“What, for Renly? Who was he? We’ve changed kings since then, some of us twice. No one cares, no one remembers.” He laid a hand lightly on her arm. “This way, if you please.”
She wrenched away. “I would thank you not to touch me.”
“Thanks at last,” he said, with a wry smile.
When last she had seen Maidenpool, the town had been a desolation, a grim place of empty streets and burned homes. Now the streets were full of pigs and children, and most of the burned buildings had been pulled down. Vegetables had been planted in the lots where some once stood; merchant’s tents and knight’s pavilions took the place of others. Brienne saw new houses going up, a stone inn rising where a wooden inn had burned, a new slate roof on the town sept. The cool autumn air rang to the sounds of saw and hammer. Men carried timber through the streets, and quarrymen drove their wagons down muddy lanes. Many wore the striding huntsman on their breasts. “The soldiers are rebuilding the town,” she said, surprised.
“They would sooner be dicing, drinking, and fucking, I don’t doubt, but Lord Randyll believes in putting idle men to work.”
She had expected to be taken to the castle. Instead, Hunt led them toward the busy harbor. The traders had returned to Maidenpool, she was pleased to see. A galley, a galleas, and a big two-masted cog were in port, along with a score of little fishing boats. More fishermen were visible out on the bay.
They found Lord Tarly in the fishmarket, doing justice.
A platform had been thrown up beside the water, from which his lordship could look down upon the men accused of crimes. To his left stood a long gallows, with ropes enough for twenty men. Four corpses swung beneath it. One looked fresh, but the other three had plainly been there for some time. A crow was pulling strips of flesh from the ripe ruins of one of the dead men. The other crows had scattered, wary of the crowd of townsfolk who’d gathered in hopes of someone’s being hanged.
Lord Randyll shared the platform with Lord Mooton, a pale, soft, fleshy man in a white doublet and red breeches, his ermine cloak pinned at the shoulder by a red-gold brooch in the shape of a salmon. Tarly wore mail and boiled leather, and a breastplate of grey steel. The hilt of a greatsword poked up above his left shoulder.
A stripling in a roughspun cloak and soiled jerkin was being heard when they came up. “I never hurt no one, m’lord,” Brienne heard him say. “I only took what the septons left when they run off. If you got to take my finger for that, do it.”
“It is customary to take a finger from a thief,” Lord Tarly replied in a hard voice, “but a man who steals from a sept is stealing from the gods.” He turned to his captain of guards. “Seven fingers. Leave his thumbs.”
The next man was a baker, accused of mixing sawdust in his flour. Lord Randyll fined him fifty silver stags. When the baker swore he did not have that much silver, his lordship declared that he could have a lash for every stag that he was short. He was followed by a haggard grey-faced whore, accused of giving the pox to four of Tarly’s soldiers. “Wash out her private parts with lye and throw her in a dungeon,” Tarly commanded. As the whore was dragged off sobbing, his lordship saw Brienne on the edge of the crowd, standing between Podrick and Ser Hyle. He frowned at her, but his eyes betrayed not a flicker of recognition.
A sailor off the galleas came next. His accuser was an archer of Lord Mooton’s garrison, with a bandaged hand and a salmon on his breast. “If it please m’lord, this bastid put his dagger through my hand. He said I was cheating him at dice.”
Lord Tarly took his gaze away from Brienne to consider the men before him. “Were you?”
“No, m’lord. I never.”
“For theft, I will take a finger. Lie to me and I will hang you. Shall I ask to see these dice?”
“The dice?” The archer looked to Mooton, but his lordship was gazing at the fishing boats. The bowman swallowed. “Might be I. them dice, they’re lucky for me, ’s true, but I. ”
Tarly had heard enough. “Take his little finger. He can choose which hand. A nail through the palm for the other.” He stood. “We’re done. March the rest of them back to the dungeon, I’ll deal with them on the morrow.” He turned to beckon Ser Hyle forward. Brienne followed. “My lord,” she said, when she stood before him. She felt eight years old again.
“My lady. To what do we owe this. honor?”
