A Feast for Crows ÔÇö Samwell III
In Braavos Sam brawls with Dareon over duty and silk; he comes back bloody to find Aemon awake, asking after dragons ÔÇö and a girl named Daenerys.
The chapter retold
In Braavos, Sam's simmering resentment of Dareon boils over into an actual brawl ÔÇö a fight about duty, desertion and the vows both of them supposedly swore, fought with fists rather than words for once. Bloodied and humiliated, Sam returns to find Maester Aemon suddenly, briefly awake and lucid, asking urgent questions about dragons ÔÇö and about a name that catches in Sam's throat to hear a blind, dying old man say with such longing: Daenerys.
The scene is a quiet gut-punch disguised as a minor domestic squabble: Sam's physical fight with Dareon (whom the reader, thanks to Arya's earlier chapter, may already suspect is a dead man walking) is almost comic in its clumsiness, but it's staged directly against Aemon's sudden, lucid fixation on Daenerys ÔÇö the last Targaryen maester's dying preoccupation with the last Targaryen queen he will never meet. It's the clearest signal yet that Aemon's storyline is racing toward its end, and that whatever peace he finds will be bound up entirely in that name.
This movement: The Quill and the Quiet Isle
- Brienne's hunt crosses the Quiet Isle, where a limping gravedigger is taller than any brother has a right to be.
- Sam sails for Oldtown via Braavos, where a girl called Cat learns his name ÔÇö and Maester Aemon hears of dragons and weeps.
- Jaime brings the king's peace to the riverlands with words where his sword hand used to be; Riverrun yields without blood.
- Arya's nightly wolf dreams betray her to the kindly man; a girl must give up Arya Stark ÔÇö she hides Needle instead.