A Clash of Kings — Arya II
Gold cloaks ride out from the city with a warrant — for Gendry; Yoren's dirk and thirty ragged brothers send them back empty-handed.
The chapter retold
The Watch’s rearguard catches up with consequences of Arya’s first chapter: gold cloaks ride out of King’s Landing bearing a warrant for a fugitive smith’s apprentice — Gendry, wanted for reasons the boy himself doesn’t understand and Arya, who does, is careful never to explain. Yoren has spent a lifetime keeping recruits out of the crown’s hands and does it again here with nothing more than a knife at a throat and thirty ragged boys backing his refusal to hand anyone over.
It’s a small standoff by the war’s coming standards — no pitched battle, no famous names — but it does real work establishing what kind of protector Yoren is and what kind of secret Gendry is carrying without knowing it. Robert’s bastard son, unclaimed and unaware, is exactly the sort of loose thread Cersei’s regime wants tied off quietly, and the gold cloaks’ failure here buys him more road before that thread gets pulled again.
This movement: The Comet
- A red comet splits the sky; five would-be kings each read their crown in it.
- On Dragonstone, Maester Cressen tries to poison the red priestess and drinks first; Stannis proclaims Joffrey a bastard born of incest.
- Tyrion takes the Hand's chair with Bronn at his back and starts removing his sister's men.
- Beyond the Wall, the Old Bear leads three hundred swords north into silence.