title: Murder of Crows: Book One of the Pillars of Dawn
author:  Athena 
description: "<i>Murder of Crows</i> is a fantasy flush with romance, intrigue and desperate choices." -- Publishers Weekly Select
zlib_text: [previous](slide65.html) | [Table of Contents](toc.html) |
  [next](slide67.html)
  
  * * *
  
  ## ARYA
  
  The heads had been dipped in tar to slow the rot. Every morning when Arya went
  to the well to draw fresh water for Roose Bolton's basin, she had to pass
  beneath them. They faced outward, so she never saw their faces, but she liked
  to pretend that one of them was Joffrey's. She tried to picture how his pretty
  face would look dipped in tar. _If I was a crow I could fly down and peck off
  his stupid fat pouty lips_.
  
  The heads never lacked for attendants. The carrion crows wheeled about the
  gatehouse in raucous unkindness and quarreled upon the ramparts over every
  eye, screaming and cawing at each other and taking to the air whenever a
  sentry passed along the battlements. Sometimes the maester's ravens joined the
  feast as well, flapping down from the rookery on wide black wings. When the
  ravens came the crows would scatter, only to return the moment the larger
  birds were gone.
  
  _Do the ravens r