On the way to the archery field, Joffrey fell into step beside the Hound and asked, half to himself, "You won twenty thousand gold dragons. Got any idea what you're doing with it?"
The Hound had swapped his armor for a red wool tunic stitched with a snarling leather dog-head emblem. He still looked like he was chewing on whatever weird feeling the awards ceremony had left him with.
He shot Joffrey a wary glance with the eye that wasn't buried under scar tissue. "What?" he grunted. "You rich pricks already swim in more coin than you know what to do with."
"Now you're coming after mine too?"
"I'm just helping you think it through," Joffrey said, draping an arm around the big man's shoulders. "That's enough to buy yourself a solid business or even a decent manor."
"Don't tell me you're planning to drink the whole pile."
The Hound snorted and looked away.
From the look on his face, that was exactly the plan.
A moment later he turned back. "Relax. I'm not going anywhere."
"Not while Gregor's still breathing."
Sansa and Arya trailed behind them, listening with open interest.
After the jousts, Lord Eddard had urgent business and couldn't escort his daughters back himself. After some shuffling, he'd handed them off to Joffrey to watch the rest of the day's events.
Sansa clearly had a lot she wanted to say. Every time she glanced at the Hound's ruined face, though, the words died in her throat.
"If you've got a question, just ask it," Joffrey encouraged her. "The dog won't bite you."
Sansa chose her words carefully and tried flattery first. "Ser Sandor, you were truly heroic today."
"You looked just like a knight from the songs."
The Hound hawked and spat loudly.
Then he gave the line he'd said a thousand times before. "Little lady, you people really need to stop—"
"Stop calling him ser!" Arya finished with a cheeky grin.
Sansa looked confused.
"Her brother is a proper knight," Joffrey explained again. "But did you see what the Mountain did out there today?"
"That wasn't jousting. That was straight-up murder."
"And he was knighted by Prince Rhaegar Targaryen himself," Joffrey added, voice dripping sarcasm. "As for the rest of the shit he's done… nobody's probably told you girls about that either."
"Every Dornishman alive wants to twist his head off."
Joffrey left out the parts that weren't fit for young ears.
He glanced at the Hound. "Yet my grandfather still protects him."
"You saw it yourself back there. The Mountain disrespected the king to his face and still got to walk away."
"I figure Father will use it as an excuse to squeeze a few hundred thousand gold dragons off Lord Tywin, though."
Joffrey chuckled.
The Hound didn't.
He stared hard at the two girls, then checked that no one else was close enough to hear. He leaned down, swept the hair away from the left side of his face, and showed them the full horror.
The skin looked like boiled leather—pitted, cratered, crisscrossed with red fissures that pulled tight when he moved. His left ear was gone, burned clean away into a black hole. The eye still worked, but the flesh around it was a mess of twisted scars. The charred part of his jaw let you see bone in places.
"Oh!" Sansa jerked her gaze away, then realized that was even ruder and forced herself to look back.
Arya, bolder, just stared straight at it. She'd been dying of curiosity anyway.
"How'd that happen?" she asked bluntly.
Sansa clapped a hand over her sister's mouth. "Arya! That's rude."
"Ser Sandor—my sister didn't mean it," Sansa apologized, mortified.
The Hound stayed silent.
"He won't even tell me," Joffrey said. "What makes you think he'd tell you two?"
Then he deadpanned, "But I already know the real story."
The Hound whipped his head around, startled.
Joffrey kept a straight face. "Dragonfire. My uncle—the short one, the Imp—told me himself."
The girls burst out laughing.
The Hound gave a disgusted snort. "You actually believe that little shit? He's a smug idiot."
He never gave the real answer.
He wasn't drunk enough, and there were too many people around.
Telling anyone how his own brother had held his face down in a brazier as a child wasn't exactly barroom conversation.
Once he'd delivered the girls to the archery field, the Hound turned to leave.
"You're not staying for the matches?" Joffrey asked.
"I don't give a shit about this prissy bow-and-arrow nonsense," he growled without looking back.
The archery range had been set up on a wide grassy stretch beside the Blackwater. Targets stood at thirty, fifty, and seventy paces.
Plenty of entrants, but most were just smallfolk from King's Landing trying their luck. The few actual knights who could shoot were easy to spot.
Halfway through the contest Joffrey spotted Lord Eddard.
He wasn't in the reserved seats. Instead he had pulled Littlefinger aside at the edge of the field and was talking in low, urgent tones.
Eddard's shoulders were rigid. Littlefinger's smile was too loose. The contrast was unmistakable.
Too many people around, though. Even with [Stargaze] on cooldown, Joffrey couldn't get close enough to overhear.
In the end the archery prize went to a boy named Anguy. In the final round he put all seven arrows into the center of a target at a hundred paces—nothing but a tiny dot to Joffrey's eyes.
The kid was so drunk on the five-thousand-gold-dragon purse that he turned down every offer of patronage on the spot.
Joffrey didn't push. The boy would spend every copper right here in King's Landing anyway—most of it probably ending up in Littlefinger's pockets.
The group melee that followed was the usual bloody mess. Broken limbs and crushed fingers everywhere, yet more hedge knights and freshly dubbed squires were still pounding their chests because they hadn't made the cut.
Thoros of Myr won again, flames or no flames. The man could actually fight.
Joffrey's mind, though, was already on tomorrow afternoon's trial of seven.
He was dying to see how the Hound and his brother were going to share a side.
Robert had finally been talked out of competing himself. In a fit of royal sulking, though, he ordered every Kingsguard to take part and form one team against a hand-picked squad of other knights. Spots filled up fast.
With one finalist injured and another having stormed off, two more openings appeared for the morning selection bouts. Half the knights in the city decided to stay an extra day.
At the evening feast Lord Eddard was once again absent.
The queen, however, was in an unusually good mood. She wasn't even giving Robert the cold shoulder.
Very strange.
Especially since Joffrey had just used [Stargaze] right on schedule and caught a glimpse of what Eddard was up to.
So after dinner he headed straight for the maester's tower.
"Someone brought you a letter this afternoon?" Joffrey asked, watching Grand Maester Pycelle's face go pale.
He almost felt bad. Keep scaring the old man like this and the Grand Maester might retire early.
Still, the question had to be asked.
"Addressed to Winterfell? Yes or no?"