9. Masquerade
"I think you are mistaken," said Dany to the woman in the red lacquered mask-Quaithe, her name was, and she claimed to be a priestess from Asshai.
They were all gathered around the campfire, the three travelers breaking their fast though it was not near dawn. Dany would have liked a goblet of the wine they offered, but when Jorah, who was seated very close to her, his hand protectively at her back, refused, she remembered how his wariness had protected her from the assassin's poison before and settled for water.
"I am the mother of this child," she went on, indicating with a tilt of her head where Rhaego suckled modestly inside the cloth sling tied about her, "but I know nothing of dragons."
Except for the dragon's eggs hidden beneath Rhaego, she thought. The eyes peering out from the slits in Quaithe's wooden mask seemed to burn through the cloth. Dany tried to convince herself that it was only her anxiety talking, the remnant of the dream she'd woken from at almost the same moment as these three arrived, of dark strangers carrying off her dragons-or children, she couldn't remember which it was now. The timing of their arrival boded ill, but unlike in her dream, their skin was pale as milk, and she remembered she'd heard the Dothraki speak of "milk men" of the east. At least, the men were fair; gods only knew what aspect the woman's red lacquered mask covered. Dany shuddered at the possibilities. But the three hailed from the port city of Qarth, of which Jorah had never heard, and had watched the comet since it appeared on the morn of Rhaego's birth and finally concurred to follow it wherever it led, which was here. Dany was inclined to believe that must be a good omen.
Of course, she thought, wrapping her arms more securely around Rhaego at her breast, fair could be foul, and there were those who had no scruples about the lives of babes in arms. Robert the Usurper had slain her brother Rheagar's children, and would have murdered her child as well, if not for Ser Jorah. And of course the kos had intended to take Rhaegar the moment he slid from her womb and throw the helpless babe to the dogs. So Dany followed her knight's suspicious lead and proceeded with caution, revealing enough that she might solicit help from the travelers from Qarth without placing herself in harm's way should they not prove trustworthy.
"We are refugees from a Dothraki khalasar, you see," she told them. "My husband and I."
Jorah's fingers tightened where they rested at her waist, and Dany was herself surprised by this lie that fell so easily from her own lips. But it made her feel safe, somehow. If she couldn't reveal herself to be a queen under the protection of her knight, she could at least present a picture of a woman in the company of a man with a vested interest in her well-being. She allowed herself to lean back a little against him, tucking her head beneath his chin, and she didn't mind when Jorah's hand relaxed and slid down to rest on her hip, his fingers tracing gentle circles on the skin bared between vest and skirt.
"Which khalasar?" asked Pyat Pree, the man who had greeted them in Dothraki, whom the light revealed to have strikingly blue lips which made his fair skin seem ghastly white. Now he spoke in the Common Tongue. "Who was khal?"
Dany opened her mouth to answer, but Jorah's deep voice rumbled against her back before she could. "Once it was forty thousand horses strong. Then the great Khal Drogo fell, and his kos battled for dominance. Dany and I fled during the ensuing chaos."
At first she was annoyed at him for speaking for her-and for his use of the diminutive of her name, though she had introduced herself thus to the travelers-but then it occurred to her that if she was to convincingly play the role of a married woman, she must defer to her "husband." Perhaps this hadn't been such a well-thought plan after all.
She noted Xaro Xhoan Daxos, the other man, bald and wearing jewels in his pierced nose, watching them through shrewdly narrowed eyes, his disinterest in them poorly feigned.
"And the child," Pree persisted, "it is yours?"
"I bore him here," Dany answered, for Pree had addressed her, and matters pertaining to childbirth were certainly within her domain, even if she was acting the deferential wife.
Pree's eyes flicked to Jorah. "But not yours."
Jorah tensed at her back, but said nothing, so Dany touched his knee lightly and took that question upon herself, as well. "The child's father is Dothraki."
"Dothraki breed bastards with their slaves as they breed horses," said Pree with a snort, lifting his wine goblet to his blue lips.
The same indignation that had come over Dany in Lhazar, when she'd seen the kos raping the Lamb Women, gripped her now at this slur against the ways of the people who had been her people-and, by extension, against her husband. Apparently Jorah sensed her ire, because his arm around her flexed, holding her back-for she'd sat up, and squared her shoulders, preparing to stand and give them away by unleashing her hot rage, which caused Rhaego in his sling to lose his hold on her nipple; he frantically rooted to find it again.
And anyway, she reflected as she swallowed a drink of water, it was true enough that the Dothraki used their slaves for pleasure as often as for any other service. And she was a fool if she thought her beloved Drogo had amassed a khalasar of forty thousand horses without being as merciless as those who fell under his power than any of his kos. You can't claim them all, Khaleesi, Jorah had cautioned her as she'd done what she could to alleviate the suffering of the conquered Lhazareen. She'd denied it then, but began to see the truth of it now. How long would Drogo have tolerated her compassionate interferences, which had sowed the very seeds of contempt that led to even her dearest ones turning their backs on her? He might have conquered Westeros for their son, but he never would have allowed her to rule his khalasar.
She sank back against Jorah once more, her posture as defeated as a former captive's should be, and became aware of Rhaego's frustrated cries. She guided him back to her breast, and when he was suckling hungrily once more, she said, "But they don't throw newborn colts to the dogs that follow the horde."
"The gods have been kind to spare you," said Daxos, who had been silent up until this point but for his introduction of himself. His eyes glinted in the fire like the jewels in his nose. "I wonder, to what purpose? It would seem they delivered you from your captors only to strand you here."
"If they were stranded," Pree said, his lips curving in a smile that seemed genuine enough, but which Dany could not bring herself to trust because of the unnatural color, "they are no longer. We three of course have with us additional camels. I am certain my companions welcome you to travel with us back to Qarth, where you may find passage back to the land from which the Dothraki have torn you."
"Your offer is very kind-" Dany began, but a squeeze of Jorah's fingers reminded her that she ought to leave the talking to him.
"As you can imagine," Jorah said, "we fled with little but the clothes on our backs-"
"And the sword you had in hand when you met us?" Daxos said.
"-and no way to repay your generosity."
"That is well," said Pyat Pree, "for my priestess friend Quaithe believes in money no more than do the Dothraki, Daxos here is a merchant prince, and has no need of it, and I-I seek the payment for kindness which only the gods can give."
Dany craned her neck to look up at Jorah, shooting him a warning look not to commit to anything without first conferring with her. His gaze did not so much as flicker to hers, but Dany let out a slow breath of relief to hear him say, "Of course my lords and lady of Qarth will understand that I would deliberate on your offer."
"But of course." Pree drained his wine goblet, then uncrossed his legs and stood and stretched his lithe body in a single fluid motion. "My friends," he said to his companions, and Dany noted the weight he gave to the word, and the twitch it evoked from Daxos' bejeweled nose, "we have kept these weary parents too long from their sleep."
"No, stay," Dany blurted out, the sense of urgency with which she had awoken from her troubled dream returning in full force at the notion of being expected to rest under the watchful eyes of these three-particularly the pair that peered from behind the silent woman's mask, which Dany still sensed would see the dragon's eggs beneath the now sleeping Rhaego if only she looked long and hard enough. "I am too awake now. I would walk."
Jorah's hand trailed lightly up her back as he stood, then he reached down to help her to her feet. He kept hold of her hand as he guided her back along their earlier path to the temple. It was for the sake of their masquerade, Dany knew, but she nonetheless found herself comparing it to the other times when a man had held her hand. She couldn't recall Drogo ever doing so, which made her sad, though she remembered Viserys grasping her roughly by the wrist and dragging her through streets of the Free Cities crowded with beggars and cutpurses. She'd felt like an animal on a leash, where Jorah's large fingers wove between her slender ones, giving her hand a gentle squeeze every now and then which reassured her more loudly than any words he could have spoken that she had both his protection and his respect; that once they had their privacy, they would return to their rightful roles of queen and knight, and he would hear her and advise according to whatever lay in her best interest, but defer the authority granted her by her station.
They slipped through a side entrance to the temple, but did not speak until Jorah had barred the door and checked that the others were locked, as well, though it seemed a futile gesture considering how most of the windows that lined the place had been smashed by the Dothraki when they stripped the temple of its idols and other treasures. Still, the lead that once contained the panes remained, giving them the illusion of privacy, and at least they had the advantage of being able to see if anyone was spying on them.
Though the windows let in enough of the wan predawn light for her counsel with Ser Jorah, Dany went to the altar and lit the braziers. She lifted Rhaego from the sling where he'd lain atop the eggs like a young dragon guarding his unhatched brothers in their mother's nest. Then, giving the babe to Jorah to hold, she set about her ritual of placing her eggs in the niches in the old wood that had once held the likenesses of gods but seemed made to hold her dragon's eggs beneath the watchful eye of the red comet-shierak qiya, Pyat Pree had called it, the Bleeding Star.
In spite of her mistrust of them, Dany was intrigued by the words the priestess Quaithe had spoken, of the comet heralding her as the Mother of Dragons. What could that mean? Dany ran her hands over the hard, rounded shapes of the eggs as she had run her hands over her own belly, as though searching for the stir of life within.
"If it please Your Grace," Ser Jorah's voice broke into her musings, "we may have but little time to discuss our plans before our visitors become curious as to what we do here."
"Perhaps they think we keep tryst," Dany quipped, but her cheeks burned when she glanced over her shoulder at Jorah and met eyes that spoke his wish that this were true. She quickly turned away again, lifting her gaze up to the comet. "You don't trust them."
"No. I don't. After your own people turned their backs on you, and the Lhazareen woman who owed you her life betrayed you by taking Khal Drogo's, I am disinclined to trust anyone. Least of all those who read meaning into the patterns of stars. Yet…"
"We have no choice but to go with them," said Dany, a little more tersely than her knight's tone had warranted; he was merely cautious, she knew, but his disdain of those who believed in signs and wonders made her feel mortified, childish, in regard to her thoughts about the comet's relation to her child or her dragon's eggs or her crown. Or all three.
"For days we've talked of little but that we cannot linger forever in this dead city," she went on, "nor can we cross the Red Waste with any certainty of our lives. Perhaps these three will carry us into peril, but no more than we certainly face in Vaes Tolorro or in the dessert, and perhaps, if we are lucky, even less. It is a risk I think we must take."
"That is my thought, as well, my queen," Jorah replied, and his agreement made Dany forgive him for his unknowing slight. "And if it came to a fight, I have no fear of Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Pyat Pree or the priestess of Asshai."
Dany smiled as she drew nearer to where he leaned back against the fallen rail of an altar and held out her arms to reach for her son. "I have the utmost confidence that the noble knight who slew my two fearsome khas can protect me from any foe."
Jorah inclined his head in acceptance of her compliment, but looked troubled as he rubbed his hand across his stubbled jaw. "My concern is more for what we shall do upon reaching Qarth. We not only have no means of repaying our rescuers, but no money for lodging, or passage elsewhere."
To Dany, who had gone through her whole life without money, this was a less troubling prospect. "We might send word to my old friend Illyrio in Pentos. He would never withhold aid from me, should I ask for it."
Jorah's gaze flickered from hers, and when he spoke, his tone was measured, careful, which she couldn't understand. "We'll still require food and lodging in the meantime. I could sell my horse, but I would be loath to part with such a fine animal-"
"Indeed, you must not. A knight is no more knight without a horse than without a sword." She added, her voice dropping as a lump formed in her throat. "And he was a gift to you from Khal Drogo, for saving my life."
She held Rhaego more tightly and kissed his head, blinking back tears at the thought of parting with one more tangible tie to her husband-or the reminder of what her faithful knight had done for her.
"What about your sword?" Dany asked. "Or the service of it?"
Jorah looked for a moment as if she had struck him, and then a dark look crossed his features.
"How would my sword serve you, Your Grace, if I lease it into the employ of others?"
At first Dany didn't understand why he would find this suggestion so deeply offensive, but then she
remembered that he had been a sellsword, before, to support his wife Lynesse before she left him. It must have humiliated him.
"Have we nothing else of enough value to put a roof over our heads or fill our stomachs for a little while?" she asked.
"We did joke once about my midwifery skills," Jorah said, but he looked her direct in the eye, clearly not of a mood for jests. "You have something, Daenerys. Something of great value."
The suggestion made her breathless, and she found herself moving instinctively toward her dragon's eggs. Jorah couldn't be serious. He wasn't thinking, it was his wounded pride talking, lashing back at her for throwing the indignities of his exiled life in his face. Which, though understandable, would never do.
Drawing herself up to full height-which, admittedly, was rather insignificant in the company of Ser Jorah, she said, "I could no more sell one of my dragon's eggs than I could sell Rhaego. We have taken our journey in steps thus far, and the gods have watched over us and provided in their time. We shall go to Qarth, and see how our path unfolds before us. It may be that our traveling companions prove worthy of having the truth of our story."
"Until then," Jorah said, pushing off the altar railing and stepping toward her, "we are refugees of Dothraki captors. Husband and wife…"
He stood close now-so close that Dany had to tilt her head back to look up at him, so close that she felt the brush of his boots against her skirt. Nearer, perhaps, than was proper, or necessary, but it didn't make her uncomfortable enough to draw back, as his hand went up to caress Rhaegar's head where it rested against her shoulder.
Then his fingers uncurled to graze her bare arm, and his other hand found its way to her waist, settling on the curve where her hipbone had been once again revealed by her shrinking belly. Dany's heart began to beat faster with anticipation; before she could move or rebuke him or even think what was happening, he said, "I suppose we'd better act the part," and bent to kiss her.
At first her mouth parted in a tiny O of astonishment at his boldness, at his breech of the tenuous boundary that had separated them since he declared his love. Then she noticed how soft his lips were, and how sweet-he tasted of the peaches they'd eaten for breakfast, mingled with the tang of sweat and masculinity, the latter which Dany hungered for most of all-and she found that she was the one grown bold, sweeping his lips more fully open with her tongue, the better to taste him. Jorah's sharp indrawn breath of surprise was immediately followed by a low sound of pleasure in his throat. He deepened his kiss in turn, his hand drifting up from Dany's arm to cup her chin in his roughened but gentle palm, his long fingers weaving themselves into her hair where her braid began at the nape of her neck.
He shouldn't be doing this, Dany thought. She certainly shouldn't allow him to continue, let alone encourage him to do so. But she didn't want to stop him. She liked Jorah's kisses, liked the lovely physical sensations they stirred within her, and most of all she liked the way they made her feel cherished and adored-like a queen, as she had felt the night she ate the heart and bathed in the Womb of the World and Drogo had her outside beneath the stars and before the khalasar. She hadn't thought she wanted Jorah's love, but if it made her feel this, when for so long now she'd felt nothing like a queen, perhaps she needed it. And she wasn't content to simply be touched as they prolonged their kiss; she wanted to return his caresses, to let his beard scratch her fingers, to press herself against his strong chest and feel whether his heart beat at the same frantic, unmeasured pace as her own.
But she could do neither. For, as soon as she began to move to do so, she remembered her arms were occupied, their bodies separated by the sleeping form of her son between them.
Drogo's son.
In spite of this realization, she did not break the kiss abruptly, but closed her lips together and pressed them to Jorah's. He responded to her signal in kind, kissing her one, twice, thrise more, each kiss more delicate than the one that came before, though to no less effect than when their lips and tongues had glided together more passionately, until at last nothing touched them but the warmth of his breath. Even then he bent over her for a moment longer, his forehead resting against hers, his hand that had cupped her cheek now grasping her hand as it rested on Rhaego's back. Dany had to close her eyes against a powerful swell of emotion, and she couldn't help but wish that it was Drogo's hand that held hers, Drogo's love that had calmed and given her confidence about the decisions she had just made about her course of action, Drogo who would be at her side as she pursued it.
But then a voice in the back of her mind whispered doubt that such a great khal as her lord husband would have given himself over to such a tender moment at all. She opened her eyes, intending to look on the face of her knight of Westeros to see if there was anything written upon it of what made him so different from her Drogo.
As she did, a dark shape caught the corner of her eye, and she whirled around, scanning the row of windows to her side for a glimpse of whatever-or whomever-she had seen.
"What is it?" Ser Jorah's voice was accompanied by the scrape of his sword sliding from its scabbard as he stepped around her, putting himself between her and any threat, real or imagined.
"Nothing. Only a shadow, or a trick of the light."
Truly, she'd seen naught at all, even before the knight stood in her way, but that did little to lower Jorah's guard, once raised, or to put Dany's mind at ease. She comforted herself with the thought that if anyone had been spying on them, they would have seen nothing but a passionate moment shared by a man and woman, which could only lend credence to the story they'd spun to protect themselves.
As they exited the temple, eggs and child riding in her sling again, Dany found herself reaching for Jorah's hand, as much to reassure herself of the protection he gave her by virtue of being her knight, as to appear as husband and wife to the three from Qarth. When she looked up at Jorah, she saw that though his eyes flicked to and fro, scanning for anything untoward, the corner of his mouth quirked upward in a cautious smile that could only mean he was pleased to hold her hand in his.
"Only acting the part," Dany said, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. The gesture was meant to remind him to have a care, that a few kisses didn't mean she returned his feelings-but instead it had rather the opposite effect.
Ser Jorah Mormont gave a rare, wide smile.
And Dany blushed as she wondered if she'd been a little hasty in thinking him unhandsome.
