“You want eat?” Mord asked, glowering. He had a plate of boiled beans in one thick, stub-fingered hand.

Tyrion Lannister was starved, but he refused to let this brute see him cringe. “A leg of lamb wouldbe pleasant,” he said, from the heap of soiled straw in the corner of his cell. “Perhaps a dish of peasand onions, some fresh baked bread with butter, and a flagon of mulled wine to wash it down. Orbeer, if that’s easier. I try not to be overly particular.”

“Is beans,” Mord said. “Here.” He held out the plate.

Tyrion sighed. The turnkey was twenty stone of gross stupidity, with brown rotting teeth and smalldark eyes. The left side of his face was slick with scar where an axe had cut off his ear and part of hischeek. He was as predictable as he was ugly, but Tyrion was hungry. He reached up for the plate.

Mord jerked it away, grinning. “Is here,” he said, holding it out beyond Tyrion’s reach.

The dwarf climbed stiffly to his feet, every joint aching. “Must we play the same fool’s game withevery meal?” He made another grab for the beans.

Mord shambled backward, grinning through his rotten teeth. “Is here, dwarf man.” He held theplate out at arm’s length, over the edge where the cell ended and the sky began. “You not want eat?

Here. Come take.”

Tyrion’s arms were too short to reach the plate, and he was not about to step that close to the edge.

All it would take would be a quick shove of Mord’s heavy white belly, and he would end up asickening red splotch on the stones of Sky, like so many other prisoners of the Eyrie over thecenturies. “Come to think on it, I’m not hungry after all,” he declared, retreating to the corner of hiscell.

Mord grunted and opened his thick fingers. The wind took the plate, flipping it over as it fell. Ahandful of beans sprayed back at them as the food tumbled out of sight. The turnkey laughed, his gutshaking like a bowl of pudding.

Tyrion felt a pang of rage. “You fucking son of a pox-ridden ass,” he spat. “I hope you die of abloody flux.”

For that, Mord gave him a kick, driving a steel-toed boot hard into Tyrion’s ribs on the way out. “Itake it back!” he gasped as he doubled over on the straw. “I’ll kill you myself, I swear it!” The heavyiron-bound door slammed shut. Tyrion heard the rattle of keys.

For a small man, he had been cursed with a dangerously big mouth, he reflected as he crawled backto his corner of what the Arryns laughably called their dungeon. He huddled beneath the thin blanketthat was his only bedding, staring out at a blaze of empty blue sky and distant mountains that seemedto go on forever, wishing he still had the shadowskin cloak he’d won from Marillion at dice, after thesinger had stolen it off the body of that brigand chief. The skin had smelled of blood and mold, but itwas warm and thick. Mord had taken it the moment he laid eyes on it.

The wind tugged at his blanket with gusts sharp as talons. His cell was miserably small, even for adwarf. Not five feet away, where a wall ought to have been, where a wall would be in a properdungeon, the floor ended and the sky began. He had plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and the moonand stars by night, but Tyrion would have traded it all in an instant for the dankest, gloomiest pit inthe bowels of the Casterly Rock.

“You fly,” Mord had promised him, when he’d shoved him into the cell. “Twenty day, thirty, fiftymaybe. Then you fly.”

The Arryns kept the only dungeon in the realm where the prisoners were welcome to escape at will.

That first day, after girding up his courage for hours, Tyrion had lain flat on his stomach andsquirmed to the edge, to poke out his head and look down. Sky was six hundred feet below, withnothing between but empty air. If he craned his neck out as far as it could go, he could see other cellsto his right and left and above him. He was a bee in a stone honeycomb, and someone had torn off hiswings.

It was cold in the cell, the wind screamed night and day, and worst of all, the floor sloped. Ever soslightly, yet it was enough. He was afraid to close his eyes, afraid that he might roll over in his sleepand wake in sudden terror as he went sliding off the edge. Small wonder the sky cells drove men mad.

Gods save me, some previous tenant had written on the wall in something that looked suspiciouslylike blood, the blue is calling. At first Tyrion wondered who he’d been, and what had become of him;later, he decided that he would rather not know.

If only he had shut his mouth …The wretched boy had started it, looking down on him from a throne of carved weirwood beneaththe moon-and-falcon banners of House Arryn. Tyrion Lannister had been looked down on all his life,but seldom by rheumy-eyed six-year-olds who needed to stuff fat cushions under their cheeks to liftthem to the height of a man. “Is he the bad man?” the boy had asked, clutching his doll.

“He is,” the Lady Lysa had said from the lesser throne beside him. She was all in blue, powderedand perfumed for the suitors who filled her court.

“He’s so small,” the Lord of the Eyrie said, giggling.

“This is Tyrion the Imp, of House Lannister, who murdered your father.” She raised her voice soit carried down the length of High Hall of the Eyrie, ringing off the milk-white walls and the slenderpillars, so every man could hear it. “He slew the Hand of the King!”

“Oh, did I kill him too?” Tyrion had said, like a fool.

That would have been a very good time to have kept his mouth closed and his head bowed. Hecould see that now; seven hells, he had seen it then. The High Hall of the Arryns was long andaustere, with a forbidding coldness to its walls of blue-veined white marble, but the faces around himhad been colder by far. The power of Casterly Rock was far away, and there were no friends of theLannisters in the Vale of Arryn. Submission and silence would have been his best defenses.

But Tyrion’s mood had been too foul for sense. To his shame, he had faltered during the last leg oftheir day-long climb up to the Eyrie, his stunted legs unable to take him any higher. Bronn had carriedhim the rest of the way, and the humiliation poured oil on the flames of his anger. “It would seem I’vebeen a busy little fellow,” he said with bitter sarcasm. “I wonder when I found the time to do all thisslaying and murdering.”

He ought to have remembered who he was dealing with. Lysa Arryn and her half-sane weaklingson had not been known at court for their love of wit, especially when it was directed at them.

“Imp,” Lysa said coldly, “you will guard that mocking tongue of yours and speak to my sonpolitely, or I promise you will have cause to regret it. Remember where you are. This is the Eyrie, andthese are knights of the Vale you see around you, true men who loved Jon Arryn well. Every one ofthem would die for me.”

“Lady Arryn, should any harm come to me, my brother Jaime will be pleased to see that they do.”

Even as he spat out the words, Tyrion knew they were folly.

“Can you fly, my lord of Lannister?” Lady Lysa asked. “Does a dwarf have wings? If not, youwould be wiser to swallow the next threat that comes to mind.”

“I made no threats,” Tyrion said. “That was a promise.”

Little Lord Robert hopped to his feet at that, so upset he dropped his doll. “You can’t hurt us,” hescreamed. “No one can hurt us here. Tell him, Mother, tell him he can’t hurt us here.” The boy beganto twitch.

“The Eyrie is impregnable,” Lysa Arryn declared calmly. She drew her son close, holding himsafe in the circle of her plump white arms. “The Imp is trying to frighten us, sweet baby. TheLannisters are all liars. No one will hurt my sweet boy.”

The hell of it was, she was no doubt right. Having seen what it took to get here, Tyrion could wellimagine how it would be for a knight trying to fight his way up in armor, while stones and arrowspoured down from above and enemies contested with him for every step. Nightmare did not begin todescribe it. Small wonder the Eyrie had never been taken.

Still, Tyrion had been unable to silence himself. “Not impregnable,” he said, “merelyinconvenient.”

Young Robert pointed down, his hand trembling. “You’re a liar. Mother, I want to see him fly.”

Two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks seized Tyrion by the arms, lifting him off his floor.

The gods only know what might have happened then were it not for Catelyn Stark. “Sister,” shecalled out from where she stood below the thrones, “I beg you to remember, this man is my prisoner. Iwill not have him harmed.”

Lysa Arryn glanced at her sister coolly for a moment, then rose and swept down on Tyrion, herlong skirts trailing after her. For an instant he feared she would strike him, but instead shecommanded them to release him. Her men shoved him to the floor, his legs went out from under him,and Tyrion fell.

He must have made quite a sight as he struggled to his knees, only to feel his right leg spasm,sending him sprawling once more. Laughter boomed up and down the High Hall of the Arryns.

“My sister’s little guest is too weary to stand,” Lady Lysa announced. “Ser Vardis, take him downto the dungeon. A rest in one of our sky cells will do him much good.”

The guardsmen jerked him upright. Tyrion Lannister dangled between them, kicking feebly, hisface red with shame. “I will remember this,” he told them all as they carried him off.

And so he did, for all the good it did him.

At first he had consoled himself that this imprisonment could not last long. Lysa Arryn wanted tohumble him, that was all. She would send for him again, and soon. If not her, then Catelyn Starkwould want to question him. This time he would guard his tongue more closely. They dare not killhim out of hand; he was still a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and if they shed his blood, it would meanwar. Or so he had told himself.

Now he was not so certain.

Perhaps his captors only meant to let him rot here, but he feared he did not have the strength to rotfor long. He was growing weaker every day, and it was only a matter of time until Mord’s kicks andblows did him serious harm, provided the gaoler did not starve him to death first. A few more nightsof cold and hunger, and the blue would start calling to him too.

He wondered what was happening beyond the walls (such as they were) of his cell. Lord Tywinwould surely have sent out riders when the word reached him. Jaime might be leading a host throughthe Mountains of the Moon even now … unless he was riding north against Winterfell instead. Didanyone outside the Vale even suspect where Catelyn Stark had taken him? He wondered what Cerseiwould do when she heard. The king could order him freed, but would Robert listen to his queen or hisHand? Tyrion had no illusions about the king’s love for his sister.

If Cersei kept her wits about her, she would insist the king sit in judgment of Tyrion himself. EvenNed Stark could scarcely object to that, not without impugning the honor of the king. And Tyrionwould be only too glad to take his chances in a trial. Whatever murders they might lay at his door, theStarks had no proof of anything so far as he could see. Let them make their case before the IronThrone and the lords of the land. It would be the end of them. If only Cersei were clever enough tosee that …Tyrion Lannister sighed. His sister was not without a certain low cunning, but her pride blindedher. She would see the insult in this, not the opportunity. And Jaime was even worse, rash andheadstrong and quick to anger. His brother never untied a knot when he could slash it in two with hissword.

He wondered which of them had sent the footpad to silence the Stark boy, and whether they hadtruly conspired at the death of Lord Arryn. If the old Hand had been murdered, it was deftly andsubtly done. Men of his age died of sudden illness all the time. In contrast, sending some oaf with astolen knife after Brandon Stark struck him as unbelievably clumsy. And wasn’t that peculiar, cometo think on it …Tyrion shivered. Now there was a nasty suspicion. Perhaps the direwolf and the lion were not theonly beasts in the woods, and if that was true, someone was using him as a catspaw. Tyrion Lannisterhated being used.

He would have to get out of here, and soon. His chances of overpowering Mord were small to none,and no one was about to smuggle him a six-hundred-foot-long rope, so he would have to talk himselffree. His mouth had gotten him into this cell; it could damn well get him out.

Tyrion pushed himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the slope of the floor beneath him, withits ever-so-subtle tug toward the edge. He hammered on the door with a fist. “Mord!” he shouted.

“Turnkey! Mord, I want you!” He had to keep it up a good ten minutes before he heard footsteps.

Tyrion stepped back an instant before the door opened with a crash.

“Making noise,” Mord growled, with blood in his eyes. Dangling from one meaty hand was aleather strap, wide and thick, doubled over in his fist.

Never show them you’re afraid, Tyrion reminded himself. “How would you like to be rich?” heasked.

Mord hit him. He swung the strap backhand, lazily, but the leather caught Tyrion high on the arm.

The force of it staggered him, and the pain made him grit his teeth. “No mouth, dwarf man,” Mordwarned him.

“Gold,” Tyrion said, miming a smile. “Casterly Rock is full of gold … ahhhh …” This time theblow was a forehand, and Mord put more of his arm into the swing, making the leather crack andjump. It caught Tyrion in the ribs and dropped him to his knees, wimpering. He forced himself to lookup at the gaoler. “As rich as the Lannisters,” he wheezed. “That’s what they say, Mord—”

Mord grunted. The strap whistled through the air and smashed Tyrion full in the face. The pain wasso bad he did not remember falling, but when he opened his eyes again he was on the floor of his cell.

His ear was ringing, and his mouth was full of blood. He groped for purchase, to push himself up, andhis fingers brushed against &hellip............