DAENERYS
Between the bars of her cage, the sun was rising over the Dothraki sea, welcomed by a strident chorus of birds hidden in the long grass. For the moment the morning coolness lingered, but Dany knew that it would soon be scorching hot. She wondered where Drogon was; the black dragon ranged far afield during the night, hunting, but he usually returned no later than a few hours after dawn. At times she could sense it when he was close – not only by the way his shadow would sweep over the plain as if a cloud had veiled the sun, and the khalasar would look up and point with superstitious pride – but as if she had reached in and touched his mind, a son speeding home to his mother. Though of late Dany could not tell who was the parent and who the child.
She stretched her legs and sat up. Her cage, for a cage, was as luxurious as they came; she had woven mats to recline on, a hrakkar pelt that reminded her of the one her sun-and-stars had given her, sandsilk draperies to keep the sun off, and more – in fact, if not for the bars, it was more of a lady's palanquin than a cage. The generosity, she imagined, was entirely due to the presence of Drogon. Khal Jhaqo's men feared and hated and were in awe of her all at once; this purple-eyed, silver-haired whore of the sunset lands, who was known to have set a witch on Khal Drogo, who had meddled in matters far beyond her comprehension, and refused to take her proper place among the crones of Vaes Dothrak. Yet she had come to them in company of a massive black dragon, fire made flesh, and it was from both hatred and awe that they had put her into the cage, bringing her food and drink so that she never hungered or thirsted, and sometimes making sacrifices of animals or incense. No other khalasar would dare trouble them with Drogon lurking nearby, and it had undoubtedly occurred to them that him not burning the lot of them to cinders depended on how well they treated Dany. She was sure that Drogon, if he had been so inclined, could have stopped them from putting her in the cage at all, but when they'd done it, he merely looked at her with his great slitted eyes and flapped off into the twilight. I chained his brothers in the darkness, she thought with a stab. He will teach me what it is to be a dragon behind bars.
The camp was beginning to stir. Slaves ducked out from the tents and trudged off to fetch water or start breakfast fires. Despite the fact that this was not how she had envisioned it happening, part of Dany was genuinely happy at once more living among a khalasar. She expected that it had to do with being freed from the bear trap of Meereen, all the plots and counterplots, of looking over her shoulder for the Harpy, of wearing her floppy ears, of hearing the pleas to reopen the fighting pits and resume the slaughters, of wondering who to trust and who intended to kill her on the morrow, of enduring Hizdahr's carnal attentions and wondering if he was the most dangerous of them all. In fact it was only now, when she was not scrambling to keep her head above water, that Dany was able to absorb how much of a nightmare Meereen had truly been. She had wanted to rule, and rule well, but all she'd wrought was a mummer's mess.
Even now, the thought of returning left her deeply ambivalent. She had to, she knew – her loyal Ser Barristan and Grey Worm, and her not-so-loyal subjects, not to mention two of her dragons and her noble lord husband, all awaited to be dealt with. And Daario. Yet while she had thought of the sellsword captain several times a day at first, the remembrances were growing farther and farther apart. She'd tried to picture his face in her head, but all she could come up with was the sheaf of blue hair and the twinkling golden tooth.
Dany was no fool. She knew far better than to hope that Daario would mount some valorous rescue. He is not a good man, he is not a hero, he is not trustworthy. She would have to do something about him too when she returned to her city, though perhaps the Yunkai'i had taken it upon themselves to solve their dilemma by beheading him as they had Groleo. Then she would be duty-bound to execute her own hostages, but her stomach still turned at the thought. They were but children, and she had become fond of them.
This is how you made such a farce of Meereen, a voice whispered in her head. You learned there that a ruler can be strong or a ruler can be kind, but only rarely can a ruler be both. Yet that still was a deep hook in her. Men will always leap at the first opportunity to call the Mad King's daughter a monster. Ser Barristan had tried to shield her from the uglier tales in circulation, but Dany had heard them all. How she was a whore, a murderess, a sorceress, a shape-changing fiend who took a hundred men to her bed each night and supped on their blood to break her fast, a daughter of demons and a harpy herself. I am the queen, I cannot leave my business there undone. Yet when would it ever be done, she did not know. If it had been such an ordeal that she was happier here in a comfortable cage, she did not know either what should be said of her instead. I will not have it said that I failed here. I will not.
Dany wondered where the khalasar meant to take her. Dothraki were a nomadic folk both by culture and temperament, and rambled for months on end in their great grassy sea, challenging other khalasars and emerging to menace cities, either being bought off with treasures and slaves or rejecting the tribute and enthusiastically sacking it nonetheless. Even her brother had had to admit that the Dothraki had no equals in the open field, which was why he had badgered Khal Drogo so relentlessly to get aboard a ship to Westeros that it had ended with his crown of molten gold. Yet as she herself had learned, they had no discipline, no sense of the future, and certainly no desire to spend months overseas in a foreign campaign to seat her on some iron chair. They would have followed her if her sun-and-stars had commanded it, but that was long ago and long done. And after the fighting was done, I would have been hard-pressed to get them to stop. She did not want a kingdom of cooked bones and charred ashes.
Once or twice, Dany had toyed with the idea that the gods had brought her back to the Dothraki in order to avenge this galling failure, to redeem herself for the choice she had made to allow Mirri Maz Duur to work her sorcery on Drogo. Jhaqo, after all, had been Drogo's ko, and the second to declare himself a new khal after Drogo's death. He should be thanking me. But she had not forgotten how Mago and Jhaqo had seized the lamb girl Eroeh, raped her, cut her throat, and staked her up. And the vow she had sworn then, how Mago and Jhaqo would plead for the mercy they had showed their victim.
Dany pondered where she would do it, and when. The how of it was fairly self-evident, assuming Drogon consented to play his part, but she had to be careful. Once he was fully grown, Drogon would cause men to stare and shake and mutter that Balerion the Black Dread had been made flesh once more, but as of yet, he was still adolescent. And while his fire would be sufficient to dispose of one so-styled khal, the other twenty thousand riders would be more than enough to throw ropes and chains, to drag him down from the sky, to cut him to pieces. They might lose a good few in the effort, it was true, but that made no matter to Dothraki. They would throw themselves against a barrier again and again, with no heed for losses, if even one of them remained to walk through it at the end; Dany recalled the tale of the Three Thousand of Qohor. To call themselves dragonslayers would gild their laurels from the farthest corner of the grassy sea to the Horse Gate of Vaes Dothrak. And a dozen new khals would spring up where there had been only one before, a dozen new foes, assuming they let her live to witness it. I am only a woman. I have no fire to breathe, no scales to shield me, no teeth and claws to fight with. I am blood of the dragon, but not its flesh.
And there was that other matter. You cannot set to rights all the ills in this world, my queen, a voice that sounded disturbingly like Ser Jorah Mormont's whispered. Eroeh was only one girl. Thousands like her perish every day, even now. And your father too was fond of burning folk to death.
Dany stirred angrily at the reminder. Go away, she ordered him, but her heart was only half in it. Her bear, her tireless brave bear. She had heard him before, as she wandered alone in the high plains, delirious with fever, bleeding and shitting. Viserys had said that dragons were impervious to the ailments of lesser men, but like so much else, he had been wrong about that. She had seen him there as well, an unquiet ghost with his molten crown and half his face scorched away. She wished that she would have seen Jorah too, had longed with an ache beyond words to turn and bury her face in his big hairy chest, but she had known that if she turned, he would fade away on the breeze. I sent him away. He, like Eroeh, was another old wrong she must avenge. She would have done anything to look on his ugly face again, he had always given her wise counsel and steadfast love. . . but he had come to her a spy, a liar, a whisperer, had been promised a pardon for murdering her and her unborn son. . . But in the end, it was me who killed him.
No, Dany thought, suddenly and sharply. Mirri Maz Duur had made the healing poultice first, had told Drogo to wear it, but he had ripped it off. And after. . . that was my fault, I asked for the spell, I had no idea what I was asking, I was but a girl. . . but it was on Drogo's pyre that she'd hatched Drogon and Rhaegal and Viserion, where she'd become the Mother of Dragons in truth. I will not regret it, I will not call it back. Drogo and Rhaego were dead. Part of her would always miss them and wonder what would have been if they had lived, but at that moment, Dany felt a door firmly close inside her. Stormborn, the Unburnt. She had been fashioned for greater things. There might come a day in the far future, as impossible as it seemed, when old mad Aerys Targaryen was remembered only as Queen Daenerys' sire.
But first she had to get out of this cage.
Her cogitations about killing Jhaqo could wait, Dany decided. I broke the chains of countless slaves, now let me break my own. She had lost track of how long she had been in here – it had been a fortnight at least, closer to a month. And she had no useful implement to batter her way out by brute force. By listening to what scraps of conversation she could, she knew that Jhaqo did not mean merely to cart her off to the dosh khaleen as a public service and have done with it. Why allow this sunset-lander to infect the wisdom of the ages, incite the crones to the gods knew what mad actions? No. Her fate would be more spectacular.
The khalasar rode hard that day, and Drogon did not return. As she always did when this was so, Dany worried. Nor could she erase the memory of little Hazzea's blackened bones, or the look on the father's face. Dragons were no tame creatures to wear a leash, but how could she not at least try to restrain them, when flying free might lead to countless more Hazzeas? I should have trained them better, the queen thought. I should have accustomed them to my face and voice and mastery, yet I was too busy struggling to rule Meereen. A city of deceit and dust and slaves and Harpies. I should raze it brick by brick when I return.
That night when they stopped to make camp, Dany was very sore from the constant rattling and jouncing of the cage, and her dwindling patience had reached its end. "You," she called in Dothraki, to one of the female slaves whose job it was to attend her. "Come here. I want a word."
Shamefaced, avoiding her gaze, the girl shuffled closer. It will behoove me to be careful, Dany realized. If she is seen conspiring with me, she is the one who will suffer for it. She smiled. "Don't be frightened. What's your name?"
The slave flicked frightened dark eyes up at her face, and then just as quickly back down. "I. . . this one's name is Zari, Khaleesi."
Dany was pleased that the girl still addressed her by her old title. "Zari. Where do you come from, child?"
"My father was ko to Khal Quoro," the girl said. "Now dead. Khal Jhaqo defeated him two moons past." She shot a panicky look to either side. "It is not wise for me to speak to you so familiarly. It is known."
"You need not fear," Dany said, thinking with a stab of how she had made the same promise to Eroeh, and all the other innocents she had tried in vain to save. "I am Mother of Dragons. If I order it, my Drogon will hurt any man who tries to hurt you." Would he? But this was no time to confess her doubts.
The mention of Drogon rendered Zari temporarily speechless. Finally, "The beast. . . Khaleesi, it is said that he is a demon that you raised with the witch's blood sorcery, that you killed Khal Drogo to give him life, that he. . ."
"Is that known as well?" Dany asked wryly. It is not far wrong. For all that they were nearly unmatched in martial prowess, the Dothraki were as superstitious as children told one too many ghost stories round the supper-fire. Viserys' fatal impatience had been driven in large part by his disdain for their never-ending cavalcade of omens and foretellings. "But whatever he is, he is mine. Now, sweetling. Do you know where we are bound?"
Zari hesitated again. She couldn't be much older than Missandei, back in Meereen; Dany missed her little scribe, sweet and brave and clever beyond her years, almost as much as she missed Jorah. But at last the girl crept up to the bars, lowered her voice to a whisper, and breathed, "In the tents of Khal Jhaqo, tale is made of a land of shadows. Of old mysteries and priests in red. The khal believes that if he gives you to them as a gift, they will give him untold riches and power in return."
Asshai. For everything, Dany could not say she was entirely shocked. What was surprising was the fact that a Dothraki, who mistrusted sorcery full as much as he mistrusted the sea, was willing to approach the red priests of Asshai, and even to strike a bargain with them. As the last Targaryen, Dany would be of immense interest to the flame-worshiping sect, and if she came packaged with one of the three living dragons in the world, her value would rise beyond price. Khal Jhaqo would indeed live as a wealthy man to the end of his days, would be healthily feared by his kith and kin for daring to do commerce with the spawn of shadows. And if he was brave enough to risk Asshai, he might also be game to get on a ship and sail for Westeros.
Dany pushed that out of her head. Too soon, too soon. Yet the moment Zari had made mention of it, her thoughts had returned to Quaithe in her red lacquer mask, the woman who had ridden from Qarth with Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Pyat Pree. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow, Quaithe had whispered, when she mysteriously appeared in Dany's cabin in the dead of night. And Dany had thought that the seer was telling her to go to Asshai. Should I then allow Jhaqo to do this?
Yet Quaithe was an utter enigma, completely unknown to her – she had never seen the woman's true face, after all. She warned me against Daxos and Pree, but I would have had to be a simpleton to trust them. When she had reappeared to Dany in Meereen, it had been to warn her against the pale mare and Reznak mo Reznak, and a horde of others as well. . . kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. The pale mare came, true enough, and the sun's son, Quentyn Martell who would have wed me. . . but was that enough to put stock in the whispers? Quaithe was a red priestess herself, she might well be eager to bring the Mother of Dragons into her order's grasp, to cut her apart and claim her flames for their own. If sorcery was a blade without a hilt, then prophecy must be even worse. Men had driven themselves mad trying to create their foretold fate – or to avoid it.
A chill ran down Dany's back. No, she thought. I will do nothing merely because one or another mysterious figure decreed that I should. I am a Targaryen, the last Targaryen, I answer neither to gods or men. Her gallant brother Rhaegar had been born on the night of the tragedy of Summerhall, as her House had turned to the fell arts in an attempt to fulfill their inheritance, and Dany had drunk her fill of it in the bloodmagic of Mirri Maz Duur, and in the House of the Undying. But what if it is the only way? What if in her deepest destiny, she was meant to pass beneath the shadow and learn its darkest secrets?
Zari was still watching her nervously. "By your leave, Khaleesi, I can go?"
"You may," Dany told her, and watched as the girl fairly fled. She leaned back against the side of the cage, head whirling. How much farther can it be? She doubted that the rest of the khalasar would share Jhaqo's resolve to visit the Asshai'i, even if they had no objection to the profit, and so he might dispatch his bloodriders to finish the job and take her the rest of the way. She knew better to think that they would be moved by pity for her predicament, but they would be moved by fear and impatience and greed. Her best hope might be to terrify them so thoroughly that they abandoned her on the side of the road, but then who might retrieve her in turn?
It would be useful if I was as monstrous as I am rumored to be, Dany thought ruefully. If only Drogon would return. If she could only trust that he would obey her once more; she had never truly believed that he would harm her, but it had been a harrowingly close thing, there in the fighting pit. She knew as well that Asshai was a haven for dragonlore, and it suddenly increased her desire to go there – there was so much she did not know. Dragons were sentient creatures, at least as intelligent as men, and all but unstoppable once mature, but her House's entanglement with them had brought at least as much grief as glory. Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin to determine whether madness or greatness is in the offing. She recalled Ser Barristan telling her that her grandfather Jaehaerys had once said something to that effect. But how can any more be born? I am the last, and I am barren. My only children will be the dragons.
Around her, she watched the riders picket horses, build supper fires, exchange rough jests and take casual pisses. In the middle of a horde some twenty or thirty thousand strong, she was utterly alone. My chance will present itself, it must. Dany angrily wiped away the tears that had gathered under her lashes, and waited until her supper was brought. She was almost tempted to throw it back in their faces, just to make a point, but she was starved with hunger, and she stood to gain nothing from antagonizing them now. She accepted the hunk of bloody horse meat and silently began to gnaw.
Supper was almost over by the time a shadow darker than the twilight swept low over the rising moon, and a murmur traveled among the Dothraki. Drogon furled his wings and came in for a graceful landing, wisps of steam rising from his scales and some charred corpse still clasped in his jaws. He dropped it in the grass, much like a hound presenting some choice morsel, and Dany saw that it was an unknown animal, not a man or a child. She let out a shuddering breath of relief. "Drogon," she called. "To me."
The dragon lifted his head on sound of her voice and looked at her with his slitted eyes. He was still recovering from the wound the Meereenese handler Harghaz had given him in the arena, though it had almost knitted and did not seem to trouble him unduly. But he took a few flaps across the camp, scattering Dothraki to either side, and halted by her cage, gazing through the bars. There was another murmur, this one angrier, and a few of the younger, brasher riders unslung their arakhs. "Call him off, witch," one of them warned her. "Do it, now."
Dany shot him a cold look. "I will do as I see needful. Fear not, he seems to have supped for the night."
The young rider mumbled something highly unflattering, but subsided. The glare of hostile eyes did not, however, and hands remained at arakh hilts until Drogon lifted off again. Dany had to fight a lurch of disappointment, as always. She could yet call dracarys to him, and sow a new Field of Fire, but now that she knew what Jhaqo intended for her, she was dangerously tempted to let it come to pass.
But even if that is so, I will not appear before them a captive, caged and tame. She and Drogon had killed the Undying of Qarth in their palace of dust, when they would have consumed her; let them do the same if the red priests of Asshai should try. From the tales Dany had heard, the worshipers of R'hllor were keenly fond of human sacrifices for their rites. I will teach them what it means to burn to death. The Targaryens had adopted the Faith of the Seven when her ancestor Aegon had conquered Westeros, forsaking their pagan Valyrian religion, though it had taken the subsequent uprising of the Militant to secure them as its staunchest defenders. Dany's desire to see the red priests atone for their actions owed nothing to religious fervor; she had not seriously thought of gods in years. Only to the Targaryen words themselves. Fire and blood.
The night grew darker. The Dothraki pitched their tents and retired within – the sound of talk drifted out, or quarreling, or lovemaking. All of it only undergirded Dany's own loneliness. Once more she tried to picture Daario's face, but could not. I never should have been so fool as to take him into my bed, let alone my heart. If Daario had survived his episode as a hostage, he was well away from the hellhole of Slaver's Bay by now, en route to gainful employment elsewhere. Far elsewhere. Yet she had found solace in his arms for a time, had felt like the girl she was and not the crone she had to be, had delighted in his touch and his kisses. Is that such a crime? I did my duty, I set him aside when I wed Hizdahr. . . though in truth she might not have been so strong if Daario had not left on his own accord.
It does me no good to pick over this again. She should not be thinking of anything but how to get out of this cage – now, while the khalasar slept. Jhaqo had not put a guard on her, correctly surmising that she was no threat on her own, and that offering men up to be roasted by Drogon would be actively counterproductive. And she was not mistreated, so why should she have any motive to break out and wreak revenge?
Why, indeed? Dany thought grimly, digging her fingers into the gap between cage and door. The Dothraki had no forges beyond those to smelt arakhs or horseshoes, and ironmongery as an art had therefore never advanced beyond the essential. Her prison was crafted of woven wicker and crosshatched branches, varnished in some sort of shellac that made it as hard as rock. Mayhaps by working up enough momentum, she could tip it over and smash it on the ground – but it was soft and squashy, would wind her and bruise her but not liberate her. She cursed Drogon's recalcitrance as she continued to labor. I would be out of here in the blink of an eye if he would so much as singe their braids.
It was not working. She sat back on her heels and cursed under her breath. Zari was the closest thing she had to an ally in the entire camp, and that very remote; the girl would never put herself at such risk as to loose Khal Jhaqo's prized prisoner, and nor should she. Eroeh's fate would indeed look desirable by comparison. Mercy had never numbered among Dothraki virtues. And once they discovered that she'd contrived to free herself, they'd –
Wait.
The torches and cookfires had been extinguished, so Dany's only source of light was the uncertain moon, but she could still make out a burly figure in a hooded cloak, moving through the camp directly toward her. Her breath seized up, and for a mad moment she thought that Daario had come after her after all. But he was more elegant, slender, flamboyant. Not like this. . . this. . .
Heart in her throat, Dany watched the hooded figure reach her cage – almost close enough to touch, if she stretched her arm through. He unsheathed a long bronze-bladed knife, and for another instant she thought he meant to kill her, but instead he started to saw at the wickerwork. His breathing was low and harsh, almost familiar, and she had to tell herself that this might not truly be happening, and that if it was, Jhaqo and his bloodriders would subject them both to some horrible fate. But one of the bars was cut away, and then another.
I know his smell. It came to her almost from the blue. His smell, and his breathing, and the coarse black hair that tufted his scarred, callused hands. This could not be real, she did not want to believe it. The khalasar could not be difficult to follow, and seeing Drogon in the skies, returning to the camp, would give anyone who was dense enough to need it a blazing beacon of her location, but –
I sent him away. I sent him away, this is a dream as before. Or it wasn't, and Dany did not know which frightened her more. Three bars had been cut away by now; the man was grunting, sweating with the exertion, and no one had yet arrived to investigate. Then one more was removed, large enough of a hole for her to slip through, and the man held out that hand. She took it, and knew at once.
Daenerys Targaryen stumbled from the dragon's cage, and into Jorah Mormont's arms.
For an endless moment she could do nothing but sob breathlessly, hanging onto him with both hands, her legs so weak and sore from the imprisonment that they could barely bear her weight. It was her bear who bore her weight instead. How could he be here, like a true answer from a prayer – how could he be here, before her, now, not now –
Dany wrenched herself backwards and almost fell. He caught her, but she wrenched free again. Gasping, almost blinded by her tears, she slapped him so hard that his head turned with a crack.
Instead of trying to catch or avoid the blow, he absorbed it with a grunt. Then he went straightaway down to one knee, and laid the blade he'd used to free her at her feet. "My queen." The voice was his, but so hoarse and choked as to sound almost unrecognizable. "Do as you will to me."
Dany was such in a state that she almost took him up on it. "How dare you!" she hissed. "How dare you. . . come back to me, like this, how dare you think – "
"That you were in need of rescue?" Beneath the hood, she saw his eyes flick ironically to the cage. "If that was not so, my queen, I apologize."
"Be quiet. I did not give you leave to speak." Dany clenched her fists, wanting to hold him, wanting to hurt him, wanting to kiss him, wanting to kill him. Always he had been too presumptuous, had dared too much of her. My bear. How was it even possible that he was here? Did he not have the sense to stay in exile where she'd sent him? But everything in her life, in her reign, had been follies and disasters since she had done so. Ser Barristan was a brave man and true, and he did his best, but Jorah, Jorah –
The knight bowed his head. "My tongue is my queen's, to do with as she will."
Dany whirled away. Her legs nearly gave out again, but she caught onto her erstwhile prison to steady herself. To walk about was a rare luxury, to feel the night wind on her skin, to stretch out her arms and bend herself in half, to pull out all the kinks and knots. Freedom. The world was possible once more. She was nonetheless irritated that she'd not been able to do it herself, felt as if she might have failed some crucial test. Where is Drogon? She ought to flee to him right now and fly off, leave Jorah in the camp. He would be known to most of them from the time when they had ridden with her sun-and-stars, they might remember him with friendship. Or they might not. It is naught to me.
But he had come for her. Not Daario and not Ser Barristan and certainly not her noble lord husband, Hizdahr zo Loraq. None of them but Jorah, foraging across the depths of the Dothraki sea on his own, tracking the khalasar, watching for the dragon. You mad sweet fool. What have you done to us?
Jorah was still motionless on his knees. He had not spoken. He seemed to be awaiting her word.
I could pick up this knife and kill him. Dany took a step forward. "Pull back your hood," she said instead. "I would look on your face."
Jorah seemed to tremble slightly, as with contained emotion he would not or could not stand to voice. Then he reached up, and obeyed.
Dany recoiled. The basic arrangement of the features was the same as ever, but so masked with bruises and scars and weals that it barely looked human. She briefly thought that she had slapped him hard enough to leave a mark, but realized instead that it was a brand on his cheek, in likeness of a hideous demon. "What have they done to you?" she blurted out. "Whose hand did this work?"
"Yezzan zo Qaggaz's, a Wise Master of Yunkai," Ser Jorah answered. "Or rather, his overseer's."
The mark of an unruly slave. Dany had learned everything she cared to know of slaves in Astapor and Yunkai and Meereen. The irony almost made her choke. Ser Jorah was banished from his homeland for selling to a slaver, and now he has been sold by one. No one could ever say that the gods were not mercilessly just. She thought again of how men would struggle with all their might to meet or avoid the fate foretold for them, and was forced to conclude that fate had never stood a chance against Jorah Mormont. If he was fool enough to blunder all the way back here, then he might just be fool enough to pull it off.
Still, Dany's anger was hot in her, searing, and she was determined not to forgive him too swiftly. Even at night, surrounded by a khalasar who would murder her as soon as barter her, with a dragon of uncertain temperament on the loose nearby. If Drogon thought Ser Jorah a threat to her, even she might not be able to stop him from unloosing his flames.
I have missed him so much. She took another step. There seemed to be no doubt that her bear had genuinely suffered for his crimes. Ser Barristan said that my father never forgot or forgave a slight. She was struggling so hard not to meet the destiny that had been written for her, desired so greatly to walk her own path. I am more than Aerys Targaryen's get, Viserys' little frightened sister, the daughter who killed her mother to come into the world. I swore it. She had left that part of her behind long ago, but some ghost of the small scared child would always remain. The house with the red door and Ser Willem Darry's big paws. My first bear. My lost home.
"Rise, ser," she said. She sounded strangely choked herself. "You will be well rewarded for your service."
His eyes burned two holes through her. He looked at her as if nothing, no man or woman or child, had existed in the world before or since. It made her want to turn away, and it made her want to move closer. "Daenerys," he whispered hoarsely.
She wanted to run to him then, wanted to cling to him, but she was still his queen. He must never presume to touch her as a woman again. If he was to be reconciled to her service, he must learn that. "Your Grace," she corrected him, as she had on the ship on the night that he had kissed her. "We may leave together – " to Asshai? To Meereen? To Westeros? – "but I have not forgotten your misdeeds. If you ever transgress in the slightest degree again, all the gods of your forefathers and mine will not stop me from giving you to the flames. Do you understand me?"
"I. . . do," he said. "Your Grace."
"Good." Dany's strength was returning. She felt light-headed, almost invulnerable. "Then we can go to – "
"You will go, Khaleesi," a cold voice commented in Dothraki, from the stand of grass just beyond. "Where a whore such as you is fit for, no more."
Ser Jorah was on his feet so fast that she almost didn't see him move. He put her behind him, one hand tense on his blade. He had always done this, had always shielded her, from everyone except himself. "Come out, Jhaqo," he answered in the same language, matching the coldness. "You must have missed my ugly face as greatly as I missed yours."
Dany heard a laugh. Then the grasses rustled, and Khal Jhaqo emerged, flanked to both sides by his bloodriders. "You," he said. "Jorah the Andal. You will again steal my prize, is that so? The whore is for the red priests. Do you see how brave I am become, since I hear of the witch burning to death? Fire kills them like us. Fire kills us all."
"You are wiser than you know," Dany answered him. All her fear was gone, all her doubt. She stepped out from behind Jorah's arm, stood alone between them, her old life and her new. And she saw the dark shadow gliding low in the night, no longer knew anything but her resolve – I am blood of the dragon, its mother, its soul – as she called out to her child. "Drogon," she sang. "Dracarys."