IV
The survivors of Winterfell scatter as the castle burns, fleeing to the surrounding forest for cover and hiding there, hoping that this last, desperate strike against the Night King and his army will be enough. Hope is all they have left as the great castle and keep, which is said to have been constructed by the legendary Bran the Builder, and which has stood since the Age of Heroes, burns, and with it thousands upon thousands of the wights that have infested it. For those whose friends, kin and comrades fell in battle, only to rise again as soldiers in the Army of the Dead, attacking their friends with the same ferocity as they once had their enemy, there is the hope that those they love may find peace once the flames consume their flesh and free them from their enslavement.
The wights make no sound as they burn.
The cries of those still living but unable to escape the walls of Winterfell before it is consumed by flames pierce the ears and rend the hearts of those who hear them.
The fire burns long into the night, consuming many of the enemy's forces, but not enough.
The King in the North watches, not daring to breathe, as the Night King emerges from the flames, unharmed, his eerie blue eyes sweeping the landscape before him. Acrid black smoke billows behind him, and dozens of White Walkers pass through it to stand behind their leader. Even some of the wights, those not close enough to Winterfell when the fires were lit to be caught in the blaze, have survived, and they fall into formation, as if summoned by a silent command. For an instant, it seems as if the Night King meets his eyes, and the King in the North fears that it was all for nothing, that he will track down each and every survivor, but instead the Night King turns his face south, towards millions of people, millions of lives that he intends to snuff out.
The survivors watch the Night King and his army march away, none of them daring to move a muscle or make a sound. Even the youngest of the children are silent, from terror or from hands pressed over their mouths. The icy night air bites at exposed skin and stiffens unmoving limbs, but none of them dare to move until long after the Night King and his army are out of sight. Then, and only then, do they look to their King for his next command.
To Jon Snow, their faith in him is both an honour and a burden. His people look to him for safety, and for guidance, yet his short reign has brought nothing but death and despair to the North.
He can't help but think of Sansa's advice that he make his true identity known to the other Great Houses, calling on them as Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of his name, rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, to send their forces North to aid in his war against the dead. Only sheer desperation induced him to take her advice, his heart rebelling at the thought of naming another man his father and calling the man who had raised and loved him a liar, but he need not have bothered. Even House Tyrell, who had remained loyal to his grandfather during Robert's Rebellion, long after the other allies of House Targaryen had deserted them, did not even deign to respond to the ravens he sent to Highgarden. It seemed that nobody cared about his claim to the Iron Throne, if they believed his story at all.
Perhaps they had had the right idea.
If he could not keep one kingdom safe, how could he hope to protect seven?
It will be all he can do to try to keep those still living safe until the morrow.
He gives the order to gather what horses and wagons remain to them, and to prepare for a journey. There is no hope of salvaging anything from Winterfell, even if they could afford to wait about in the dead of a winter night for the fires to burn out. They need to move if they do not want their blood to freeze in their veins, their digits and their limbs to turn black and useless, and their hearts to stop from the cold. Castle Cerwyn is closest, and as Lord Cerwyn obeyed Jon's command to bring his people to Winterfell, he hopes that the Night King will ignore a castle that is already devoid of life as he leads his army towards richer prey.
He counts his people as they emerge from their hiding places, his eyes alert for any familiar face.
Some he already knows that he will not see.
Lady Lyanna Mormont, who took umbrage at the suggestion that she should hide in the crypts with the women and young children, he saw killed by a giant, when he was too far away from the girl who was his staunchest defender when she needed him to return the favour. She managed to survive just long enough to slay her foe.
Edd, Lord Commander of the remnants of the Night's Watch, died doing his duty by the realm, as did almost all of the Black Brothers who came with him to Winterfell. The world shall not see their like again.
He wishes that he was not certain that Bran was among the fallen, but he knows that the Night King would not have left Winterfell while the Three-Eyed Raven remained alive. It is not the tall, pale youth with whom he was reunited, the youth who imparted the truth of his origins to him without showing so much as a flicker of emotion, that Jon mourns. He does not want to remember Bran like that, as a stranger who seemed so far removed from the world of men that he was almost as inhuman as the Night King. Jon mourns for the little brother he remembers, the boy who struggled with archery but persevered, the boy who hated to see a man executed but who did not look away because he wanted to make their father proud, the boy who cradled a direwolf pup in his arms and pleaded for its life, the boy who wanted nothing more than to be a knight and have adventures.
Was there anything but memories left of the boy Bran was once he became the Three-Eyed Raven?
The Hound is the first he recognises, his great height setting him apart from other men. He moves stiffly, favouring his right leg, but is otherwise unharmed. He carries a child in one arm, two others close at his heels, the scowl on his face daring any man to draw attention to his protectiveness of them.
Brienne of Tarth is already at work, marshalling the survivors into a group, and snapping at her squire to help her hitch horses to the wagons. The boy is pale with shock and exhaustion, bearing little resemblance to the cheerful, eager youth Jon has got to know over the past months. He follows her commands as if his life depends on it, the task giving him something to focus on other than the horror he has witnessed. Tormund follows her as she carries out her work, though Jon doubts that Brienne will consider him more of a help than a hindrance.
Ser Davos, like the Hound, has found himself the caretaker of a couple of young children, who cling to his hands, refusing to let go of him even after he has lifted them into a wagon. Davos takes a few moments to soothe them, brushing away the children's tears with his shortened fingers before they can freeze on their cheeks, and then he drags himself away from them to seek out other survivors in need of help.
At least Jon can be grateful that some of the children have survived.
What was he thinking to order that the most vulnerable among them should be sent to the crypts, locked beneath the ground with the Stark dead, and no weapon with which to defend themselves when the Night King used his dark magic to raise the Lords of Winterfell and the old Kings of Winter to attack their own people?
He hears Sam's cry of relief and joy before he sees him, and turns in time to see him run, faster than he has ever seen him run before, towards a slight figure emerging from the forest, a tiny boy balanced on her hip. Sam enfolds Gilly and Little Sam in his embrace, weeping unashamedly.
"Jon!"
An instant after he hears her voice call out his name, Sansa hurls herself at him, her arms wrapping around his neck, and holding him as tightly as if she means never to let him go. Her face is bloodied and her gown and cloak are dirty but she is blessedly, mercifully alive. He returns her embrace, and can feel her body tremble in his arms, though whether from cold or shock or a combination of the two, he cannot tell.
He once jested that their father would return from the dead to kill him if he let anything happen to her, and he half-believed it, remembering how Ned Stark was always at his softest in the company of his daughters, remembering how he sought to protect them from the evils of the world, even willing to besmirch his honour and support a wicked boy pretender's claim to the Iron Throne because he knew it to be the only way to save Sansa's life. When he was able to fight to reclaim Winterfell from the Boltons, when he had Ramsey at his mercy and could make him suffer for the pain he inflicted on Sansa, he hoped that Ned would know, and be proud of him, both for avenging his sister and for ensuring that her home was safe for her once more.
At least he has achieved something tonight.
He has failed to protect his people, failed to stop the Night King before he could turn his sights on the other kingdoms, failed to protect Bran and Rickon, but if he can keep his sisters safe, he has not let his father down.
He pats Sansa's back awkwardly, his mind searching for something comforting to say, but he can come up with nothing. What can he say to her that would make this better? She is no longer the innocent, sweet girl who loved songs and stories and who would believe in a warrior who could make all well again. She is too clever to be taken in by false reassurances. She knows as well as he does that, though the Night King may be gone, they must still contend with cold and hunger as they travel in search of refuge. In the end, he says nothing, just holds her for another moment before gently disengaging from her embrace, and returning his attention to his people.
The trickle of survivors is slowing now, and to his horror and dismay, they number fewer than two hundred.
Two hundred, of the tens of thousands of fighters gathered from the North and the Vale, and the tens of thousands of people who flocked to Winterfell, trusting in their King to protect them from the approaching threat.
No more than a dozen or so are children.
What future can be left for the North when it has lost its children?
Desperately, Jon scans the face of every survivor, praying to the old gods, the new gods, even the Lord of Light, any god that might listen to his prayer and show him an ounce of mercy, that he will see her among them.
He waits for her a long time, too long given the desperate need to bring his people to safety.
Arya never appears.
His heart aches at the thought of giving her up for dead, and he wants nothing more to wait until the fires burn out so they can search the ruins, until he can order every man to help him sift through the rubble to uncover her. He desperately wants to believe that Arya, who managed to survive all those years alone, against all odds, was able to find some safe corner of Winterfell, concealed from the Night King's army and protected from the fire. He wants to believe that she is just waiting to emerge, and chide him for doubting that she would outlive them all.
But he knows that Arya is gone.
He gives the order for their band of survivors to set out, mounting the horse closest to him and spurring it forward so he can take his place at the head of the straggling procession, and lead them towards Castle Cerwyn.
Alone at the head of the procession, where none can see his tears, he allows himself to grieve for his little sister.
Castle Cerwyn lies half a day's ride from Winterfell, but that is for a confident rider with a well-rested mount, on a day when the worst a traveller must contend with is a light summer snow. With icy winds blowing and snow blanketing the ground, with fewer horses than they have men and women to ride them, and with the need to keep pace with the wagons that carry those too young, too old or too injured to travel on horseback, the journey lasts three full days.
By the time Castle Cerwyn comes into view, they are all exhausted, starving and half-frozen.
Jon reins in his horse, halting the animal until Sansa's horse draws level with his.
"Did Lord Cerwyn send the grain, as you commanded him?" he asks in a low voice as soon as she is within earshot. He knows that many of the lords were reluctant to obey Sansa's command that they send almost all of the grain they had stored for the coming winter to Winterfell, that it might be provisioned for the arrival of the people of the North when they came to seek shelter within its walls. He suspects that at least a couple of them will have held back more of their stores than they were supposed to, for fear that they would not be able to get it back once the battle was over. If Lord Cerwyn was one of them, Jon will bless the man's memory.
"Lord Cerwyn was the first to obey the command," Sansa reports, knowing why he asks. "But I didn't order any of the lords to send all of their food."
"Only almost all of it."
"We needed it! With all of the people coming, I needed to make sure that I would have enough to feed them!"
"I know that. It was the right thing to do." In his mind, he adds 'at the time'. There is no question but that Sansa made the right decision, for the right reasons, when she gave the order, one he had not thought to give. The lords may have balked at the idea of turning over their precious stores of grain but there is no question but that they needed to have food to feed the people flooding into the castle, especially as the Boltons were remiss in making the necessary preparations for the coming winter. There is also no question but that things would be at least a little easier for them now if he could believe that they were riding towards a castle whose granary was full to the brim. "We'll just have to make do with whatever we find there." What else can they do?
Lord Cerwyn may have obeyed the order to send the vast bulk of his grain to Winterfell, but no such order was given regarding firewood.
It comes as a pleasant surprise to Jon to ride into the small, neat courtyard to see tall stacks of cut logs against the walls, shielded from the worst of the snow by rough canvas covers. Without him needing to give the order, several men dismount, gather armfuls of wood, and carry it inside to the hall. It is an example that others are not slow in following, every man, woman and child present desperate for the warmth of a fire after three days spent travelling through the snow. Fires are laid in the great hearths on either end of the hall, and the people huddle around them as the first, flickering flames dance to life, this first taste of warmth so welcome that, at first, nobody cares about whether or not there is any food in the castle. The fires take hold, driving the chill from the hall.
Jon would like nothing more than to stay in the hall, with his people, allowing the heat of the fire to melt the ice in his blood, restoring fingers and toes that are almost numb with the cold, but he cannot allow himself even this small luxury, not when there is so much still to be done.
When he asks if any of the survivors lived in Castle Cerwyn, two men and a woman step forward, all of them servants to the dead lord. To them, he entrusts the tasks of showing others where the food is stored, and bringing them to the kitchens to light the fires there. It has been too long since any of his people have had a proper meal.
Sam, he summons to join him in the rookery. To his dismay, over half of the birds are stiff in their cages, starved to death when the castle's Maester and the servants who would have tended them fled to Winterfell. The fourteen still alive are weak.
"We'll need to feed them up before we try to have them carry any messages," Sam reports, after spending several minutes studying them. "They won't make it a league in this state."
Jon curses under his breath. He was counting on being able to send ravens to all of the great Houses, to the Citadel, and to King's Landing immediately. Time is of the essence, and the other kingdoms need to know of the approaching threat, as well as the weapons that will prove effective against it.
"How long is it going to take before they're ready?"
"At least a few days. I'll need to take it slowly, they've been starving for so long that overfeeding them could kill them."
"I'll leave it to you to care for them. We need to prepare messages to let everybody know what has happened."
"Even Queen Cersei?"
"Yes." Jon has no love for Cersei Lannister, who made herself an enemy of every Northman when she imprisoned Ned Stark and allowed her monstrous son to call for his head, but there are a million people in King's Landing, and Westeros will be lost forever if they are allowed to become a million soldiers in the Night King's army. To prevent this, he will give Cersei every bit of help he can to defend her city, and pray that, this time, she heeds his warning and is willing to do what needs to be done to save the people. "If we band together, there is still a chance that we can defeat the Night King. We need to spread the word to as many people as possible."
Sam, always more comfortable with a pen than with a sword, is already rummaging through the desk in the room, a triumphant smile on his broad face when he unearths paper and ink. He taps the ink bottle, his smile fading slightly when there is no sloshing sound. "Frozen solid," he reports. "At least I'll have time to thaw it while the ravens recover their strength."
"Don't send them out before they're ready, but don't delay either," Jon cautions him. "As soon as they're strong enough to carry a message, send them."
"I will. It's a shame that ravens can't cross the sea, isn't it?" Jon's bewilderment must show on his face, because Sam is quick to elaborate. "If a raven could cross the Narrow Sea, we could send one to Daenerys Targaryen."
"The Mad King's daughter?"
"And Maester Aemon's great-niece. He used to get letters about her from time to time, and he always asked me to read them to him. She's Queen of Meereen, or at least she was the last time Maester Aemon got a letter. They made her their Queen when she conquered it to free all of the slaves. She has an army of Unsullied, they're supposed to be the greatest fighters in the world, and she has three dragons. They must be fully grown by now. Imagine what dragonfire could do against wights."
Jon can imagine all too easily.
He grew up hearing about Aegon's conquest in Maester Luwin's history lessons, and reading the stories about it in the library. He knows all about how, with his two sisters and three dragons between them, Aegon conquered Westeros, uniting the kingdoms under his rule and establishing a dynasty that lasted almost three centuries. The stories of the Targaryen conquest were among his favourites, even though he knew that his ancestor, Torrhen Stark, was forced to renounce his title of King, a title that the Starks had held for thousands of years before the King Who Knelt surrendered it to save his people. At the time, he never dreamed that Aegon Targaryen was as much his ancestor as Torrhen Stark. He knows how the fire of the Targaryen dragons cut through armies, and how it melted the great stone fortress of Harrenhal, reducing it to a smoking ruin.
He can imagine three immense beasts flying over the Night King's army, breathing fire and destroying wights.
"You couldn't have said something about her before now?" he grumbles.
"Well, we could hardly expect her to leave everything in Meereen behind and come to Westeros even if we had sent her a letter. Nobody outside the North and the Vale sent so much as a man to fight when you asked for their help, and they all grew up on stories about the White Walkers. Daenerys probably never heard of them. In her shoes, I'd think that the message was a trap to lure me and my dragons into an ambush."
Jon has to concede that Sam's point is a fair one. "If I want her to come to Westeros to join the fight, a letter isn't going to be enough," he muses aloud. "Is there a map in that desk?"
Sam opens drawers, and rifles through the papers for a few moments before presenting Jon with a map, painstakingly painted on parchment. It is slightly faded, but as detailed as any of the maps that Maester Luwin made Jon and Robb study when they were boys, before they were old enough to escape the schoolroom.
Jon studies the map in silence, tracing the path from Castle Cerwyn to White Harbour with his finger, estimating how long it is likely to take their party to travel that distance, factoring in both the weather and the need to slow their pace to the speed of the wagons. The winter storms will make any crossing difficult, at best, but House Manderly prides itself on building ships strong enough to sail in all weathers.
"Find out if any of the men from White Harbour are among the survivors, and if there are any others with experience of sailing."
Sam raises a surprised eyebrow at the order. "What are you thinking?"
"That there may still be hope."
With dragons, he might have been able to defeat the Night King at Winterfell.
With dragons, he might still have a chance to save Westeros.
"The red one is the prettiest."
Like the first set of dragons' eggs gifted to Daenerys as a wedding gift, each of the three eggs is a different colour. One has steel grey scales, with swirls of pale blue. A second has scales as white and smooth as pearls, with delicate silver veins threading through them. The third, the one that Loreza Sand pronounces the prettiest, has scales of a deep ruby red, slashed with pale yellows and oranges that bring to mind the rising sun, the vibrant colours appealing to a little girl who favours bright hues. Unlike the first set of dragon's eggs, however, these have not lost any of their colour, and have not been turned to stone. They glow whenever Drogon, Rhaegal or Viserion breath gentle tongues of flame over them, and at times, Daenerys is certain that she can see them move, ever so slightly. Even now, in the grey of early morning, what little light there is seems to cling to them.
"How much longer will it take for them to hatch?" Loreza asks, her dark eyes fixed on the ruby-red egg that has taken her fancy. The little girl is one of the few to dare to set foot in the former fighting pit. Even her mother and sisters, none of whom lack courage, prefer to observe the dragons from a safe distance. She is only allowed to approach the dragons if Daenerys is with her, and she is eager enough to see the dragons and the eggs that she consents to hold her hand while they are there, as her mother insisted when she granted permission for the visit, though she would usually raise very strong objections to being treated like a baby.
The dragons tolerate her presence well enough, even regarding her with something akin to indulgence. Daenerys wonders if the prospect of baby dragons entering the world has made them more patient with children, or if they can sense the strain of Valyrian blood that Loreza and her sisters inherited from their ancestress, another Daenerys Targaryen, the princess whose wedding brought peace between Dorne and the Targaryen dynasty, and that this makes them more warmly disposed to her than would otherwise be the case.
Her stomach churns uncomfortably at the memory of how Drogon and Rhaegal reacted to Jon Snow, accepting him in a way that they never had a stranger. She should have guessed that he must have had Valyrian blood. She should have... No. She will not think of him. She cannot allow herself to think of him, of what he did to her, of what she did in King's Landing, or of what has become of the people of the Westeros in her absence. She has to move on.
"I don't know," she says, in answer to the question, grateful for Loreza's presence, which gives her something else to focus on besides memories of what will not be.
"But it's been more than two months." An eternity to a child who has not yet celebrated her ninth nameday. It is strange to think that the dragons were born after she was.
"Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion were in their eggs for hundreds of years before they hatched."
"That's too long!"
"The ages turned their eggs to stone. It was different for them. I don't know how long it will take for newly laid eggs to hatch. Perhaps it will happen any day now."
"It will take as long as it takes," Ellaria's voice chimes in from her place in the stands, a vantage point that allows her to keep an eye on her youngest child. "You wanted to see the eggs, and now you have. It is time for Her Grace to go."
"Can I go with you, Your Grace?" Loreza asks at once, casting a pleading look at Daenerys. "Mama will let me, won't you? I'll be very, very good, I promise."
"That will be something new," Ellaria remarks, amusement dancing in her eyes as she watches her daughter bounce in excitement at the prospect of accompanying Daenerys on her trip. The destination is of little interest to Loreza, but the means of transportation holds a definite appeal. "Will Drogon take a passenger, Your Grace?"
"Yes." He never has in this lifetime, but she is certain that if he was willing to accept multiple men as passengers when they flew beyond the Wall to rescue Jorah and the others, Drogon will allow Loreza to ride with her.
Ellaria allows her daughter to wait in suspense for a few moments, smiling as she dances from one foot to the next, impatient for the answer but knowing better than to push her, for fear of being forbidden. At last, she nods. "I have no objection, if you're willing, Your Grace. It's this, or she may try to sneak onto Viserion when our backs are turned."
Loreza adopts an injured expression, as though she would never contemplate trying to ride a dragon without permission, but her face lights up when Daenerys guides her over to Drogon, who lowers one of his massive wings to allow them to climb up onto his back. Daenerys sits the child directly in front of her, reaching around her to hold onto the ridges below his neck, so that her arms are a protective barrier around her.
"Hold on tight," she cautions, waiting until Loreza has followed her example and clutched at the scales before speaking to Drogon. "Valahd."
A heartbeat after Drogon soars into the air, Viserion takes flight. At first he soars even higher than Drogon, then he suddenly swoops down to glide alongside his mother and brother, shrieking with what Daenerys knows to be joy. She has not flown with all three of her sons since the eggs were laid. Between them, they ensure that the eggs are never left without a dragon to defend them; they take it in turns to hunt, and when she flies on Drogon, only one of the other two will accompany them.
On a dragon, she can cover ground at many times the speed of her khalasar, allowing her to set out weeks after they do and still catch up, should she wish to join them on their missions. For the most part, she leaves them to it, but on occasion, she makes a point of flying overhead as a reminder to their enemies that the Mother of Dragons leads the Dothraki.
As a young girl newly wed to Drogo, and new to the life of a Khaleesi, she was shocked to learn that most of the slaves that travelled with the khalasar were given as gifts, even after Jorah explained the reason for the custom.
"If you rule a city and you see the horde approaching, you have two choices; pay tribute or fight. An easy choice for most."
Now, she uses it as part of her work.
Drogo commanded forty thousand warriors. When his khalasar approached a city, its leaders never contemplated trying to fight, as they might have with one of the smaller khalasars, commanded by less formidable Khals. Instead, they were quick to offer him slaves by the thousand, as well as gold, jewels, fine cloth, and the best horses they could find, terrified that he might deem the gifts they presented him with unworthy, even insulting, and that rather than accepting their gifts and moving on, he would instead choose to lead his khalasar in a sack of the city. She commands over a hundred thousand warriors, all of the Dothraki united at last in a single khalasar, the greatest army that the world has ever seen.
Volantis is a powerful city, one of the largest of the Free Cities, and the most highly populated. It has the resources to do a great deal of damage to her forces, were she to wage war on them directly. It is also a city where the slaves vastly outnumber the freemen so, when her khalasar first rode up to its walls, it was not a difficult choice for its leaders to make. Rather than risk conflict with the horde, they gifted them with over fifty thousand slaves. The lives of the slaves were undoubtedly of less value to them than the horses, gold and silver they used to further sweeten the mood of her khalasar.
When the Dothraki rode away, with their gifts in tow, the wealthy citizens of Volantis breathed a sigh of relief.
Then the Dothraki returned to their gates a second time, and even more slaves, horses, and gold were offered up in order to appease them.
She regrets that she was not there for the third time, regrets not being present to see the looks on the faces of the leaders of Volantis when they realised that no matter how many slaves and horses, no matter how much of their coin and treasures they gave her khalasar, they would not be left in peace to continue to grow wealthy off the suffering of those they enslave.
She pretends not to be aware that Tyrion is taking bets about how many more visits it will take before the leaders of Volantis see the wisdom in putting an end to the slave trade altogether.
Her khalasar is visible from a distance, a great column that stretches for miles, less than a day's journey from Meereen. They see her as she soars overhead, and cry out, arakhs raised in salute to their Khaleesi.
The slaves gifted to Drogo walked alongside his khalasar, lashed if they moved too slowly. The slaves gifted to her khalasar travel on horseback or by wagon, and her warriors treat them with the courtesy she commands of them. They are her people now, and they have suffered so much already. A comfortable journey to the territory she rules, and every help and support they can be given to start new lives as free men and women, is the very least they are owed.
Cries of 'Mhysa!' fill the air, and thousands upon thousands of hands wave to her.
Loreza lets go of Drogon long enough to wave back, but resumes her grip at Daenerys' gentle reprimand.
Viserion, even swifter than Drogon, circles overhead a couple of times before flying away.
On their return journey, they fly over the Bay of Dragons, the ships in the port looking tiny below them, and then out to sea. Viserion swoops low, skimming over the foamy surface of the sea, Loreza laughing gleefully as the spray splashes her. Drogon, less amused than Loreza, soars higher, out of reach of his brother's splashing.
Daenerys smiles as she watches Viserion dive under the water, surfacing with a fish that looks tiny in his massive jaw but is large enough for a feast. He tosses the fish high in the air, blackening it with his fire before eating it.
Loreza is saying something but her attention is focused on Viserion's antics, and she scarcely hears the child until one word cuts through her reverie.
"...Westerosi."
"What did you say?"
"That ship is Westerosi. Over there."
Daenerys follows the little girl's pointed finger, and can see the ship she means. It is difficult to judge distance from this height, but there can be no question but that its destination is the Bay of Dragons.
"That's House Manderly's sigil on the sail. They used to come to Dorne for wine."
Daenerys' stomach roils, and she can feel bitter fluid rising in her throat.
She recognises the name.
The North has come to Meereen.
TBC.
Author's Note: My sincere thanks to those who have left kind and encouraging reviews, and who have added this story to their Favourites and Author Alerts.