"I'm quite sure that, whatever I said, it must have been misinterpreted." Tyrion marched glumly up the dark street toward the upper-class districts. "Such a mercurial temperament ill suits a proper ruler."
"You went too far," said Rago, the Dothraki holding the torch aloft beside him. "Even a slave girl would have gotten angry with you. Not that it would have mattered then," the man went on. "Sometimes they're better when they're angry."
"I was only trying to console her," the little man said. "I don't see why I should be punished for that."
"Well, ordering you off seemed to make her feel better, so it worked." He hesitated at a crossroads, trying to pick a turn. A small group of merchants spied the tall dark horseman and quickened their steps as they passed by. The Dothraki ignored them, turning down the street the men had just come down. "And being ordered to spend a night in a whores' den doesn't seem like much of a punishment. You really haven't been with a woman since you came here?"
There isn't one person in this place you're leaving behind that you care about, is there? She had asked, storm clouds gathering on her face. "No. The only women who've ever shown an interest in me are whores. And I rather lost my taste for whores in Westeros."
"I don't know which idea is stranger," Rago said. "Paying for a woman, or paying to use her just once."
Tyrion eyed the tall man who had been attending Dany on some business of the horsemen when she had turned suddenly upon her Hand. "You seem rather different from the usual run of Dothraki, if you don't mind my saying." Starting with the fact that you speak Common and Valerian.
The man scoffed. "More 'civilized,' I suppose?" He slowed, for which Tyrion was grateful: even though the tall Dothraki had seemed in no hurry, Tyrion had been hard-pressed to keep up. "When I was just starting to grow hair around my sack, I went out on my very first raid – just a small troop of us, stealing horses from a village. It should have been easy, a way to break in the boys and give them a taste of blood and loot. The damned sheep used slings, of all things, and I took a rock in the side of my head, knocked me right off my horse. My brothers left me for dead. When I woke, I was a prisoner. A slave."
He shifted his grip on the torch and pointed out a turn. "The people they sold me to weren't so bad, for sheep. They tried to teach me their ways, and as hard as I resisted it, some of that nonsense soaked in. When I escaped and rejoined my khalisar, years later, I had a lot to prove. I had to learn to fight like a demon and take many women and horses, far more than I needed, to convince others that my stones weren't softened just because I knew how to read and sometimes talked before I fought. That is how I became Kogo's bloodrider, before I became hers."
It seemed that a great many of Queen Daenerys's closest people were former slaves: Missandei, the Unsullied, Varys, even himself and Jorah – though Grey Worm and Missandei's nostrils flared when he referred to himself as such – and now this young stallion. Tyrion wondered if the Breaker of Shackles could tell somehow, or if having been slaves was something that drew people to Dany and bound them to her service. As they turned onto the alley that ended at the Garden of Joy, Tyrion asked, "Rago. What do you expect you will find across the Poison Water?"
The big horseman smiled at the doors at the end of the alley. "Loot. Glory. Fun. Something different. I like different things. Maybe that's something the sheep put into me."
"And perhaps death?"
He shrugged. "A man can't be worried about that. He'd never have a chance to live," he said. "Just so long as I'm properly burned when I die."
Tyrion, like most Westerosi men, had heard tales of the opulence of Eastern bawdy houses; the Garden of Joy fit his imaginings quite nicely – as regarded its size and décor, at least. The women were another matter. The ones in the garden fronting the big house drew aside at his approach, some averting their eyes from him, others staring with less-than-friendly expressions. In the main parlor, the young girls in attendance clasped their hands and studied their slippers, while the madam looked at him rather like his nanny when she first caught him staring at a serving girl's arse.
Nevertheless, her voice was courteous and professional. "Greetings, my lords, to the Garden. What is your pleasure?"
"My pleasure waits for me in my tent," Rago said. "I'll be back for you at sunrise. If you're too drunk or worn out to walk down to the dock, I'm to throw you over my shoulder like a sack of feed and carry you."
She turned to him. "And you, my lord?" She asked, her voice strangely neutral.
"My pleasure is to serve the queen, who sent me here to farewell Meereen. Wine," he said. "I don't care what, so long as it's fit to drink." He took a deep breath. "And a selection. Again, no preferences, so long as they're pretty."
She gave him a troubled look and left. A girl barely past puberty arrived shortly after with a goblet and a small decanter. Her eyes never dropped below the top of his head as she served him. During the second glass, he tried to strike up a conversation, but she could be coaxed to give no more than one- or two-word answers. When he pressed her for a longer comment, she shivered and nearly dropped the tray. Tyrion took the decanter and dismissed her, perplexed.
The madam returned. "Please accept my apologies. Normally, a client has his pick of hostesses, but we are having … difficulties. But if it please my lord, we have available a young beauty recently come to our service, who is will- who is free to serve your needs."
The hour was late, and the city was full, both from the fleets in the harbor and from the caravans come to provision the ships. Tyrion imagined that the whores of Meereen must be very busy of late. "Pretty, you say?"
"A goddess, my lord. Her face and form will not disappoint, I swear to you."
He sighed and set aside his goblet. "Lead on then."
The madam conducted him to the staircase. He eyed the steps. "I don't suppose you have rooms on the ground floor."
"Only storerooms and servants' quarters, my lord," she said. "Nothing worthy of the Queen's guest."
It was a common arrangement in such places, guaranteeing the customers privacy and limiting their chances to slip out without paying. He sighed again and began to labor up the stairs, hanging on to the ornate railing nearly even with the top of his head. Pausing at a landing halfway up, he looked down between the stiles and caught one of the young serving girls staring up at him with undisguised hatred. She dropped her gaze and hurried off.
The madam conducted him down a series of halls, traffic growing sparser as they went on until they reached a section that seemed deserted. Tyrion's legs were weary and his sense of direction befuddled by the time they reached the door at the end of a blank hallway. "Pleasant eve, my lord," said the madam, opening the door just wide enough for him to enter, and shutting it firmly behind him.
Tyrion was pleasantly surprised by the room. Having been conducted so far from the salon, he had expected to end up in some mean little soldier's crib, but the place was roomy, warm, and as ornately furnished as any of Littlefinger's guest suites, with draperies and sculpture and the glitter of fine-wrought things.
The girl standing beside the bed was finely wrought as well: dark-haired and lovely and beautifully attired, she had stood so still as he entered that at first glance he had mistaken her for sculpture. Her face was a mask, watching him without expression. When the door closed, she said in faintly accented Common, "You don't look the way I expected."
"You thought I'd be taller?"
"Better-looking." She made a small gesture toward the bed. "Well. How do you want to do this? Shall I undress? Do you have a position in mind? Or would you like to drink some more before you decide?"
Tyrion looked to a small side table and spotted a decanter and goblets much like the one he had abandoned in the parlor. "I think wine would make for a good start." When she made no move to serve him, he waddled to the table and poured his own. "I must say, you are the most unaccommodating whore I have ever done business with. Do you imagine a dwarf's gold is harder to spend than any other sort?" Feeling mean, he added, "If it's my equipment that concerns you, you'll soon see that I am made as other men."
"I'm not worried about how yellow your coin is, or how big your cock," she rejoined. "That isn't why we drew lots to see which of us would be forced to service you."
It wasn't often Tyrion was at a loss for words; in the presence of tyrants and dragons, rallying troops at the walls of King's Landing, or standing in court under sentence of death, he had always had something to say – sometimes even the right thing. But now he felt his chin sag to bump the rim of the goblet, his mouth open and empty, his mind blank and echoing with the woman's words.
"Apologies, my lord," she said, sounding decidedly unapologetic. "My behavior dishonors the house. I shall do my best henceforth to please you, whatever way I can." She approached and knelt before him. The gesture of submission might have been more effective, he thought, if she hadn't still been taller than he was. And more convincing if she hadn't been staring into his eyes the whole time like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.
He turned from her, to a small round table flanked by a pair of stools. "Drink with me then. Perhaps if you keep me diverted long enough, I'll pass out, and you won't have to endure my touch at all."
-0-
"'The interpreter you stole from Kraznys will remain, to be sold … to the highest… bidder.' Grey Worm's nostrils flared. "Everyone who heard his voice knew he meant to take you for himself. And that he had other uses for you than your skill with words." Missandei's head rested on his shoulder; he ran his fingers through her hair. "I have never killed a man in anger. But standing over him kneeling in the dust, listening to him beg for his life with my hand on my knife, was very … satisfying. It took all my willpower not to wipe his friends' blood from my blade on the shoulder of that fancy jacket."
She tittered. "He would have soiled himself."
"He did anyway. You didn't notice?"
"I was watching you."
-0-
"There," Milli said, "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
Theon pulled her closer in answer, not yet ready to speak. He lay naked with her on the rude little bed, his breathing and heartbeat slowing. He felt a growing warmth and sense of peace that was different from the release he remembered. She kissed him under the ear, and he shivered. "No," he finally said. "Not at all. But you couldn't have got much out of it."
"Hmh." Her hand covered his where it rested on her hip. She twined her fingers in his, and guided his hand to her pubic hair. "You have all the tools you need to please a woman, you just need to learn how to use them. Your hand is good for more than squeezing teats and getting her wet. And there are things to do with your tongue besides filling her mouth or flicking her nipples." She unlocked their hands, but kept hers atop his, each finger on one of his. She pressed the heel of her hand against the back of his, guiding him downward, and urged the tip of his middle finger into the cleft between her thighs. "Tonight, you'll become a better lover than you ever were when you had a cock."
-0-
"I'm so sorry," Dany said softly, running her fingers through Daario's hair.
He blinked, focusing on the table in front of him, and the two bottles on it. His chin was on the table, and he couldn't seem to lift it. This wasn't the Pyramid. He was in a tavern, he thought, talking. Talking to…
A tendril of silver hair lay across his shoulder, trailing down to the table.
"I know how cruel I seemed. I didn't mean to. You think I chose between you and my throne across the sea, but I didn't. The Seven Kingdoms need a ruler. That is the life I was born and bred for. I have no more choice about filling that role than I have a choice whether to draw my next breath." The fingers massaged his scalp, traced a line from his temple to his ear. "Forgive me."
His head and eyes were heavy, so heavy. The room was darkening. "I do," he murmured. "I did. But it still hurts."
"I know, love. That won't fade soon, but it will fade. You'll rule this city until they learn to rule themselves, and then you'll protect them from themselves and from those who wish them ill. Your days as a rootless man are over. You'll become respected, even admired, a pillar of the city, with statues in your likeness standing in the markets. You'll find other women, even women to love. You'll raise children and grandchildren. You'll be happy. I only hope you can remember me fondly, in time, as I know I will remember you." Her lips touched the back of his neck, and the world was gone.
…
Alluquere withdrew her hand from the sleeping mercenary's hair. She slipped his purse from his belt, poured the coins from it into her palm, and looked at them a moment before putting them back. She picked up her two goblets, the rim of one of which had been coated with a potion formulated to make the partaker sleepy and talkative, and sometimes experience visions, made especially potent when mixed with spirits. She stowed them in her bag and entered the tavern.
Rufus, the Second Sons' third-in-command, spied her from his table and motioned her to him. He said, "How is he?"
"Still hurting. But he'll mend."
"Why didn't he take you to a room?"
"That isn't what he wanted from me."
"Where is he now?"
"Still out on the balcony, sleeping off two bottles of Arbor red."
"Two bottles usually has him dancing on the tables, not sleeping on them."
She shrugged and held out her palm. Rufus dropped several coins into it. "How can I get hold of you again?"
She shook her head. "This won't work a second time."
He smiled, showing a gold tooth. "Not for him. For me."
She dropped the coins into her purse. "You can't. I'm leaving the city. Taking a caravan through Y'unkai to Astapor, then catching a ship sailing west." She turned away. "Everyone wants to fuck the Queen. But this isn't where she rules anymore."
-0-
"So." Tyrion drained his glass. "Are dwarves so unwelcome at every brothel in Meereen?"
"The world is full of dwarves," she said, refilling it. "Roughly half of them have cocks. Many of the ones with cocks have money. Any number of them have found welcome here. It isn't your height that makes serving you so burdensome. It's the size of your heart. You see, we've heard the stories."
"Stories? What stories?" Tyrion said, feeling outraged. "Are you talking about those ridiculous tales spread by wandering troupes? The ones that portray my sister as a saint, and her son a martyr, and me some sort of evil mastermind determined to destroy the Seven Kingdoms? That's all complete nonsense. Those people will-"
"No." She gave him a skeptical look. "Whoring is a mobile profession, my lord. Brothels like to rotate the stock, to keep regular customers interested and coming back. Every caravan and army on the march has its followers. Whores travel the length and breadth of the known world, and where we go, we take the stories and secrets that are murmured in our ears." Her eyes met his. "And that is how we know what sort of man you are. A man who betrayed every woman who ever loved him."
It took him a moment to find his voice. "I? I betrayed?"
"Your mother died bringing you into the world and giving you life. Doesn't that seem like something of a betrayal?"
"I was a newborn," he said. "I didn't have the least choice in the matter."
"When you spoke to the queen about it, you sounded as if you were boasting."
"I was pleading for my life and freedom. I-" He stopped. "There was no one in that chamber but the queen and her close advisers. None of them would have whispered the details into a whore's ear."
She tsked. "There were plenty of people in that chamber. But apparently a Lannister, even one just released from a slave's chains, doesn't notice servants unless he's looking for someone to give orders to." She touched the rim of her goblet to her lips. "How do you explain what you did to your bride, then?"
"Tysha?" His chest tightened. "What am I supposed to have done to her?"
She gave him a strange look. "You took a fancy to a wheelwright's daughter, a common girl. But she wouldn't spread her legs for coin. So you married her in a sham ceremony, knowing your father could annul it with a wave of his hand. So the story goes. Two weeks later, when you tired of her, you made a present of her to your father's guardsmen, to show her what you thought her love was worth."
His hand clenched around the stem of the goblet. "That … is completely backwards. I fell in love with a common girl and married her, only to be told that she was a prostitute hired by my brother. I refused to believe it, so my father proved it by hiring her to service a barracks full of soldiers. He made me watch. Her hand had so many silver stags in it they were falling through her fingers-"
"Tossing a coin on a woman's belly after you've raped her doesn't make her a whore, Tyrion Lannister!" The girl caught herself, and regarded him. "Is it possible that you're merely the stupidest man on earth, instead of the most evil?" She went on, "She was exactly what she told you. No doubt your father thought different, that any woman who would lie with you must be a whore of one sort or another. It wouldn't have been hard to get your brother to go along with the story. But I wonder what threats he used on her, to force her to submit and play her role?" She refilled his glass, which was mysteriously empty again. "Did she look your way, while she was enduring it all? And if she did, what did she see? I can guess well enough – the face of the man she loved, twisted in contempt as he watched the woman he claimed to love being gang-raped. How hard were you to convince, really? Did you actually doubt your brother when he told you?" She set the bottle down and touched the rim of her glass with her fingertips. "You never asked her for the truth of it, did you? If you had, she might well have lived."
What happened to her?
She went where whores go.
"Of course he killed her," the girl said quietly. "After that elaborate effort to cleave you apart, do you suppose he'd give her a chance to approach you ever again? To tell you the truth, and possibly steal back your heart, and turn your hurt and anger on him redoubled?" She raised the goblet. "You killed him, I hear. Too bad it was for all the wrong reasons." She sipped. "And now we come to your mistress, the one you murdered in the bed where you made love."
"She was trying to stick a dagger in my eye!"
"She was trying to drive you away before your father returned from the privy, you fool," she said. "If she'd been trying to stick a knife into your eye, she'd have done it. And why didn't she call out, with your father and his guards just a shout away? Didn't you ever wonder?" She sipped. "It was self-defense for her as well. Freed from your cell, what else but revenge would have brought you to that room, and at that hour?"
"Not for her," he said. "She was the last person I expected to find there."
"It was part of her deal for your life," she said. "As was her testimony. He said he'd have you killed if you weren't convicted. But if you were, he'd arrange your escape." She gave him a little smile. "You really think your brother and the Spider did it all themselves? Your father may have helped only by doing nothing, but you wouldn't have gone free any other way." She took a tiny sip. "He didn't do it for love. He intended to use you as an outside threat to bring Cersei and her children firmly under his hand."
Tyrion's voice shook. "Why should I believe any of this?"
"Why indeed? Why open your eyes when you've got so comfortable walking through life blind?" She regarded him. "That she betrayed is not in question, my lord, but exactly who she betrayed is. You recall how surprised you were when Bronn brought her to you?"
He swallowed. It had been quite late, long past the time men off duty made their selections from among the camp followers. He had sent Bronn out to find him a woman, expecting him to bring back some coarse wench fit only for sucking his cock. Instead… "He told me he took her off an officer."
"Oh yes. He was always eager to show his value to you. But do you really think such a practical man got in a swordfight with a stranger, just to bring you a prettier whore?"
He remembered Bronn's refusal to be his second against the Mountain. The sellsword had weighed the risks against the possible reward, and chosen the safer course. "Possibly not."
"By 'taking her,' perhaps he meant he was walking by a certain tent when he heard a man and woman quarreling, and nearly caught her in his arms when she rushed out. She was followed by the officer, unarmed and half-dressed. The man claimed he'd already paid her and demanded the woman returned or his money back. Bronn showed him six inches of his sword, and the 'ginger cunt' changed his mind."
Tyrion said carefully, "If what you say is true, the only way you could know it is if one of those three told you."
"Or told someone, who told someone, who told me," she said. "It was the officer, of course. Even men sworn to secrecy on pain of death can't help boasting to a properly impressed woman." She gave him a heavy-lidded look. "She was meant for you and no one else that night. They knew you'd send Bronn out for a woman. Your tent was the last on the row, there was only one way he could come. All they had to do was wait by the flap." She watched him as if studying the horizon for an approaching ship. "That little drama was meant to induce you to offer her protection and keep her close."
Tyrion's vision darkened until it was a tunnel whose end was the whore's face. "Who?"
"Who is the last person you would ever expect to send you a whore?" She sipped, watching him over the glass's rim. "Did you never wonder why she would tell you nothing of herself, not even where she came from?" With the glass still at her lips she went on, "She was supposed to do far more than warm your bed. She was supposed to stay close, watch you, report your plans and movements, and if necessary, to kill you. You didn't really think he would send you off to rule in his stead without some sort of leash?"
It would be just like him, he thought. Tyrion was good at the Game, but his father was the master. "He forbade me to take her to King's Landing." But as he said it, he knew the answer.
"And you have always been such an obedient son," she smirked. "What surer way to have you bring her?" She went on, "She played the whore very well for you, I'm sure. At first. But then something remarkable happened."
Come away with me, she had begged, fear brightening her eyes as he lay wounded after the repulse of Stannis's attack. Flee across the Sea, leave all this behind. Nothing else matters, not the gold, nothing. So long as we're together. Plainly she had thought the next attempt on his life would be successful. What had not been plain was the possibility that she might be privy to the assassin's plans.
Softly, almost to himself, he said, "When I came into the room in the Tower, she was calling him in her sleep. Using the pillow name she gave to me."
He jumped when she slammed her glass down on the table, making the liquid inside leap out. "And that's what put the look on your face that made her certain you had come to kill her?" She stood and turned away, stiff with anger. Quietly she said, "She was asleep. She had been used night after night by a man who had no end of ways to express his contempt for whores. Do you really think it was him she was calling to in her dreams?"