“We will make King’s Landing within the hour.”

Catelyn turned away from the rail and forced herself to smile. “Your oarmen have done well by us,Captain. Each one of them shall have a silver stag, as a token of my gratitude.”

Captain Moreo Tumitis favored her with a half bow. “You are far too generous, Lady Stark. Thehonor of carrying a great lady like yourself is all the reward they need.”

“But they’ll take the silver anyway.”

Moreo smiled. “As you say.” He spoke the Common Tongue fluently, with only the slightest hintof a Tyroshi accent. He’d been plying the narrow sea for thirty years, he’d told her, as oarman,quartermaster, and finally captain of his own trading galleys. The Storm Dancer was his fourth ship,and his fastest, a two-masted galley of sixty oars.

She had certainly been the fastest of the ships available in White Harbor when Catelyn and SerRodrik Cassel had arrived after their headlong gallop downriver. The Tyroshi were notorious for theiravarice, and Ser Rodrik had argued for hiring a fishing sloop out of the Three Sisters, but Catelyn hadinsisted on the galley. It was good that she had. The winds had been against them much of the voyage,and without the galley’s oars they’d still be beating their way past the Fingers, instead of skimmingtoward King’s Landing and journey’s end.

So close, she thought. Beneath the linen bandages, her fingers still throbbed where the dagger hadbitten. The pain was her scourge, Catelyn felt, lest she forget. She could not bend the last two fingerson her left hand, and the others would never again be dexterous. Yet that was a small enough price topay for Bran’s life.

Ser Rodrik chose that moment to appear on deck. “My good friend,” said Moreo through his forkedgreen beard. The Tyroshi loved bright colors, even in their facial hair. “It is so fine to see you lookingbetter.”

“Yes,” Ser Rodrik agreed. “I haven’t wanted to die for almost two days now.” He bowed toCatelyn. “My lady.”

He was looking better. A shade thinner than he had been when they set out from White Harbor, butalmost himself again. The strong winds in the Bite and the roughness of the narrow sea had not agreedwith him, and he’d almost gone over the side when the storm seized them unexpectedly offDragonstone, yet somehow he had clung to a rope until three of Moreo’s men could rescue him andcarry him safely below decks.

“The captain was just telling me that our voyage is almost at an end,” she said.

Ser Rodrik managed a wry smile. “So soon?” He looked odd without his great white side whiskers;smaller somehow, less fierce, and ten years older. Yet back on the Bite it had seemed prudent tosubmit to a crewman’s razor, after his whiskers had become hopelessly befouled for the third timewhile he leaned over the rail and retched into the swirling winds.

“I will leave you to discuss your business,” Captain Moreo said. He bowed and took his leave ofthem.

The galley skimmed the water like a dragonfly, her oars rising and falling in perfect time. SerRodrik held the rail and looked out over the passing shore. “I have not been the most valiant ofprotectors.”

Catelyn touched his arm. “We are here, Ser Rodrik, and safely. That is all that truly matters.” Herhand groped beneath her cloak, her fingers stiff and fumbling. The dagger was still at her side. Shefound she had to touch it now and then, to reassure herself. “Now we must reach the king’s master-atarms,and pray that he can be trusted.”

“Ser Aron Santagar is a vain man, but an honest one.” Ser Rodrik’s hand went to his face to strokehis whiskers and discovered once again that they were gone. He looked nonplussed. “He may knowthe blade, yes … but, my lady, the moment we go ashore we are at risk. And there are those at courtwho will know you on sight.”

Catelyn’s mouth grew tight. “Littlefinger,” she murmured. His face swam up before her; a boy’sface, though he was a boy no longer. His father had died several years before, so he was Lord Baelishnow, yet still they called him Littlefinger. Her brother Edmure had given him that name, long ago atRiverrun. His family’s modest holdings were on the smallest of the Fingers, and Petyr had been slightand short for his age.

Ser Rodrik cleared his throat. “Lord Baelish once, ah …” His thought trailed off uncertainly insearch of the polite word.

Catelyn was past delicacy. “He was my father’s ward. We grew up together in Riverrun. I thoughtof him as a brother, but his feelings for me were … more than brotherly. When it was announced thatI was to wed Brandon Stark, Petyr challenged for the right to my hand. It was madness. Brandon wastwenty, Petyr scarcely fifteen. I had to beg Brandon to spare Petyr’s life. He let him off with a scar.

Afterward my father sent him away. I have not seen him since.” She lifted her face to the spray, as ifthe brisk wind could blow the memories away. “He wrote to me at Riverrun after Brandon was killed,but I burned the letter unread. By then I knew that Ned would marry me in his brother’s place.”

Ser Rodrik’s fingers fumbled once again for nonexistent whiskers. “Littlefinger sits on the smallcouncil now.”

“I knew he would rise high,” Catelyn said. “He was always clever, even as a boy, but it is onething to be clever and another to be wise. I wonder what the years have done to him.”

High overhead, the far-eyes sang out from the rigging. Captain Moreo came scrambling across thedeck, giving orders, and all around them the Storm Dancer burst into frenetic activity as King’sLanding slid into view atop its three high hills.

Three hundred years ago, Catelyn knew, those heights had been covered with forest, and only ahandful of fisherfolk had lived on the north shore of the Blackwater Rush where that deep, swift riverflowed into the sea. Then Aegon the Conqueror had sailed from Dragonstone. It was here that hisarmy had put ashore, and there on the highest hill that he built his first crude redoubt of wood andearth.

Now the city covered the shore as far as Catelyn could see; manses and arbors and granaries, brickstorehouses and timbered inns and merchant’s stalls, taverns and graveyards and brothels, all piledone on another. She could hear the clamor of the fish market even at this distance. Between thebuildings were broad roads lined with trees, wandering crookback streets, and alleys so narrow thattwo men could not walk abreast. Visenya’s hill was crowned by the Great Sept of Baelor with itsseven crystal towers. Across the city on the hill of Rhaenys stood the blackened walls of theDragonpit, its huge dome collapsing into ruin, its bronze doors closed now for a century. The Street ofthe Sisters ran between them, straight as an arrow. The city walls rose in the distance, high and strong.

A hundred quays lined the waterfront, and the harbor was crowded with ships. Deepwater fishingboats and river runners came and went, ferrymen poled back and forth across the Blackwater Rush,trading galleys unloaded goods from Braavos and Pentos and Lys. Catelyn spied the queen’s ornatebarge, tied up beside a fat-bellied whaler from the Port of Ibben, its hull black with tar, while uprivera dozen lean golden warships rested in their cribs, sails furled and cruel iron rams lapping at thewater.

And above it all, frowning down from Aegon’s high hill, was the Red Keep; seven huge drum-towers crowned with iron ramparts, an immense grim barbican, vaulted halls and covered bridges,barracks and dungeons and granaries, massive curtain walls studded with archers’ nests, all fashionedof pale red stone. Aegon the Conqueror had commanded it built. His son Maegor the Cruel had seen itcompleted. Afterward he had taken the heads of every stonemason, woodworker, and builder who hadlabored on it. Only the blood of the dragon would ever know the secrets of the fortress theDragonlords had built, he vowed.

Yet now the banners that flew from its battlements were golden, not black, and where the threeheaded dragon had once breathed fire, now pranced the crowned stag of House Baratheon.

A high-masted swan ship from the Summer Isles was beating out from port, its white sails hugewith wind. The Storm Dancer moved past it, pulling steadily for shore.

“My lady,” Ser Rodrik said, “I have thought on how best to proceed while I lay abed. You mustnot enter the castle. I will go in your stead and bring Ser Aron to you in some safe place.”

She studied the old knight as the galley drew near to a pier. Moreo was shouting in the vulgarValyrian of the Free Cities. “You would be as much at risk as I would.”

Ser Rodrik smiled. “I think not. I looked at my reflection in the water earlier and scarcelyrecognized myself. My mother was the last person to see me without whiskers, and she is forty yearsdead. I believe I am safe enough, my lady.”

Moreo bellowed a command. As one, sixty oars lifted from the river, then reversed and backedwater. The galley slowed. Another shout. The oars slid back inside the hull. As they thumped againstthe dock, Tyroshi seamen leapt down to tie up. Moreo came bustling up, all smiles. “King’s Landing,my lady, as you did command, and never has a ship made a swifter or surer passage. Will you beneeding assistance to carry your things to the castle?”

“We shall not be going to the castle. Perhaps you can suggest an inn, someplace clean andcomfortable and not too far from the river.”

The Tyroshi fingered his forked green beard. “Just so. I know of several establishments that mightsuit your needs. Yet first, if I may be so bold, there is the matter of the second half of the payment weagreed upon. And of course the extra silver you were so kind as to promise. Sixty stags, I believe itwas.”

“For the oarmen,” Catelyn reminded him.

“Oh, of a certainty,” said Moreo. “Though perhaps I should hold it for them until we return toTyrosh. For the sake of their wives and children. If you give them the silver here, my lady, they willdice it away or spend it all for a night’s pleasure.”

“There are worse things to spend money on,” Ser Rodrik put in. “Winter is coming.”

“A man must make his own choices,” Catelyn said. “They earned the silver. How they spend it isno concern of mine.”

“As you say, my lady,” Moreo replied, bowing and smiling.

Just to be sure, Catelyn paid the oarmen herself, a stag to each man, and a copper to the two menwho carried their chests halfway up Visenya’s hill to the inn that Moreo had suggested. It was arambling old place on Eel Alley. The woman who owned it was a sour crone with a wandering eyewho looked them over suspiciously and bit the coin that Catelyn offered her to make sure it was real.

Her rooms were large and airy, though, and Moreo swore that her fish stew was the most savory in allthe Seven Kingdoms. Best of all, she had no interest in their names.

“I think it best if you stay away from the common room,” Ser Rodrik said, after they had settledin. “Even in a place like this, one never knows who may be watching.” He wore ringmail, dagger, andlongsword under a dark cloak with a hood he could pull up over his head. “I will be back beforenightfall, with Ser Aron,” he promised. “Rest now, my lady.”

Catelyn was tired. The voyage had been long and fatiguing, and she was no longer as young as shehad been. Her windows opened on the alley and rooftops, with a view of the Blackwater beyond. Shewatched Ser Rodrik set off, striding briskly through the ............