Fic: A Year from Now (14/?)
Title: A Year from Now (14/?)
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Xaro Xhoan Daxos
Ratings & Warnings: R; none in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 3560 words
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's truth is made known, but rather than flee, she finds herself considering an offer which Jorah would rather she refuse.
Author's Note: As always, many thanks to just_a_dram for her awesome beta work, and to you, my readers--and I promise, things will start looking up for Dany and Jorah soon! For a while, anyway, hehe.
Previous Chapters |
14. Unmasked
They had been given the lowest seats on Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge, near the rowers, as befit their supposed station, but Dany hardly minded, so charmed she was with the vessel. Any place on the watercraft provided a breathtaking nighttime view of the vast city of Qarth, and while the festivities of Xaro's merchant friend's wedding feast carried on the deck above them, Dany amused herself with trying to identify the landmarks they'd visited during the weeks they'd passed in the city.
Since the day Xaro had come to her after her early morning quarrel with Jorah, their host had taken a greater interest in them, making it his personal quest to better acquaint them with the wonders of his city, which surpassed any Dany had visited in wealth and magnificence. Jorah had, of course, found Xaro's friendship amiss, while she had taken the more optimistic line that he saw their inner quality through their mask and might prove the ally whom they so desperately needed.
Jorah had scoffed at this. "Has it not occurred to you that Daxos sees our inner quality because he's never for a second believed we are who we claim to be? He was there in Vaes Tolorro when Quaithe called you the mother of dragons."
Dany had been quick with her retort and defense of their host--to Jorah's obvious vexation which, if she read him accurately, was borne of jealousy as much as suspicion, and filled her with a perverse desire to make her knight squirm.
"You were there, too, ser," she'd said, "and you saw how Xaro lurked in the shadows, taking our measure while Quaithe revered us and Pyat Pree fawned over us. And then he warned us away from Pree. Given your encounter with Quaithe at the wharf, I should think you would be glad we have come under Daxos' protection rather than that of a priestess and a warlock."
"I should have been gladder if he'd shown us the protection of paying our passage out of this city."
"And where would you have us sail?" Dany had asked, in all sincerity. "To Asshai, as Quaithe recommends? To Pentos, where you insist the assassins of three proclaimed Baratheon kings undoubtedly will be looking for me?"
At that, Jorah's shoulders had sagged with his confession. "I don't know where I would have us go. But neither do I know why you insist on staying here."
In truth, Dany had fallen a little in love with the city. Unlike anywhere her wandering life had taken her, in Qarth she found it easy to pretend she was a queen. Not a khaleesi, but a real queen with a crown and a throne. And a pleasure barge--when she conquered Westeros, she simply must have a pleasure barge to carry her and her Queensguard and her courtiers up and down the Blackwater Rush, or even out into the sea, all lit with colored lanterns such as these to make the boat look like a cluster of jewels as it glided across the waters to tunes piped and harped and sung of Aegon's conquest in days of old and her own glorious return to the kingdom.
Someday.
For now, she found the domed roof of Qarth's Temple of Memory amid the striking architecture of the city and imagined it was the Sept of Baelor in King's Landing. When Xaro had taken them in and they'd seen the traditional sacrifices being made, Jorah had snorted and remarked that in Westeros, the only people who still sacrificed to their gods were savages whom the civilized folk kept well behind an impregnable Wall. Not desirous of inviting Jorah's scorn to interrupt her daydreams, Dany kept quiet about her find and pointed out a parapet instead.
"There," she said, glancing over her shoulder to where Jorah reclined at the low table behind her. "I can just see Xaro's palace. Our chamber is on this side--imagine the view we would have of the canal if we were but a few floors higher."
"Would that we had a view where we could see that Rhaego and your dragon's eggs are safe," came the knight's gruff reply.
With a sigh, Dany turned to face him, her hands stretched out on either side to rest on the gilt railing of the barge. Jorah had not at all liked the idea of leaving Rhaego with a wet nurse and a nursemaid while they attended this wedding, even though Dany had allowed Xaro's servants to assist with the care of her child of late and had solicited her knight's grudging admission that the women were trustworthy enough and fawned over the baby sufficiently to befit a prince.
"If Xaro meant harm to me or my own," she said, not for the first time, "he'd have acted long before now. Why won't you trust him?"
Jorah wiped the glistening juices of his meat form the corners of his mouth and looked hard at her. "Why won't you mistrust him?"
Dany pushed off the railing and approached him, looking down at him from across the low table. "Because I will eventually have to give my trust to someone, if I am to have my throne."
"You think he may give you an army." At Dany's nod, he scowled. "I thought you agreed with me that you should wait out the war in Westeros before you invade with a foreign army."
"If I have a large enough army, it will not matter how many rally together against me. And they will all be my subjects in the end."
The knight sat up straighter, and Dany marveled at how his presence seemed to loom over her even from his position of looking up at her.
"It's your son the crones prophesied to be the stallion who mounts the world, Daenerys. Not you."
Dany's temper flared. It was not the first time doubt flickered through her mind that Ser Jorah had given her his service because he supported her queenship. But that was madness; though he'd said himself there was little he wouldn't do for love, she couldn't believe that devotion to her person would spur him to imperil his own life in the Red Waste. Unless she sat on the Iron Throne, he would never sit in his hall on Bear Island, and she believed in her heart that home was his first love, not her. Even if he believed otherwise, her stubborn, loyal bear.
In any case, this quarrel had been ongoing for weeks, and she was disinclined to have it out again here, for the beauty of the night and the quality of the wine and the closeness of her dreams of being queen. She extinguished her anger as easily as if it were a bedside candle to snuff out, and moved around the table to Jorah, smiling at him.
"Of course I am not the one to mount the world. I am the dragon, and have no need of mounts. I have wings."
Jorah actually gave a small laugh at that, his first in longer than she could remember that was not an unpleasant, mocking one. His face was so much more comely when he smiled--she could easily imagine how, in the flush of valor and victory, his joy had charmed Lynesse Hightower into accepting his hand. The careworn lines of his troubled existence gave way to ones instead that spoke of an experienced and storied one. And as his lips parted over good teeth, shining in the light with the juices of savory food and sweet drink, she remembered how soft and gentle they could be upon her own.
She extended her hand to him so that he might assist her to sit once more upon the cushions beside him, and even after she was situated comfortably, she did not let go. It felt good to be in contact with his body again, if not with his heart and mind. He'd not shared her bed since that morning when he'd rejected her attempt to pleasure him, and though she had not wished to, after he'd humiliated her so--she was his queen!--there was no denying that she'd missed his strong and reassuring presence. The surprising tenderness of one who could be so gruff. The simple feel of his strong, callused fingers woven through hers and his roughened palm flush with hers.
She regarded him from beneath an arched eyebrow as she sipped her wine. "But I thought you had no use for prophesies."
It was not often that she caught her vigilant knight off his guard, but for once Ser Jorah looked truly nonplussed. Dany would have laughed, except that he pulled his hand from hers.
"I never said--"
"Your eyes do," Dany interrupted. "You humor me, when you speak of stallions mounting worlds. I know you are a man of reason, my knight, with little room for faith. And you know that I, too, am skeptical of such things after the maegi Mirri Maz Duur killed my husband with her art."
"Then surely you may appreciate my view that after her betrayal, you should be slower to accept strangers as allies."
With a start, Dany recognized the emotion in his eyes as they held her, unblinking. She had seen it in Drogo's eyes, when he'd looked upon her after her bloodriders reported the attempt on her life in the Western Market. Seven gods, how had she been so blind? Jorah did not fight her at every turn because he would control her, but because he would protect her!
She reached her hand up to trace the furrows of his brow, and was pleased to see them ease slightly with the light touch of her fingers. His breath hitched. He, like Khal Drogo, would ride to war for her. She settled her hand on the curve of his neck exposed above the green silken collar of his fine tunic, which had been made expressly for this occasion, and she felt the heat of him, and the strong, quick beat of his pulse. When she drew him down so she could brush her lips across his prickly cheek to his ear, he snaked his arm boldly around her waist.
"Will you still worry for me when I have won my throne?" she whispered to him.
Jorah turned his head, so that his reply was a breath on her lips. "Aye. And more, my queen."
Dany closed her eyes in anticipation of his sweet mouth melting into hers, his tongue sweeping away the bitterness that had separated them these weeks, but instead Jorah tensed, and she opened her eyes to see him staring up at the deck above them, where the wedding party feasted. She turned just as Xaro called down to them.
"My esteemed guests! Would you not like to admire my city from on high?"
Though part of Dany regretted the interruption, Jorah had not so thoroughly distracted her from her earlier daydreams that she was not excited by Xaro's invitation. "We would be honored!"
"You would be honored," Jorah muttered, releasing her. "It's evident in our host's timing that he esteems me only out of courtesy to you."
That she'd gone from wanting to kiss this man to wanting to slap him made Dany glad she hadn't kissed him. Was there no end to Jorah's petty suspicions and jealousies? Was there naught she could do to make him trust her judgment, or her favor?
"As well he should," she hissed. "I am the queen."
She swept from him and forced her wide smile at Xaro not to falter as she heard Jorah growl at one of the serving boys to fetch him more wine. A goblet awaited her when she had climbed up to Xaro, and, as he guided her away from the noisy party to the prow, she drank it quickly to make her vexation with Jorah recede like the waves as the barge cut smoothly through the dark water. It was of a finer vintage than they had been served below, and she took a perverse satisfaction in knowing that Jorah was missing out. Were he only aware of his punishment.
"How many moons have passed since I brought you to my city?" Xaro's voice broke gently into Dany's thoughts, his softly accented Valyrian putting Dany as much at ease as his good wine. "Two?"
"Nearer to three," she replied.
"And I see you like Qarth very much."
The sun had dipped below the horizon, a sliver of orange just reflected in the water, so Dany could not, at present, see much of the city. She smiled at its silhouette against the blue-black midnight sky, however, and answered, "Qarth will always hold a special place for me. My sweet son gave me his first smiles here. He learned to sit on his own, and he begins to crawl." On his belly, like a lizard, she did not add--her little dragon.
Xaro smiled fondly, the jewels in his nose catching the light of the lanterns strung from pillar to pillar about the perimeter of the barge. "There are fine tutors in Qarth, when Rhaego comes of age to study. Should you ever like to live here permanently?"
"Oh, I…" A downward glance revealed a swallow of wine to remain in her goblet. She drank it, and said, "We talk of returning home soon."
"Of course." Xaro's breath ruffled her hair like a light breeze as he leaned close and murmured, "You would have to have a very big arse indeed to reach the Iron Throne of Westeros from Qarth."
Before Dany could comprehend what he was saying or doing, his long fingers cupped her buttock and gave it a squeeze.
"And yours is certainly just the right size to please a man."
Dany jerked away from him, her goblet clattering to the deck, though no one of the wedding party noticed or looked her way. She wondered if Jorah had heard it, below.
"Pardons, my prince, but I do not understand you."
He leered--not lustfully, as she'd seen him look at the young men who served in his house--and pressed the tips of his ringed fingers together. "I've just paid your arse a pretty compliment."
"I do not think my husband would like that."
With Xaro's approach, Dany backed against the railing that overhung the lower deck, where Jorah was seated, and prayed for his watchful eye, which she had earlier brashly scorned, to be turned to her.
"Jorah Mormont is no more your husband than you were a captive of the Dothraki."
Jorah's full name spat from Xaro's lips was more astonishing and alarming to Dany than the reference to the Iron Throne. "What did you say?"
"Ser Jorah Mormont," Xaro repeated, looking like a fox in the ruddy lantern light. "The exiled knight, formerly of Bear Island. I believe he was called Jorah the Andal by those in your husband's khalasar, Dany. Or should I say Daenerys, daughter of Aerys of House Targaryen, rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms?"
Dany opened her mouth in a desperate rebuttal, but Xaro put a long, pale finger, on which rested a large ruby, to her lips.
"I was most relieved to discover you both have other occupations, because you'll never get anywhere as actors. Captives?" A chuckle rattled in his throat. "Mormont never submitted to anyone in his life, that was clear from the moment we met, and neither of you cringes before your betters or lowers your eyes in shame, and you love that babe too much for him to have been gotten on you by a Dothraki raper, and you don't love the knight enough, though I will grant that he does not feign his devotion to you."
For some reason, though it was true enough, Dany was most rankled by Xaro's assessment of her feelings for Jorah. But it would not do to press him on any point. He knew all.
"What price for your silence?" she asked.
"Oh no, Your Grace, you misunderstand me. It is I who wish to buy you something."
"And what would that be?"
Daxos' eyes and teeth gleamed gold in the lantern light. "A fleet, my queen, to bear you to Westeros. Or rather, us. And I would not buy you a fleet so much as give you one. For a wedding gift."
She thought she should be afraid, but Dany felt only a sensation that her chest had been emptied of rib and muscle and fiber and muscle, so that her heart hung suspended in the breathless chamber. "You offer me your hand?"
"Would it be plainer if I dropped to one knee?" he asked, doing exactly that; somehow, Dany could not imagine Jorah doing the same. As if reading her thoughts, Xaro smiled shrewdly up at her. "Is not a merchant prince a more fitting consort for a queen than an exiled knight?"
Dany was so dazed by what had transpired that she had no memory of telling Xaro she must take time to consider his offer or of descending to the lower level of his pleasure barge until Jorah's scowling face, waiting for her at the bottom, greeted her.
"You're pale," he said, on his feet at once and striding across the deck to her. "What has Daxos said to you?"
"That he wants to give me a fleet."
A heartbeat of silence as Jorah took this in with a blink, and then he took her roughly by the shoulders. "You little fool, what did you tell him?"
Dany had no thought of slapping him until she had already cracked him hard across the cheek, the sound of it cutting almost like lightning through the buzz of activity of the cooks and scullery maids and serving boys ceased as they turned in surprise to look.
"You forget yourself, ser! I am your queen, and you are a knight in my service. I told Xaro nothing he could not guess from your behavior."
Above his beard, Jorah's cheek reddened, the individual streaks of each of Dany's fingers evident, but he did not lift his own hand to rub it. "What price does he name for this fleet?"
Lifting her chin defiantly, Dany answered, "Only my hand."
"Only." Jorah snorted. "At least you are a little better than Viserys. You would sell yourself for your crown, rather than those little ones who are under your power."
At that moment, she would gladly trade Jorah for a fleet--if anyone were fool enough to take such an insolent knight off her hands.
"I would give myself," she said. "I am, after all, free to do so."
Although Dany restrained her hand from striking him again for his disrespect, her words alone made Jorah cringed as he had not from the physical blow; when he spoke again, it was not to argue, but to advise.
"Surely you see that Daxos does not only ask for your hand. Think what you witnessed today at this Qartheen marriage. What do you have that Daxos might ask for?"
Her dragon's eggs, he meant, though she hadn't even told Jorah the full truth of what had happened that day she'd sent him away and Daxos had come to her.
He'd seen the eggs--one of them, anyway. But she'd lied to him about what it was, said it was just a strange rock she'd found in the ruins of Vaes Tolorro. Some wrecked thing salvaged from the Dothraki plunder, which had captivated her. She'd told herself then that Daxos believed her, though now, given how he'd sussed everything else, she was sure he knew she'd lied about that, too.
But she was not about to let a knight make a fool of her.
"I find it interesting, ser, that you accuse a man of playing me false to take what is precious to me, when you would have me sell them for mere coin."
She turned from him, intending to rejoin Xaro--who was watching from above--but Jorah caught her wrist and pulled her back toward him, a look of mad desperation on his face.
"Daenerys, you can't--"
But before he could go further, a distant shout diverted their attention. They looked to see a skiff rowing toward them, very fast, bearing Xaro's colors, an urgent man standing in the prow. Dany recognized him as the steward.
"My prince! Your palace--"
"Is finer than any king's in the world!" Xaro called down, and the wedding party laughed. "Tell me something I don't know!"
"Your guards are slain by vandals and…You have been robbed!"
A collective gasp went up from the wedding party, and Xaro lost no time coming down to the main deck to speak with his steward, Dany at his heels and Jorah still keeping hold of her, the conversation about her dragon's eggs recent enough that her first instinct was to fear for them.
"What was taken?" he asked, leaping agilely over the edge of the barge and down into the rowboat.
"It is not a question of what," replied the steward, looking beyond his master until his eyes locked with Dany's; she did not resist when Jorah's hand, which still clasped her wrist, slid down to grip her hand as the man pronounced, "but of whom."
A/N: At fanfiction.net I'm offering a drabble to the 100th reviewer, so it's only fair that offer a drabble to a random LJ reviewer, too. In your review, comment with a prompt, and you may just see your name in the notes of a fic near you next week!
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Xaro Xhoan Daxos
Ratings & Warnings: R; none in this chapter
Format & Word Count: WIP, 3560 words
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's truth is made known, but rather than flee, she finds herself considering an offer which Jorah would rather she refuse.
Author's Note: As always, many thanks to just_a_dram for her awesome beta work, and to you, my readers--and I promise, things will start looking up for Dany and Jorah soon! For a while, anyway, hehe.
Previous Chapters |
14. Unmasked
They had been given the lowest seats on Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge, near the rowers, as befit their supposed station, but Dany hardly minded, so charmed she was with the vessel. Any place on the watercraft provided a breathtaking nighttime view of the vast city of Qarth, and while the festivities of Xaro's merchant friend's wedding feast carried on the deck above them, Dany amused herself with trying to identify the landmarks they'd visited during the weeks they'd passed in the city.
Since the day Xaro had come to her after her early morning quarrel with Jorah, their host had taken a greater interest in them, making it his personal quest to better acquaint them with the wonders of his city, which surpassed any Dany had visited in wealth and magnificence. Jorah had, of course, found Xaro's friendship amiss, while she had taken the more optimistic line that he saw their inner quality through their mask and might prove the ally whom they so desperately needed.
Jorah had scoffed at this. "Has it not occurred to you that Daxos sees our inner quality because he's never for a second believed we are who we claim to be? He was there in Vaes Tolorro when Quaithe called you the mother of dragons."
Dany had been quick with her retort and defense of their host--to Jorah's obvious vexation which, if she read him accurately, was borne of jealousy as much as suspicion, and filled her with a perverse desire to make her knight squirm.
"You were there, too, ser," she'd said, "and you saw how Xaro lurked in the shadows, taking our measure while Quaithe revered us and Pyat Pree fawned over us. And then he warned us away from Pree. Given your encounter with Quaithe at the wharf, I should think you would be glad we have come under Daxos' protection rather than that of a priestess and a warlock."
"I should have been gladder if he'd shown us the protection of paying our passage out of this city."
"And where would you have us sail?" Dany had asked, in all sincerity. "To Asshai, as Quaithe recommends? To Pentos, where you insist the assassins of three proclaimed Baratheon kings undoubtedly will be looking for me?"
At that, Jorah's shoulders had sagged with his confession. "I don't know where I would have us go. But neither do I know why you insist on staying here."
In truth, Dany had fallen a little in love with the city. Unlike anywhere her wandering life had taken her, in Qarth she found it easy to pretend she was a queen. Not a khaleesi, but a real queen with a crown and a throne. And a pleasure barge--when she conquered Westeros, she simply must have a pleasure barge to carry her and her Queensguard and her courtiers up and down the Blackwater Rush, or even out into the sea, all lit with colored lanterns such as these to make the boat look like a cluster of jewels as it glided across the waters to tunes piped and harped and sung of Aegon's conquest in days of old and her own glorious return to the kingdom.
Someday.
For now, she found the domed roof of Qarth's Temple of Memory amid the striking architecture of the city and imagined it was the Sept of Baelor in King's Landing. When Xaro had taken them in and they'd seen the traditional sacrifices being made, Jorah had snorted and remarked that in Westeros, the only people who still sacrificed to their gods were savages whom the civilized folk kept well behind an impregnable Wall. Not desirous of inviting Jorah's scorn to interrupt her daydreams, Dany kept quiet about her find and pointed out a parapet instead.
"There," she said, glancing over her shoulder to where Jorah reclined at the low table behind her. "I can just see Xaro's palace. Our chamber is on this side--imagine the view we would have of the canal if we were but a few floors higher."
"Would that we had a view where we could see that Rhaego and your dragon's eggs are safe," came the knight's gruff reply.
With a sigh, Dany turned to face him, her hands stretched out on either side to rest on the gilt railing of the barge. Jorah had not at all liked the idea of leaving Rhaego with a wet nurse and a nursemaid while they attended this wedding, even though Dany had allowed Xaro's servants to assist with the care of her child of late and had solicited her knight's grudging admission that the women were trustworthy enough and fawned over the baby sufficiently to befit a prince.
"If Xaro meant harm to me or my own," she said, not for the first time, "he'd have acted long before now. Why won't you trust him?"
Jorah wiped the glistening juices of his meat form the corners of his mouth and looked hard at her. "Why won't you mistrust him?"
Dany pushed off the railing and approached him, looking down at him from across the low table. "Because I will eventually have to give my trust to someone, if I am to have my throne."
"You think he may give you an army." At Dany's nod, he scowled. "I thought you agreed with me that you should wait out the war in Westeros before you invade with a foreign army."
"If I have a large enough army, it will not matter how many rally together against me. And they will all be my subjects in the end."
The knight sat up straighter, and Dany marveled at how his presence seemed to loom over her even from his position of looking up at her.
"It's your son the crones prophesied to be the stallion who mounts the world, Daenerys. Not you."
Dany's temper flared. It was not the first time doubt flickered through her mind that Ser Jorah had given her his service because he supported her queenship. But that was madness; though he'd said himself there was little he wouldn't do for love, she couldn't believe that devotion to her person would spur him to imperil his own life in the Red Waste. Unless she sat on the Iron Throne, he would never sit in his hall on Bear Island, and she believed in her heart that home was his first love, not her. Even if he believed otherwise, her stubborn, loyal bear.
In any case, this quarrel had been ongoing for weeks, and she was disinclined to have it out again here, for the beauty of the night and the quality of the wine and the closeness of her dreams of being queen. She extinguished her anger as easily as if it were a bedside candle to snuff out, and moved around the table to Jorah, smiling at him.
"Of course I am not the one to mount the world. I am the dragon, and have no need of mounts. I have wings."
Jorah actually gave a small laugh at that, his first in longer than she could remember that was not an unpleasant, mocking one. His face was so much more comely when he smiled--she could easily imagine how, in the flush of valor and victory, his joy had charmed Lynesse Hightower into accepting his hand. The careworn lines of his troubled existence gave way to ones instead that spoke of an experienced and storied one. And as his lips parted over good teeth, shining in the light with the juices of savory food and sweet drink, she remembered how soft and gentle they could be upon her own.
She extended her hand to him so that he might assist her to sit once more upon the cushions beside him, and even after she was situated comfortably, she did not let go. It felt good to be in contact with his body again, if not with his heart and mind. He'd not shared her bed since that morning when he'd rejected her attempt to pleasure him, and though she had not wished to, after he'd humiliated her so--she was his queen!--there was no denying that she'd missed his strong and reassuring presence. The surprising tenderness of one who could be so gruff. The simple feel of his strong, callused fingers woven through hers and his roughened palm flush with hers.
She regarded him from beneath an arched eyebrow as she sipped her wine. "But I thought you had no use for prophesies."
It was not often that she caught her vigilant knight off his guard, but for once Ser Jorah looked truly nonplussed. Dany would have laughed, except that he pulled his hand from hers.
"I never said--"
"Your eyes do," Dany interrupted. "You humor me, when you speak of stallions mounting worlds. I know you are a man of reason, my knight, with little room for faith. And you know that I, too, am skeptical of such things after the maegi Mirri Maz Duur killed my husband with her art."
"Then surely you may appreciate my view that after her betrayal, you should be slower to accept strangers as allies."
With a start, Dany recognized the emotion in his eyes as they held her, unblinking. She had seen it in Drogo's eyes, when he'd looked upon her after her bloodriders reported the attempt on her life in the Western Market. Seven gods, how had she been so blind? Jorah did not fight her at every turn because he would control her, but because he would protect her!
She reached her hand up to trace the furrows of his brow, and was pleased to see them ease slightly with the light touch of her fingers. His breath hitched. He, like Khal Drogo, would ride to war for her. She settled her hand on the curve of his neck exposed above the green silken collar of his fine tunic, which had been made expressly for this occasion, and she felt the heat of him, and the strong, quick beat of his pulse. When she drew him down so she could brush her lips across his prickly cheek to his ear, he snaked his arm boldly around her waist.
"Will you still worry for me when I have won my throne?" she whispered to him.
Jorah turned his head, so that his reply was a breath on her lips. "Aye. And more, my queen."
Dany closed her eyes in anticipation of his sweet mouth melting into hers, his tongue sweeping away the bitterness that had separated them these weeks, but instead Jorah tensed, and she opened her eyes to see him staring up at the deck above them, where the wedding party feasted. She turned just as Xaro called down to them.
"My esteemed guests! Would you not like to admire my city from on high?"
Though part of Dany regretted the interruption, Jorah had not so thoroughly distracted her from her earlier daydreams that she was not excited by Xaro's invitation. "We would be honored!"
"You would be honored," Jorah muttered, releasing her. "It's evident in our host's timing that he esteems me only out of courtesy to you."
That she'd gone from wanting to kiss this man to wanting to slap him made Dany glad she hadn't kissed him. Was there no end to Jorah's petty suspicions and jealousies? Was there naught she could do to make him trust her judgment, or her favor?
"As well he should," she hissed. "I am the queen."
She swept from him and forced her wide smile at Xaro not to falter as she heard Jorah growl at one of the serving boys to fetch him more wine. A goblet awaited her when she had climbed up to Xaro, and, as he guided her away from the noisy party to the prow, she drank it quickly to make her vexation with Jorah recede like the waves as the barge cut smoothly through the dark water. It was of a finer vintage than they had been served below, and she took a perverse satisfaction in knowing that Jorah was missing out. Were he only aware of his punishment.
"How many moons have passed since I brought you to my city?" Xaro's voice broke gently into Dany's thoughts, his softly accented Valyrian putting Dany as much at ease as his good wine. "Two?"
"Nearer to three," she replied.
"And I see you like Qarth very much."
The sun had dipped below the horizon, a sliver of orange just reflected in the water, so Dany could not, at present, see much of the city. She smiled at its silhouette against the blue-black midnight sky, however, and answered, "Qarth will always hold a special place for me. My sweet son gave me his first smiles here. He learned to sit on his own, and he begins to crawl." On his belly, like a lizard, she did not add--her little dragon.
Xaro smiled fondly, the jewels in his nose catching the light of the lanterns strung from pillar to pillar about the perimeter of the barge. "There are fine tutors in Qarth, when Rhaego comes of age to study. Should you ever like to live here permanently?"
"Oh, I…" A downward glance revealed a swallow of wine to remain in her goblet. She drank it, and said, "We talk of returning home soon."
"Of course." Xaro's breath ruffled her hair like a light breeze as he leaned close and murmured, "You would have to have a very big arse indeed to reach the Iron Throne of Westeros from Qarth."
Before Dany could comprehend what he was saying or doing, his long fingers cupped her buttock and gave it a squeeze.
"And yours is certainly just the right size to please a man."
Dany jerked away from him, her goblet clattering to the deck, though no one of the wedding party noticed or looked her way. She wondered if Jorah had heard it, below.
"Pardons, my prince, but I do not understand you."
He leered--not lustfully, as she'd seen him look at the young men who served in his house--and pressed the tips of his ringed fingers together. "I've just paid your arse a pretty compliment."
"I do not think my husband would like that."
With Xaro's approach, Dany backed against the railing that overhung the lower deck, where Jorah was seated, and prayed for his watchful eye, which she had earlier brashly scorned, to be turned to her.
"Jorah Mormont is no more your husband than you were a captive of the Dothraki."
Jorah's full name spat from Xaro's lips was more astonishing and alarming to Dany than the reference to the Iron Throne. "What did you say?"
"Ser Jorah Mormont," Xaro repeated, looking like a fox in the ruddy lantern light. "The exiled knight, formerly of Bear Island. I believe he was called Jorah the Andal by those in your husband's khalasar, Dany. Or should I say Daenerys, daughter of Aerys of House Targaryen, rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms?"
Dany opened her mouth in a desperate rebuttal, but Xaro put a long, pale finger, on which rested a large ruby, to her lips.
"I was most relieved to discover you both have other occupations, because you'll never get anywhere as actors. Captives?" A chuckle rattled in his throat. "Mormont never submitted to anyone in his life, that was clear from the moment we met, and neither of you cringes before your betters or lowers your eyes in shame, and you love that babe too much for him to have been gotten on you by a Dothraki raper, and you don't love the knight enough, though I will grant that he does not feign his devotion to you."
For some reason, though it was true enough, Dany was most rankled by Xaro's assessment of her feelings for Jorah. But it would not do to press him on any point. He knew all.
"What price for your silence?" she asked.
"Oh no, Your Grace, you misunderstand me. It is I who wish to buy you something."
"And what would that be?"
Daxos' eyes and teeth gleamed gold in the lantern light. "A fleet, my queen, to bear you to Westeros. Or rather, us. And I would not buy you a fleet so much as give you one. For a wedding gift."
She thought she should be afraid, but Dany felt only a sensation that her chest had been emptied of rib and muscle and fiber and muscle, so that her heart hung suspended in the breathless chamber. "You offer me your hand?"
"Would it be plainer if I dropped to one knee?" he asked, doing exactly that; somehow, Dany could not imagine Jorah doing the same. As if reading her thoughts, Xaro smiled shrewdly up at her. "Is not a merchant prince a more fitting consort for a queen than an exiled knight?"
Dany was so dazed by what had transpired that she had no memory of telling Xaro she must take time to consider his offer or of descending to the lower level of his pleasure barge until Jorah's scowling face, waiting for her at the bottom, greeted her.
"You're pale," he said, on his feet at once and striding across the deck to her. "What has Daxos said to you?"
"That he wants to give me a fleet."
A heartbeat of silence as Jorah took this in with a blink, and then he took her roughly by the shoulders. "You little fool, what did you tell him?"
Dany had no thought of slapping him until she had already cracked him hard across the cheek, the sound of it cutting almost like lightning through the buzz of activity of the cooks and scullery maids and serving boys ceased as they turned in surprise to look.
"You forget yourself, ser! I am your queen, and you are a knight in my service. I told Xaro nothing he could not guess from your behavior."
Above his beard, Jorah's cheek reddened, the individual streaks of each of Dany's fingers evident, but he did not lift his own hand to rub it. "What price does he name for this fleet?"
Lifting her chin defiantly, Dany answered, "Only my hand."
"Only." Jorah snorted. "At least you are a little better than Viserys. You would sell yourself for your crown, rather than those little ones who are under your power."
At that moment, she would gladly trade Jorah for a fleet--if anyone were fool enough to take such an insolent knight off her hands.
"I would give myself," she said. "I am, after all, free to do so."
Although Dany restrained her hand from striking him again for his disrespect, her words alone made Jorah cringed as he had not from the physical blow; when he spoke again, it was not to argue, but to advise.
"Surely you see that Daxos does not only ask for your hand. Think what you witnessed today at this Qartheen marriage. What do you have that Daxos might ask for?"
Her dragon's eggs, he meant, though she hadn't even told Jorah the full truth of what had happened that day she'd sent him away and Daxos had come to her.
He'd seen the eggs--one of them, anyway. But she'd lied to him about what it was, said it was just a strange rock she'd found in the ruins of Vaes Tolorro. Some wrecked thing salvaged from the Dothraki plunder, which had captivated her. She'd told herself then that Daxos believed her, though now, given how he'd sussed everything else, she was sure he knew she'd lied about that, too.
But she was not about to let a knight make a fool of her.
"I find it interesting, ser, that you accuse a man of playing me false to take what is precious to me, when you would have me sell them for mere coin."
She turned from him, intending to rejoin Xaro--who was watching from above--but Jorah caught her wrist and pulled her back toward him, a look of mad desperation on his face.
"Daenerys, you can't--"
But before he could go further, a distant shout diverted their attention. They looked to see a skiff rowing toward them, very fast, bearing Xaro's colors, an urgent man standing in the prow. Dany recognized him as the steward.
"My prince! Your palace--"
"Is finer than any king's in the world!" Xaro called down, and the wedding party laughed. "Tell me something I don't know!"
"Your guards are slain by vandals and…You have been robbed!"
A collective gasp went up from the wedding party, and Xaro lost no time coming down to the main deck to speak with his steward, Dany at his heels and Jorah still keeping hold of her, the conversation about her dragon's eggs recent enough that her first instinct was to fear for them.
"What was taken?" he asked, leaping agilely over the edge of the barge and down into the rowboat.
"It is not a question of what," replied the steward, looking beyond his master until his eyes locked with Dany's; she did not resist when Jorah's hand, which still clasped her wrist, slid down to grip her hand as the man pronounced, "but of whom."
A/N: At fanfiction.net I'm offering a drabble to the 100th reviewer, so it's only fair that offer a drabble to a random LJ reviewer, too. In your review, comment with a prompt, and you may just see your name in the notes of a fic near you next week!