Dahlia - Upright and Unbending
It is said when Naamah gave herself to the King Persis to earn Blessed Elua his freedom, she approached the King of Persis with the regal bearing of a queen, and her bearing caused him to treat her as an equal, the only person capable of understanding his desires.
"How your heart must be breaking," Bellegere murmurs. She calls herself The Black Pearl, as her mother and her mother's mother did before her, but baser blood has diluted the pure ebon of the first Pearl's complexion. This one, a pale rendition of those before her, is more brown than black.
"A heart can break in but one way," Daenerys says, "and mine has not." She might have been lichen on the wall for all the notice Bellegere took of her.
"I know mine would, to be placed in your situation. The shame of being paraded on the barbarian's arm like some spoil of war would kill me before I lay beneath him." Bellegere frowns in concentration. "Or no, not beneath him. I remember now, the horselords fuck their women as a dog mounts a bitch - from behind."
"Lewdness does not become an adept of Dahlia House," Daenerys reminds her, a touch of asperity in her voice. That should be left to Jasmine House.
"Growing up we are taught that to be coarse or crude is the greatest of sins but look at you," Bellegere says coolly. "You shame your house by bedding with a savage from the grasslands and for what? Is the luster of gold grown so bright that a daughter of House Targaryen should sell her maidenhead for it?"
It was not a daughter who decided, but a son. "The Dowayne raised no objections. It is not your place to do so now." She tries to make her voice cold and hard but it is an exercise in futility. She has been bred to Dahlia House from childhood, she is a princess born but the hauteur that comes so naturally to the other adepts she has grown up, to her own brother has never come to her.
Bellegere laughs as though at the feeble mewing of a kitten. "Your brother claims your bloodline to be rich and storied," she says, with a toss of her raven's wing hair. "Across the water, you were a princess born. But you were not born to the Thirteen Houses, not as I was. The Dowayne will never see you as she sees me. There is only one part of you that interests her and that's the purse between your legs."
She stands with her hands on her hips, gemstones winking in the coronet of hair piled high on her head, her golden gown as soft and luminous as candlelight. A fine gown, but Daenerys' - a gift from the khal - is finer. Bellegere stands in all her glory but the truth comes to Daenerys in a flash and she laughs incredulously. "You're jealous," she says, marveling at the sweet simplicity of it. Even pearls can crack and the dark flush spreading across Bellegere's cheeks confirms her guess. "You're jealous that my maidenhead was bid for and won at a higher price than yours."
In the Night Court where such matters are minutely inspected, intimately measured such a thing must have been a source of great shame. Bellegere will have heard the whispered taunts, the breathless laughter of fickle friends and rivals whenever she sweeps into a salon for months.
"I have my pride," Bellegere hisses. "I would rather die than be fondled by a stinking savage."
"A stinking savage," Daenerys repeats. "Do you know, Bellegere, I have been studying the Dothraki for the past few months, so that I might make myself more pleasing to the khal. I have studied their customs so that I might not unknowingly give offense, their language so that I might better give service and their history for pure pleasure." The Dowayne had approved when it came to her notice. Beauty always fades but some are given the gift of grace. And what is grace but wisdom distilled, the fragrance of the dying flower?
"What, do they have any history to speak of?"
"Their warriors braid bells into their hair after a victory. After a defeat, they cut their hair so that all might know of their shame. You might call the practice unsubtle but I feel that it drives home a point." She pauses. "You must see Khal Drogo's hair at Lord Rousse's ball tonight. It is quite magnificent."
Viserys escorts her to the ball that night. "You look well, brother," she tells him and he does. His silver hair is drawn back from his face, highlighting his high cheekbones and the sharp angles of his face, reducing his thin face almost to gauntness. Few men would have dared attempt it but it only serves to emphasize the severe beauty of his face. "Is the tunic a gift of Lady Novrelle's? It is exquisite." And it is, the soft violet tints bleeding into eachother a match for his fever-bright lavender eyes.
He glares at her and she knows she has misspoken. He does not like to be reminded that all his grandeur, from his silken tunic to the sword at his hip, the chariot they ride in and the six white stallions with purple plumes in their manes, are all gifts from his mistress. For all his pride, he is still a kept man. "Forgive me, I-"
He does not wait to hear her poor, shambling excuses. He grabs her arms, his fingers squeezing like iron bands. "You will not misspeak before the khal tonight. If you do, I swear they will be the last words you speak." He brings her face so close to hers that she can smell the sour wine on his breath. "You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"
"No," she whispers feebly. She might have imagined herself a dragon when she spoke to Bellegere and brought her low but Viserys reminds her once again of who and what she is.
"A whore," he says, "I sold you when you were a child and it is time I was given what was mine." In Terre D'Ange to serve in the Thirteen Houses is a signal honor, but across the waters (as Viserys never fails to remind her) she would be the lowest of the low. Once she had dared to ask him if she was such a humiliation to him, why had he sold her to Dahlia House in the first place? That had been wrong of her. She had woken the dragon and for days she had to powder the bruises and bite marks on her body. The Dowayne must never know.
He examines her critically. "You should have been bedded years ago, when you first began to bleed. But the D'Angelines have the queerest customs, sixteen years and still a maid." In the darkness of the coach his hands slip under her low cut gown and find her breasts. He squeezes them as he has ever since they first began to bud, to remind her of her place as a whore he says. "But accomplished, I expect. Make the khal love you, sweet sister, and perhaps I will too."
She bats away the tears that tremble in her eyes, wondering how the Dowayne ever accepted her into Dahlia House. My bloodline is a proud one, but I never was. By the time they have been announced into the ballroom, she is bright and smiling again. She catches a glimpse of herself as they pass the mirror in the foyer and thinks she does Viserys credit. I am beautiful and I have been trained in the arts of love, she thinks wildly, he must love me, surely he must.
There is no mistaking the khal. The guests sway in silks and satins in pastel and watercolor shades, like pale wraiths in a painting, but he is not one to blend in, he was made to stand out. She smiles, thinking what Lady Rousse must make of him in his painted leather vest and sandsilk trousers. He is so fierce, so out-of-place and yet magnificent that Viserys stifles a laugh and looks around for the outraged lady of the manse. The khal's sleek oiled hair reaches to his buttocks, when unbound it will be a river of darkness. The thought makes her shiver, for tonight she shall have the honor of unbinding it - a dubious honor that she does only for duty, for her brother's love. Surely he must love me.
No doubt her ladyship will complain to her husband that he has quite spoiled her picturesque soiree and her husband will hem and haw but in the end, what can they do? The D'Angelines throw open their manses and their cities whenever the Dothraki pass by on their way to the slavers' markets in the east, as they do every few years - out of sheer laziness, Daenerys sometimes thinks. Balls come cheaper than battles.
"Khal Drogo," she says, stepping out to greet him. She curtseys deeply to him, as she would a visiting royal, and comes up smiling. "You look magnificent." These are simple words and she repeats them in her slow, halting Dothraki. The words are not beautiful, not melodic as becomes an adept of the Night Court but his flat, onyx eyes seem to spark with interest when she speaks them in his tongue.
Briskly he shoots off a question. "I am sorry," she falters, "I have only a few words..." She flushes. If he were a regular patron, she might ask him to dance to put them both at their ease but Dothraki men do not dance. Their women do, to entice lovers. She realizes that they have nothing in common and so she sits quietly at his side.
A man and a maid do not need to talk, she thinks. But it would be sweeter to come to a bed knowing the man she would be sharing it with. She has practiced the arts of love since she began to bleed, but practicing is not the same as a performance. She sips from a flute of tart white wine, fighting a rising wave of panic. Smile, hold your head high, be proud, be regal. You will not shame yourself, your house and your brother. He bought you for a night so that he might know what it was like to lie with a virgin princess, so that your status might add to his own. Do not disappoint him.
But she has never felt so unregal, so childlike in her life.
"Dance?" he says, the accent so rough and guttural that she has to ask him to repeat the word before she understands.
"Do you speak D'Angeline?" she asks and he shakes his head. So he has only a few words, the same as she. It touches her more than she can say - which as well, for she would never know how to say them to him.
"Yes," she whispers and her smile is genuine now, not a gaudy show for the sharp-eyed spectators. "Yes, I will be honored to dance with you."