A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Quentyn II
Quentyn serves as a sellsword in the Windblown, crossing the desert toward a war against the very queen he has come to marry; desertion, when it comes, must be earned.
The chapter retold
Quentyn Martell, having reached the war camps around Meereen under an assumed name, takes service in the Windblown, a mercenary company fighting on YunkaiÔÇÖs side against the very queen he crossed the world to marry. It is a strange, humbling posture for a prince ÔÇö mucking in with sellswords, hiding his name and his purpose from men who would kill him for either ÔÇö and every day in the camp is a rehearsal for the harder problem waiting underneath it: defecting from a paid company, in wartime, without being hanged for it first.
The chapter measures the gap between QuentynÔÇÖs mission and QuentynÔÇÖs temperament with quiet, mounting dread ÔÇö he is patient, careful, decent, none of which are qualities that reliably survive contact with mercenary politics or dragon queens. Desertion, the chapter insists, has to be earned rather than simply declared, and watching a prince learn the sellswordÔÇÖs rules of loyalty from the bottom up is the bookÔÇÖs way of making clear just how far outmatched he is by everyone else angling for a piece of DaenerysÔÇÖs war.
This movement: The Griffin and the Rhoyne
- Aboard the Shy Maid, Tyrion unmasks his companions: Jon Connington, exiled griffin lord ÔÇö and 'Young Griff', a blue-haired boy who may be Rhaegar's son Aegon.
- Stone men attack on the Bridge of Dream; Tyrion pulls Young Griff from the river; Connington comes up with greyscale he tells no one about.
- Quentyn Martell crosses half a world with a marriage pact signed in old ink, to court a queen who's never heard of him.
- Tyrion is snatched in Volantis by a knight in a merchant's skin: Jorah Mormont, buying his way home with a dwarf.