Author's Note:

Hello everyone! I just got a new job and have to move my life to a new apartment across the state, so updates might come a little more slowly and more sporadically in the next few months. Apologies in advance! With love,

& Thank you & as always, enjoy!

…

IX.

Chains of Gold

The wall and floor were not the most comfortable place to wait on a queen's pleasure, but Alyce fell asleep against the wall anyhow.

She woke when one of the guards gently nudged her with a boot.

"Imoa kijakthi," he said quietly in Meereenese, "it is very late."

"Is it quiet from her room?" he asked sleepily. She straightened her clothes as she stood.

"Yes. For a while now."

"Will you let me in, please? I'll share her bed for a bit tonight."

The guard glanced at the few knives she had at her belt but it did not stop him from opening the door for her. Alyce slipped inside. She waited a moment for her nightvision to grow sharper. Daario slept on the bed, bedclothes tangled in and out of his legs. Dany was standing on her balcony, sleepless, as she did so many nights.

Quiet as a cat, Alyce slipped through the room, but intentionally let her footfalls make soft sounds on the balcony floor as she walked to the queen. Dany turned and her face softened when she saw her. She turned away, back to the city, and wordlessly Alyce put arms around her from behind.

"I thought you might not be able to sleep," she murmured. Dany relaxed against her. The little queen's body was small and soft, such contrast to Alyce's hard planes and angles. "Enough thinking for tonight."

"Alyce: tell me. Am I making the right choice?" she asked very softly.

"Trust yourself," Alyce whispered. "Now look at me."

The girl turned and Alyce took her face in her hands and began to rub her fingers at points of stress. "At night, not even a queen needs to think. At night, a queen needn't be a queen. Come sleep. I will hold you."

She led her back to the bed, and, opposite of the sleeping sellsword, pulled her against her chest. She stroked her gossamer hair.

"In Braavos of a Hundred Isles, it is often misty, but they have a superstition that on clear nights, unwitting sailors can find themselves sailing on a river of the sky and be caught there, forever to weave in and out of the white, glassy stars," she murmured to her. "They say the night sky is like a sea of dew, black like a pool of water at midnight. The stars are great shards of glassy ice floating in this perfectly still sea, and if you watch the sky long enough, you can see a few streaks of ripples the ships sometimes make up there…"

…

Tyrion Lannister had slept so soundly the night before that his usual fitful sleeplessness caught him a bit by surprise.

He tossed in a bed that felt far too large for him in the blackness of the bedchamber. As he balled himself up, turning into his side, he realized the restless void within him had a name.

Alyce.

Without her, the fitful wheels of his mind turned without rest or sanctuary. He thought of his brother, his sister, and his father. He thought of the plots of Varys the Spider and of the Mad King Aerys. The black throats of Joffrey and Shae. Jon Connington and his purple-eyed princeling.

He turned over onto his stomach and tried to focus his thinking on the pleasures of the day. Its lazy morning in bed…the intent, violet eyes of the clever young queen…Alyce stripping naked and stepping into the pool…the face she made when swept up in release.

His cock stirred and tightened slightly but did not demand attention. He was still well sated from earlier. This afternoon and evening, he and Alyce had made love twice and given pleasure with mouths and hands after that. Not since he had been younger and he had spent days not leaving brothels had there been so much pleasure in such quick succession. Yet somehow this fulfilment went deeper—drove more sharply into his soul.

Everything was different now.

It had changed when her mouth had met his in Yezzan's tent, and his heart had been wrenched up with the force of autumn storm at sea. His heart of its own volition had given itself up in full, absurd surrender. All his plans for himself had changed. All his priorities had yielded to what now came before any other. All his hate and bitterness had cooled like doused coals, and a new fire had roared into existence at his center, life-giving and bright as a forge.

That she would come back… That she would hunt for him… That she would pull him to her body like something precious. That such a woman would…

Alyce was no doe of her father's house of stags. Her fierceness was that of a mountain cat. Her tongue was barbed as a spear, her fingers quick and deadly, and her hidden sweetness a thousand times more precious for it.

If for her happiness she needed the stars to turn in a different direction, he would do everything in his power to make it so. If she was harmed, he would destroy the one responsible. And if she left him, he would be as pathetic as Mormont over Daenerys, searching for her in whores and cursed to remain unsatisfied by anything and everyone else.

Everything is different now.

Tyrion turned on his side, the thin sheet pulled to his chin and tried to find a few hours of sleep.

He woke as the bed creaked behind him. He started, and made to turn, but warm arms were already encircling him beneath the bedsheet, and he relaxed like a wave was washing out of his skin.

Alyce pressed her soft mouth against the back of his head and held him against her, his back curled against her front, her body surrounding his. There was something so comforting in the feeling, and in the scent of her, that Tyrion felt his muscles melting. She brushed back some of his hair away from the side of his face and toward her and his eyes closed at the touch. I love you, he wanted to murmur. Gods help me, but I love you so.

She stroked his hair again and he felt sleepiness and contentment trickling through him from his fingertips toward his head, where it pooled heavy and blissfully deep. She nuzzled her head against the back of his, sighing, and held him close in the darkness.

Tyrion wanted to stay awake to linger in these moments and commit them to his memory for always, but sleep reached for him with gentle fingers that could not be turned askance, and he sank into thoughtlessness in her arms.

…

"It's not fair to play with me when I don't know anything about the game. You have an entirely unfair advantage."

Alyce was protesting to continuing playing him at cyvasse only because her pride hated losing to him, but Tyrion Lannister knew better than to say so.

The board was spread across their blankets on the bed and Alyce lay naked on her side across the board from him. She was too cautious a player and never made enough offensive moves; she also was not as clear as she should have been on the rules, despite him patiently explaining certain ones multiple times.

"It's too complicated a game," she complained. "The two of us would be more evenly matched at cards. I could teach you games I doubt you know that I picked up in the Company—then you'd be the one struggling like this."

"You have too much pride, sweetling," he said mildly. "You won't become any good at things you give up on."

"Oh, easy for you to say, you great arrogant master of everything."

He smirked. She was sore over her loses and it was petulant and adorable. He felt suddenly like making love to her again.

"Then instead let us play something at which you are the undisputed master," he announced.

She gave him a suspicious look. "And what would that be, pray? Not having a cock?"

"If by 'have,' you mean 'own,' and 'claim full and incontestable rights to,' then I assure you, you have one." He casually pushed the game board aside. Pieces scattered, and he began to crawl toward her, stark naked.

She had caught his meaning and a smirk quirked up the corner of her mouth. "Master of fucking, he says…I should get this in writing."

"I'll sign it," he japed. He raised his voice to announce, "Tyrion Lannister, Lord of Nothing, Heir to Less Than Shit, Lord Paramount of a Mummer's Fart" —she was laughing uproariously— "does hereby swear that Alyce Waters, the Bastard of a Wine-Soaked King of Whoring, is hereto and henceforth forever the most incredibly excellent and undisputed Master of Fucking, in all lands known and unknown, from the Bay of Lannisport to the Shadow Lands Beyond Asshai, and as such, shall be worshiped with copious amounts of oral pleasuring until her glorious cunt falls out!"

Alyce was beside herself with mirth, and Tyrion was parting her legs to wedge himself between them and kiss her shoulders. Her laughter turned to breathlessness as his fingers teased the skin of her inner thighs, and when she began to moan, he put his mouth to her.

…

In the evening after her sparring lesson, Alyce returned to their room to find Tyrion nestled in their bed and reading by candlelight.

Something about it…the darkness outside their curtained balcony opening…the warmth of the candlelight…his avid expression and the bedclothes piled and drawn up to his waist made a sight she wanted to take in for slightly longer than just a cursory moment. She stood watching him, and he gave her a look.

"What is it?"

You look nice sounded stupid, and so did I like this. Alyce shrugged. "I wanted to look at you like that for a moment."

"Hm." He watched her disrobe. The servants had already brought the water, and it was probably cold now, but Alyce stepped into the small basin and scrubbed off her sweat with a bit of cloth. She scrubbed under her nails and lathered some soap in her hair. There was no water to rinse her, but she toweled the suds off when she stepped out.

Clean and damp, she joined Tyrion in their bed. She nestled up against him and he put an arm around her so her head could rest on his chest.

"What are you reading tonight?" The man went through books and scrolls like an addict. There was a new one every day.

"A history of this city, the third volume in the set."

"Learn anything interesting?"

"Many things. The pyramids here are modeled after the ancient pyramids of Ghis, which were built even before the people that settled here had wheels or steel, and they took twenty or thirty years to build—all by hand. They used water as a natural leveling measurement to get the outer infrastructure level."

"All done by slaves, I imagine."

"Of course. The brick sewers of the city are rather an engineering marvel as well, but I won't bore you with those details. I happen, by unfortunate history, to be a scholar of proper sewer engineering."

She gave him a dry look. He closed his book.

"I'm not teasing—I actually am. When I turned sixteen, my lord father put me in charge of all the drains and cisterns at Casterly Rock. I did quite well with it—the sewage never flowed smoother than when I was at the helm."

Alyce grimaced. At the age of manhood, he was given a farce of a position while his two siblings had been given positions of respect and responsibility since their early teens—especially his brother Jaime.

"It's unfortunate that your lord father cannot die twice," she commented. "I should have liked to loosen his bowels for him as well."

"One cannot have everything." His dry, light tone never faltered. "Any new bruises?"

"Nothing of mark. He has me training with a damned shield now."

"You should consider fighting with a shield, Alyce, especially against adversaries that have reach on you—like a man fighting with a longsword. A shield is not just for defense—you would still be dual-wielding."

She was shaking her head. "In a proper full battle, yes. For guarding and daily defense? No, and you know I have the right of that. Ser Barristan is merely honing my older training, not trying to change my fighting style." She snuggled in tighter and pulled the covers up to her chest. "Read to me?"

He opened his book again, and his smooth voice began to speak of Meereen's class system. Alyce listened, relaxing. Today had been their last council meeting before the queen's wedding, and she felt nervous, though she knew Ser Barristan, Grey Worm, and the other commanders had taken every precaution and made every plan should something happen during the ceremony. It was to be relatively short and uneventful.

Tyrion truly did have a handsome voice. She loved closing her eyes and just listening to him read aloud. He sounded every bit the lord. My status is not equal to his. He was born the great Tywin Lannister's trueborn son. I would have been a barefoot, purse-cutting bastard in Flea Bottom if not for Varys. We could have gone our whole lives without ever looking each other in the eyes.

He stroked her back as he read, and she felt drowsy and tender. Her charge and lover had some of the poorest luck in life as any in the kingdoms…

…but he had the mind of a king.

Alyce realized Tyrion had paused in his reading. She shifted her head on his chest and asked sleepily, "What are you thinking of?"

"This so-called peace our dragon queen is marrying for. The precariousness of it."

"It bothers me, too," she admitted. "Ser Barristan and I speak of it sometimes, but he would never question Daenerys' decisions. This city is a festering anthill, too mired in its old ways. She is too good for the butchery it would take to rule through force, and too precious to subject herself to the whims of these master slavers."

"Aye… The more I learn about Hizdahr, the Sons, the Great Masters, the forces here… No peace brokered here between her and these forces has any true strength. All the forces amassed outside the gates and all those of power within who did not enter with Daenerys want rid of her. Who is to enforce their leaving? She is trying to dig herself out of a hole, while all the while, the dirt she shovels out comes out from under her feet and she sinks deeper."

"She does not have the strength to destroy what has been massed against her."

Tyrion sucked on his own thoughts for a moment. "I mislike it—all of it. It has a sour, dangerous taste. But I do not have the power or the connections here to shift things as I did in King's Landing… I am making friends and learning the pyramid and its ways with every day that passes, but it is not enough. They will be wed the day after tomorrow."

"At least within this pyramid, she is safe. We make sure of that. Hizdahr could do nothing to her here unless he was suicidal, and we both know he values his own neck far too much."

"I have a couple small wheels already turning in protection," he said, "and I will finagle more pockets of influence and channels of information where I can after the wedding. If she is bent on staying here, her power must be better cemented. These Sons of the Harpy…if their roots spread throughout the entire populace, not just the wealthiest amongst them, that is a deep and difficult problem. But the common people can be fairly easily pleased by largesse."

He trailed off, but she could still almost hear the wheels turning in his head. He was a great schemer, in same league with Lord Petyr Baelish and Lord Varys.

"That Missandei girl is a great deal cleverer than she appears," he commented after another moment.

"Very clever for her age," Alyce agreed. "She knows these politics, and I have once or thrice heard her give suggestion to Daenerys or Ser Barristan, and always an insightful one."

"It is frightfully good to have clever women about," he murmured, nuzzling her head with his mouth gently. She smiled.

…

When the sun rose upon Daenerys Targaryen's wedding day, so did Daario Naharis, donning his clothes and buckling on his sword belt with its gleaming golden wantons. "Where are you going?" Dany asked him. "I forbid you to make a sortie today."

"My queen is cruel," her captain said. "If I cannot slay your foes, how shall I amuse myself whilst you are being wed?"

"By nightfall I shall have no foes."

"It is only dawn, sweet queen. The day is long. Time enough for one last sortie."

"No." She wanted him to stay and hold her. One day he will go and not return, she thought. One day some archer will put an arrow through his chest, or ten men will fall on him with spears and swords and axes, ten would-be heroes. Five of them would die, but that would not make her grief easier to bear. One day I will lose him, as I lost my sun-and-stars. But please gods, not today. "Come back to bed and kiss me." No one had ever kissed her like Daario Naharis. "I am your queen, and I command you to fuck me."

She had meant it playfully, but Daario's eyes hardened at her words. "Fucking queens is king's work. Your noble Hixdahr can attend to that, once you're wed. And if he proves to be too highborn for such sweaty work, he has servants who will be pleased to do that for him as well. Or perhaps you can call the Dornish boy into your bed, and his pretty friend as well, why not?" He strode from the bedchamber.

He is going to make a sortie, and if he takes Ben Plumm's head, he'll walk into the wedding feast and throw it at my feet. Seven save me. Why couldn't he be better born?

When he was gone, Missandei brought the queen a simple meal of goat cheese and olives, with raisins for a sweet. "Your Grace needs more than wine to break her fast. You are such a tiny thing, and you will surely need your strength today."

That made Daenerys laugh, coming from a girl so small. She relied so much on the little scribe that she oft forgot that Missandei had only turned eleven. They shared the food together on her terrace. As Dany nibbled on an olive, the Naathi girl gazed at her with eyes like molten gold and said, "It is not too late to tell them you have decided not to wed."

It is, though, the queen thought sadly. "Hizdahr's blood is ancient and noble. Our joining will join my freedmen to his people. When we become as one, so will our city."

"Your Grace does not love the noble Hizdahr. This one thinks you would sooner have another for your husband."

I must not think of Daario today. "A queen loves where she must, not where she will." Her appetite had left her. "Take this food away," she told Missandei. "It's time I bathed."

Afterward, as Jhiqui was patting Daenerys dry, Irri approached with her tokar. Dany envied the Dothraki maids their loose sandsilk trousers and painted vests. They would be much cooler than her in her tokar, with its heavy fringe of baby pearls. "Help me wind this round myself, please. I cannot manage all these pearls by myself. Where is Alyce?"

"She will meet Your Grace in the entryway after Your Grace makes her descent," Missandei answered.

She should be eager with anticipation for her wedding and the night that would follow, Daenerys knew. She remembered the night of her first wedding, when Khal Drogo had claimed her maidenhead beneath the stranger stars. She remembered how frightened she had been, and how excited. It would not be the same with Hizdahr. I am not the girl I was, and he is not my sun-and-stars.

"Reznak and Skahaz beg the honor of escorting Your Grace to the Temple of the Graces. Reznak has ordered your palanquin made ready."

Meereenese seldom rode within their city walls; they preferred palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs, borne upon the shoulders of slaves. "Horses befoul the streets," one man of Zakh had told her, "salves do not." Dany had freed the slaves, yet palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs still choked the streets as before, and one of them floated magically through the air.

"The day is too hot to be shut up in a palanquin," said Dany. "Have my silver saddled. I would not go to my lord husband upon the backs of bearers."

"Your Grace," said Missandei, "this one is sorry, but you cannot ride in a tokar."

The little scribe was right, as she so often was. The tokar was not a garment meant for horseback. Dany made a face. "As you say. Not the palanquin, though. I would suffocate behind those drapes. Have them ready a sedan chair." If she must wear her floppy ears, let all the rabbits see her.

When Dany made her descent, Reznak and Skahaz dropped to their knees.

"Your Worship shines so brightly, you will blind every man who dares look upon you," said Reznak. His fawning reminded Dany of the impression of his toadying Alyce had done of him the other day to make her and Missandei laugh, and she had to keep back her sudden urge to smirk, but she sobered soon enough. Alyce is not fond of this man…and Quaithe warned me to beware the perfumed seneschal. Reznak wore a tokar of maroon samite with golden fringes. "Hizdahr zo Loraq is most fortunate in you…and you in him, if I may be so bold as to say. This match will save our city, you will see."

"So we pray. I want to plant my olive trees and see them fruit." Does it matter that Hizdahr's kisses do not please me? Peace will please me. Am I a queen or just a woman?

"The crowds will be thick as flies today." The Shavepate was clad in a pleated black shirt and a muscles breastplate, with a brazen helm shaped like a serpent's head beneath one arm.

"Should I be afraid of flies? Your Brazen Beasts will keep me safe from any harm."

It was always dusk inside the base of the Great Pyramid. Walls thirty feet thick muffled the tumult of the streets and kept the heat outside, so it was cool and dim within. Her escort was forming up inside the gates. Horses, mules, and donkeys were stabled in the western walls, elephants in the eastern. Dany had acquired three of those huge, queer beasts with her pyramid. They reminded her of hairless grey mammoths, though their tusks had been bobbed and gilded, and their eyes were sad.

She found Strong Belwas eating grapes as Barristan Selmy watched a stableboy cinch the girth on his dapple grey. Lord Tyrion Lannister was already astride his mount in an oddly cushioned saddle, looking taller than he ever had. The clothes he wore fit him well, and were finely made, and he had had his hair cut shorter and his beard shaved clean for the occasion. He looked younger with his jaw hairless and with a genuine smile on his face as he and Alyce shared some quip.

Alyce looked both fetching and fearsome in equal measure, and moved with her usual easy lack of self-consciousness, though she was weighed down by the mail, boiled leather, and breastplate she had donned. She wore her shortsword and two long dirks, as well as two other knives, and though Daenerys usually saw her in sandals, she was wearing sturdy boots on her feet today. At a quick glance, she could have been mistaken for a young man, but her plate stuck out too far over her bosom and her jaw was too slight and feminine. She seemed to be teaching Lord Tyrion about a dirk she had found for him to keep at his belt—a nasty piece of steel with a triangular blade. They looked up and saw her, and Alyce gave her a deep look as if to say, Well…today. Are you still sure?

The three Dornishmen were with Ser Barristan, talking, but they broke off when she appeared. Their prince went to one knee when the queen neared them. "Your Grace, I must entreat you. My father's strength is failing, but his devotion to your cause is as strong as ever. If my manner or my person have displeased you, that is my sorrow, but—"

"If you would please me, ser, be happy for me," Daenerys said. "This is my wedding day. They will be dancing in the Yellow City, I do not doubt." She sighed. "Rise, my prince, and smile. One day I shall return to Westeros to claim my father's throne, and look to Dorne for help. But on this day the Yunkai'i have my city ringed in steel. I may die before I see my Seven Kingdoms. Hizdahr may die. Westeros may be swallowed by the waves." Dany kissed his cheek. "Come. It's time I wed."

Ser Barristan helped her up onto the sedan chair. Quentyn rejoined his fellow Dornishmen. Alyce swung onto her mount beside Lord Tyrion's and Strong Belwas bellowed for the gates to be opened. Daenerys Targaryen was carried forth into the sun and Selmy fell in beside her on his dapple grey.

"Tell me," Dany said, as the procession turned toward the Temple of the Graces, "if my father and my mother had been free to follow their own hearts, whom would they have wed?"

"It was long ago. Your Grace would not know them."

"You know, though. Tell me."

The old knight inclined his head. "The queen your mother was always mindful of her duty." He was handsome in his gold-and-silver armor, his white cloak streaming from his shoulders, but he sounded like a man in pain. "As a girl, though…she was once smitten by a young knight from the stormlands who wore her favor at a tourney and named her queen of love and beauty. A brief thing."

"What happened to this knight?"

"He put away his lance the day your mother wed your father. Afterward he became most pious, and was heard to say that only the Miaden could replace Queen Rhaella in his heart. His passion was impossible, of course. A landed knight is no fit consort for a princess of royal blood."

And Daario Naharis is only a sellsword, not fit to buckle on the golden spurs of even a landed knight. "And my father? Was there some woman he loved better than his queen?"

For some reason, Ser Barristan glanced at Tyrion riding just behind Daenerys. He shifted in his saddle, clearly uncomfortable. "Not…not loved. Mayhaps wanted is a better word, but it was only kitchen gossip, Your Grace—the whispers of washerwomen. Not a fit thing to discuss so many years later."

Dany eyed him, more curious because of his hesitance. "I want to know. I never knew my father. I want to know everything about him. The good and…the rest."

"I do not think it would be appropriate in present company."

"He wishes not to bring up my mother's name in front of me, Your Grace," Tyrion spoke up easily from behind them. "I have heard a hint of that rumor, Ser Barristan, but my father never allowed any details to reach our ears. I should be curious about the particulars as well. You do not risk offending me."

Barristan grimaced.

"Tell me, Ser Barristan," said Daenerys.

"As you command, Your Grace…" The white knight chose his words with care. "Prince Aerys…as a youth, he was taken with a certain lady of Casterly Rock, a cousin of Tywin Lannister. When she and Tywin wed, your father drank too much wine at the wedding feast and was heard to say that it was a great pity that the lord's right to the first night had been abolished. A drunken jape, no more, but Tywin was not a man to forget such words, or the…the liberties your father took during the bedding." His face had reddened. Dany glanced behind her at Alyce and Lord Tyrion, who himself looked surprised by what the knight had said.

"Gracious queen, well met!" Another procession had come up beside her own, and Hizdahr zo Loraq was smiling at her from his own sedan chair. My king. Dany wondered where Daario Naharis was, what he was doing. If this were a story, he would gallop up just as we reached the temple, to challenge Hizdahr for my hand.

Side by side the queen's procession and Hizdahr's made their slow way across Meereen, until finally the Temple of the Graces loomed up before them, its golden domes flashing in the sun. How beautiful she tried to tell herself, but in truth she could not help but think of her captain. If he loved you, he would come and carry you off at swordpoint, as Rhaegar carried off his northern girl. Even if he was mad enough to attempt it, the Brazen Beasts would cut him down before he got within a hundred yards of her.

Galazza Galare awaited them outside the temple doors, surrounded by her sisters in white and pink and red, blue and gold and purple. There are fewer than there were. Dany looked for Ezzara and did not see her. Has the bloody flux taken even her? Though the queen had let the Astapori starve outside her walls to keep the bloody flux from spreading, it was spreading nonetheless. Many had been stricken: freedmen, sellswords, Brazen Beasts, even Dothraki, though as yet none of the Unsullied had been touched. She prayed the worst was past.

The Graces brought forth an ivory chair and a golden bowl. Holding her tokar daintily so as to not tread upon its fringes, Daenerys Targaryen eased herself onto the chair's plush velvet seat, and Hizdahr zo Loraq went to his knees, unlaced her sandals, and washed her feet whilst fifty eunuchs sang and ten thousand eyes looked on. He has gentle hands, she mused, as warm fragrant oils ran between her toes. If he has a gentle heart as well, I may grow fond of him in time.

When her feet were clean, Hizdahr dried them with a soft towel, laced her sandals on again, and helped her to her stand. Hand in hand, they followed the Green Grace inside the temple, where the air was thick with incense and the gods of Ghis stood cloaked in shadows in their alcoves.

Four hours later, they emerged again as man and wife, bound together wrist and ankle with chains of yellow gold.

…