The Dragon and the Hawke 4
"This is really fucked up," Marian notes as they walk past the slaves strapped up on crosses
"The Walk of Punishment," Barristan tells her and Dany as they slow to a stop before one of the slaves, "It is a warning."
"To who?" Dany aks.
"To other slaves, to stop them from doing whatever it was that theses slaves did," is the tired response.
Dany holds her hand out to Jorah, "Give me your water."
While Dany tries to get one of the tied up slaves to drink, Marian walks over to another one, frowning at him. She looks the slave in the eyes, and she sees a terrible resignation present in his eyes. Years, maybe decades of pain, and degradation, and horror all pushed through his eyes and into her. She clenches her teeth, frowns, and turns away, unable to take the raw emotion that has passed to her.
With her eye averted, she sees that Dany, Jorah, and Barristan have moved on, and she jumps to catch up with them. She spends the beginning of the negotiations trying to tap down on her desire to roast Krazy as he tells Missy, who tells Dany, that she isn't rich enough to afford his Unsullied.
She watches the slave master with a mixture of hatred and hunger, and eventually the man notices. He turns to Missy and says something in that language that he doesn't know Dany understands, and Missy turns to her, "My master wishes to know why you are gazing at him in such a manner?"
"Oh, don't mind me, I'm just thinking of all the ways I could kill him," Marian waves her hand, as though she were discussing the weather.
Missandei's eyes widen, and she turns back to Kraznys and tell him what Marian said, and the man laughs. He waves aside his concern over his gaze, though Marian has to raise an eyebrow at how easily he can dismiss a threat against his life.
There are ome more negotiations, then Dany does something that Marian really doesn't expect, and tells the slavers, "I have dragons. I will trade one for the unsullied."
This elicits a shit storm in both parties, but Marian stays back and watches her friend's face, as well as that of Krazy and his ilk. The former Champion of Kirkwall can see as clear as day that Dany has won the negotiations, and Krazy was going to try and milk her for everything that she had. She could also see that he had already accepted her offer.
It would not matter how many dragons Dany offered, only that Krazy got a dragon. In the end, Dany offered him Drogon, and took Missandei right off the bat. All the while, Jorah and Barristan look like somebody shit in their cornflakes.
Once the negotiations ended, Jorah and Barristan spent the next minute trying to dissuade Dany from her trade. Marian followed a few feet behind, skipping merrily as they argued with the queen, well, more at the queen than anything.
She was only drawn into it when Barristan looks back at her and demands, "And why are you being so silent about this matter?"
Shrugging, Marian tells her, "I trust Dany to do her thing."
She catches the Queen's smile as she steps up to Missandei and starts asking her questions. Skipping between Jorah and Barristan, she catches up with her friend and their newest party member and asks, "hey… butting in, sorry. What did you tell Krazy when I told you I was thinking of how I'd kill him?"
Missandei's eyes widen, and she swallowed, "I told him you were a mad woman in service to the Queen, and that it was your job to look at men and think of how to… do things to them. I was not specific."
"He thought I wanted to fuck him… didn't he?"
"yes."
Marian manages to hold herself together, for all of five seconds, before she lets out a tremendous laugh. She catches herself on a wall, and just keeps laughing for several minutes, and by the time she gets a grip over herself, the others have already left.
Looking around, she frowns, but shrugs. Turning to one of the unsullied, she asks, "Hey… you see which way my party went?"
The man does not react, simply staring ahead, over the sea. Marian leans up to his face, then turns her head to gaze in the direction that he is staring. She frowns to herself, then pats the man on the head like a dog, "Don't worry, you'll be free by tomorrow."
At this, the head turns, and the unsullied looks her in the eyes. Marian smiles at him, and presses as much comfort and caring that she can into him. She watches as tears well in his eyes, probably the first that he has ever shed. She just gives him a sad smile and tells him once more, "Tomorrow."
Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough, and sure enough, every unsullied was lined up in formation as Dany, Marian, and the rest of their party exit the walls of the city to observe them and the Queen can be given command. Marian was carrying Drogon on her shoulder, and most of her back, while the nobles and slave masters of Astapor stared in awe at her and the Dragon.
Krazy was giving a speech, Missy was translating, and Dany was impassive as she strode past the lines of the Unsullied. His speech died in his throat as he caught sight of Drogon climbing over Marian. His speech, which had been something about sacking cities and bloodying the unsullied early, really seemed to light a gleam in Dany's eyes as she took the chain that attached to the collar around Drogon's neck.
Drogon, for his part, understood the nature of the farce that the mother and her second were putting him through. He knew that he must burn the pretty smelling man with no hair, but only at Mother's command. The prospect of burning a man was exciting, the most he had burnt himself, and alone, had been a fish. He still recalled watching the other bald man, the one who had chained mother like he was now, burning with the help of his brothers. He wanted this new bald man to burn as well.
Drogon tilted his head, taking flight and landing in front of the bald man and screeching at him. He gleefully let the man know that in a few minutes, he would be flash fried and eaten. He recalled what Marian had told him, when the collar had been latched around his neck: so long as there was a collar around his neck, he could eat humans. If there was no collar, no humans.
He didn't like it, but Marian hadn't been accepting of his hesitation, nor of Viserion nor Rhaegal's. The brothers had whined for hours at her, but she had been firm, and told them that bad people were a special treat.
Marian, for her part, watched as drool dripped out of Drogon's mouth and worried she may have overdone it just a tad when she taught the dragons what they could do with bad people when they had collars on. She hadn't expected them to understand her, but she supposed that they were a lot like Grrr, her Mabari. They were a lot smarter than people gave them credit for; they were basically dragon shaped people, who had mage's tempers. Marian could not remember how many times she had shocked people with lightning for annoying her. It was scary really, how much she related to the dragons.
It was by this point in her internal debate that she noticed that Dany had finally played her hand. The Queen was holding the whip thing that symbolized that she was the master of the unsullied and she was shouting in Valyrian at the unsullied. Allowing a big grin to spread over her face, Marian looks over at Krazy, who was looking more and more scared with every word that Dany was saying, as did the masters behind him.
She turned her attention to Jorah and Barristan, who had what may have been the most relieved looks on their faces. She rolled her eyes at them, not really understanding how they had actually thought Dany would be willing to sell her children.
Then the unsullied started killing people, a lot of people, and Drogon started burning other people, and Dany just sort of stood in the center of a terrible mass of organized chaos. Marian decides that she should make her way over to her friend, and casually pushes through former slaves murdering slavers and screaming people.
She stops in front of her friend and gives her a big smile and a thumbs up.
Dany returns her smile, though it is more subdued.
"What's wrong?"
"I have killed many people with this," Dany sighs
"Phe," Marian waves her hand dismissively, "they were slavers. Fuck 'em."
"You truly see nothing wrong with what I've done?"
"My friend Fenris, you know, the escaped slave I told you about," Marian continues after Dany nods, "Well he had a saying, the only good Tevinter, is a dead Tevinter. Now, what that means here, is that the only good slaver is a dead slaver. I think he was right."
She shudders, "I mean, Krazy cut off some guy's nipple! And the guy wasn't allowed to react! That's all kinds of messed up."
Dany nods, the small amount of reservations she had easily assuaged by her friend.
Together they stand at the entrance to the city, listening to the sounds of people dying, dragons roaring, and freed slaves cheering. Marian quirks her mouth and notes, "We should probably fix this place up before we leave."
"What do you mean?"
"Well you just destroyed a system that's existed for who the hell knows how long," Marian points out, "We should probably make sure that people don't start killing each other once we leave. That would just… suck."
Dany raised an eyebrow, "Speaking from experience?"
"Yep," Marian nods, shuddering as she remembered the shit storm that Kirkwall had become after the Qunari had killed the Viscount, "It isn't pretty, and old anger'll jump up out of nowhere and fuck everyone over.
Dany nods, "Then we will stay, until the people of Astapor are settled."
"Yay!" Marian cheers, then to the approaching Jorah she extends a hand, "High five!"
Jorah blinks at her, and shakes his head. She frowns, then extends a hand to Missandei, who hesitantly claps it. Marian starts cheering happily to herself, making some kind of dance as Dany gives an impassioned speech to the Unsullied and they start banging their spears.