A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Tyrion IX

Shipwrecked survivors are scooped up by slavers off the coast; Tyrion talks fast enough to keep Penny and Jorah alive as far as the auction block outside Meereen.

The chapter retold

The storm-battered survivors of the Selaesori Qhoran are scooped out of the water by slavers cruising the coast for exactly this kind of opportunity, and Tyrion talks fast and constantly to keep himself, Penny, and Jorah alive and together through the humiliating process of being valued, inspected, and marched toward the auction block outside plague-stricken Meereen. His tongue, so often his only weapon, becomes here a genuinely desperate survival tool rather than a witty ornament.

The chapter completes TyrionÔÇÖs fall from lord to cargo that began the moment he left Westeros ÔÇö sold once by circumstance in Pentos, now sold literally, priced and handled by men who have no idea and would not care that theyÔÇÖre auctioning off the Hand of two kings. ItÔÇÖs a bleak, almost farcical low point rendered without any of the comic relief the earlier river chapters allowed, and it sets Tyrion physically at the gates of the queen heÔÇÖs spent the whole book being carried toward, in the worst possible condition to meet her.

This movement: The Winterfell Knot

• Winterfell fills with Bolton banners and murdered guests; someone is killing Freys in the dark and the walls whisper 'Theon'.
• Abel the bard and his washerwomen ÔÇö spearwives ÔÇö recruit a broken creature to steal 'Arya' out of the castle.
• Theon remembers his name jumping from the battlements with a weeping girl in his arms, into the snow.
• Jon lets the free folk through the Wall by the thousand and lends Val, loans wildlings, and writes letters lords burn.