Nym's gown was the same shade of blue as the sea, her hair the same black as the tar on the ship's hull, her skin burnished gold under the sun.
Quentyn felt achingly plain beside her, and wished for a moment that Obara had been sent with him instead. Of all the Sand Snakes, it was Obara who would have shown him to his best advantage by comparison, and it was Obara with whom he got along best.
Obara had no time for the awkward little games in which her sisters so delighted, a plainness Quentyn appreciated in her manner leaving her much easier to deal with than any other woman of their House. Brusque and forthright and rude, yes, but Obara was easy to understand, once you had her trust, and Quentyn preferred that to Nym's games, as plentiful and seeming-transparent as her endless parade of half-sheer gowns and veils.
Quent's simple linen tunic seemed especially plain next to Nym's silken gown, even edged in thread-of-gold stitching as it was. Perhaps it was because he was the one wearing it that it seemed so plain.
No matter - plain of face or not, he had the weight of Dorne and the purses of Norvos behind him, and, with the captives in his hold, the promise of the Golden Company. A fine dowry for any woman, even a Dragon Queen such as had not been seen in centuries.
"Thinking of your blushing bride, little cousin?" Nym teased, lolling over the railings in precisely the right way to make every man aboard stare. "Wondering if mayhaps she has some sense of the great destiny coming toward her?"
"I daresay that I am the one moving toward a great destiny, Nymeria," Quentyn said easily, leaning back against the rail, the better to look her in her viper's eyes. "It is not to be sniffed at, from forgotten second child to Prince Consort."
"If she is ever crowned by an authority recognised in Westeros," Nym agreed, grinning now as only she and Uncle could. "Dearest cousin-"
"Arianne is your dearest cousin, Nym," Quent cautioned her. "Do not overplay your hand."
She laughed at that, and Quentyn was surprised by the honesty of her reaction - Nym's usual laugh was a delicate, trilling thing, but this was the laugh she saved mostly for Arianne, or for her Fowlers, low and uneven and musical.
"Quite so, Quent," she admitted, shaking her head. "Tell me then, how you plan on wooing her."
"I don't," he said, smiling himself when Nym's grin froze, turned jagged. "This is not to be a love match, cousin - I will present myself as an ally, first and foremost, and a suitor second."
"I've heard rumour that she is to wed a slaver prince," Nym warned him, serious now as she so rarely was. "You will need more than an alliance if you are to win her away from such as that."
"Perhaps not so much," he said with a shrug, pushing away from the railing. "I have heard rumour that she abhors slavery, and has sought to do away with it, even in Slaver's Bay."
He moved to cross the deck to where Arch and Drink were playing cyvasse, intent on ruining their game just to see the look of betrayal that would doubtless flood Arch's face, when Nym caught him by the wrist.
"Let me help," she said. "That is why the Prince sent me with you, Quent - let me guide you. I know better than you how to talk to a woman, after all."
The captives in the hold...
They had come upon them by chance, and realised their worth by pure luck. Had it not been for one of Quentyn's guards having served in his aunt's retinue during her time in King's Landing, they might never have recognised Lord Connington for who he was, and had it not been for that, the rest of the story might not have come out.
It was the Lady who had revealed it, of course. Her hair was not so dark as it had been, Nym said, speaking as though remembering a dream, and with her skin browned dark by the sun and her hair faded, her bright eyes were not so striking as they had been against her once-soft face.
Quent had no reason to doubt her identity - he knew others of her House, after all, saw the same sort of resemblance between her and them as he sometimes did between himself and his brother and sister - beyond her questionable company, but even that only leant credence to her madness.
"Cousin," Quentyn said, sitting on a box so as to put himself more on the other man's level - another reason for Quent to feel plain. Tall and slim and pretty as a girl, the man who claimed to be Aegon Targaryen looked well even in shackles.
"Well met," he said, serious as the grave, leaning forward to hold onto the bars of his cage. Lord Connington was watching, as he always did, from his own cell, but the Lady was sleeping, or at least giving the appearance of it, and Quentyn saw no cause to worry about her. "Have you decided to release us, then?"
"Not yet," Quent said, shrugging off Lord Connington's curses as though they were nothing. "While we have men who can vouch for your companions - or at least, for some of your companions - we have none who might vouch for you, save Lord Connington and the Lady, who are... Biased. I am sure you understand."
"If you did not come to release us," he-who-might-be-Aegon said, all suspicion now, "then why come at all? You are hardly here to bring us meals, your highness - that would be below your dignity, I am sure."
"I spent half my life as a squire, cousin," Quent said. "Serving food is a habit by now, I assure you - but no, that is not why I am here."
"The Golden Company, then," Connington rasped, thudding to his knees against the bars of his own cell. He was an old man, now, or looked it at least, worn by years of hardship and secrecy, but his eyes were as shrewd as Quent's father's, and for that alone Quentyn held him in the deepest of suspicion. "You would have their word?"
"And the truth of why they have thrown their lot in behind a would-be conqueror without a single groat to his name," Quent agreed, clasping his hands and smiling a little. Oberyn had told him that he looked like his father when he did that, and while Quent didn't believe that he had any of the charm his father must have had in his youth, he had accepted the compliment and taken it to heart. "They are Blackfyres to the bone, when the Iron Throne is in question - why would they choose to support a true-born Targaryen, when there are doubtless Blackfyres yet in Pentos and Tyrosh?"
Oberyn had shared his suspicions of such things over a cup of wine, only the night before Quent and Nym had departed on their journey - he had travelled more widely than most men, and had heard rumours of the heirs of Blackfyre and Bittersteel yet living, yet thriving, in the cities of the east. It seemed strange to him that the Golden Company, who had been founded by Bittersteel, would throw in behind the heirs of the men Bittersteel had so hated, the men Bittersteel had fought war after war to see gone from the throne.
"No Blackfyres," Connington snapped. "We searched, and hunted, in hopes of uniting the claims, but all for naught - they are dead, Prince, deader than your aunt."
"Perhaps," Quent agreed easily, glad of his unremarkable face and how easily it hid his feelings. "Even so, I am told that the Golden Company are supposedly contracted elsewhere - what makes you so certain that they will raise their banners under yours, cousin?"
"Fire and blood," maybe-Aegon said, serious and dreamy all at once. "We are all heirs to Aegon the Unworthy, cousin, and my aunt has woken dragons from stone. A contract writ in ink is nothing against a contract writ in fire and blood, I promise you that."
"You think to subjugate your aunt, then?" Quent asked, genuinely curious - he had heard enough tales of Daenerys Targaryen to find the notion of her being subjugated by any man deeply amusing, but he held that back for fear of offending the men before him. "Her dragons may object."
"She will be my bride, and together we will conquer the Seven Kingdoms, as Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives did, so long ago."
Quentyn gave that a moment, amazed by Aegon's certainty, and then nodded, but said nothing.
"I am sure she will be thrilled by an offer made by a beggar of uncertain provenance, with only an undefined promise made by sellswords and a face that might as easily be Lysene as Valyrian to recommend him," Nym said, appearing at the stairs and slinking into the light, coming to a sinuous sort of halt with one hand on Quent's shoulder. "I may be a bastard to two Houses, but at least I know for certain which Houses, and can offer my mother and father as proof. What proof have you, boy-who-would-be-king?"
"You did very well," Nym assured him as they ate, later that evening. "You are a far more talented mummer than I ever dreamed, little cousin - if this plan falls through, you might make a living on the stages of Braavos!"
"My father would be thrilled by such a prospect, I am sure," he said, rolling his eyes at Nym's habitual theatrics. She had been sent with him for this as much as anything else, to coax him into at least pretending enough charm to convince Daenerys Targaryen to marry him, if it were possible.
Quentyn was still unconvinced of this grand scheme of his father's. It seemed to him that restoring the Targaryens could well lead to a war great enough to consume even impervious Dorne, especially since they didn't yet know how much of her father lived on in the new dragon queen, and he couldn't see how they were to actually overcome Robert Baratheon's hold on the Seven Kingdoms. The Usurper, against all sense, was a popular King, with friends in every corner of the realm save for Dorne, and the daughter of a madman was not likely to prove more popular than him just for being a Targaryen.
Not everyone had been sorry to see the Targaryens fall, after all. Even the Tyrells, who owed so much to House Targaryen, had been quick to turn their cloaks when the day was won, and had escaped without so much as censure despite having half-killed their new King's brothers.
No, Quent was unsure of this, but Nym was right - he was a more talented mummer than any of them had ever dreamed, had spent these last years at Sunspear since his knighthood learning to hide himself away, and so no one knew of his misgivings, save for Cletus.
"When we arrive in Meereen," Quent said, "we will be arriving in the middle of a war - I would have you stay close, Nymeria, and not disappear on one of your little errands, at least until we are safely within whatever of the city the Queen controls. I would not return to Dorne with word of your death - my uncle would never forgive me."
"Nor would your sister," Nym agreed, sipping her wine and grinning. The wine seemed to cling to her teeth a moment, staining them red, but Quentyn blinked and it was gone - a trick of the light, but a fitting one, to turn Nym's viper's smile bloody. "Worry not, Quentyn, I will be tied to your side until I must relinquish you to the care of the Mother of Dragons. Doubtless she will be a more amusing companion for you than I am."
Quent did not have to work to conceal his blushes anymore, not usually, but it was a struggle then, with Nym waggling her eyebrows and licking her lips at him. She had teased and tormented him all the way here with talk of his - hopefully - impending wedding night, never saying outright that she thought him as much a maid as little Trystane, and as her teases had become more overt, his ability to hide his embarrassment had failed him more often than not.
Not that he would ever quiet Nym's obvious curiosity by detailing any of his... exploits in her hearing. He had known his share of women, although perhaps a woman of the Viper's line would think he had known too small a share of pleasure.
"You will need to perfect your act before you are alone with her," Nym said, determinedly serious as only she could be. "There will be pillowhouses and whores, even on a battlefield - we will find a fine one for you, so you might practice your technique before unleashing it on the Queen."
"Nymeria!"
The Lady Belowdecks, as the shiphands had taken to calling her, had requested that Quent allow her a word in private - had it not been for how peaceably she had taken her imprisonment, how much Quent admired her sister, he would have refused, but as it was he agreed, and even offered her the use of his berth to refresh herself, as much as such things were possible on a ship.
How he missed proper baths.
The Lady, though, with her black-and-grey hair damp around her shoulders, her soft face smiling, her bright eyes tired, seemed undisturbed by the sparsity of luxuries afforded her, almost beatific in her captivity, sitting before him as though the fine steel shackles around her wrists were instead fine silver bracelets.
"Prince Quentyn," she said, in an accent that had not faded, even after twenty years abroad. "I am grateful to you for this, your highness - had you chosen not to grant me an audience, I would have understood."
"You are one of our own, my lady," he said, trying for the diplomatic neutrality of tone his father always employed in difficult situations. "Of all people, you I could least refuse."
She blushed, something which surprised Quentyn - his uncle had known her well, before the world had gone to hell, and had spoken of her often while in his cups, of the great love she had borne Quent's aunt, of her beauty, of her fearlessness and her kindness. The woman of Oberyn's stories was not the sort of woman who blushed at half a compliment.
But then, if she had spent all her time away with Lord Connington, Quent doubted she had had even that much since last she had been in Dorne. Jon Connington was not a man given to such frivolities as kindness or gentleness or manners.
"I only wish to offer you proof of Prince Aegon's identity, such as it is," she said, folding her hands in her lap and tucking her feet underneath her little stool, as Quent had so often seen Arianne do when she wanted something from their father. "I know that you doubt him, and I would as well, in your position, but-"
"But you believe him to be who he has been taught he is," Quent guessed, leaning forward over his knees. "I know, my lady, that it might be a comfort to you-"
"No comfort, your highness," the lady said, shaking her head, and the bittersweet smile that curled her lip just then hinted at the storied beauty of her youth, and Quent wished, briefly, that he might have known her in all her glory, known her fierceness and fire as much as her lovely face. "I took him from his mother's arms myself, and watched as Lord Varys laid a whore's child in his place. I nursed him myself, and kept him hidden at Starfall until after it was all over, until I'd seen my brother's sword returned home in his killer's hands and my daughter into her grave. I have had Aegon Targaryen since he was less than half a year old, Prince Quentyn, nursed him from my own breast, held him in my own two arms when he cried the whole of Pentos awake every night until he was near two and a half years old, raised him hidden away from the world until Jon Connington was thrown at us and we were thrown out. He is who he says he is, my prince, I swear it to you, on my brother's memory."
Quent's head was spinning, as it had when Arch had caught him on helm with the flat of his sword in the practice yard, so long ago.
"Who was your daughter's father, my lady?" he asked, so confused that this was all the sense he could make of everything. "Some say Lord Stark, some his brother, some your brother."
She laughed, and there was another flash of her former beauty, and Quent felt something that he refused to name fear coil small in his belly.
"That, Prince Quentyn," she said, meeting his eyes, and yes, there was the ferocity Oberyn had sighed over, "is a secret just for me, for now, and it matters little. What matters is that you believe me."
Ashara Dayne, risen from the dead, vouching for Aegon Targaryen, son of Elia Martell, who had never had a chance to live. How could Quentyn disbelieve her?