The Old Lion?

  He leveled the letter on the lacquered table with another beleaguered glare. House Lannister had never been stronger than it stood now, and still his children were determined to do everything they could to try and tear it all down.

  The dwarf had always been a disappointment, so he had hardly been surprised when he abandoned King's Landing to go cavorting across Braavos with whores. It was what convinced his other son—who should have and will yet be his heir—to join him in that folly that confounded him. In doing so he had abandoned his post and left his sister to deal with Robert's younger brothers alone.

  He had been too soft on the boy, he knew. It was not the first time he had forgotten himself, forgotten he was a Lannister and not a fool.

  And that was only the least of the folly his children had visited on him, for he had swore that if he heard another whisper of this Solomon the Magnificent, that he would have their tongue cut out and their miserable family thrown from the highest window in Casterly Rock. It had stopped the whispers, but the problem remained.

  What his only daughter was thinking when she thought it wise to not only believe a mummer, but to go so far as play into the rumors, he could not say.

  Those were his children. A son more fit to be a fool, a daughter with less between her ears than the gods gave a hen, and a dwarf that only thought about his next whore.

  "What are we to do, Tywin?"

  His eyes turned on Kevan spitefully, though he soon returned to staring at the bedamned letter, his thoughts troubled. The wildfire, Robert's bedamned brothers, the Tyrells, the Martells, the escaped whoremonger and eunuch, the trouble stirring in the narrow sea, and now a war in the Vale. All that and all his daughter had to tell him was that she had everything well in hand. It was a farce.

  "I have already done what I can," he finally muttered.

  He could not march an army into King's Landing on mere suspicion, and the Tyrells had already replaced the gold cloaks in all but name. Nor could he do more in Braavos than send Genna to uncover what led those two to folly. At least she knew how to speak to them.

  "Perhaps it might have been better if you were in King's Landing as master of coin," Kevan voiced, drawing his eyes again. "Or perhaps convinced Stark to name another Lannister. At least then we needn't only rely on Cersei."

  "And have the realm look at us as nothing more than a purse the king can reach into at his leisure?" He scoffed derisively. "No. I should have been named Hand of the King. The crown is three million dragons in our debt, and have I even asked for a pittance of it back?"

  "You have the right of it, Tywin."

  Perhaps he had been too passive, too complacent. He should have sent Kevan, not the dwarf, and he should have sent more men. He could have found some excuse for it. His daughter with child again, it…

  He hummed. Perhaps. "Cersei is due to give birth soon, is she not?"

  Kevan slowly nodded after a moment. "This moon or the next, I believe."

  "Then we will go to King's Landing. With any luck Robert will have crushed Lord Grafton and returned some sense to the Vale by the time we have arrived." Robert Baratheon might be more fool than king but Tywin could not deny that he had a certain talent for war.

  "Who should join us?"

  He stood and looked out the window at Lannisport below. "Crakehall. Marbrand. Prester as well. A mounted force. The journey will take too long otherwise."

  Kevan left him to his thoughts after. Tywin could at least trust that it would be done.

  Sometimes he remembered his other brothers as well, Tygett and Gerion, but it did not do well to dwell on what had already come to pass.

  House Lannister was at a critical point in time, and after what happened to the Targaryens, the stakes had never been higher. If they stumbled even once, they would flounder, and so risk fading into the histories as the Durrandons and the Gardeners had.

  That he would not allow.

  Naella?

  Of everything they hoped to find waiting for them in Pentos, not a one of them had thought to find a Braavosi armada. She had tried counting them all as they approached the harbor, their hulls and sails painted blues and purples and blacks, but had given up after a hundred.

  They were boarded shortly thereafter, every part of the ship scoured for slaves with a zeal that surprised her even for the Braavosi. They had even asked her and the others pointed questions, but none of them were slaves. Not anymore.

  The Braavosi allowed them to continue to the harbor, though not before a warning to the captain that he would hang within the hour if they discovered otherwise.

  Soon she saw the tiled roofs and square brick towers that she remembered running between as a girl. Sometimes she still wondered if she was dreaming, but if she was then she would have seen her brother waiting for her at the docks as they approached.

  All that awaited her instead were scores more Braavosi in their sea blue uniforms.

  The seven of them made their way to the house by the docks that they all knew. It was where all their tongues were cut out, and it seemed to her as good a place as any to begin. Except when they neared, they also found all its doors and windows boarded shut.

  It hardly gave them pause as they quickly went to work. At least until a reedy voice interrupted them in Pentoshi Low Valyrian.

  "Leave it be! That house there is cursed, you hear? Cursed!"

  It was an older man, and alone. Baerys touched a hand to the sword he had hidden on his person, his faintly purple eyes flashing dangerously, but she stepped forward and made a shooing motion first.

  The man reddened at the irreverent action. "I would sooner brave the rains than that house," he tried again. "All inside it had suddenly perished not even a fortnight ago, not a mark on them. Some say they heard screams."

  And she had watched it all happen. Naella smiled at him placidly until he left, muttering under his breath about disobedient children.

  Turning back to her compatriots, she signed that it was the sorcerer that had taken their lives. The sorcerer that had spared them so they might return to try and find what was precious to them.

  Megelle scoffed and signed that they were dead, if not from the sack then at the spider's hand after they had failed, her muddy green eyes looking somewhere far away. It touched on her own fears, though she refused to give into despair.

  Then we will avenge ourselves on the spider that betrayed us, she signed back.

  The house they found well furnished still. It was acceptable for their purposes.

  Then came the hard part as they all bickered on what to do with the Braavosi here. Some argued that they should work with the Braavosi, who would have no reason to love the spider and the whale. Others argued that they would be hanged once the Braavosi returned to Braavos as they always have.

  Naella was less certain. The sorcerer had said she would never be far from his sight, but he had not made any signs known to her since that night.

  She soon signed that they should wait until they knew more. For now they should go out and see for themselves what had become of Pentos.

  They all agreed to that much.

  Naella made for the slums first, to the alleyway that she and her brother used to sleep in. It was still there, but her brother was not.

  The remnants of the sack lingered also, the northeasterly walls still being repaired and many places still blackened from the fires that had engulfed the city. Where the whale's manse once sat was only a ruin now.

  She eventually found herself drawn to a crowd near the gallows.

  "When Pentos sued for peace and its magisters swore to take the First Law into their hearts, Braavos rejoiced." The man speaking was all in black, and in Braavos, the darker colors signified power and prestige. "It had taken six wars, each more bitter than the last, but we had succeeded in freeing the good people of Pentos, we thought. We laid down our arms and returned peace with peace."

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  Naella spied three men with a noose around their necks and a gag in their mouths. All of them were finely dressed, but dirtied.

  "And what did the magisters do with peace? They made a mockery of the First Law for near a hundred years. Not slaves did they call you, but bondsmen. No more."

  The floor fell away, and soon all three danced upon the air. The crowd cheered.

  "This seventh will be the last. Just as we Braavosi carved the First Law into the very bedrock of Braavos, so we will carve it into the very bedrock of Pentos. This the Sealord promises you, good people of Pentos. This Antaryos Prestayn promises you."

  She spied three more men being dragged up the gallows by Braavosi in drab blue, two of them wailing for mercy as they were gagged. The crowd only mocked them in return.

  Naella began to wonder if they intended to hang every magister left in the city.

  "But it will not end here. We know there can be no peace with slavers, and shame on us for having pretended otherwise. Valyria is gone. The Lorathi understand this, and have agreed to join their hands with ours. The Westerosi are already no friends to slavers."

  The crowd only continued to grow, and she found herself scaling a statue to watch from its shoulders.

  "What does that leave? Volantis which dreamed to forge Valyria anew and saw their dreams dashed against the rocks instead? The Three Daughters that feud with one another? The Dothraki that these magisters unleashed upon you all? How easily they all forget that there are three or even five slaves for each of them, forget that the only release from slavery they offer is the hand of the Many-Faced God."

  Naella was close enough now that she saw the Braavosi's cool blue eyes rake across the crowd.

  "Yes, we Braavosi often say that all men must die. Valar morghulis in the tongue of Old Valyria. And yet we also say valar dohaeris, for it is death that gives meaning to all we do in life. We intend to remind them again what these words mean."

  The floor fell away again, all three dancing with the Many-Faced God.

  "The Sealord promises any man who can carry that purpose in their heart a good wage. Antaros Prestayn promises you that you will see this scene repeat in Myr, in Tyrosh, in Lys, and yes, even in Volantis when that whole rotten edifice collapses around them, the lie laid bare for all to see."

  The crowd cheered again, hungrier this time.

  "You who have bore the lash of a whip all your lives, who have had to watch as your masters raped your wives and your daughters and your sons because it amused them to. To you I say again. Valar morghulis. Valar dohaeris."

  The Braavosi all in black gave a grim smile as the crowd erupted in bloodlust. Already she could see men young and old pushing their way through to sign their names.

  She even felt some embers in her own heart, for she had no reason to love the magisters and many reasons to hate them. Naella did not doubt that the words would soon be repeated in every slum in Pentos, every cranny or alleyway. Just as she did not doubt that the words would reach the ears of every magister from the Disputed Lands to Qohor.

  They would do what they always did when they feared their own slaves. They would punish them first, and punish those that made even a whisper of protest all the harsher.

  As she left the plaza and its gallows behind, a part of her was already thinking about how she might use this to her advantage. She had watched the spider at work all these years, seen his schemes and how he played on the hopes and fears of high and low alike.

  As too did she know now that the Braavosi were here to stay. Not for all the warships in the harbor, but for Pentos having all but become Braavos, Braavosi marines crawling across every inch of the city. And as she passed between the square brick towers of the magisters, she saw all their treasures dragged out by the same Braavosi, all of it bound for the Secret City.

  It didn't surprise her. Naella knew enough about men to have already guessed that it was not the First Law alone that turned the Braavosi to war. In a moon's time Pentos would find itself stripped of magisters and treasures both, which would only whet their appetites for more in the other daughters of Valyria.

  Yet between vultures and slavers, she knew which she preferred.

  Back at their safehouse, she waited for the others to return as well. They had all seen the same things she had, and so she proposed her plan.

  The Braavosi might have taken the city, but she did not believe that they had already brought Pentos's vast hinterlands to heel as well. However sudden Braavos's attack had been, the bulk of the magisters would have still fled to their manses or further abroad to the other Free Cities with as much wealth as they could carry.

  And that is where they would come in. All of them knew well that information was as valuable as coin, and they were all well practiced at extracting it.

  They all agreed to her plan, just as they had agreed to come here. They would avenge themselves on the spider by beating him at his own game.

  It was in her dreams that night that she finally saw the sorcerer again, seated on a bench in a park that seemed queer to her. He smiled at her, a fatherly air about him.

  Naella tried to sign something when he stopped her. "There is no need for that. Affix it in your mind and I will see."

  Taking a seat next to him under the songs of birds, she did as he asked, reliving her day as best she could. He had seemed most bemused at the Braavosi's speech, and when she was done, he gave a thoughtful hum.

  "Your plan is sound. The Braavosi might have superiority at sea until Volantis stirs itself, but I would be surprised if they aren't already trying to figure out how to avoid a grueling land campaign that would see even their coffers stretched thin."

  He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear again.

  "You will need coin to build a presence in the Three Daughters. I will provide. I do not think Varys would have expected me to let you all loose on Pentos, but once you begin, it will not take him long to respond."

  That much she already knew. Most likely she would not last a year before she found a knife in her belly, but she hoped that by then she would have done the spider enough damage that she could meet her end with a smile on her lips.

  "You are as brave as any knight," she heard him whisper one last time before the dream blew away like smoke on the wind.

  The next few days passed in a blur. While she would not approach the Braavosi until she had information they were hungry for, there were still a thousand things to do.

  Two of them had seen success in finding what they left behind, Baerys with his sister and Laemon with his sickly mother, but the rest of them had no such luck. It only made her heart grow colder, her mind more focused.

  There had been some surprise when news reached them that King's Landing had burned green for a day, but none of them much let it distract them. They had left Westeros behind and would likely never return.

  Then one day she heard news that caused her heart to quicken. There was a boy near the age her brother would be, a boy that also happened to look much like her. The boy, as Baerys told her, was also associated with one of the scores of gangs in the slums that dealt in petty crime, gangs that formed and went as freely as the summer rains.

  Not wasting another breath, she hurried there as quickly as her feet could carry her. And there she saw him. Her brother. Thin and skinny and hungry, but alive.

  She couldn't stop herself from immediately accosting him with a hug so fierce that he squirmed and protested in her arms. When she finally retreated, she graced him with as beautiful a smile as she could manage.

  A smile that quickly faltered when he just looked at her blankly, a blush on his cheeks, yes, but not even a hint of recognition. It had her gripping him tighter lest he disappear.

  Naella had found her brother, but he did not know her, and she could not even whisper her name into his ear.

  The gods were cruel.