YUNKAI
YUNKAI, ESSOS
It was late in the afternoon. The sun had lost its warmth but the bricks of the ancient city along with its stone streets held enough from the day to keep the temperature uncomfortably high. Suffocating. The Yunkai kept to the shade, sleeping or conducting their trade in the coolest corners with the rats. They waited eagerly for the night, eyeing the foreigners with interest.
The enormous fleet of ships clogging the bay did nothing to help. Their sails obstructed the breeze. It was tight – hulls rubbed against each other as deck hands scampered between the vessels. Missandei stood at the front of the queen's ship. She narrowed her eyes at the golden city and then back to the sea gates. They remained open, the body of open water swelling beyond. She was afraid that if her gaze drifted from them for too long they'd shut and leave the entire fleet savaged in the water.
"You are back, Lord Tyrion?" she startled, as Tyrion strolled up onto the deck. He'd sobered up. She could tell by the frown etched between the scars on his forehead. Missandei couldn't decide if the lion drank to forgot all the things he'd seen or the plots that swirled in his head.
"You can drop the 'lord'." He wasn't sure he was any form of Lord anymore. Were you still a Lord if you murdered members of the royal family? Possibly not. Not here, anyway. Here he was the smallest lion that ever breathed. "Negotiations are concluded. Nearly all the ships you see here belong to the queen. Grey Worm is dividing up our existing crews as we speak so that we may leave at once. The sooner the better. We'll be light until we reach Astapor. See..." he pointed to the edge of the fleet nearest the open water. Several of the boats there were hitching their sails into the wind, turning to the gates and beginning their escape.
"And the Second Sons? Do they still police the city?" And the gates...
"For now. The changeover will happen as the last of our boats leave. I'd advise the queen's boat not be one of those. The Yunkai are yearning for a fight. Peace doesn't suit their constitution. I wouldn't put it past them to pick off the weak ones as a bit of friendly sport."
That unsettled Missandei. She rubbed her arms and thought of her queen – wondering where she was now. Her and the knight had been gone too long. She wasn't entirely sure that she trusted Ser Jorah after all that had happened.
"Have I offended you?" Tyrion asked, more quietly.
"No. It's this place – I'd rather we leave as soon as we can. It feels..."
Tyrion knew exactly how it felt. "I know."
He lingered next to her, watching the bay. "It's more than the looming gates that disturb you," he added quietly. "You've been rather cool toward the knight."
"The queen has forgiven him."
That wasn't an answer to his question. "You are not the queen." Missandei scorned him. He raised his hands in submission. "Ser Jorah serves his heart – always has – and right now that heart belongs to your queen. He is neither fickle nor insincere."
"You trust him," she turned back towards the water and the open gates.
"I trust his heart. That is all."
"I trust only the swords of men. They're always craving blood."
"What are we doing?" Daenerys whispered, her naked back pressed to the sharp cliff wall. The knight had her pinned there, holding tightly onto her wrist after pulling her from the railing's edge and out of sight. She could feel his panicked breath on her neck.
"Leaving..."
He took a moment to collect himself before stepping back onto the walkway, dragging her with him. There was nowhere to hide. The beautiful, silver gown wrapped around Daenerys's body was soaked in blood. It was in her hair, down her arms – across her face. None of it hers. It turned black as it dried, leaving her as though she'd stepped straight out of the flames.
It was on his neck too – one great hand print where the prince had grasped roughly at him before -
-before going over.
"We can't be seen like this," he added, racing wildly over the rickety walkways. They creaked ominously and dislodged small clouds of dust underfoot as though the whole sad thing wished to collapse into the water. "He was the Crown Prince." Jorah wasn't intimately versed on the intricacies of Varys's treaty but he was pretty certain that this would break it. He wasn't sure whose wrath he was more afraid of – Yunkai or Varys.
"He will wash up against the city docks..."
"Soon," Jorah agreed. "The tide is coming in. Our ships must run against it."
They both stopped. The walkway ended in a gate house connected to the old palace. It too was a building hitched onto the face of the cliffs. Its tiny windows faced the water, black and sullen to the world. Jorah wondered if anyone was already watching...
"Stay here..." he said, leaving her on the walkway. He laid against the door, listening. There was a shift of metal behind them. A guard – maybe two. Four. He pushed through, hitting one of them in the process. He swung his sword wildly, catching an arm. Blood sprayed over his armour and continued in a sickening line across the wall.
The smallest of the four rushed in and Jorah had to throw himself to one side. The guard ended up on the walkway. Stunned by the sudden brightness, he whirled around just in time to watch a disgraced knight's sword slip in under his rib and exit through his back. He coughed, dropping his weapon which tumbled into the ocean below. A gull cried out. The dying guard saw a silver dragon against the cliff face, wings unfurling into great, blinding sails.
Jorah had barely raised a sweat as he turned back to the room to find the last guard. He was smart. Jorah could see the calculating look in the other man's eye. He'd taken the time to arm himself with an axe as well as a sword and now owned the centre of the room, waiting for Jorah to make the first move. So he did.
The guard died, hanging from a rusted spike in the wall. Two foot of iron protruded from his chest, stained with blood which dripped onto the floor in an expanding puddle beneath him.
"Don't look at them," Jorah whispered to his queen, as he led her through the room.
She ignored him, staring directly at the twitching corpse hung up on the wall like an animal after the hunt. Violence and death did not scare her. She was a child of blood – a dragon. Daenerys didn't want to admit it but she felt most at home with the Dothraki and their bloody rituals. There was truth in violence. This world of politics she'd been thrust into made her uneasy.
"My father would have burned this city to the ground," she replied, as they started down a narrow, spiral staircase. "Let the fire cleanse their defiance. Sometimes I wonder if the Lord of Light is a dragon. A great beast living above the clouds."
"You are not your father," Jorah reminded his queen. "The great conquerors of your line built cities. If you burn the world there will be nothing left to rule."
"My bear," she whispered, drawing closer to him as they descended, "your are from the North. Your gods come from the depths of time. They've been sleeping too long to save us now. It's the new gods that stir and hiss at the whims of men."
Right now, she was being saved by a bear, not the gods and he had a tight grasp. They reached the sea. Daenerys could hear it lapping against the stone and feel it in the damp stones.
"Over here," Jorah said, pushing open a rotted door.
They emerged in the fish markets. Scales littered the wharves while dozens of stray cats howled. One ship. That's all they needed. A potential candidate brushed up against some of the merchant vessels and the end of the dock. He could see a small guard of unsullied patrolling its deck. He pointed to it and Daenerys nodded.
"We'll never make it without being seen," she said. Her silver gown and dark red stains were unmissable among the olive-skinned Yunkai. If the alarm was raised, they'd be dragged back into the palace and she seriously doubted they'd find any mercy from the Old Masters.
The war bells of Yunkai rang. Their shrill call dislodged a thousand gulls from the cliffs, turning the sky a frantic white. A scuffle broke out at the docks where the bloodied body of the prince bobbed in the water leaving a stain in the water. One of the gulls stood on the dead prince's chest, picking at a shiny button on his tunic. Hands reached down, groping for an inch of fabric. The body was dragged out of the waves and laid over the stone. One of the guards knelt down, whispered something to the Yunkai gods, then rolled the corpse over.
A gasp rolled through the crowd. The guard looked over to the dragon queen's ships, running toward the ocean gates. "Close the gates," he hissed. "Take the ships."
"Stop! These are the queen's ships." The Unsullied guard levelled a spear at the rotten fabric. Two stowaways had climbed out of the water, scaling the side of the ship and thrown themselves on the deck.
"Relax, Rat Tail," Jorah replied, sliding back the hood on his stolen robes. The Unsullied knelt at once, bowing his head before the queen. "Why are the bells ringing?"
"The city, they have found a dead prince. They tried to attack our ships but we have all sailed from the docks. We are nearly at the gates."
The queen stood and moved to the edge of the ship, eyeing the enormous sea gates as the ship approached. "They sailed without their queen?"
"No... your grace. That is – we believed you to be on the queen's ship. Your flag was raised and we sailed."
Daenerys glanced at Jorah. She couldn't read his face. Couldn't decide if the ships leaving her on were for her protection or lack of hope. "Tell the captain to widen the sails. We must clear the gates."
"The gates are closing," Jorah whispered. They were. The monstrous structures shed salt and gullshit, cutting through the waves.
"The Second Sons?"
"Are dead." He finished for her. Above, he could see their bodies hanging from the walkways on the cliff. "Yunkai is done with us. Now all we can do is run."
Run they did. Every ship in the bay let its sails out. Hundreds of white sheets engorged, dragging the ships through the choppy ocean against the tide. As the gates of the harbour started to close, the wind softened. Anything left on the wrong side would be in Yunkai's grasp. Jorah tugged his queen away from the side as the hull scraped against one of the gates. She pulled free of him, reaching out to touch the stone. There was magic in the gates – old magic but not enough to keep her. The magic of a dragon was stronger than stone or whispering gods.
Not all their boats made it. Five were trapped. One was crushed in half between the stone, sinking in a salty foam. The others were boarded – their crew slaughtered immediately and thrown into the sea. Dany didn't see it but she felt their screams.
"Catch the lead ship," she ordered. "I'll have my word with Varys now."
The Dragon Queen shed the rags she'd used to hide in the markets of Yunkai and boarded her ship with her bloodied robes in full view. Fire and Blood. She'd not let them forget it. There was nothing more powerful than a leader that got their hands dirty. Power was only power if people truly believed that you'd earned it.
"My queen."
"Your grace."
Varys and Tyrion bowed in succession. Missandei smiled.
"And thus the answer to the prince's demise," Varys added. He was rather impressed to see that it was the queen, not her bear, that had performed the deed. He'd admit to being curious to the circumstances.
"These things happen," Daenerys replied. "Shall we continue this below deck?"
"My lady, won't you change first?"
Daenerys waved Missandei off. She was quite happy as she was.
"Will the Yunkai follow us?"
Varys averted his gaze from the window. He was watching for smoke on the air, listening for screams. "Follow? No... They are a city at war with themselves. With the prince dead there will be a squabble to establish succession and then, perhaps, they will branch out – test their power on the neighbouring cities. Chasing you across the world will not be part of their agenda. They have no designs on Westeros."
Tyrion frowned. "We risk Astapor then?"
"We need Astapor," Varys admitted. "We cannot sail these ships into war – there are not enough men or provisions to make the trip."
Daenerys had been watching Jorah for quite some time. He'd been uncommonly stoic through this meeting. It was starting to unsettle her. "Ser Jorah?"
He shifted uncomfortably. "It's only, your Grace..."
"Speak."
"Astapor is not enough. We will need to make landfall before Westeros – there is more to this plan than a slaver city."
Daenerys was not surprised. She didn't need to ask Varys outright – all she did was level her fierce eyes at him.
"True... It is not agreed yet but you have friends – friends who will shelter your fleet for a price – conceal your crossing into the new world. Old friends."
The queen closed her eyes for a moment. Her mind was always filled with half-thoughts, ill-formed memories of a place she barely remembered. There was a scent of lemon in the air, towering stone walls and a bright red door with a golden sun set into the wood. Inside it smelled of pine and smoke as though concealing a northern wood. Occasionally she found herself there in dreams, playing in the courtyard. "Braavos..." she whispered.
"Braavos, my queen."
Tyrion shifted uncomfortably. "Braavos is full of the king's spies," he cautioned.
"I assure you," Varys replied, "it is full of the queen's loyal court. They lay in wait for her return."
