"My daughter has taken an axe for a lover," Lord Balon said. His father slid his fingers under the necklace and gave it a yank so hard it was like to take Theon's head off, had the chain not snapped first. Is it the gold price you paid, or the iron?" In the Old Way, women might decorate themselves with ornaments bought with coin, but a warrior wore only the jewelry he took off the corpses of enemies slain by his own hand. "That bauble around your neck - was it bought with gold or iron?" "You will." Throwing off the furs, Lord Balon pushed himself to his feet. If you mislike my garb, I will change it." "Was it his pleasure to garb you in velvets and silks and make you his own sweet daughter?" "Did Ned Stark dress you like that?" his father interrupted, squinting up from beneath his robe. "Yet the cold and the damp still make my joints ache, as when they were alive. I vowed I'd live to see them both in their graves, and I have." He grimaced. "They are both dead, Stark and that Robert who broke my walls with his stones. "Lord Eddard is dead, beheaded by the Lannister queen." "Ten," Theon answered, pulling off his torn gloves. "Nine years, is it?" Lord Balon said at last.
Unbound, it hung past the small of the back. His eyes were flinty too, black and sharp, but the years and the salt winds had turned his hair the grey of a winter sea, flecked with whitecaps.
Bone thin and bone hard he was, with a face that might have been chipped from flint. Balon Greyjoy had always been thin, but now he looked as though the gods had put him in a cauldron and boiled every spare ounce of flesh from his bones, until nothing remained but hair and skin. He was smaller than Theon remembered him. At the sound of boots on stone, the Lord of the Iron Islands lifted his eyes to behold his last living son. He found his father seated beside a brazier, beneath a robe of musty sealskins that covered him foot to chin. Theon climbed the twisting steps to the solar. "Out of my way, or you'll learn who I am." The man stood aside. The wood was damp and moldy, the iron studs rusted.Īfter a moment the door was opened from within by a guard in a black iron breastplate and pothelm. He hammered on it with a fist, and cursed when a splinter snagged the fabric of his glove. The door was grey wood studded with iron, and Theon found it barred from the inside.
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