The blood oranges were ripe again. The courtyard where Doran Martell, his wife and young son were sitting was heavily scattered with the fallen fruit. The tangy, citrusy scent smelled like home to Doran. Glancing at his wife's tense face, however, Doran knew that the blood oranges only served as a painful reminder to Mellario of how far from home she truly was.
She did not love the Water Gardens the way he always had. The sight of the children frolicking in the water did not bring her joy and serenity as it did Doran; it only reminded her of how tenuous her hold on her own children was.
"Faster, faster!" Arianne's voice coming from the pool could be heard loud and clear. She was perched on Garin's shoulders, riding him as she would a horse. Garin was the same age as Arianne - her milk-brother, the son of Arianne's wet nurse - but he was more than a head taller than Arianne. Tyene was riding on Drey's shoulders. They were racing across the shallow pool, shouting and laughing as only children could. Sylva Santagar, or Spotted Sylva as the other children called her, was clamoring for her turn on Garin's shoulders. Arianne got down without much ado, watching the race continued, clapping and cheering.
She was the shortest among the children her age. Arianne had taken after her mother in that regard. Doran had heard Arianne praying to the Seven – "Please may I grow out of being short and pudgy, to be beautiful?" Pudgy? Were the other children making fun of her? Doran had never heard it himself, but he knew children could be cruel at times, in an unthinking and unconscious way.
Quite soon, Arianne and her friends would be too old to be playing in the pools. It saddened Doran considerably to think of that.
He stole another glance at his wife. She was preoccupied with Quentyn, who at three was only just beginning to talk. Quentyn was saying something that did not make much sense to Doran, but Mellario smiled and replied to him as if she understood perfectly what Quentyn was saying. Arianne had said her first word before she could even walk properly. "Arin" had been her first word, her failed but adorable attempt to say her own name, while her chubby fingers pointed at her own chest.
Mellario saw him looking at her, but ignored the gesture. They had quarreled again last night, as they had almost every night since Oberyn had brought the green-haired girl from Tyroshi to the Water Gardens. The green-haired girl was playing in the pool too, riding on Nymeria's shoulders, another one of Oberyn's many daughters.
Oberyn and Elia had played in these pools too, but not with Doran. He was almost a man grown by the time Oberyn and Elia was old enough to enter the pools. He had watched them playing in the pools only when he came to visit his mother. Oberyn and Elia had been very close, being only a year apart. They went everywhere together. Oberyn stuck to his older sister like glue, swearing to protect her from any harm. But it was Elia in her quiet and subtle way who protected Oberyn most of the time, preventing him from getting into fights and various troubles. But as they grew older, their path diverged, as it must.
"Where were you, when Elia was raped, her children murdered, and her own life robbed?" Oberyn had raged at Doran. "Why did you allow Mad Aerys to keep her in King's Landing as a hostage?"
Doran had no answer.
But Oberyn's worst contempt was saved not for his brother, but for himself. "Where was I?" He had asked over and over again, tears sliding down his cheeks. Fury came next, piling on top of his grief and sorrow. Fury, and a quest for vengeance. "We must avenge our sweet sister and her babies," Oberyn insisted.
Elia's children. Doran shuddered thinking of them. Rhaenys, who Arianne had held in her arms when she was only a few months old. Baby Aegon, who none of the Martells even had the chance to see, let alone hold, before Gregor Clegane had ripped him from Elia's arms and bashed his head on the wall. And Elia herself, violated, brutalized, raped, for who knew how long before she was killed.
Doran's dreams were red, and bloody. Tywin Lannister had wrapped their bodies in Lannister crimson to hide the blood, and presented them to Robert like gift-wrapped presents. An offering for the new king, the victorious usurper. Robert Baratheon had not punished Tywin, or any of Tywin's men who had committed the atrocity. He had rewarded Tywin Lannister by making Tywin's daughter Cersei his queen, in fact.
Baratheons, Lannisters - their hands were as bloody, as guilty as the monsters who actually did the deed. And Robert Baratheon had no interest in giving Dorne and the Martells justice. Justice for Elia and her children, as Doran had demanded time and time again.
Doran thirsted for vengeance just as much as Oberyn, if not more.
But Doran was not only a grieving brother, he was also the Prince of Dorne. It is the children who will suffer the most, his mother had told him, when he was old enough to leave the pools. "It is an easy thing for a prince to call the spears, but in the end, the children pay the price. For their sake, the wise prince will wage no war without good cause, nor any war he cannot hope to win," the Princess of Dorne had told her eldest son and heir as they watched the children frolicking in the pools and fountains.
Dorne did not have the force to defeat the Iron Throne and the combined forces of the Baratheons and Lannisters. Vengeance now, like Oberyn was pushing, would cause more bloodshed. Patience. Patience was what was required. Patience and careful planning.
"Your own daughters, my Arianne and Quentyn, all the children in Dorne, it is them we must consider," he had told Oberyn, when Oberyn was clamoring to lead a host to attack King's Landing in Viserys Targaryen's name. Oberyn had raged and argued, but he had listened to his brother in the end, like he usually did. The Red Viper answered to one but himself, and listened to no man's counsel, people said. But Oberyn knew Doran better than most, just as Doran knew Oberyn better than most as well.
Vengeance required patience, careful planning, as well as a wedding. Oberyn had signed the pact with Willem Derry on Doran's behalf. The secret pact to wed Arianne to Viserys Targaryen, in return to Dorne's support to put Viserys on the throne, and end the usurper's reign. The plan called for Arianne to be sent to Tyroshi to serve as cupbearer to the father of the green-haired girl, so Arianne could meet her betrothed in secret.
Doran had fully expected Mellario to object, the same way she had objected strenuously when he told her about his promise to send his first-born son to be fostered with House Yronwood.
"It is not your debt! It was Oberyn who killed Edgar Yronwood, not you," she had raged at him at the time.
"Oberyn is my brother, it is a blood debt owed by House Martell to House Yronwood. And they would not accept any other coin."
That was the wrong word to use. "Coin?" Mellario had screamed. "He is your son! What sort of father uses his own flesh and blood to pay his debts?"
A father who was trying to prevent war and bloodshed, so other fathers and mothers would not have to watch their children die. So that other children would not become orphans. It was his duty as the Prince of Dorne. "The princely sort," he replied, and Mellario slapped him in the face, hard.
This time, when he told her about the plan for Arianne, she had reacted in an entirely different manner. She looked calm; she did not scream or cry. She said nothing as Doran told her all. When Doran was done talking, she walked composedly to her dressing table, picked up a knife she had been using to segment a blood orange, pointed the sharp end of the blade to her chest, and said, in an eerily calm and composed voice, "If you steal another one of my children, you will lose a wife. Forever."
Steal? They are my children too, I love them as much as you do, he wanted to say. But he suspected that would only increase her anger. "Mellario," Doran pleaded. He did not dare to try wresting the knife away from her, the pointy end was less than a finger length away from her chest. "Quentyn would not go to the Yronwoods for another few years. And Arianne can visit us any time she wishes."
She was deaf to his words. "I carried them both in my wombs for nine months. Nine months. Wrestled with death bringing them into this world. And you … their own father, my own husband, the man I married for love, the man I thought loved his wife, loved his children … you want to send them both away to strangers. Complete strangers they do not know, where they will be treated who knows how. How can a stranger loves a child like his own mother and father?"
The Norvoshi did not foster their children away. Doran had tried explaining the custom to Mellario time and time again, to no avail. She could not accept it. She would not accept it. She had accepted the hot and spicy Dornish food that burned her tongue and unsettled her stomach, the sun that burned hotter than anything she ever knew in Norvos, even Doran's more reticent behavior once they were back in Dorne very, very grudgingly, but she would not accept or understand fostering. It was a preposterous custom, she had told him over and over again. Children should grow up with their own family, cared for by their own parents, surrounded by their own brothers and sisters.
"Anders Yronwood has sons of his own. Why does he want our Quentyn?"
"I told you, we owe a blood debt to the Yronwoods. And his sons will be sent away to foster with other lords too. That is the way it is here," Doran tried to explain.
She had laughed, a bitter and mocking laugh. "Do you not see how ridiculous it is? He sends his own sons away, while taking in another man's son? Why? Why not keep his own sons with him, and leave our Quentyn be?"
He had not listened to her pleas regarding Quentyn; he could not, no matter how much he wished he could. That was a promise made years and years ago, long before he had met Mellario, and he did not dare break it. After Lord Edgar Yronwood's death, the only thing preventing the Yronwoods from rebelling was Doran sending Oberyn to Oldtown. Exile, even though it was never called that. That, and the promise that Doran's first son would be fostered with House Yronwood. Anders Yronwood would still remember the manner of his grandfather's death, and he would not take it lightly if the promise was broken. House Yronwood was the second most powerful House in Dorne, and they had men enough to wage a long and bloody civil war against the Martells. The Martells would probably win in the end, but not after many lives had been lost. Doran did not want that. He would do almost anything to prevent that.
Mellario had resigned herself to Quentyn's fate in the end. Or so Doran thought, until the night he told her about Arianne. He had pleaded with her, begged her. "Mellario, please, give me the blade. You must not harm yourself. Think of our children!"
She ignored his pleas. "Promise me you will not send Arianne away, or I will plunge this knife into my chest," she whispered softly. It was not an idle threat, Doran knew. Mellario was always at her most determined, and dangerous, when she was the calmest. He almost wished she was screaming at him, looking at him with fury or even hatred. He would have preferred that to the resigned, weary look on her face now. She brought the knife closer to her flesh; he flinched and finally said, "I promise. Arianne will not go anywhere. Now please, give me the knife."
She threw the knife on the floor instead of handing it to him. Sat down on the bed, and started weeping. "How did it come to this? Tell me, Doran. My sweet gallant prince, who shined so bright in red, gold and orange when I first saw him. How did we end up this way?"
He sat down next to her, touched her hand, but she flinched at his touch. He moved his hand away. She slid further away to put more distance between them, as if his flesh next to her was a burden she did not wish to carry. He loved her still, all these years later, even after all the disagreements, all the quarrels. He was less certain of her feelings towards him now. He sighed, a long, weary sigh. "I don't know, my love."
She recoiled hearing him calling her 'my love'. He had not done so in a long while. They sat side by side on the bed for hours, silent, separate, unconnected, isolated from one another. I love you still, he wanted to say, but he could not bear to see her recoil or flinch again.
They were not talking this morning too, watching the children playing in the pools. Mellario had not looked at him even once, her attention completely focused on Quentyn. He was shocked when she asked him a question. "What will happen to the Tyroshi girl? Will you send her home again, to her father, now that Arianne will not be his cupbearer?"
"Her father is content to let her stay here. She has no brother or sister, and very few friends over there. She wrote to her father to say that she is happy to be here, with many friends to keep her company," Doran replied, trying to catch Mellario's eyes. She was avoiding his gaze, staring at Arianne in the pool instead.
"You and her father would get on very well, then. Men who would not miss their children if they are gone," Mellario spat out the words contemptuously.
He was composing the words to counter her assertion, when Arianne suddenly came running towards them. She looked upset, tears pooling in her eyes. "What is it, Arianne?" Doran asked gently. "What happened, my child?"
"I fell and hurt myself," Arianne replied, pointing to her bruised and skinned knees.
Mellario brushed away the hair falling over Arianne's eye with one hand, while her other hand held on to Quentyn. "It doesn't look so bad," Mellario told her daughter. "I will ask the maester to put a poultice on it."
"Won't that hurt more?" Arianne asked, looking anxious.
"Well, you must put up with some pain before it could get better," Mellario said in a matter-of-fact tone. Arianne paled hearing her mother's words. Mellario's expression softened considerably. "It will not be so bad. Ask your father, he will tell you the same thing." She was still not looking at Doran, but it was an olive branch of sort she was extending to her husband. Doran smiled gratefully. He put his hand beneath Arianne's chin and raised her head, so he could look her in the eyes. "Your mother is right. It will only hurt for a little bit, and then you will feel better, and the wound will heal," he said, giving his daughter a smile. He was rewarded with a quick kiss on the cheek.