Shagga hefted the huge double-bladed axe. “There are no goats, Halfman.”

“Make do.”

Roaring, Shagga leapt forward. Pycelle shrieked and wet the bed, urine spraying in all directions as he tried to scramble back out of reach. The wildling caught him by the end of his billowy white beard and hacked off three-quarters of it with a single slash of the axe.

“Timett, do you suppose our friend will be more forthcoming without those whiskers to hide behind?” Tyrion used a bit of the sheet to wipe the piss off his boots.

“He will tell the truth soon.” Darkness pooled in the empty pit of Timett’s burned eye. “I can smell the stink of his fear.”

Shagga tossed a handful of hair down to the rushes, and seized what beard was left. “Hold still, Maester,” urged Tyrion. “When Shagga gets angry, his hands shake.”

“Shagga’s hands never shake,” the huge man said indignantly, pressing the great crescent blade under Pycelle’s quivering chin and sawing through another tangle of beard.

“How long have you been spying for my sister?” Tyrion asked.

Pycelle’s breathing was rapid and shallow. “All I did, I did for House Lannister.” A sheen of sweat covered the broad dome of the old man’s brow, and wisps of white hair clung to his wrinkled skin. “Always . . . for years . . . your lord father, ask him, I was ever his true servant . . . ‘twas I who bid Aerys open his gates . . .”

That took Tyrion by surprise. He had been no more than an ugly boy at Casterly Rock when the city fell. “So the Sack of King’s Landing was your work as well?”

“For the realm! Once Rhaegar died, the war was done. Aerys was mad, Viserys too young, Prince Aegon a babe at the breast, but the realm needed a king . . . I prayed it should be your good father, but Robert was too strong, and Lord Stark moved too swiftly . . .”

“How many have you betrayed, I wonder? Aerys, Eddard Stark, me . . . King Robert as well? Lord Arryn, Prince Rhaegar? Where does it begin, Pycelle?” He knew where it ended.

The axe scratched at the apple of Pycelle’s throat and stroked the soft wobbly skin under his jaw, scraping away the last hairs. “You . . . were not here,” he gasped when the blade moved upward to his cheeks. “Robert . . . his wounds . . . if you had seen them, smelled them, you would have no doubt . . .”

“Oh, I know the boar did your work for you . . . but if he’d left the job half done, doubtless you would have finished it.”

“He was a wretched king . . . vain, drunken, lecherous . . . he would have set your sister aside, his own queen . . . please . . . Renly was plotting to bring the Highgarden maid to court, to entice his brother . . . it is the gods’ own truth . . .”

“And what was Lord Arryn plotting?”

“He knew ,” Pycelle said. “About . . . about . . .”

“I know what he knew about,” snapped Tyrion, who was not anxious for Shagga and Timett to know as well.

“He was sending his wife back to the Eyrie, and his son to be fostered on Dragonstone . . . he meant to act . . .”

“So you poisoned him first.”

“No. ” Pycelle struggled feebly. Shagga growled and grabbed his head. The clansman’s hand was so big he could have crushed the maester’s skull like an eggshell had he squeezed.

Tyrion tsk ed at him. “I saw the tears of Lys among your potions. And you sent away Lord Arryn’s own maester and tended him yourself, so you could make certain that he died.”

“A falsehood!”

“Shave him closer,” Tyrion suggested. “The throat again.”

The axe swept back down, rasping over the skin. A thin film of spit bubbled on Pycelle’s lips as his mouth trembled. “I tried to save Lord Arryn. I vow—”

“Careful now, Shagga, you’ve cut him.”

Shagga growled. “Dolf fathered warriors, not barbers.”

When he felt the blood trickling down his neck and onto his chest, the old man shuddered, and the last strength went out of him. He looked shrunken, both smaller and frailer than he had been when they burst in on him. “Yes,” he whimpered, “yes , Colemon was purging, so I sent him away. The queen needed Lord Arryn dead, she did not say so, could not, Varys was listening, always listening, but when I looked at her I knew. It was not me who gave him the poison, though, I swear it.” The old man wept. “Varys will tell you, it was the boy, his squire, Hugh he was called, he must surely have done it, ask your sister, ask her.”

Tyrion was disgusted. “Bind him and take him away,” he commanded. “Throw him down in one of the black cells.”

They dragged him out the splintered door. “Lannister,” he moaned, “all I’ve done has been for Lannister . . .”

When he was gone, Tyrion made a leisurely search of the quarters and collected a few more small jars from his shelves. The ravens muttered above his head as he worked, a strangely peaceful noise. He would need to find someone to tend the birds until the Citadel sent a man to replace Pycelle.

He was the one I’d hoped to trust . Varys and Littlefinger were no more loyal, he suspected . . . only more subtle, and thus more dangerous. Perhaps his father’s way would have been best: summon Ilyn Payne, mount three heads above the gates, and have done. And wouldn’t that be a pretty sight , he thought.

ARYA

F ear cuts deeper than swords , Arya would tell herself, but that did not make the fear go away. It was as much a part of her days as stale bread and the blisters on her toes after a long day of walking the hard, rutted road.

She had thought she had known what it meant to be afraid, but she learned better in that storehouse beside the Gods Eye. Eight days she had lingered there before the Mountain gave the command to march, and every day she had seen someone die.

The Mountain would come into the storehouse after he had broken his fast and pick one of the prisoners for questioning. The village folk would never look at him. Maybe they thought that if they did not notice him, he would not notice them . . . but he saw them anyway and picked whom he liked. There was no place to hide, no tricks to play, no way to be safe.

One girl shared a soldier’s bed three nights running; the Mountain picked her on the fourth day, and the soldier said nothing.

A smiley old man mended their clothing and babbled about his son, off serving in the gold cloaks at King’s Landing. “A king’s man, he is,” he would say, “a good king’s man like me, all for Joffrey.” He said it so often the other captives began to call him All-for-Joffrey whenever the guards weren’t listening. All-for-Joffrey was picked on the fifth day.

A young mother with a pox-scarred face offered to freely tell them all she knew if they’d promise not to hurt her daughter. The Mountain heard her out; the next morning he picked her daughter, to be certain she’d held nothing back.

The ones chosen were questioned in full view of the other captives, so they could see the fate of rebels and traitors. A man the others called the Tickler asked the questions. His face was so ordinary and his garb so plain that Arya might have thought him one of the villagers before she had seen him at his work. “Tickler makes them howl so hard they piss themselves,” old stoop-shoulder Chiswyck told them. He was the man she’d tried to bite, who’d called her a fierce little thing and smashed her head with a mailed fist. Sometimes he helped the Tickler. Sometimes others did that. Ser Gregor Clegane himself would stand motionless, watching and listening, until the victim died.

The questions were always the same. Was there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Was there more food? Where was Lord Beric Dondarrion? Which of the village folk had aided him? When he rode off, where did he go? How many men were with them? How many knights, how many bowmen, how many men-at-arms? How were they armed? How many were horsed? How many were wounded? What other enemy had they seen? How many? When? What banners did they fly? Where did they go? Was there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Where was Lord Beric Dondarrion? How many men were with him? By the third day, Arya could have asked the questions herself.