“No . . . no.” He shook his head. “I never meant . . . forgive me. You have to forgive me.”
“Have to?” It was too late. He should have begun by begging forgiveness. She could not pardon him as she’d intended. She had dragged the wineseller behind her horse until there was nothing left of him. Didn’t the man who brought him deserve the same? This is Jorah, my fierce bear, the right arm that never failed me. I would be dead without him, but . . . “I can’t forgive you,” she said. “I can’t.”
“You forgave the old man . . .”
“He lied to me about his name. You sold my secrets to the men who killed my father and stole my brother’s throne.”
“I protected you. I fought for you. Killed for you.”
Kissed me, she thought, betrayed me.
“I went down into the sewers like a rat. For you.”
It might have been kinder if you’d died there. Dany said nothing. There was nothing to say.
“Daenerys,” he said, “I have loved you.”
And there it was. Three treasons will you know. Once for blood and once for gold and once for love. “The gods do nothing without a purpose, they say. You did not die in battle, so it must be they still have some use for you. But I don’t. I will not have you near me. You are banished, ser. Go back to your masters in King’s Landing and collect your pardon, if you can. Or to Astapor. No doubt the butcher king needs knights.”
“No.” He reached for her. “Daenerys, please, hear me . . .”
She slapped his hand away. “Do not ever presume to touch me again, or to speak my name. You have until dawn to collect your things and leave this city. If you’re found in Meereen past break of day, I will have Strong Belwas twist your head off. I will. Believe that.” She turned her back on him, her skirts swirling. I cannot bear to see his face. “Remove this liar from my sight,” she commanded. I must not weep. I must not. If I weep I will forgive him. Strong Belwas seized Ser Jorah by the arm and dragged him out. When Dany glanced back, the knight was walking as if drunk, stumbling and slow. She looked away until she heard the doors open and close. Then she sank back onto the ebony bench. He’s gone, then. My father and my mother, my brothers, Ser Willem Darry, Drogo who was my sun-and-stars, his son who died inside me, and now Ser Jorah . . .
“The queen has a good heart,” Daario purred through his deep purple whiskers, “but that one is more dangerous than all the Oznaks and Meros rolled up in one.” His strong hands caressed the hilts of his matched blades, those wanton golden women. “You need not even say the word, my radiance. Only give the tiniest nod, and your Daario shall fetch you back his ugly head.”
“Leave him be. The scales are balanced now. Let him go home.” Dany pictured Jorah moving amongst old gnarled oaks and tall pines, past flowering thornbushes, grey stones bearded with moss, and little creeks running icy down steep hillsides. She saw him entering a hall built of huge logs, where dogs slept by the hearth and the smell of meat and mead hung thick in the smoky air. “We are done for now,” she told her captains.
It was all she could do not to run back up the wide marble stairs. Irri helped her slip from her court clothes and into more comfortable garb; baggy woolen breeches, a loose felted tunic, a painted Dothraki vest. “You are trembling, Khaleesi,” the girl said as she knelt to lace up Dany’s sandals.
“I’m cold,” Dany lied. “Bring me the book I was reading last night.” She wanted to lose herself in the words, in other times and other places. The fat leather-bound volume was full of songs and stories from the Seven Kingdoms. Children’s stories, if truth be told; too simple and fanciful to be true history. All the heroes were tall and handsome, and you could tell the traitors by their shifty eyes. Yet she loved them all the same. Last night she had been reading of the three princesses in the red tower, locked away by the king for the crime of being beautiful.
When her handmaid brought the book, Dany had no trouble finding the page where she had left off, but it was no good. She found herself reading the same passage half a dozen times. Ser Jorah gave me this book as a bride’s gift, the day I wed Khal Drogo. But Daario is right, I shouldn’t have banished him. I should have kept him, or I should have killed him. She played at being a queen, yet sometimes she still felt like a scared little girl. Viserys always said what a dolt I was. Was he truly mad? She closed the book. She could still recall Ser Jorah, if she wished. Or send Daario to kill him.
Dany fled from the choice, out onto the terrace. She found Rhaegal asleep beside the pool, a green and bronze coil basking in the sun. Drogon was perched up atop the pyramid, in the place where the huge bronze harpy had stood before she had commanded it to be pulled down. He spread his wings and roared when he spied her. There was no sign of Viserion, but when she went to the parapet and scanned the horizon she saw pale wings in the far distance, sweeping above the river. He is hunting. They grow bolder every day. Yet it still made her anxious when they flew too far away. One day one of them may not return, she thought.
“Your Grace?”
She turned to find Ser Barristan behind her. “What more would you have of me, ser? I spared you, I took you into my service, now give me some peace.”
“Forgive me, Your Grace. It was only . . . now that you know who I am . . .” The old man hesitated. “A knight of the Kingsguard is in the king’s presence day and night. For that reason, our vows require us to protect his secrets as we would his life. But your father’s secrets by rights belong to you now, along with his throne, and . . . I thought perhaps you might have questions for me.”
Questions? She had a hundred questions, a thousand, ten thousand. Why couldn’t she think of one? “Was my father truly mad?” she blurted out. Why do I ask that? “Viserys said this talk of madness was a ploy of the Usurper’s . . .”
“Viserys was a child, and the queen sheltered him as much as she could. Your father always had a little madness in him, I now believe. Yet he was charming and generous as well, so his lapses were forgiven. His reign began with such promise . . . but as the years passed, the lapses grew more frequent, until . . .”
Dany stopped him. “Do I want to hear this now?”
Ser Barristan considered a moment. “Perhaps not. Not now.”
“Not now,” she agreed. “One day. One day you must tell me all. The good and the bad. There is some good to be said of my father, surely?”
“There is, Your Grace. Of him, and those who came before him. Your grandfather Jaehaerys and his brother, their father Aegon, your mother . . . and Rhaegar. Him most of all.”
“I wish I could have known him.” Her voice was wistful.
“I wish he could have known you,” the old knight said. “When you are ready, I will tell you all.”
Dany kissed him on the cheek and sent him on his way.
That night her handmaids brought her lamb, with a salad of raisins and carrots soaked in wine, and a hot flaky bread dripping with honey. She could eat none of it. Did Rhaegar ever grow so weary? she wondered. Did Aegon, after his conquest?
Later, when the time came for sleep, Dany took Irri into bed with her, for the first time since the ship. But even as she shuddered in release and wound her fingers through her handmaid’s thick black hair, she pretended it was Drogo holding her . . . only somehow his face kept turning into Daario’s. If I want Daario I need only say so. She lay with Irri’s legs entangled in her own. His eyes looked almost purple today . . .
Dany’s dreams were dark that night, and she woke three times from half-remembered nightmares. After the third time she was too restless to return to sleep. Moonlight streamed through the slanting windows, silvering the marble floors. A cool breeze was blowing through the open terrace doors. Irri slept soundly beside her, her lips slightly parted, one dark brown nipple peeping out above the sleeping silks. For a moment Dany was tempted, but it was Drogo she wanted, or perhaps Daario. Not Irri. The maid was sweet and skillful, but all her kisses tasted of duty.
She rose, leaving Irri asleep in the moonlight
. Jhiqui and Missandei slept in their own beds. Dany slipped on a robe and padded barefoot across the marble floor, out onto the terrace. The air was chilly, but she liked the feel of grass between her toes and the sound of the leaves whispering to one another. Wind ripples chased each other across the surface of the little bathing pool and made the moon’s reflection dance and shimmer.
She leaned against a low brick parapet to look down upon the city. Meereen was sleeping too. Lost in dreams of kinder days, perhaps. Night covered the streets like a black blanket, hiding the corpses and the grey rats that came up from the sewers to feast on them, the swarms of stinging flies. Distant torches glimmered red and yellow where her sentries walked their rounds, and here and there she saw the faint glow of lanterns bobbing down an alley. Perhaps one was Ser Jorah, leading his horse slowly toward the gate. Farewell, old bear. Farewell, betrayer.
She was Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, khaleesi and queen, Mother of Dragons, slayer of warlocks, breaker of chains, and there was no one in the world that she could trust.
“Your Grace?” Missandei stood at her elbow wrapped in a bedrobe, wooden sandals on her feet. “I woke, and saw that you were gone. Did you sleep well? What are you looking at?”
“My city,” said Dany. “I was looking for a house with a red door, but by night all the doors are black.”
“A red door?” Missandei was puzzled. “What house is this?”
“No house. It does not matter.” Dany took the younger girl by the hand. “Never lie to me, Missandei. Never betray me.”
“I never would,” Missandei promised. “Look, dawn comes.”
The sky had turned a cobalt blue from the horizon to the zenith, and behind the line of low hills to the east a glow could be seen, pale gold and oyster pink. Dany held Missandei’s hand as they watched the sun come up. All the grey bricks became red and yellow and blue and green and orange. The scarlet sands of the fighting pits transformed them into bleeding sores before her eyes. Elsewhere the golden dome of the Temple of the Graces blazed bright, and bronze stars winked along the walls where the light of the rising sun touched the spikes on the helms of the Unsullied. On the terrace, a few flies stirred sluggishly. A bird began to chirp in the persimmon tree, and then two more. Dany cocked her head to hear their song, but it was not long before the sounds of the waking city drowned them out.
The sounds of my city.
That morning she summoned her captains and commanders to the garden, rather than descending to the audience chamber. “Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”
“There is nothing to stay for,” said Brown Ben Plumm.
“Your Grace, the slavers brought their doom on themselves,” said Daario Naharis.
“You have brought freedom as well,” Missandei pointed out.
“Freedom to starve?” asked Dany sharply. “Freedom to die? Am I a dragon, or a harpy?” Am I mad? Do I have the taint?
“A dragon,” Ser Barristan said with certainty. “Meereen is not Westeros, Your Grace.”
“But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?” He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. “My children need time to heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”
“What will you do then, Khaleesi?” asked Rakharo.
“Stay,” she said. “Rule. And be a queen.”
JAIME
The king sat at the head of the table, a stack of cushions under his arse, signing each document as it was presented to him.
“Only a few more, Your Grace,” Ser Kevan Lannister assured him. “This is a bill of attainder against Lord Edmure Tully, stripping him of Riverrun and all its lands and incomes, for rebelling against his lawful king. This is a similar attainder, against his uncle Ser Brynden Tully, the Blackfish.” Tommen signed them one after the other, dipping the quill carefully and writing his name in a broad childish hand.
Jaime watched from the foot of the table, thinking of all those lords who aspired to a seat on the king’s small council. They can bloody well have mine. If this was power, why did it taste like tedium? He did not feel especially powerful, watching Tommen dip his quill in the inkpot again. He felt bored.
And sore. Every muscle in his body ached, and his ribs and shoulders were bruised from the battering they’d gotten, courtesy of Ser Addam Marbrand. Just thinking of it made him wince. He could only hope the man would keep his mouth shut. Jaime had known Marbrand since he was a boy, serving as a page at Casterly Rock; he trusted him as much as he trusted anyone. Enough to ask him to take up shields and tourney swords. He had wanted to know if he could fight with his left hand.
And now I do. The knowledge was more painful than the beating that Ser Addam had given him, and the beating was so bad he could hardly dress himself this morning. If they had been fighting in earnest, Jaime would have died two dozen deaths. It seemed so simple, changing hands. It wasn’t. Every instinct he had was wrong. He had to think about everything, where once he’d just moved. And while he was thinking, Marbrand was thumping him. His left hand couldn’t even seem to hold a longsword properly; Ser Addam had disarmed him thrice, sending his blade spinning.
“This grants said lands, incomes, and castle to Ser Emmon Frey and his lady wife, Lady Genna.” Ser Kevan presented another sheaf of parchments to the king. Tommen dipped and signed. “This is a decree of legitimacy for a natural son of Lord Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort. And this names Lord Bolton your Warden of the North.” Tommen dipped, signed, dipped, signed. “This grants Ser Rolph Spicer title to the castle Castamere and raises him to the rank of lord.” Tommen scrawled his name.
I should have gone to Ser Ilyn Payne, Jaime reflected. The King’s Justice was not a friend as Marbrand was, and might well have beat him bloody . . . but without a tongue, he was not like to boast of it afterward. All it would take would be one chance remark by Ser Addam in his cups, and the whole world would soon know how useless he’d become. Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. It was a cruel jape, that . . . though not quite so cruel as the gift his father had sent him.
“This is your royal pardon for Lord Gawen Westerling, his lady wife, and his daughter Jeyne, welcoming them back into the king’s peace,” Ser Kevan said. “This is a pardon for Lord Jonos Bracken of Stone Hedge. This is a pardon for Lord Vance. This for Lord Goodbrook. This for Lord Mooton of Maidenpool.”
Jaime pushed himself to his feet. “You seem to have these matters well in hand, Uncle. I shall leave His Grace to you.”
“As you wish.” Ser Kevan rose as well. “Jaime, you should go to your father. This breach between you—”
“—is his doing. Nor will he mend it by sending me mocking gifts. Tell him that, if you can pry him away from the Tyrells long enough.”
His uncle looked distressed. “The gift was heartfelt. We thought that it might encourage you—”
“—to grow a new hand?” Jaime turned to Tommen. Though he had Joffrey’s golden curls and green eyes, the new king shared little else with his late brother. He inclined to plumpness, his face was pink and round, and he even liked to read. He is still shy of nine, this son of mine. The boy is not the man. It would be seven years before Tommen was ruling in his own right. Until then the realm would remain firmly in the hands of his lord grandfather. “Sire,” he asked, “do I have your leave to go?”
“As you like, Ser Uncle.” Tommen looked back to Ser Kevan. “Can I seal them now, Great-Uncle?” Pressing his royal seal into the hot wax was his favorite part of being king, so far.
Jaime strode from the council chamber. Outside the door he found Ser Meryn T
rant standing stiff at guard in white scale armor and snowy cloak. If this one should learn how feeble I am, or Kettleblack or Blount should hear of it . . . “Remain here until His Grace is done,” he said, “then escort him back to Maegor’s.”
Trant inclined his head. “As you say, my lord.”
The outer ward was crowded and noisy that morning. Jaime made for the stables, where a large group of men were saddling their horses. “Steelshanks!” he called. “Are you off, then?”
“As soon as m’lady is mounted,” said Steelshanks Walton. “My lord of Bolton expects us. Here she is now.”
A groom led a fine grey mare out the stable door. On her back was mounted a skinny hollow-eyed girl wrapped in a heavy cloak. Grey, it was, like the dress beneath it, and trimmed with white satin. The clasp that pinned it to her breast was wrought in the shape of a wolf’s head with slitted opal eyes. The girl’s long brown hair blew wild in the wind. She had a pretty face, he thought, but her eyes were sad and wary.
When she saw him, she inclined her head. “Ser Jaime,” she said in a thin anxious voice. “You are kind to see me off.”
Jaime studied her closely. “You know me, then?”
She bit her lip. “You may not recall, my lord, as I was littler then . . . but I had the honor to meet you at Winterfell when King Robert came to visit my father Lord Eddard.” She lowered her big brown eyes and mumbled, “I’m Arya Stark.”
Jaime had never paid much attention to Arya Stark, but it seemed to him that this girl was older. “I understand you’re to be married.”
“I am to wed Lord Bolton’s son, Ramsay. He used to be a Snow, but His Grace has made him a Bolton. They say he’s very brave. I am so happy.”
Then why do you sound so frightened? “I wish you joy, my lady.” Jaime turned back to Steelshanks. “You have the coin you were promised?”
“Aye, and we’ve shared it out. You have my thanks.” The northman grinned. “A Lannister always pays his debts.”
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