A Year from Now (12/?)
Title: A Year from Now (12/?)
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont
Ratings & Warnings: R for nudity and sexual content in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 3977 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: Startling news from Westeros and burgeoning feelings for Jorah leave Dany uncertain as to her future course of action.
Author's Note: As always, thanks to my beta, just_a_dram, and to my fellow Jorah/Dany shippers for reading.
Previous Chapters |
12. Usurpers
"The Usurper is dead."
The words Daenerys Targaryen had waited her whole life to hear sounded hollow in her ears, spoken in halting tones by her own incredulous voice.
She sat huddled over a table with Ser Jorah in a darkened corner of one of the many winesinks in the quay; upon hearing the news from Westeros, he'd stated that he needed a drink. Dany did not disagree, and sipped at a cup sweet red wine as Jorah nursed a flagon of ale. For the news had not just been of King Robert's death, but of that of his Hand, Eddard Stark, as well--executed, in fact, for the crime high treason, at which Jorah fairly spat in disbelief.
Though he had, perhaps, been still more surprised to hear that Stark's eldest son, a boy about Dany's own age, Jorah said, who could scarcely have finished training with wooden swords in the castle yards of Winterfell, styled himself King in the North, while Robert's two brothers vied with each other for the Iron Throne, claiming that their nephew King Joffrey was not of Baratheon blood at all, but a bastard borne of Queen Cersei's incest with her twin, Ser Jaime. Dany had winced at that; her own parents, and indeed most of her forebears, had been brothers wedded to sister, or their nearest female kin, and she herself had passed her girlhood expecting to become Viserys' bride--a thought which repulsed her now, though not for reasons having to do with incest.
"The Seven Kingdoms are fractured," she said. "Ser Jorah, this is exactly what I need, is it not? I must amend my letter to Illyrio at once, and ask for an army."
"Unless he's friends with another khal for you to marry, I can't see how Illyrio would be of any help to you."
Though the knight did not speak forcibly, staring blankly into his ale, Dany nonetheless felt his words like a blow to the gut. Illyrio had arranged her marriage for such a time as this. She didn't know how he knew the Seven Kingdoms would descend into chaos--and she recalled with a chill down her spine how uneasy Illyrio had made her when he first befriended Viserys, and the whispers she'd heard on the streets of Pentos that the magister didn't have a friend he wouldn't cheerfully sell for the right price--but the Seven Kingdoms were embroiled in civil war now, and this was precisely the time Illyrio had intended for the Targaryen heir to march on Westeros with Khal Drogo's army of ten thousand Dothraki cavalrymen. She should be invading her country now, but instead she was as far away from the Iron Throne as she'd ever been, with exactly one knight in her service.
Because she'd taken pity on a slave woman.
Ser Jorah had been right when he'd said she had a gentle heart.
But no longer.
Dany sat up straight and slipped her forefinger between Rhaego's lips and her nipple to break the strength of his latch. He screeched in protest when she removed him from her breast, but quieted when she put him on her shoulder and patted his back.
"Then I must try my luck and appeal to Xaro Xhoan Daxos for ships and hired swords," she said. "My best chance for success may be while the lords of Westeros battle amongst themselves."
"Not with a foreign army."
"What do you mean, ser?"
At last Jorah looked up from his ale, his eyes locking with hers as he took a long pull from the flagon. He set the empty cup on the slightly uneven surface of the table and signaled to the barmaid to bring him another, and leaned against the wooden back of his bench.
"No king--or queen--no matter how legitimate her claim to the throne, could unite the houses of Westeros so quickly as a foreign threat would."
Dany gaped at him. "But…the plan has always been to strike with a foreign army."
"A Dothraki army." Jorah gave a curt nod to the wench who brought him a fresh ale. "With such a fearsome calvary at your command, I'd have put my life on your success. Now you talk of merchant vessels and an army of sellswords." He shook his head and raised his cup to his lips. "Gold is not so inspiring as a khal's righteous indignation at an attempt on his beloved khaleesi's life."
Dany's shoulders sagged under the weight of Jorah's words, and Rhaego began to squirm in her slackened arms, rooting for her breast. She cradled him and let him suckle again on the opposite side. "But surely--"
"Surely you haven't forgotten how quickly Robert sent his assassins for you when he learned of your pregnancy?" Jorah's eyes flickered down to his cup as he drank. "The very brothers who now contend for his throne sat upon the council that advised that course, my queen."
With a sigh, Dany conceded his point. "And they would not hesitate to eliminate the smallest hint of another threat."
Jorah nodded. "Stannis most of all. The houses of his Crownlands once supported House Targaryen. Stannis cannot risk that they might yet retain those old loyalties."
"Are there other houses that would support me? Viserys was confident of the Martells of Dorne, who would avenge my brother Rhaegar's wife Elia and their children, and the Tyrrells, the Redwynes, the Darrys, and the Greyjoys."
Dany pursed her lips; she knew Ser Jorah had won his spurs for his valor in quelling the Greyjoy Rebellion.
"Your house rally to the side of this King in the North, I presume?" she added, sounding even to her own ears a petulant child, little more than a mewling babe in arms like the one at her breast, but she didn't care. This news, which should have been the best of her life, had left her feeling overwhelmed and more desperate than ever.
"House Mormont would follow you, were I still lord."
"Were that the case, you would never have met me. You would do your duty and flock to your overlord's banner."
Dany half-expected Jorah to bristle at this, to declare his loyalty to her as his true sovereign. However, he seemed not to have heard her at all.
"Joffrey must be Queen Cersei's bastard," he said, as though thinking aloud, "or the northmen would defend his claim. It was, after all, Robert Baratheon we fought to put on the throne. But I know Eddard Stark, and were he alive, he'd give the strength of Winterfell and her bannermen to the rightful heir, which would be Stannis, as Robert's eldest brother." He rubbed his fingers over his beard. "There must be something foul afoot to prompt young Robb to rebellion…" His eyes flicked to Dany's so abruptly that they startled her."So perhaps House Targaryen may have new allies, my queen. Someday."
"Someday," Dany echoed, her voice tremulous, Jorah's visage distorting as she regarded him through a veil of unshed tears. She would not let them fall; a dragon did not weep.
"I know you are right," she said, blinking back the tears, "that my son and I stand a better chance of surviving to sit the Iron Throne if we bide our time while our enemies are too distracted to even remember the Targaryen line did not die with my brother Rhaegar on the Trident…But hearing of the Usurper's death…hearing of home…" Her eyes welled again. "It was as if were starving in a dungeon and caught a whiff of a savory dish, only to have it taken away before I could taste it. I've waited a lifetime for home already…"
"Well do I know the feeling."
She pushed back her tears once and for all, and looked upon him. The face that she hadn't thought handsome at first, but had lately become so dear to her, the first face she wanted to see each day, was lined, deep unhappiness tugging at the corners of his mouth, his gaze far away. It must be an anguish to him to advise her to delay her journey to Westeros knowing that in doing so he extended his own wait.
She reached out to him, and his lips curved slightly upward and he peered at her through bright eyes as he grasped her hand across the table.
"What does all this mean for you, my good knight? With Lord Stark dead…Is there aught to keep you from home?"
"As I said, you are home."
Dany thought Jorah said it with less conviction than the previous day, which struck her as passing strange, though she dismissed the suspicion; he was preoccupied with this news and its implications. And he squeezed her hand before releasing it and taking up his ale again with a heavy sigh.
"Unless one of the claimants to the throne has taken the time from his war to change the laws against the slave trade, my crime is still punishable by death in the Seven Kingdoms. And there are many besides Eddard Stark who would happily see me dead--or smile to do the deed themselves." Hs expression and tone became as bitter as the ale he drank.
"Not your own kin?"
"No. My deeds brought shame upon House Mormont, but they would not harm one of their own. Though I cannot imagine my aunt Maege would be so forgiving as to happily relinquish my lands back to me, or even shelter me under my own roof."
Dany ached inwardly for him, but she didn't miss how he spoke of the shame wrought by his deeds--not by himself, as if he did not fully own to what had exiled him. She'd always found it difficult to reconcile what she knew of his past with the noble, honorable behavior he'd exhibited to her, which came at his own peril. Now, though, she had to wonder.
"Are you sorry for your crime, Jorah? Only…I think how you told me I could not claim all the Lhazareen captives for my own, how you said it was the kos' right to have the women…"
"Are you asking whether I condone slavery and the abuse of prisoners of war?" asked Jorah, twisting to glance over his shoulder; he'd finished his second pint, and Dany thought he was looking for the barmaid, but she passed without him flagging her. Had he spied something suspicious? He turned back to her, his face indicating nothing.
"No, my queen. I do not. And since you mention it, I will tell you I believed your desire to free Khal Drogo's captives and spare them maltreatment and enslavement was noble, and right."
"I want to know how you regard your crime. Not my husband's."
Dany bristled even though, as ever, Jorah intimated no slur upon the Dothraki's brutal ways. It was she who condemned them--Drogo, too--and she did not like that she'd come to view certain aspects of husband more negatively after his death than she had in his life. But it wasn't fair to unleash anger upon Jorah that ought to have been directed at herself.
Jorah's demeanor indicated he felt precisely the same. He sat back against the bench, lifting his chin defiantly as he said, "My view of what I did has not changed since then. The men I sold were bound for the Wall, as good as slaves already. Even if their master was to be my lord father."
Dany recalled the statement he'd made the previous day, about how he wouldn't go to the Wall for the
same reason she wouldn't go to the dosh khaleen. She'd been chewing on it ever since, and now she thought she understood--at least in part. So long as Jorah Mormont lived, he would be free.
Yet he would deny other men their freedom.
"Do you mean to tell me you would sell those men again?" Dany asked.
He turned again to look over his shoulder, and as he did so, a man who'd been sitting in the shadows, his Qartheen-style cloak pulled up to cover his mouth, got up and exited the tavern. Dany glanced at Jorah, but his eyes were searching for the barmaid, to whom he signaled for another ale.
"I've searched my soul for an answer to that question every day since my exile," he said.
"Have you found one?"
The barmaid returned with Jorah's ale and set it before him, eying Dany's virtually untouched wine as she cleared away the two empty tankards.
"Oh yes," Jorah replied, his lips curled faintly upward as he squeezed a wedge of lemon into his cup.
"And what is it, ser?"
He took a long drink, and his eyes met hers as he swallowed. "That there is precious little I wouldn't do for love."
~*~
Jorah's words lingered with Dany all through the day and kept her awake late into the night, long after his breathing had deepened and the twitches of his muscles stilled as he fell fully asleep beside her in their comfortable bed in Xaro Xoan Daxos' palace. She'd employed every means she knew to help her sleep, including waking Rhaego to suckle him, which normally made her drowsy even when her mind wanted to be alert, but it had no such effect as she studied Jorah in the pale moonlight filtering through the gauzy curtains that covered the tall, open windows.
He slept nude tonight, the sheet draped low across his hips; however, it wasn't his physical nakedness she contemplated, but how open he'd made his heart to her since they arrived in Qarth. Somehow, his declarations about her being his home, of her being the choice he would make above the chance to return to Bear Island, had struck Dany as being more courtly than sincere, so that Jorah had managed to take her by surprise when he'd all but proposed marriage to her that morning. She'd known when she asked him to make her a gift of the bear brooch that she trod very near the Westerosi wedding tradition of a bride taking the cloak of her husband's family, but she hadn't imagined he would be so emboldened as to actually speak of it.
Perhaps he hadn't meant her to understand. He might have thought her ignorant of the customs of her homeland. The irony, if that was the case, was that she'd read of weddings in the Seven Kingdoms in one of the books Jorah had given her for her wedding to Drogo. Those very books that listed the genealogy of House Targaryen, with bloodlines so pure and high that she should be ashamed to accept trinkets and entertain offers of marriage from knights in her service. Least of all knights exiled for such a despicable crime as selling slaves.
And yet, as she studied Jorah's sleeping form, his muscles tensed and his face lined with care as though there was no rest for his weary soul even in sleep, she couldn't bring herself to condemn him, either, and not because the Targaryens balked at slaveholding. It was difficult to find fault with a man whose driving motivation for everything he did was love. Now, for her.
She had tasted power over Drogo, and it had been sweet, but she knew now that the words Jorah had uttered would never have passed from the horse lord's lips. And perhaps that was the sort of marriage she needed--not a political alliance in which she ultimately must rank second to her powerful lord husband, but one in which she was queen of a man's country as well as of his heart.
Then again, was she, indeed, queen of Jorah's heart? Or did Lynesse Hightower still hold that place, the Queen of Love and Beauty as he'd crowned her at the tourney at Lannisport? The question Dany should have asked him wasn't whether he would sell slaves again, but whether he would marry Lynesse again.
Was that what he thought of when he'd talked to Dany of cloaks? The day he'd placed his own green woolen cloak with the black bear sigil over Lynesse's shoulders? When he'd run from Bear Island with Lynesse, had he also told her that it didn't matter, that wherever she was, he was home? If her merchant prince cast her out, and she came groveling back to Jorah, would he forgive her, and take her once again into his bed?
Dany imagined it as clearly as if it really were happening. A double of herself--a little older, a little taller, a little more beautiful, and infinitely more proud--who could only be Lynesse, sauntered up to the bedside and let a silken bed robe slide from her shoulders to cover Dany as she climbed between her and Jorah on the bed. By the time Dany broke free from the robe, which entangled her like a net, Lynesse and Jorah had gotten up from the bed. Only it wasn't Jorah anymore, it was Xaro Xhoan Daxos, and he sailed off with Lynesse in a pleasure barge, brightly lit with lanterns which suddenly exploded into flame. Dragon flame, from the mouth of the three-headed creature she'd dreamed of before, when she was dying in the Red Waste, once again ridden by a full-grown Rhaego. Though the dragon wasn't quite the same as before, Dany saw, its black, cream, and green-scaled necks ending in the shaggy black body of a bear standing tall on its hind legs. Above the roar of the dragon-bear and the flames, Xaro and Lynesse screamed in agony while Mirri Maz Duur danced with a man with blue lips and a woman in a red lacquered mask who sang in the tongues of Lhazaar, Valyria, and Westeros of the children of Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen.
And then brilliant white light flashed in Dany's eyes, and she saw that it was morning, and she was quite alone in bed with Jorah, Rhaego a babe asleep in his cradle, surrounded by the dragon's eggs.
She'd slept.
She'd dreamed.
Dany crept out of bed, quietly and carefully so as not to rouse Jorah, and sponged cool water from the wash basin over her sweat slicked skin. As she cleaned herself she tried to make sense of the dream, but it seemed so ridiculous now, an amalgam of all the people she'd thought of during the long, wakeful night. Yet her heart pounded in her chest, which rose and fell with breaths that came quick and ragged, not from exhaustion but exhilaration at having vanquished a foe. Even if it was only a rival for a man's heart and not a rival for her crown, and only in a dream.
But why should she settle for a dream victory? She reached for a light bedrobe she'd left draped over a bench last night and her gaze fell upon the onyx bear Jorah had bought her. It was a humble gift, yet she'd received more pleasure from it when Jorah's deft fingers pinned it on her gown than she'd ever been with any of the family jewels Viserys had sold to feed them. Lynesse would have scoffed at such a gift. Could Dany truly blame Jorah for wanting a second chance with a younger woman who slightly resembled his former wife? Surely he recognized her worth over the thankless girl he had married.
She noticed that he had stirred in his sleep, causing the sheet to slip down past his waist to reveal his arousal. Fascinated, she went back to bed and lay down atop the sheet, the better to look him over. He was older than Drogo, to be sure, and not as handsome, his hair thinning on the top of his head and growing over his body where Drogo had been smooth. But she was intrigued by the way the wiry hairs framed Jorah's well-muscled chest, emphasizing how fit he was and how strong for the sword, and she liked the way they thinned to a fine trail that ran down from his navel to where it branched out again above his manhood.
He groaned, and Dany looked up to find his eyes cracked open as he reached to pull the sheet up over himself.
"It happens to men, sometimes, in the mornings," he said, his voice low and slightly raspy with sleep, and Dany liked the sound of it, wanted to hear him speak endearments to her in that voice. "Even when they awake alone in their beds. Even when they haven't dreamed of ladies fair."
Dany thought he must be referring to the time she'd woken to his arousal and she'd been repulsed and he mortified. Much had changed between then and now, not least of all their charade of being married which had made her comfortable with Jorah's physical affection. No, not merely comfortable, but desirous of it. For her bond with him ran deep now. He was more than advisor to her, or even friend. He had sacrificed for her in the Red Waste, not out of service but out of love; he had helped her deliver her child, and since then had given a father's love to Rhaegar and the tenderness of a husband to her, while never demanding more from her than she was ready to give, as he might well have done were he a less honorable man, given his strength and their isolation. Dany had much for which to be grateful, and she felt a little embarrassed at her previous ignorance that had brought pain to a man who deserved the opposite.
She reached beneath the sheet and took him in her hand. Jorah's stomach hitched inward with his sharply indrawn breath, and she smiled.
"You're certain it has nothing to do with me, ser?" she asked, coyly.
Her smile widened as she began to slide her hand up and down over him. Now this was power, she thought, rendering speechless the man who almost never held his tongue in her presence. He would do anything for love. He had not stipulated what kind of love, but surely such devotion ought to be rewarded. She tightened her fingers around him and enjoyed how he swelled against her in turn, his head falling back on his pillow exposing his pale throat and the bulge of his Adam's apple which she was desirous to kiss. As she stretched to press her lips to his neck she also quickened her strokes, his surprisingly soft, almost velvety skin supple beneath her palm, and his breathing became a pant.
Suddenly, his hand closed around hers. "Don't," he ground out between his clenched teeth.
Dany lifted her head, but did not still her hand. "Don't you want this?"
"I think that's quite evident." Jorah's other hand came around hers, prying her fingers loose from around him. "But do you?"
She blinked. "I am Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. I do nothing but that I want to do it, pleasuring you included."
She reached for him again, but his large hand found her shoulder, holding her firmly back from him. He gave a slight smile tinged with regret. "I don't want you to pleasure me, Dany. If that was all I wanted, I know where I could go. I want you to love me. Can you give me that?"
Flame ignited in Dany's breast, scorching its path up her chin and into her face. She slapped Jorah's hand away and sprang from the bed, upsetting the bedside table as she did so, which sent a candlestick and her onyx brooch clattering to the floor. In his cradle, Rhaego woke with a cry.
"Go, then, Ser Jorah!" Dany shouted over the babe's wails. "Find a whore to fuck. I hope she looks like me," she spat. "Or your wife."
A/N: Thanks so much to all you awesome readers who support me with your enthusiastic reviews! This time, those who take the time to comment will get an early morning tryst with Jorah--and he won't go all noble and put a stop to it. Although I can't promise that the Dragon Queen won't be jealous and exact revenge. ;)
Read Chapter 13
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont
Ratings & Warnings: R for nudity and sexual content in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 3977 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: Startling news from Westeros and burgeoning feelings for Jorah leave Dany uncertain as to her future course of action.
Author's Note: As always, thanks to my beta, just_a_dram, and to my fellow Jorah/Dany shippers for reading.
Previous Chapters |
12. Usurpers
"The Usurper is dead."
The words Daenerys Targaryen had waited her whole life to hear sounded hollow in her ears, spoken in halting tones by her own incredulous voice.
She sat huddled over a table with Ser Jorah in a darkened corner of one of the many winesinks in the quay; upon hearing the news from Westeros, he'd stated that he needed a drink. Dany did not disagree, and sipped at a cup sweet red wine as Jorah nursed a flagon of ale. For the news had not just been of King Robert's death, but of that of his Hand, Eddard Stark, as well--executed, in fact, for the crime high treason, at which Jorah fairly spat in disbelief.
Though he had, perhaps, been still more surprised to hear that Stark's eldest son, a boy about Dany's own age, Jorah said, who could scarcely have finished training with wooden swords in the castle yards of Winterfell, styled himself King in the North, while Robert's two brothers vied with each other for the Iron Throne, claiming that their nephew King Joffrey was not of Baratheon blood at all, but a bastard borne of Queen Cersei's incest with her twin, Ser Jaime. Dany had winced at that; her own parents, and indeed most of her forebears, had been brothers wedded to sister, or their nearest female kin, and she herself had passed her girlhood expecting to become Viserys' bride--a thought which repulsed her now, though not for reasons having to do with incest.
"The Seven Kingdoms are fractured," she said. "Ser Jorah, this is exactly what I need, is it not? I must amend my letter to Illyrio at once, and ask for an army."
"Unless he's friends with another khal for you to marry, I can't see how Illyrio would be of any help to you."
Though the knight did not speak forcibly, staring blankly into his ale, Dany nonetheless felt his words like a blow to the gut. Illyrio had arranged her marriage for such a time as this. She didn't know how he knew the Seven Kingdoms would descend into chaos--and she recalled with a chill down her spine how uneasy Illyrio had made her when he first befriended Viserys, and the whispers she'd heard on the streets of Pentos that the magister didn't have a friend he wouldn't cheerfully sell for the right price--but the Seven Kingdoms were embroiled in civil war now, and this was precisely the time Illyrio had intended for the Targaryen heir to march on Westeros with Khal Drogo's army of ten thousand Dothraki cavalrymen. She should be invading her country now, but instead she was as far away from the Iron Throne as she'd ever been, with exactly one knight in her service.
Because she'd taken pity on a slave woman.
Ser Jorah had been right when he'd said she had a gentle heart.
But no longer.
Dany sat up straight and slipped her forefinger between Rhaego's lips and her nipple to break the strength of his latch. He screeched in protest when she removed him from her breast, but quieted when she put him on her shoulder and patted his back.
"Then I must try my luck and appeal to Xaro Xhoan Daxos for ships and hired swords," she said. "My best chance for success may be while the lords of Westeros battle amongst themselves."
"Not with a foreign army."
"What do you mean, ser?"
At last Jorah looked up from his ale, his eyes locking with hers as he took a long pull from the flagon. He set the empty cup on the slightly uneven surface of the table and signaled to the barmaid to bring him another, and leaned against the wooden back of his bench.
"No king--or queen--no matter how legitimate her claim to the throne, could unite the houses of Westeros so quickly as a foreign threat would."
Dany gaped at him. "But…the plan has always been to strike with a foreign army."
"A Dothraki army." Jorah gave a curt nod to the wench who brought him a fresh ale. "With such a fearsome calvary at your command, I'd have put my life on your success. Now you talk of merchant vessels and an army of sellswords." He shook his head and raised his cup to his lips. "Gold is not so inspiring as a khal's righteous indignation at an attempt on his beloved khaleesi's life."
Dany's shoulders sagged under the weight of Jorah's words, and Rhaego began to squirm in her slackened arms, rooting for her breast. She cradled him and let him suckle again on the opposite side. "But surely--"
"Surely you haven't forgotten how quickly Robert sent his assassins for you when he learned of your pregnancy?" Jorah's eyes flickered down to his cup as he drank. "The very brothers who now contend for his throne sat upon the council that advised that course, my queen."
With a sigh, Dany conceded his point. "And they would not hesitate to eliminate the smallest hint of another threat."
Jorah nodded. "Stannis most of all. The houses of his Crownlands once supported House Targaryen. Stannis cannot risk that they might yet retain those old loyalties."
"Are there other houses that would support me? Viserys was confident of the Martells of Dorne, who would avenge my brother Rhaegar's wife Elia and their children, and the Tyrrells, the Redwynes, the Darrys, and the Greyjoys."
Dany pursed her lips; she knew Ser Jorah had won his spurs for his valor in quelling the Greyjoy Rebellion.
"Your house rally to the side of this King in the North, I presume?" she added, sounding even to her own ears a petulant child, little more than a mewling babe in arms like the one at her breast, but she didn't care. This news, which should have been the best of her life, had left her feeling overwhelmed and more desperate than ever.
"House Mormont would follow you, were I still lord."
"Were that the case, you would never have met me. You would do your duty and flock to your overlord's banner."
Dany half-expected Jorah to bristle at this, to declare his loyalty to her as his true sovereign. However, he seemed not to have heard her at all.
"Joffrey must be Queen Cersei's bastard," he said, as though thinking aloud, "or the northmen would defend his claim. It was, after all, Robert Baratheon we fought to put on the throne. But I know Eddard Stark, and were he alive, he'd give the strength of Winterfell and her bannermen to the rightful heir, which would be Stannis, as Robert's eldest brother." He rubbed his fingers over his beard. "There must be something foul afoot to prompt young Robb to rebellion…" His eyes flicked to Dany's so abruptly that they startled her."So perhaps House Targaryen may have new allies, my queen. Someday."
"Someday," Dany echoed, her voice tremulous, Jorah's visage distorting as she regarded him through a veil of unshed tears. She would not let them fall; a dragon did not weep.
"I know you are right," she said, blinking back the tears, "that my son and I stand a better chance of surviving to sit the Iron Throne if we bide our time while our enemies are too distracted to even remember the Targaryen line did not die with my brother Rhaegar on the Trident…But hearing of the Usurper's death…hearing of home…" Her eyes welled again. "It was as if were starving in a dungeon and caught a whiff of a savory dish, only to have it taken away before I could taste it. I've waited a lifetime for home already…"
"Well do I know the feeling."
She pushed back her tears once and for all, and looked upon him. The face that she hadn't thought handsome at first, but had lately become so dear to her, the first face she wanted to see each day, was lined, deep unhappiness tugging at the corners of his mouth, his gaze far away. It must be an anguish to him to advise her to delay her journey to Westeros knowing that in doing so he extended his own wait.
She reached out to him, and his lips curved slightly upward and he peered at her through bright eyes as he grasped her hand across the table.
"What does all this mean for you, my good knight? With Lord Stark dead…Is there aught to keep you from home?"
"As I said, you are home."
Dany thought Jorah said it with less conviction than the previous day, which struck her as passing strange, though she dismissed the suspicion; he was preoccupied with this news and its implications. And he squeezed her hand before releasing it and taking up his ale again with a heavy sigh.
"Unless one of the claimants to the throne has taken the time from his war to change the laws against the slave trade, my crime is still punishable by death in the Seven Kingdoms. And there are many besides Eddard Stark who would happily see me dead--or smile to do the deed themselves." Hs expression and tone became as bitter as the ale he drank.
"Not your own kin?"
"No. My deeds brought shame upon House Mormont, but they would not harm one of their own. Though I cannot imagine my aunt Maege would be so forgiving as to happily relinquish my lands back to me, or even shelter me under my own roof."
Dany ached inwardly for him, but she didn't miss how he spoke of the shame wrought by his deeds--not by himself, as if he did not fully own to what had exiled him. She'd always found it difficult to reconcile what she knew of his past with the noble, honorable behavior he'd exhibited to her, which came at his own peril. Now, though, she had to wonder.
"Are you sorry for your crime, Jorah? Only…I think how you told me I could not claim all the Lhazareen captives for my own, how you said it was the kos' right to have the women…"
"Are you asking whether I condone slavery and the abuse of prisoners of war?" asked Jorah, twisting to glance over his shoulder; he'd finished his second pint, and Dany thought he was looking for the barmaid, but she passed without him flagging her. Had he spied something suspicious? He turned back to her, his face indicating nothing.
"No, my queen. I do not. And since you mention it, I will tell you I believed your desire to free Khal Drogo's captives and spare them maltreatment and enslavement was noble, and right."
"I want to know how you regard your crime. Not my husband's."
Dany bristled even though, as ever, Jorah intimated no slur upon the Dothraki's brutal ways. It was she who condemned them--Drogo, too--and she did not like that she'd come to view certain aspects of husband more negatively after his death than she had in his life. But it wasn't fair to unleash anger upon Jorah that ought to have been directed at herself.
Jorah's demeanor indicated he felt precisely the same. He sat back against the bench, lifting his chin defiantly as he said, "My view of what I did has not changed since then. The men I sold were bound for the Wall, as good as slaves already. Even if their master was to be my lord father."
Dany recalled the statement he'd made the previous day, about how he wouldn't go to the Wall for the
same reason she wouldn't go to the dosh khaleen. She'd been chewing on it ever since, and now she thought she understood--at least in part. So long as Jorah Mormont lived, he would be free.
Yet he would deny other men their freedom.
"Do you mean to tell me you would sell those men again?" Dany asked.
He turned again to look over his shoulder, and as he did so, a man who'd been sitting in the shadows, his Qartheen-style cloak pulled up to cover his mouth, got up and exited the tavern. Dany glanced at Jorah, but his eyes were searching for the barmaid, to whom he signaled for another ale.
"I've searched my soul for an answer to that question every day since my exile," he said.
"Have you found one?"
The barmaid returned with Jorah's ale and set it before him, eying Dany's virtually untouched wine as she cleared away the two empty tankards.
"Oh yes," Jorah replied, his lips curled faintly upward as he squeezed a wedge of lemon into his cup.
"And what is it, ser?"
He took a long drink, and his eyes met hers as he swallowed. "That there is precious little I wouldn't do for love."
~*~
Jorah's words lingered with Dany all through the day and kept her awake late into the night, long after his breathing had deepened and the twitches of his muscles stilled as he fell fully asleep beside her in their comfortable bed in Xaro Xoan Daxos' palace. She'd employed every means she knew to help her sleep, including waking Rhaego to suckle him, which normally made her drowsy even when her mind wanted to be alert, but it had no such effect as she studied Jorah in the pale moonlight filtering through the gauzy curtains that covered the tall, open windows.
He slept nude tonight, the sheet draped low across his hips; however, it wasn't his physical nakedness she contemplated, but how open he'd made his heart to her since they arrived in Qarth. Somehow, his declarations about her being his home, of her being the choice he would make above the chance to return to Bear Island, had struck Dany as being more courtly than sincere, so that Jorah had managed to take her by surprise when he'd all but proposed marriage to her that morning. She'd known when she asked him to make her a gift of the bear brooch that she trod very near the Westerosi wedding tradition of a bride taking the cloak of her husband's family, but she hadn't imagined he would be so emboldened as to actually speak of it.
Perhaps he hadn't meant her to understand. He might have thought her ignorant of the customs of her homeland. The irony, if that was the case, was that she'd read of weddings in the Seven Kingdoms in one of the books Jorah had given her for her wedding to Drogo. Those very books that listed the genealogy of House Targaryen, with bloodlines so pure and high that she should be ashamed to accept trinkets and entertain offers of marriage from knights in her service. Least of all knights exiled for such a despicable crime as selling slaves.
And yet, as she studied Jorah's sleeping form, his muscles tensed and his face lined with care as though there was no rest for his weary soul even in sleep, she couldn't bring herself to condemn him, either, and not because the Targaryens balked at slaveholding. It was difficult to find fault with a man whose driving motivation for everything he did was love. Now, for her.
She had tasted power over Drogo, and it had been sweet, but she knew now that the words Jorah had uttered would never have passed from the horse lord's lips. And perhaps that was the sort of marriage she needed--not a political alliance in which she ultimately must rank second to her powerful lord husband, but one in which she was queen of a man's country as well as of his heart.
Then again, was she, indeed, queen of Jorah's heart? Or did Lynesse Hightower still hold that place, the Queen of Love and Beauty as he'd crowned her at the tourney at Lannisport? The question Dany should have asked him wasn't whether he would sell slaves again, but whether he would marry Lynesse again.
Was that what he thought of when he'd talked to Dany of cloaks? The day he'd placed his own green woolen cloak with the black bear sigil over Lynesse's shoulders? When he'd run from Bear Island with Lynesse, had he also told her that it didn't matter, that wherever she was, he was home? If her merchant prince cast her out, and she came groveling back to Jorah, would he forgive her, and take her once again into his bed?
Dany imagined it as clearly as if it really were happening. A double of herself--a little older, a little taller, a little more beautiful, and infinitely more proud--who could only be Lynesse, sauntered up to the bedside and let a silken bed robe slide from her shoulders to cover Dany as she climbed between her and Jorah on the bed. By the time Dany broke free from the robe, which entangled her like a net, Lynesse and Jorah had gotten up from the bed. Only it wasn't Jorah anymore, it was Xaro Xhoan Daxos, and he sailed off with Lynesse in a pleasure barge, brightly lit with lanterns which suddenly exploded into flame. Dragon flame, from the mouth of the three-headed creature she'd dreamed of before, when she was dying in the Red Waste, once again ridden by a full-grown Rhaego. Though the dragon wasn't quite the same as before, Dany saw, its black, cream, and green-scaled necks ending in the shaggy black body of a bear standing tall on its hind legs. Above the roar of the dragon-bear and the flames, Xaro and Lynesse screamed in agony while Mirri Maz Duur danced with a man with blue lips and a woman in a red lacquered mask who sang in the tongues of Lhazaar, Valyria, and Westeros of the children of Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen.
And then brilliant white light flashed in Dany's eyes, and she saw that it was morning, and she was quite alone in bed with Jorah, Rhaego a babe asleep in his cradle, surrounded by the dragon's eggs.
She'd slept.
She'd dreamed.
Dany crept out of bed, quietly and carefully so as not to rouse Jorah, and sponged cool water from the wash basin over her sweat slicked skin. As she cleaned herself she tried to make sense of the dream, but it seemed so ridiculous now, an amalgam of all the people she'd thought of during the long, wakeful night. Yet her heart pounded in her chest, which rose and fell with breaths that came quick and ragged, not from exhaustion but exhilaration at having vanquished a foe. Even if it was only a rival for a man's heart and not a rival for her crown, and only in a dream.
But why should she settle for a dream victory? She reached for a light bedrobe she'd left draped over a bench last night and her gaze fell upon the onyx bear Jorah had bought her. It was a humble gift, yet she'd received more pleasure from it when Jorah's deft fingers pinned it on her gown than she'd ever been with any of the family jewels Viserys had sold to feed them. Lynesse would have scoffed at such a gift. Could Dany truly blame Jorah for wanting a second chance with a younger woman who slightly resembled his former wife? Surely he recognized her worth over the thankless girl he had married.
She noticed that he had stirred in his sleep, causing the sheet to slip down past his waist to reveal his arousal. Fascinated, she went back to bed and lay down atop the sheet, the better to look him over. He was older than Drogo, to be sure, and not as handsome, his hair thinning on the top of his head and growing over his body where Drogo had been smooth. But she was intrigued by the way the wiry hairs framed Jorah's well-muscled chest, emphasizing how fit he was and how strong for the sword, and she liked the way they thinned to a fine trail that ran down from his navel to where it branched out again above his manhood.
He groaned, and Dany looked up to find his eyes cracked open as he reached to pull the sheet up over himself.
"It happens to men, sometimes, in the mornings," he said, his voice low and slightly raspy with sleep, and Dany liked the sound of it, wanted to hear him speak endearments to her in that voice. "Even when they awake alone in their beds. Even when they haven't dreamed of ladies fair."
Dany thought he must be referring to the time she'd woken to his arousal and she'd been repulsed and he mortified. Much had changed between then and now, not least of all their charade of being married which had made her comfortable with Jorah's physical affection. No, not merely comfortable, but desirous of it. For her bond with him ran deep now. He was more than advisor to her, or even friend. He had sacrificed for her in the Red Waste, not out of service but out of love; he had helped her deliver her child, and since then had given a father's love to Rhaegar and the tenderness of a husband to her, while never demanding more from her than she was ready to give, as he might well have done were he a less honorable man, given his strength and their isolation. Dany had much for which to be grateful, and she felt a little embarrassed at her previous ignorance that had brought pain to a man who deserved the opposite.
She reached beneath the sheet and took him in her hand. Jorah's stomach hitched inward with his sharply indrawn breath, and she smiled.
"You're certain it has nothing to do with me, ser?" she asked, coyly.
Her smile widened as she began to slide her hand up and down over him. Now this was power, she thought, rendering speechless the man who almost never held his tongue in her presence. He would do anything for love. He had not stipulated what kind of love, but surely such devotion ought to be rewarded. She tightened her fingers around him and enjoyed how he swelled against her in turn, his head falling back on his pillow exposing his pale throat and the bulge of his Adam's apple which she was desirous to kiss. As she stretched to press her lips to his neck she also quickened her strokes, his surprisingly soft, almost velvety skin supple beneath her palm, and his breathing became a pant.
Suddenly, his hand closed around hers. "Don't," he ground out between his clenched teeth.
Dany lifted her head, but did not still her hand. "Don't you want this?"
"I think that's quite evident." Jorah's other hand came around hers, prying her fingers loose from around him. "But do you?"
She blinked. "I am Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. I do nothing but that I want to do it, pleasuring you included."
She reached for him again, but his large hand found her shoulder, holding her firmly back from him. He gave a slight smile tinged with regret. "I don't want you to pleasure me, Dany. If that was all I wanted, I know where I could go. I want you to love me. Can you give me that?"
Flame ignited in Dany's breast, scorching its path up her chin and into her face. She slapped Jorah's hand away and sprang from the bed, upsetting the bedside table as she did so, which sent a candlestick and her onyx brooch clattering to the floor. In his cradle, Rhaego woke with a cry.
"Go, then, Ser Jorah!" Dany shouted over the babe's wails. "Find a whore to fuck. I hope she looks like me," she spat. "Or your wife."
A/N: Thanks so much to all you awesome readers who support me with your enthusiastic reviews! This time, those who take the time to comment will get an early morning tryst with Jorah--and he won't go all noble and put a stop to it. Although I can't promise that the Dragon Queen won't be jealous and exact revenge. ;)
Read Chapter 13