S2·E4 — Garden of Bones

The hour retold

The garden of bones is Harrenhal, where the Mountain’s men pick a prisoner each evening and the questions asked are beside the point; Arya files it all away and starts whispering names into the dark like a prayer. The episode is a study of power at its ugliest octave. Joffrey has Sansa stripped and beaten before the throne because her brother keeps winning battles — Robb takes Oxcross this same hour, falling on the Lannister west like weather — and it is Tyrion who stops it, with the observation that the Mad King also did as he liked. The lesson Sansa is learning, one bruise at a time, is that courtesy is armor and armor is all she has.

The war of the five kings meets its first impossibility on a beach at the Stormlands’ edge, where Renly and Stannis parley in the language of brothers who never liked each other. Renly has the numbers, the charm and the fruit; Stannis has the bloodline, the grievance and one night’s grace on offer. Neither blinks, so the red woman settles it: Davos rows Melisandre into a cave beneath Storm’s End and watches her birth a thing of shadow with a face he knows. It is the moment the war stops being a contest of armies. Away east, Daenerys reaches the gates of Qarth with her starving column and bluffs the Thirteen into opening the greatest city that ever was — a phrase, she will learn, that the Qartheen apply themselves.

What happens

• Robb wins at Oxcross; the West bleeds and Tywin falls back to Harrenhal.
• Joffrey has Sansa beaten before the court until Tyrion stops it.
• Renly and Stannis parley and part as enemies; Davos rows Melisandre into a cave beneath Storm's End.
• The shadow she births there has a face Davos knows.
• Daenerys reaches the gates of Qarth and bluffs her way past the Thirteen.

The people of the episode

The fallen — spoilers

• The Tickler — Harrenhal's questioner — a nameless death from a boy's hands, mourned by no one.