Valonqar | Game of Thrones

1

'A princess,' Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. "Why does he give us so much?" She asked. "What does he want from us?" They'd lived in the magister's house for a year—eating his food, pampered by his servants. Dany was sixteen, old enough to know that such gifts seldom come without their price, here in the free city of Pentos.

"Well, Illyrio's no fool," he said. He was a gaunt man with nervous hands and a feverish look in his pale lilac eyes; her brother was... pathetically average when compared to Daeron. Her nephew knew how to ride and fight and plot, and he knew when to be kind and when to be ruthless, but Viserys had none of those talents. "The magister knows I'll not forget my friends when I come into my throne." Behind her, Daeron snorted in disdain as he moved to a table along a wall bedecked with refreshments—exotic cheeses, cool meats, sweet fruits.

"Illyrio plays you for a fool, Uncle," Daeron said, popping a small cube of cheese into his mouth. He swallowed. Dany watched her brother narrow his eyes; he had never liked Daeron. His was not the blood of the dragons, her brother's favourite words. It was tainted by the whore. Viserys had never said these things in their nephew's hearing, though.

Dany said nothing, though she worried Daeron was pushing it. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spice, gemstones, and other, less savoury things. He had friends in all the Nine Free Cities, she had heard, and even beyond, in the city the horselords called Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the Jae Sea. Dany had also heard that he'd never had a friend he wouldn't cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the talk in the streets, and she knew her nephew did the same, but she knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dreams.

Daeron had no such qualms.

"If you bring an army of savages into the Seven Kingdoms," Daeron continued, pouring himself some wine into a gold goblet encrusted with gemstones, "they will burn the fields, rape the women, enslave the children. You will rule over a lawless land and look over your shoulder until the day someone sheathes a dirk in your spine." Dany silently agreed with him—even she knew that Dothraki in Westeros was a bad idea. It could only end in disaster.

Viserys wouldn't hear any of it. "You still slouch," he said with a tinge of annoyance. "Straighten yourself." Her brother pushed back her shoulders with his hands, moving one down her spine to pull her Pentoshi gown loose. "You have a woman's body now." Daeron's back was to her, so still he might have been carved from stone.

Swallowing her terror, she looked at Viserys.

His fingers brushed lightly over her breasts and tightened on a nipple. Dany tried not to wince; that would only make him angrier. "I need you to be perfect today. Can you do that for me?" Viserys asked her. "You will not fail me... If you do, it will go hard for you. You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" His fingers twisted her, the pinch hard against her bare nipple. He repeated, "Do you?"

"No," Dany said meekly.

Viserys smiled at her. "Good." He touched her hair, almost with affection, then turned to leave. At the door, he looked at her again. "When they write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say it began today." As the door swung shut behind him, Dany went to the window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay.

The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany heard the red priests chanting as they lit their night fires—The Prince! The Prince has come!—and the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment, she wished she could be out there with them, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo's manse.

Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armoured knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh, Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Nine Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her brother had a simpler name. "Our land," he called it. The words were like a prayer with him. "Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours, ours forever. The dragon remembers."