She was breaking her fast on a bowl of cold shrimp-and-persimmon
soup when Irri brought her a Qartheen gown, an airy confection of
ivory samite patterned with seed pearls. “Take it
away,” Dany said. “The docks are no place for
lady’s finery.”
If the Milk Men thought her such a savage, she would dress the
part for them. When she went to the stables, she wore faded
sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved
freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung
from her medallion belt. Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki
fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid.
“I have won no victories,” she tried telling her
handmaid when the bell tinkled softly.
Jhiqui disagreed. “You burned the maegi in their house of
dust and sent their souls to hell.” That was Drogon’s victory, not mine, Dany wanted to say,
but she held her tongue. The Dothraki would esteem her all the more
for a few bells in her hair. She chimed as she mounted her silver
mare, and again with every stride, but neither Ser Jorah nor her
bloodriders made mention of it. To guard her people and her dragons
in her absence, she chose Rakharo. Jhogo and Aggo would ride with
her to the waterfront.
They left the marble palaces and fragrant gardens behind and
made their way through a poorer part of the city where modest brick
houses turned blind walls to the street. There were fewer horses
and camels to be seen, and a dearth of palanquins, but the streets
teemed with children, beggars, and skinny dogs the color of sand.
Pale men in dusty linen skirts stood beneath arched doorways to
watch them pass. They know who I am, and they do not love me. Dany
could tell from the way they looked at her.
Ser Jorah would sooner have tucked her inside her palanquin,
safely hidden behind silken curtains, but she refused him. She had
reclined too long on satin cushions, letting oxen bear her hither
and yon. At least when she rode she felt as though she was getting
somewhere.
It was not by choice that she sought the waterfront. She was
fleeing again. Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed.
She had begun running in her mother’s womb, and never once
stopped. How often had she and Viserys stolen away in the black of
night, a bare step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives? But
it was run or die. Xaro had learned that Pyat Pree was gathering
the surviving warlocks together to work ill on her.
Dany had laughed when he told her. “Was it not you who
told me warlocks were no more than old soldiers, vainly boasting of
forgotten deeds and lost prowess?”
Xaro looked troubled. “And so it was, then. But now? I am
less certain. It is said that the glass candles are burning in the
house of Urrathon Night-Walker, that have not burned in a hundred
years. Ghost grass grows in the Garden of Gehane, phantom tortoises
have been seen carrying messages between the windowless houses on
Warlock’s Way, and all the rats in the city are chewing off
their tails. The wife of Mathos Mallarawan, who once mocked a
warlock’s drab moth-eaten robe, has gone mad and will wear no
clothes at all. Even fresh-washed silks make her feel as though a
thousand insects were crawling on her skin. And Blind Sybassion the
Eater of Eyes can see again, or so his slaves do swear. A man must
wonder.” He sighed. “These are strange times in Qarth.
And strange times are bad for trade. It grieves me to say so, yet
it might be best if you left Qarth entirely, and sooner rather than
later.” Xaro stroked her fingers reassuringly. “You
need not go alone, though. You have seen dark visions in the Palace
of Dust, but Xaro has dreamed brighter dreams. I see you happily
abed, with our child at your breast. Sail with me around the Jade
Sea, and we can yet make it so! It is not too late. Give me a son,
my sweet song of joy!” Give you a dragon, you mean. “I will not wed you,
Xaro.”
His face had grown cold at that. “Then go.”
“But where?”
“Somewhere far from here.”
Well, perhaps it was time. The people of her khalasar had
welcomed the chance to recover from the ravages of the red waste,
but now that they were plump and rested once again, they began to
grow unruly. Dothraki were not accustomed to staying long in one
place. They were a warrior people, not made for cities. Perhaps she
had lingered in Qarth too long, seduced by its comforts and its
beauties. It was a city that always promised more than it would
give you, it seemed to her, and her welcome here had turned sour
since the House of the Undying had collapsed in a great gout of
smoke and flame. Overnight the Qartheen had come to remember that
dragons were dangerous. No longer did they vie with each other to
give her gifts. Instead the Tourmaline Brotherhood had called
openly for her expulsion, and the Ancient Guild of Spicers for her
death. It was all Xaro could do to keep the Thirteen from joining
them. But where am I to go? Ser Jorah proposed that they journey
farther east, away from her enemies in the Seven Kingdoms. Her
bloodriders would sooner have returned to their great grass sea,
even if it meant braving the red waste again. Dany herself had
toyed with the idea of settling in Vaes Tolorro until her dragons
grew great and strong. But her heart was full of doubts. Each of
these felt wrong, somehow . . . and even when
she decided where to go, the question of how she would get there
remained troublesome.
Xaro Xhoan Daxos would be no help to her, she knew that now. For
all his professions of devotion, he was playing his own game, not
unlike Pyat Pree. The night he asked her to leave, Dany had begged
one last favor of him. “An army, is it?” Xaro asked.
“A kettle of gold? A galley, perhaps?”
Dany blushed. She hated begging. “A ship, yes.”
Xaro’s eyes had glittered as brightly as the jewels in his
nose. “I am a trader, Khaleesi. So perhaps we should speak no
more of giving, but rather of trade. For one of your dragons, you
shall have ten of the finest ships in my fleet. You need only say
that one sweet word.”
“No,” she said.
“Alas,” Xaro sobbed, “that was not the word I
meant.”
“Would you ask a mother to sell one of her
children?”
“Whyever not? They can always make more. Mothers sell
their children every day.”
“Not the Mother of Dragons.”
“Not even for twenty ships?”
“Not for a hundred.”
His mouth curled downward. “I do not have a hundred. But
you have three dragons. Grant me one, for all my kindnesses. You
will still have two and thirty ships as well.”
Thirty ships would be enough to land a small army on the shore
of Westeros. But I do not have a small army. “How many ships
do you own, Xaro?”
“Eighty-three, if one does not count my pleasure
barge.”
“And your colleagues in the Thirteen?”
“Among us all, perhaps a thousand.”
“And the Spicers and the Tourmaline
Brotherhood?”
“Their trifling fleets are of no account.”
“Even so,” she said, “tell me.”
“Twelve or thirteen hundred for the Spicers. No more than
eight hundred for the Brotherhood.”
“And the Asshai’i, the Braavosi, the Summer
Islanders, the Ibbenese, and all the other peoples who sail the
great salt sea, how many ships do they have? All
together?”
“Many and more,” he said irritably. “What does
this matter?”
“I am trying to set a price on one of the three living
dragons in the world.” Dany smiled at him sweetly. “it
seems to me that one-third of all the ships in the world would be
fair.”
Xaro’s tears ran down his cheeks on either side of his
jewel-encrusted nose. “Did I not warn you not to enter the
Palace of Dust? This is the very thing I feared. The whispers of
the warlocks have made you as mad as Mallarawan’s wife. A
third of all the ships in the world? Pah. Pah, I say.
Pah.”
Dany had not seen him since. His seneschal brought her messages,
each cooler than the last. She must quit his house. He was done
feeding her and her people. He demanded the return of his gifts,
which she had accepted in bad faith. Her only consolation was that
at least she’d had the great good sense not to marry him. The warlocks whispered of three
treasons . . . once for blood and once for gold
and once for love. The first traitor was surely Mirri Maz Duur, who
had murdered Khal Drogo and their unborn son to avenge her people.
Could Pyat Pree and Xaro Xhoan Daxos be the second and the third?
She did not think so. What Pyat did was not for gold, and Xaro had
never truly loved her.
The streets grew emptier as they passed through a district given
over to gloomy stone warehouses. Aggo went before her and Jhogo
behind, leaving Ser Jorah Mormont at her side. Her bell rang
softly, and Dany found her thoughts returning to the Palace of Dust
once more, as the tongue returns to a space left by a missing
tooth. Child of three, they had called her, daughter of death,
slayer of lies, bride of fire. So many threes. Three fires, three
mounts to ride, three treasons. “The dragon has three
heads,” she sighed. “Do you know what that means,
Jorah?”
“Your Grace? The sigil of House Targaryen is a
three-headed dragon, red on black.”
“I know that. But there are no three-headed
dragons.”
“The three heads were Aegon and his sisters.”
“Visenya and Rhaenys,” she recalled. “I am
descended from Aegon and Rhaenys through their son Aenys and their
grandson Jaehaerys.”
“Blue lips speak only lies, isn’t that what Xaro
told you? Why do you care what the warlocks whispered? All they
wanted was to suck the life from you, you know that now.”
“Perhaps,” she said reluctantly. “Yet the
things I saw . . . ”
“A dead man in the prow of a ship, a blue rose, a banquet
of blood . . . what does any of it mean,
Khaleesi? A mummer’s dragon, you said. What is a
mummer’s dragon, pray?”
“A cloth dragon on poles,” Dany explained.
“Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes
something to fight.”
Ser Jorah frowned.
Dany could not let it go. “His is the song of ice and
fire, my brother said. I’m certain it was my brother. Not
Viserys, Rhaegar. He had a harp with silver strings.”
Ser Jorah’s frown deepened until his eyebrows came
together. “Prince Rhaegar played such a harp,” he
conceded. “You saw him?”
She nodded. “There was a woman in a bed with a babe at her
breast. My brother said the babe was the prince that was promised
and told her to name him Aegon.”
“Prince Aegon was Rhaegar’s heir by Elia of
Dorne,” Ser Jorah said. “But if he was this prince that
was promised, the promise was broken along with his skull when the
Lannisters dashed his head against a wall.”
“I remember,” Dany said sadly. “They murdered
Rhaegar’s daughter as well, the little princess. Rhaenys, she
was named, like Aegon’s sister. There was no Visenya, but he
said the dragon has three heads. What is the song of ice and
fire?”
“It’s no song I’ve ever heard.”
“I went to the warlocks hoping for answers, but instead
they’ve left me with a hundred new questions.”
By then there were people in the streets once more. “Make
way,” Aggo shouted, while Jhogo sniffed at the air
suspiciously. “I smell it, Khaleesi,” he called.
“The poison water.” The Dothraki distrusted the sea and
all that moved upon it. Water that a horse could not drink was
water they wanted no part of. They will learn, Dany resolved. I
braved their sea with Khal Drogo. Now they can brave mine.
Qarth was one of the world’s great ports, its great
sheltered harbor a riot of color and clangor and strange smells.
Winesinks, warehouses, and gaming dens lined the streets, cheek by
jowl with cheap brothels and the temples of peculiar gods.
Cutpurses, cutthroats, spellsellers, and moneychangers mingled with
every crowd. The waterfront was one great marketplace where the
buying and selling went on all day and all night, and goods might
be had for a fraction of what they cost at the bazaar, if a man did
not ask where they came from. Wizened old women bent like
hunchbacks sold flavored waters and goat’s milk from glazed
ceramic jugs strapped to their shoulders. Seamen from half a
hundred nations wandered amongst the stalls, drinking spiced
liquors and trading jokes in queer-sounding tongues. The air
smelled of salt and frying fish, of hot tar and honey, of incense
and oil and sperm.
Aggo gave an urchin a copper for a skewer of honey-roasted mice
and nibbled them as he rode. Jhogo bought a handful of fat white
cherries. Elsewhere they saw beautiful bronze daggers for sale,
dried squids and carved onyx, a potent magical elixir made of
virgin’s milk and shade of the evening, even dragon’s
eggs which looked suspiciously like painted rocks.
As they passed the long stone quays reserved for the ships of
the Thirteen, she saw chests of saffron, frankincense, and pepper
being off-loaded from Xaro’s ornate Vermillion Kiss. Beside
her, casks of wine, bales of sourleaf, and pallets of striped hides
were being trundled up the gangplank onto the Bride in Azure, to
sail on the evening tide. Farther along, a crowd had gathered
around the Spicer galley Sunblaze to bid on slaves. It was well
known that the cheapest place to buy a slave was right off the
ship, and the banners floating from her masts proclaimed that the
Sunblaze had just arrived from Astapor on Slaver’s Bay.
Dany would get no help from the Thirteen, the Tourmaline
Brotherhood, or the Ancient Guild of Spicers. She rode her silver
past several miles of their quays, docks, and storehouses, all the
way out to the far end of the horseshoe-shaped harbor where the
ships from the Summer Islands, Westeros, and the Nine Free Cities
were permitted to dock.
She dismounted beside a gaming pit where a basilisk was tearing
a big red dog to pieces amidst a shouting ring of sailors.
“Aggo, Jhogo, you will guard the horses while Ser Jorah and I
speak to the captains.”
“As you say, Khaleesi. We will watch you as you
go.”
It was good to hear men speaking Valyrian once more, and even
the Common Tongue, Dany thought as they approached the first ship.
Sailors, dockworkers, and merchants alike gave way before her, not
knowing what to make of this slim young girl with silver-gold hair
who dressed in the Dothraki fashion and walked with a knight at her
side. Despite the heat of the day, Ser Jorah wore his green wool
surcoat over chainmail, the black bear of Mormont sewn on his
chest.
But neither her beauty nor his size and strength would serve
with the men whose ships they needed.
“You require passage for a hundred Dothraki, all their
horses, yourself and this knight, and three dragons?” said
the captain of the great cog Ardent Friend before he walked away
laughing. When she told a Lyseni on the Trumpeteer that she was
Daenerys Stormborn, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, he gave her a
deadface look and said, “Aye, and I’m Lord Tywin Lannister and shit gold every night.” The
cargomaster of the Myrish galley Silken Spirit opined that dragons
were too dangerous at sea, where any stray breath of flame might
set the rigging afire. The owner of Lord Faro’s Belly would
risk dragons, but not Dothraki. “I’ll have no such
godless savages in my Belly, I’ll not.” The two
brothers who captained the sister ships Quicksilver and Greyhound
seemed sympathetic and invited them into the cabin for a glass of
Arbor red. They were so courteous that Dany was hopeful for a time,
but in the end the price they asked was far beyond her means, and
might have been beyond Xaro’s. Pinchbottom Petto and
Sloe-Eyed Maid were too small for her needs, Bravo was bound for
the Jade Sea, and Magister Manolo scarce looked seaworthy.
As they made their way toward the next quay, Ser Jorah laid a
hand against the small of her back. “Your Grace. You are
being followed. No, do not turn.” He guided her gently toward
a brass-seller’s booth. “This is a noble work, my
queen,” he proclaimed loudly, lifting a large platter for her
inspection. “See how it shines in the sun?”
The brass was polished to a high sheen. Dany could see her face
in it . . . and when Ser Jorah angled it to the
right, she could see behind her. “I see a fat brown man and
an older man with a staff. Which is it?”
“Both of them,” Ser Jorah said. “They have
been following us since we left Quicksilver.”
The ripples in the brass stretched the strangers queerly, making
one man seem long and gaunt, the other immensely squat and broad.
“A most excellent brass, great lady,” the merchant
exclaimed. “Bright as the sun! And for the Mother of Dragons,
only thirty honors.”
The platter was worth no more than three. “Where are my
guards?” Dany declared. “This man is trying to rob
me!” For Jorah, she lowered her voice and spoke in the Common
Tongue. “They may not mean me ill. Men have looked at women
since time began, perhaps it is no more than that.”
The brass-seller ignored their whispers. “Thirty? Did I
say thirty? Such a fool I am. The price is twenty
honors.”
“All the brass in this booth is not worth twenty
honors,” Dany told him as she studied the reflections. The
old man had the look of Westeros about him, and the brown-skinned
one must weigh twenty stone. The Usurper offered a lordship to the
man who kills me, and these two are far from home. Or could they be
creatures of the warlocks, meant to take me unawares?
“Ten, Khaleesi, because you are so lovely. Use it for a
looking glass. Only brass this fine could capture such
beauty.”
“It might serve to carry nightsoil. If you threw it away,
I might pick it up, so long as I did not need to stoop. But pay for
it?” Dany shoved the platter back into his hands.
“Worms have crawled up your nose and eaten your
wits.”
“Eight honors,” he cried. “My wives will beat
me and call me fool, but I am a helpless child in your hands. Come,
eight, that is less than it is worth.”
“What do I need with dull brass when Xaro Xhoan Daxos
feeds me off plates of gold?” As she turned to walk off, Dany
let her glance sweep over the strangers. The brown man was near as
wide as he’d looked in the platter, with a gleaming bald head
and the smooth cheeks of a eunuch. A long curving arakh was thrust
through the sweat-stained yellow silk of his bellyband. Above the
silk, he was naked but for an absurdly tiny iron-studded vest. Old
scars crisscrossed his tree-trunk arms, huge chest, and massive
belly, pale against his nut-brown skin.
The other man wore a traveler’s cloak of undyed wool, the
hood thrown back. Long white hair fell to his shoulders, and a
silky white beard covered the lower half of his face. He leaned his
weight on a hardwood staff as tall as he was. Only fools would
stare so openly if they meant me harm. All the same, it might be
prudent to head back toward Jhogo and Aggo. “The old man does
not wear a sword,” she said to Jorah in the Common Tongue as
she drew him away.
The brass merchant came hopping after them. “Five honors,
for five it is yours, it was meant for you.”
Ser Jorah said, “A hardwood staff can crack a skull as
well as any mace.”
“Four! I know you want it!” He danced in front of
them, scampering backward as he thrust the platter at their
faces.
“Do they follow?”
“Lift that up a little higher,” the knight told the
merchant. “Yes. The old man pretends to linger at a
potter’s stall, but the brown one has eyes only for
you.”
“Two honors! Two! Two!” The merchant was panting
heavily from the effort of running backward.
“Pay him before he kills himself,” Dany told Ser
Jorah, wondering what she was going to do with a huge brass
platter. She turned back as he reached for his coins, intending to
put an end to this mummer’s farce. The blood of the dragon
would not be herded through the bazaar by an old man and a fat
eunuch.
A Qartheen stepped into her path. “Mother of Dragons, for
you.” He knelt and thrust a jewel box into her face.
Dany took it almost by reflex. The box was carved wood, its
mother-of-pearl lid inlaid with jasper and chalcedony. “You
are too generous.” She opened it. Within was a glittering
green scarab carved from onyx and emerald. Beautiful, she thought.
This will help pay for our passage. As she reached inside the box,
the man said, “I am so sorry,” but she hardly
heard.
The scarab unfolded with a hiss.
Dany caught a glimpse of a malign black face, almost human, and
an arched tail dripping venom . . . and then
the box flew from her hand in pieces, turning end over end. Sudden
pain twisted her fingers. As she cried out and clutched her hand,
the brass merchant let out a shriek, a woman screamed, and suddenly
the Qartheen were shouting and pushing each other aside. Ser Jorah
slammed past her, and Dany stumbled to one knee. She heard the hiss
again. The old man drove the butt of his staff into the ground,
Aggo came riding through an eggseller’s stall and vaulted
from his saddle, Jhogo’s whip cracked overhead, Ser Jorah
slammed the eunuch over the head with the brass platter, sailors
and whores and merchants were fleeing or shouting or
both . . .
“Your Grace, a thousand pardons.” The old man knelt.
“It’s dead. Did I break your hand?”
She closed her fingers, wincing. “I don’t think
so.”
“I had to knock it away,” he started, but her
bloodriders were on him before he could finish. Aggo kicked his
staff away and Jhogo seized him round the shoulders, forced him to
his knees, and pressed a dagger to his throat. “Khaleesi, we
saw him strike you. Would you see the color of his blood?”
“Release him.” Dany climbed to her feet. “Look
at the bottom of his staff, blood of my blood.” Ser Jorah had
been shoved off his feet by the eunuch. She ran between them as
arakh and longsword both came flashing from their sheaths.
“Put down your steel! Stop it!”
“Your Grace?” Mormont lowered his sword only an
inch. “These men attacked you.”
“They were defending me.” Dany snapped her hand to
shake the sting from her fingers. “It was the other one, the
Qartheen.” When she looked around he was gone. “He was
a Sorrowful Man. There was a manticore in that jewel box he gave
me. This man knocked it out of my hand.” The brass merchant
was still rolling on the ground. She went to him and helped him to
his feet. “Were you stung?”
“No, good lady,” he said, shaking, “or else I
would be dead. But it touched me, aieeee, when it fell from the box
it landed on my arm.” He had soiled himself, she saw, and no
wonder.
She gave him a silver for his trouble and sent him on his way
before she turned back to the old man with the white beard.
“Who is it that I owe my life to?”
“You owe me nothing, Your Grace. I am called Arstan,
though Belwas named me Whitebeard on the voyage here.” Though
Jhogo had released him the old man remained on one knee. Aggo
picked up his staff, turned it over, cursed softly in Dothraki,
scraped the remains of the manticore off on a stone, and handed it
back.
“And who is Belwas?” she asked.
The huge brown eunuch swaggered forward, sheathing his arakh.
“I am Belwas. Strong Belwas they name me in the fighting pits
of Meereen. Never did I lose.” He slapped his belly, covered
with scars. “I let each man cut me once, before I kill him.
Count the cuts and you will know how many Strong Belwas has
slain.”
Dany had no need to count his scars; there were many, she could
see at a glance. “And why are you here, Strong
Belwas?”
“From Meereen I am sold to Qohor, and then to Pentos and
the fat man with sweet stink in his hair. He it was who send Strong
Belwas back across the sea, and old Whitebeard to serve
him.” The fat man with sweet stink in his hair . . . “Illyrio?”
she said. “You were sent by Magister Illyrio?”
“We were, Your Grace,” old Whitebeard replied.
“The Magister begs your kind indulgence for sending us in his
stead, but he cannot sit a horse as he did in his youth, and sea
travel upsets his digestion.” Earlier he had spoken in the
Valyrian of the Free Cities, but now he changed to the Common
Tongue. “I regret if we caused you alarm. If truth be told,
we were not certain, we expected someone
more . . . more . . . ”
“Regal?” Dany laughed. She had no dragon with her,
and her raiment was hardly queenly. “You speak the Common
Tongue well, Arstan. Are you of Westeros?”
“I am. I was born on the Dornish Marches, Your Grace. As a
boy I squired for a knight of Lord Swann’s household.”
He held the tall staff upright beside him like a lance in need of a
banner. “Now I squire for Belwas.”
“A bit old for such, aren’t you?” Ser Jorah
had shouldered his way to her side, holding the brass platter
awkwardly under his arm. Belwas’s hard head had left it badly
bent.
“Not too old to serve my liege, Lord Mormont.”
“You know me as well?”
“I saw you fight a time or two. At Lannisport where you
near unhorsed the Kingslayer. And on Pyke, there as well. You do
not recall, Lord Mormont?”
Ser Jorah frowned. “Your face seems familiar, but there
were hundreds at Lannisport and thousands on Pyke. And I am no
lord. Bear Island was taken from me. I am but a knight.”
“A knight of my Queensguard.” Dany took his arm.
“And my true friend and good counselor.” She studied
Arstan’s face. He had a great dignity to him, a quiet
strength she liked. “Rise, Arstan Whitebeard. Be welcome,
Strong Belwas. Ser Jorah you know. Ko Aggo and Ko Jhogo are blood
of my blood. They crossed the red waste with me, and saw my dragons
born.”
“Horse boys.” Belwas grinned toothily. “Belwas
has killed many horse boys in the fighting pits. They jingle when
they die.”
Aggo’s arakh leapt to his hand. “Never have I killed
a fat brown man. Belwas will be the first.”
“Sheath your steel, blood of my blood,” said Dany,
“this man comes to serve me. Belwas, you will accord all
respect to my people, or you will leave my service sooner than
you’d wish, and with more scars than when you
came.”
The gap-toothed smile faded from the giant’s broad brown
face, replaced by a confused scowl. Men did not often threaten
Belwas, it would seem, and less so girls a third his size.
Dany gave him a smile, to take a bit of the sting from the
rebuke. “Now tell me, what would Magister Illyrio have of me,
that he would send you all the way from Pentos?”
“He would have dragons,” said Belwas gruffly,
“and the girl who makes them. He would have you.”
“Belwas has the truth of us, Your Grace,” said
Arstan. “We were told to find you and bring you back to
Pentos. The Seven Kingdoms have need of you. Robert the Usurper is
dead, and the realm bleeds. When we set sail from Pentos there were
four kings in the land, and no justice to be had.”
Joy
bloomed in her heart, but Dany kept it from her face. “I have
three dragons,” she said, “and more than a hundred in
my khalasar, with all their goods and horses.”
“it is no matter,” boomed Belwas. “We take
all. The fat man hires three ships for his little silverhair
queen.”
“It is so, Your Grace,” Arstan Whitebeard said.
“The great cog Saduleon is berthed at the end of the quay,
and the galleys Summer Sun and Joso’s Prank are anchored
beyond the breakwater.” Three heads has the dragon, Dany thought, wondering. “I
shall tell my people to make ready to depart at once. But the ships
that bring me home must bear different names.”
“As you wish,” said Arstan. “What names would
you prefer?”
“Vhagar,” Daenerys told him. “Meraxes. And
Balerion. Paint the names on their hulls in golden letters three
feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the
dragons are returned.”
She was breaking her fast on a bowl of cold shrimp-and-persimmon
soup when Irri brought her a Qartheen gown, an airy confection of
ivory samite patterned with seed pearls. “Take it
away,” Dany said. “The docks are no place for
lady’s finery.”
If the Milk Men thought her such a savage, she would dress the
part for them. When she went to the stables, she wore faded
sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved
freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung
from her medallion belt. Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki
fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid.
“I have won no victories,” she tried telling her
handmaid when the bell tinkled softly.
Jhiqui disagreed. “You burned the maegi in their house of
dust and sent their souls to hell.” That was Drogon’s victory, not mine, Dany wanted to say,
but she held her tongue. The Dothraki would esteem her all the more
for a few bells in her hair. She chimed as she mounted her silver
mare, and again with every stride, but neither Ser Jorah nor her
bloodriders made mention of it. To guard her people and her dragons
in her absence, she chose Rakharo. Jhogo and Aggo would ride with
her to the waterfront.
They left the marble palaces and fragrant gardens behind and
made their way through a poorer part of the city where modest brick
houses turned blind walls to the street. There were fewer horses
and camels to be seen, and a dearth of palanquins, but the streets
teemed with children, beggars, and skinny dogs the color of sand.
Pale men in dusty linen skirts stood beneath arched doorways to
watch them pass. They know who I am, and they do not love me. Dany
could tell from the way they looked at her.
Ser Jorah would sooner have tucked her inside her palanquin,
safely hidden behind silken curtains, but she refused him. She had
reclined too long on satin cushions, letting oxen bear her hither
and yon. At least when she rode she felt as though she was getting
somewhere.
It was not by choice that she sought the waterfront. She was
fleeing again. Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed.
She had begun running in her mother’s womb, and never once
stopped. How often had she and Viserys stolen away in the black of
night, a bare step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives? But
it was run or die. Xaro had learned that Pyat Pree was gathering
the surviving warlocks together to work ill on her.
Dany had laughed when he told her. “Was it not you who
told me warlocks were no more than old soldiers, vainly boasting of
forgotten deeds and lost prowess?”
Xaro looked troubled. “And so it was, then. But now? I am
less certain. It is said that the glass candles are burning in the
house of Urrathon Night-Walker, that have not burned in a hundred
years. Ghost grass grows in the Garden of Gehane, phantom tortoises
have been seen carrying messages between the windowless houses on
Warlock’s Way, and all the rats in the city are chewing off
their tails. The wife of Mathos Mallarawan, who once mocked a
warlock’s drab moth-eaten robe, has gone mad and will wear no
clothes at all. Even fresh-washed silks make her feel as though a
thousand insects were crawling on her skin. And Blind Sybassion the
Eater of Eyes can see again, or so his slaves do swear. A man must
wonder.” He sighed. “These are strange times in Qarth.
And strange times are bad for trade. It grieves me to say so, yet
it might be best if you left Qarth entirely, and sooner rather than
later.” Xaro stroked her fingers reassuringly. “You
need not go alone, though. You have seen dark visions in the Palace
of Dust, but Xaro has dreamed brighter dreams. I see you happily
abed, with our child at your breast. Sail with me around the Jade
Sea, and we can yet make it so! It is not too late. Give me a son,
my sweet song of joy!” Give you a dragon, you mean. “I will not wed you,
Xaro.”
His face had grown cold at that. “Then go.”
“But where?”
“Somewhere far from here.”
Well, perhaps it was time. The people of her khalasar had
welcomed the chance to recover from the ravages of the red waste,
but now that they were plump and rested once again, they began to
grow unruly. Dothraki were not accustomed to staying long in one
place. They were a warrior people, not made for cities. Perhaps she
had lingered in Qarth too long, seduced by its comforts and its
beauties. It was a city that always promised more than it would
give you, it seemed to her, and her welcome here had turned sour
since the House of the Undying had collapsed in a great gout of
smoke and flame. Overnight the Qartheen had come to remember that
dragons were dangerous. No longer did they vie with each other to
give her gifts. Instead the Tourmaline Brotherhood had called
openly for her expulsion, and the Ancient Guild of Spicers for her
death. It was all Xaro could do to keep the Thirteen from joining
them. But where am I to go? Ser Jorah proposed that they journey
farther east, away from her enemies in the Seven Kingdoms. Her
bloodriders would sooner have returned to their great grass sea,
even if it meant braving the red waste again. Dany herself had
toyed with the idea of settling in Vaes Tolorro until her dragons
grew great and strong. But her heart was full of doubts. Each of
these felt wrong, somehow . . . and even when
she decided where to go, the question of how she would get there
remained troublesome.
Xaro Xhoan Daxos would be no help to her, she knew that now. For
all his professions of devotion, he was playing his own game, not
unlike Pyat Pree. The night he asked her to leave, Dany had begged
one last favor of him. “An army, is it?” Xaro asked.
“A kettle of gold? A galley, perhaps?”
Dany blushed. She hated begging. “A ship, yes.”
Xaro’s eyes had glittered as brightly as the jewels in his
nose. “I am a trader, Khaleesi. So perhaps we should speak no
more of giving, but rather of trade. For one of your dragons, you
shall have ten of the finest ships in my fleet. You need only say
that one sweet word.”
“No,” she said.
“Alas,” Xaro sobbed, “that was not the word I
meant.”
“Would you ask a mother to sell one of her
children?”
“Whyever not? They can always make more. Mothers sell
their children every day.”
“Not the Mother of Dragons.”
“Not even for twenty ships?”
“Not for a hundred.”
His mouth curled downward. “I do not have a hundred. But
you have three dragons. Grant me one, for all my kindnesses. You
will still have two and thirty ships as well.”
Thirty ships would be enough to land a small army on the shore
of Westeros. But I do not have a small army. “How many ships
do you own, Xaro?”
“Eighty-three, if one does not count my pleasure
barge.”
“And your colleagues in the Thirteen?”
“Among us all, perhaps a thousand.”
“And the Spicers and the Tourmaline
Brotherhood?”
“Their trifling fleets are of no account.”
“Even so,” she said, “tell me.”
“Twelve or thirteen hundred for the Spicers. No more than
eight hundred for the Brotherhood.”
“And the Asshai’i, the Braavosi, the Summer
Islanders, the Ibbenese, and all the other peoples who sail the
great salt sea, how many ships do they have? All
together?”
“Many and more,” he said irritably. “What does
this matter?”
“I am trying to set a price on one of the three living
dragons in the world.” Dany smiled at him sweetly. “it
seems to me that one-third of all the ships in the world would be
fair.”
Xaro’s tears ran down his cheeks on either side of his
jewel-encrusted nose. “Did I not warn you not to enter the
Palace of Dust? This is the very thing I feared. The whispers of
the warlocks have made you as mad as Mallarawan’s wife. A
third of all the ships in the world? Pah. Pah, I say.
Pah.”
Dany had not seen him since. His seneschal brought her messages,
each cooler than the last. She must quit his house. He was done
feeding her and her people. He demanded the return of his gifts,
which she had accepted in bad faith. Her only consolation was that
at least she’d had the great good sense not to marry him. The warlocks whispered of three
treasons . . . once for blood and once for gold
and once for love. The first traitor was surely Mirri Maz Duur, who
had murdered Khal Drogo and their unborn son to avenge her people.
Could Pyat Pree and Xaro Xhoan Daxos be the second and the third?
She did not think so. What Pyat did was not for gold, and Xaro had
never truly loved her.
The streets grew emptier as they passed through a district given
over to gloomy stone warehouses. Aggo went before her and Jhogo
behind, leaving Ser Jorah Mormont at her side. Her bell rang
softly, and Dany found her thoughts returning to the Palace of Dust
once more, as the tongue returns to a space left by a missing
tooth. Child of three, they had called her, daughter of death,
slayer of lies, bride of fire. So many threes. Three fires, three
mounts to ride, three treasons. “The dragon has three
heads,” she sighed. “Do you know what that means,
Jorah?”
“Your Grace? The sigil of House Targaryen is a
three-headed dragon, red on black.”
“I know that. But there are no three-headed
dragons.”
“The three heads were Aegon and his sisters.”
“Visenya and Rhaenys,” she recalled. “I am
descended from Aegon and Rhaenys through their son Aenys and their
grandson Jaehaerys.”
“Blue lips speak only lies, isn’t that what Xaro
told you? Why do you care what the warlocks whispered? All they
wanted was to suck the life from you, you know that now.”
“Perhaps,” she said reluctantly. “Yet the
things I saw . . . ”
“A dead man in the prow of a ship, a blue rose, a banquet
of blood . . . what does any of it mean,
Khaleesi? A mummer’s dragon, you said. What is a
mummer’s dragon, pray?”
“A cloth dragon on poles,” Dany explained.
“Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes
something to fight.”
Ser Jorah frowned.
Dany could not let it go. “His is the song of ice and
fire, my brother said. I’m certain it was my brother. Not
Viserys, Rhaegar. He had a harp with silver strings.”
Ser Jorah’s frown deepened until his eyebrows came
together. “Prince Rhaegar played such a harp,” he
conceded. “You saw him?”
She nodded. “There was a woman in a bed with a babe at her
breast. My brother said the babe was the prince that was promised
and told her to name him Aegon.”
“Prince Aegon was Rhaegar’s heir by Elia of
Dorne,” Ser Jorah said. “But if he was this prince that
was promised, the promise was broken along with his skull when the
Lannisters dashed his head against a wall.”
“I remember,” Dany said sadly. “They murdered
Rhaegar’s daughter as well, the little princess. Rhaenys, she
was named, like Aegon’s sister. There was no Visenya, but he
said the dragon has three heads. What is the song of ice and
fire?”
“It’s no song I’ve ever heard.”
“I went to the warlocks hoping for answers, but instead
they’ve left me with a hundred new questions.”
By then there were people in the streets once more. “Make
way,” Aggo shouted, while Jhogo sniffed at the air
suspiciously. “I smell it, Khaleesi,” he called.
“The poison water.” The Dothraki distrusted the sea and
all that moved upon it. Water that a horse could not drink was
water they wanted no part of. They will learn, Dany resolved. I
braved their sea with Khal Drogo. Now they can brave mine.
Qarth was one of the world’s great ports, its great
sheltered harbor a riot of color and clangor and strange smells.
Winesinks, warehouses, and gaming dens lined the streets, cheek by
jowl with cheap brothels and the temples of peculiar gods.
Cutpurses, cutthroats, spellsellers, and moneychangers mingled with
every crowd. The waterfront was one great marketplace where the
buying and selling went on all day and all night, and goods might
be had for a fraction of what they cost at the bazaar, if a man did
not ask where they came from. Wizened old women bent like
hunchbacks sold flavored waters and goat’s milk from glazed
ceramic jugs strapped to their shoulders. Seamen from half a
hundred nations wandered amongst the stalls, drinking spiced
liquors and trading jokes in queer-sounding tongues. The air
smelled of salt and frying fish, of hot tar and honey, of incense
and oil and sperm.
Aggo gave an urchin a copper for a skewer of honey-roasted mice
and nibbled them as he rode. Jhogo bought a handful of fat white
cherries. Elsewhere they saw beautiful bronze daggers for sale,
dried squids and carved onyx, a potent magical elixir made of
virgin’s milk and shade of the evening, even dragon’s
eggs which looked suspiciously like painted rocks.
As they passed the long stone quays reserved for the ships of
the Thirteen, she saw chests of saffron, frankincense, and pepper
being off-loaded from Xaro’s ornate Vermillion Kiss. Beside
her, casks of wine, bales of sourleaf, and pallets of striped hides
were being trundled up the gangplank onto the Bride in Azure, to
sail on the evening tide. Farther along, a crowd had gathered
around the Spicer galley Sunblaze to bid on slaves. It was well
known that the cheapest place to buy a slave was right off the
ship, and the banners floating from her masts proclaimed that the
Sunblaze had just arrived from Astapor on Slaver’s Bay.
Dany would get no help from the Thirteen, the Tourmaline
Brotherhood, or the Ancient Guild of Spicers. She rode her silver
past several miles of their quays, docks, and storehouses, all the
way out to the far end of the horseshoe-shaped harbor where the
ships from the Summer Islands, Westeros, and the Nine Free Cities
were permitted to dock.
She dismounted beside a gaming pit where a basilisk was tearing
a big red dog to pieces amidst a shouting ring of sailors.
“Aggo, Jhogo, you will guard the horses while Ser Jorah and I
speak to the captains.”
“As you say, Khaleesi. We will watch you as you
go.”
It was good to hear men speaking Valyrian once more, and even
the Common Tongue, Dany thought as they approached the first ship.
Sailors, dockworkers, and merchants alike gave way before her, not
knowing what to make of this slim young girl with silver-gold hair
who dressed in the Dothraki fashion and walked with a knight at her
side. Despite the heat of the day, Ser Jorah wore his green wool
surcoat over chainmail, the black bear of Mormont sewn on his
chest.
But neither her beauty nor his size and strength would serve
with the men whose ships they needed.
“You require passage for a hundred Dothraki, all their
horses, yourself and this knight, and three dragons?” said
the captain of the great cog Ardent Friend before he walked away
laughing. When she told a Lyseni on the Trumpeteer that she was
Daenerys Stormborn, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, he gave her a
deadface look and said, “Aye, and I’m Lord Tywin Lannister and shit gold every night.” The
cargomaster of the Myrish galley Silken Spirit opined that dragons
were too dangerous at sea, where any stray breath of flame might
set the rigging afire. The owner of Lord Faro’s Belly would
risk dragons, but not Dothraki. “I’ll have no such
godless savages in my Belly, I’ll not.” The two
brothers who captained the sister ships Quicksilver and Greyhound
seemed sympathetic and invited them into the cabin for a glass of
Arbor red. They were so courteous that Dany was hopeful for a time,
but in the end the price they asked was far beyond her means, and
might have been beyond Xaro’s. Pinchbottom Petto and
Sloe-Eyed Maid were too small for her needs, Bravo was bound for
the Jade Sea, and Magister Manolo scarce looked seaworthy.
As they made their way toward the next quay, Ser Jorah laid a
hand against the small of her back. “Your Grace. You are
being followed. No, do not turn.” He guided her gently toward
a brass-seller’s booth. “This is a noble work, my
queen,” he proclaimed loudly, lifting a large platter for her
inspection. “See how it shines in the sun?”
The brass was polished to a high sheen. Dany could see her face
in it . . . and when Ser Jorah angled it to the
right, she could see behind her. “I see a fat brown man and
an older man with a staff. Which is it?”
“Both of them,” Ser Jorah said. “They have
been following us since we left Quicksilver.”
The ripples in the brass stretched the strangers queerly, making
one man seem long and gaunt, the other immensely squat and broad.
“A most excellent brass, great lady,” the merchant
exclaimed. “Bright as the sun! And for the Mother of Dragons,
only thirty honors.”
The platter was worth no more than three. “Where are my
guards?” Dany declared. “This man is trying to rob
me!” For Jorah, she lowered her voice and spoke in the Common
Tongue. “They may not mean me ill. Men have looked at women
since time began, perhaps it is no more than that.”
The brass-seller ignored their whispers. “Thirty? Did I
say thirty? Such a fool I am. The price is twenty
honors.”
“All the brass in this booth is not worth twenty
honors,” Dany told him as she studied the reflections. The
old man had the look of Westeros about him, and the brown-skinned
one must weigh twenty stone. The Usurper offered a lordship to the
man who kills me, and these two are far from home. Or could they be
creatures of the warlocks, meant to take me unawares?
“Ten, Khaleesi, because you are so lovely. Use it for a
looking glass. Only brass this fine could capture such
beauty.”
“It might serve to carry nightsoil. If you threw it away,
I might pick it up, so long as I did not need to stoop. But pay for
it?” Dany shoved the platter back into his hands.
“Worms have crawled up your nose and eaten your
wits.”
“Eight honors,” he cried. “My wives will beat
me and call me fool, but I am a helpless child in your hands. Come,
eight, that is less than it is worth.”
“What do I need with dull brass when Xaro Xhoan Daxos
feeds me off plates of gold?” As she turned to walk off, Dany
let her glance sweep over the strangers. The brown man was near as
wide as he’d looked in the platter, with a gleaming bald head
and the smooth cheeks of a eunuch. A long curving arakh was thrust
through the sweat-stained yellow silk of his bellyband. Above the
silk, he was naked but for an absurdly tiny iron-studded vest. Old
scars crisscrossed his tree-trunk arms, huge chest, and massive
belly, pale against his nut-brown skin.
The other man wore a traveler’s cloak of undyed wool, the
hood thrown back. Long white hair fell to his shoulders, and a
silky white beard covered the lower half of his face. He leaned his
weight on a hardwood staff as tall as he was. Only fools would
stare so openly if they meant me harm. All the same, it might be
prudent to head back toward Jhogo and Aggo. “The old man does
not wear a sword,” she said to Jorah in the Common Tongue as
she drew him away.
The brass merchant came hopping after them. “Five honors,
for five it is yours, it was meant for you.”
Ser Jorah said, “A hardwood staff can crack a skull as
well as any mace.”
“Four! I know you want it!” He danced in front of
them, scampering backward as he thrust the platter at their
faces.
“Do they follow?”
“Lift that up a little higher,” the knight told the
merchant. “Yes. The old man pretends to linger at a
potter’s stall, but the brown one has eyes only for
you.”
“Two honors! Two! Two!” The merchant was panting
heavily from the effort of running backward.
“Pay him before he kills himself,” Dany told Ser
Jorah, wondering what she was going to do with a huge brass
platter. She turned back as he reached for his coins, intending to
put an end to this mummer’s farce. The blood of the dragon
would not be herded through the bazaar by an old man and a fat
eunuch.
A Qartheen stepped into her path. “Mother of Dragons, for
you.” He knelt and thrust a jewel box into her face.
Dany took it almost by reflex. The box was carved wood, its
mother-of-pearl lid inlaid with jasper and chalcedony. “You
are too generous.” She opened it. Within was a glittering
green scarab carved from onyx and emerald. Beautiful, she thought.
This will help pay for our passage. As she reached inside the box,
the man said, “I am so sorry,” but she hardly
heard.
The scarab unfolded with a hiss.
Dany caught a glimpse of a malign black face, almost human, and
an arched tail dripping venom . . . and then
the box flew from her hand in pieces, turning end over end. Sudden
pain twisted her fingers. As she cried out and clutched her hand,
the brass merchant let out a shriek, a woman screamed, and suddenly
the Qartheen were shouting and pushing each other aside. Ser Jorah
slammed past her, and Dany stumbled to one knee. She heard the hiss
again. The old man drove the butt of his staff into the ground,
Aggo came riding through an eggseller’s stall and vaulted
from his saddle, Jhogo’s whip cracked overhead, Ser Jorah
slammed the eunuch over the head with the brass platter, sailors
and whores and merchants were fleeing or shouting or
both . . .
“Your Grace, a thousand pardons.” The old man knelt.
“It’s dead. Did I break your hand?”
She closed her fingers, wincing. “I don’t think
so.”
“I had to knock it away,” he started, but her
bloodriders were on him before he could finish. Aggo kicked his
staff away and Jhogo seized him round the shoulders, forced him to
his knees, and pressed a dagger to his throat. “Khaleesi, we
saw him strike you. Would you see the color of his blood?”
“Release him.” Dany climbed to her feet. “Look
at the bottom of his staff, blood of my blood.” Ser Jorah had
been shoved off his feet by the eunuch. She ran between them as
arakh and longsword both came flashing from their sheaths.
“Put down your steel! Stop it!”
“Your Grace?” Mormont lowered his sword only an
inch. “These men attacked you.”
“They were defending me.” Dany snapped her hand to
shake the sting from her fingers. “It was the other one, the
Qartheen.” When she looked around he was gone. “He was
a Sorrowful Man. There was a manticore in that jewel box he gave
me. This man knocked it out of my hand.” The brass merchant
was still rolling on the ground. She went to him and helped him to
his feet. “Were you stung?”
“No, good lady,” he said, shaking, “or else I
would be dead. But it touched me, aieeee, when it fell from the box
it landed on my arm.” He had soiled himself, she saw, and no
wonder.
She gave him a silver for his trouble and sent him on his way
before she turned back to the old man with the white beard.
“Who is it that I owe my life to?”
“You owe me nothing, Your Grace. I am called Arstan,
though Belwas named me Whitebeard on the voyage here.” Though
Jhogo had released him the old man remained on one knee. Aggo
picked up his staff, turned it over, cursed softly in Dothraki,
scraped the remains of the manticore off on a stone, and handed it
back.
“And who is Belwas?” she asked.
The huge brown eunuch swaggered forward, sheathing his arakh.
“I am Belwas. Strong Belwas they name me in the fighting pits
of Meereen. Never did I lose.” He slapped his belly, covered
with scars. “I let each man cut me once, before I kill him.
Count the cuts and you will know how many Strong Belwas has
slain.”
Dany had no need to count his scars; there were many, she could
see at a glance. “And why are you here, Strong
Belwas?”
“From Meereen I am sold to Qohor, and then to Pentos and
the fat man with sweet stink in his hair. He it was who send Strong
Belwas back across the sea, and old Whitebeard to serve
him.” The fat man with sweet stink in his hair . . . “Illyrio?”
she said. “You were sent by Magister Illyrio?”
“We were, Your Grace,” old Whitebeard replied.
“The Magister begs your kind indulgence for sending us in his
stead, but he cannot sit a horse as he did in his youth, and sea
travel upsets his digestion.” Earlier he had spoken in the
Valyrian of the Free Cities, but now he changed to the Common
Tongue. “I regret if we caused you alarm. If truth be told,
we were not certain, we expected someone
more . . . more . . . ”
“Regal?” Dany laughed. She had no dragon with her,
and her raiment was hardly queenly. “You speak the Common
Tongue well, Arstan. Are you of Westeros?”
“I am. I was born on the Dornish Marches, Your Grace. As a
boy I squired for a knight of Lord Swann’s household.”
He held the tall staff upright beside him like a lance in need of a
banner. “Now I squire for Belwas.”
“A bit old for such, aren’t you?” Ser Jorah
had shouldered his way to her side, holding the brass platter
awkwardly under his arm. Belwas’s hard head had left it badly
bent.
“Not too old to serve my liege, Lord Mormont.”
“You know me as well?”
“I saw you fight a time or two. At Lannisport where you
near unhorsed the Kingslayer. And on Pyke, there as well. You do
not recall, Lord Mormont?”
Ser Jorah frowned. “Your face seems familiar, but there
were hundreds at Lannisport and thousands on Pyke. And I am no
lord. Bear Island was taken from me. I am but a knight.”
“A knight of my Queensguard.” Dany took his arm.
“And my true friend and good counselor.” She studied
Arstan’s face. He had a great dignity to him, a quiet
strength she liked. “Rise, Arstan Whitebeard. Be welcome,
Strong Belwas. Ser Jorah you know. Ko Aggo and Ko Jhogo are blood
of my blood. They crossed the red waste with me, and saw my dragons
born.”
“Horse boys.” Belwas grinned toothily. “Belwas
has killed many horse boys in the fighting pits. They jingle when
they die.”
Aggo’s arakh leapt to his hand. “Never have I killed
a fat brown man. Belwas will be the first.”
“Sheath your steel, blood of my blood,” said Dany,
“this man comes to serve me. Belwas, you will accord all
respect to my people, or you will leave my service sooner than
you’d wish, and with more scars than when you
came.”
The gap-toothed smile faded from the giant’s broad brown
face, replaced by a confused scowl. Men did not often threaten
Belwas, it would seem, and less so girls a third his size.
Dany gave him a smile, to take a bit of the sting from the
rebuke. “Now tell me, what would Magister Illyrio have of me,
that he would send you all the way from Pentos?”
“He would have dragons,” said Belwas gruffly,
“and the girl who makes them. He would have you.”
“Belwas has the truth of us, Your Grace,” said
Arstan. “We were told to find you and bring you back to
Pentos. The Seven Kingdoms have need of you. Robert the Usurper is
dead, and the realm bleeds. When we set sail from Pentos there were
four kings in the land, and no justice to be had.”
Joy
bloomed in her heart, but Dany kept it from her face. “I have
three dragons,” she said, “and more than a hundred in
my khalasar, with all their goods and horses.”
“it is no matter,” boomed Belwas. “We take
all. The fat man hires three ships for his little silverhair
queen.”
“It is so, Your Grace,” Arstan Whitebeard said.
“The great cog Saduleon is berthed at the end of the quay,
and the galleys Summer Sun and Joso’s Prank are anchored
beyond the breakwater.” Three heads has the dragon, Dany thought, wondering. “I
shall tell my people to make ready to depart at once. But the ships
that bring me home must bear different names.”
“As you wish,” said Arstan. “What names would
you prefer?”
“Vhagar,” Daenerys told him. “Meraxes. And
Balerion. Paint the names on their hulls in golden letters three
feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the
dragons are returned.”