…
IV.
East Through Andalos
"I am taking this," she told him firmly in their native tongue. "And you are not getting it back."
Alyce pulled the goblet right out of his hand and poured its contents unceremoniously off the balcony. It splattered redly far below them. She then sat next to him in a cushioned chair and put her boots up on the railing.
The dwarf frowned at her. His eyes were already a little unfocused. After his supper with Illyrio, he had taken a large goblet of wine from the table and had come out on a nearby balcony to drink it. He had already been drinking at dinner.
"I was only going to get a little slightly drunk, no more." He sounded dark, as if he were making fun of himself.
"I don't care. We're all leaving on the morrow and you need to have your stomach for the journey."
He sighed. "Your master has you policing me?"
Alyce slammed a fist down on the stone table between them and made the dwarf flinch in shock. "He is not my master. And one would think your own self-respect would keep you from making a bloody drunken arse of yourself."
That seemed to shame him. He brooded on his own thoughts for a time. The setting sun across the water glowed red and the light made Alyce's black hair look shining scarlet, like blood. The dwarf gazed at her lit by that light for a time. Alyce moved her gaze from the shining port to stare unaffectedly back at him. The slanting light highlighted his scars, but it also made his curly dirty-golden hair a deeper, shinier hue. His mismatched eyes each held the remembrance of pain and a touch of weariness. He was drunk. She looked away from him.
"Where were you born?" he asked her.
"Neither of us wish to answer personal questions, Tyrion," she told him gently. She supposed she ought to start using his name. People liked to hear their own names, and she reckoned this creature was overly tired of being "Dwarf."
"I can tell you where I was born. A tower of Casterly Rock in my mother's blood and screams." His voice was still dark and sardonic. His tone was his shield.
"All children are born of blood and screaming."
"Mine involved a bit more blood than usual."
"What was her name?"
"She was the Lady Joanna."
"I'm sorry for you. All dwarves should at the very least have mothers."
He smirked. "Yes, at least one person to love them." He glanced at her. "And your mother? I've answered two things now and you haven't told me anything."
"She was a noblewoman of Dorne. Or a septa. Or a whore. Or Illyrio's dead wife. If you cannot spot truth from lie, what's the point of asking?"
Tyrion leaned back in his chair. "True enough," he admitted. He reached for the goblet Alyce had placed on the tiny table between them and looked disappointed to find only droplets in it. He set it back down.
When the sun slipped below their sight, its light disappeared from the reflective water of the port and it grew chilly.
"I should rest for tomorrow morning," she told him, standing. "Not all of us get to travel in Magister Illyrio's private litter." She had seen it being prepared earlier that day. "Will you accompany me back to the third floor rooms?"
"I would be honored." His tone was hollow; there was no feeling in it and his courtesies were empty. He did not hold out his arm, as the gesture would be absurd, but Alyce slowed her pace to match his short, waddling strides and they walked together through the manse.
"This is your room, I believe," she told him as they found his bedchamber door in the dimming light in the manse.
"So it is."
"Goodnight, Tyrion."
He glanced up at her, slight suspicion in his eyes. Perhaps he thought she was being courteous to make fun of him.
"Goodnight."
They parted.
…
They departed Illyrio's manse by the postern gate and the kennels.
Their procession was a loaded one—a large, purple velvet litter for Illyrio and Tyrion, mules to carry chests, casks, barrels, as well as hampers of delectables to keep Illyrio from growing peckish. There were men and guards on horseback to guide and guard the train. A team of four horses also pulled a now-empty wagon at the tail end.
Alyce was given an extremely fine speckled gray mare with a soft and luxurious saddle. Even with such a good saddle she knew she still might have saddle sores by the end of the trek, but she was grateful for the comfort all the same. She tied her pack up behind her saddle and waited as patiently as possible for the procession to commence out of the city. Tyrion and Illyrio entered the litter that was carried by eight sturdy mules, a servant served them a platter of spiced sausages and a small pitcher of dark smokeberry brown, and they began on their slow way out of the Sunrise Gate to the clop-clopping of ironshod hooves on hard Valyrian road.
Alyce kept fairly close to the litter to hear some of what passed between Tyrion and Illyrio. Whatever the two of them did not eat from their platters or pitches was immediately after offered to her, and so she was fed well. Her horse was calm and dutiful, and the autumn when the sun was out was nice enough to go without a cloak, so she left it draped across her lap. The horsemen mainly kept to themselves, so she was a bit lonely, but what she could catch of her charge's conversation entertained her enough. Tyrion's reputation for cleverness was not undeserved. She found herself enjoying his conversation—his words were never disappointing. She listened closely, thinking about the way he thought, learning him.
What Illyrio had to say of Varys interested her a great deal, as well. She learned quite a bit about Lord Varys' past from listening in. The truth of Illyrio's tales was, as always, questionable, however.
When night fell and they had stopped to allow Illyrio to relieve himself and change teams, Alyce handed off her mare to a horseman and climbed into the wagon with her pack. It was padded to allow Illyrio's household guards who were traveling with them to have a few hours' rest in shifts. One of them joined her in the wagon, and Alyce expected to have to rebuff some attempt at seduction, having grown up in King's Landing where it seemed like a man only spoke to a woman as if they were sheaths for their cocks. The man said nothing to her, however, and went to sleep in the back of the wagon. Either the men of Pentos were more chivalrous or the threat of Illyrio's displeasure was expansively protective.
She at first found it difficult to sleep, but after half an hour she eventually dozed off. She did not awaken fully again until that next morning, and when they stopped next to change teams, she found her new allotted horse with an equally cushioned saddle and rode her beside the litter. She was served breakfast: boiled eggs and roasted larks stuffed with garlic and onion.
In good spirits, she ate happily and watched the scenery pass by. She was certainly seeing more than Tyrion was from the litter in all its luxury. Eventually, however, there came to be nothing to see but ochre fields, bare brown elms, and the road itself stretching straight into their horizon. Alyce drank a few cups of sweet brown ale to warm her and make her head buzz pleasantly.
They changed teams twice that day and there was not much talk between Tyrion and Illyrio as Illyrio slept, but she could tell Tyrion was drinking too much by the way pitchers of wine disappeared. As she rode, Alyce hummed a tune that had always stayed with her.
Once he and Illyrio were awake there was interesting conversation. She learned a little about one of the men they'd be traveling with—named Griff—and about the Golden Company. Pieces, anyway. The wind took some of their words and the velvet muffled others.
When they stopped again to change horses and Illyrio sent for a fresh hamper of food, Tyrion asked how far they had come and Alyce learned they had entered Andalos. Andalos. Had anyone she knew traveled so far east? It was like journeying into the past and into stories and the Seven-Pointed Star.
The men that lived out here were bound to the land, tillers and toilers. There were orchards, farms, mines, and ruins. She listened as Tyrion and Illyrio slept, woke, talked, drank. Illyrio snored. At night, Alyce again passed off her horse, slept with her weapons beneath her bedding so they would not be stolen, and woke to find a new mount the next morning. She ate olives, tarts, and other delicious things as they traveled. Tyrion had drunk too much the night before and Illyrio babied him.
Days passed the same. They eventually left the Flatlands and headed into the Velvet Hills.
"Half the whores in Lannisport have bigger breasts than these hills," commented Tyrion. "They should be called the Velvet Teats." They saw a circle of standing stones that Illyrio claimed had been raised by giants, and later a deep lake. The next evening they came upon a huge Valyrian sphinx crouched beside the road. It had a dragon's body and woman's face.
"A dragon queen," said Tyrion. "A pleasant omen." He smiled up at Alyce who was riding beside his side of the litter.
"Her king is missing." Illyrio pointed out the smooth stone plinth on which the second sphinx once stood, now grown over with moss. "The horselords built wooden wheels beneath him and dragged him back to Vaes Dothrak."
That night, drunker than usual, Tyrion broke into sudden song.
He rode through the streets of the city,
Down from his hill on high,
O'er the wynds and the steps and the cobbles,
He rode to a woman's sigh.
For she was his secret treasure,
She was his shame and his bliss.
And a chain and a keep are nothing,
Compared to a woman's kiss.
…
"What is that tune, my lady?" Tyrion asked her, sticking his head out of the litter's curtain. "It is not one I know."
Illyrio had begun to snore half an hour ago. It was still early afternoon, and the sun was breaking in and out of greyish clouds, thrusting pale yellow down like spears. Tyrion was not as drunk yet as he became later in the evenings.
Alyce shrugged. "A woodworker I knew as a child sang it." She looked out over the low hills. "He was a huge man, and unhappy. He never sang when he worked in his shop, but in the evenings he would whittle at something and he would always sing the song under his breath."
She glanced back at him. "I can sing it, if you'd like, but I'm no minstrel. In fact, I've been told I sing poorly."
Tyrion smiled his misshapen smile. "Anything but the cheesemonger's snores would be most welcome."
She shifted a bit in the saddle and looked out across the hills again. She had no vanities about her voice and so was able to sing in an careless, unaffected manner to the little lord.
"I'm sailing away, my own true love,
I'm sailing away in the morning.
Is there something I can send you from across the sea,
From the place where I'll be landing?
No, there's nothing you can send me, my own true love,
For there's nothing I wish to be owning,
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled
From across that lonesome ocean.
I just thought you might want something fine,
Made of silver or maybe golden,
Either from the mountains of the Marches,
Or from the coast of the Thousand Islands.
If I had the stars from the darkest night,
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean,
I'd forsake them all for your sweet kiss,
For that's all I wish to be owning.
Well I might be gone a long, long time.
It is only that I'm asking,
Is there something I can send you to remember me by,
To make your time more easy passing?
How can, how can you ask me again?
It only brings me sorrow.
The same thing I want from you today
I would want again tomorrow.
Oh, I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from her ship a-sailing
Saying 'I don't know when I'll be coming back again
It depends on how I'm feeling.'
Well, if you, my love, must think that way,
I'm sure your mind is roaming,
I'm sure your heart is not with me,
But with the country to where you're going.
So take heed, take heed of the western wind,
Take heed of the stormy weather,
And yes, there's something you can send back to me:
Mryish boots of Myrish leather ."
Tyrion was frowning at her. "A sad song," he announced, "to be your tune. A sad song for a sad man. Leave it behind and give me Six Maids in a Pool. Now that's a proper tune."
Alyce obliged him with a bit of a laugh and took a great breath to sing out the merrier song.
"Six maids in a pool, of noble blood,
One Fool, but great, on the shore.
He'd seen that flower full of love—
'She'll be in my garden,' he'd sworn…"