Fic: A Year from Now (31/?)
Title: A Year from Now (31/?)
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Quaithe, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Tyrion Lannister, Aegon Targaryen, Barristan Selmy
Ratings & Warnings: R; none in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 3431 in chapter 31
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 returns to Qarth, and nothing goes according to plan.
Author's Note: As always, thank you so much, dear readers--I become more and more grateful for you and your enthusiasm for this story as it nears its end…I think we're within three chapters from the end… Massive thanks to just-a-dram, who held my hand through plotting this chapter, and for betaing it while ill. Above and beyond…
Previous Chapters |
31. Unraveling
"Careful now--mind your step," Jorah said as he turned to assist his wife down the gangplank of The Bear and the Maiden Fair.
Dany placed her hand in his upturned palm, but gave him a bemused smile, as well. "I hope you'll be as gallant when I'm a great lumbering cow nine moons hence."
"I will." He pictured her, fierce and radiant and heavier with his child than she had been with Drogo's, now that her lifestyle was not so active nor her diet so lean, and couldn't stop himself grinning. He drew her hand to his lips, brushing them across her knuckles. "But you will never be a cow."
"It is well we go to visit Xaro Xhoan Daxos," Dany replied, her eyes dancing like a ripple of sunlight on the waves in the harbor. "He has mastered the art of the pretty compliment."
"But not the sincere one. Daenerys?" Jorah's grip tightened on her hand; the laughter had gone out of her eyes as if a cloud had passed over the face of the sun, her gaze drifting over his shoulder. He turned, instinctively thrusting his arm out in front of her, as he found himself looking down at a red-cloaked figure whose face was obscured by a red-lacquered wooden mask.
"Quaithe," Dany breathed.
"The Priestess of Asshai," Jorah muttered.
"Priestess of Asshai?" Tyrion Lannister pushed his way through the party disembarking the ship, waddling up to Quaithe without hesitation. "There's one of your people warming Stannis Baratheon's bed in Westeros. Let me think, what is her name? Melora or Maleficent or…Melisandre! Yes, that's it. They say she's very terrible and very red, but I never heard any one mention a mask. It's a nice touch."
The Imp may as well have not spoken, for all the attention Quaithe paid him. The bright eyes peering through the slits were as unmoving as the wooden mask itself , fixed on Dany's midsection, as if gazing through cloth and flesh into her womb itself. Jorah laid his open palm on the belly that thus far still showed no signs of her pregnancy, his thoughts turning to the day not a fortnight past, when they'd first suspected his child grew within her.
"Are you pleased, Jorah?" she'd asked as they lay curled together in their narrow bunk, her small hand covering his hand where it cupped her breast and drawing it down to her stomach. "To be the father of kings?"
"Of princes," he'd corrected her, and pressed a kiss to her ear. "And princesses. Rhaego will be king."
Squirming as he'd kissed her again, his beard prickling the sensitive skin of her neck, Dany persisted, "Rhaego will be the Stallion Who Mounts the World."
"And he is my son."
"But not your seed."
Jorah had pushed up on his elbow, then, gently turning Dany so that she lay on her back and he could peer into her eyes--or he could have done, if the cabin had not been too dark. At the same time, he'd been glad she couldn't see the suspicion that must surely line his face--though he'd known she must hear it in his voice.
"What is this line of questioning?" he'd asked. "Do you mean to trap me into confessing that I'll love a son of my body better than the one who is not?"
Dany's flare of temper had not been evident to him on her face in the dark, but, perched at the head of their bed, two spots like glowing embers appeared where Drogon's nostrils would be, his smoke hazy pale grey against the dark.
Her reply had been mild. "I know you will give no preference to one over the other. But your love will be different."
She'd placed her hand over his on her belly again, pressing his palm into her, as if she could make him feel the tiny stirring of life within. Remembering how that first night of the journey that led them to this moment had begun with feeling Rhaego jostle about inside her, Jorah's heart had leapt within his ribs with the anticipation of the day this babe would make his--or her--presence known in so tangible a way. He'd leant his head down toward Dany and felt her smile against his cheek as she'd brushed her lips across it.
"I only wanted to know, my bear, if you are pleased that, whatever titles they have, your sons and daughters shall be the highest lords and ladies of the land."
Jorah had laid down again, drawing his wife's back against him and burying his face in her loose-flowing hair; in truth, the knowledge of Dany's pregnancy, an event for which he'd longed since the peaceful months of marriage in Valyria, during which her quest for the Iron Throne had been at an end, had filled him as much with foreboding as with joy, when he considered it in light of her current pursuit of her dragon's eggs and ongoing dispute with Griff over who was the rightful heir. Perhaps it was because his own aspirations had never been for anything more than the home he loved on Bear Island and the love of a good woman, but the last thing he would wish for his children would be to spend their lives as pawns or even kings and queens in this game, as their parents had been. But for that period in Valyria, Dany had known no other life.
"I'm pleased to be a father," he'd told her, and released a long breath and the tension in his shoulders. "I would be even if still we wandered poor in exile. Though pleased hardly goes far enough. It's..." His voice had caught. "…all I ever wanted."
He hadn't needed to see Dany's face to know that his answer more than satisfied her; she'd wriggled her hips, pushing her arse against him so that he grew hard against her.
"Are you certain you want nothing more?" she'd asked, her voice dropping to a low, coy pitch.
"There is one thing," Jorah had said, and when Dany had rocked back into him again, he'd somehow managed not to push her onto her back at once, and said, "Not to have to attend the birth this time."
"But you proved a most capable midwife." Dany's reply had not been quite as playful as he'd thought it would be, and her grip on his hand had tightened a great deal, almost as an echo of the night she'd delivered Rhaego. "I…I think I will want you with me again."
He had turned her onto her back, then--not to act upon his desires, but to look at her, his eyes straining to make out her features in the watery moonlight coming in through the porthole windows.
"You are not…frightened of giving birth again? You, Daenerys, who delivered Rhaego as if you'd borne a dozen babes already?" He thought, but did not say, Who stood unflinchingly among flames and hatched Drogon?
"I was terrified. Didn't I look it?"
"Perhaps my own terror kept me from seeing yours." He kissed her forehead. "If you ask it of me, I will be there by your side. The only thing that could keep me from you would be your Dothraki maids' insistence that it's unlucky for a man to be present in the birthing chamber."
"Or your kinswomen, rather," had come Dany's reply.
"My kinswomen?"
"Gods be good, your child will be born in your hall on Bear Island."
Gods be good…Jorah certainly had never entertained the possibility of the Seven's benevolence more strongly than as he had made love to his wife that night. He even vowed that as soon as ever they came to a place where the Seven were worshiped, he would go into the Sept and offer prayers of thanks to them for ordering his steps--even the ones that had brought shame to his name and his House.
Now, however, as he stared into the face obscured by the red mask, he was more inclined to believe as he had been more used to: that the gods were not good.
Not to him.
"To go north," Quaithe intoned, "you must journey south. To reach the west you must go east. To go forward you must go back--"
"Is that how they say I told you so in Asshai?" Jorah spat. "Gloat all you want, Priestess--we went north and west, but here we are again. We've come back. This time, with a dragon."
"--and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."
Dany stepped out from behind Jorah's arm. "We will not go to Asshai. My journey to the Seven Kingdoms ends here in Qarth."
Though Jorah misliked how Quaithe pierced Dany with her gaze, he found himself powerless to do or say anything to break the moment of connection. Indeed, he would have been grateful for one of the Imp's ill-timed witticisms, but the priestess seemed to hold all the party on the gangplank behind them transfixed as though by some devilry.
"You have chosen the more difficult road," came her disembodied voice from behind the mask, "hidden by darker shades than Asshai-by-the-Shadow."
Her eyes flicked to Jorah, and he nearly cried out because it was like looking into the dark and twisted corridors of the House of the Undying, and like the black, suffocating wings of crows. He shut his eyes against the image, telling himself that it was all just a nightmare, only a dream, like so many he'd had since last they were in this city.
When he opened them again some moments later, the Red Priestess of Asshai was gone.
~*~
"Daenerys Targaryen," greeted Xaro Xhoan Daxos as the queen and her entourage boarded his pleasure barge. Apart from Jorah, she had brought Khal Jhogo and his three bloodriders, Tyrion Lannister, Ser Barristan Selmy, the prisoner Griff-- boarded the merchant prince's pleasure barge. Drogon came with them, too, wearing a collar about his neck attached ludicrously to a lead which Dany held as if he were no more than a large pet dog.
"Sit, sit," Daxos bid them, gesturing with a sweep of his bejeweled hand.
Dany did not move, nor did Jorah, seeing at once that this was no pleasant reunion of old friends, as their host undoubtedly wanted them to believe from the low table laden with delicacies beneath the shade of a canopy. Apart from the aura of distrust Daxos always exuded, the cushions on which he reclined--and from which he did not arise at his guests' arrival--were situated on the lower deck of the barge, with the rowers, rather than above where he'd presided the last time Dany and Jorah had been here as his guests. Tyrion, however, felt no such compunction, and broke rank to make himself comfortable on the cushions, to the bemusement of the serving boys who began to ply him with food and drink after a nod from their master.
"You will forgive me," Daxos said, "if I do not stand before Your Imminence. My legs are not what they were when last we supped together. Though my charm, I think, surpasses it."
With a glance up at Jorah, Dany settled in the place of honor at Daxos' right hand, Drogon at her back, his serpentine neck looped around her so that his head rested on her shoulder between her and her host. As Jorah took his seat on her other side, he noted with no small amount of relief that she did not look at all charmed by the merchant prince--for though he felt secure in the renewed fervor of their love, he could not forget that she had for a time contemplated the offer of Daxos' hand in marriage--nor did she make polite inquiries as to what ailed his leg.
Not that Daxos needed to be coaxed to talk about himself.
"I always knew you would return to me," he said, leaning on his right elbow, his body inclined close to her, as he sipped a goblet of green nectar from Myr. "Though I had hoped, not actually married to your bear knight rather than merely pretending to be his wife."
Around a mouthful of olives, Tyrion quipped, "It seems youg Griff there is not the only one thwarted in love."
"Love has naught to do with it," muttered Griff, his arms firmly in the grasp of his two Dothraki guards.
"Poetic license," said Tyrion. "Thwarted in duty doesn't sound nearly so pretty."
Daxos' gaze had been on Dany's breast, bared by the Qartheen-style gown in Targaryen blood red--which Tyrion had earlier remarked would have allowed her to pass for a Lannister, if only her eyes had been green--but his eyes did not darken with lust until they raked over Griff. Jorah couldn't stop himself smirking as he remembered Tyrion's suggestion that they trade the lad for the egg--and how appalled Barristan Selmy had been by the jape.
"I suppose I must call you Prince Jorah now?" Daxos abruptly turned the conversation back to the direction he had intended it before Tyrion interrupted; the jewels in his nose glittered with the same irritation as shined in his eyes.
"Lord Mormont will do," Jorah replied.
Daxos threw back his head and laughed. "Lord of what? You may have married a queen, but she has no lands. And until she does, neither do you, my exile knight. My wandering prince."
The fire of Drogon's flesh burned through the sleeve of Jorah's tunic as Dany sat a little more upright, forcing her dragon to unwind from around her.
"My ancestor Aegon the Conquerer would argue that the one who holds all the dragons holds all the lands."
"Ah," said Daxos, "but you don't hold all the dragons, do you? That's why you have returned to Xaro, is it not, sweetling?"
"Her Grace," Jorah reminded the man in a growl.
"What Prince Jorah means to say," Tyrion cut in, wiping his hands on a linen, "is that Her Grace has prepared most generous trade agreements to benefit the Thirteen--and especially Xaro Xhoan Daxos--in exchange for the dragon's egg." He paused for Daxos' reaction, adding, when there was none, "Or perhaps the lad, if you prefer?"
Daxos' gaze drifted not unwillingly to Griff. "I thought you had no living relations, Your Grace?"
"I am her nephew, my lord--" Griff said, struggling in futility against the Dothraki.
"He claims to be my nephew," Dany said.
"The son of her elder brother Prince Rhaegar, long believed to be dead."
"He has no proof of it."
"Aside from your best features?" Daxos smirked. "Well--I suppose your prince ranks other features more highly than your uncommonly beautiful hair and eyes."
"I don't think his mind has much to do with that feature," said Tyrion--fortunately for him, Jorah was giving Daxos so many murderous glances that he had none to spare for the Imp.
Once again, Daxos' head fell back with a laugh from his belly. "I'd say throw in the dwarf, and I'd accept your offer, but alas…I already traded your egg for a pair of lame legs."
Dany's skin went pale as death against the red of her gown. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, my pretty little queen, that when your Captain Groleo sent a raven to me announcing the birth of your scaly son, I paid a little call on our mutual friend Pyat Pree. I meant to come into the possession of two eggs."
As Jorah silently cursed himself for not considering that Groleo might have been reporting back to his former master, Dany slumped back against Drogon, wrapping her arms protectively about him as if he were a spindly toddling child like Rhaego, and not a beast bigger than herself who peered dangerously at Daxos through golden slits of eyes, smoke snaking out from his nostrils and between the fangs that extended over his lower jaw. "But instead the warlock now holds two of my children."
"We should return at once to your ship, my queen," said Jorah, pushing to his feet; when she resisted his tug on her elbow, he explained, "You have no ally here, Daenerys. It's plain that he didn't visit Pyat Pree in a chivalrous attempt at retrieving the egg to give it back to you."
Daxos' lips curled upward as he sipped from his goblet of nectar. "I recently heard that a king said he who holds all the dragons holds all the lands. A merchant prince said that he who holds all the lands holds all the trade agreements."
Dany lifted her head, her expression mirroring the dragon's as mother and child glowered at Daxos. "Traitor."
"Mm. Though that's a sin, I hear, of which the Dragon Queen is especially forgiving?" The jewels in his nose seemed to wink at Jorah as Dany stood, inhaling long and slow.
"Fascinating," said Tyrion. "Drogon's breathing smoke and Daenerys looks likely to. Picking up on his mother's mood, is he?"
"Your Dothraki army cannot all fly to Westeros on the backs of your dragons any more than they may cross the Narrow Sea astride their horses," Daxos said as Jorah pulled Dany away from the table, looking impotent as he lay there, crippled, upon the cushions. "You still have need of a fleet, Daenerys. I would not burn bridges--"
"Barges, I think you mean," said Tyrion, as Drogon reared back, his mouth yawning for an instant, and then vomiting fire.
The curtained pavilion shading the table at once ignited, and all of Dany's party and the serving boys scrambled out from under it to avoid being burnt. Daxos, however, laid there, attempting to drag himself over the table with his arms, but not succeeding. One doughty lad eyed the burning flaming drapes warily, then ducked beneath to go to his master, but the blur of indigo and silver that darted past them, tugging at the unburned ends of the curtains until they came loose from the pergola and then shunting the bundle overboard, was Griff.
"Grab the dragon!" Jorah shouted to the bloodriders as he sheltered Dany from the blaze in the furthest corner of the deck. "His lead! Grab the lead!"
Drogon poised for another round of fire, and the bloodriders shied away, their eyes white with terror like spooked horses'. Ser Barristan Selmy leapt in front of them--it was not for nothing that men called him Barristan the Bold--heedless of what bodily damage he was likely to sustain from dragonfire. Luckily he beast did not breathe flame, but neither was Selmy able to catch him; for Drogon unfurled his leathern wings, beat the air, and then, with a shriek, pushed off from his perch on the railing--which cracked beneath his weight--and took flight, swooping up, up above the river.
For a moment he--like everyone onboard Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge--stood panting as the charred remains of the fabric sank beneath the river, steaming, and Drogon disappeared among the towers and parapets of Qarth. Then he rounded on Dany, the fire seemingly not extinguished after all, but instead burning in the lilac depths of his eyes.
"That beast is out of control!" he bellowed into her face before the Dothraki guards leapt to restrain him once more. Even then he was undaunted. "And so are you!"
"I did not command Drogon to wreak this destruction!"
"No, but neither did you stay him. Nor did you stay your own heart from trusting whom it ought not, or loving whom it ought not." He shot a fiery glower at Jorah, and then down at Dany's belly. "You have bound your heart to this man--this slaver, this spy--when it ought to have been bound to your kingdom."
"As is yours?"
"Yes," Griff said, his chest puffing out as he drew back his shoulders, head held high even as the Dothraki bound his wrists behind him. "As is mine."
And though Jorah would never have said so to Dany, in that moment he could believe that the boy was Rhaegar's son.
That he was the king.
Dany's jaw muscle rippled beneath the skin of her cheek as she ground her teeth. "Very well then," she said, turning in a swirl of her blood red gown to disembark Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge. "We shall see how undying is your love for the Seven Kingdoms when you retrieve my children from Pyat Pree."
Read Chapter 32
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Quaithe, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Tyrion Lannister, Aegon Targaryen, Barristan Selmy
Ratings & Warnings: R; none in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 3431 in chapter 31
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 returns to Qarth, and nothing goes according to plan.
Author's Note: As always, thank you so much, dear readers--I become more and more grateful for you and your enthusiasm for this story as it nears its end…I think we're within three chapters from the end… Massive thanks to just-a-dram, who held my hand through plotting this chapter, and for betaing it while ill. Above and beyond…
Previous Chapters |
31. Unraveling
"Careful now--mind your step," Jorah said as he turned to assist his wife down the gangplank of The Bear and the Maiden Fair.
Dany placed her hand in his upturned palm, but gave him a bemused smile, as well. "I hope you'll be as gallant when I'm a great lumbering cow nine moons hence."
"I will." He pictured her, fierce and radiant and heavier with his child than she had been with Drogo's, now that her lifestyle was not so active nor her diet so lean, and couldn't stop himself grinning. He drew her hand to his lips, brushing them across her knuckles. "But you will never be a cow."
"It is well we go to visit Xaro Xhoan Daxos," Dany replied, her eyes dancing like a ripple of sunlight on the waves in the harbor. "He has mastered the art of the pretty compliment."
"But not the sincere one. Daenerys?" Jorah's grip tightened on her hand; the laughter had gone out of her eyes as if a cloud had passed over the face of the sun, her gaze drifting over his shoulder. He turned, instinctively thrusting his arm out in front of her, as he found himself looking down at a red-cloaked figure whose face was obscured by a red-lacquered wooden mask.
"Quaithe," Dany breathed.
"The Priestess of Asshai," Jorah muttered.
"Priestess of Asshai?" Tyrion Lannister pushed his way through the party disembarking the ship, waddling up to Quaithe without hesitation. "There's one of your people warming Stannis Baratheon's bed in Westeros. Let me think, what is her name? Melora or Maleficent or…Melisandre! Yes, that's it. They say she's very terrible and very red, but I never heard any one mention a mask. It's a nice touch."
The Imp may as well have not spoken, for all the attention Quaithe paid him. The bright eyes peering through the slits were as unmoving as the wooden mask itself , fixed on Dany's midsection, as if gazing through cloth and flesh into her womb itself. Jorah laid his open palm on the belly that thus far still showed no signs of her pregnancy, his thoughts turning to the day not a fortnight past, when they'd first suspected his child grew within her.
"Are you pleased, Jorah?" she'd asked as they lay curled together in their narrow bunk, her small hand covering his hand where it cupped her breast and drawing it down to her stomach. "To be the father of kings?"
"Of princes," he'd corrected her, and pressed a kiss to her ear. "And princesses. Rhaego will be king."
Squirming as he'd kissed her again, his beard prickling the sensitive skin of her neck, Dany persisted, "Rhaego will be the Stallion Who Mounts the World."
"And he is my son."
"But not your seed."
Jorah had pushed up on his elbow, then, gently turning Dany so that she lay on her back and he could peer into her eyes--or he could have done, if the cabin had not been too dark. At the same time, he'd been glad she couldn't see the suspicion that must surely line his face--though he'd known she must hear it in his voice.
"What is this line of questioning?" he'd asked. "Do you mean to trap me into confessing that I'll love a son of my body better than the one who is not?"
Dany's flare of temper had not been evident to him on her face in the dark, but, perched at the head of their bed, two spots like glowing embers appeared where Drogon's nostrils would be, his smoke hazy pale grey against the dark.
Her reply had been mild. "I know you will give no preference to one over the other. But your love will be different."
She'd placed her hand over his on her belly again, pressing his palm into her, as if she could make him feel the tiny stirring of life within. Remembering how that first night of the journey that led them to this moment had begun with feeling Rhaego jostle about inside her, Jorah's heart had leapt within his ribs with the anticipation of the day this babe would make his--or her--presence known in so tangible a way. He'd leant his head down toward Dany and felt her smile against his cheek as she'd brushed her lips across it.
"I only wanted to know, my bear, if you are pleased that, whatever titles they have, your sons and daughters shall be the highest lords and ladies of the land."
Jorah had laid down again, drawing his wife's back against him and burying his face in her loose-flowing hair; in truth, the knowledge of Dany's pregnancy, an event for which he'd longed since the peaceful months of marriage in Valyria, during which her quest for the Iron Throne had been at an end, had filled him as much with foreboding as with joy, when he considered it in light of her current pursuit of her dragon's eggs and ongoing dispute with Griff over who was the rightful heir. Perhaps it was because his own aspirations had never been for anything more than the home he loved on Bear Island and the love of a good woman, but the last thing he would wish for his children would be to spend their lives as pawns or even kings and queens in this game, as their parents had been. But for that period in Valyria, Dany had known no other life.
"I'm pleased to be a father," he'd told her, and released a long breath and the tension in his shoulders. "I would be even if still we wandered poor in exile. Though pleased hardly goes far enough. It's..." His voice had caught. "…all I ever wanted."
He hadn't needed to see Dany's face to know that his answer more than satisfied her; she'd wriggled her hips, pushing her arse against him so that he grew hard against her.
"Are you certain you want nothing more?" she'd asked, her voice dropping to a low, coy pitch.
"There is one thing," Jorah had said, and when Dany had rocked back into him again, he'd somehow managed not to push her onto her back at once, and said, "Not to have to attend the birth this time."
"But you proved a most capable midwife." Dany's reply had not been quite as playful as he'd thought it would be, and her grip on his hand had tightened a great deal, almost as an echo of the night she'd delivered Rhaego. "I…I think I will want you with me again."
He had turned her onto her back, then--not to act upon his desires, but to look at her, his eyes straining to make out her features in the watery moonlight coming in through the porthole windows.
"You are not…frightened of giving birth again? You, Daenerys, who delivered Rhaego as if you'd borne a dozen babes already?" He thought, but did not say, Who stood unflinchingly among flames and hatched Drogon?
"I was terrified. Didn't I look it?"
"Perhaps my own terror kept me from seeing yours." He kissed her forehead. "If you ask it of me, I will be there by your side. The only thing that could keep me from you would be your Dothraki maids' insistence that it's unlucky for a man to be present in the birthing chamber."
"Or your kinswomen, rather," had come Dany's reply.
"My kinswomen?"
"Gods be good, your child will be born in your hall on Bear Island."
Gods be good…Jorah certainly had never entertained the possibility of the Seven's benevolence more strongly than as he had made love to his wife that night. He even vowed that as soon as ever they came to a place where the Seven were worshiped, he would go into the Sept and offer prayers of thanks to them for ordering his steps--even the ones that had brought shame to his name and his House.
Now, however, as he stared into the face obscured by the red mask, he was more inclined to believe as he had been more used to: that the gods were not good.
Not to him.
"To go north," Quaithe intoned, "you must journey south. To reach the west you must go east. To go forward you must go back--"
"Is that how they say I told you so in Asshai?" Jorah spat. "Gloat all you want, Priestess--we went north and west, but here we are again. We've come back. This time, with a dragon."
"--and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."
Dany stepped out from behind Jorah's arm. "We will not go to Asshai. My journey to the Seven Kingdoms ends here in Qarth."
Though Jorah misliked how Quaithe pierced Dany with her gaze, he found himself powerless to do or say anything to break the moment of connection. Indeed, he would have been grateful for one of the Imp's ill-timed witticisms, but the priestess seemed to hold all the party on the gangplank behind them transfixed as though by some devilry.
"You have chosen the more difficult road," came her disembodied voice from behind the mask, "hidden by darker shades than Asshai-by-the-Shadow."
Her eyes flicked to Jorah, and he nearly cried out because it was like looking into the dark and twisted corridors of the House of the Undying, and like the black, suffocating wings of crows. He shut his eyes against the image, telling himself that it was all just a nightmare, only a dream, like so many he'd had since last they were in this city.
When he opened them again some moments later, the Red Priestess of Asshai was gone.
~*~
"Daenerys Targaryen," greeted Xaro Xhoan Daxos as the queen and her entourage boarded his pleasure barge. Apart from Jorah, she had brought Khal Jhogo and his three bloodriders, Tyrion Lannister, Ser Barristan Selmy, the prisoner Griff-- boarded the merchant prince's pleasure barge. Drogon came with them, too, wearing a collar about his neck attached ludicrously to a lead which Dany held as if he were no more than a large pet dog.
"Sit, sit," Daxos bid them, gesturing with a sweep of his bejeweled hand.
Dany did not move, nor did Jorah, seeing at once that this was no pleasant reunion of old friends, as their host undoubtedly wanted them to believe from the low table laden with delicacies beneath the shade of a canopy. Apart from the aura of distrust Daxos always exuded, the cushions on which he reclined--and from which he did not arise at his guests' arrival--were situated on the lower deck of the barge, with the rowers, rather than above where he'd presided the last time Dany and Jorah had been here as his guests. Tyrion, however, felt no such compunction, and broke rank to make himself comfortable on the cushions, to the bemusement of the serving boys who began to ply him with food and drink after a nod from their master.
"You will forgive me," Daxos said, "if I do not stand before Your Imminence. My legs are not what they were when last we supped together. Though my charm, I think, surpasses it."
With a glance up at Jorah, Dany settled in the place of honor at Daxos' right hand, Drogon at her back, his serpentine neck looped around her so that his head rested on her shoulder between her and her host. As Jorah took his seat on her other side, he noted with no small amount of relief that she did not look at all charmed by the merchant prince--for though he felt secure in the renewed fervor of their love, he could not forget that she had for a time contemplated the offer of Daxos' hand in marriage--nor did she make polite inquiries as to what ailed his leg.
Not that Daxos needed to be coaxed to talk about himself.
"I always knew you would return to me," he said, leaning on his right elbow, his body inclined close to her, as he sipped a goblet of green nectar from Myr. "Though I had hoped, not actually married to your bear knight rather than merely pretending to be his wife."
Around a mouthful of olives, Tyrion quipped, "It seems youg Griff there is not the only one thwarted in love."
"Love has naught to do with it," muttered Griff, his arms firmly in the grasp of his two Dothraki guards.
"Poetic license," said Tyrion. "Thwarted in duty doesn't sound nearly so pretty."
Daxos' gaze had been on Dany's breast, bared by the Qartheen-style gown in Targaryen blood red--which Tyrion had earlier remarked would have allowed her to pass for a Lannister, if only her eyes had been green--but his eyes did not darken with lust until they raked over Griff. Jorah couldn't stop himself smirking as he remembered Tyrion's suggestion that they trade the lad for the egg--and how appalled Barristan Selmy had been by the jape.
"I suppose I must call you Prince Jorah now?" Daxos abruptly turned the conversation back to the direction he had intended it before Tyrion interrupted; the jewels in his nose glittered with the same irritation as shined in his eyes.
"Lord Mormont will do," Jorah replied.
Daxos threw back his head and laughed. "Lord of what? You may have married a queen, but she has no lands. And until she does, neither do you, my exile knight. My wandering prince."
The fire of Drogon's flesh burned through the sleeve of Jorah's tunic as Dany sat a little more upright, forcing her dragon to unwind from around her.
"My ancestor Aegon the Conquerer would argue that the one who holds all the dragons holds all the lands."
"Ah," said Daxos, "but you don't hold all the dragons, do you? That's why you have returned to Xaro, is it not, sweetling?"
"Her Grace," Jorah reminded the man in a growl.
"What Prince Jorah means to say," Tyrion cut in, wiping his hands on a linen, "is that Her Grace has prepared most generous trade agreements to benefit the Thirteen--and especially Xaro Xhoan Daxos--in exchange for the dragon's egg." He paused for Daxos' reaction, adding, when there was none, "Or perhaps the lad, if you prefer?"
Daxos' gaze drifted not unwillingly to Griff. "I thought you had no living relations, Your Grace?"
"I am her nephew, my lord--" Griff said, struggling in futility against the Dothraki.
"He claims to be my nephew," Dany said.
"The son of her elder brother Prince Rhaegar, long believed to be dead."
"He has no proof of it."
"Aside from your best features?" Daxos smirked. "Well--I suppose your prince ranks other features more highly than your uncommonly beautiful hair and eyes."
"I don't think his mind has much to do with that feature," said Tyrion--fortunately for him, Jorah was giving Daxos so many murderous glances that he had none to spare for the Imp.
Once again, Daxos' head fell back with a laugh from his belly. "I'd say throw in the dwarf, and I'd accept your offer, but alas…I already traded your egg for a pair of lame legs."
Dany's skin went pale as death against the red of her gown. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, my pretty little queen, that when your Captain Groleo sent a raven to me announcing the birth of your scaly son, I paid a little call on our mutual friend Pyat Pree. I meant to come into the possession of two eggs."
As Jorah silently cursed himself for not considering that Groleo might have been reporting back to his former master, Dany slumped back against Drogon, wrapping her arms protectively about him as if he were a spindly toddling child like Rhaego, and not a beast bigger than herself who peered dangerously at Daxos through golden slits of eyes, smoke snaking out from his nostrils and between the fangs that extended over his lower jaw. "But instead the warlock now holds two of my children."
"We should return at once to your ship, my queen," said Jorah, pushing to his feet; when she resisted his tug on her elbow, he explained, "You have no ally here, Daenerys. It's plain that he didn't visit Pyat Pree in a chivalrous attempt at retrieving the egg to give it back to you."
Daxos' lips curled upward as he sipped from his goblet of nectar. "I recently heard that a king said he who holds all the dragons holds all the lands. A merchant prince said that he who holds all the lands holds all the trade agreements."
Dany lifted her head, her expression mirroring the dragon's as mother and child glowered at Daxos. "Traitor."
"Mm. Though that's a sin, I hear, of which the Dragon Queen is especially forgiving?" The jewels in his nose seemed to wink at Jorah as Dany stood, inhaling long and slow.
"Fascinating," said Tyrion. "Drogon's breathing smoke and Daenerys looks likely to. Picking up on his mother's mood, is he?"
"Your Dothraki army cannot all fly to Westeros on the backs of your dragons any more than they may cross the Narrow Sea astride their horses," Daxos said as Jorah pulled Dany away from the table, looking impotent as he lay there, crippled, upon the cushions. "You still have need of a fleet, Daenerys. I would not burn bridges--"
"Barges, I think you mean," said Tyrion, as Drogon reared back, his mouth yawning for an instant, and then vomiting fire.
The curtained pavilion shading the table at once ignited, and all of Dany's party and the serving boys scrambled out from under it to avoid being burnt. Daxos, however, laid there, attempting to drag himself over the table with his arms, but not succeeding. One doughty lad eyed the burning flaming drapes warily, then ducked beneath to go to his master, but the blur of indigo and silver that darted past them, tugging at the unburned ends of the curtains until they came loose from the pergola and then shunting the bundle overboard, was Griff.
"Grab the dragon!" Jorah shouted to the bloodriders as he sheltered Dany from the blaze in the furthest corner of the deck. "His lead! Grab the lead!"
Drogon poised for another round of fire, and the bloodriders shied away, their eyes white with terror like spooked horses'. Ser Barristan Selmy leapt in front of them--it was not for nothing that men called him Barristan the Bold--heedless of what bodily damage he was likely to sustain from dragonfire. Luckily he beast did not breathe flame, but neither was Selmy able to catch him; for Drogon unfurled his leathern wings, beat the air, and then, with a shriek, pushed off from his perch on the railing--which cracked beneath his weight--and took flight, swooping up, up above the river.
For a moment he--like everyone onboard Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge--stood panting as the charred remains of the fabric sank beneath the river, steaming, and Drogon disappeared among the towers and parapets of Qarth. Then he rounded on Dany, the fire seemingly not extinguished after all, but instead burning in the lilac depths of his eyes.
"That beast is out of control!" he bellowed into her face before the Dothraki guards leapt to restrain him once more. Even then he was undaunted. "And so are you!"
"I did not command Drogon to wreak this destruction!"
"No, but neither did you stay him. Nor did you stay your own heart from trusting whom it ought not, or loving whom it ought not." He shot a fiery glower at Jorah, and then down at Dany's belly. "You have bound your heart to this man--this slaver, this spy--when it ought to have been bound to your kingdom."
"As is yours?"
"Yes," Griff said, his chest puffing out as he drew back his shoulders, head held high even as the Dothraki bound his wrists behind him. "As is mine."
And though Jorah would never have said so to Dany, in that moment he could believe that the boy was Rhaegar's son.
That he was the king.
Dany's jaw muscle rippled beneath the skin of her cheek as she ground her teeth. "Very well then," she said, turning in a swirl of her blood red gown to disembark Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge. "We shall see how undying is your love for the Seven Kingdoms when you retrieve my children from Pyat Pree."
Read Chapter 32