“What are you called?” Domeric asked it again.
The girl in the chains only made a thin sound in her throat, a squeak with no word in it.
She tucked her head down and watched them with the same wet, helpless look she had worn when they came in.
Enough.
“Ser Wendel.
Pull a hair from her head.” Wendel put a hand on his bare scalp.
“Why me?
That is a foul sorcerer.” “A knight who will not look at an ugly thing has no business claiming he can beat it.
I had you for a proper sword.” He did not like sending his best man into it.
The guards behind him were shaking hard enough to rattle their own mail.
In their heads magic was worse than any devil the septons named.
He could not send those.
“All right.
All right.” Wendel went, muttering as he did.
The good work never found him.
The rotten work never missed.
He reached her with a hand that was not steady and took a hair.
The men at Domeric’s back drew one breath together and gave two steps of stone.
Only Jorah Mormont moved the other way and put himself in front of his lord.
Domeric stared.
In this country the hired steel failed you the moment the dark put on a new coat.
He had seen it before.
He still hated the sight of it.
Wendel had the hair and was back at his side like a man leaving a burning stable.
[Unearthing] Cissy A sorcerer’s pet.
Title: none Strength: 6 Agility: 12 Spirit: 5 Note: The pet of a powerful sorcerer.
For a reason not given, it and its master have exchanged bodies.
Feed it well enough and you may earn its goodwill.
Pictures came with the letters.
Hands holding out food.
A mouth taking it.
The same scene, again and again.
A pet.
That was why the tongue would not work.
She was afraid.
The Unearthing liked fear.
The take came clean.
The rest of it sat wrong in him.
A man and a pet trading skins.
If that was a working, it was a working he had no name for.
“What now?” Jorah said, when the silence had gone on long enough.
“Take the chains off her.
Then find food.
Good food.” The cell filled faster than a hall at harvest.
Spiced beef.
Smoked salmon.
Snails in their shells.
Beef in red wine.
Soft cheese running in its own milk.
Roe.
A roast fowl still breathing steam.
In the life before this one he had known what a table could be.
He had spent three years teaching Lonehill’s cooks to come near it.
Whatever else the hills lacked, he would not be shamed by a plate.
The girl came up as if the floor might bite.
She took a piece of the beef in both small hands and put it in her mouth and chewed as if tasting were a task she had been given.
When he did not stop her, she ate properly.
Her cheeks filled.
Grease made a mess of her face.
“Slowly,” Domeric said, and let the smile be kind.
“There is more.” “Th-thank you.” The words were broken.
The pleasure in them was not.
He took his men out.
“We came to judge her,” Wendel said.
“There is nothing in her head we can use.
You heard her.
She can barely speak.” “Then what?” “Her master will come for her.
We wait.” Wendel’s mouth opened on another question.
“Leave it.” Domeric turned, and the mildness went off his face.
“Double the guard on the dungeon.
Send ten more.
No.
Send a hundred.” He looked at Jorah.
“I want you on that door yourself for the next few days.
I don’t trust the rest of them with this.” “My honor, my lord.” Rain found the window and tried to come through it.
From the chamber Lonehill was a pale smear.
Noon had been clean sun.
Then lead-colored cloud came up out of the southeast and the sky went black in the space between two breaths.
Thunder broke.
The water came down as if a gate had opened in the air.
The town was miners and smiths and the work that fed both.
Low roofs lost their edges in the wet.
The slates had never been laid for a flood; water ran the gaps between them in bright, shaking lines.
Hills and timber stood and vanished in the same look.
In the life before, men would have paid to stand and stare at it.
It was still a long way from the working town he meant to have.
He crushed the letter in his hand and threw it into the hearth and watched the fire take it.
News from across the Narrow Sea.
The dragon brother and sister.
Magister Illyrio of Pentos, in his own fat hand.
Lonehill still had first claim on him.
A pair of Targaryen pretenders and their restoration could wait.
Jorah had watched the letter burn and said nothing until it was ash.
“It is done,” he said.
“A dozen traps off the dungeon stair.
Two hundred men in plain sight and out of it.
They will move when they are told.” “Good.
The other one is a sorcerer.
There is no such thing as too much preparation.” The attack itself, as Jorah told it, was a short tale.
A night at the northern face.
Guards caught a girl slipping into a shaft with a little pick, hunting for something she had not named.
She had no sword-work.
She had the fire.
A dozen men went the way of Jorah’s candle before the castellan got a chain on her.
The Unearthing had given the rest.
A pet.
A master.
What Domeric could not find was the reason.
Why a sorcerer would put a hand in his mines.
What was in the rock that he had not already pulled out of it.