The mosquito was only a mosquito.
He let it go.
He put two fingers to his own face.
He wanted the count.
He wanted to know what three years had bought him.
[Unearthing] Domeric Bolton Lord of Lonehill.
Trueborn son of House Bolton.
Heir to the Dreadfort.
In Eddard Stark’s eyes the finest sword in the North.
The man Robb Stark calls brother.
The lord Ser Wendel Manderly and Jorah Mormont have sworn.
The secret liking of Sansa Stark and Wynafryd Manderly.
To the hill clans and the wildlings, a devil out of some pit.
Title: the Little Flayer; Finest Sword in the North Strength: 70 Agility: 80 Spirit: 75 Combat index: 225 Note: You already know the secret you keep.
Why ask?
He looked at the two hundred and twenty-five and shook his head.
The number had not moved.
A common man sat at thirty.
A knight who had done the work reached sixty.
Eddard Stark, who had stood in the same dust as Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, had counted one hundred and seventy.
Most men would have drunk to two hundred and twenty-five.
He knew better.
The names waiting for him were not most men.
Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer.
Gregor Clegane, the Mountain.
Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper.
Any one of them was a wrong thing to meet in a yard.
He had worked.
For half a year the sword had refused the next step.
Every craft went that way if you stayed with it long enough.
The higher the stair, the narrower the tread.
He let his mind go down into the work and hunt the place the blade would not open.
The ward at the bed woke first.
Twenty feet of faint pressure, bought in Qarth, laid for a footfall.
Asleep or waking, he would feel a body come into it.
Wendel?
No.
His chief sword did not pay calls at this hour.
Wendel would be under a fat woman by now, sleeping like a hog.
Domeric closed his hand on the longsword.
The answers were already stacked: if the shape was wrong, he would take it before it finished standing up.
Two hundred and twenty-five was enough for any ordinary knife in the dark.
He held his breath and looked.
The room was empty.
The ward had not been empty.
He had felt the step.
Door shut.
Windows shut.
No mark that either had moved.
No second breath in the chamber.
A fault in the Qarthene work, then?
For a lord that was not a small fault.
In clean weather a miss meant nothing.
On the night a knife found the bed, a miss was the whole of the story.
He thought of Joffrey Baratheon going to his death in a hall full of witnesses, and of Tywin Lannister on a privy with his son’s bolt in him, and the sweat came up cold.
He was still deciding whether to call the guard when a bright voice came out of the corner.
“Hello!
I’m Issi Aulds.
I’m glad to meet you.” Night in Westeros ran on candles.
The light they threw was a poor thing.
The corners kept their dark.
The dark in that corner was moving.
A working.
Magic, here, in his own room.
The realm had gone a thousand years without enough of it to remember what it cost.
In the tale Robert Baratheon died and the strongest stag left in the race—Renly, the youngest brother, the man with the best claim after the king—went out before the War of the Five Kings had found its feet.
The night before he was to meet Stannis, Melisandre of Asshai had born a shadow and sent it to do the cutting.
Domeric did not look away from the twist in the dark.
A figure came out of it.
Not a man.
A white rat stood there.
More precisely: a white rat riding a cat.
The rat wore leather.
A crown sat on its head.
A cloak was pinned at the shoulders.
The cat brought it forward at a walk.
Sweat ran the line of his hair.
He had a harder mind than most.
He had not bought this picture with it.
“Hello.
I’m Issi Aulds, a sorcerer out of Asshai.
Ser Domeric.
I’m glad to meet you.” The rat.
The voice was the rat’s.
The eyes in the little skull were quick.
They took the doubt in his face, and the rat hopped off the cat and came to his boots and looked up, as if that were a kind of courtesy.
Asshai.
He felt his mouth tighten.
Asshai-by-the-Shadow was the farthest city men still bothered to name, and the one they wanted least to walk.
Magic had soaked the stones.
There were no forbidden doors there.
Sorcerers, alchemists, moonsingers, red priests, dark workers, necromancers, aeromancers, pyromancers, bloodmages, torturers, justiciars, poisoners, priestesses, night-walkers, skinchangers—if they wished it, they held their rites and lay down with demons.
Spellsingers and warlocks and aeromancers did their work in the street.
Shadowbinders and bloodmages kept the later hour for the worse half.
He put the catalogue away.
She had come prepared.
The crown and the cat were not an assassin’s kit.
“Are you human?” “Of course I am.” The white rat set both paws on its hips and pursed its mouth.
“And I’m a girl, I’ll have you know.” “Then what is this?” The ears dropped.
“A working went wrong.
My pet and I traded skins.” A pause.
“That thick-headed thing of mine.
I think you’ve locked it up.” “So that is why you came, my lady sorcerer.” Domeric’s eyes stayed cold.
He looked at his uninvited guest and did not look away.