Chapter 8:
Against a setting sun, he burned the mountains, blackening more than stone.
"Dracarys!" Jaehaerys commanded Vermithor again, as they blanketed a mountainside valley in flame and death.
As he'd suspected, from high up, some inconsistencies in the smaller maps not corrected by dragon riders had begun to show themselves. It wasn't so much that he'd been confused about the direction he needed to go and the routes he needed to cut off, but it was enough to mean he had to be meticulous. He had to close off any directions they could go that were going to allow them to sequester themselves and hold out or hide for long.
As Vermithor's wings beat the air and took them higher after another gliding exhale, Jaehaerys tightened his grip at his saddle and leaned, to look off the left.
He'd already caught sight of a number of people fleeing toward the only way out of the closed off valleys. Given the sight of some horses and various weapons, he needed little more confirmation that he'd found what he was seeking.
The bandits were split in different areas, which under any circumstance would have made rounding them up practically impossible. If they'd attacked by any conventional method, one group would have undoubtedly warned another and then subsequent pockets of the bandits would have fled in every direction until they regrouped somewhere else.
They could have done nothing to prepare for a dragon razing every pass of the mountains all day and shepherding them all in the direction it wanted them to go.
The only way he hadn't burned.
Jaehaerys adjusted his helm and called Vermithor into a bank that saw them swooping low toward a fleeing force. If he were kind enough to call it that.
So high up, even the desert wind of Dorne just over the mountains wasn't warm. The wind coming off of the peaks was violent as well, but he wouldn't be impeded with the preparation. Even with some protection for his head and face, he'd flown through things before that impacted him surprisingly hard.
"Dracarys!" He commanded Vermithor, even though it might have been unnecessary.
They'd been burning the outskirts and the fringes of the bandits they found since he set out, and given they were just repeating what they'd done elsewhere, it was getting almost repetitive.
That didn't make it any less exhausting. Riding a horse for hours could get tiring. Riding a dragon for hours, far more so. Riding Vermithor, who was diving and corkscrewing, and rapidly climbing and falling along different peaks for the better part of a day was leaving his limbs feeling like stone.
That'll have to be it for today.
If his orders had been carried out properly, then what of the Vulture King's forces he hadn't immediately eliminated would be in disarray, chaotic and funneled right to where the lords waited.
Vermithor beat his wings and began to gain altitude again, with a word from his lips. Jaehaerys let himself concentrate on the horizon. Far outside the range of any conventional bow, he didn't have to worry about arrows, even ignoring that he was a fast moving target and the bandits couldn't have possibly anticipated his arrival.
As Vermithor's wings caught the natural winds cresting the sheer cliffs and began to more gently drift, he looked out into the sands of the one kingdom that his ancestor had not truly conquered.
Only one of the Seven Kingdoms had a prince or princess of its own that they claimed separate from the royal family.
How long…?
As he rode Vermithor back toward where he knew Rogar and Harmon's forces would be gathering, Jaehaerys wondered how long it would be until someone was born into House Martell that inevitably would rebel again, having entirely forgotten the losses suffered on each side of that conflict.
He wondered how long it would be until he had to remind them.
Night fell over Volantis like a dark curtain, but many of the people didn't bed down.
The streets changed in a tangible way.
While many businesses closed, others opened up fully.
Instead of returning us to the inn where we were staying after dark, Sorzo seemed to want to make the most of a successful day and took me on another long walk through the city. There was just so much to see, and even by nightfall I hadn't come close to going to all corners. We wound up nearer the harbor where ships were coming and going under his insistent guidance.
In short order after that, I found myself sitting back in a huge stack of pillows before a very low table in one of those businesses that only got brighter with the dark outside. Sorzo had the chest of coins opened on the table. He'd been counting it for a while but finally given up on account of just how many it fit.
I was initially unsure why he wanted to come to a different business rather than return to the inn, but that had only lasted until I'd gotten inside. He'd practically pulled me into the entrance with a giddy grin.
Little wonder why.
A new woman approached and swept into our alcove, clad, if it could be called that, in a series of intertwined pieces of pale pink silk so thin that I could see… everything really. The darker points of her nipples, the tapering line between her thighs, the crack of her ass when she turned. I'd met deviant Dibellans with less on casual display. I studied the brunette's face, ignoring the plush curve of her lips as she leaned in close to whisper something into Sorzo's ear where he sat. She placed down a bottle of something she'd brought with her on the table near the chest, and a few cups presumably for our use. She bent at the hip, flashing a view for Sorzo that many men would no doubt commit violence for back in Skyrim.
My attention was on something else of hers.
Another teardrop.
Most of the women in the building had them. Now that I knew that the tattoos meant ownership, or something like indebted criminals, or whatever the ruling they were doing to make sense of it, a lot of tattoos began to make a kind of strange sense.
People that had horses on their faces worked in stables or adjacent. People with quills were usually writing or dealing with something adjacent, used as scribes. The stripes on the guard's faces were like the sabrecats that they called tigers. Maybe meant to symbolize ferocity -- that was a familiar concept from some ancient Nord worship. I'd seen skulls, the people who moved and dealt with the dead presumably, and even more complicated mixes that I could only assume were some kind of more personal mark. I suspected that the swords were to mark sellswords or the function of them in a place where people were owned for that purpose effectively. It wasn't all that different, except that where I was from, sellswords were only agreeing on a specific amount of time.
None of that was what was confusing me at the moment.
Why tears?
I was struggling to see the connection. What it meant.
When we'd stepped through the door, and in the process the hazy wall of something being burned to smother the smell of sweat, sex, and cooked meat, a number of the barely clad women approached us. All of them bore that same tattoo at least, and sometimes among others.
Sorzo had done a great deal of talking. Shortly thereafter, a woman that seemed to be in charge approached us, and with a few sharp words gave orders to the girls gathered. She didn't have any face tattoos, but there was an air about her of weariness that suggested she was working all the same.
The women of various ages and appearances had scattered in a lot of directions at once.
We were escorted promptly to a back "room" of the open air business after she talked with Sorzo, looked at me, and looked at the chest of coins. I wasn't absolutely sure it should really be called a room, because there were no doors I'd seen. It was only ever various degrees of thickness of curtains that separated sections, when the actual walls of the building were not involved. I saw enough on my way through, in flashes of those curtains, to know that people were receiving all manner of service all over the place. Most of them were intimate in some way. Some were having sex, some were being rubbed down with oils, some were being treated to a number of services at once.
It was varied.
Soft instrumental playing drifted throughout the building, but I never saw the bard directly. They were somewhere near the middle, among the various curtains obscuring all angles mostly.
The woman who'd walked us back spoke a little further with Sorzo before ushering us to sit and departing again briefly. When she returned, it was with my current conundrum.
A whispery soft voice murmured something against the shell of my ear, incomprehensible and sweet and inviting. Lips pressed against my skin there, and just behind it, cooing as lithe fingers with a touch of roughness curved and curled along the back of my shoulders.
I turned my head enough to direct my eyes to the woman beginning to walk fingers up the back of my neck.
Long, dark lashes, dark eyebrows, and dark blue eyes glittered at me in the intimate lighting from beneath a bound-up, messy bun of bright blonde hair.
Something about her appearance kept tickling me as wrong but I couldn't quite put my finger on what. She was lightly tanned, and when the edge of her more conservative robe of silvery silk dipped from the edge of her shoulder with an intentional press of her breasts against my arm, it let me see where the line of sun exposure differentiated between her tan and her naturally pale skin tone. She obviously tanned better than I did.
She'd given her name upon entry, and performed a slight bow I didn't have a word for, where her knees bent, and her head dropped, but not very far.
She'd said a few words initially, but when I parroted them back to her, seemed to settle only on one until I repeated it.
Orwynne.
It didn't take her long to find a way up against me and encouraging a great deal of physical contact. My nature as an outsider and inability to be certain the exact nature of every interaction had me on a bit of a backfoot though, despite part of me enjoying the meandering, unsubtle attention.
Still, something else interested me a great deal more. For the third time I found my gaze on a specific thing as my attention returned to her.
A quill.
She had a fresh teardrop tattoo inked on her cheek, but at its side, a small quill, and a different, curious one. It was the prow of a ship, but it had seemingly been inked over with… a lopsided hourglass potentially?
Maybe a skull?
Whatever it was, it was filled in further until it was mostly just a black spot more like a tattooed beauty mark than anything else.
It was getting harder to concentrate on that kind of thing though.
Since she'd slid into place and had found her way wriggling in closer to me with each passing moment, her right hand had ghosted the edge of my cock over the red silk of my strange baggy pants at least three separate times. I'd written off the first one as her testing, but by the third, the brush of her knuckles was nothing if not intention, feeling me out.
A different people.
I reminded myself to try to appreciate the good with the bad, or at least not think over it long.
Orwynne whispered something else against my ear, and I glanced over at Sorzo. Partly for a point of guidance, and partly because I was fairly certain this was some manner of transactional. There were certainly some less discussed cults of Dibella that took coin to privately guide a manner of worship that some argued could serve doubly, but even by that irregular approach, this was…
…something very different.
Sorzo looked at the woman increasingly draping parts of herself over me, and then my expression, and laughed lightly.
He reached forward and dug around the edge of the little chest sitting in front of us with the coin we'd made. Pulling out a fistful of them, he tossed them in a heap across the many pillows and the rug that covered the floor.
Orwynne leaned up against me, grinding her hips against the right side of mine, and in spite of my inability to communicate, my heartbeat jumped. I became a little more keenly aware of every warm bit of skin and cloth she was pressing in tighter to me. The drag of her fingertips.
All of me stirred, even as she peeled herself away and went down on hand and knee to gather the coins that Sorzo had tossed out with eyes that promised things I could all but taste.
The silk robe-thing she was wearing slipped a little further, exposing one side of her back as she arched. When she tilted a little to look over her naked shoulder with a fistful of the skull-marked coins and bit her lip, a quiet part of me pointed out that I didn't need to be able to share a word of reasonable conversation with her to leave her bow-legged. A few lines of subtle musculature bunched as she tilted, drawing my eye even as she let the gathered bounty fall clinking into a bit of cloth she unraveled from her arm, tying it off while she watched me.
I was beginning to greatly appreciate the intended roomyness of the pants Denorro had selected for me.
Maybe something of my thoughts showed in my expression, because she giggled breathlessly, and spun on hand and knee to crawl, climbing back up among the pillows toward me. The half-hanging robe left one perky tit entirely exposed, and while she was letting it sit free with no effort made to cover back up, I realized something new.
Her dark reddish nipple was pierced through with a tiny bar of gold.
Is the other matching?
Before I could really consider the distracted thought, Orwynne slid her way up and crawled into my lap. Her thighs parted slightly in the drapery of the silken garment falling over them only just enough to hide her nethers from my eyes but make me want to see anyways. On the path of her climb, with a forward lean bordering on a stretch, she once again took a moment to touch me, but this time there was nothing subtle about it. She brought both hands in and seized my manhood twice over in outline against the red silk of the pants Denorro had selected for me.
I twitched. High and low. My chin lifted.
She looked at me through lowered eyelashes and then resumed her rise, only to turn, twisting around and leaning back against me with a little shimmy. As her bottom dropped in my lap, she turned her head to get her lips closer to my jaw again, and said something with a dramatic, suggestive whine.
Whatever it was, it was lost in words I didn't know, but apparently still loud enough that Sorzo who was distracted with his brunette let out a sudden snort and laugh.
I didn't get time to even try to ask before the curtains shifted as a pair of girls entered, heads bowed forward and shoulders hunched in. They were dressed in softer colors, and they avoided looking at me directly.
As Orwynne's hand came up and behind her to grasp the back of my neck from where she sat in my lap, fingertips curling and dragging along, I found myself distracted from the pair by a different pair, glancing down. The cloth of her silken robe dangled loose, and with my chin over her shoulder and her leaned back against me, the right side of her garment still hung freely. It left the left side only partially covering her other breast, kind of loosely cupping it in fabric without hiding anything from my angle looking down.
Another glimmering bar of gold went through that reddish nipple, too.
Balanced.
Through the various smells smothered in the den, I felt like I could practically smell Orwynne's arousal, but it might just as well have been something they'd put on her skin to make her more tantalizing.
It was only really fought by the vague spiciness in the air and the smell of the food the other girls had brought. They each had a cut of meat for us on plates atop trays, and if I was remembering my words right, it was their word for a cow or ox that one of the two muttered unintrusively. Sorzo's excitement when he'd set things up began to make even more sense.
I glanced up despite myself. The meat's edges were blackened, as it had been stabbed and fire roasted. The juices running from it across the plate it sat on made my mouth water even from across the short expanse of our room.
As I glanced at the girls, something nagged at the edge of my consciousness again. The blonde girls crossed the edge of the short table and lowered to slide the trays with the plates on its surface.
My eyes followed them, searching their features. Their cheeks. The same tattoos. The redness of the skin… fresh. As the one placing the tray nearer me leaned, I caught her glance at me again.
She swallowed thickly when our eyes met and looked away quickly.
Orwynne's lips pressed up under my jaw again and she murmured something that drew Sorzo's attention over. The gentle shake of her head, nose tickling my jaw, could have been nuzzling me, or she could have been suggesting "no" to something without saying the word for no. I couldn't be sure. I glanced at the swordsman for an answer, as he looked from me to Orwynne, and then the two girls bringing our food.
"Ysmir?" He said, and hooking his chin toward the girls who stepped back from their duties.
I lifted an eyebrow at him wordlessly.
He motioned to the girls and lifted his hand and eyebrow in return, before motioning between them and me.
What?
I looked at the girls briefly again.
Do I want more?
I wasn't sure if he meant what Orwynne was doing or food.
I was fairly confident it was either option.
Looking at the pair of slightly younger women than the one grinding her ass against me, I caught upon the one glancing at me again. I was still unable to quite figure out what it was that was nagging me just barely as wrong about what I was looking at, even as I shook my head at him in answer.
The girls departed in a hurry.
Orwynne crooned something I didn't understand, turning entirely side-saddle and pulling one thigh up tighter against my stomach in the process. When she drew up, and murmured something else in that lilting language of theirs into my right ear a second after, she took the lobe gently between her lips for a moment.
I drew in a slow breath through my nose and brought my left hand up to touch her since she seemed so inviting. I was distracted with something specific, and palmed her exposed nipple curiously, squeezing her as gently as my rough hands might.
That's new.
The immediate, approving curve of her smile told me I was more than invited to more. It was only that I saw Sorzo's foot shift its positioning in the corner of my eye that reminded me of where I was, in the moment. So instead, I tilted my head in and withdrew my hand after a second to tap the quill on her cheek beneath her eye with my fingertip.
She tilted her cheek into my touch at the first moment.
"Quill," I said speaking to her. "Book?"
Orwynne slowed a little and tilted her head slightly at me, with one tit still out. I reached aside with my left hand and dug around for where I'd dropped my pack without pushing her away, and dug out my book of words. Referencing it for a word I wanted, one of the ones that I was only half-sure I knew what it meant, I spoke it to her as a question, too.
"Read?"
She reached out gently, and took my book of words in her hand, opening it slightly and looking over the pages. She flipped through them, brow furrowing some, but then she glanced between me and it and shook her head slowly.
No. I don't want you to read this.
Before I could try to elaborate, she called something toward the curtain. She sounded almost… annoyed. Frustrated. A silhouette passed by the curtain, moving away seemingly at her call, and I heard feet on the rug flooring as someone hurried off. I could feel the slight huff that escaped her, because all of her weight was still pressed down on me.
When I looked from the curtain back to her face again, Orwynne was giving me a kind of uncertain look, the moment of irritation gone as if it'd never been there. I reached out and gently took my book back from her.
Sorzo sighed so loud it drew my attention to him. He let his head drop back against the cushions he was slouched into, and whatever he muttered, the brunette that I only then realized had one hand down the front of his pants let out a laugh.
She asked him something and began to push up. He looked from her to me and back, sitting up a little, and she made a hooking gesture with her chin toward the curtain. The sway of her hips as she stepped partway through it before turning a look over her shoulder at the swordsman was full of implication.
Sorzo hesitated, but pushed up and then held out a hand vaguely to me with palm flat.
"Ysmir… ah…"
I watched him try to come up with words. It was kind of amusing to be on the other end of it.
His eyes widened.
"Watch." He said. "Ysmir watch first."
Sorzo motioned to the chest and pointed to his eyes, and then made a vague motion about the area.
I laughed at him, and more than a little humoured then, just nodded, flicking a hand dismissively toward him.
He and the brown-haired woman disappeared through the curtain, but he stalled long enough to grab his plate of skewered meat from his tray on his way. Just as the curtain was closing behind them, another woman I'd never met stepped in. She was fairly short, and had her hair braided in one long length.
I blinked, because it was also blonde, and something slid into place for me.
Wait.
I looked at Orwynne, and then the girl who'd entered the room, bringing what I was realizing was a wide book bound with thick, stained leather. Ignoring the part of my mind wondering what those darkened and lightened stains were, I realized what exactly had been slightly bothering me.
I'd been all over Volantis all day, and most people looked like Sorzo. Most people were tanned, at least lightly, and most people had brown hair. It was light brown, dark brown, some black haired. There were people that were blonde, and I'd even seen a few people with red hair, but…
Since I'd walked in practically, it'd only been blondes in front of me. A lot of blondes.
As the new girl was bringing the questionable book over to Orwynne, I finally caught onto what was very slightly nagging me about her appearance.
Her hair.
I reached out and brushed my fingers through it, given she was still on top of me. Leaning in close and in the process drawing her blue eyes up to my face, I ignored her even when she wet her lips for a kiss that I wasn't intending. I was looking at her hair. I found what was subtly off to me just at the root. The barest difference.
It's not natural.
Orwynne glanced between me, my fingertips, and her hair. I watched her eyes drift back and forth quickly, and then she cleared her throat softly.
I let the strand I was holding fall, even as my confusion grew.
Did Sorzo tell them to bring me a bunch of blondes?
I glanced at the new girl I didn't know the name of, who gave me a bright smile, a slight dip, and then backtracked carefully without turning her back on me, before disappearing through the curtain.
Orwynne opened the book in front of her and wiggled her bottom slightly against me, back straightening primly as she lifted a few words into the air, eyes down on the pages.
I couldn't read their language, but I glanced at the page-
There was a lot of symbols across its surface, but that wasn't even beginning to be what drew my attention.
Across the bottom of the first broad page was a drawing of a light-haired young man wearing a circlet, laid back in some kind of bed, with wrinkled sheets. He was pressed up on his elbows, looking down. The black stone of the surroundings beyond the bed was shaded very dark, adding a sharp contrast that only echoed in one other part of the sketch.
The drawing was illicit, boldly so, in its implication because between his legs was the bowed head of a woman with hair every bit as black as the stone was shaded, hanging in a curtain that only just cut off what was obviously happening. A woman with light hair sat slightly more to the back of the image, leaned in at the edge of the bed with her chin resting on cupped hands. The dark-haired woman's face was completely obscured by the curtain of her hair, but she was clearly taking the man in her mouth, even if the exacting details weren't displayed.
A little extra effort was given to the lines that made up the almost studious purse of the light-haired woman's lips as she watched.
".... …. …" Orwynne was reading, tracing a fingertip along the first line of symbols, from left to right.
I reached out to put my hand on hers. Orwynne slowed and then fell silent to look aside and up to me again.
"Write?" I asked her. I was extremely interested in hearing that story, but I would first actually need to be able to comprehend it. I motioned between us. "Read… Write… err… Orwynne?"
The book didn't look like… well, a copied book by hand as much as the first draft. While it was large, and had plenty of flat surface, to include even the drawing which was very suggestive, the marks were every bit as drawn over and uneven as my own. It had symbols blotted out entirely with inky lines, and little tiny scribbles all over in different spots.
I made a motion with my left hand as if holding a quill.
If I can get how her name sounds and see symbols, maybe I can start building something. I'll just need more things to compare to.
"Yes," Orwynne said with a nod, and a sudden smile, tapping the book. But then she said, "I … … book."
A word for the self. Followed by one like write, but subtly different. Then another word, short and abrupt.
Something at the back of my mind whispered, "wrote".
I repeated what she said, back to her, with a frown.
She blinked and suddenly balked visibly, dipping her head. She closed the book, and tightened her hold on it. I looked at her face, unsure what had caused the abrupt change. She avoided meeting my eyes for a second, but at my continued silence, glanced up.
"Orwynne," I pronounced carefully. "...wrote book?"
She glanced away from me again, and hesitated with a press of her teeth together. I caught her eye the curtains, but then she wet her lips and nodded.
She apologized, or used the words that I'd approximated so far as an apology when they were used between people and the body language involved, the dips of the head, and then continued to speak another number of words and my name, and more still, but I understood nothing of it.
But that didn't really matter.
"No." I said lifting my left hand to her again, gently. Then I pointed to my own book, sat aside, and asked to be sure I was understanding, "I wrote book?"
She bit her lip, and then carefully shook her head, glancing at me. I made an inviting motion with my hand again, circling it toward me to encourage her.
She glanced toward the curtain, and sighed disappointedly.
I felt a moment of surprise, as her body language changed unsubtly to annoyed. She shifted a little more directly off of the high point of my lap toward my knee.
"... wrote … book." She spoke four distinct sets of sounds, pointing first to me, making a motion with her write hand erratically to write, and then pointing at the book, and then finally speaking the word for the book.
Rolling it around in my head, I voiced the words back to her, but pointed to her, and her book.
She nodded rapidly at me.
It's you.
I figured it out at that moment.
You.
Or something equivalent. Like a distinguishing command. Subject.
Also write and wrote.
They definitely had stated tenses, not implied. I was correct in my initial assumption that they would, but I hadn't exactly had a comparative word set show itself to whatever strange magical sense was filling in for me in some minor way.
I immediately reached out for my book and nearly displacing her as I dug for the quill as well, flipped open to the most recent page to add it down in the same system I had been. When I laid it over the top of her closed book to use it as a backing to write, Orwynne was watching me, interested, but guarded.
Once I had it notated, I slowed.
She corrected me. I realized.
Oh.
I looked at her. At her face tattoo.
Sorzo had brought me in here, and paid up a bunch and gotten us special food -- which was still sitting there getting colder -- and I was fairly sure had all manner of anything blonde, fake or real, brought my way seemingly to slake any variety of unknown appetites with. I wasn't sure what the background of that blonde thing was, but I had yet to see as many blondes by the hour the whole day walking around Volantis as the near ten that I had seen coming and going since walking through the doors of the business of questionable services. Most of which had made personal visits to my curtained alcove.
They were trying to appeal to my perceived desires, but much like Sorzo connecting me in some way to his nobility, I wasn't sure when I'd mentioned anything of the like or given that idea.
Not that I had issues with the thought, just that I didn't have that particular kind of restriction to begin with and I had no clue where it might have come from.
I was nearly certain Sorzo was off fucking some slave right then, that matched his own desires, even.
Maybe they have some kind of beauty god similar and this is a temple.
I put the thought out of my head because it didn't matter and I hadn't seen any obvious religious iconography. Instead, I focused on the present, and the realization that came with it.
Orwynne was expecting a reaction because she was a slave that had corrected me. Who was probably supposed to be tending my every desire. And because she was a slave and I was someone clearly paying a great deal of coins to get this special treatment that Sorzo had arranged, then offending me or correcting me when she was probably supposed to be offering me everything from her toes to her ears to be attended by, almost certainly meant she was risking something bad.
Yet, I needed to be corrected, to learn. I still wasn't quite sure where the little bits of attitude she had were coming from, given it wasn't like I had to have sex with her. Presumably.
What's the catch here?
I looked at her, and glanced at the big book. Placing aside my own, and reaching out carefully to get my fingers around the cover of hers, I tried to pull it open again. She furrowed her eyebrows at me, but carefully opened it, and I flipped through a few pages.
And then more.
And then more.
Some of the drawings within were far more detailed. They were not all between a man and a woman. Most often for sure, but some of the depictions… I wasn't sure I would ever want to hear those stories. And it was all clearly stories. The attempts to sketch things were far and few between by comparison but there were still quite a few.
We would have killed for this. Lifts-Her-Tail would have had to get serious.
The very last page was more of a sketch in-progress of a pale-haired woman eating out a dark haired woman off the prow of a ship, with black sails.
Orwynne snapped the book shut around my hand on the page.
I looked at her.
She swallowed, looking down at the book and refusing to look at me for a few seconds. I saw the tightening of her eyes again, the subtle hints of an expression she pushed back. After a longer pause, she slowly pulled her hand back.
I thought of the people on the raised wooden platform being sold. Of the many faces I'd passed by that all were just living varying degrees of their life seemingly comfortable as slaves, and others who were clearly all but dead in the eyes now that I'd begun to look for it.
I withdrew my hand from within the book. I put that hand gently on it and pressed it more out of the way. She lifted it and set it aside, glancing around despite no one else being present, and then between me and the food on the table.
Her stomach rumbled.
It would make things easier if she felt reassured. I might have been trying to learn from a questionable source, but I wasn't going to give my service to R'hllor, and it wasn't a common skill with ready access for lessons in my situation.
I would need the kind of person willing to try to correct me. And she's not going anywhere.
I was looking forward to the meat, but there would always be more. I motioned her toward it.
"You." I said, lifting my chin. "Eat."
She barely shifted, giving me a speculative bit of side eye. That was the only hesitation I got before she threw herself off of me without dignity and bent over the plate to grab the skewer that went through the different little sections of seasoned, juicy meat. Lifting it from the plate, she took an immediate bite, pulling one piece off and beginning to scarf it down.
The groan she made was not unlike the suggestive sounds she'd been entreating me with before. That made me more confident she'd been without that degree of good food for some time, or that this was not an opportunity that would be often afforded to her and she was a natural glutton. The ink of the tear on her cheek was still new, not faded like some tattoos people had were, and while I was sure I'd not seen her face at the block, it was possible there were others, or that she'd been sold a number of days or weeks ago to the harbor business owner.
She was eating in a hurry.
Then yet another blonde woman I'd not met came through the curtain, midway through a sentence.
She stopped with an open mouth at the sight of Orwynne eating my dinner, a kind of hiccup sound of horror as she looked between us. Orwynne froze, hunched over her meal and eating like she'd never had meat, and glanced up at the other girl.
The other girl backed out. I saw her shadow move quickly away.
Orwynne groaned quietly and turned back to me in a rush.
I watched her expression, watched as a lot of emotions and thoughts practically played out in front of me.
Consideration. Studying me. Glancing around. Glancing down at my pants. The curtain. The meat. A second of hesitance. Resolution.
Orwynne dropped the skewer back on the plate and threw herself at me. My instinct was to lift my hands high to catch hers and protect my face from something like an attack, but then I noticed her own were going out toward my pants instead.
Oh.
I was still arguing with myself over that particular subject.
Orwynne jerked them half down from the front, even as the back caught at my hips, given I was sitting, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, all signs of anything ladylike she'd been pretending a mere few minutes ago to keep up some demure servile behavior completely gone. She shoved her hand up and slivered it into the wrapping that served as my undergarment.
I was watching everything escalate but the language and cultural barrier was enough to give me pause in spite of my rising heartbeat. I was half of a mind to try to stop whatever seemed to be driving her sudden aggression, because I had a few more things I intended to say to her, and a number of questions besides.
She's a slave.
Then she had me flopping half hard between her palms and into the warmth of her mouth, head dropping forward in a smooth bob between my thighs as she sucked me back along her tongue.
Hot, wet friction took prominence. It was everything my body wanted just then and a moment before it hadn't even been a real concern.
I grunted immediately.
It was an involuntary sound that thankfully didn't boom like thunder, and before I could do more than wind my hand around the back of her head in that pale hair, the curtain displaced with two arrivals.
One of them looked worried and angry, and the other cautious. Then both expressions kind of changed to surprise. It was the woman that had been giving people orders at the front. The other girl was the one who'd seen Orwynne gorging herself on my food and stepped back out.
There was a moment of hesitation, a shocked kind of pause, and then the woman in control who seemed prepared to be angry, all but forced her expression into a pleasant turnabout. Orwynne was sucking me like her life really depended on it, even as she made a quiet, curious hum like a question that went right into my flesh. I inhaled again, part approval, and part because I wasn't sure how long it was since my last breath. The owner of the place met my eyes like the next bob and noisy slurp of Orwynne's mouth around my prick was perfectly normal to walk in on and hesitated.
I was a dragon. The dragonborn. The divine signifier of might. The Nordic hero. I'd wound up in beds with other occupants across Skyrim. Some I could remember less of than others. When the urge struck me I'd never really needed to try hard to find someone willing, because I was power personified. There were always those who wanted a chance to stand in the storm and see if they came out the other side better for it. I was looking forward to leaving an impact on this Not-Nirn in that way too.
All of that was true.
I wasn't inexperienced.
But I'd also never been looked in the eye by a couple of women I didn't know with approval while some girl I just met kneeled between my legs and sucked my dick like I was going to blow her off a mountain if I didn't… well, blow off in her mouth and let her do what she wanted.
Even for me, it was something quite new.
I learned something about myself at that moment, that made sense, but that I'd never bothered to ask because it was so specific. Some men might have hesitated, or shied back. Maybe shouted, demanded privacy, recoiled, softened, or gotten irritated at the intrusion.
And I was, a little, irritated at the intrusion.
As Orwynne's lips pulled along the vein of my masculinity under sudden audience, I was finding my balls all too eager, intent on spilling my seed across the back of that slick, inviting tongue. That internal knot of control was slipping me, if anything, influenced in the wrong direction. The feeling of power, of servitude, from the slave tickled some part of me that I resisted instinctively, aware of my kin's history, but like a pleasant scratch in my brain and balls both, I wanted to lean in.
To seize and push her.
I expected an immediate withdrawal from the pair and maybe an apology, but there was actually a moment of pause from them instead. It was so long to my growing and distracting confusion, that Orwynne's head and hand dropped again in a couple subsequent squeezes and suckling pull of her lips, despite having been walked in on. My body didn't care about the witnesses and I clenched, to fight the desire to spill. There was a soft creak of protest, as my nail bit one of the pillows next to me.
If anything, the pair of women's brief gawking had brought me far closer than a mere few moments ago.
You should leave.
I wanted to say it, but I didn't have the words. I didn't have the patience.
Before I could do little more than tighten my fingers in the blonde hair bobbing between my legs, in response to a kind of slobbery drag of Orwynne's teeth, the matron or whatever she was stuck her hand out aside, pressing the other girl back with her. She stepped back out of my little area, pushing the curtain with her, bowing her head. She let it fall back into place and their shadows turned to go, with muttered words I couldn't understand.
My heart continued to thump aggressively at an eager cadence.
Orwynne's head tilted the barest bit, and even as her lips tightened suction around the risen, pinkish-red edge of my cockhead, I saw her eyes go aside to the shadows cast on the floor. She glanced at me, made a curious sound, and eased her lips from around my tip with a slight tilt of her head. She made another sound, muttered something, and reached up, rubbing a fingertip around her lips even as her other hand continued to pump the lower portion of my length slowly.
She smacked her lips a couple times as I just forced a long breath through my nose. I needed the moment to keep myself from a lot of natural impulses at once.
"Orwynne," I began, glancing at the book. I thought that maybe her urgency was on account of her owner coming to discipline her for some failing. Which had been cleared up, because there was nothing failing about her lips around me. On that, the owner and I agreed at least.
So, when I continued to use the word I'd recalled and said, "write-" I didn't expect her to lean forward and take me immediately into her mouth again, tongue pressing flat and cheeks hollowing as she swallowed up the crown of my sensitivity.
I wasn't going to argue, though.
Oh.
Orwynne began to bob, twist, and draw her hand up. She really began to move with enthusiasm and a growing litany of soft, insistent sounds. Given how my control already felt like a dried piece of old rope barely holding a whole ship to dock in a storm, I found myself in short order tilting as she took me throbbing to her tongue. It had already been strangely clipped by the weird intrusion.
I'm going to finish soon.
I pretty much lacked all of those words to communicate it.
So I didn't even bother. She could choke. She'd figure it out.
My balls tightened and a shiver I wasn't in control of made me settle in a little more. I could work past how appealing some aspects of Volantis were, and ignore my draconic nature, the urge for domination, tomorrow.
Despite my barely-there ability to communicate, she seemed to register I was nearing. She pulled her other hand off of the exposed part of my thigh where she'd been holding tight for additional leverage with a rough drag of her nails to grab higher at the back of my pants and try to pull them a little more down. I obliged her with a slight lift of my hips that let her get the baggy things down further.
If anything, that made it different for a moment, better and worse when the next drop of her head caused a messy drip of saliva and odd, hollow gurk to escape her throat as I lifted up. Her rhythm was briefly upset, but she fell back into it after a noisy breath through her nose.
As her fingers crept up for a more firm grip along my hip, squeezing, they caught suddenly on the edge of the scales that had become exposed when I was wounded, as a natural grip point. They were all but invisible to the eye, but easily more friction.
She didn't really react beyond a low sound, and harder suck, which was fine. She probably didn't notice and soon I wouldn't care.
I teetered on the edge of orgasm.
The scales. The problem that hadn't gone away since, showing itself in all of my body being hot.
Where blood landed in the grass, it began to faintly hiss, a tiny wisp of smoke rising.
On the verge of completion, my eyes widened as I remembered.
I tipped over the edge.
…At the same time that I wrenched her mouth up off of my cock and pulled her head aside by the roots of her unnatural blonde hair.
A jerk of my ecstatic length, and a line of pearlescent white shot out of me and drew a splattered arrow across the wood of the low table. My seed began to hiss with heat, burning its shape in the wood, even as my prick jumped again and hosed a second, lesser attempt at filling something that just wasn't there.
Some landed on Orwynne's robe thing, even as she made a little "Uihk!" sound of surprise for how rough I'd been in my realization and sudden need to get her up off of me before she sucked something down her throat that would do a little more than potentially burn her lips.
Thankfully, and woefully, given I'd pulled her off in time and nothing was doing anything to get the most out of my pleasure, it was basically done in a pair of seconds. I didn't start burning lines down left and right on the carpet as I might have otherwise. Still, I turned my hips aside and breathed out in two kinds of relief when I realized what I'd avoided, glancing over at the blonde woman breathlessly.
The faint echoes of pleasure were all but dissipated, lost by the surge of my blood in alarm and the sudden necessity to save someone's life. From me.
Orwynne was rubbing at her mouth, eyes squinted in vague pain and rolling her tongue. It took her a second, confusedly looking between me and the table with how hard I'd jerked her around. Then she glanced down at the edge of her silk robe where my fluids had burned it a bit with increasing horror.
She threw herself back from me slightly, mudcrab crawling shortly with a stuttered gasp.
"Orwynne." I said seriously, as she opened her mouth with that gasped breath that she'd just taken. I could just tell it was about to fuel a shout of alarm.
…
"...I payment you." I tried.
The woman who'd dropped pretending to be something I didn't even fully understand, that I could only approximately compare in my experience to a courtly woman with a lacking husband… actually considered it.
She hesitated, looking between me and the table with a literal cum-burn on it, and the matching evidence of a burned hole down near the bottom of one the short sleeves of her wrapped silk robe, where a droplet had managed to fall.
I threw the offer out brokenly in her language, because it was the closest I could come to communicating what I meant. I was already sitting there, dick out, half-spent, and with all my evidence of orgasm cooling nearby. I hadn't exactly seen magic used often, and even where I had, it didn't seem universally trusted. No one else I'd seen had a literally burning hot inside temperature, and with how long it'd been since the bug monster fight, I was certain its poison wasn't responsible.
I could almost see the wheels turning behind her eyes as I diverted the immediate worst case. The wagon of foregone conclusions was turning around.
"You pay …" She said, finishing with a new word.
When I looked at her uncomprehendingly, waiting, she actually grunted at me softly.
"You pay Orwynne. You pay me." She repeated the sentence again, and I understood what she was getting at. "You pay me."
I nodded very slowly, and hooked my head to the chest sitting open, next to a new burn line and a plate of mostly cooled steak cuts on a stick.
Something about my offer made her dark blue eyes narrow on me, even more speculatively. She looked me up and down, and when her eyes again went between my legs, I was reminded of my condition, and very casually stowed myself, readjusted and tightened the undergarment she'd fished me out from, and pulled up the silk pants that still half sat around my thighs.
She said something suddenly, with a nod.
When I didn't react other than lifted eyebrows at her and a slight shrug, she added, "Yes."
I nodded my agreement. "Yes."
Then Orwynne abruptly lifted her hand, one finger up, and then she indicated her robe-thing.
"You pay … …" She said a new word I didn't know. I assumed it meant her robe.
"I pay … robe." I echoed back to her and lifted my fingertip to my lips, hoping that the gesture carried in some way.
She wet her lips slowly, looking around.
It seemed to.
She nodded slowly and began to sit up. I awkwardly began to do the same, and after another glance toward the curtain and I, she reached out to take the steak skewers back up, and bite off another chunk. She chewed for a few moments, but made a disappointed sound before putting it back down.
I took the opportunity to grab one of the nearby pillows and drag it across that part of the table, relieved at least that it didn't burst into flame, even if it slightly darkened the fibers that made up the cloth. The heat seemed relative to me, and was dissipating already, which was good.
Orwynne tried to quickly finish some more of the expensive meat, but her expression was disgruntled and unsatisfied. I watched her roll her tongue a few times and then drag it along her front teeth, and then realized something I hadn't really thought about.
Her teeth were better than most of the people I'd seen since arriving in Volantis. Above the norm, even.
Different… values of slaves?
Obviously she was better treated than some.
Was I being attended to in that way as well?
I thought of my own teeth, and Sorzo's. I definitely had better teeth than him. I was healthier in general. Maybe that was one of the things which had given him the idea that I would be pickier about it. While I didn't understand the blonde thing, I did appreciate that weird amount of thought he'd put into the whole thing.
I really need a better understanding of the coins and costs, though.
Orwynne put aside the skewer and held up a finger to me and called something out. I tossed the cleanup pillow into the pile and tried not to think about if anyone else had likely done similar before my arrival in the private alcove. It all looked immaculate and expensive, so it might have been unlikely, but…
A short few seconds later and a shadow approached the edge of the alcove and came in with a brief dip of her head: the woman who seemingly owned, or at the very least ran the night operations of the place. Orwynne said some things to her and indicated to me, finishing by indicating herself and tilting her head forward. She waited silently after that for response.
I lowered, casually, to sit as I had been before everything.
The older, dark-haired woman looked at me, severe expression slackening slightly, as her eyebrows began to climb her forehead. She said something to me, lifting her fingers and rubbing them together a few times emphatically, before indicating Orwynne.
Orwynne said something else, and lifting her chin gave the shimmering silk robe she was wearing that went to her knees a shake. The kind of gesture intent to indicate it.
I had a feeling she was saying I'd pay for the robe-dress-thing.
So I nodded slowly.
The woman said something, giving Orwynne a kind of skeptical look and an up and down. She motioned over shoulder, waving her hand and said a few other words. Whatever it was, I could tell it got on the blonde slave's nerves, because Orwynne shifted restlessly, glancing at me.
So I went with what seemed like the most neutral response.
I shrugged at the owner slowly.
The owner blinked her head, and shook her head slowly, muttering to herself with a look toward me that I found hard to understand. Disbelief? I wasn't sure.
This is the situation I'm in.
The woman running the place fixed her jaw after a second and shrugged back at me, before snapping something at Orwynne who flinched and immediately grabbed the big book she was carrying before and ran out of the alcove in a hurry.
I watched the slave go unsurely.
The owner of the establishment looked around, before moving over and pulling one of the big pillows from the pile. I used every bit of steel in my spirit not to react as the burned side of the one I'd used moments to spread the heat was left displayed. It slowly rolled back and off the side of the pile, as the owner turned her back on it, unseen. Her eyes scanned the table with a frown, and she reached out to trace the burn mark on it.
I was a Nord. We were fiery people. It was necessary to survive the cold.
Her choice of action made me wince despite trying not to react to the twofold unknown that she was doing. She sniffed her fingertip briefly, and I fought, probably fruitlessly, to keep my expression blank. She grimaced and shook her head. She lowered her acquired pillow near the edge and sat down fully onto it, looking at me.
When our eyes met, she reached out and pointed at the burn mark on the table.
"I pay?" I said, glancing at the chest full of coins. Around half of which had come from Denorro's temple alone for his return. Sorzo had been extremely happy with the haul. It seemed like a lot to me, if they were even comparatively worth half a Septim each.
The slave owner grunted, but nodded.
She reached out, grabbed coins from the chest, and lifting her right wrist exposed a strange length of pale wood tied along the outside of her forearm. She quickly unfastened the loops binding it and it came away, like half a long tube cut vertically.
I wasn't sure what its purpose was until she laid it at an angle from her hand to the table and spilled the coins into it. They all fell down in series, stacking at the bottom under the quick motions of her practiced hands and taps of the stick-thing. That's when I noticed it had little notches and dark marks on the side.
For counting large amounts of coins fast.
Given how small and how many the Volantis coins trading hands could be despite the two distinct colors, it made sense she would have something like it. I had yet to see anyone else in our dealings pull one out until the owner of the place did, though.
How much am I paying her for her silence, some burned tastebuds, a robe, and a table?
Sorzo was enjoying the wind down, the pleasant coolness of sweat between his shoulderblades and a panting, breathless woman beneath him. Despite everything, the wounds, the near dying on the Demon Road, Malsero's abandoning him after years of being the best he could have ever asked for in a right hand among the slaves, it was all coming around.
They'd made so much.
With the corsair that had been absolutely ruining and wrecking ships off of the near coasts and in the open seas with an amassed group of pirates, there was an extremely limited income of goods from the far east. As much as Sorzo would have liked to smack Malsero stupid, it couldn't be argued that the man didn't know trading.
Had he made a totally painless journey, the massively gouged local prices on goods from the east in the middle of the limited trade period would have been capable of making him an immense amount. As it was, when the Temple of R'hllor had learned that he'd abandoned Denorro in the moment and only picked him up a second time with help effectively, they'd only given him a portion of the bounty for the red priest.
That was Denorro's work. It seemed like Malsero's behavior had finally gotten through the near limitless patience of the priest, and Denorro was the kind of valuable that shouldn't have been readily offended. Of course the other priests of the temple were going to speak with him before simply paying out.
They had still paid out on principle, but only a fragment of what Malsero had been expecting, with Denorro sending a greater portion to them.
Despite that, Sorzo had little doubt that even with only one wagon, Malsero had recouped the majority of his losses. Probably even turned a profit with the people he knew and the history of success he had, given current prices. With a tidy little bit extra even from a partial payment for Denorro, the merchant would rebuild and be off on his next adventure in the mid year at some point all over again, no doubt.
Assuming of course that by then the corsair terrorizing the waters nearby had been captured and killed, or enough pirates were that they were driven off and retreated back to the Basilisk Isles. No doubt, with the pressure on the market being what it was, some of the old bloods' business ventures were getting interrupted. They would eventually begin to work with Lys and the cities to the east to get things moving again.
He was a free man, fresh from enjoying the wet of a whore that would have only been afforded the most wealthy. Just looking the part of a slave freed in the service of someone that looked like Ysmir in his new clothes, with the coin they were throwing around, was enough to give him entirely new experiences. Ones he'd dreamed back when he was barely a boy becoming a man.
He'd eaten better than he had in months. Enjoyed the kind of bedmate that only a triarch's relatives might casually manage.
Everything was great.
"Sorzo," The curtain shifted as a blonde head poked through.
The most expensive girl available in the place, "freshly acquired" and the "Experience of a lady" according to the pleasure den's owner. Clearly she was intended to be a Valyrian blood one by the choice of hair color.
Wait, no. She was for Ysmir. Not me.
Sorzo began to grow concerned, rising and pulling the covers from his shoulders to flick them aside.
Did he kick her out?
Things had seemed to be going well when he left…
"We should return to your lord." She said, speaking in that lightly accented way she had since introduction, where she'd all but began promising bedding to Ysmir with her eyes.
He found it hard to place the accent itself, as it didn't sound exactly north or south, or in the specific style of any of the free cities he'd visited personally.
Maybe that is part of the experience.
The High Valyrian that Denorro spoke sometimes to Ysmir had sounded strange to his ears, too, even ignoring the difference of the language itself.
It could be a good accent.
He didn't know enough to call it wrong, and if they'd gotten what they paid for, it was probably accurate.
As he sat up, Sorzo ignored the mention of his lord, choosing not to correct it. While he'd not said anything specific about whether Ysmir's blood came from Lys, Volantis, or elsewhere, it was pretty obvious when he was referring to himself as Valyrian that there was something to it and he was content to let people draw their own conclusions until it mattered and he figured out a way to really ask the sorcerer, himself.
"There is business Deka wishes to conclude with you, and she has difficulties speaking with him." The "lady" added.
Who doesn't?
He stretched a little and pulled back on his things with a groan.
Maybe I should have tried to save a little on my end. I haven't seen how much he was going to give me of the mix in payment.
He stepped by her and left her in the room with the woman he was already done with, who was enjoying a lay about. She'd earned it and she looked good doing it.
Making his way over, passing through a hallway of curtains, and then around the edge of the main area to the back alcove where he'd left Ysmir, he pushed back the curtain and stepped into the private space.
Considering the last complete sentence he'd heard of the expensive whore's murmurings to Ysmir's deaf ears was that she'd "finally found the rumored lord with a cock like a donkey", he'd been inclined, once he got past his laughter, to believe things were going to work themselves out well. Even if Ysmir wanted to be read to, before he enjoyed his celebratory gift.
He'd felt comfortable stepping out…
…And he didn't want any more thoughts of Ysmir's prick in the back of his mind while he was achieving a young dream of laying up an old blood's kind of whore.
As he entered the little room, a smell touched his nose, something burned piercing through the incense they left smoldering to keep the scent of sweat and sex minimal. There was a new blackened line and mark on the table to suggest the reason. It hadn't been there when he'd left. Ysmir's own steak cuts sat nearby, only half-eaten.
What a waste.
Deka, an infamous former pirate that wasn't called that only because she had supposedly only ever hit Westeros for loot, was the owner of the Sea's Secrets. While most people had a neutral face that was just nothing if not calm, hers sat just beyond the border of a scowl from presumably years of sacking ships off the coast of Dorne or wherever it was she lied about.
Either way she'd managed enough luck and coin both to find a permanent place in Volantis, forgiven and well-ventured with the most popular, and pricy pleasure den on the west side of the city. She sat across the low table from Ysmir, with a counting rod out, and was sliding coins down into it to the notches with practiced speed. She had a number of towers of Volantene honors already stacked up on her side of the table.
Sorzo frowned at the amount.
"That's a great deal of coins for a table." He began to cut her off, ready to defend Ysmir from someone trying to rip him for everything.
"Oh, this isn't for that." Deka quickly said with a shake of her head. Her expression was dour as she looked over at him with something like pity. "This is for Orwynne. Your lord has agreed to purchase her in full, with the robe, and the table."
"What? Why?" He asked, glancing at Ysmir. "How much is she?"
The owner of the den's smirk filled him with unpleasant feelings.
"She fucked some trade vessel captain after he rescued her from a sinking ship, and then his first mate, then roundabout encouraged everything into a mutiny attempt that resulted in their ship smashing into the dock on their way to port. When I purchased her from the city, it was for twenty-eight thousand honors, on the presumption that any girl that could lay a man that good, and talk and act like an old blood, could make double that before she was too old to pull. Fifty thousand honors seems fair by comparison."
"Fifty-" He began, aghast. He glanced at Ysmir, who looked between them, met his eyes and shrugged with a nod.
He shook his head rapidly at the sorcerer.
Ysmir frowned at him and tilted his head.
Deka cackled roughly. "Seems like he really likes her, to me. One thing I've learned in this business -- people got their likes, and they rarely make sense. Fifty thousand seems fair. Goodness knows, I haven't had an accident with fire in my den since it opened. Playing with lantern oil around all of these curtains? You're lucky I didn't add some more!"
Sorzo's heart skipped a beat.
What happened here?
"Thirty-five." He tried, flatly.
She glanced up, pausing in her methodical movements to get the coins lined up.
"Forty-five." Deka countered, with a smirk. "I'll give you five off, because it sounded like you earned that five with Merie and I've seen you dreaming at my stoop for a long time. We'll round it all out at that."
Ysmir reached down and carefully put away that journal he'd filled with scribbles in the pack that sat among the pillow.
We're fine… We're fine.
"Enjoyed that new freedom you found didn't you, ey' boy? Little Sorzo is not so little anymore, it seems." Deka continued.
He'd almost forgotten the last time anyone had called him that. He was surprised she remembered it, given he'd only ever been able to run butchered cuts of meat to her den in his youth for a year or so. After he'd been bought by Malsero, they traveled often.
Then again, places like pleasure dens tended to be where a lot of whispered conversations that should never have occurred at all found their way spoken.
"Thirty-eight." He tried.
"Forty-five." She repeated with a raspy chortle. "Now help me count. I know how much fits in these issue-chests. You've got enough here to pay me fair and still more to do whatever you want next. Provided you both don't just go around buying out my stock, or fuck the old bloods' whores like you wanted tonight, every night."
He grimaced, looking at Ysmir.
I left you alone for barely enough time to get…
Sorzo grimaced.
Ysmir's head tilted just a little at him, eyes roaming his front. Something in his expression grew annoyed, but after a moment, the corner of his lips quirked up.
It immediately brought back that moment.
Ysmir's expression as he stepped forward… as he grinned, before burning a thousand men alive in an instant.
All at once, the headiness of post-orgasmic glow, the heat of his exertion in his skin, it faded. Sorzo felt a cold sweat anew and his irritation fled. Wordlessly, he moved over and sat down in the place between Deka and Ysmir and began to help her count.
Their honors were all mixed up, so it was going to take a while, either way.
"Forty five is a fair price for a lady, you know?" Deka joked to him with a nudge.
"Experience of a lady, my ass." He muttered to her. "The blonde hair isn't even natural."
"Take it up with him. He owns her now." Deka said, just giving him a greedy grin. "I deliver everything I promise. Nothing more, nothing less."
Not a chance.
Rhaena frowned to herself as she placed aside another scroll into her growing pile that she'd written off as without any information. She was almost certain she wasn't going to find anything in her search, but all the same she had to try given the situation.
For all that Visenya had been a terror, she had also been arguably the most knowledgeable person their family had on dragons, Valyrian custom, and tradition. Had she been born a man, she likely would have been the King of Westeros instead of Aegon, being his elder. Visenya was all of Maegor's most terrifying traits that could have made him good as a leader, and realistically a lot of the ones that he had lacked, too.
While Rhaena would never forgive Maegor, she respected Visenya in a begrudging way. She was one third the group that had made their kingdom and established their family's lasting dynasty. She was a mother that would clearly do anything for her son. If it had ever been a measurement of pure skill alone on dragon back, Rhaena had little doubt that the woman that had kept Jaehaerys and Alysanne captive effectively would have been more than capable of besting her son in the skies, as well.
It was just hard to account for skill at a certain point when discussing the sheer size of dragons. Things got far more rocky without even acknowledging that usually the size of dragons also correlated a fair bit with their age and thus experience.
That was another truth she'd faced the hard way.
Rhaena placed aside another piece of writing to retrieve a new one.
There had already been efforts in the past by Maester Culiper before his death to go through Dragonstone's writings and organize. Sometimes it was necessary to copy things to new mediums as they grew old or risked other natural destruction. It was one of the primary purposes of the Maesters, even, to retain that knowledge and make it accessible for them. That meant that whatever organization had existed by Visenya's own hand, was long gone.
When she'd approached and began to sort through things after she swore Aerea to secrecy, Maester Anselm approached her asking her what she sought. She couldn't very well tell him specifics, so she asked him to sort for her everything they had on the dragons, and all of Visenya's writing, as the rumors that the elder wife of Aegon dabbled in dark sorceries had at least some truth.
Tyanna's caution when dealing with her spoke well enough of that.
Rhaena ordered them brought to her study, where she would be a little more comfortable given the amount of reading she would likely have to do. It wasn't as if she was going to manage it all in a night.
The documents and journals piled up with every passing hour, but eventually, when the stack seemed such that she would be going through it for weeks, the maester confirmed it was everything they had.
As bad as the pile looked, it was a small grace Rhaena realized, that Alysanne had flown for King's Landing the day before. While she had little doubt that she had managed to curb Aerea's urge to shout to the walls that her dragon could make sounds, the queen had taken to disturbing her study and private chambers at every opportunity of her stay and would notice she was looking for something.
Her sister had spent more time in her room than the provided chambers.
Sat within the heated water of the bath she'd had drawn, Alysanne cupped some of the liquid in her hand and drew it up, depositing a wave along the soft, pale skin of her shoulder as she hummed faintly to herself.
The fragrant soap from her personal collection dripped a languid line down the outside of her younger sister's arm, where the queen let it waterfall in droplets from her fingertips. The edge of the basin did little to nothing to obscure her sister's glistening naked body from her, but that wasn't a concern to either of them. If Alysanne hadn't been willing to be seen, she wouldn't have invited her company.
The queen was used to bathing with a degree of assistance. She suspected Alysanne had gotten more fond of having someone else around or helping with her bath after the incident.
Rhaena reached out and drew back Alysanne's hair from where she sat at the edge of the tub, eyes drawn to the sensitive skin of her younger sibling's neck. She caught a sideways look from Alysanne as she brought her hands up along the edges of her sister's arms and rubbed across her shoulders to squeeze gently, but the flash of blue was only for a moment.
Alysanne relaxed back, eyes drifting closed, and let her wash her hair with a soft sound of comfort. The shifting water shimmered around the queen's knee as it moved up slightly to break the surface.
Rhaena tilted the scroll in her hand aside, and then began to roll it up.
Could I have actually tried?
Even for her, it was hard to be certain. The line between a woman's interest and desire could be narrow, and the nature of the relationships between Targaryen siblings didn't exactly help them even before her own interests and many peoples' thoughts were considered. Not to mention that Alysanne could have been playing around, teasing her for her "improper" tastes in her own mischievous way.
Maybe.
Rhaena pushed aside the thought and the confidence she felt in it as soon as it formed. She had more important things to devote her time to just then, and she liked to think she could learn from her experience with Androw. She'd never crossed that line before with either Jaehaerys or Alysanne despite a few subtle implications to the former when it was necessary to soothe the ego of her brother. If she did, it would likely be catastrophic, and moreover, she couldn't be sure any of Alysanne's actions in her short stay were not something being actively planned around by the king.
Even ignoring the ghosts that haunted her every action.
Even if she was extremely doubtful her brother would willingly ever have their sister queen spend time with her to wind her up in their dealings in that particular way, she wouldn't bite. Not with everything so dangerous. So close to something going up in flames potentially.
I have to be careful. For Aerea.
Alysanne had a way of brushing past whatever walls were placed before her and asking uncomfortable questions, too. She could make it all too cathartic to tell her whatever she wanted to know and give oneself entirely to her company.
The problem as ever before was that Alysanne cared. Alysanne was terribly authentic in every way.
Even aware that Alysanne had likely been ordered to stay longer by Jaehaerys, she'd wound up actually telling her sister about how it'd felt when she traveled in detail. Telling her about the good and bad she'd seen. Even the Lannister bastard's behavior. Asking her about Jaehaerys, and listening to her sister complain in her own nonchalant way about a neverending schedule of necessities.
The kingsguard will probably tell Jaehaerys about all of the time she spent with me.
Rhaena picked up and unrolled another scroll, propping it open on her knee.
Since that was his intention the whole time I'm sure.
As she placed aside another scroll, she looked around the pile, mind going to a particular book she'd seen Visenya with.
There should be more.
Rhaena sat up a little, picking up and moving aside covers and the edges of parchment, to look beneath to be sure she wasn't mistaken.
Where's the red one?
She had personally seen a red book that Visenya carried with her for years. The same book that had been referenced by the elderly Targaryen when it came to the Valyrian marriage ceremony.
It was practically her journal.
It should have returned to Dragonstone if it went elsewhere, and been stored among their family's personal writings. Yet, there was no sign of it anywhere.
I'll need to ask the maester about it tomorrow.
Rhaena sighed and rubbed at her eyes.
I'm not going to find anything.
It bothered her. Their dragons were their birthright. They lived and died together. At the same time, the way Balerion was behaving, the sound he'd made… it was like they really didn't know anything about them, sometimes.
There were rumors, of course about how things had been. Most of it was left behind. Dragonstone was the ancestral home of their family, because it was the place they took their dragons to before the Doom. Old Valyria's reach had been immense, with their blood magic so powerful they controlled everything they cared to. A handful of dragons could bring entire kingdoms to heel, and yet they'd had hundreds, if not thousands.
Why Balerion?
That was the odd thing. It wasn't as if Aerea had taught him to do that. She'd just apparently woke up to him doing it.
It could be age.
As she'd suggested to Aerea, Balerion was the eldest of the living dragons. The only one to survive the Doom. The largest living dragon too. She didn't know of any dragons in writing even that lived a longer age, but that could have been because of what was lost in the Doom itself.
It wasn't even really a word.
She forced herself to not get ahead of herself. The ability to change his fire was strange, but even making sounds didn't really mean he would ever learn to… speak, really. There were animals that could almost sound like people.
We'll just have to wait until we see more.
It wasn't really a plan, but it was all they could really do. Whatever the case was with Balerion's newfound ability to intonate, given he was the only case she'd ever heard of with it and had no idea how or why it started up, it wasn't going to be the thing that upended their lives probably.
Whatever Rhaena might have felt about it, Aerea was doing great with Balerion and that would be necessary to give her the free will to truly control her life in spite of what Jaehaerys no doubt intended for her.
I just need to do what I can.
Hours later by the time she left her study for her bedchambers, Rhaena's head was aching and she was no closer to having found anything. There were still many more scrolls and books she'd yet to touch.
She undressed quietly, aware that no one waited for her in her bed. The thick rug that covered the cold black stone that made up all of the castle's walls made her bare feet silent across the floor as she made her way toward the comfort of its soft sheets. The chill in the air urged what hair there was on the back of her arms and neck to stand on end, but there wasn't much to be done for it. She wasn't going to have a fire tended for her all night when she probably wouldn't be let to sleep long even uninterrupted by people coming and going. She slept too light, now.
Once she was at her bedside, she smothered the lone source of light she was using for navigation. An almost absolute darkness fell as her eyes tried to adjust, while she slipped back the covers and eased down and into the cool, crisp sheets.
The distant thrum and whisper of wind against Dragonstone's walls didn't make for the kind of company that let her get to sleep fast, but it was familiar. Calming.
She closed her eyes.
And opened them a moment later to Aerea pushing loudly through her chamber doors and running over to the side of her bed. The light coming through the curtains near the balcony was pale white, a sign of the early morning mist that always smothered the island.
"I know it's early, but I was thinking see, it's not far to-" Aerea said, excitedly.
In the fog of her mind barely managing to get enough of her together to be a person with how short it had felt since she managed to close her eyes, Rhaena could barely concentrate on her.
Aerea was still talking.
"-so we could fly there and back, today. Or even stay for a night maybe."
Rhaena wet her lips and cleared her throat, trying to sit up and get her eyes that felt like they had sand poured into them to stay open.
Where?
"Mm?"
It was the best she could manage.
"It would be a good chance to really see how things go over a longer distance." Aerea continued on, turning and pacing, making emphatic motions of her hands to argue her point.
Her daughter was already wearing her riding outfit, the creak of leather boots audible.
"Hhlright." Rhaena forced out, reaching down and grabbing her bedcovers to pull them back. She turned and pushed her legs to the edge, scooting until she was at its side. She straightened her back with a slight exhale, and stretched before pushing onto her feet.
As Rhaena rubbed a hand back through her hair, she called out to the door for one of the servants, who rushed in and after a wave of her hand, began to pull the curtains and pick up the clothing from the floor.
In short order that felt a small eternity, a set of her own leathers were brought out.
"Why do you want to go there?" She asked Aerea blearily, to cover that she hadn't actually heard anything she said.
"Well, they are sworn to us." Aerea voiced after a pause. "It's rumored in your court that they have all kinds of interesting things from far lands. If Balerion can-"
Rhaena lifted her right hand, headache intensifying.
Aerea fell silent.
She fixed her daughter with a deliberate, if weak stare as the servant finished stacking up her clothes from the previous day in her arms and backed out.
"...I just meant that there's a rumor they have all kinds of old treasures. Even a horn that can summon a kraken from the sea. Who knows if they have anything else that's from Valyria, like old books."
Celtigar.
She hadn't seen him since even before he was dismissed from office by Jaehaerys. His time as lord treasurer and master of coin at the behest of Rogar had been received extremely poorly, and however bad Maegor had made things with his constant wars, the Lord of Claw Isle had only made them worse after his pardon for the parts he played during Maegor's reign.
As she looked at her daughter, Rhaena was confronted with the realization that in Aerea's eyes, it was just, "There's a thing over there, and we can do that. Let's do that." and she either willfully or ignorantly just had no idea the complicated history she'd grown up just beyond the edge of, or with only her toes touching.
Once again.
"Alright." She said, with a slow nod. "We'll fly to Claw Isle."
Aerea's expression brightened even more.
She didn't agree because she felt like they'd find anything, or that it would serve some other function of letting Aerea get a handle on flying Balerion for longer distances. If anything, she was confident anything Celtigar would have had that was important regarding dragons would have long been traded for.
That notwithstanding, as worried as some part of her was as a mother, Aerea had flown Balerion all around Essos without a saddle and managed to make it back. In the short time since they'd had everything touched up and taken a few flights, by comparison the ride would be comfortable.
She agreed because Aerea wanted to go, and if they didn't go somewhere, Aerea was bound to eventually try to go somewhere on her own.
Further, Alysanne mentioned in passing having been writing to Prunella.
When was the last time I saw her?
They weren't friends by any measure, but she knew Prunella. She'd been one of her younger sister's lady companions for years and most of their stay at Dragonstone, before Visenya's death. She and her sister had been among the women to disrobe Jaehaerys at his and Alysanne's second marriage's bedding ceremony.
What have you and Alysanne been talking about?
Alysanne might have been one of the most socially and politically experienced people in the realm after her short time as queen, but she'd probably never expect contact between her and Prunella.
Maybe the Celtigar would know some things Alysanne wouldn't readily tell her.