied up their purses, and yanked gemstones from their ears and rings from their fingers. One of the corpses was so fat that the ship’s cook had to cut his fingers off
with a meat cleaver to claim his rings. It took three Meadowlarks to roll the body into the sea. The other pirates were chucked in after him, without a word of prayer or ceremony.

Their own dead received more tender treatment. The sailors sewed their bodies up in canvas, weighed down with ballast stones so they might sink more quickly. The captain of the
Meadowlark
led his crew in a prayer for the souls of their slain shipmates. Then he turned to his Dornish passengers, the three who still remained of the six who had come aboard at the Planky Town. Even the big man had emerged, pale and greensick and unsteady on his feet, struggling up from the depths of the ship’s hold to pay his last respects. “One of you should say some words for your dead, before we give them to the sea,” the captain said. Gerris had obliged, lying with every other word, since he dare not tell the truth of who they’d been or why they’d come.

It was not supposed to end like that for them
. “This will be a tale to tell our grandchildren,” Cletus had declared the day they set out from his father’s castle. Will made a face at that, and said, “A tale to tell tavern wenches, you mean, in hopes they’ll lift their skirts.” Cletus had slapped him on the back. “For grandchildren, you need children. For children, you need to lift some skirts.” Later, in the Planky Town, the Dornishmen had toasted Quentyn’s future bride, made ribald japes about his wedding night to come, and talked about the things they’d see, the deeds they’d do, the glory they would win.
All they won was a sailcloth sack filled with ballast stones
.

As much as he mourned Will and Cletus, it was the maester’s loss that Quentyn felt most keenly. Kedry had been fluent in the tongues of all of the Free Cities, and even the mongrel Ghiscari that men spoke along the shores of Slaver’s Bay. “Maester Kedry will accompany you,” his father said the night they parted. “Heed his counsel. He has devoted half his life to the study of the Nine Free Cities.” Quentyn wondered if things might not have gone a deal easier if only he were here to guide them.

“I would sell my mother for a bit of breeze,” said Gerris, as they rolled through the dockside throngs. “It’s moist as the Maiden’s cunt, and still shy of noon. I hate this city.”

Quentyn shared the feeling. The sullen wet heat of Volantis sapped his strength and left him feeling dirty. The worst part was knowing that nightfall would bring no relief. Up in the high meadows north of Lord Yronwood’s estates, the air was always crisp and cool after dark, no matter how hot the day had been. Not here. In Volantis, the nights were almost as hot as the days.

“The
Goddess
sails for New Ghis on the morrow,” Gerris reminded him. “That at least would bring us closer.”

“New Ghis is an island, and a much smaller port than this. We would be closer, yes, but we could find ourselves stranded. And New Ghis has allied with the Yunkai’i.” That news had not come as a surprise to Quentyn. New Ghis and Yunkai were both Ghiscari cities. “If Volantis should ally with them as well—”

“We need to find a ship from Westeros,” suggested Gerris, “some trader out of Lannisport or Oldtown.”

“Few come this far, and those who do fill their holds with silk and spice from the Jade Sea, then bend their oars for home.”

“Perhaps a Braavosi ship? One hears of purple sails as far away as Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea.”

“The Braavosi are descended from escaped slaves. They do not trade in Slaver’s Bay.”

“Do we have enough gold to
buy
a ship?”

“And who will sail her? You? Me?” Dornishmen had never been seafarers, not since Nymeria burned her ten thousand ships. “The seas around Valyria are perilous, and thick with corsairs.”

“I have had enough of corsairs. Let’s not buy a ship.”

This is still just a game to him
, Quentyn realized,
no different than the time he led six of us up into the mountains to find the old lair of the Vulture King
. It was not in Gerris Drinkwater’s nature to imagine they might fail, let alone that they might die. Even the deaths of three friends had not served to chasten him, it would seem.
He leaves that to me. He knows my nature is as cautious as his is bold
.

“Perhaps the big man is right,” Ser Gerris said. “Piss on the sea, we can finish the journey overland.”

“You know why he says that,” Quentyn said. “He’d rather die than set foot on another ship.” The big man had been greensick every day of their voyage. In Lys, it had taken him four days to recover his strength. They’d had to take rooms in an inn so Maester Kedry could tuck him into a feather bed and feed him broths and potions until some pink returned to his cheeks.

It was possible to go overland to Meereen, that much was true. The old Valyrian roads would take them there.
Dragon roads
, men called the great stone roadways of the Freehold, but the one that ran eastward from Volantis to Meereen had earned a more sinister name:
the demon road
.

“The demon road is dangerous, and too
slow
,” Quentyn said. “Tywin Lannister will send his own men after the queen once word of her reaches
King’s Landing.” His father had been certain of that. “His will come with knives. If they reach her first—”

“Let’s hope her dragons will sniff them out and eat them,” said Gerris. “Well, if we cannot find a ship, and you will not let us ride, we had as well book passage back to Dorne.”

Crawl back to Sunspear defeated, with my tail between my legs?
His father’s disappointment would be more than Quentyn could bear, and the scorn of the Sand Snakes would be withering. Doran Martell had put the fate of Dorne into his hands, he could not fail him, not whilst life remained.

Heat shimmers rose off the street as the
hathay
rattled and jounced along on its iron-rimmed wheels, giving a dreamlike quality to their surroundings. In amongst the warehouses and the wharves, shops and stalls of many sorts crowded the waterfront. Here fresh oysters could be bought, here iron chains and manacles, here
cyvasse
pieces carved of ivory and jade. Here were temples too, where sailors came to sacrifice to foreign gods, cheek by jowl with pillow houses where women called down from balconies to men below. “Have a look at that one,” Gerris urged, as they passed one pillow house. “I think she’s in love with you.”

And how much does a whore’s love cost?
Truth be told, girls made Quentyn anxious, especially the pretty ones.

When first he’d come to Yronwood, he had been smitten with Ynys, the eldest of Lord Yronwood’s daughters. Though he never said a word about his feelings, he nursed his dreams for years … until the day she was dispatched to wed Ser Ryon Allyrion, the heir to Godsgrace. The last time he had seen her, she’d had one boy at her breast and another clinging to her skirts.

After Ynys had come the Drinkwater twins, a pair of tawny young maidens who loved hawking, hunting, climbing rocks, and making Quentyn blush. One of them had given him his first kiss, though he never knew which one. As daughters of a landed knight, the twins were too lowborn to marry, but Cletus did not think that was any reason to stop kissing them. “After you’re wed you can take one of them for a paramour. Or both, why not?” But Quentyn thought of several reasons why not, so he had done his best to avoid the twins thereafter, and there had been no second kiss.

More recently, the youngest of Lord Yronwood’s daughters had taken to following him about the castle. Gwyneth was but twelve, a small, scrawny girl whose dark eyes and brown hair set her apart in that house of
blue-eyed blondes. She was clever, though, as quick with words as with her hands, and fond of telling Quentyn that he had to wait for her to flower, so she could marry him.

That was before Prince Doran had summoned him to the Water Gardens. And now the most beautiful woman in the world was waiting in Meereen, and he meant to do his duty and claim her for his bride.
She will not refuse me. She will honor the agreement
. Daenerys Targaryen would need Dorne to win the Seven Kingdoms, and that meant that she would need him.
It does not mean that she will love me, though. She may not even like me
.

The street curved where the river met the sea, and there along the bend a number of animal sellers were clustered together, offering jeweled lizards, giant banded snakes, and agile little monkeys with striped tails and clever pink hands. “Perhaps your silver queen would like a monkey,” said Gerris.

Quentyn had no idea what Daenerys Targaryen might like. He had promised his father that he would bring her back to Dorne, but more and more he wondered if he was equal to the task.

I never asked for this
, he thought.

Across the wide blue expanse of the Rhoyne, he could see the Black Wall that had been raised by the Valyrians when Volantis was no more than an outpost of their empire: a great oval of fused stone two hundred feet high and so thick that six four-horse chariots could race around its top abreast, as they did each year to celebrate the founding of the city. Outlanders, foreigners, and freedmen were not allowed inside the Black Wall save at the invitation of those who dwelt within, scions of the Old Blood who could trace their ancestry back to Valyria itself.

The traffic was thicker here. They were near the western end of the Long Bridge, which linked the two halves of the city. Wayns and carts and
hathays
crowded the streets, all of them coming from the bridge or making for it. Slaves were everywhere, as numerous as roaches, scurrying about their masters’ business.

Not far from Fishermonger’s Square and the Merchant’s House, shouts erupted from a cross street, and a dozen Unsullied spearmen in ornate armor and tiger-skin cloaks appeared as if from nowhere, waving everyone aside so the triarch could pass through atop his elephant. The triarch’s elephant was a grey-skinned behemoth clad in elaborate enameled armor that clattered softly as he moved, the castle on its back so tall that it scraped the top of the ornamental stone arch he was passing underneath. “The
triarchs are considered so elevated that their feet are not allowed to touch the ground during their year of service,” Quentyn informed his companion. “They ride everywhere on elephants.”

“Blocking up the streets and leaving heaps of dung for the likes of us to contend with,” said Gerris. “Why Volantis needs three princes when Dorne makes do with one, I will never know.”