Tyrion slept. A warm mixture of wine and smoke lulled him into wonderful dreams. He didn't even mind the amorous sea rocks that he'd spent the night on. One of the larger specimens was wrapped in his jacket forming a dreadful pillow that stank of shellfish. His lips were cracked from salt and any exposed skin itched from a forest assault during the night. He'd expected worse. As far as Tyrion was concerned, as long as he hadn't awoken in the jaws of a dragon, things were going well.

The ground rushed under him.

Stones rolled and stuck into places he'd rather not mention as he was dragged out. Light hit his face like the slap of a whore's madame then strong hands grabbed his shoulders, set him upright and shook until he forced his eyes open only to find them full of sand. A bear snarled.

"God dammit, Mormont..." Tyrion muttered, trying to push him away. His chubby hands bounced off the knight's armour with the force of a gnat.

"Wake up – you fool!" Jorah growled.

It took Tyrion a moment to recognise terror in the knight's weathered features. When he tried to stand up, Jorah pushed him roughly to the ground along with shattered bottles and bits of wood. That's when he realised that the others were knelt, taking cover behind the structure he'd spent the night under. The dragons were close by, looming behind Jorah with their wings out. The knight had come with a small party of Unsullied, all of whom wore the same veil of fear.

"What happened?" Tyrion slurred. "Honestly, whatever it is, I didn't do it. I was too drunk to do it. Lost my belt somewhere..." He began hunting for it.

"No – I don't believe you did." Jorah turned Tyrion around to face the destroyed remnants of the the camp. Worse, it was empty. A few torn sails. Broken chairs and bent swords. No bodies.

The warrior prince moved forward, scaling the steps of the pavilion. From amid the ruinous scene he pried a foreign object and held it up to the others – a spear of sharp black stone and wound with kelp and feathers from a southern bird.

"Gather what you can," Jorah ordered. "We leave immediately for the ships."


"No? No!"

The queen remained calm, positioned near the ship's rail, watching the bay and mysterious continent beyond. She'd ordered the vessel to sail to the other shore so that she could survey the scene herself. It was doing so now, letting out its sails. Jorah could feel the sharp tug of the wind against wood. The breeze was strong and in their favour – perfect for a voyage West.

"As I said," Dany confirmed. "No. We are not leaving."

"Khaleesi – Daenerys..."

"I am not leaving until I have seen inside the city."

"This is a dangerous land, my queen. We are not prepared for this kind of exploration. You've soldiers, trained in warfare on open fields – not rummaging through the jungle like pirates and common savages."

Daenerys fought to stop her mind wandering to Daario. For his queen's pleasure, there were no foolish tasks for a man like him. Her bear frustrated her with his caution and bloody endless trepidation. Not everything was a calculated risk. Sometimes it was just risk.

"If whatever took your camp is still out there, which we must assume," Jorah continued, pacing the deck, "they will pick us off like overripe fruit." She was about to reply when Jorah held up his bandaged hand to stop her. "If you say - 'I have dragons-' I swear to whichever god is closest..." She was amused, pursing her lips with a glisten in her eyes that he lived for. "My lady, you know what it is that I mean."

She nodded. "Yes, Ser, I know what you are about. Consider this – my people and your men are alive. What then? Leave them as captives?"

The notion made Jorah uncomfortable. "It is unlikely that they live."

"Really. Was there blood?"

"My lady?"

"In the tents. On the beach. Was there any evidence of violence?"

"Well-"

"No. Grey Worm has briefed me. He is concerned that his soldiers and a valuable sea navigator are alive. The Dothraki agree. You are outnumbered."

"Truth is not a democracy, my queen. Your men are dead."

"Prove it to me."

Jorah bowed low, his fraying shirt rippling in the wind. "Yes, my queen."


"This is suicide." Tyrion strapped on his sword and folded several ornate knives into the leather. Even if he clothed himself in blade there wouldn't be enough to protect him from whatever took Unsullied and Dothraki alike. They were warriors by blood and he – well he was not.

Jorah towered beside Tyrion, doing the same. "On that, we agree."

"The queen's word is law?"

"The queen's word is law..." Jorah confirmed.

"Well, we'll find naught but bones – or nothing at all," Tyrion sighed. "Let's hope we find nothing. What's that look for, Mormont? I've seen it before. We both know that the queen's interests are with the city not the missing. We're chasing ghosts and evil things, best left sleeping. Silence again, is it? Yes, I guess so. Bears were never known for their conversation. Too much snow and not enough ale. Why else would they fuck the mountain lions of -" Tyrion's face hit the pebbles hard, slammed into them by a large hand. Jorah Mormont walked off. "Yes well," he dusted himself off. "Deserved that."

The imp was picked up by Grey Worm. The Unsullied commander had chosen a long spear which presently dug at the pebbles at their feet. Its tip was sharp and dipped in purple venom that smelled sickly, like peach groves baking in the sun. "Ser Mormont is not fond of your teasing."

"No, he is not." Tyrion agreed. "He's left his armour across the Narrow Sea. See how he struts into the forest against his better judgement. Is that kind of devotion foolish or brave?"

"We are about to find out, Lord Tyrion," Grey Worm replied.

"I was afraid you'd say that."


The queen led the search party.

Firmly against her knight's wishes, she took the expedition into the jungle armed with the unshakable instinct of a dragon. An hour on and they reached the lip of the great black crater. Their Dothraki trackers found steps carved out of the stone which they followed, down onto the flat edge of the city. The ground was hot and stank of swamp and dead things. It was a cancer in the ground. The further they explored, the deeper Jorah's frown became. The dents across his forehead were nearly as deep as the rivers cutting out the cliffs. His eyes were bluer than the water in the falls, almost ice.

"Yeen, my queen." Jorah stood with Daenerys in front of the horrible sight.

It was as they'd heard. A dead city. He could not guess how it had been made. There were no cuts or grooves – bricks or struts holding the structures up. Instead they rose from the surrounds into rounded forms, closer to congealed wax upon a table. Between some of the buildings were statues, tall as any keep in Westeros. They formed sea serpents with fish-mouths agape with curved teeth. Dragons of the sea. He had no wish to meet a civilisation that built such things and wished to behold them.

"Do you believe the stories now?" Daenerys whispered, in Ser Jorah's ear. With the eyes of all their men on him, Jorah dared not move as she continued. "Yeen was lifted from the sea by an angry god and its throne tossed to the waves. The depths are empty now, unguarded and left to the realms of monsters. These are the stories from the dragon tower. Bed time stories meant to frighten the young."

The queen drifted away from him. She approached Yeen fearlessly as a ray of light among the shadows. She passed beneath the raging statues, her eyes on theirs. Fire, water and smoke between them.

Grey Worm studied the cliffs that surrounded the city. They made him uneasy. "Can the ocean breach them?"

Tyrion had been watching the cliffs too. "Not unless the earth cracks apart and lets it in."


CINNAMON STRAITS

Marahi sank into the ocean. The pirates raged on deck, picking through the spoils of their last venture onto the shores of the impoverished islands. Women. Daario watched as they were lined up along the deck. The pirates took turns picking one they liked the look of before taking them back to their ships in exchange for pear brandy and gold. It was clear to Daario that the pirate fleet was formed of individuals with a brokered peace dependant on a delicate system of trade and fear.

"You can 'ave one too, if you like. Pretty one – that one, maybe." One of the larger, female pirates stood beside him and gestured at a silver-haired girl, shaking in line. The shells embedded in her skin caught the light. He'd have said it was beautiful if not for the finger bones strung around her neck.

The Jade Seawas stained with pulverised kelp. It was thick, suspended in the currents along with bits of broken ship. Daario found it a sickly sight and where earlier the water smelled of spices it had turned rotten. It would only get worse as they sailed to the East. By the time the waters reached Asshai they'd be black and dead.

"Do you like women, little man?" The pirate continued.

Daario wasn't mad keen on the nickname but there was truth in it. Amongst these dark-skinned women and men he was an pale-bellied imp. "Yes, I like women," Daario replied, watching another one dragged onto a side boat. "I like them better without chains around their necks. There's nothing like a woman's smile, freely given."

The pirate seemed amused. "None of us are free in these waters," she assured him.

Also true. Daario wasn't in chains any more but he'd stop short of thinking himself at liberty.

"Though if it troubles you, these women will be pirates soon and released from the invisible chains the world laid on them. It is a better life. Do not worry, little man, we are nearing Yin. The others like a good steal and there's always profit in war. It is neither here nor there which shiny-arsed-cunt sits on the throne of swords. It's the dragon they don't like."

The dragon had been circling their fleet. It had vanished for a while on Marahi, feasting on livestock and sleeping in the mountains with the gnarled vines and terrified sheep. "You don't need to worry about the dragon. He's watching for his mistress – Queen Daenerys."

"Are dragons are like the bleeding trees?" The pirate asked. "Watchers of the world? I thought they were ill-tempered lizards."

Daario laughed, leaning against the deck with the wind in his face. "Ay, they're that. Viserion's not all bad, as far as dragons go – though he tried to eat my donkey once."


"Where are Yi Ti's ships?" Daario folded the brass looking glass. The Jade Sea was empty. For a bustling trade route around the largest country in the East, they'd sailed into a marine desert. The pirates had gone quiet too. "How long has it been since you sailed these waters?"

"Months," the pirate replied. "We ferried silk to the Summer Isles. These waters were two fleets deep. I don't under-" her voice dropped off as she caught sight of something in the water. "There."

The tip of a mast and crows nest protruded from the waves.

"A wreck in these waters – unusual."

Daario thought it more than strange. "How far to Yin?"

"A day," she replied. "These are the burned shores of Yi Ti you see to your left. We continue as planned until something stops us. What troubles you now?" The pirate stretched her muscular arm out, catching one of her many ravens straight onto bare skin. She unhooked a message tied to its leg and set it free.

"Stories," Daario replied. "Before you -" he was about to say, 'bought me' but amended it to, "found me, I spent time with a group of Dothraki. There were rumours circulating through the men about the deserts of Yi Ti and in particular, those near Yin. Dead men walking near the Jade Gates."

"Little man, we are all dead men walking. That is the deal we strike with the gods the moment they breath life into us. Horselords are superstitious and simple."


YEEN, SOTHORYOS

"What is it?"

"A temple?" Jorah offered, advancing with the queen.

They were inside a sprawling building. The wooden doors had rotted away, leaving the city an open mess. Entering one of these structures they'd found a room lit by a veil of insects that had nested on every surface. Their bodies light flickered like that of the stars but the black stone walls made it feel as though they had wandered into a void – a great chasm in the earth.

"Torch..." Jorah held out his hand. When an Unsullied passed him a flame he took the lead. Every movement they made echoed through the cavernous room.

Jorah spent a moment casing the edges and then lowered the flame to a track running against the wall. It caught in a dramatic flare of light then chased itself until it circled right around to the queen. Not a temple. "A throne room."

In the centre were several lifted steps and a large, flat platform where a throne used to sit. It was chiselled out and now the room was bare.

Tyrion, who'd been hanging behind the rest of the party, ducked under Jorah's arm and stared, hands outstretched. He knew exactly what this was. "This is not good," he whispered. "Don't tell me you're not seeing this, Mormont because I know that you are."

Jorah was seeing it. He was seeing the stone tentacles etched into the floor, tangled and leaping out in free-form sculpture at random almost as though there were real sea monsters set into the floor. Any child raised in Westeros could understand.

"The Greyjoy siegel," Jorah nodded. "Here again – all over the bloody place." He paced. Circled it. Grazed his flame over the stone. There was no mistaking it.

"Except it was never theirs. They took it from the back of a chair which washed up on their shores – or caught in a fishing net, depending on which drunken bastard tells the story and believe me, my queen, there are as many stories as there are fish. Their gods are borrowed and the great Seastone chair that Balon keeps his arse warm on once sat here."

"A cursed thing," Jorah added. The two men of Westeros exchanged looks. If this was the source of the Seastone chair then this place was older than previously thought. "My queen, we should leave this place sleeping. It was old before the First Men came."

"I agree with the knight, if you value my council, my queen, we should -" Tyrion spun around, facing the entrance. "Anyone hear that?"

Jorah unsheathed his sword in reply.

"The wind?" Grey Worm asked.

"Perhaps..." Jorah replied. He shuffled toward the edge of the door, peering around its oily, mangled surface. He looked upon the city with new eyes. It resembled the broken pieces of sea creatures, seething against each other and turned into stone. Perhaps they were not stone as he had thought but living creatures bound by magic and it was their screams that his queen heard. "Anyone see anything?" he asked the men that had been left outside. No one had. "Back to the ships – Daenerys!"

The queen turned and moved deeper into the city, following streets that moved as rivers, meandering in chaos. She could hear the whispers again, drawing her in. Her eyes closed and at once she found herself in a storm. Her boat was caught in the night, teetering on the crest of a powerful wave. Fires burned in the distance, spurting from a dozen peaks. Valyria broke apart with the ocean rearing up on it.

No.

This wasn't Valyria. The mountains were all wrong and there were no dragons in the air. She was somewhere else, watching a different world burn. From within the flames, a great, winged beast larger than any dragon known, took to the sky. Its silhouette left the flames and headed to the water before plunging into the waves.

"My queen..."

Jorah's arms tightened around her waist. He held her firmly against his chest. She could feel his heart beating and his steel on her back. Daenerys was fire against him. She opened her eyes and realised the frightening drop at her feet. He was holding her back from the fall. Perhaps that was what he'd always done...

Dany rested in his embrace. Jorah allowed himself a moment in which he murmured to her and pressed his lips to her cheek. When she pushed him away it was gently.

"The poor creature," Dany knelt at the edge of the pit.

Grey Worm joined them. His first words were in his native tongue. "What is this thing?" he added.

"A dragon," Daenerys replied. "What's left of one." She started to nod in understanding. "Ser Jorah, you are correct. My visions are not coming from the rock – they're coming from her."

The hollow eyes of the dragon skull stared back from its tomb far below. There were a few bones scattered around but mainly only the head was left and it was huge. Its skull was easily the size of the largest warship complete with fangs taller than Grey Worm.

"The size of it, my queen," said Jorah, "this creature comes from before the Targaryen conquest."

"I do not understand," Grey Worm helped Daenerys to her feet. "Why is it here?"

"Dragons originated in the East," Daenerys explained. "Eggs have been found as far off as Asshai, anywhere the earth weeps flame. She was probably from these jungles."

Tyrion was last to the edge. He came at them running, skidding awkwardly to a stop when he ran out of ground. "My queen I – bloody hell – is that a fucking a dragon head? Right," he recovered and pointed furiously behind them toward the city. "We found something too but you're not going to like it."