Night hung low, but the stars shone high.
Through the thin gauze curtains stirred by the sea breeze, Clay lay against soft cushions, his eyes clear and bright.
His fine noble education told him that the brightest string of stars in the night sky was the Ice Dragon, which guided every ship coming and going through White Harbor.
It was late at night now. After a whole day of bustling noise and the passage of countless goods and riches, White Harbor seemed to have tired itself out and fallen quiet.
The entire harbor was utterly still. Apart from the ever-present sound of the waves, there was only the occasional distant toll of a bell.
There were exceptions, of course. From his high vantage point, Clay could see a small patch beneath a flight of stone steps in Fish King's Square that was still brightly lit.
Clay's memories gave him a clear name for the place-the Lazy Eel.
It was one of the most famous taverns in all of White Harbor, though not because its service or drinks were particularly good.
Quite the opposite: it offered the oldest whores and the worst liquor in White Harbor, along with meat pies stuffed with lard and cartilage.
Sailors who'd spent months drifting on the Narrow Sea probably loved places like that most. Cheap and good value, Clay thought.
Clay was not so bored that he would go out of his way to look at such a place. He did so only because he was now the master here.
He had to demand of himself that he look at this vast port city with the eyes and thoughts of its master, rather than those of a guest or a sixteen-year-old boy.
When dinner ended, the old man sent away his two granddaughters and the other attendants, leaving only grandfather and grandson in the lamplit New Castle.
The old man spoke plainly. With Clay's position as heir as solid as steel, there was no need to speak in riddles.
Clay's elder uncle, Wylis Manderly, the next in line to inherit White Harbor, was an enormously fat man just like Earl Wyman himself. He could barely mount a horse to go to war, and his health was very poor.
So, from now on, Clay would have to start learning to manage White Harbor and formally begin doing what was expected of an heir.
For Clay, this was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, becoming the heir meant he could no longer do whatever he pleased as he had before.
On the other hand, his position as heir allowed him to enjoy and even mobilize White Harbor's vast resources. After all, his plan for a witcher army was a money-devouring beast that could never be fed enough.
Clay's overall thinking roughly broke down into the following steps:
First, he could not change Duke Stark's journey south. The wind stirred up by his little butterfly wings probably could not yet reach inside the thick walls of King's Landing.
Clay required himself to stay informed of developments in King's Landing at all times. He did not know whether his family had a spy network like the Spider's Little Birds. If they did, he would send them all to King's Landing.
He had no way to judge the situation in King's Landing, but as long as the old wolf lived, the North's swords would not all be drawn. If the old wolf really was sent to the executioner's block, even the Old and New Gods together with R'hllor could not stop Robb Stark from summoning his bannermen and marching south to avenge his father.
Second, whatever the outcome of the first point, since the Three-Eyed Crow feared the nonexistent foreign god behind him and had not troubled him for now, he would use this time to expand his stock of potions as quickly as possible and find a way to create a squad of witchers skilled in battle.
Clay could not say exactly how many people he could mutate. There were too many uncertainties, but in principle, the more the better, provided he could keep them under control.
In this world of ice and fire, witchers were special forces, through and through. Clay did not remotely have enough time to produce hundreds or thousands of them for positional warfare, but a single squad would be enough for surprise attacks.
But this plan had a prerequisite: he had to persuade his grandfather, the head of the family. Without his support, Clay could not take a single step forward. He could not even scrape together the money for the mutation potions, let alone find candidates.
Third, if the second point proved unworkable, Clay would have to pour all his limited resources into himself. He had tested it himself: the current strength of his Signs was enough for small-scale, low-intensity conflicts, but he would still be at a loss on a real battlefield.
For example, his Quen Sign was currently a pitiful level 1. It could block arrows shot from a distance, but if his luck was truly terrible and he was sent to storm a city, only to face a bolt from a siege ballista head-on...
Then...
No one could save him. After all, those things had shot down even dragons, and their power was terrifying.
For another example, his current Axii Sign could bewilder an ordinary person, but what if he encountered someone trained or strong-willed?
This was not a game where, if the persuasion failed, he could pay a little money to settle things or simply draw his sword and cut someone down.
So Clay also had to improve his own strength as quickly as possible. The importance of this point could not be overstated.
Then there was the final point: the Three-Eyed Crow's promise, which Clay had been wavering over all along.
From the Three-Eyed Crow's final words, Clay understood that the dim-witted stableboy Hodor might well have been his handiwork. If he could have Hodor deliver things to Clay, that meant Hodor was completely under the Three-Eyed Crow's control.
But that was not terribly important. The truly critical question was whether Clay should accept the Dragon Egg and the hatching method if Hodor really brought them.
As a born-and-bred son of the North, Clay would be taking an enormous risk simply by accepting a Dragon Egg. He was already beginning to regret having run his mouth and said that back then.
But if he were asked to throw the Dragon Egg into the sea like a lump of rock, Clay could not bear to do that either. After all, once grown, the thing would be a genuine bomber dropping incendiaries in the world of ice and fire-and one that could continually upgrade itself, at that.
Only one of Daenerys's three dragons survived in the end; two died to ballistae. That gave the impression that ballistae really could kill dragons, but it was actually an illusion caused by Daenerys's dragons being far too small.
Against the great dragons of history, ballistae would merely tickle them. Their thick scales would stop every bolt.
There was also another question that needed explaining: if he really hatched a dragon, how would Clay explain his bloodline? It was hard to say whether Earl Wyman might even suspect that he was not Clay Manderly at all.
After all, the northern nobility had also suffered many casualties during the War of the Usurper, because they had been the main force fighting the royal army.
Clay knew very well how loyal his family was to House Stark. Things would actually have been easier if his family were a bunch of turncoats like Littlefinger's.
So, for Clay, the Dragon Egg was a choice with extremely high risks and no upper limit to its rewards.
Somewhat irritated, he rolled halfway over on the bed. Having sorted out his thoughts, Clay simply stopped thinking about it. Tomorrow, he would seek out Earl Wyman alone. Everything else could wait; he absolutely had to win the old man's support and approval for these witcher abilities.
As for the risks, Clay understood them very well, but he was already prepared.