Dark As Pride and Bright As Hope
The rain had been drowning Sunspear for a week; at the end of the first day, the Prince of Dorne had stopped noticing the soft patter against the windows of his study but from time to time, it still startled him from his thoughts and when it did, they inevitably shifted from what he could do – his negotiating a more desirable terms with the new King of the Seven Kingdoms, the dragon who had arrived here without a host but a group of children, Dornish children instead – to what he couldn't. His fear for Siella and his inability to help her when she needed it most…
Why had it come to this? The maesters claimed that a woman's second time in the birthing bed was usually her safest one. Siella's pains were taking a third day already, she was spiking a fever, didn't know her own name any longer and the child would not come… The maesters and midwives gathered around her had been very cheerful in the beginning – "Are you ready with the gift, my Prince? You'll soon be rewarding us for the arrival of a healthy babe" – but this soon seemed to have no end… Mors Martell was pretty sure that the two figures he had seen an hour ago were two of the midwives, having found excuses to leave, so they wouldn't be around to face his pain and anger. Only the oldest among the women, a toothless old wife had dared tell him the truth: it wasn't going the right way, they could lose not just the babe but Siella herself… She was old enough to not place any great value on her life and that made her bold.
It was easier to focus on the negotiations. That seemed to be reaching a dead end. All things resolved, he and the strange Targaryen had reached the point where neither would back up. And the opinions of his bannermen were divided between the two of them… Between Baelor Targaryen's soft-spoken but passionate insistence and the shouts of his lords and ladies in both directions, he found it increasingly hard to say which was the right way, the good way. Which was justice and which was pride. Which was cautiousness and which was… pride again.
The treaty lay in front of him in two copies. Two copies that only differed on one little detail. He reached for one of them, reached out for the inkwell and then drew his hand back. No, he wasn't sure.
A soft knock made him look up. Old Ingal entered and bowed. "Lady Toland, my prince…" he said. He had not asked if Mors would receive her – he knew that she was always welcome.
Ileria entered the study in a swish of crimson skirts. Mors didn't rise. "How is she?" he asked quickly.
"There is no change…"
She had been present for Mariah's birth as well, and even Larra's – an obligatory and highly disgusting sight for all great ladies in Dorne. They had to make sure that the Princess of Dorne was the one giving birth but Ileria could really go without the reminder of every woman's bless and curse – he had heard her say so to Siella many years ago.
"Did you make your decision?"
Mors hesitated. "Not yet."
"Is he really this insistent?" she asked. "He looks quite agreeable to me. Not like his brother at all, cursed be his name."
"On this, he won't move from his stance," he sighed. "He demands that Mariah keeps her rights, even if she moves down the succession and at the end, Dorne goes to the Iron Throne through her children if I do not…"
Suddenly, he couldn't say it. They both looked at the door, keeping their breath. Had he just summoned Iblas, the sand demon that taunted and hunted women in the birthing bed?
No. What a ridiculous idea! There was no such thing as Iblas. He was just letting his fears get the better of him. Those were old wives' superstitions.
"If he won't accept anything else, perhaps a compromise might be reached," Lady Toland offered. "Let Mariah move down the succession retaining her rights but stipulate that should the boy not become King, he would not be given any authority here. Make it an objective that should she succeed, she'll rule only with the help of a Dornish council. That should lock him off effectively."
The boy. She never said young Daeron's name. None of them did. The very thought of sending his innocent child to a Daeron Targaryen made him want to weep. If Dorne didn't rely on me, Baelor couldn't pay me enough to accept his cousin for her.
"I'll think of this," he promised and contemplated her for a while. "You want this peace very much, don't you, my lady? I didn't think I'd see the day."
She sighed. "People changed," she said. "Not everyone can be as brave as Dyanna Dayne, for all the good it brought her."
Twilight was reaching inside the room, dotted by the heavy grey raindrops. In the brief moment before the death of the day and the lighting of the candles, the Lady of Starfall rose to stand with them as she had been in the premature twilight of her days. As thin as a rail. Wrinkled. With white strands shooting her crowning glory of black hair. "Are they back?" Those were said to have been the words haunting her last days. "Is she coming?" She had died before Baelor Targaryen had returned with her daughter's corpse. Perhaps she was lucky, Mors thought. All her valiant fight against the Young Dragon… and she ended up like this.
"I meant no offense, Ileria," he said and her shoulders sagged.
"I know," she said. "I guess I'm not the woman I used to be."
He wanted to tell her that she'd regain her onetime confidence. He wanted to lie to her.
"I don't want my children to live in submission," she admitted. "But I don't want to leave things unsettled if there is a chance to smooth them over with a compromise. I want my children to reach old age."
She still wore black for the son who had fallen in the first battles, four years ago.
"I will reach a compromise," Mors promised. "Somehow."
She sighed and left as quietly as she had come.
As the evening drew on, there were no news from Siella's chambers but a long line of bannermen made their way through his study. Some of them begged him to sign the peace the Targaryen king wanted. What did it matter if Princess Mariah retained her rights? She'd still be placed behind all children Mors would have. And there were ways to make her Targaryen husband a traditional consort. Others insisted that he demand the Targaryen boy come to Dorne and be actually trained to be a consort. Why should the Princess be deprived of what was hers under the Dornish law of ten times of hundred years? "Because it's too dangerous!" Mors snapped at the Lords Uller and Gargalen – the most unfortunate choice he could make. Two warmongers, those were, and they stared at him open-mouthed. Before the night ended, all other Houses would know that their Prince feared the Iron Throne. How could I! Baelor Targaryen wasn't the one he needed to negotiate with, those of his bannermen who didn't care for peace unless all was arranged to their liking were also ones he needed to be careful with. At least the Yronwoods won't be touched by talks of how we should preserve the Rhoynish custom no matter what, Mors thought cynically.
Just as he expected, they started talking one over another and from their sentiments, Mors could only understand that in this case, there was no need of the match at all. Indeed, there was no need of the peace either – but he wasn't sure he had heard this part right. He drew a deep breath and was about to outshout both mummers, the door was thrown open.
The smile at the old woman's face was as broad as the mouth of a river.
"Hand over the reward, my lord!" she yelled. "Hand over, and fast! You have a son! Do you hear me, a son!"
For a long moment, Mors didn't move. The two men's voices drifted out of his head, or perhaps they had stopped talking, he didn't know. Then, he asked, "What about Siella? How is she?"
"You'll see her on your own, my Prince. Such is the joy of the new mother that she already forgot it all, and there was much to forget…"
Without bothering to excuse himself to the two fools, Mors strode down the hall. The road to his lady wife's chambers was short, or perhaps he only thought so because he ran the last steps and the few halls. He threw the door open and burst inside.
The first thing he saw was a big, red-faced babe that the women were bathing and he was wailing uproariously. Then, he looked at the bed. Siella looked back at him. Her hair was still sweat-soaked but her eyes were bright with joy and perhaps the last remnants of the retreating fever. He reached over, cupped her cheek. She leaned her head into her palm and abruptly, he was thrown some twelve years back, when he had first met his Lysene bride, a descendant of the family that had killed his father… It looked like another life now. With her, he had made a new, different one. And now, they were living a third, after that terrible war was over.
His son kept wailing and at this moment, there was no sound sweeter in the world. The sound of promise, hope… Siella closed her eyes, tears escaping silently. "Mariah…" she moaned softly.
"I'll send for her soon," Mors promised. When they signed the peace treaty, their daughter could come home. Come home to what? Losing her rights? His son's birth filled him with joy for him and Siella, for Dorne and yet it underlined the necessity to do his daughter injustice in a way he hadn't expected before.
This night, he did not sleep at all. He paced and paced, thinking of how he should deal with the situation, what he should do. Sense of politics clashes with the fatherly feelings that he had forced to the back of her mind – and there was the matter of pride as well. As practical as his solution was, his entire being was screaming at him, asking him why should they change their ways, and to Mariah's detriment, when it hadn't been them who started the war.
Still, he had to do it. Cold resolve filled him as the next morning, he received the silver-haired king. To his surprise, Baelor seemed agitated.
"You should really send her away," he said instead of greeting his host.
"Who?" Mors asked.
"Her!"
Following his look, Mors went to the window and stared at young Elsbet, Ileria's daughter, who was just coming out of the Tower of the Sun. She was laughing at something a boy walking next to her was saying and Mors was pleased to see her like this in the bright sunlight following the retreat of the long rain.
"Why?"
"Whores do not belong to a virtuous court," Baelor said and Mors stared at him, once again wondering if the man was mad – subtly so. "She was my brother's whore."
Suddenly, the young King's state of mind flew out of Mors' own mind. "She was your brother's victim," he said coldly. "In Dorne, we do not punish victims for a second time. Your brother took her by force, just in case you didn't know."
Baelor didn't look convinced. "She seduced him with her women's wiles," he insisted, his eyes wide and bright, trying to convince Mors. "That's what women do. They live to entice men."
Where am I going to send Mariah? Where? To a place where this man reigns?
"Did you make your mind?" Baelor suddenly asked, taking his seat. His eyes were now narrowed and shrewd – the eyes of a politician. How many men lived under his skin?
"We can sign a treaty without a marriage contract," Mors suddenly said. His daughter deserved better than being sent to a court where she'd be looked at with suspicion just because she was a woman.
"But it will not be as binding," Baelor said. "I am offering you queenship – and you're ready to throw it back to my face for the slim chance of Daeron gaining influence here through her?"
"If it's so slim, why are you so insistent?" Mors snapped back. For all his smiles and calls for binding wounds, this Targaryen wanted Dorne no less than his late brother. He was simply subtler about it.
They stared at each other, neither willing to concede a thing.
Footsteps echoed and Ingal rushed in without pausing to knock. "My Prince," he gasped, breathless. "My Prince, they have found another one!"
Mors was at the place less than half an hour later, passing through a crowd that parted for him and closing right back, pressing to see the new graves found by the men who had been looking for them. This one was in the garden of a dilapidated house in the back of the shadow city. A good choice, this – no one ever went in this part of the slum because the houses could fall any moment. The perfect place to carry those who the Young Dragon's torturers had brought to slow death, trying to extort information about those undermining their king's blood-established rule, and bury them under the cover of night.
Four guards around the house held the crowd at bay. Mors approached slowly, his mind reverting back to that horrible night two years ago when they had found his own sister, buried in secret after committing a suicide – another thing that should bother the dragons' conscience, provided that they had it!
There were five bodies. Vorian Dayne's was the one closest to the gate. Mors recognized him by the fair hair, as silver as Baelor Targaryen's. A few strands still remained. As to the flesh, like with the others, all that was left of him was the skeleton, the mouth still opened into a tortured scream. Mors slowly knelt and looked at the others. No, he couldn't say who they were.
How old had Vorian been at the time of his death? Young, so young. If he were alive, we'd be making preparations for his wedding to Elsbet, Mors thought as behind him, someone pleaded, "My lord, please don't! It isn't… There is nothing to see."
Without looking at the people, Davos Dayne came close, stood before the bones that had been his brother, tried to kneel and couldn't. Silently, Mors rose and helped him down. Davos nodded thanks and took the dead hand. The skeleton. Stood like this for a while. His breathing was labored, his head bowed and Mors was overwhelmed by the memory of two boys, loud and dashing, making everyone at Sunspear look at them and later, every girl pine after one of them. Now, Vorian was dead, just like his mother and little sister, and the entire future of the Dayne line laid in a pale boy with ruined health, a boy who couldn't even walk properly. But he lived. He'd wed Elsbet in his brother's place but… when? When would he be well enough? A year? Two years? Mors refused to contemplate the possibility of never.
Such bright boys they had been… Mors ground his teeth.
"Your Grace, I will give you the marriage you demand," he said when he returned to the Old Palace. "But not the retained rights. This – never."
A long moment passed, then another one, and a third.
Baelor Targaryen slowly nodded.