Mira

Chapter 7 - The Desert's Oath

"I've hands," she said. "I can dig."

"And this?" He touched another pouch. "Maiden's tear. Found only in the high valleys near Godsgrace."

"I buy," she said. "Traders go where coin is."

"With whose coin, mistress?"

Mira met his gaze. "With the king's, now. He wishes his men to live."

Weren's eyes narrowed to pale slits. Beneath his disapproval, she caught something else: unease, the brittle pride of a man displaced. He dropped the pouch back amongst its sisters with careless fingers.

"Herbs are tools," he said. "In the wrong hands, they become weapons."

"In the wrong mind," she replied, "so does milk."

He let a cold silence hang between them a beat too long, then nodded once and left, his maester's chain whispering against itself as he walked.

It was only later, when the camp was purple with fallen light and the first cookfires burned low, that she opened her satchel to refill a jar and felt her heart lurch.

One vial was gone.

A small thing. Glass, wax-sealed, stoppered weeks ago. A smooth brown serpent of liquid that knew precisely how to slow a heart.

Her fingers searched every fold twice. Nothing.

She sat back on her heels. The canvas walls seemed to press in.

Whoever had taken it knew what it could do-or would find out. Knew it had been in her possession. Weren's voice returned: In the wrong hands, they become weapons.

You should never have carried it this far, she told herself. You should have left that life in the ashes with the first letter.

Too late.

***

The first attack came the next day.

Not the storm that had battered them at the Greenblood, but a mean, quick strike at the flank of the supply line-a handful of riders with sunburst shields, a scatter of arrows, a torch flung into a grain cart.

"Rebels," the report ran. "Dayne men."

By the time the skirmish had been driven off, they had prisoners.

Mira saw him as they marched them in: a man walking despite a wound, his wrists bound, dust and blood streaking his face. His hair was pale, not silver-gold like some highborn Valyrian, but the softer sheen of dawn on stone. A greatsword, wrapped and bound, was carried separate by two soldiers, as if it, too, were dangerous.

"Arthur Dayne," someone said, almost reverent. "Sword of the Morning."

He did not look like a captive. He looked like a man who had chosen not to run.

Daeron stepped forward. The circle of lords parted for him.

"You led the raid?" Daeron asked.

"I rode with my men," Arthur said.

"You sought to burn the food that feeds my army. And yours." No anger yet. Just cataloguing.

"I sought to remind you our land is not yours," Arthur said. His voice was rough from thirst, but each word was clear.

A muscle jumped in Daeron's jaw. "I might hang you."

"You might," Arthur said.

Aemon spoke up. "He is too valuable. The Daynes are proud, but they bend. Ransom him; it might buy us quieter roads."