Fic: A Year from Now (28/?)
Title: A Year from Now (28/?)
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Aegon Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, Barristan Selmy, Jhogo
Ratings & Warnings: R, none in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 2429 words in this chapter.
Summary: "Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies.” Dany takes Ser Jorah's advice, setting her unborn child, her unhatched dragons, her quest for the Iron Throne, and her relationship with her faithful knight on a very different, but no less adventurous path.
Chapter Summary: Dany meets her captives.
Author's Note: As always, thanks to just_a_dram for betaing.
Previous Chapters |
28. In the Hall of the Dragon Queen
"You claim to be my brother Prince Rhaegar's son."
Dany eyed the prisoner who stood before the battered table in the closet off the common room of The Dragon's Nest which the innkeep called his counting house. She did her best not to wriggle on her stool, though the hard narrow bench had made her arse go to sleep, and instead focused on how glad she was for the height it lent her as she interrogated the lanky youth. This was the first council she'd ever held, and she felt quite the queen as she sat proud and straight, her hands resting on Drogon's fiery flesh as he lay coiled in her lap like a serpent, his blood red eyes trained on the prisoner and his tongue lashing out from time to time.
Griff--she refused to call him Aegon until she could be sure that was his true name--certainly looked more Targaryen than anyone she'd met, the roots of his hair the distinctive silvery blond above the blue dye that had begun to grow out, and his eyes decidedly more violet than blue. His features, however, were unlike those she'd conjured up for Rhaegar--which, admittedly, were an older, milder version of Viserys’--though she conceded that Rhaegar's son might have favored his Dornish mother.
And she couldn't help but think of Viserys, always so proud and defiant, even as Khal Drogo's bloodriders had restrained him as he received his golden crown, when the young man with bound hands puffed out his chest, tilted his chin upward, and said, "I claim it because it is true. I am Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of that name. I am your brother's son, my lady--"
"Your Grace," Dany corrected him.
"I am His Grace," Griff retorted; though his nose was nothing like Viserys', his nostrils flared just as her brother's had done when vexed. "If you would be my wife, Princess Daenerys, then you would be Her Grace." His gaze flicked over her right shoulder, where Jorah stood in the position of chief advisor and guard. "But it seems that is not possible."
Jorah snorted, Drogon hissed, and Dany herself choked back words that burned like bile in her throat, repeating the words over in her mind which Jorah had spoken to her before this council had convened: If the boy is an impostor, he does not know it. How else could she expect Griff to behave, when he had been raised from birth to believe he was the heir to the Iron Throne? She had been brought up to believe the same about herself, and by a person whose insanity perhaps made his claim less credible than Griff's.
Of course, the proof of her bloodline now turned its horned head and nuzzled its hot snout into the neckline of her gown to suckle at her breast. Realizing she had begun to slouch, Dany threw back her shoulders and spoke to Griff in tones as level as her gaze.
"The gods must smile upon you that you live to stand before me. When my brother King Viserys violated the sacred city of Vaes Dothrak, the great Khal Drogo made him a crown of molten gold, which was the death of him. Have you survived such a test? Are you blood of the dragon?"
"No, my lady--"
"I am. Do not wake the dragon."
As if on command, Drogon pulled off her breast, his head lashing around on his whip of a neck to flick his tongue and snort smoke at Griff.
He took a slight step backward, into the solid form of the young ko who looked so like her dead bloodrider Rakharo, whose long tanned fingers clapped around Griff's arm as tightly as a shackle.
"F-forgive me…Your Grace," Griff stammered.
Dany tried not to smirk visibly at his submission, though Drogon expressed his own feelings on the matter with a rather haughty hiss before he latched once more onto her breast.
"You have been brought up to believe you are King Aegon," she said. "By whom?"
She'd had the story from Jorah, of course, but it was not the same as hearing it from Griff's own mouth. And she wanted to know whether he would dare lie to her.
"By Jon Connington, Lord of Griffin's Roost. Prince Rhaegar's beloved friend."
"Who was exiled by my father King Aerys for his defeat at the Battle of the Bells," Dany said, in her mind adding what Jorah had told her, for refusing to carry out a battle plan that would have slain many women and children.
She squirmed again on her bench, as much at the horror of such a strategy as that it had come directly from her father. Madness… Though words Jorah had spoken to her drifted from even further back in her mind: If you would be queen, it will mean killing Robert's children--the Princess Myrcella and the little King Tommen, and Stannis' daughter--and the babes of any other rivals who would one day make war on Rhaego's claim.
Raising her voice, as if to speak over Jorah in her mind, she said, "Jon Connington has long been rumored to have drunk himself to death. You will, of course, understand if I am mistrustful of men come back from the dead."
"If my queen will permit me," came a tentative and aged-crackled voice from near the doorway; Dany swung her gaze as Griff turned to settle on the white-haired, bearded knight who stood under the guard of the two other bloodriders. "I will vouch that the man of whom you speak is, truly, Lord Jon Connington. I saw him with mine own eyes, at the house of Illyrio Mopatis in Pentos."
"You vouch?" Dany said. "Ser Barristan Selmy, who served in my father's Kingsguard, then swore fealty to the Usurper? Do you turn your white cloak a third time and swear fealty to me?"
Most men would have wavered at such a question, but Dany watched Ser Barristan intently, and saw neither his blue eyes flicker from her to Griff, nor even a telltale roll of his throat with a discomfited swallow. Age might have made his voice unsteady, but not lack of conviction as he replied, "I serve the true heir to the Iron Throne."
"A careful answer, ser." Dany returned her attention to Griff. "Where is Jon Connington, then? Dead in Vaes Dothrak because of your foolhardy quest?"
Griff shifted his weight; though his eyes were on Dany, his gaze turned inward. "He was in Myr, rallying the Golden Company to fight for my seat on the Iron Throne, when I conceived my plan to rescue Your Grace from the crones." Again the nostrils flared a little as the violet eyes met Dany's again. "I knew no swords were allowed in the sacred city of the Dothraki, so I took only Ser Barristan with me."
"Come now, Young Griff, don't lie to the queen," drawled a voice from somewhere in the vicinity of Selmy and the bloodriders--the Imp's, though Dany couldn't see him over Griff. "You know you took only Ser Barristan with you because Jon Connington would never accompany you on such an idiotic quest, and would have stopped it altogether, if he'd got wind of it."
Behind her, Jorah snorted. Dany might have laughed, too, but pressed her lips tightly together, on principle misliking the idea of being amused by the Kingslayer's brother, even if he was a dwarf. She could not tell whether he referred to her as queen out of respect or mockery, and she gritted her teeth that Jorah apparently felt no such qualm.
"If you are so knowledgeable of the ways of the Dothraki," she said to Griff as if there had been no interruption, "then you should also know that they are not famed for their mercy. Khal Jhogo, why have you allowed these men to live?"
In Dothraki, Jhogo repeated to Dany what Jorah had already told her: that the Dothraki had seen the Red Comet when it appeared and known that it signified the birth of the Stallion Who Mounts the World, and that somewhere the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea lived. They had not immediately set out to search for Dany and the child, Jhogo having been embroiled in his own game--not of thrones, but of saddles--but when he'd returned to Vaes Dothrak a khal in his own right, to bring his bride and their unborn child before the crones, they arrived almost at the same time as Griff, and the crones had prophesied that his arrival was a sign that now was the time to find the wayward khaleesi .
"Boy say he wed Dan Ares queen," Jhogo concluded in his halting version of the Common Tongue of Westeros. "But khaleesi do not take husbands after khals."
"She did," Griff said, his eyes narrowing on Dany before shifting to Jorah as he spat, "A lord so low as to be almost of common birth. An exile and an informer."
Despite the uncertain state of her marriage Dany said, "I will no more allow disrespect for my royal consort than for my own royal person."
"Pay no heed to him, Your Grace," came the Imp's voice once again, "Aegon's just got his smallclothes in a twist because I introduced your lord husband to him as Uncle Jorah."
"You must put him aside, Daenerys," persisted Griff, "and join your strength to mine through a royal marriage. It is not for a queen to wed for love."
Dany's face reddened at his deliberately disrespectful familiar address, but she was too furious with all that he implied to correct him for that seeming triviality. Or to react to the pain in her breast as Drogon clung to her as she leapt to her feet.
"Is that what Jon Connington taught you? Is that what he believed of his beloved Prince Rhaegar? That he bore no love for his wife Elia of Dorne?"
"Well, there is the thing about Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark," said Tyrion Lannister.
"Bring the Imp forward," Dany barked to her bloodriders, her chest heaving with her breathless rage.
Griff was dragged roughly aside as the dwarf, unbound but flanked by his Dothraki guards, waddled forward, his chin of a level with the top of the table. Deep within, Dany felt a twinge of conscience that looming over him like this was not in keeping with the sort of queen she meant to be--she did not, after all, feel any disgust for the way he had been born; only to whom--but only enough to make her resume her seat, not to have a stool brought for the Imp.
"Jorah tells me that you don't know when to shut your mouth, though a deal that comes out of it is sound council."
"Does he, now?" Tyrion smirked up at Jorah. "He was singing a different tune when he was knocking my teeth out."
"You will have fewer unless you soon give evidence of anything but the former," Dany said. "Why should I take council from the Kingslayer's brother?"
"Why should I serve the Mad King's daughter? Or the Beggar King's sister?"
"Because I am neither my father nor my brother!"
Tyrion smiled as he made a little bow. "I believe my point is made."
No, it could not be so. Dany's heart pounded. "You may not be a kingslayer, but you are a kinslayer, are you not?"
"I don't deny that I've killed Your Grace's most dangerous opponent," said the Imp, rocking back and forth on his heels, "and I'll do everything I can to rid you of my sweet sister Queen Cersei--with pleasure."
"Have you anything else to offer me but the services of a rather unlikely assassin?"
Tyrion's eyes dropped down to Drogon, and unsettling as they were, one black and one bright as an emerald--or an asp--Dany thought that of everyone who had beheld the first dragon in three hundred years, he alone had looked at it with more awe than terror. "I'm something of an expert in dragonlore."
"But obviously you've never dealt with real dragons."
"I beg your pardon, but neither has Your Grace. And I do know that unless you'd like your teats chewed off--and I daresay your husband won't--" This with a cheeky glance at Jorah. "--then you'd better see about feeding him properly. Meat. And dragons don't like it raw."
Suddenly wearied by the council, Dany dismissed the Dothraki and her prisoners from her presence. When they had gone, shutting the door behind her, Dany plucked Drogon from her breast and set him on the table, then slumped over it, rubbing her aching eyes. She flinched when Jorah's big hands settled heavily at the base of her neck, but he did not withdraw, and she relaxed as his fingers began to massage the knots that had formed at the top of her spine and along her shoulder blades.
"Is this what I've come to?" she said. "Surrounding myself with an army of rapers and advisors who include kinslayers and turncoats and--"
Jorah's hand flew away as if her skin had burst into flame and burnt him. "Slavers?" he said, roughly, his boots thudding on the floorboards as he rounded the table to face her. "Spies?"
Sighing, Dany raised her head. "I did not mean--"
"Didn't you?" The table shuddered as both his palms came to rest on the surface and he loomed over it, the lines of his face hard, his eyes dark. Drogon shrieked, skittered up Dany's arm to perch on her shoulder, and puffed smoke from his nostrils.
She stared back at her husband, and saw herself mirrored in his gaze, no longer the tired girl she had earlier beheld in the looking glass, but lean. Hard. Tried by fire, but unburnt. A dragon on one shoulder. She had an empty one where another might sit. And arms to hold a third.
She knew, then, what she must do.
"Perhaps I did mean it," she said. "It was, after all, you who told me that if I want to win my game of thrones, I shall have to compromise. I see now that I must--but not for a throne."
Now Jorah's features creased with confusion. "Daenerys?"
"My father might have been willing to sacrifice children. I am a mother, and there is nothing I won't do to rescue mine. Tell Captain Groleo we sail on the morn for Qarth."
Read Chapter 29
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Aegon Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, Barristan Selmy, Jhogo
Ratings & Warnings: R, none in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 2429 words in this chapter.
Summary: "Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies.” Dany takes Ser Jorah's advice, setting her unborn child, her unhatched dragons, her quest for the Iron Throne, and her relationship with her faithful knight on a very different, but no less adventurous path.
Chapter Summary: Dany meets her captives.
Author's Note: As always, thanks to just_a_dram for betaing.
Previous Chapters |
28. In the Hall of the Dragon Queen
"You claim to be my brother Prince Rhaegar's son."
Dany eyed the prisoner who stood before the battered table in the closet off the common room of The Dragon's Nest which the innkeep called his counting house. She did her best not to wriggle on her stool, though the hard narrow bench had made her arse go to sleep, and instead focused on how glad she was for the height it lent her as she interrogated the lanky youth. This was the first council she'd ever held, and she felt quite the queen as she sat proud and straight, her hands resting on Drogon's fiery flesh as he lay coiled in her lap like a serpent, his blood red eyes trained on the prisoner and his tongue lashing out from time to time.
Griff--she refused to call him Aegon until she could be sure that was his true name--certainly looked more Targaryen than anyone she'd met, the roots of his hair the distinctive silvery blond above the blue dye that had begun to grow out, and his eyes decidedly more violet than blue. His features, however, were unlike those she'd conjured up for Rhaegar--which, admittedly, were an older, milder version of Viserys’--though she conceded that Rhaegar's son might have favored his Dornish mother.
And she couldn't help but think of Viserys, always so proud and defiant, even as Khal Drogo's bloodriders had restrained him as he received his golden crown, when the young man with bound hands puffed out his chest, tilted his chin upward, and said, "I claim it because it is true. I am Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of that name. I am your brother's son, my lady--"
"Your Grace," Dany corrected him.
"I am His Grace," Griff retorted; though his nose was nothing like Viserys', his nostrils flared just as her brother's had done when vexed. "If you would be my wife, Princess Daenerys, then you would be Her Grace." His gaze flicked over her right shoulder, where Jorah stood in the position of chief advisor and guard. "But it seems that is not possible."
Jorah snorted, Drogon hissed, and Dany herself choked back words that burned like bile in her throat, repeating the words over in her mind which Jorah had spoken to her before this council had convened: If the boy is an impostor, he does not know it. How else could she expect Griff to behave, when he had been raised from birth to believe he was the heir to the Iron Throne? She had been brought up to believe the same about herself, and by a person whose insanity perhaps made his claim less credible than Griff's.
Of course, the proof of her bloodline now turned its horned head and nuzzled its hot snout into the neckline of her gown to suckle at her breast. Realizing she had begun to slouch, Dany threw back her shoulders and spoke to Griff in tones as level as her gaze.
"The gods must smile upon you that you live to stand before me. When my brother King Viserys violated the sacred city of Vaes Dothrak, the great Khal Drogo made him a crown of molten gold, which was the death of him. Have you survived such a test? Are you blood of the dragon?"
"No, my lady--"
"I am. Do not wake the dragon."
As if on command, Drogon pulled off her breast, his head lashing around on his whip of a neck to flick his tongue and snort smoke at Griff.
He took a slight step backward, into the solid form of the young ko who looked so like her dead bloodrider Rakharo, whose long tanned fingers clapped around Griff's arm as tightly as a shackle.
"F-forgive me…Your Grace," Griff stammered.
Dany tried not to smirk visibly at his submission, though Drogon expressed his own feelings on the matter with a rather haughty hiss before he latched once more onto her breast.
"You have been brought up to believe you are King Aegon," she said. "By whom?"
She'd had the story from Jorah, of course, but it was not the same as hearing it from Griff's own mouth. And she wanted to know whether he would dare lie to her.
"By Jon Connington, Lord of Griffin's Roost. Prince Rhaegar's beloved friend."
"Who was exiled by my father King Aerys for his defeat at the Battle of the Bells," Dany said, in her mind adding what Jorah had told her, for refusing to carry out a battle plan that would have slain many women and children.
She squirmed again on her bench, as much at the horror of such a strategy as that it had come directly from her father. Madness… Though words Jorah had spoken to her drifted from even further back in her mind: If you would be queen, it will mean killing Robert's children--the Princess Myrcella and the little King Tommen, and Stannis' daughter--and the babes of any other rivals who would one day make war on Rhaego's claim.
Raising her voice, as if to speak over Jorah in her mind, she said, "Jon Connington has long been rumored to have drunk himself to death. You will, of course, understand if I am mistrustful of men come back from the dead."
"If my queen will permit me," came a tentative and aged-crackled voice from near the doorway; Dany swung her gaze as Griff turned to settle on the white-haired, bearded knight who stood under the guard of the two other bloodriders. "I will vouch that the man of whom you speak is, truly, Lord Jon Connington. I saw him with mine own eyes, at the house of Illyrio Mopatis in Pentos."
"You vouch?" Dany said. "Ser Barristan Selmy, who served in my father's Kingsguard, then swore fealty to the Usurper? Do you turn your white cloak a third time and swear fealty to me?"
Most men would have wavered at such a question, but Dany watched Ser Barristan intently, and saw neither his blue eyes flicker from her to Griff, nor even a telltale roll of his throat with a discomfited swallow. Age might have made his voice unsteady, but not lack of conviction as he replied, "I serve the true heir to the Iron Throne."
"A careful answer, ser." Dany returned her attention to Griff. "Where is Jon Connington, then? Dead in Vaes Dothrak because of your foolhardy quest?"
Griff shifted his weight; though his eyes were on Dany, his gaze turned inward. "He was in Myr, rallying the Golden Company to fight for my seat on the Iron Throne, when I conceived my plan to rescue Your Grace from the crones." Again the nostrils flared a little as the violet eyes met Dany's again. "I knew no swords were allowed in the sacred city of the Dothraki, so I took only Ser Barristan with me."
"Come now, Young Griff, don't lie to the queen," drawled a voice from somewhere in the vicinity of Selmy and the bloodriders--the Imp's, though Dany couldn't see him over Griff. "You know you took only Ser Barristan with you because Jon Connington would never accompany you on such an idiotic quest, and would have stopped it altogether, if he'd got wind of it."
Behind her, Jorah snorted. Dany might have laughed, too, but pressed her lips tightly together, on principle misliking the idea of being amused by the Kingslayer's brother, even if he was a dwarf. She could not tell whether he referred to her as queen out of respect or mockery, and she gritted her teeth that Jorah apparently felt no such qualm.
"If you are so knowledgeable of the ways of the Dothraki," she said to Griff as if there had been no interruption, "then you should also know that they are not famed for their mercy. Khal Jhogo, why have you allowed these men to live?"
In Dothraki, Jhogo repeated to Dany what Jorah had already told her: that the Dothraki had seen the Red Comet when it appeared and known that it signified the birth of the Stallion Who Mounts the World, and that somewhere the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea lived. They had not immediately set out to search for Dany and the child, Jhogo having been embroiled in his own game--not of thrones, but of saddles--but when he'd returned to Vaes Dothrak a khal in his own right, to bring his bride and their unborn child before the crones, they arrived almost at the same time as Griff, and the crones had prophesied that his arrival was a sign that now was the time to find the wayward khaleesi .
"Boy say he wed Dan Ares queen," Jhogo concluded in his halting version of the Common Tongue of Westeros. "But khaleesi do not take husbands after khals."
"She did," Griff said, his eyes narrowing on Dany before shifting to Jorah as he spat, "A lord so low as to be almost of common birth. An exile and an informer."
Despite the uncertain state of her marriage Dany said, "I will no more allow disrespect for my royal consort than for my own royal person."
"Pay no heed to him, Your Grace," came the Imp's voice once again, "Aegon's just got his smallclothes in a twist because I introduced your lord husband to him as Uncle Jorah."
"You must put him aside, Daenerys," persisted Griff, "and join your strength to mine through a royal marriage. It is not for a queen to wed for love."
Dany's face reddened at his deliberately disrespectful familiar address, but she was too furious with all that he implied to correct him for that seeming triviality. Or to react to the pain in her breast as Drogon clung to her as she leapt to her feet.
"Is that what Jon Connington taught you? Is that what he believed of his beloved Prince Rhaegar? That he bore no love for his wife Elia of Dorne?"
"Well, there is the thing about Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark," said Tyrion Lannister.
"Bring the Imp forward," Dany barked to her bloodriders, her chest heaving with her breathless rage.
Griff was dragged roughly aside as the dwarf, unbound but flanked by his Dothraki guards, waddled forward, his chin of a level with the top of the table. Deep within, Dany felt a twinge of conscience that looming over him like this was not in keeping with the sort of queen she meant to be--she did not, after all, feel any disgust for the way he had been born; only to whom--but only enough to make her resume her seat, not to have a stool brought for the Imp.
"Jorah tells me that you don't know when to shut your mouth, though a deal that comes out of it is sound council."
"Does he, now?" Tyrion smirked up at Jorah. "He was singing a different tune when he was knocking my teeth out."
"You will have fewer unless you soon give evidence of anything but the former," Dany said. "Why should I take council from the Kingslayer's brother?"
"Why should I serve the Mad King's daughter? Or the Beggar King's sister?"
"Because I am neither my father nor my brother!"
Tyrion smiled as he made a little bow. "I believe my point is made."
No, it could not be so. Dany's heart pounded. "You may not be a kingslayer, but you are a kinslayer, are you not?"
"I don't deny that I've killed Your Grace's most dangerous opponent," said the Imp, rocking back and forth on his heels, "and I'll do everything I can to rid you of my sweet sister Queen Cersei--with pleasure."
"Have you anything else to offer me but the services of a rather unlikely assassin?"
Tyrion's eyes dropped down to Drogon, and unsettling as they were, one black and one bright as an emerald--or an asp--Dany thought that of everyone who had beheld the first dragon in three hundred years, he alone had looked at it with more awe than terror. "I'm something of an expert in dragonlore."
"But obviously you've never dealt with real dragons."
"I beg your pardon, but neither has Your Grace. And I do know that unless you'd like your teats chewed off--and I daresay your husband won't--" This with a cheeky glance at Jorah. "--then you'd better see about feeding him properly. Meat. And dragons don't like it raw."
Suddenly wearied by the council, Dany dismissed the Dothraki and her prisoners from her presence. When they had gone, shutting the door behind her, Dany plucked Drogon from her breast and set him on the table, then slumped over it, rubbing her aching eyes. She flinched when Jorah's big hands settled heavily at the base of her neck, but he did not withdraw, and she relaxed as his fingers began to massage the knots that had formed at the top of her spine and along her shoulder blades.
"Is this what I've come to?" she said. "Surrounding myself with an army of rapers and advisors who include kinslayers and turncoats and--"
Jorah's hand flew away as if her skin had burst into flame and burnt him. "Slavers?" he said, roughly, his boots thudding on the floorboards as he rounded the table to face her. "Spies?"
Sighing, Dany raised her head. "I did not mean--"
"Didn't you?" The table shuddered as both his palms came to rest on the surface and he loomed over it, the lines of his face hard, his eyes dark. Drogon shrieked, skittered up Dany's arm to perch on her shoulder, and puffed smoke from his nostrils.
She stared back at her husband, and saw herself mirrored in his gaze, no longer the tired girl she had earlier beheld in the looking glass, but lean. Hard. Tried by fire, but unburnt. A dragon on one shoulder. She had an empty one where another might sit. And arms to hold a third.
She knew, then, what she must do.
"Perhaps I did mean it," she said. "It was, after all, you who told me that if I want to win my game of thrones, I shall have to compromise. I see now that I must--but not for a throne."
Now Jorah's features creased with confusion. "Daenerys?"
"My father might have been willing to sacrifice children. I am a mother, and there is nothing I won't do to rescue mine. Tell Captain Groleo we sail on the morn for Qarth."
Read Chapter 29