Arianne
By the grace of the gods that called the North their own, they met no one on the way back to their chambers. Arianne knew the younger Sand Snakes were bursting to ask why Lord Connington had lost his composure, but Elia was nearly a woman grown and not so naïve regarding the game of thrones. Still, the girl kept quiet until the door was closed and the lord installed in a high-backed chair near the fire. Giants and dragons and seas of dead men and it's a few words from a pretty pair of lips that has him going to pieces. Once, Arianne might have thought the man incapable of any feeling save prickliness and anger. Anger especially, when anyone made mention of Robert Baratheon. She knew it wasn't her place to fault him on that front. Not so long ago I was just as fiery-tempered and infinitely more short-sighted. A few years in Norvos had snuffed out the fire that so despaired Prince Doran. I am his heir at last, in that. She had been mother and father both to Elia and her younger sisters, while Quentyn had spent the time growing devoted to his mother while Arianne remained aloof. He does not remember when she left. He was at Yronwood growing besotted with Gwyneth Yronwood. While losing one child proved unbearable to Mellario of Norvos, losing all three proved not so great an obstacle when she returned to the city of her birth. I had not seen her since girlhood when I found myself on her doorstep. Arianne, Quentyn, the four Sand Snakes…
"There is no call to send Trystane as well," Prince Doran had said, "for Princess Myrcella is coming to stay in Dorne with us and so here he will remain." Only half a world away in the house of a mother she hardly knew did Arianne learn the truth, and of why her cousins had accompanied them. Father didn't want all his jewels in one chest, and neither did my uncle. The object of the midnight voyage out of the hidden harbor beneath Sunspear was to get Arianne as heir to Dorne out of Dorne and the reach of Tywin Lannister both while the War of Five Kings played out. While the Lannisters enjoyed their false summer only to crumble from within. When word that the old lion had died reached Prince Doran he spurred it on over the Narrow Sea, to where ears most eager to hear such tidings. All at once they were leaving Norvos and headed down the Rhoyne, a voyage so perilous Arianne could scarcely imagine what might warrant such a risk. She'd found out what, or rather who, in Volantis, marrying the purported still-living son of Rhaegar Targaryen even as the pale mare ravaged the city. They'd scarcely been bedded before they were off again, the Fortune heading a massive fleet made up of every ship imaginable. Only to find the realm Connington sought to win on my husband's behalf no longer existed, and would have to settle for one that may, in time.
Aegon had his hands full with the griffin lord, Arianne having trouble much blaming him. I am just a name to him, just a pretty face. Nothing in comparison to the man who raised him. At least he has someone to call Father. She would say something to that effect to the princeling when next they were alone, Aegon badly needed to learn that Connington's stony example made for poor fare when leading men as he aspired to. He knows that much, though. Not for the first time, Arianne's estimation of her husband grew. It was the dragon who spurred us out of Volantis, not the griffin waiting for a Pentoshi debt-dealer's word. A sudden piercing wailing cut through the chatter of the yard and the streets beyond, Arianne's cousins clapping their hands to their ears as Quentyn let out an unprincely squeak. She stuck her head out the window but of course there was nothing to see but swirling snows and here and there the burning of torches. Has someone been killed? It didn't sound pained, exactly… The babe within her, through with turning her stomach to a roiling maelstrom every dawn, contented with giving her a kick. A little Oberyn, perhaps. Then she cursed her childish thought. As ill-fated a name as Doran, no doubt. The world needs no more vipers, quick to draw steel and call for blood, but it needs grass no better, content to watch the years roll by mistaking inaction for prudence. Another kick from the baby made Arianne's breath hitch. I should find a midwife, just to be sure. Wandering the chaos of the castle was a prospect she didn't relish, though, so with some trepidation she put the task to Elia, the Lady Lance. The girl was off in a flash. Mother might know something about babies yet to be born, but someone will need to pull Quentyn from her teat before she's any use. The fiery spite went out as soon as it had sparked, making Arianne feel all the worse. He is a boy wearing a man's expectations. He cannot be faulted if it's all too much.
"I'm going to bed." she announced. "Send Elia along when she returns." Obella nodded solemnly, the second eldest of her uncle's present brood.
Another wail cut the night. There was no accompanying uproar, though, no call to arms, and so Arianne let it pass. She sat on the bed, comfortable if spare, wondering if she'd be any happier were it a canopied silk-sheeted affair in the Red Keep. The girl I was, perhaps. But even when I was a fiery fool, I knew better than to reach for power for power's sake. Didn't I? The door's creaking open woke her moments later, groggy even as someone came near in the darkness.
"Her Grace is feeling poorly." Arianne heard Elia say bossily. She felt a hand slip into her own.
"I'm awake." she said, a reply to the wordless inquiry.
"So you are. It doesn't look like you're in any pain, but if you are…" The woman sounded calm, as much as she sounded confident."
"I'm not. Just…"
"Just?" the midwife prompted. Just dreadfully unsure. Unsure if I did the right thing going east, unsure what to do about my mother and brother, unsure how best to manage the Sand Snakes, unsure how to act around my royal husband and his griffin. Oh, and just as an aside, I'll have a baby of mine own to mind in the coming months.
"Just uncomfortable."
"Not to worry. At least you're carrying on." That made Arianne smile.
"I know a man or two who might say bringing a baby along is nothing to crow about."
"Let a man shoot an arrow through the eye of a needle before he opens his mouth." Arianne's smile grew wider while Elia Sand gave a snort of laughter. "If only they knew what trouble we went to making them in the first place, maybe they'd be less eager to unmake each other." The midwife didn't sound highborn, which Arianne supposed made sense. There was the soft feeling of something on her stomach. She's listening to the baby. "This would be easier with a cup…" Elia was gone at once, returning it seemed inside a minute. Then it was the cup against her stomach instead of the woman's ear, Arianne listening to her soft muttering even as the midwife listened to the baby. "Uhhh-huh. And there, and there. Ahhh, where've you gone? Where've you gone? Ah, there you are." Every so often the cup moved, the woman's voice never losing its even soothing tone.
"Elia, light a candle. I can't see a thing." The light came a breath later, Arianne beholding a pale face framed by dark hair. Guileless brown eyes studied her impassively, a face as common as it was honest.
"You're pretty." the woman said, straightening up. "Nothing to worry the least bit about. Everything seems fine, though all the moving about might be why you're so sore and uncomfortable."
"All the better I've come to Winterfell. I doubt any of us are going anywhere."
"No, we're not." the midwife agreed. Honest, for better or worse.
"Do you happen to know what that wailing is?" Arianne asked.
"I hear tell it's a baby giant. She cries when she's hungry, the same as normal babes." The same but for her lungs. Despite Elia's bravado, Arianne saw her complexion pale. She thinks she's made of the same sisters and for Dorne. She knew better than to try to talk sense into her loved cousin. Words are wind, after all. Maybe when she sees a giant up close though, she'll see sense.
"Elia?"
"Your Grace?" Arianne took a long breath, as shallowly as she dared so as not to agitate the babe.
"If His Grace is not otherwise occupied, I should like to see him." And learn more of a man with whom I share a child. While Elia busied herself, Arianne looked better at the midwife.
"I saw a griffin in the other room, on the way in here." The woman said, looking unsure.
"Jon Connington, of Griffin's Roost."
"There was another griffin, a younger one, among the storm lords." Oh yes, the red cousin. "I thought that was where the griffins came from? Down in the stormlands?"
"They did. They do. Er, both now, I suppose. Ronnet considers himself the true lord, as Jon was stripped of his holdings but the Mad King." The midwife's eye twitched.
"Fighting griffins are fitting for them, then."
"What about yourself, good lady?"
"Me? I'm no kneeler's lady, gods save me." Kneeler?
"What's your name?"
"Gilly."
"How did you come to Winterfell, Gilly? Are you a northron?"
"Not by kneeler reckoning. People from below the Neck call everyone in and above it 'northmen', but kneelers as live between the Neck and the Wall take exception to that. We're wildlings to them and they're kneelers to us. Or, they were, before the Others came out of the Land of Always Winter. They don't much care what one man might call another." Arianne felt her skin tingle, made no better by the fresh snowfall tumbling down outside. Gilly noticed, squeezing her hand. "Don't worry about them. Just you eat when you're hungry and sleep when you're tired. I've heard the Children of the Forest are getting up to their own mischief somewhere in Winterfell, they should be able to make the place that much harder for the Others to stamp out." Arianne remembered the tales she'd heard as a girl. The Hammer of the Waters.
"I don't suppose you know much about Dorne's history then, being from beyond the Wall."
"I liked it well enough when we were there, Sam and me and Little Sam. Old Olenna's less grape and more prickerbush though, I don't care what the Redwyne sigil is." Arianne was confused.
"I thought you said you were born beyond the Wall?"
"Aye, I was. But I went with Sam wherever I could and that meant a lot of time in the Reach. Visiting his family, visiting Oldtown…the Citadel doesn't let women into its library. The man who told me off looked as though he knew as much about the world as your babe."
"Is your Sam a man-at-arms, then? Or some lord's sworn sword?"
"He was in the Night's Watch, trying to forge his chain at the Citadel. That didn't work out though, and so Marwyn sent us off to find the dragon queen." Gilly tittered. "Then it was right back to the Reach to get everyone on board, and you know the rest." If anything, Arianne was more bewildered than before. Why would Olenna Redwyne care about the doings of some hapless acolyte?
"He isn't highborn himself, is he?" Gilly frowned.
"By kneeler reckoning, might be. I have a babe of my own coming along, though, and I'm willing to bet neither one's birth is going to be anything but an awful mess. Nothing high about being born. Nothing low, either."
Before Arianne could ask who this Sam might be, the bedroom door opened. Elia stood on the threshold, looking solemn as ever she did when in Aegon's presence. Playing the curtsying maid. I know better. The king came in after her, stopping at the sight of Gilly.
"Oh, there you are. Apologies, Lord Tarly is looking for you." The wildling girl stood and left without another word, all while Arianne's head spun. Tarly? The man behind those thundering bronze toys? Aegon brought a chair to her bedside while Elia waited for her next instruction.
"See to your sisters. Make sure Obella does not go wandering about Winterfell." See that you don't either. The unspoken end of her sentence made Elia look at her feet, mumbling acceptance before she left, closing the door. "Would that I could keep her well in hand. Every time she's told to do something, she goes out of her way to see it isn't done. When something is forbidden her…"
"There's nothing for it but that very thing." Aegon finished. "Are you surprised? With the Red Viper for a father, I should think it odd she's behaved as well as she has."
"My uncle did not have a castle full of northmen to bother, a throng of giants to annoy, a dragon's tail to tug. My guess would be she's already halfway there, eager for a glimpse of the giant-babe."
"Yes, the giants. A real pity Harry Strickland did not live to see their mammoths, he was mad for elephants." The dead captain-general of the Golden Company did not long linger in his thoughts, Arianne's hand soon in his. "Are you well?"
"As well as can be expected, according to Gilly. I'd be better served staying put than moving about, though."
"Well and good, it looks like we'll be guests of the northmen awhile yet."
"Don't you think it odd that your heir should be born in the north?"
"Better than not being born at all, I say." Arianne couldn't help her mood lifting a bit. A hidden prince, a dragonking, with the easy manner of a fisherman.
"Has Lannister tried talking to you again?"
"No, he's off keeping what order's to be kept among the southern lords. Or fucking with Baelish's plans, which now I think on it might be the same thing." It isn't the dwarf he's thinking of, no more than Strickland. "I could have done without seeing him like that." Him. Jon Connington.
"He's made of stiffer stuff than you account, Aegon."
"I thought so, too. But he's not so sturdy as he seems, nor so hardy. War and intrigue are a young man's game, and Jon spent his raising me. Poor repayment it would be for me to trot up to the dragon and have him roast me to ash. Leaving you alone in the world to fend for your family and our babe, as Rhaegar left Princess Elia." He sniffled, bringing Arianne's hand to his lips. "Viserion can keep his bogs and Daenerys her savages. Better I should do right by you and see our child grow. Mayhaps that would silence whatever ghosts linger in Jon's shadow." Arianne sat up.
"A lovely thought, but we needs must first make sure there's someone or thing to do right by in the end. You know as well as I do we don't belong here, not where the wilds hold sway. Once the Others have been dealt with, we can go back to Sunspear. Or the Water Gardens, or the Rhoyne or even King's Landing if the need arises. Without a throne to sit, what's got you tied to one place?"
"What about Quentyn?"
"What about him?"
"Throne or no throne, our child is still heir to Dorne. Perhaps even more so with nothing to take King's Landing as their seat for."
"My father plotted to marry me to Viserys and by so doing make me queen, with Dorne falling to Quentyn. Well, as it worked out, it could be I wed a dragon and get Dorne both. I suppose he wonders if Daenerys should have been his, atop wondering if he's the stuff of princes to begin with."
"There's a castle full of highborn girls he can woo, if he'd prefer the easy life. Certainly his name and title will bring maidens and young widows with eye-catching dowries in force." That made Arianne laugh aloud.
"Quentyn was spooked enough at the prospect of romancing one girl, however will he handle more than he can count?" Again, assuming we're still here. A smart merchant makes his money first, then wonders what to spend it on.
The notion seemed less amusing when Arianne mulled it over, though. Quentyn is yet unwed. He could well be our window into the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. Dorne had ever valued its independence, led by princes instead of lowly lords. There was a long bloody history between her homeland and the kingdoms on its northern border, neither stormlanders nor reachmen especially fond of her countrymen. And now the only Dornish here are Quentyn and I and our poor cousins. Small help our independence is now. At least to Arianne's estimation, it was different with the north. If it wasn't too big and too unwieldy before, it certainly is now. No Wall to hem them in, either. What kept Winterfell from turning its gaze northward, all but forgetting the lands below the Neck? What people they have hunt and fish, with farming a side effort at best. No doubt with the influx of the wildlings, most members of wandering clans and tribes that but followed the herds, that disparity would only grow more lopsided. A different world, Arianne concluded, welcome to the ice and snow. She only prayed it would be a southern girl who managed to untie Quentyn's tongue long enough to let him charm her with all his plain graces. Small help he'll be in this. I ought be in the hall, taking the measure of the ladies assembled, not lounging here with Aegon holding my hand. Hiding behind closed doors will not warm anyone to Quentyn in any case.
"Aegon, would you help me stand?"
"I thought you weren't supposed to move? As it happens, I like you where I can find you."
"The sun will not rise, at least not for long. I will, in its stead." Arianne replied, a bit tersely. The king laughed at this.
"So you shall, and soon you'll be round about as the sun, if you aren't already!" Arianne felt her cheeks redden and the old reckless fire that had filled her in her youth spark, if briefly. When he gently helped her to her feet and into thick fur slippers, Arianne found standing was a deal easier than she expected. "Will I be going with you, match-maker?"
"No. I think it best for now you keep Jon Connington on his feet." Mention of the aging griffin erased the grin from her husband's face. When he smiles, does Connington see Prince Rhaegar? Ah, no. He must see the father in the son when he is dour. The way Arianne heard it, Rhaegar Targaryen was nearly always melancholy. Perhaps there is my aunt in there as well, with easy smiles and sweet loving wit.
There was no one to herald her approach. No one stood from the tables lined with food, much less knelt before her. The men of the Golden Company find no fault with northern hospitality, Arianne observed. One of the sergeants, missing an eyebrow from a long-past sword that might have spilled his brains were it swung true, had a giggling serving maid in his lap, a hand on her breast as she fed him off a fork. Nor with northern company. A sudden snort made her look to one of the closer hearths, beholding the hairiest man she'd ever seen sitting up against the wall, dead asleep. His nose twitched and small piggish eyes flicked open warily, the gaze fierce and piercing. Before Arianne could react they widened in disbelief, the man rubbing his eyes good and hard before he opened them again.
"Thought those southern wines had done for me, I did." he grunted.
"I'm no drunken flight of fancy." she replied, sounding bolder than she felt.
"Glad to hear it." the man replied before rolling over and snoring anew.
"Bugger Borroq. His boar's by far the smarter of the two, and with better manners besides. I'd sooner me own daughter bring the pig home than the man, at least a boar is good for finding truffles." Arianne turned to behold a woman with a kindly weathered face and flyaway brown hair holding a bowl of stew. "Have you eaten yet? Carrots, beets and beef tonight. Nobody's keen to draw steel when the food is forthcoming, and wine flowing even freer than that." Though the prospect of eating gave her doubts, Arianne swallowed. It didn't have to be a princess I spoke to first. Besides, I'm hungry.
"I would love something hot in my stomach, but I was looking for-"
"Aye, you were looking for your sort. Nothing wrong in being with your own, sweetling. Why do you think we put up with louts like Borroq?" From her hide shirt to her bare battered feet, the woman was all wildling. Yet she's as kindly as an old kitchen matron. She led Arianne all the way up the hall near to the table where the Starks must sit when they deigned to attend meals, stopping at another just beneath it full of knights and lordlings. Rather than rapping on one of their shoulders though, the woman bent to whisper in the ear of a girl Arianne had lost in the throng at first. On seeing the Dornish princess the girl stood at once, getting up from the table and leaving the men to their inanity. What the girl lacked in height she made up for in curves, with glossy brown curls framing a lovely round face from which bright clever brown eyes studied her.
"Good evening, princess. I'd introduce you to the lads but honestly, when's that ever done a girl the least bit of good? Come, we'll find someplace only the gods are listening- and they the old kind, unlikely to much care what two southern girls have to say, eh?"
Arianne was led out of the hall by her new friend, stew still in her hands. Almost as soon as she despaired of eating it while it was still hot the girl eased her onto a crate someone had left lying in the corridor. "There we are. Lady Myranda Royce, daughter of Lord Nestor Royce." she introduced herself. "No need to tell me who you are, it's obvious, isn't it?" Lady Royce seemed to sense that Arianne would rather eat than talk, and the stew was settling, divinely warm, in her stomach before she made reply to the stream of chatter.
"I thank you for your warm greetings, Lady Royce, but-"
"Not a bit of it! Princess Sansa would be ever so cross if something were to befall you in the Great Hall and as Harry's too busy arseing with his blasted knights to keep an eye on you on her behalf, the responsibility must fall to me!" Princess Sansa. Yet unwed, but for Lannister. Somehow Arianne doubted anyone would much protest were the Stark girl to declare she'd found a husband, least of all the dragon queen's pet dwarf. Then again, so far as I know Harrold Arryn is just as unspoken for. A duller princess might ask why it is such an apparent match hasn't been made. Arianne thought herself sharp enough not to ask something so obvious, realizing that as much as the Royce girl talked, nothing of import actually left her rosy mouth. "If I might be so brazen as to ask, you're married to the dragon prince, yes?"
"No. I am married to the dragon king." Of the Golden Company and a few scattered exiles in truth, but a king regardless.
"Of course, of course, so silly of me!" They wound up in Winterfell's godswood, a place Arianne felt she could not have belonged less. Before long they heard voices, soft yet carrying over the pools and moss of the wood.
"He must be here somewhere."
"So he must. The pools are the only water that hasn't frozen for leagues. He will not leave them idly." Lord and Lady Reed. Arianne would not soon forget them, nor the look on Jon Connington's face when he saw the woman seated at the High Table. A ghost. One among the dead, alive before his very eyes. Myranda Royce was not put off, instead tapping the trunk of a nearby elm. So silently did a gaggle of little olive-skinned people appear from its boughs that Arianne could only pity the southerners of old who sought to do away with the crannogmen.
"Tell your lord, your lady that Princess Arianne would like a word." I would? One among them leapt off her branch, capering nimbly off toward the voices. "Never mind them, princess. One never gets used to them, so save yourself the effort." Lady Royce waved her hand in dismissal of the invisible army that could have hid in every treetop.
They found the pair seated side by side, staring into the largest and deepest of the pools. Short, slight, with olive skin and unnervingly green eyes, Lord Howland Reed's every drop of blood was crannog. His lady was another sort, that much was clear. Some isolated tribe or clan, Arianne mused. One where the blood of the First Men flows as strong today as it did in the Dawn Age. She was beautiful, a blind man could see it, but Arianne had never seen hair so black and glossy, bound up behind her head while in the wood so as not to get it tangled on an errant branch. Nor skin of flawless ivory. On their approach the water rippled, as if someone had cast a stone. Then the dragon's head emerged, peering about nimbly as a sea serpent before lazily sinking into the black morass. So that's where he's hiding. As if we needed more reason to keep clear of these trees.
"Thank you for fetching the princess, Lady Royce. Hurry back to the hall before you're missed, or your father and brother storm in here after you." Lord Reed said.
"Even Albar is not so dense. My father, now…" Myranda Royce gave a perfectly-timed giggle and with a curtsy went off without another word. Howland Reed studied Arianne with those too-green eyes of his until her skin crawled.
"I assume you're looking for the Starks."
"I'm not looking for anyone. I only wanted to take the measure of those I share a hearth with." To find a bride fitting for my blushing brother. For a moment she glimpsed merry Myranda bouncing up to Quentyn in her mind's eye and it was all she could do not to laugh herself to tears.
"Forgive the lady. Myranda Royce is a woman of true heart, she acted on mine own instruction and Princess Sansa's." At least we aren't forgotten, then.
"What instructions were those?"
"That any among your party who surfaced were to be brought to us first. The Starks themselves are indisposed; their reunion has been a long time coming." "I myself waited years to behold my mother's face again." Arianne replied, nodding curtly.
"Why do the Starks need to talk to my husband? To tell him off bopping Viserion on his milky snout? Aegon is not a fool, there are some lessons that never need learning."
"Aegon, you name him. A name fit for kings." They were Lady Reed's first words to her.
"A name fit for my husband. It is his own, as is that heavy mantle." The lady turned, a gaze identical to her husband's in intensity if not in color. Under the boughs of the trees Jyana Reed's eyes might have been black.
"You believe he is who he's claimed to be, then?" "Who else should he be?" Arianne said, getting annoyed. It was not the first time such an implication had been raised, without Aegon's earshot or within. Now that the throne is gone and Viserion unlikely to be of any help, what does it matter? For just a moment she was a girl again, walking in Prince Doran's footsteps before his gout robbed him of the strength to rise.
"Arianne, who do you want to be when you grow up?"
"I want to be princess of Dorne!" her younger self had cried, grinning as her father smiled. That wasn't what he was asking then, and not what she's asking now. His Targaryen ancestry (or, she admitted, a possible lack thereof) wasn't the point.
"You don't care whether or not he's Rhaegar's son." Arianne said finally, as if she could not fathom it herself. "You care whether or not he's Elia's." The blood of the First Men, as strong today as it was in the dawn of days. A beauty to sing of even twenty years on and more, with half of Westeros pining for her ghost. "Lord Connington recognized you. At the feast."
"He may have remembered another, no more. One who was a dear friend to your aunt, who drowned in grief when her life's every love left her alone in the world." Arianne felt her knees go numb. Could I be right where I'm meant to be?
"You knew Elia Martell."
"Ashara Dayne did." Lady Jyana Reed's voice was a jewelled sound yet unyielding as iron.
"You knew my aunt."
"Ashara Dayne did, and Ashara Dayne is dead."
