A Dance With Dragons

Jon successfully recruits wildlings to garrison castles along the Wall so they can fight off the Others and marauding wildlings. He fails to gain the support of the Thenns, a proud, old free-folk family that keeps itself separate from the wildlings. As he makes his way through the mountains, he sees more than one face carved on a weirwood tree—the mark of worshipers of the old gods of the North. These trees mean that wildlings do not really want to worship R’hllor as commanded. When he returns to Castle Black, he finds still more unease about incorporating wildlings, including wildling women fighters, into the defense of the Wall. Most believe the wildlings are more likely to raid communities on the Westeros side of the Wall than fight against the Others. Even his allies are skeptical of his plan. Jon puts on a brave face since he knows he is doing what is right, but the second-guessing undercuts his confidence.

Tyrion survives his dunking. Griff tells him that he has to check for greyscale on all his extremities. If his fingers or toes ever go numb or gray, he has greyscale. The unspoken threat is that the party will leave him or kill him to stop Young Griff from getting it. As Tyrion plays cyvasse, a chess-like game of strategy, with Young Griff, Tyrion sounds him out to see what kind of young man he is. Using the camaraderie of the game, Tyrion overcomes whatever instructions Young Griff received about being discreet. Tyrion subtly leads Young Griff to conclude that taking Westeros and showing up with a kingdom in hand is more likely to convince Daenerys to marry him. Daenerys is Aegon’s aunt and doesn’t have as strong a claim to the throne as he does as the son of the crown prince. Marrying him makes sense strategically.

The party makes it to its destination, where they hear rumors of Daenerys’s ill-fated decision to refuse the ships. Entire mercenary armies and the soldiers of Volantis and Yunkai are massing to march against her. Those cities depend on the slave trade, making Daenerys a threat to them. While Griff and the others are looking for some way to find a ship or ride to Meereen, Jorah Mormont, disgraced former Queensguard of Daenerys, recognizes and kidnaps Tyrion. He means to take Tyrion to Daenerys to regain her favor.

With opposition growing around her, Daenerys agrees to marry Hizdahr if he will keep the peace in Meereen for 90 days. He agrees, and she announces their betrothal. Daario, her mercenary lover, returns and is not pleased she will marry another man. She could refuse to marry Hizdahr in the end and then kill her enemies with the time the betrothal buys her, he advises. He is a mercenary soldier, given to violence and treachery; she shouldn’t expect any better from him, she realizes. She tells him a queen cannot act this way. Most “queens have no purpose but to warm some king’s bed and pop out sons for him,” Daario counters; marrying Hizdahr will be perfect if she wants to be subject to such demands (304). Daenerys is so angry over the contempt he shows her with this remark that she sends him and his Stormcrow crew back to fight Yunkai. After this episode, she concludes that his advice might be expedient, but following it would make her the “butcher queen” her enemies accuse her of being or a “monster” like Daario and her political enemies (355).

Griff, Young Griff, and company realize someone has taken Tyrion. Unable to find any other way to get close to Meereen, they sign on with the Golden Company. The talk they hear among the soldiers and in town is that Daenerys has chosen to stay in Meereen, making her a lost cause. Young Griff now openly claims to be Aegon. He convinces the Golden Company to go to Westeros to support him in his fight for the Iron Throne; his charisma makes him look every inch a prince. This decision is a bold, perhaps rash one, but Jon Connington goes along because he has limited time; he finds the first signs of greyscale on his body, but he tells no one.

Quentyn and his companions join the mercenary army of the Windblown in an effort to get closer to Meereen. The Windblown are fighting for Yunkai, Daenerys’s enemies, so getting into Meereen will pose a problem. The Tattered Prince, the Windblown’s leader, solves their problem when he asks them and other speakers of the Common Tongue of Westeros to turn cloak and go to Meereen in case Yunkai loses. He doesn’t explain why he wants them to do this, but it is likely because he wants Daenerys’s help in taking Pentos.

Asha Greyjoy, sister of Theon, is in Deepwood Motte, a Winterfell castle sure to fall now that the Boltons have Moat Cailin. She receives a letter from Ramsay Bolton saying as much, along with skin—probably foreskin—from Reek/Theon. Ramsay has styled himself a lord in the message. Asha is unsure of what to do. At Deepwood, she has some measure of freedom, and her lover, Qarl the Maid, is with her. Without the backing of the Iron Islands, she is vulnerable to capture. She cannot go to the Iron Islands because of her failed attempt to become queen and because she has an unwanted husband, one foisted on her by her King Euron, her uncle. When an army attacks, she and her company abandon Deepwood and their hostages. They intend to go to their boats on the nearby coast and escape. Asha and the Iron Islanders don’t make it to the boats. She engages in an epic struggle for survival—one she expects no one will ever hear about. Her last attacker, who repeatedly calls her by a misogynistic slur, wins, and Asha experiences such a severe wound that she becomes unconscious.

Jorah Mormont takes Tyrion to Volantis. There are few ways to get to Meereen, so Jorah goes to the old woman—the widow of Vogarro, a former triarch (ruling power)—said to have information and contacts that can help them. She tells them they’d be better off to leave Volantis, where the election of the new triarchs and the mustering of forces for and against Daenerys are making the situation volatile. Despite her unassuming appearance and setting, she is an expert political thinker, so Tyrion takes her seriously and compliments her by telling her she’d have been a triarch if women had access to such roles. Tyrion notices that priests of R’hllor and their followers are fervent supporters of Daenerys because they believe the dragon queen is Azor Ahai reborn. Volantis’s rulers oppose Daenerys because the slave trade is central to their economy, but Vogarro’s widow, who has excised the tear tattoos that marked her as an enslaved person, wants Daenerys to stir from Meereen and ensure their freedom. Vogarro’s widow puts them on a ship headed to Qarth instead of directly to Meereen, but she promises their trip won’t end there because the red priest Benerro has seen a different end destination in his prophecies. She gives them this news with an ominous tone.

During their meeting, Penny, a young woman with dwarfism, attacks Tyrion. She and her brother, also a person with dwarfism, performed at the wedding where Joffrey Baratheon died of poisoning; many blamed Tyrion for poisoning his nephew, the king. Penny and her brother fled across the Narrow Sea in case someone blamed them for the poisoning instead. Someone killed Penny’s brother because they thought he was Tyrion, upon whose head Cersei placed a bounty for killing Tywin. Vogarro’s widow convinces them to take Penny, her dog, and her pig with them since being a person with dwarfism is dangerous as long as the bounty is still out there. Tyrion is aghast when he realizes killing Tywin and running away has had unintended consequences for innocent people.

Jon needs information on what is happening north of the Wall, so he sends out rangers, including one of his rivals during the election for the leadership of the Night’s Watch. These days, most rangers never return because the Others, wights, or wildlings kill them, so Jon is sending the men to their deaths. Rattleshirt, a wildling, challenges him to a bout in the training yard, and Jon loses to him. He recalls his father’s advice that it is better to get a potential enemy’s measure in the training yard than during battle, so he doesn’t respond when Rattleshirt and others taunt him for losing and call him a “bastard.” Jon receives a message from Ramsay Bolton informing him that Ramsay will be marrying Arya, who is on her way to Winterfell. Jon’s impulse is to rescue his half-sister, but he chooses to be bound by his oath to be loyal only to the Night’s Watch.

Melisandre tries to entice him to have sex with her; sex can create powerful magic, perhaps enough to somehow save Arya. Jon refuses her offer because he knows it will diminish his standing as lord commander of the Night’s Watch. He is attracted to her, especially since she assumes the appearance of Ygritte, the wildling woman he loved when he was spying on the wildlings. Melisandre predicts that three of the rangers he sent will not return alive and that a “grey girl on a dying horse” (595) will come to the Wall to ask for his help to escape a wedding. Melisandre offers this prophecy to gain Jon’s support, but he seems unmoved. She speculates that the girl will be Arya, but she cautions she cannot be sure what this prophecy means. She provides more evidence of her power when she takes control over Ghost, whose bond with Jon is so strong that the direwolf usually only obeys him. She releases Ghost and again warns Jon to keep Ghost near him.

Davos has been a prisoner in Manderly’s dungeons for weeks. His jailor is a sadist, but so far he feeds Davos and hasn’t killed him as Manderly commanded. Manderly eventually meets with Davos. He reveals that his cowardice before the Freys was a “mummer’s farce” (453), fakery designed to trick the Freys and Lannisters. He was moved by Davos’s call for revenge after all. He used the fake execution of Davos as proof of his loyalty and thus secured the release of his son. He has plans. He intends to turn on the Freys and Lannisters to get his revenge on them for killing Robb and his men at the Red Wedding. A servant from Winterfell tells them that he saw one of Eddard Stark’s sons—likely Rickon—escaping after Theon took Winterfell. Manderly also shares the news that Arya will be marrying Ramsay. Manderly means to turn on the Boltons and Freys at the wedding. He wants Davos to find Rickon, potentially the last male heir who has a claim to Winterfell. He suspects Rickon is on Skagos, an island off the east coast of Winterfell. Its inhabitants are said to be cannibals, and Davos dreads going there.

Meereen faces two challenges—displaced people from the city of Astapor, which Yunkai attacked, and the Yunkish army. Many of the Astapori are sick with the bloody flux, a contagious illness that kills all its victims. Daenerys feels torn between mercy and duty. If she were merciful, she would let in the Astapori to treat them, but doing that would consume her resources and labor, leaving her vulnerable to Yunkai. She hastens her marriage to Hizdahr to buy some goodwill from the nobility and prevent the resumption of killings by the Sons of the Harpy.

As Melisandre predicted, three of the rangers die north of the Wall. She meets with Rattleshirt. It turns out he is Mance Rayder. She cast a glamor to make him look like Rattleshirt. Rattleshirt, not Mance, burned. She reveals her trick to Jon, minimizing the difficulty of the magic to impress him with her power. She uses an entire chest of powders and blouses with secret pockets for the powders to make sure she has the ability to make her magic look dazzling when need be; unlike Jon, who still has not moved into the old commander’s lodgings, she believes that being powerful means relying in part on “the trappings of power, for power itself flows in no small measure from such trappings” (478). Still, Jon is canny enough not to come running to her lodgings when she calls, so she goes to his quarters to reveal Mance. She instructs Mance to go to Winterfell in disguise and get the girl they believe is Arya. Melisandre wants to gain Jon’s support for R’hllor and Stannis with this action. She has a series of confusing visions. She sees Jon’s sister at Deep Lake, an abandoned castle of the Night’s Watch. When she tries to scry to find out more about Azor Ahai, all she sees are death signs around Jon and snow.