A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Jaime I
Down the river in a skiff: Jaime Lannister, freed by a mother's treason, rows past a burned land trading insults with the huge wench sworn to deliver him.
The chapter retold
Jaime Lannister opens the book the way the book needed him opened ÔÇö from inside his own head for the first time, in a stolen skiff drifting down a burned Trident with the biggest woman he has ever needled for company. Freed by Catelyn Stark's quiet treason and bound for King's Landing under Brienne of Tarth's watch, he fills the silence with jokes about wenches and honor because the alternative is admitting he has nothing left to threaten anyone with ÔÇö no sword hand yet lost, but a captor's leash all the same, and a kingdom of drowned mills and burned villages sliding past the gunwales as proof of what his family's war has cost people who never held a sword in it.
The chapter's real business is voice: readers who have spent two books despising the Kingslayer from the outside are handed his interior for the first time, and what is in there is smarter, funnier and more wounded than the reputation suggested. Brienne, sworn to deliver him whole to King's Landing in trade for Catelyn's daughters, treats every reflection on the water like a threat and every one of Jaime's barbs like a test ÔÇö the first notes of a partnership neither of them would admit to wanting yet.
This movement: Wolves at the Crossing
- Brienne rows the Kingslayer downriver under a flag of lies; the banter starts sharpening into respect.
- Robb returns to Riverrun with a Westerling bride and a broken treaty; the Freys go home cold.
- Beyond the Wall, the survivors of the Fist stagger to Craster's; Sam earns the name Slayer with a dragonglass dagger.
- Dany sails for Astapor, where an army that feels nothing is sold by men who feel less.