A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Quentyn III
The spurned suitor will not go home empty-handed: Quentyn Martell buys the Windblown's renegades and a madman's plan ÔÇö steal a dragon from under a pyramid.
The chapter retold
Quentyn Martell, having deserted the Windblown at last, spends what coin and persuasion he has left buying the loyalty of a handful of the companyÔÇÖs renegades ÔÇö including his own friends Gerris and Archibald ÔÇö for a plan so far past reasonable that he can barely explain it without sounding mad even to himself: steal a dragon out from under DaenerysÔÇÖs absent throne, before anyone with more sense can talk him out of it.
The chapter is a portrait of desperation dressed as resolve ÔÇö QuentynÔÇÖs whole errand to Meereen has been quietly failing for chapters, the queen he was promised to has flown off on a different, more famous dragon entirely, and rather than accept the missionÔÇÖs collapse he doubles down on the single most dangerous version of it available. Every reader whoÔÇÖs been tracking this bookÔÇÖs dragon lore can feel exactly how badly this plan is going to go; the tragedy is that Quentyn, dutiful to the last, canÔÇÖt see it, or wonÔÇÖt let himself.
This movement: The Dragon's Peace Breaks
- Cersei walks her penance through King's Landing, shorn and naked, while her champion waits: an eight-foot silence in white armor.
- Kevan Lannister steadies the realm as regent ÔÇö competence the realm can't be allowed to keep.
- On the Dothraki sea, Dany ÔÇö fevered, alone but for Drogon ÔÇö meets Khal Jhaqo's riders in the grass.
- Asha, Stannis's prisoner, watches the northmen prepare a battle in the snow that the book leaves unfought.