Pentos burned well. All cities burn well when consumed in dragonfire and trapped in a dry autumn. Gerion had once told him that in Westeros autumn would bring heavy and constant rains that would last for days. Pentos, sitting further away to the East was naturally warmer and drier. Rain did not fall on the Free city that day, nor the day after.

"The Dragon Queen was stirring up trouble up in the high end of town," one of the many refugees said as he passed them near the city gates. "She's birthed herself three beasties and fled with her Horselords to Slavers Bay, the rest of us are left with the broken pieces." He turned and spat as if to exaggerate his point.

Rhaego waved him on his way and set his purple eyes on smoke filled clouds that cut through the blue sky. If he closed his eyes and listened hard enough he could almost hear the screams coming from the city.

"Daenerys Targaryen did all that?" Gerion was in a mood today.

"Fire did that," replied Rhaego. "My lady mother is not the sort who would lay waste to an entire city of people."

Gerion wiped at his sweat, smearing himself all over with soot-stripes. "Well she has three dragons, dragons make fire, and fire did that. Whether it was intentional or not half of Pentos is up in smoke and we've just travelled all this way for nothing."

"We know she is headed towards Slavers Bay at least," he said. "We might be able to get there first and stop her before she tries anything else."

The Lannister was not impressed by that. "You have a Khalasar two hundred strong, if we were travelling across Westeros we'd have nothing to be afraid of." his emerald eyes narrowed on Rhaego. "We're not in Westeros, and if we try and go anywhere near those slavers they'll have you and your riders in chains with a number seared into your flesh."

"They'd have to kill me before I let that happen."

"Then that's what they'll do!" shouted Gerion, unusually frustrated.

Rhaego clenched his jaw and set the Lannister with a firm look, irritation clutching at his bones. "I have a plan." He said through gritted teeth. "Now be silent and let me get to it."

Yet the son of Casterly Rock did not stop talking. "Well…..what's our next move?"

"I'm going to go into that screaming carcass of a city and see if I can't find myself a nice tavern to get drunk in."

Gerion works a kind of magic with most people. If he spends even half an hour in their company they will like him. He had a gift for making others laugh and smile with merriment, to Rhaego it seemed as if he didn't even try. It doesn't matter what sort of a person he speaks with, in the end the result is the same. He's a Lannister, a soldier, and when he needs to he'll kill in cold blood, but in half an hour most would want to be his friend.

Rhaego and a few of his bloodriders sat on a small table in the corner of a nice little tavern that had managed to remain unburnt by the fires. Gerion sat in a chair beside a dozen sellswords, raising his cup of ale with the men, near crying from laughter. A stranger might look at that sight and think them old friends, thought Rhaego as he watched on silently.

"And then she came running out, naked as the day she was born, chasing after me. 'I'll have your head for this!' she screamed. I just laughed. 'You already had my head! You had it in your mouth; you had it in your cunt!'

The Tyroshi sitting beside Gerion spat out his ale at that, spraying several of the surrounding tables. "HA! You're a mad man!" he chortled.

Gerion gave a nonchalant shrug. "It couldn't be helped, I was horny and she wanted to fuck a lordling," he sipped at his ale. "I wouldn't mind giving that Dragon Queen a fuck, what's the news on that, lads?"

A couple of the men exchanged cautious glances at that before the Tyroshi spoke again. "She's been livin' here under the Magister's good will for years. Then suddenly someone tries to attack her, kills some of her guards." The warrior gave his green beard and thoughtful stroke. "They say she had the men responsible lashed to a great funeral pyre and had them burnt, some even swear that she took the eggs in hand and walked into the fire, by the end the fires spread about out of control but she emerged, unburnt and with three live dragons. Dark magic I am thinking."

Gerion gave an understanding nod. "And she left, just like that?"

"Aye," he agreed. "Just took her savages and her old knight and packed them up in one of Illyrio's ships and set sail for Slavers Bay. I hear the Ghiscari are wet with excitement at the news; it's been so long since royalty came to buy their products, let alone one with dragons."

"Has the Magister given her coin for such purchase?"

The man shrugged. "I know not, though it wouldn't surprise me if the good Magister paid her off to be rid of her. With an army of Unsullied and dragons the silver queen could be quite threat to King Tommen's throne."

That seemed to genuinely surprise Gerion and a look of confusion came across his golden face. "Tommen?" he asked, "Is his brother Joffrey not the elder?"

"He was….but then he was murdered by his uncle the Imp, poisoned during a grand feast." The Tyroshi took a gulp of ale. "Joffrey left no children in his Tyrell wife and now the fat one sits King. He'll have his pudgy hands full between the Ironborn raiding the coast and Stannis Baratheon freezing his arse off in the North. Mayhaps the Dragon Queen has picked the perfect time for her invasion."

Gerion nodded absently and went quiet for a moment as the others at his table quickly filled his silence with their own tales of debauchery. After a beat the Lannister drummed his fingers against the table and downed the rest of his drink. He rose to his feet and bid his drinking companions a good day and safe travels before leaving the tavern. Rhaego watched him leave and in his own time finished the wine he had been drinking and followed him out.

The Lannister was waiting for him in an alley beside the tavern, a dark look in his green eyes. "So it seems that things are a lot more complicated than I had originally thought."

Rhaego grunted in acknowledgment. "So I heard, though it changes nothing."

"Are you daft?" asked Gerion. "Daenerys is on her way to Slavers Bay to buy an army, why should we seek her out? She's gone from an exile to one of the most powerful people in Essos, what on earth could harm her now?"

More than you know, Rhaego thought to himself. "My mother isn't the only one who can change her fate," he insisted. "I do have a plan."

That warranted a bitter laugh from the Westerlord. "Plans?" he spoke the word as if it was foreign to him. "Now that's a thing, your plans always boil down to you hitting harder than the other man."

"Well this time it's different," he said. "Though, if you want to leave then by all means, I'm not stopping you."

Gerion bit down in his bottom lip at that and furrowed his brows in frustration. Finally he pitched the ridge of his nose in defeat. "Alright fine!" he shouted. "I'll go along with this, but only because you need someone who doesn't believe your bullshit."

The young Khal couldn't help but laugh. "That's good enough for me."

Behind them Jakerhro and the other Bloodriders staggered out, more than a little drunk and grinning like idiots. Tomo had a bloodied mouth and when he smiled Rhaego noticed he was absent a couple of teeth, yet his smile was large and genuine. I can't leave them alone for a second…

"What've you been up to?" Rhaego asked, his curiosity risen.

Tomo hiccupped into a fit of laughter. "I won!"

"What did you win?"

Yet it seemed as if the other man didn't hear him. "I won!" he said again, barely being held up by Jakerhro.

Rhaego rolled his eyes at that and led his men back to their horses. Once they were up and moving and well out of the city in the safe confines of the Khalasar campsite Rhaego turned back to Gerion as the Lannister went about removing his saddle. "What did you make of those sellswords you were drinking with?"

Lannister considered briefly. "They seemed like decent men, they seek the simple pleasures in life and have no greater ambitions other than getting paid and spending that coin."

"Men like that would be very useful," said Rhaego, "a man untroubled by delusions of grandeur is less likely to stab you in the back."

"You planning on giving them knives?" The cogs in Gerion's mind were moving fast, and his eyes gleamed with excitement. Despite all that he liked to say to contrary, the Lannister was quite fond of chaos. Rhaego thought that perhaps it came from having someone like Tywin Lannister as an overbearing older brother.

"For what I'm planning, it wouldn't hurt if we had a little diversity amongst our forces." He allowed a grin to form in the curves of his mouth. "Even Tyroshi warriors can be useful in a battle, even if it just as brightly painted bait to distract the enemy."

"Who is this enemy?"

For the briefest of moments Rhaego considered telling him, but that moment came and went. Things would be better served as a surprise for all involved. So in the end he settled for a light smack on the man's shoulder and told him, "You'll know soon enough."

After that he returned to his tent and found Mylessa waiting for him, her scarlet hair tumbling down her shoulders, the deep red contrasting with her milky flesh. Without saying a word he went to her, discarding his clothing and crushing his lips to hers, enjoying the way her skin lit up against him. Soon the night became a blur of frenzied motion and colour and heat. Afterwards, spent and covered in sweat, they laid in each other's arms. It was moments like that where Rhaego ached to tell her how much he loved her in body and soul, but even in the delirious glow of their recent activities he knew better than to say such things. Life had taught him many harsh lessons, one was that if you opened yourself up enough then you invited betrayal and hurt, and despite how he felt about her, he wasn't sure that Mylessa would not hurt him.

That's not all it is you coward, a prickly voice said from the back of his mind. You're afraid that if you tell her how you feel then she'll reject you. Whatever the case he felt that it would be best if he kept the contents of his heart locked up.

Mylessa lifted her head from his chest and said, "You're making that face again."

"What face?"

"That look where you concentrate really hard on something small in the distance," a faint smile passed her lips. "You tend to do it when you brood."

He brushed her hair behind her ear. "I wasn't brooding; I was just caught in a deep thought."

"And was that thought about dragons?" she asked hesitantly, as if she thought he would bite.

Rhaego answered by giving her a soft kiss on the lips, enjoying how swollen and red they looked. "No dragons, I leave those thoughts at the door."

"But…aren't you worried?" she asked, gently tracing circles in his chest. "I'm a servant of R'hllor and even I am worried about all of this. It seems too much too soon, danger surrounds those dragons Rhaego."

He frowned a little at her words but nevertheless forced a smile. "I'm not about to go chasing dragons, at least not yet. There are things from the past, old wrongs that needed to be righted before I go to them."

"What do you mean?"

Rhaego couldn't keep the fury from his voice as he spoke. "Jhaqo, Mago and Pono; they were all members of my father's Khalasar and his Kos. When my father lay dying and my mother heavy with child they betrayed us. They're traitors, every one of them. I will find them all in the great grass sea and tear their beating hearts out; I swear by the Great Stallion of my father's people and by your red R'hllor that when I am through they will beg for death. And once I make their men my own and have a Khalasar greater than my father's, then I shall find these dragons."

Jakerhro had an unusual laugh. Instead of one familiar song of joy, it seemed that the bloodrider had one for every occasion. Sometimes he would snort not unlike the horse he rode, other times he would throw his head back and bellow for all to hear. When Rhaego told him of his plan, Jakerhro's laugh sounded like a strangled wheezing sound, as though he was a man of ninety rather than eighteen.

"So we finally get to take their heads?" another wheeze. "I'm excited about this plan."

Rhaego allowed himself the thinnest of smiles. "Aye," he said. "Thought you might, though to do this we'll need to cheat, maybe even do things that our ancestors would have thought dishonourable."

The other man waved it off from atop his saddle. "I've been living by your side for all my life Rhaego; we crossed the point of tradition long ago. I'll follow you through Hell, blood-of-my-blood."

"Hopefully that won't be necessary just yet."

A fly buzzed past Rhaego's ear noisily and he waved his head about like a wet dog, the braids of his silver hair whipping about. Most of his father's people would have their braids adorned with bells to show their prowess in battle, though Rhaego preferred to not announce to the whole world his skill. Ser Barristan taught him to never let his opponent know your strengths, and to Rhaego the whole world was his opponent.

The Khalasar rode on through the day, moving at a slow and even pace. Night found them camped in amidst a patch of green some ten mile west of Pentos, with a roof of stars and the chirp and whirr of insects to serenade them. Rhaego felt odd without the usual chatter of Gerion filling the camp of a night. He had sent the Lannister back into the city that morning alone with a small chest of coin, to help attract some his sellsword friends. I can't trust them, he reminded himself, but I can trust myself and how much fear I can impress upon them.

"You've changed her," Jakerhro's voice cut Rhaego from his schemes.

"What do you mean?"

Jakerhro waved over towards one of the campfires where Mylessa was busy talking with Jhezabel. "The Red woman," he said with a devilish smile. "When she first arrived here I thought that she was some witch come to set a curse upon us with her talk of fire and shadow, but I was wrong, it was you who changed her."

Rhaego dragged his eyes over to Mylessa, watching as she listened patiently to the child at her side. There was a look on her face as she sat with the girl, the look one gets when indulging in a simple joy. Rhaego had heard more than his fair share of stories about the cruelty of the Red clergy, in some places it was said that they burnt children alive to appease their fiery god and had their shadows kill those who offended them. Despite the warmth of the campfire Rhaego shivered. Most of my life I have survived by being more savage than my enemies, he reflected, but how could I ever fight a foe that doesn't fear death?

Yet when he saw Mylessa now, he could see none of that burning fanaticism. He saw only a woman, one as mortal and vulnerable as any he had known. Finally he realized Jakerhro was still there and tore his gaze away. "There is more to every man or woman than the sum of their parts old friend, the lady Mylessa is no different."

Jakerhro laughed that wheeze of his again. "Just so."

That morning, before the sun had risen and darkness still claimed its hold on the land, Rhaego awoke. Sleep had always come fitful to the young Khal, and he found it very easily to awaken at a moment's notice should the occasional call for it, which it often had in the roads of Essos. That particular morning he had set himself to awaken an hour earlier than he usually did, and without much effort that was what happened.

He donned a pair of leather pants and boots, as well as a dirk at his hip, but otherwise wore little else as he walked out into the night air. The gentle sound of hooves beating into the dirt was steadily growing louder and he set his purple eyes to the direction of the noise, vaguely making out the figures emerging from the west of the camp. He could see individual figures in the approach. Six riders, chain armoured and another dressed in boiled leather, Gerion.

Rhaego issued a quiet warning to the few sentries that still sat awake and they moved off, out of sight while he approached the riders on his own. As they drew closer to the flames of the dying campfires he began to see the men's individual faces somewhat more clearly, they were mostly Tyroshi, that much was made clear by their blue and green hair and forked beards, though one of them had the look of Valyria in him, The by blow of some Volantian noble most likely.

The men all seemed to be the ones Gerion had struck up with back in the Pentoshi tavern, aside from the Volantian who had a stern look set on his face. Rhaego assumed that they were all high ranking captains within their company, and right then and there he deemed the Volantian as his main obstacle. Any man who is disciplined enough to deny himself the drink would not be party to what I suggest, he was going to have to work around the matter.

Gerion was the only one who dismounted, an action that spoke volumes. "These fine gentlemen are the ones I spoke of great Khal," he said in a subservient manner. "The captains of the Silent Sphinxes," he gestured to the green haired Tyroshi he had been speaking with in the tavern, "Captain Relequo Tedarys," a short, balding man with a blue forked beard, "Captain Andro Uhoris," beside him a tall ungainly man with a single purple stripe in his long yellow mane, "Captain Daarkyn the small," a young lad with faint blue hair and no beard, "Serjeant Cas of the Bleeding tower," beside him a moustached man with one eye and several missing teeth, "Serjeant Bryis Stom," finally Gerion gestured to the Volantian who sat tall and impassive from his stallion, "and their leader, lord commander Axtis Uberyon."

He gave them all a nod of acknowledgement. "Well met, I am Khal Rhaego."

Axtis kept his dark purple eyes on Rhaego. The young Khal already had grown to dislike the man for wearing his hostility so plainly. He had the classic features one would associate with the blood of Old Valyria, the silvery gold hair, the finely crafted face. He was old though, as old as Gerion: over forty name days at the least. "Khal, I had thought to be on my way towards Tyrosh and employment in the Disputed Lands and your blonde friend here comes to me with tales of gold and fortune," Axtis said, his voice cold as his eyes. "Yet all I see here is a camp of savages, most of whom look half drunk. Why should I waste my time speaking with one such as you?"

He was a brave man, Rhaego would give him that. "Everything Gerion has told you is true; I have employment for you men and gold to pay you, with the potential for more after the job is completed."

The green haired man, Relequo, laughed at that. "I saw that chest you had good Ser Gerion bring, it was mighty fine…but where would one such as you get more? I had heard that Dothraki have little need or value for coin?"

"You'll find that I am not your typical Dothraki, Captain, though I do hold one of my people's beliefs very close to heart; I believe in gifting friends. Perhaps if you would gift me with your one thousand swords for a time then I would gift you with my gold, and any loot taken from the battle."

The young Serjeant had a hungry look in his eyes then, the prospect of riches, women and gold a tempting offer. The old man of the group, Bryis, spat in distaste though. "How do we know you have the gold? Mayhaps you stole a chest full and thought to deceive us into thinking you have more."

Rhaego turned to Gerion who hurried off into the camp. Not long after he and Jakerhro emerged with another chest which they unceremoniously dumped before the sellswords. Rhaego did the honours of opening it and watching them glance down at the glitter like the scavengers they are. "So you can see, I intend to hold up my end of the bargain. Can I count on your support?"

The various men all turned to each other and began muttering in harsh whispers, while occasionally glancing over at the gold. Rhaego could see their Tyroshi greed overpowering their scepticism. For a heartbeat he thought that he might actually have had them, but then the Volantian spoke.

"If we are to do business," he said with a cold smile. "Then we would have to take half of the pay now, including that chest."

The rage boiled within Rhaego at that and he ached to put his dirk through the man's throat. Yet instead he forced a smile. "I have already given one chest of gold, how do I know you'll not just take my coin and leave?"

Axtis' eyes never left Rhaego. "You don't, but you're not in any position to make demands are you?"

From the corner of his eye Rhaego could see the other sellswords looking uncomfortable at their leader's words; perhaps they had some honour after all. That was all the initiative he needed. Rhaego leaned forward as if to hear him but then dashed forwards. He used Axtis' foot as a step where it stuck out from the stirrup, and got up alongside him. The man had a dagger in a sheath set handy in the saddle, which Rhaego ripped out and forced into the Volantian's eye before jumping back onto the ground.

It happened so fast that none of the others had time to do anything other than gape as their lord commander fell from his saddle unto the ground with an undignified thump, his blood pooling out from under him and staining the dirt red. Finally the old man made to unsheathe his sword but by then more than twenty of Rhaego's archers stood with their bows aimed at the sellswords and he quickly put his blade back.

Rhaego wiped some of the blood from his hands onto his leather pants and began to walk about thoughtfully. "So…" he said, "You shall keep that chest as an advance and more after your forces have helped me crush Khal Pono, do we have a deal?"

Relequo nodded his head enthusiastically, terror griping his heart. "Deal."