A Dance of Cloaks - By Dalglish, David Page 0,4

and guards while they bring in men off the street. We have our mansions and they have their hovels, and you tell me which is easier to hide? They are like worms. We cut off a head only to have two more grow from the parts.”

“They don’t fear you,” Alyssa said. “None of you. Spineless men, you will lose everything but what you hold in your hands, hands that shrink with each passing day. Do you know how many of your own mercenaries give a portion of their coin to the guilds?”

“And how would you know?” Maynard asked. He leaned back in his chair. His shoulders felt heavy and his arms made of stone. So many times he had heard this same argument from reckless fools. It saddened him to realize his daughter was now one of them. A bit of anger kindled in his heart. If Alyssa had such thoughts, he doubted they were originally her own. She had been out of the city for far too long to be so aware. Someone had fed her information twisted to fit their scheme.

“How I know doesn’t matter,” Alyssa said a bit too quickly.

“It is all that matters,” Maynard said. He rose from his chair and clapped for his servants. “Yoren Kull has been whispering in your ear, hasn’t he? I forbid Lord Pensley from allowing him contact with you, but where there’s walls there’s rats, isn’t that right?”

“I’ve had many fosters.” Her voice was losing a bit of her certainty. She did fine when on the offensive. Now that his eye was on her, she faltered. “And what does it matter? I stayed with Lord Kull during the winter months. His castle is closer to the ocean where it’s warm.”

“Lord Kull?” Maynard laughed. “He collects taxes from Riverrun. My servants live in a better home. Tell me, did he seduce you with whispers of power and a glass of wine?”

“You’re avoiding my…”

“No,” Maynard said, his voice growing stern. “You’ve been tainted with lies. We are still feared, but the guilds are feared even more. They are desperate. They kill without abandon. They have someone whispering in the ear of King Vaelor to convince him of our blame in all these matters. I have had as many men executed by the royal noose as killed by daggers in the night. Those who side with us gag on their food or have their children vanish from their bedchambers. Besides, we may have our wealth, but they have Thren Felhorn.”

He clapped again. Servants crowded around all of them. Alyssa felt uncomfortable by their presence, and then the guards arrived.

“Take her,” Maynard said.

“You can’t!” she shouted as rough hands grabbed her arms and pulled her flailing from the table.

He forced himself to watch her dragged away but refused to say a thing. There was too much chance he’d reveal his pain.

“What do you want us to do with her?” asked his keeper of the guard, a simple-minded man made useful by his muscles and sheer devotion to his work.

“Put her in one of the cells,” Maynard said as he sat at the table and picked up a fork.

“The gentle touchers would make her talk sooner,” said the guardkeeper. Maynard looked up, appalled.

“Under no circumstances,” he said. “She is my daughter. Give her time to cool underneath the stone. Once she’s ready, I can show her just how bloody this war has gotten. I should have brought her back to me, I see that now. She says she is a woman grown, and of that I have no doubt. Let us hope her cunning surpasses even my own. I will not have my wealth stolen from me by a pathetic tax collector.”

Aaron sat alone. The walls were bare wood. The floor had no carpet. There were no windows and only a single door, locked and barred from the outside. The silence was heavy, broken only by his occasional cough. In the far corner was a pail full of his waste. Thankfully, he had stopped smelling it after the first day.

His new teacher had given him only one instruction: wait. He had been given a waterskin, but no food, no timetable, and worst of all, nothing to read. The boredom was far worse than his previous instructor’s constant beatings and shouts. Gus the Gruff he had called himself. The other members of the guild whispered that Thren had lashed Gus twenty times after his son’s training was finished. Aaron hoped his new teacher would be outright