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May 19 - August 18, 2025
The world was full of cravens who pretended to be heroes; it took a queer sort of courage to admit to cowardice as Samwell Tarly had.
“I’ve never had a friend before.” “We’re not friends,” Jon said. He put a hand on Sam’s broad shoulder. “We’re brothers.”
Aww
He rode like a man who feared nothing. Catelyn envied him that; she had come to fear so much.
She could not hate Joffrey tonight. He was too beautiful to hate.
the pie-faced simpleton called Moon Boy,
Yup
The septons preach about the seven hells. What do they know? Only a man who’s been burned knows what hell is truly like.
“The Red Keep shelters two sorts of people, Lord Eddard,” Varys said. “Those who are loyal to the realm, and those who are loyal only to themselves.
who will mourn poor Varys then? North or south, they sing no songs for spiders.”
“Why would Petyr lie to me?” “Why does a bear shit in the woods?” he demanded.
Delay, you say. Make haste, I reply. Even the finest of jugglers cannot keep a hundred balls in the air forever.”
“What if a wizard was sent to kill him?” “Well, as to that,” Desmond replied, drawing his longsword, “wizards die the same as other men, once you cut their heads off.”
And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are too dangerous to share, even with those you love and trust.
Catelyn had more faith in a maester’s learning than a septon’s prayers.
“My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?” He grinned.
Stone was a bastard’s name in the Vale, as Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a surname for children born with no names of their own.
Above Snow, the wind was a living thing, howling around them like a wolf in the waste, then falling off to nothing as if to lure them into complacency.
Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I’ve found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone else.”
Lyanna had only smiled. “Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man’s nature.”
He thought of the promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them.
If the gods frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts?
As the maester knelt to examine the wound, Bran turned his head. Theon Greyjoy stood beside a sentinel tree, his bow in hand. He was smiling. Ever smiling.
For a small man, he had been cursed with a dangerously big mouth, he reflected as he crawled back to his corner of what the Arryns laughably called their dungeon.
“I remember once I asked Maester Luwin why he wore a chain around his throat.” Maester Aemon touched his own collar lightly, his bony, wrinkled finger stroking the heavy metal links. “Go on.” “He told me that a maester’s collar is made of chain to remind him that he is sworn to serve,” Jon said, remembering. “I asked why each link was a different metal. A silver chain would look much finer with his grey robes, I said. Maester Luwin laughed. A maester forges his chain with study, he told me. The different metals are each a different kind of learning, gold for the study of money and accounts,
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Lord Randyll couldn’t make Sam a warrior, and Ser Alliser won’t either. You can’t hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn’t mean tin is useless.
It was queer how sometimes a child’s innocent eyes can see things that grown men are blind to.
“I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine,” Ned said, “but that was not one of them.” “Oh, but it was, my lord,” Cersei insisted. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”
“A man of the Night’s Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman’s love, but for the realm, and all the people in it.
“They will look, and they will talk, and some will mock you.” Let them mock, Bran thought. No one mocked him in his bedchamber, but he would not live his life in bed.
“Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods.” Osha studied him. “You asked them and they’re answering. Open your ears, listen, you’ll hear.” Bran listened. “It’s only the wind,” he said after a moment, uncertain. “The leaves are rustling.” “Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?”
He’s your father’s bannerman, isn’t that so?” The Late Lord Frey, Catelyn thought. “He is,” she admitted, “but my father has never trusted him. Nor should you.” “I won’t,” Robb promised.
“Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night’s Watch take no wives and father no children?” Maester Aemon asked. Jon shrugged. “No.” He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket. “So they will not love,” the old man answered, “for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.”
What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.
The knight gave her a curious look. “You are your brother’s sister, in truth.” “Viserys?” She did not understand. “No,” he answered. “Rhaegar.” He galloped off.
“Father says you should let the men see you before a battle.” “Go, then,” she said. “Let them see you.” “It will give them courage,” Robb said. And who will give me courage? she wondered,
And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled. The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It was a terrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. For a second she felt something like pity for the Lannisters below. So this is what death sounds like, she thought.
The right side of her face was swollen and beginning to ache, but she knew Joffrey would want her to be beautiful.
“Here, girl.” Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her broken lip. The moment was gone. Sansa lowered her eyes. “Thank you,” she said when he was done. She was a good girl, and always remembered her courtesies.
Tell me again what you saved.” “Your life.” Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”
A word, and Dany could have her head off … yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death?
“When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before.” Never, the darkness cried, never never never.
“Why not my uncle? Why not Ser Addam or Ser Flement or Lord Serrett? Why not a … bigger man?” Lord Tywin rose abruptly. “You are my son.” That was when he knew. You have given him up for lost, he thought. You bloody bastard, you think Jaime’s good as dead, so I’m all you have left. Tyrion wanted to slap him, to spit in his face, to draw his dagger and cut the heart out of him and see if it was made of old hard gold, the way the smallfolks said. Yet he sat there, silent and still.
The gift of a sword, even a sword as fine as Longclaw, did not make him a Mormont. Nor was he Aemon Targaryen.
He was who he was; Jon Snow, bastard and oathbreaker, motherless, friendless, and damned. For the rest of his life—however long that might be—he would be condemned to be an outsider, the silent man standing in the shadows who dares not speak his true name.
let these two kings play their game of thrones.
I want my daughters back, and the queen holds them still. If I must trade our four Lannisters for their two Starks, I will call that a bargain and thank the gods. I want you safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from your father’s seat. I want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed a woman and father a son. I want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my lords, and weep for my husband.”
“I swear it,” she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms that by rights were hers.
I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old.
