“This is a child’s game,” Richard decides, upon seeing that he will not win Ser Barrow’s latest mark.

He will put his O in the northeast socket and Barrow will put his X dead east and there will be nowhere left for either of them to make any mark that matters. A glance across the fire prickles with contempt; he lifts the rabbit’s hide and Thot weeble-wobbles over to take it from his grasp on her way to bustling back out into the rain.

The kind thing to do would be to suggest an alternative. Instead he produces a rag from his person and creaks to his feet to wet it at the cave’s entrance. The better to scrub rough between his fingers and along the blade of his knife