The Dragon and the Hawke 6

"We don't need to take Yunkai," Jorah notes as he, she, Marian, Barristan, and Grey Worm observe the slave city from the top of a cliff, "Taking the city will not bring you any closer to Westros or the Iron Throne."

"How many slaves are there in Yunkai?" Daenerys asks, and in front of her, Marian smiles to herself as she looks at the view before them.

Dany was using her 'my mind is made up, fuck off or help me,' voice. Jorah could never tell when the queen whipped that one out, but Marian had a decade of practice with Anders and Justice. Remembering her fellow apostate, Marian frowns in distaste. She could still recall the sight of him bleeding out from her dagger to his throat.

Marian shakes her head, and catches Dany's final statement to Jorah, "Then we have 200,000 reasons to take the city."

Turning around, Marian sees Dany giving some orders to Grey Worm, and she followed after the queen, "So what's the plan?"

"I am going to offer them a chance to surrender," Dany tells her

"And when they say no?"

"Why do you think they will say no?"

"They're slavers, and they've had things their way for thousands of years," Marian tells her, thinking of the many times she had tried the same tactic in Kirkwall, and how it had never worked. Slavers liked things their way, and fuck everyone else. Marian was glad she didn't mind killing people, otherwise killing so many slavers would probably have done something to her moral compass or conscience.

"I told Grey Worm to have the man he sends tell Yunkai that they will surrender if they do not wish to suffer the same fate as Astapor."

Marian nods, "Alright, that should at least get you somebody coming over to try and bribe you."

Dany looks over at her friend and raises an eyebrow, "How many times have you done something like this to know how they will react?"

Marian stops, and starts counting on her fingers, Dany watches as her friend runs out of fingers, followed by toes, before flicking her finger through the air for some mental math. Finally, after Marian says something about carrying the two, Dany shakes her head and notes, "A lot, then."

"Yeah," Marian nods, then smiles, "Want me to get the boys ready to put the fear of the maker into the guy they send to bribe you?"

Dany nods, "Yes, I need to talk to Missandei on how to properly receive an ambassador, so if you would?"

Marian gives a mocking salute and a genuine smile before setting off to pick up the dragons. She manages to find them after a few minutes of looking, basking in a particularly sunny patch of grass, and claps her hands, "Alright, boys, we've got bad men to scare!"

Drogon is the only one to react, opening one eye to look at Marian. He huffs, closes his eyes, and goes back to sleep. The Human Dragon thought she could order them around outside of Mother's presence and would be taught the error of her ways. Viserion and Rhaegal, though more hesitant than their larger brother to ignore her, followed his lead.

Marian for her part, simply raised an eyebrow. rolling her eyes she steps up and leans against Drogon's flank. She ignores his warning growl and laughs, patting his side, "Awe, is the little baby tired?"

Was she mocking him? Drogon's eyes popped open and his head spins to stare at the woman. She sends him a rakish grin, and shows her own teeth in response to him doing the same. Then there is a flash in the woman's eyes, and the power that let her kill older dragons is stirred.

Again, Drogon is given the unpleasant reminder that Marian was a more dangerous predator than he. As magic sparked between the two, Viserion and Rhaegal raise their own heads to watch the show, regretting their decision to follow Drogon's lead. It takes only a second for the Alpha personality to present itself, and the dragon turns his head, accepting that the human was stronger.

"Good boy!" Marian smiles and rubs Drogon's neck. The dragon gives a hiss of pleasure, then grunts in dismay as she pulls away, "C'mon guys, we've gotta go scare a bad man!"

All three dragons hop up at that, remembering the last time there was a bad man, and the veritable feast of human meat that they had enjoyed. Marian blinks at their reaction, then grimaces, "Oh… yeah… no eating him until your Momma gives the order."

The dragons chirp in disappointment, but take off anyway, as the alpha ordered, and fly towards where they can feel their mother. Dany, in her own sense, turns to her children as they approach, and tells Missandei to have the unsullied get into possition.

The dragons land in front of her, all three rushing around her, trying to grab her attention, and she smiles and runs a hand over Drogon's head, then Viserion's, then Rhaegal's. Each gives a chirp of glee at her gentle touch, and the Mother of Dragons sighs. She turns her attention to Marian, who has just managed to get around a tent and was walking towards her.

Marian, seeing Dany's expression, stops and tries to think of what she might have done this time. Not able to figure anything out, she walks over to her friend and her kids and asks, "What did I do this time?"

"I was going to ask you that very question," Dany tells her pointedly

Marian tilts her head, then shakes it, "Can't think of anything bad I've done recently… but, then again, you usually give me that look whenever I've done anything…"

"Precisely," Dany nods, "So what have you done this time?"

Marian shrugs, still not sure where she could have caused any trouble

"The dragons," Dany indicates as Drogon nuzzles her hand far more insistently than he had for the entire trip to Yunkai.

"Oh!" Marian realizes, "I told them they could eat the bad guy only on your say so."

"Bad guy?" Dany raises an eyebrow at the childish moniker describing the slavers

"Well, yeah, the guy they're sending is a slaver, isn't he?"

"Indeed."

"So, yeah, bad guy."

Dany sighs, shaking her head, then turns to adress her children,"As much as I would like to feed him to you, I have no need of him."

Rhaegal, who grasps that Mother had told them no faster than his brothers, chuffs in disappointment before slinking over to his nest in the command tent. Drogon is the second to understand, flops onto the ground, sulking at the fact that he won't get to eat anyone today. Viserion isn't as disappointed in the lack of eating bad guys, instead just enjoying the feel of Mother getting right behind his ear ridges.

Dany looks down at Drogon, scared by his belly flop onto the hard dirt, but Marian waves her off to go get ready for her meeting. As the Mother of Dragons departs, Marian sits down next to the black dragon and scratches his head.

Drogon turns his head slightly, and his eyes tell her of hurt feelings and a sense of betrayal. Marian rubs under his chin and tells him, "Don't feel that way, Drogon. Your mother wasn't the one to promise you bad guys, I was."

The dragon flicks his head to the side, and his neck snakes around to stare at her more fully. Marian gives him a rueful smile, "Yeah, I know, I shouldn't promise things for Dany, but then again, when has she ever disappointed you?"

Drogon lays his head back on her lap as he considers her words. Mother had never lied to her, never been cruel as the scortched bald men had. It seemed that Mother was the only one who saw that he and his brothers were the better creatures to humans. Marian was okay, but she was a dragon too, so she didn't count in favor of the humans. In fact, in Drogon's thinking, the only good beast was a dragon.

When she caught the contemplative gleam to Drogon's eyes, Marian smiled, sure that she had just one a great battle of wills against yet another creature smarter than her. Patting him on the head, she tells him, "Come on, let's go scare a slaver."

Drogon watches as Marian stands and walks towards the tent that Mother sits in, and he flaps his wings and hops after her. They spend three hours waiting for the emissary to arrive. To pass the time, Marian starts teaching Missandei to juggle, then she tries to teach Grey Worm. Surprisingly, the Commander of the Unsullied manages to catch on to the skill quickly, and soon he and Marian are showing off for the amusement of everyone else in the tent.

Dany watches, and not for the first time, realizes that she is terribly glad to have the mage as a companion. Grey Worm was a serious man, a stoic man, and after less than an hour of personal interaction with Marian, he was smiling softly. It wasn't a big thing, barely an upturning of his lips, but it was enough to let Dany know that her friend was needed.

Unfortunately, the juggling had to stop as the emissary approached. Grey Worm replaced his helmet on his head, Marina sat down on the ground, leaning up against Dany's throne and started playing with a ball of fire, and everyone else got into their own positions to start putting on the show.

As the Emissary wa carried up to the tent by a party of slaves, Marian frowned, and the gleeful ball of fire in her hand started to morph into a crackling ball of spiking electricity. The emissary was able to see this even from his seat, the height of his position, and the blue light of the lightning helping him see the armored woman playing with magic as easily as he breathed.

He had to be given credit though, that wasn't when he shat his pants. He stepped off of his chair and strode forward as Missandei introduced him, "Now Comes the noble Razdal mo Eraz, of that ancient and honorable house, master of men, and speaker to savages, to offer terms of peace."

While she had been speaking, the slave lord had been striding confidently towards Daenerys. As Missandei finished speaking, Rhaegal turned his gaze towards the bad man he was not allowed to eat, and hisses in anger.

Razdal stomps and takes a terrified step backwards before Dany places a calming hand on Rhaegal's neck. The dragon, staring at the slaver with a terrifying combination of boiling rage, demented hatred, and stomach churning hunger, lowers his head to the ground. Razdal, petrified, only moves when Marian points out, "I smell shit… did he shit himself?"

"I believe he did," Dany smiles as the emissary turns to look at her with a mixture of fear and anger. The two gaze at each other levelly as Missandei lists off all of Daenerys's titles, and when she finishes, Dany tells him, "You may approach. Sit."

The message is clear to Razdal. The invader had displayed her power, and her unwillingness to deal with any form of flattery or blustering that he may have started the talks with. He sat carefully in the chair that was placed before him and took the wine that Missandei offered him.

He took a sip, then placed the goblet he had been given on the ground before speaking, "Ancient and glorious is Yunkai, our empire was old before dragons stirred in old Valyria, many an army has broken against our walls. You will find no easy conquest here, Khaleesi."

Dany's response is simple, she reaches to her side, and pulls out a slide of meat from a horse that had died the day before. She tosses it into the air, where it is struck by a blast of lightning from Marian before Viserion snatches it out of the air. The dragon gleefully chomps on the meat as he stares at the slaver he wasn't allowed to eat, imagining the meat he was chewing was that of the bad guy in front of him.

Razdal swallows, and his teeth clench when the mage calls out, "Yep, he definitely smells like shit."

Marian chuckles at the fact that they managed to get the guy to shit his robes twice before they'd even gotten to the proper threats. Dany, as well smiles, "I was told that i should blood my unsullied earlier, and it is clear that you find my children and my mage terrifying. Why not save yourself and your fellow slave masters a terrible death?"

"There is no need," Razdal tells her, and claps his hands. Four slaves carrying two chests approach and set their burdens on either side of the queen, opening them, solid bars of gold are revealed, "The Wise Masters of Yunkai extend a gift, gold, and more on the deck of your ship."

"My ship?" Dany asks

"He wants us to fuck off," Marian notes, raising an eyebrow at Razdal, "He thinks he can buy you."

"Does he?" Dany leans back, "Do you?"

"Yes," Razdal growls out, "The Wise Masters will gift you with any number of ships so that you may sail from here. Return to Westeros so that we may conduct our business in peace."

Dany sighs, turning her head away from Razdal as he speaks, and her eyes catch on one of the slaves he had brought with him. The slave was trembling, terrified, of either her or Razdal. It did not matter which, only that he not be afraid for long, "I have a gift for you, as well."

Razdal straightens, clearly believing that Dany will agree to take her armies and leave. He was sorely disappointed by what Daenerys Targaryen decided to gift him with, "You life."

"My life?"

"And those of your Wise Masters," Dany elaborates, "Surrender your city and you will be allowed to live."

Razdal growls, jumping to his feet and toppling the chair, "How dare-"

"I'd like to point out that if you don't agree, I get to feed you to Drogon feet first!" Marian points out, raising a finger

The wind is immediately taken from Razdal's sails, but he manages to get himself together and narrows his eyes, "i was promised safe passage."

"And you shall receive it," Dany nods, "But once you are back in your walls, you will no longer be safe from my word. Tell your masters of my terms, you have until sundown tomorrow to reply. If you do not, I will assume that you do not surrender, and will be forced to take your city and your lives."

Razdal snarls, "Yunkai has friends! Powerful friends! You will break on our walls! Just a every army has before! Take the gold!"

The slaves step forward, but Rhaegal gives a warning growl, his head lifting from the throne to stare at them. Dany raises an eyebrow at Razdal and notes, "the gold was a gift, one I will put to good use. Be sure to tell the Wise Masters that I thank them."

Razdal's lips twitch, his face contorting in an ugly manner before he spins and stalks back to his chair. He growls in his native tongue as he sits down.

As he was leaving, Marian tilts her head, and asks, "any idea what he meant by friends?"

Dany looks to Jorah, who seems to know the most about Essos of all the people with her, and he shakes his head, "I don't know."

"Find out," Dany tells him, leaning back with a sigh, petting Rhaegal's head as she closes her eyes.

Before she can drift off into a nap, Marian asks, "Hey, I meant to asks, why did you change your robe?"