The Mystery Knight — Dunk VIII

Ser Alyn Cockshaw draws Dunk aside to a quiet well — and pays bravos' wages for it. Ser Maynard Plumm proves quicker: Alyn goes down the well, and Plumm shows Dunk that he knows exactly who Egg is, and minds not at all.

The chapter retold

Ser Alyn Cockshaw draws Dunk aside to a quiet well and pays bravos' wages to see him dead there — and Ser Maynard Plumm proves the quicker hand, sending Cockshaw down the well instead. The chapter's real revelation follows: Plumm shows Dunk that he knows exactly who Egg is, a prince of the blood in a hedge knight's train, and minds not at all — a man playing his own unreadable game amid everyone else's. Dunk survives an assassination only to discover how many people at Whitewalls have already seen through his squire's shaven head.

This movement: The Mystery Knight

• The wedding tourney opens: Ser Glendon Ball, Fireball's furious son, unhorses all comers, while Dunk falls to the Snail's craft and a ransom he cannot pay.
• Ser Maynard Plumm drifts through the feast knowing more than any hedge knight should — including whose head is under Egg's hood.
• The dragon's egg vanishes in the night; the castle is sealed; and Glendon Ball is seized for the theft on no evidence but his father's name.
• Ser Alyn Cockshaw lures Dunk to a quiet well with hired steel — and goes down it himself, with Plumm's blade to help him.

The fallen — spoilers

• Ser Alyn Cockshaw — Went to murder a hedge knight by a quiet well; went down it instead, on Maynard Plumm's steel.