Obara
Obara Sand pushed open the door into the Merchant's House so hard that she knocked some poor bastard on his arse as he was trying go the other way. She spared him barely a glare, though he was a big Ibennese fellow twice her size and looking pretty disgruntled at the turn of affairs.
"Watch where you're going," Obara spat, stepping over him with a single stride of her long legs, her boots beating a martial tattoo upon the floor of the largest inn in Volantis.
"We're very sorry, good sir," Sarella said as she came through the door behind her, her tone as mild as a newborn lamb. "My sister is a little out of her humour today. And she was never a barrel of laughs to begin with."
"I heard that," Obara snapped, casting her serpent eyes around the common room. The Merchant's House was the largest and grandest inn in Volantis, surrounded by brothels and taverns and warehouses that stank of fish guts and the sweat of slaves. The inside was packed, with Westerosi and Summer Islanders mingling with pale Qartheen and silver-haired Lyseni. There were a fair few Ghiscari hanging around too, clumping together in little groups, huddling amongst themselves as if for protection against the fury of a hostile world, whispering to one another and casting frightened looks out at anyone who was not Ghiscari like them.
It was the Westerosi who worried Obara the most. Some of them, maybe even most, were Kings Landing men as like as not, and all it would take would be for one of them to recognise the Prince of Dorne, and for that one to carry word back to the ball-less spider in the Red Keep and the sword of war would descend on Dorne before Prince Doran's plans could fully mature.
Mayhap, anyway. Perhaps uncle could pass it off, pretend that this was some passing fancy of wild Prince Oberyn, to revisit Essos and recapture some of his lost youth, and take his daughters with him to show them a little of the world while they were still young. Perhaps. But it would be a difficult thing to fool the lions and the spider, and with cousin Quent in their den…best not to be seen at all. And yet…this place was too crowded. That was an asset for them in remaining hidden, true, but at the same time it was hard to spot trouble with such a mass of folk all around, and all of them potential troublemakers.
We should have stayed at a different inn. Obara did not often think that she could possibly know better than her father, but this was one such occasion. Father's arguments were sound, particularly that this was not only the largest inn in Volantis but also the safest, and the one where they were least likely to have their throats slit. It was also, he said, the best place to find a captain to take them onto Astapor. Or Meereen, as it now turned out they needed to go.
Not that the position had helped them out much so far. Three weeks they had been stuck here, becalmed ever since they had arrived from Lys. Three weeks stuck here, almost as desperate for news of the dragon queen and her whereabouts as they were for a ship to carry them to her.
Slaver's Bay, Mother's mercy.
Things had started to go wrong the moment they had arrived in Lys. First of all – and the one bit of good fortune in all this was that they had found this out before they paid out any money for a trip to Qarth or Pentos – they had been told that the last Targaryen and all her dragons had left Qarth and had been seen in Astapor. This rumour had been repeated often enough for Father to give it credence. So Pentos and Qarth were out and Volantis was in, which wasn't so bad except for another corsair attack which fortunately didn't get anyone else killed, and then they had arrived in Volantis to find that not only had Danaerys burned Astapor, she had then conjured up an army of ten thousand from somewhere, marched on Yunkai and smashed the city's forces in open battle. Now she was reported to be moving on Meereen, the last and largest of the three great slaver cities.
Meanwhile they were stuck in Volantis, unable to get a ship to take them anywhere near where they wanted to go.
Speaking of where she wanted to go, Obara finally caught sight of someone she recognised: Tyene, flirtatiously dressed in a low cut gown but nevertheless managing to give the impression of someone who didn't quite realise what effect she had on men. Obara, however, knew Tyene well enough to know that she knew exactly what effect she was having on the two men who sat on either side of her. Sailors, by the look of them, one a Braavosi and the other a native Volantene by the look of him, both leaning in, occasionally shooting jealous glances at one another, then turning their full attention back to Tyene with whispered words and coy smiles.
Tyene giggled uproariously at something the Braavosi said, which made the Volantene smoulder with barely restrained frustration.
Obara stomped through the crowd, leaving Sarella to follow in her wake and apologise for anyone she shoved, stepped on or otherwise pissed off on her way through the Merchant's House like a ram smashing ever galley in its path.
Tyene caught sight of her a moment before she reached the table where she sat. "Obara! Sweet sister, you have to meet my new friends! This is Tycho, and this is Doniphos."
"Charmed, now piss off," Obara growled, sitting down opposite Tyene.
The two men looked confused, glancing from Obara to Tyene and then back again.
"Did I not just tell you to fuck off?" Obara demanded, and to emphasise the point she rose from her seat, picked up Volantene Doniphos by the scruff of his neck and bodily chucked him six feet across the cavernous common room, to skid to a halt against one of the pillars that held up the roof.
Tycho half rose from his seat, one hand reaching for the bravo's blade he wore at his hip.
There was a knife in Obara's hand, and the blade resting against his neck, before he could even draw the blade.
"Please," Obara said. "I'm in the mood."
Tycho swallowed, then turned and fled. It was only then that Obara noticed that everyone was staring at her.
"We have received some ill news from home," Sarella explained, less than convincingly. "She's taking it rather hard."
As unconvincing as she sounded, it was enough to convince most people to return to their business.
"Perhaps you can kill somebody next and get us thrown out!" Sarella hissed.
"Don't you start," Obara snapped, sitting down. "Where's Father?"
"With Nym," Tyene said. "And you're in a particularly fine mood, I see."
Obara ignored that. "So if Father's with Nym, then where's Nym?"
"Gone to see her mother," Tyene said. "They're hoping she can help them find a ship."
Obara snorted. "If she can do that, she's better at this than we are." She paused for a moment, thinking of her own mother, the whore in Oldtown with tears as her only weapon. Choose. My weapon or your mother's. I made my choice that day, and it was the right one. I do not regret it. Not for one day, not for one moment. "Still…I do not begrudge her the chance to meet her again."
"Nor I," Sarella said, and it seemed to Obara that her voice, too, acquired something of a wistful quality.
Tyene sighed. "Oh, look at you two getting all sentimental. Have a drink and stop moping, the pair of you." She pushed a pair of tankards of brown ale in their direction.
Sarella frowned. "Are those…the drinks the two men you where with were drinking?"
"Yes, and?" Tyene asked. "They won't want them now, will they?"
"You'll forgive me if I don't want to drink out of a cup that's had another person's mouth in it," Sarella muttered. "Archmaester Lewyn writes that that is how diseases spread, leading to bleeding gums and the loss of teeth."
"Afraid of losing your winning smile?" Tyene asked. "Honestly, Sarella, my taste in men is too excellent to pick up anyone with a disease."
"I'm not thirsty," Obara muttered.
"Except for blood, it seems," Sarella said.
Obara glared at her. "Do you mean to tell me that you're not a little frustrated by all this?"
"I don't see how starting fights is going to help."
"I don't know, you seem to be trying to pick one with me," Obara snapped.
"I take it from this that you didn't have much luck down at the docks?" Tyene said pointedly.
"No, we didn't, but at least we tried," Obara said sharply. "We didn't decided to sit in the common all day picking up passing men."
Tyene assumed a proud and haughty demeanour. "Passing men? Passing men? Is that what you think, that I've been sitting around on my arse all day while you two pounded up and down the wharfs?"
"Haven't you?" Obara demanded.
"Come on, girls, let's not fight amongst ourselves," Sarella murmured. "We're all feeling a little dispirited and-"
"Oh, shut up," Obara said. "Where are Ellaria and Elia?"
"They've gone to see the Widow," Tyene said.
Obara's eyes narrowed. "Father didn't want to do that." She didn't entirely understand why Father had been averse to approaching the richest merchant and information broker in Volantis, but he had dismissed the idea out of hand when Nym had raised it, and even when Ellaria had broached the notion a sevenday later. Was it just pride? It seemed a curious thing to stand on, with the future of Dorne at stake. Still, Father had ruled it out, and Obara would not have gone against him. It appeared that Ellaria had fewer scruples.
Tyene shrugged. "It seems like we're running out of options, doesn't it? At this rate we'll have to buy horses and chance the demon road."
Obara hmmed. "So, Sarella and I looked for a ship. Father and Nym have gone begging to Nym's mother. Ellaria and Elia have gone begging to the Widow of the Waterfront. Which brings us back to: what are you doing?"
"Tycho was first mate on a merchantman out of Pentos," Tyene said. "And Doniphos was quartermaster on a Volantene galley. Before I was so rudely interrupted I was hoping to sweet talk one of them into giving us passage."
"Good luck with that," Sarella said. "We tried ever ship moored in the harbour and the message was always the same: no one is sailing to Meereen right now because of the war. Well, except for the slave ships."
"We are not getting on a slave ship," Obara said. "You know what they call people who book passage on a slave ship as passengers: fucking idiots, that's what. You go to sleep in your cabin and you wake up chained in the hold with three hundred luckless Naathi bastards."
"As unfortunate as it is, I can't really blame captains for staying away," Sarella said, continuing as though Obara hadn't spoken. "With Daenaerys marching on Meereen, who knows if there'll even be a city by the time they reach there."
"But the slavers are still going?" Tyene asked.
"They think they're guaranteed a windfall either way," Obara muttered, her voice as sour as Dornish wine.
"If Daenaerys loses the war the there will be captives enough to glut the market from her defeated forces," Sarella explained. "But if she takes Meereen, then plenty of Meereenese would rather sell themselves than risk the vengeance of their own slaves."
"We'd better hope she does take the city because we'll be fucked up the arse if she loses," Obara spat. "Then what would we do?"
"Stage a daring rescue?" Tyene suggested.
Obara smirked at the thought, almost in spite of herself. "Maybe we could, but what about the dragons? Without them all of this is pointless." She was silent for a moment. "What I don't understand is why the queen is heading for Meereen in the first place."
"Isn't it obvious?" Tyene said. "She went to Astapor and saw the Unsullied, then she went to Yunkai to sleep with the famous pillow slaves, and now she's going to Meereen to take in a gladiator match. She's just looking for a good night out, is all."
Sarella snorted. "And the sacking and the fighting?"
"Obviously she hasn't had a very good time," Tyene said.
Obara chuckled. "It makes as much sense as anything else. Still, she's made our job harder and no mistake. What do we do now?"
"Is the demon road so dangerous?" Tyene said, glancing at Sarella.
"Why are you looking at me?"
"Because you're supposed to know things," Tyene said. "Haven't you read a book or something?"
"Several, as it happens, but none that explained the demon road," Sarella said. "There's some talk that the Yunkish are hiring sellswords."
"It's a bit late when you've already lost the war," Obara said.
"Apparently they want another go," Sarella continued. "We could join up."
Obara shook her head. "You two wouldn't last five minutes in a sellsword company."
"Well we can't sit here until our hair turns white," Tyene said.
"No," Obara sighed. "No we cannot. But we can sit here until Father and Ellaria are done. If the gods are good, one or both of them will get us a ship before the day ends."
"And if the gods are not good?" Sarella asked.
Obara looked at her. "Then we'd best hope there are no actual demons on the demon road, hadn't we?"
And that the dragon queen isn't dead or in chains by the time we reach her.