The Dragon and the Hawke 10
"Why are we sitting on a rock?" Marian asks, tilting her head backwards to look at Dany, "There have to be more comfortable places than this."
"You are the one sitting on the rock," Dany rolls her eyes at her friend as she stands atop the tallest stone in front of Yunkai. Arrayed around her were her captains and advisors, and before them was a line of her Unsullied, and behind her was the rest of her army. Marian was the only one sitting on the rock.
They had been waiting in front of Yunkai for an hour before Marian asked her question, and it was an hour more before Dany began to dishearten. She had freed the slaves of the city, but they did not come out. They could be afraid? They could have been content? Why did they not come out?
"They will come, your Grace," Ser Barristan tells her, seeing her distress, "In their own time."
"Maybe they didn't want to be conquered," Dany thinks aloud
"You didn't conquer them," Ser Jorah shakes his head, "You liberated them!"
Dany is not consoled, though, thinking of her time with Drogo and Viserys before that, "People learn to love their chains."
But then, the doors to the city are opened. Dany stares, a small smile creepy across her face as she watches the former slaves of Yunkai move towards her. The stream of people does not even begin to abate before the crowd reaches Dany and her entourage.
There is a moment as they reach that the slaves stop almost in unison only five feet from the line of unsullied. The reason for their stop is clear to Dany and her advisors; the unsullied had lowered their spears to point at the advancing slaves.
Seeing this, Marian hops off of her seat on the rock and walks up to the line. She taps the nearest Unsullied and tells him, "It's alright."
The man nods nearly imperceptibly and raises his spear once more, the other unsullied follow suit. Marian smiles at the thousands upon thousands of people mobbed together, and those who see her smile back happily.
As Marian is stopping the spear point, Missandei starts to monologue about the greatness that is Daenerys Targaryen to the freed slaves. As she reaches the climax of her monologue, about how they owe her their freedom, Dany stops her.
Looking across the crowd, she begins to make her own speech, this one about how the slaves all deserved to free themselves, how they should not look to her to free them. The speech is loud, and stirring, and hits on every point that she wanted to get across to the people she had freed.
Marian smiled at her friend, happy that her and Missandei seemed to have come up with some sort of gameplan about how they should speechify the locals. Though she didn't understand a lick of what was being said, she liked the looks of the former slaves that had managed to reach the front.
They were smiling, and their smiles were getting wider and wider, until then dropped them and more contemplative looks to their place as Dany finished her speech. Marian watched them, curious to see what they were thinking.
It only took a minute, and then from the middle of the crowd, "Mhysa!"
The call was joined by another, then another, then another. Until every freed slave of Yunkai was crying out to Dany, and reaching towards her. Marian looked back at her friend, curious to see her reaction to this incredibly positive if unintelligible response.
Dany, for her part, asks Missandei what the word meant, and the multilingual woman smiles at her and tells her,"It is old Ghiscari, Khaleesi. It means Mother."
Dany's eyes widen, and her eyebrows fly up as she looks at the freed slaves in a new light. She watches as they try to get closer to her, but are stopped by the Unsullied as her soldiers again lower their spears.
She does not want that though, and she steps down from her high perch towards her new people. She walks to her line of Unsullied and tells them to raise their spears as she passes them. She walks through the slaves, smiling at every face she sees.
They reach out to touch her, their symbol of the new lives they would live under her rule. Better lives, they hoped, but never again in chains. Those that can reach her, slide their hands over her and she does not move away for any reason but to reach more of them. Eventually, the Khaleesi is in the middle of their crowd and they close in on her.
Jorah and Barristan tense and Daario narrows his eyes, but Marian and the former slaves Missandei and Grey Worm are not worried. The former slaves of Astapor see the Yunish and know the love that those men feel for the queen is as they feel it. Marian for her part, couldn't see Dany getting mobbed, having been surrounded and gang hugged herself.
The people hugging her are calling something else, not 'Mhysa,' but a longer and more complicated word that Marian has no hope of understanding. Before she can try and call out to Missandei for a translation, though, she is lifted off her feet, and onto the shoulders of two burly ex slaves with a whoop and a laugh.
Looking around from her new vantage, she sees Dany getting the same treatment. Except with the slaves around Dany, they are all reaching towards her and she is running her fingers along theirs. The slaves around Marian have thrust their hands into the air to call her apparent new title. Turning her torso, she sees Missandei and calls out, "What are they calling me?"
Missandei listens for a second before blushing. After a few seconds she calls out, "They have named you Thunderbride!"
"Why are you blushing!?" Marian calls back
"I am making the title nice!" She calls to her
"Oh! What is it really!?"
"Louder as thunder Master's bed slave!"
"Why doesn't it sound that long when they shout it!?"
"Loud as Thunder and Master's Bed Slave are both a single word"
"Oh!" Marian smiles and splays her arms, lighting cackling in both fists, "That's right mother fuckers! Look out for Thunderbride!"
The slaves roar in approval at seeing the same magic that ended the wise masters playing in the hands of the Magical woman who belongs to the queen. They continued to shout in support of Dany's consort as Dany herself was being carried through the crowd so that everyone may at least stroke her hand.
It took hours before the pair of them were let down, and hours more before they moved into the city and took up residence in a mansion that Marian had already happily looted. It was dark as Dany, Marian, and Missandei all moved into Dany's chambers to relax.
"It appears that the people believe that you two are lovers," Missandei tells Dany now that they are alone without prying eyes and ears.
Dany and Marian's eyes both widen and they demand as one, "What?"
"They saw the liberties that she has within your ranks, and now they believe that she is your consort to have deserved those liberties."
"Oh," Dany frowns, "How do we dissuade them of this belief?"
"Yeah! Much as I love Dany, if I ever try and date anyone and they think she's an ex, they'd just be loathing it!"
"I would suggest you both take independent consorts," Missandei shrugs
"What, like a fuck buddy?" Marian frowns, "I don't like things casual, Isabella was everything I needed to ever learn when it came to just sex, and I did not like that one bit."
Missandei shrugs, "Taking others into separate beds will deal with the rumors the quickest.
"Well I do not plan on entering any form of relationship for a very long time," Dany, too, frowns, "I will not become second to any other again."
Marian and Dany look at each other awkwardly, then Marian shrugs, "Ah well, so I'm your consort! Could be worse."
"How?" Dany asks
"Barristan could be your consort!"
That got all three laughing.