But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.

- W.B Yeats

She was small for her years.

She was six-and-ten, a woman grown, but to Jon's eyes she still looked half a child. Bred as she had been all her life in the Free Cities, she was still dressed in the Pentoshi fashion - gilded sandals that laced up to her ankles, a stola of wispy lilac silk with fluted folds that left her arms bare. It was clasped at the shoulders by silver dragons with scales limned in onyx and caught at her slender hips with a girdle of moonstones. Her hair spilled in loose waves down her shoulders and back, sunlight and moonshine woven as one.

She had the beauty of the dragonlords of Old Valyria but all the fierceness of a mouse. On the window seat she huddled under a cloak sewn of many furs, and would not meet his eyes when he entered. From the window of her cabin he could see the ships moored upon Blackwater Bay.

Jon Arryn stood for a moment at the doorway, feeling like a ravisher who had chanced upon a helpless maid. Behind him, Stannis stood stiff as a spear and Littlefinger lounged. The mailed fist and the silk glove, he thought. Never had the needs of the realm bred a stranger pair of bedfellows.

As he took in her measure, he was reminded most powerfully of another young girl - the child bride he had taken years ago at Riverrun. He had tried to be gentle with her as well, but he had no gift where maidens were concerned. His lady wife had quite drowned their marriage bed in her tears.

"Lady Daenerys," he began.

"Queen."

Her voice was as low as the whisper of leaves upon the forest floor. She hugged her cloak tighter around herself, still looking down at her little feet. But she had the courage to speak - or mumble, as it were.

"I am Daenerys Stormborn, trueborn daughter of Aerys and Rhaella, both of the House Targaryen. By rights, I am Queen of the Seven Kingdoms." She said this all mechanically, as though she had said it a hundred times. Perhaps she had. It was all the girl had left, what she thought of as her birthright though she had never set foot in Westeros.

The ship's captain, who had soothed her all through her voyage across the Narrow Sea, stepped forwards. Sighing, as though he was used to this, he said, "My lady, you forget yourself. You must not speak so in front of these eminent lords."

She jerked up her head and Jon could see that her eyes were red. The poor child had been weeping for her brother. "They are not eminent lords," she said fiercely. "They are the Usurper's dogs."

Stannis Baratheon could not control himself any longer. "You lost all rights to the Iron Throne when King Robert defeated King Aerys fifteen years ago," he told her. "It is only by courtesy that you are even addressed as the Lady Daenerys."

"He was an usurper," she said. But she said it very timidly. "He is no true king."

"He won his throne by conquest," Stannis corrected her. "As did your own ancestor, Aegon the Conqueror. It is now his by rights."

The child had nothing to say to that. She tucked one foot under the other. "You would not bring me all this way just to kill me," she said finally. "You killed my brother. Have you brought me here to show me off, to shame me and enslave me?"

"There are no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms, my lady," the captain told her patiently. "It is outlawed."

There are slaves everywhere, Jon thought wearily. Some have chains you can see.

"Viserys Targaryen was killed for claiming to be King of the Seven Kingdoms," he told her. "A title to which he had no right. King Robert and his Small Council conferred long and hard amongst themselves as to that grave matter. Your brother died so that the realm might be at peace, my lady. I grieve for your loss but the good of millions must come before a sister's love."

There had been gold and a lordship in it and now Jorah Mormont, slaver and poacher as he was, was the Lord of Bear Island once more and of Harrenhal as well. Perhaps even now he's racing to his wife in Braavos, Jon thought. To woo back his silver-haired Hightower whore with coin. Ned had written to him of that nasty business and as one of their closest informants in the Free Cities, he had learned more than he cared to of the man's past.

It left a foul taste in Jon's mouth, this skulduggery and cloak-and-dagger business. It was not... it was not honourable. But it had to be done. Viserys Targaryen was a man grown and a threat to the realm, conspiring with the spice soldiers and cheese lords of the Free Cities. And of late there had been whispers of him taking up with the Dothraki, of a promise made to wed his young sister to the khal of ten thousand screamers...

Better that the snake's head be struck off before he could strike. But Daenerys Stormborn was a maiden, young and tractable.

As Tywin Lannister was oft heard to say, There is a task for every tool and a tool for every task.

The girl gave a brittle laugh. "The dogs conferred. Indeed." She looked up at him and spoke out with a fury he would not have expected of her. "The falcon and the moon. I know you. The traitor, Jon Arryn. You sheltered the Usurper and that Stark who wanted to kill my brother, the noble Prince Rhaegar."

"He did," Jon said, not able to stop himself. "But only after your brother had defiled his sister, my lady. Lady Lyanna Stark died of the wounds Prince Rhaegar gave her, a young maid and innocent."

"She deserved it then."

Stannis opened his mouth but Jon spoke up. "My lady, you are weary. When you are fed and better rested, I shall call upon you to discuss such weighty matters of business as we have at hand."

She raised her chin up defiantly. "What weighty matters can you have to discuss with me?"

"Matters of alliance," he told her. "A marriage."

She stared at him for one long moment before she understood what it meant. Then she started to cry. "No. No. I was to marry Viserys, I was to be his queen..."
Queen you shall be, Jon thought wearily. If we can shape you to it. Robert had three boys, but he knew which of them it would be best to marry the last of the dragons to. He bowed very courteously to her, thinking it best if he took his leave of her. She was such a small, shrunken thing, hiding under that great cloak, he could only pity her.

"Lord Baelish will see you to your apartments in the Red Keep," he said. "You will be pleased to know that you are being kept in your lady mother's old chambers at Maegor's Holdfast."

The best guarded and most closely kept, he thought. "Be gentle with her," he murmured to Littlefinger, as he stepped aside.

Littlefinger's smile was sunny. "I keep a brothel, Lord Arryn," he said, very primly. "I know how to gentle wild fillies that will soon be mounted."

His lordship had sent for her.

It was not often that Ros was called to the castle, indeed she could count the number of times she had been summoned there on one hand. Twice to service His Grace himself, once to attend the Imp and once more for a doddering old lord who could scarce climb out of bed. There was a place for whores and it was far from the eyes of the lady wives.

But today it seemed, she would not be pandering to her usual clientele.

"You're to play serving wench," Lord Littlefinger told her, handing her a linen smock and tunic as a lady's maid might don. "You and Armeca and that pretty, sweet child Mhaegen."

"Roleplay?" she asked, giggling. She slid the rings off her fingers and ears and unbuckled her girdle. Her diaphanous gown of rose-colored silk slid to her feet and she handed her trinkets and baubles to him. "There's some who like to see me dressed up. I've been a septa and a warrior maid more times than I can count, but there was one who wanted me to play the silent sister for him. Gagged me he did."

He ignored her chatter. He was measuring her as he always did the women of his brothel, as he always did everyone really, with the coolly impartial but keen eyes of a connoisseur. "You are growing fat, my dear," he said, the faintest hint of reprimand in his tone. He reached out to slide his fingers over her belly.

"The men seem to like it," she shot back. She patted her ample breasts and smirked at him as she pulled the tunic over her head. "As long as they pay up, who's to say I'm too fat?"

"As you will, my dear girl." He studied her and then smiled warmly. "How many years has it been, Ros?"

"Since what, m'lord?" She did not like the feel of the homely roughspun on her back, it reminded her too much of the sackcloth that she had worn as a child. These days she wore smallcloths of linen and lace and gowns of silk and samite.

He spread his arms out. "Why since you've been a maid of course, pure and sweet. I will need you to attend one today."

She had to stop to think about it. "Me pa had me when I was ten, before I'd had my blood. Me stepma didn't like that, she knew it was happening but she never said a word to him. She took it out on me though, she was always a'swearing that I was more trouble than I was worth, said she'd knock it out of me but she never could." Though she tried her best, with pots and pans and the boiling kettle at the end. She still had the scars to prove it, a burnt leaf on the smooth skin of her left thigh. "Twas a hard winter when I was twelve and they sold me for bread for the little ones."

"You were the eldest?"

She nodded. Small Paul who was so big, Beth and Dara and Elmer still at stepma's teat. The last time she had seen them, their lips were blue from the cold, their faces white and strained from hunger. The trees had been silver that day, the village so pure and pretty in the snow that reached up to her knees, that day the man who'd bought her bundled her up in the cart. She'd taken one last look at her stepmother, standing with Elmer in her arms and mantled in hatred, and never looked back. She hadn't even cried, not for many moons after.

They never wanted me, none of them. At least here she was wanted. Needed even, by all the lost little girls they brought to the whorehouse and who she had to train and look after for the first few months. Needed by Lord Littlefinger himself.

"I wound up here eventually," she said indifferently. "Everyone seems to."

He shook his head. "Only the cleverest. No one ever winds up as high as you have. You made your way up here." He smiled at her almost admiringly. "Just like me."

It was true, she thought. She'd made her way up to King's Landing just as he'd said, she'd made her way from roughspun shifts and fucking pigboys at the crossroads inns to jeweled girdles and gold from the King's own hand. Sows and silk purses. "I've been in King's Landing ten years now I'd reckon."

"And you are lovelier now than you ever were as a virgin," he said and kissed her hand. "You are like the finest wine, Ros. Age only serves to improve you."

She giggled. "M'lord's too gallant. What will your lady say should she hear?"

"You know I'm not wed." He looked terribly amused. "How do you know that I have a lady of his own?"

She smiled innocently at him. "Your lordship's trained me well, is all."

He nodded in approval. "Good girl. And now I will need you to keep all your wits about you today. You're to serve the Lady Daenerys today. You'll attend her as her maid. Win her trust, win her goodwill - she is only a child and grieving for her brother, poor little thing. She will be longing for a friend, even if she does not know it herself. You'll have Armeca and Mhaegen to help you. Armeca plays the fool, she pretends that she cannot speak a word of the Common Tongue and Mheagen is so young and fresh-faced that no one would ever suspect her. They are your tools. Share your stories with the girl so that she might share hers with you, take her measure, note how far she will bend before she breaks. Report it all to, and only to, me."

"You can trust me, m'lord." She was used to doing this for him, she was proud of being his right hand. But she'd never heard of any Lady Daenerys. "Who's she?" Ros asked curiously. "She's highborn and a maiden, you say. A mistress for the King?" There were enough great houses who'd be willing to sell their daughters, barter them as pawns in the high lords' game of thrones. Eager even.

Poor pretty little maid, she thought, with a twinge of sympathy for the girl she hadn't even seen yet. Your septa taught you to be a lady but now your pa tells you that you're to spread your legs for the good of the family. You'll weep and wail but you'll do as you're bid. In the end you're just another whore, just like me.

"Better," his lordship told her. His smile cut like a knife. "A dragon."

The latticework tracery was as fine and airy as whitework embroidery, a confectioner's dream but stone in place of sugar. It was crocheted with stars and wheels, flowers and leaves, birds and beasts and inlaid with lapis and mother-of-pearl. The Red Keep was Maegor the Cruel's fantasy in sandstone, a warren crisscrossed with spyholes and secret passageways. In his queens' chambers the walls were not true walls but carved screens through which it was his pleasure to keep an eye on them.

Only the blood of the dragon will ever know the secrets of the fortress the Dragonlords had built, he had vowed on the day he had taken the heads of every stonemason, woodworker, and builder who had labored on it. Even now, some three hundred years later, no spider had claimed that he had truly unraveled the web. But not for lack of trying.

Of late these apartments of state had seen little use. Queen Cersei had chosen, for some inexplicable reason of her own to lodge in the Princess Elia's rooms and so for the present Daenerys Targaryen would sleep in the room her ill-fated mother had slept in.

It was a well-known secret, the passageways behind the walls of the queens' chambers. Queen Rhaella had had them boarded up and would frequently check on them to make sure. But today the boards had been knocked down for her daughter's arrival. Petyr had taken her there himself, asking her to watch for him. And so Lysa of House Tully put her eye to a perforation in the carved wall and watched.

The Targaryen girl stood on the balcony, looking out over the city. Lysa wondered what the self-proclaimed queen thought of her city, of the castle she had seen only in her dreams.

There were three maids filling a tub with ewers of boiling hot water. Whores really, handpicked by Petyr. Steam rose from the bath and with a sigh the girl drifted into the room. Quietly, she began to undo the clasps and girdle that held up her eastern gown. It slid to her feet with a rustle of silk and she stepped calmly into the bath.

"My lady, it's too hot for you," one of the women, the redhead, said in alarm.

But the girl seemed at ease. "It's never too hot," she murmured, almost too faintly for Lysa to make out. "Not for me."

The dusky woman with the long black hair threw a look at the fair-haired little one. Then she rose to scrub the girl's back with a bar of sweet-smelling soap. The other one busied herself folding the girl's old gown and bringing out the new one she was to wear.

Lysa observed the Targaryen girl. Her face is fair enough, she was forced to admit, and no one could forget those eyes. But as her lord husband had told her, she was as small and slight as a child, a bird-boned creature with narrow hips and tiny breasts. She had the famed silver-gold hair that was true enough - but then so did half the whores in Lys. For her part, Lysa did not think much of that insipid coloring, faded and washed-out. She did not think much of the girl's beauty either, though fools would have been quick to name her the fairest woman in all the world.

But then the world was full of fools looking to curry favor.

At her age I was magnificent, Lysa thought, remembering herself at sixteen. Jon could not keep his hands off me, the filthy old lecher, though he masked it as honor and duty.

She had been tall and slender as a young willow tree, with the deep blue eyes and rich auburn hair of the Tullys. Fire in my hair, she thought, smiling as she remembered all the minstrels who would pay tribute to her when she was the Hand's young bride, new-come to King's Landing. Eyes brimmed with laughter. Lips made for kisses, though I was never kissed as I should have been.

Years of miscarriages and childbearing had slackened her figure, dulled the sheen of her hair and drawn harsh lines on her ivory skin. Years of sorrow had changed the laughter in her eyes to tears and now her lips were made more for pouring venom than for sweet kisses.

But once she had been radiant. Once she had been one of the loveliest women in all the realm. As fair as Cersei Lannister, she thought. And certainly fairer, far fairer, than Cat. Ah, her sister. How she did not miss her.

The fair-haired one had begun to prattle. She was talking about her new baby. "...Hair as fine as black silk," she was saying, "it flows through your hands like water, it does. And her eyes, oh her eyes are as blue as mountain lakes."

The redhead giggled. "Have you turned into a poet, Mheagen? Have those sweetmeats who're always scribbling to you finally got to you?"

"No," Mheagen said, smiling warmly. "It's my little Barra, that's who's gotten to me. Oh you don't know how sweet it is, Ros, not till you've nursed one of your own at the breast."

"She sounds beautiful," said Ros. "But I'd rather suckle a lord with a full purse." She turned her face to the Targaryen girl and asked innocently, "Do you want a babe of your own, m'lady? Someday?"

For a while, the girl said nothing. She tipped her head back and let the black-haired girl soap her hair. Then she said, "A son. Strong and stalwart."

Dragonspawn. You would spew your venom into his ears and bid the years, waiting and hating as your brother waited and hated.

"Not a daughter as beautiful as yourself?" Ros asked curiously. "M'lady, you're the fairest woman I've ever seen in my life."

Lysa almost laughed out loud. Oh really.

Daenerys Targaryen shook her head. Her voice was hollow as said, "Beauty can be a curse. And there's only one thing a daughter's good for. Wifing. Whoring." She shrugged one slim shoulder, as though they were the same thing. She trailed her hand through the water and said, "Do you know who I am?"

Ros shook her head. "Lord Baelish sent us to serve you," she said. "He told us you were a noble lady, new-come to the city. He said you'd traveled a long way."

"It was a long voyage, yes." Her face was drawn with suffering. "You did not think to ask him?"

Ros smiled. "M'lady, no one ever thinks to question Lord Baelish. They just do as they're told."

"Is he so fearsome? He seemed most amiable."

Ros hesitated. "He's a dear, sweet man," she said presently. "I've worked for him long years, m'lady. He's soft-spoken. Gentle like. He's good and generous to those who've earned his trust. But there's steel in him too. You don't cross Lord Baelish."

"I see."

No you don't, Lysa thought dismissively. You're only a little girl. He'll play you as he does everyone else. He was so clever, her Petyr. There wasn't a greater man in all the Seven Kingdoms.

"Begging m'lady's pardon," Mheagen said shyly, "but who are you?"

The black-haired girl helped her up. For a moment she stood, naked and glistening with beads of water, young and vulnerable and utterly desirable. She was pale as alabaster, a girl of marble and moonshine and not flesh and blood. Her blood is fire, Lysa thought with a jolt. Now she is as helpless as a naked, newborn babe but someday she will burn us all down.

Then the maids began to towel her dry. They helped her into a gown of white Myrish lace, the cut and style of it clearly unfamiliar to the Targaryen girl. In her ears they put amethyst drops to match her eyes. They brushed out her hair before a looking-glass with a frame of silver-and-ebony and braided it into one of the elaborate court styles.

Once her mother would set the fashions, Lysa remembered. And Cersei Lannister would follow. Now it is the lioness who leads and the dragon who must follow.

It was only after they were done with her that Daenerys Targaryen finally turned to Mheagen. "Nothing," she said softly. "I am nothing."

I've added the mandatory Ros scenes. Can anyone please tell me what the point of her character is? For the purpose of the story, I've had her live in King's Land
A/N: In keeping with the showing for many years, I think she was already associated with Littlefinger's brothel from before anyway. Also Lysa totally seems like the type of person to spy on other people - and if it's in Littlefinger's interests, all the better. I've had Daenerys dress in a stola, a Roman fashion, since it's similar to the gown she wore in Pentos. And guys, thanks for all the fav alerts but a review or two would be nice too :D