Tyrion unfurled the map he'd drawn, even the Red Viper raising an impressed brow at the lengths to which he'd gone to accurately depict the Seven Kingdoms. The Tattered Prince regarded him across the table with eyes that told him nothing, though Tyrion hardly expected him to start drooling like a dog soon to have his bowl filled.
"Countless petty lords and landed knights have lost their holdings thanks to their support of one king or another. It's a long voyage to Astapor, perhaps I might provide a bit of a…diverting exercise to keep us occupied."
"Oh?" the sellsword captain asked, though he was more than mildly curious, and Tyrion knew he knew the dwarf knew it.
"Well, in between my attempts to try and turn you away from Astapor and the flux boiling past its walls. But enough about shitting slavers. How well do you know Westeros?"
"Well enough to know the kingdoms apart, and a goodly part of my company are Westerosi by birth. Suffice it to say I will not look for snow in Dorne."
"Good. Well, as we discussed your own recompense in this enterprise to be more than coin…it might behoove you to, shall we say, visualize the form such a windfall might take." The Tattered Prince smirked.
"I've done more than my share of visualizing in my time, my lord. Very little of it has ever come to pass."
"It never hurts to be prepared." Tyrion replied bracingly. The man duly leaned over the map, Oberyn content to watch Tyrion do his dwarfing.
"Nothing in the north." the Tattered Prince said, sending a quill across its vast breadth, a fine black line bisecting it.
"Not the north. If I may, there's precious little for you to want there unless your ideal recruits are the grumpy, bearded sort."
"Nothing in Dorne. After all, my lord…" another black line, curving up from the Red Mountains down through Sunspear. "…there are snakes in Dorne."
"Snakes, sand, and sun. If you wanted those, you'd take up in Astapor." Tyrion agreed readily. And mine own niece, who I'd sooner keep well quit of my troublemaking. The Iron Islands were crossed off without elaboration. He's not a seal or a seagull, the islands are not for him.
"Unruly tribes in the high passes, treacherous mountain roads…I have old bones, my lord, and they are not the sort much fit for rigor." The Vale was crossed off in turn.
"Hill tribesmen and aching limbs are nothing compared to having to deal with the company of Lysa Arryn." Tyrion said dryly. "You will miss nothing steering clear of the Vale."
"As for the stormlands, well, I'm none too fond of storms, and I'd sooner put down roots far from the ever-watchful eyes of King's Landing." A line curving through Storm's End, another ringing King's Landing off from the rest of the crownlands.
"The river lords are querulous and the countryside a shambles thanks to my father's tender hand. You'd do better elsewhere." Tyrion opined. The line the Tattered Prince happened to draw led from the Twins into the Bite.
"The westerlands are famed for the gold they've provided House Lannister over the ages. Pulling gold from the ground instead of wheat and barley, now isn't that an idea?" Tyrion gave him his best smile, tossing in his mismatched eyes.
"I should be proud to call you 'neighbor' if you saw fit to pledge your loyalty to House Lannister." He laid a hand protectively and possessively over the dot that was Casterly Rock. A line through the western mountains was the only reply the old sellsword gave.
"The Reach, then."
"Why, so it appears." Tyrion said, as if it were pure happenstance.
"Mm. Something on the river's edge, though I'll miss the sea somewhat."
"If I may make a suggestion?"
"By all means."
"The Florents of Brightwater Keep are known for their overlarge ears. In my experience, they heed only the sound of fair weather. When Renly marched from Highgarden they rode with him and when Renly fell and Stannis took his troops, the Florents were among them. Now, of course, Stannis is scattered and Brightwater Keep has been granted to the second son of Mace Tyrell's."
"Why, so it must be, if my lord tells it so."
"Lord Mace fought for House Targaryen during Robert's Rebellion," Tyrion wore on, "if you could call him sitting on his arse outside the walls of Storm's End fighting. He dipped his banners without a word when Eddard Stark swept upon him. Should Daenerys cross the Narrow Sea and find herself in Westeros, why, what care has she for the son of a man who abandoned her family's cause?" Doomed as it was. "Far better for her that someone of proven loyalty, an experienced battle commander, be given so rich a prize as Brightwater Keep. The second Tyrell son can find another castle to claim." Whether or not the Tattered Prince would ever indeed hold the castle was not the object of Tyrion's mummery. The prospect alone was enough to hold the Tattered Prince's attention. A castle with no Florents to claim it save the ones foolish enough to remain and hold against the Tyrell host coming to sort them out… It may be that Mace Tyrell falls afoul of Cersei's temper or Father's use for him before we arrive, even.
"My lord does much to make the stew he stirs sound mouthwatering. But I am not a Florent, Lannister, and I do not rely only on my ears." He sniffed. "I smell something besides carrots and cloves."
"Of course, I've still the onions on hand to toss in." Tyrion said evenly. "One cannot make a proper stew without the occasional onion." Nothing is certain, particularly on this side of the Narrow Sea.
"Onions don't sit well with me."
"Better fare than you'll get from the likes of the Yunkish." The Tattered Prince did not even make a show of disagreeing. Yunkai will spend blood even quicker than gold, particularly if it isn't its own. But will they take this raggedy sellsword to their bosom, offer him a castle and fertile lands far from the endless squabbling of the Free Cities and the slavers' dens?
"Yunkish gold is a lot closer than some castle I've never seen."
"So it is. Why don't you ask the Westerosi among the Windblown about the Reach, even those who've never been there will know it's the breadbasket of Westeros. Full of unwed noble daughters, fields of every crop-"
"-and rivers of gold, yes?" Tyrion snorted.
"There's gold to spare on either side of the Narrow Sea. Offer your soldiers a chance to grow old in peace, surrounded by greenery instead of dust and death. A peaceful life's a real treasure, my lord. I had only the barest taste at Sunspear and I'm raring to get back to it as soon as I'm able."
That evening saw him back in the cabin he shared with the Dornishmen. It might have been tight but for Tyrion's size, which seemed to set Prince Quentyn's companions a bit more at ease. The prince himself was not so relaxed.
"Are we making for Sunspear, then?" he asked.
"Another hour or two of practice, my prince, and you may well sound as if that isn't what you want most in all the world." Tyrion replied, tumbling into his hammock.
"Our pet lion has presented quite the prospect to the commander of the Windblown. We still make for Astapor, but it seems the Yellow City is not the most forthcoming of clients. That the sellswords have their doubts about Yunkai's ability to march on Meereen successfully should tell you much and more." Oberyn said.
"Oh, has Rags found that slavers are something of the overproud sort?" Ser Archibald said, snorting. "Next you'll tell me he's just discovered that horses neigh."
"Better that than finding out firsthand that dragons cook their meat before eating it." Tyrion cut in. "It may be we reach Astapor regardless of what happens but once his holds are full of plunder, the Tattered Prince won't give a tin bob for another chest of Yunkish gold." Tyrion's tone was grim.
"The serpent drawn to the cries of a baby bird." Prince Quentyn said, sounding revolted.
"Just so. The Windblown are sellswords after all, scarce more than pirates on horseback. Astapor is an old city, wealthy, and currently in tumult. Ripe for a sacking, and our stalwart host seems of just that mindset."
"Astapor is not our concern." Quentyn said. "If it gets us to Daenerys faster-"
"Astapor is our concern. Talk that the flux is burning through it is nothing to be taken lightly. Surely the Tattered Prince is not about to let us pull on slipshod armor and take part, but that doesn't mean those who go into Astapor won't be bringing the blight back out with them."
"How long is this little swim going to take us?" Ser Archibald asked, trying to sound offhand.
"Twice as long as it took to reach Volantis from Lys, and that at best." Tyrion answered while the bald knight groaned. "I'd work on getting my sea legs under me, ser, before I worried overmuch about what sort of shape I'll be in on reaching Meereen. If you can't keep your bile to yourself, the sellswords will spill it all out into the Gulf of Grief along with your innards and toss you overboard." That a dwarf might speak to him so seemed to confound Ser Archibald more than anything, as if he never in his life expected to be in the position in which he found himself. Tyrion had seen it before. You are not the first to have his nose tweaked by a dwarf, ser. Pray you don't make me feel the need to yank something more within my reach.
Tyrion found himself forgetting all the moving poetry and songs he'd heard regarding the blue vastness of the sea after the first week. Blue, he thought irritably, blue, blue and still more blue, and if one is lucky occasionally the sound of some bald Dornishman filling a bucket from one end or the other. He was still in a fog when a sound that might have been fit to escape Myrcella's mouth left Caggo's, the Dothraki leaping a foot into the air as the men on deck broke out into shouts and bellowing. Before Tyrion could so much as turn his head the Red Viper was on him, deftly pulling him out of the way. He didn't struggle, of course, content as ever to be nannied out of anything resembling danger when such a thing occurred.
"One of the sellswords caught something." he said.
"Bully for him. Is the Dothraki so unmanned by fuck my father fried." Tyrion felt a deep shudder rattle down his body as the crowd parted for a moment. On the ship's deck twitched a massive black lamprey long and thick as one of the Mountain's legs, mouth of needly teeth writhing uselessly. After vomiting over the side of the deckrail himself, Tyrion straightened up. "I believe I shall speak a little softer to Greenguts from now on." he said queasily. Looking past the ship's bow, Tyrion felt his empty stomach tighten as the horizon began to redden. At once murmuring broke out, more than one fearful glance going between the red sky and the monstrous lamprey. "Over the side with it." Tyrion said, loudly. "Lampreys are all slime, nothing a man thinks of eating but when he's desperate." No one moved, only staring at the dwarf. He put a bit of steel into his voice.
"I'd be happy to do it myself, but I'm not about to lug that knot of slime over myself. You, archer, help me."
"Fuck off, dwarf, I'll not go near it!"
"Come, we don't need it dying on the deck. We'll never get the stink out of the wood." The voice of Prince Quentyn was not one Tyrion expected to hear, but he didn't object when it came time to grab his end of the frayed sailcloth the lamprey wriggled on. With a grunt from the prince, a groan from the dwarf and a splash from the lamprey, all was as it should be.
"On." Tyrion said. "Back to your duties."
"The biggest lamprey I've ever seen I saw pulled off a shark strung up on the wharf." a man of Lyseni extract said. "It was as long as my forearm. Tell me, dwarf, what might that-" he pointed after the lamprey "-have been feeding on?"
"I haven't the first bloody hint, and if I'm honest, I don't care. Standing around shitting in our smallclothes isn't going to get us clear of these waters, nor put you in position to earn all that gold you've been promised by the Yunkai'i." Tyrion kept his own uncertainties buried beneath the old Lannister indifference. He clapped his hands. "Believe me, you'd sooner take a scolding from me than whatever misfortune the Tattered Prince might dream up. On, and with all haste." he said, walking back to the side of the Red Viper.
"If you ever tire of Lannister mischief, a dwarf corsair would be the subject of more songs and tales than even the most knowledgeable bards could remember." Oberyn said, grinning wide while Quentyn returned to the company of his friends.
"I've already lived quite the life, to seize upon those laurels would be greedy. Better I leave it for the lucky dwarf of tomorrow." Tyrion said curtly while the snake laughed.
"Perhaps, you are a most considerate fellow when it occurs to you to be. Most unlike a Lannister, now I think on it."
"Consider this. The last thing we need is the crew quaking like maidens and swapping black rumors."
"Should they not? You saw that lamprey with your own eyes-"
"-and it appalled me only slightly less than the sight of mine own sister. Not the sort of threshold one much wants to approach, let alone cross, if one wants to keep one's lunch down."
"Ah, well. At least it's past." It will be past when the skies of blood are behind us and talk of Valyria dies down.
"And now I'm empty-stomached again and robbed completely of anything resembling an appetite. I might blame the lamprey, but in truth it's more a consequence of thinking on Cersei." That night the prince and his knights talked long into the night, each telling the other what he intended on doing when he returned to Dorne. The finest way to draw an unkind god's ears, Tyrion thought as he drifted off. The next thing he knew, he was in the sea, sinking into lightless depths with no recollection of being thrown overboard. The cold black water could be nothing but a dream, and yet Tyrion found himself thrashing bodily to ascend and break the surface. Something slid against him, slippery as it was powerful, spurring him on despite his burning back muscles. A light began to glow out there in the gloom, lazily growing closer. Tyrion shut his eyes. I need not look at it, he told himself. One can no more die of fright in a dream than drown. Then again, who knew what sleeping sorceries lurked in the waters off Valyria? Who, in truth, knew anything about what might live there now? For there is life. Of that much, Tyrion was certain. Only when the light was so bright it was burning through his eyelids did he open them, beholding none other than Cersei. A lamprey's slimy body had replaced her legs, an endless pit of sucker-teeth glinted at him, but her green eyes were unmistakable. The mer-lamprey grabbed onto him with hellish-strong hooked claws and in his struggles he happened to look down, another mouth of needly teeth gaping wide instead of Jaime's favorite part of her.
Tyrion shot upright so quickly he nearly launched himself out of his hammock. The smell of wine filled his nostrils, clashing with his own sweat. He looked about uncomprehendingly to see the knights snoring noisily in the seats they'd occupied when he first nodded off. Prince Quentyn's head was on the little table, no less insensate. Sitting on a barrel, back straight and looking right at him, Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell said not a word. Tyrion held a hand in front of his eyes for some minutes, not trusting a few tears not to fall. Not here, he told himself. Not in front of this prince.
"You do not lack for demons, my lord. Nor ghosts." he heard Oberyn say softly.
"Sad to say, but even a short man it seems is capable of bad dreams." Tyrion replied. His effort to brush it off was wasted on the Red Viper, who well might have been better at reading people than he was himself.
"And capable of feeling pain that would have a giant flat on his face, it would seem." He was quiet for a time. "My mother spoke of seeing something similar once."
"Oh? And what unlucky soul did she observe to share my affliction?"
"Your own lady mother, my lord. If I may." Tyrion's insides turned to icicles.
"Did your mother speak of mine often?"
"No, Lady Joanna's untimely passing as well as the manner of our reception at Casterly Rock cooled whatever warmth my mother might have held toward your house. To say nothing of Lord Tywin refusing one of his golden twins for Elia or I, offering you instead."
"Bugger marriage. I might have appreciated the princess simply taking me off his hands and growing up at Sunspear." Oberyn snorted.
"To think of the trouble we might have stirred up." He quieted again.
"Who was it that haunted Lady Joanna, my prince?"
"A prince, and later king." The poor woman.
"It would seem Jaime did well by my lady mother's memory to dispose of Aerys."
"There was aught to be gained for anyone but the flatterers in Aerys' court in the Mad King keeping his throne, that is as plain now as it was then. I'd have gladly killed him myself if it meant keeping my sister and her children safe."
"And yet you seek his daughter, to put her on that same throne."
"My lord, you are not a simple man. I'm sure you've realized by now that the War of Five Kings will never end. New kings will crown themselves in the footsteps of the old and soon the war will become the War of Five Hundred Kings. King's Landing has not the strength to pacify the whole of the Seven Kingdoms, even with Lord Tywin helming the effort."
"What care is that of yours? You could simply remain in Dorne and let the rest of the world bleed, it's not like anyone is going to come after you."
"But for the raiders from the Marches as happened of old, before the dragonkings. Dorne did well to put the past behind it when Maron Martell wed the first Daenerys." Tyrion raised an eyebrow.
"I would not have thought that opinion to come from you, my prince."
"We are not hill tribesmen to settle disputes in shouting matches around sputtering fires." No, we determine guilt and innocence with blood sport, much more civilized. But it had been the Red Viper's own ghost that spurred him to risk his life fighting the Mountain, Tyrion remembered. Do the dead ever truly die?
Prince Quentyn stirred, mumbling into the wood of the table.
"His father ought not have let him leave the borders of Dorne." Tyrion said.
"I don't disagree." Prince Oberyn elaborated no further. "He would not be dissuaded, though. Not when he got word that Daenerys Targaryen had brought three dragons into the world. It was perhaps the only time I can remember our traditional positions being reversed."
"Dragons would help House Martell be revenged on my father."
"They would." Oberyn's tone told Tyrion that the prince was unmoved thus. "I have for myself seen the legacy of dragons' last visit to Dorne. Ellaria's father is Lord Harmen Uller of the Hellholt and the castle is still blackened in places, chunks of sand-fused glass poking out of the dunes around the castle from time to time."
"You are not optimistic."
"Cooking castles like they're loaves of bread is not something of which men ought be capable. We are vain, arrogant, unsteady creatures. Double that for those of so-called "high" birth, and so again for those who claim descent from Valyria."
"Worrying about what color the butterfly will be before the caterpillar has cocooned, I see. Daenerys' dragons, if indeed she has them, will be nothing like the three Aegon used to conquer Westeros. Not in size, nor in temperament. Aegon's three were trained to be war-beasts, Daenerys' will scarcely be bigger than horses." Tyrion found it hard to share Prince Oberyn's wariness. Perhaps my reading has me thinking I know more than I do. "If I may, my prince, I would posit that Daenerys' disposition herself is more relevant than how fierce her dragons might be. Anyone you seek to sit on the Iron Throne will need to be more than just another highborn behind, particularly with the beehive hurled into a feast hall that the war has turned Westeros into."
"I can only tell you what is known of what she's done, I know little to nothing of the girl herself. I suppose we'll draw our own conclusions once we reach Meereen." If we do, never a guarantee. The closer we get the more hazardous our little trip becomes.
It came through the closed door of the cabin that the Tattered Prince had forbidden his men from fishing off-duty until the fleet had left the red skies over Valyria behind.
"Oh, drat," Tyrion had opined, "however am I to fish magic boots out of the sea now?" Oberyn chuckled.
"What would you do with magic boots, my lord?" Tyrion thought a moment.
"It would depend on what they did, I suppose. Perhaps I could leap the distance from here to Meereen in a single nimble prance and have all settled by the time you showed up."
"Would that the gods looked upon us with such favor. Greenguts is greener every day that passes, it seems Yronwoods make poor mariners."
"We'd best let him sleep, then, as well as the rest. Frog will need all the sleep he can get, perhaps it will make him less…froglike in Daenerys' eyes." And perhaps her dragons will mistake a toad for one of their own.
"I have heard it said that some boys only become men the day they marry."
"And did their brides have hordes of Dothraki, an army of Unsullied and three dragons to bring to bear?" We are bringing coins of baked mud before the Iron Bank. "We ought rethink this. Perhaps it's better not to offer Quentyn as a prospective husband, at least not right away, and leave the question open for Daenerys to guess at."
"Do dragons have much patience for dwarf mischiefs in the lore you've read?"
"No, but more than one queen has, and that's what Daenerys is." He couldn't help straightening up, a bit of pride bubbling up within him. "Suffice it to say I consider myself more capable a counselor than Mushroom." A cry of "Land!" above them had Tyrion dubious. We cannot be there already. Despite his misgivings he made no move to stick his head into the corridor to ask someone, content to remain out of sight and in the graces of the Tattered Prince until such time as he was summoned. As it happened he was correct, the coastline so spotted being that of the Isle of Cedars. "I don't suppose our host will be keen on stopping off." Tyrion said, though the bookish boy he'd once been would have jumped at the chance.
"He may have little choice, if the fleet's store of fresh water are low. Even if we're well set up to push on to Astapor, the Tattered Prince might just use the island as an excuse to slow our pace and arrive at even more a fortuitous hour." Oberyn replied.
"Oh, a wander down some idyllic, exotic beach will be just the thing for me to draw ever a starker contrast with the horrors of Slaver's Bay."
On the deck watching the island come ever closer, Tyrion felt youth's excitement sputter in the face of age's experience. The Doom smashed this island just as it smashed Valyria itself.
"We'll not stay long." the Tattered Prince was telling his officers, tasked with relaying his orders to the common sellswords in turn. "A day to fill our waterskins and such. Anyone not on deck by sunset will be swimming to Astapor." Far from the welcoming balmy shore Tyrion expected, he found himself going wide-eyed at the sight of half-sunken buildings beginning to poke up along the shoreline. All that remains of Velos after the Doom. A shriek from the top of one of the half-collapsed towers had Tyrion ready to piss himself until an answering call from lower down the tower had him squinting after several nimble shapes loping thoughtlessly about the ruins.
"Monkeys, my lord dwarf, nothing more." Oberyn said. The closer the ships of the Windblown got to Velos, the louder the monkeys became.
"We are ill-welcomed here, it seems." Tyrion remarked.
"Nothing of the sort. Velos is not the island's interior, scarcely visited. These wretches are well familiar with ships and men both, and I'm sure they're scheming how best to make off with an easy meal or bauble or whatever it is a monkey plots to steal when men's backs are turned." the Tattered Prince replied distastefully. He turned to Caggo. "We need no crewmen who can't understand even the Trade Talk."
"Crossbows and archers on the topdecks, keep our ships' rigging clear." the scarred Dothraki replied, nodding vigorously. "Their racket's making my head pound already." Better than snoring or Ser Archibald's retching.
"Hardly worse than the sounds of battle." Tyrion replied, remembering the Green Fork and the Blackwater. Caggo snorted.
"The day I heed a dwarf's word on battle is the day I stick my cock in a lamprey's mouth."
"Do you know, I might know a knight of the Kingsguard who's gone and done just that think at the bottom of Blackwater Bay."
"Silence." The Tattered Prince called, sounding irritated he had to reprimand his right hand. Quite so. You ought be ashamed, horselord. To think you could be riled by the words of a mere dwarf.
"No dawdling. You heard the commander. Anyone still ashore by dark will end his days in Velos." Caggo growled as the first of the sellswords began to take to the rowboats. Tyrion was not asked to join them, which hardly surprised him. Nor did he volunteer, which hardly seemed to surprise the Tattered Prince.
He spent the day with the Dornishmen, watching Ser Archibald's face approach something like hale again before he had to dash back topside to pay tribute to the sea.
"Wretch." Ser Gerris said, shaking his head. "The next time we plan to cross the sea, we ought see how our candidates to do so fare on the Sea of Dorne. Even if a blade doesn't do for me, the stink might."
"Oh, a blade's got good odds. Never question battle's ability to turn shitwise at the first opportunity." Tyrion counselled. "Renly thought the War of Five Kings all but won as he crawled up the roseroad toward Stannis. Stannis thought the same when he took his brother's men for his own and sailed for King's Landing. Even Aegon the Conqueror lost a dragon and a queen trying to conquer Dorne. Only a fool considers a battle not yet fought as already won." And now Dorne seeks to be the one to bring dragons back to Westeros. That they had to endure Tyrion's presence had seemed a jape to Ser Gerris Drinkwater at first. When the tall, handsome knight saw none other than the Red Viper of Dorne listening to his words if not heeding them outright he took it with ill grace. Join the queue, Ser Comely. You are not the first tall, nor the first handsome, nor the first arrogant knight I've met. Prince Quentyn, for his part, seemed of the mind that the less he said to Tyrion the less Tyrion had to say to him. If he cannot face a dwarf, what prayer has he of wooing the Mother of Dragons? The sounds of men returning made Tyrion wonder if they'd found anything more interesting than provisions in Velos' ruins. As if they'd tell Old Rags and have whatever it may be confiscated as company plunder. Nor would common sellswords know what to look for in such a ruin. They left Velos and the isle on which it sat otherwise undisturbed, Tyrion watching it shrink back over the horizon from which it came. He thought on the monkeys lurking in what little of it still stood. Content but for when a ship draws near. Perhaps they have the right of it after all. Certainly they know better than the lot of us, sailing toward woe and war and the bloody fucking flux.
"If you were meant to have been a monkey, Lord Lion, you would have been born one." Oberyn called from his hammock. Tyrion doubted if he had even bothered to open his eyes, and yet it seemed the viper could guess his thoughts.
"As it happens, I've been called a monkey and more during my time as Joffrey's Hand."
"By a blind man, no doubt. You are uglier than most any monkey save perhaps a shorn one, though the racket you make is far the more entertaining."
"I am glad to be of that use, at least." I'd be gladder for a night's sleep I'm not like to piss myself during.