A week's worth of chasing each other around the council table had them no nearer to leaving Meereen, to say nothing of reaching Westeros, than when they began. And we'd best not tarry much longer. The momentum is ours, best to act before the wave crests and the moment passes. Tyrion had no idea how long it would take for word to reach Westeros of the Siege of Meereen, but that it would seemed to him inevitable. What order could be prized from the chaos had come like a few precious droplets squeezed from a pruning blood orange, the sort Tyrion did not trust to last. We have sellswords acting as guards and filling patrols. Soon they will thirst for plunder again, what discipline their officers have instilled will falter. Oh, and the small matter of the flux to contend with as well. The tumult had seen the highborn of the city wall themselves up within their pyramids, responding to no entreaties of any voice, which suited Tyrion just fine. Meereen is theirs and they may have it. This city is a corpse, its lifeblood was slavery and it has been bled white. He pushed what slavers survived the reprisals of the freedmen from his thoughts. There were other matters at hand far more pressing. Seated to the queen's immediate right, he could sense Selmy's disapproval and Mormont's ire, but somehow no one brought forth misgivings as to his place on the council, nor had he once come to the council chamber to find someone else in his seat. Nor have I been interrupted, or even talked over. He'd let the rest of them go at it like alley curs tearing up a corpse, saying little, partially because he felt the concerns brought forth were ancillary matters at best.
"The world is full of plunder," the queen finally said as Tyrion mused, "and I would sooner hear notions on how we are to get to Westeros than accounts of who's earned what reward." If we're rewarding anyone, first spoils should go to Viserion. We have him to thank for the victory, and that nearly single-handed.
"The greater part of the realm owes loyalty to the Iron Throne in name only. Or owed, as it happens, what with all the rebelling and pretender kings carrying on so." Tyrion said in turn, looking at the table before him as if it were a map of Westeros. "Whatever we do, I think, will not be adequately responded to, nor speedily. Wars guzzle resources and time the way a calf guzzles milk, so once we manage to land in Westeros the rest will be more mopping up than true pitched battle thanks to the War of Five Kings." If that. However, it didn't do to advertise weakness and exhaustion in the mainland to the ironmen, nor to the Dothraki, and so Tyrion left that matter unelaborated upon.
"Whatever we do will need to wait until we've crossed the Narrow Sea, and the breadth of Essos at that." The Tattered Prince did not sound as though a notion was forthcoming.
"The Dothraki won't take to ships any more than their horses will. That many men, that many horses, on ships for that long…" Mormont added. Tyrion studied the other faces of the council, such as it was. Plumm and Old Rags have only lands and wealth at risk, they will agree to anything that sounds half sane. Their colleagues in Bloodbeard and Gylo Rhegan had somehow perished in the fighting, their companies splintering both for the queen and into smaller bands. No doubt to flee into the hills and prey on travelers. Grey Worm and the Shavepate knew nothing of sailing, nor Westeros, and let birds of other plumages sing. And mine own countrymen. Selmy and Mormont, at it again like bickering children, each shooting a dark look the other's way whenever the latter's eyes left the former. Oberyn Martell lounged unconcernedly in a chair opposite Tyrion, which to an untrained eye might communicate indifference. I know better. Greyjoy loomed from his end of the table like an ox tied up next to a paddock full of lambs. To Tyrion's mild interest, the brute had thus far said no more than he was bidden to, mostly on matters of seafaring or logistics. A nerve had begun to darken in his temple, a look that Tyrion had seen before. Stupid men ought not try to think, they'll only hurt themselves.
"The Iron Fleet's arrival was most fortunate, but I'm uncertain as to how longships will fare moving men in numbers such as we have." Ser Barristan said.
"Longships are built to move at speed, not ferry men. Much less horses." Tyrion said, waving off the notion. "All I've ever heard of ironborn is that they take from better men what they cannot make for themselves."
"The iron price. We do not labor over anvils or pull food from the ground." Greyjoy replied, not flinching.
"The bygone price, now. Bloody minds and bloody blades will do me more harm than good in Westeros, for fighting is the least of the work that needs must be done." the queen's tone was stony. The ironman seemed pained thinking of a reply.
"The Iron Islands are bleak and hard by the Drowned God's own doing, so that only the hardened can call them home. Always, we have lived the lives our god has deemed us live." The Iron Islands are what flew forth when the Father sneezed after his making of the mainland.
"Reaving and raiding your way to full bellies and full beds, yes yes, but that will not win us allies upon our return." Tyrion opted for instead, unmoved by the ironman's words.
"As I recall, you are not the only Greyjoy that lives. If you're here to press your claim, I seem to recall your having an elder brother besides Lord Balon, and Balon himself having at least one child of his own."
"Theon is lost and Asha is fled. The kingsmoot rose for my brother Euron, a demon-worshipper and godless man. The Seastone Chair cannot be sat by an abomination. It took a red priest's workings to turn the winds our way and bring us to Meereen." Greyjoy elaborated.
"Or the winds turned in your favor upon their whim. The gods care not for man's aims or ends, prayers or no prayers, blood or no blood." Tyrion replied. They're fucking gods, you clueless clod. "Prophecy, just a vintage too sweet to taste that the vintner's pissed in it." Missandei of Naath's muttering in what she knew of Dothraki to the queen's three bloodriders had them muttering, no doubt whinnying about the 'poison water'. "I'm rather more concerned with these other krakens loose in the world. You said yourself this kingsmoot raised the Crow's Eye, what right in their eyes do you have to treat with us, or to lay claim to this Seastone Chair? At sea, you are but Euron's tractable little brother, and on the mainland Balon's children come before you, council of captains or no." Greyjoy stared at him. Then he smiled of all things, and Theon saw just a shade of the grinning lad he'd spotted at the feast welcoming King Robert to Winterfell.
"By what right? By right of conquest, westerman. What else would a dragon do but conquer?" Lounge in a pool and listen to pet dwarfs spin yarns, I suppose.
"That might serve for dealing with your brother, but your niece and nephew are stickier-" Greyjoy cut him off.
"Theon is broken. I do not know if he even still lives. As for Asha, she tried to woo the kingsmoot with talk of Sea Dragon Point and eking out new lives upon the Stony Shore. They chose Euron." Then this niece of yours is cleverer than all your fool captains put together, and wasted on the lot of them and your pisshole islands both.
"I need no ships to carry the Dothraki." The queen's tone was untroubled. "The task is great enough moving everyone else without trying to pack my khalasar onto ships." Bored of discussing the Greyjoy succession, Your Grace? Well, you're hardly wrong in that. "Dothraki are sailors too, of a sort, on a sea of amber waves." she said with a small smile, Missandei of Naath's words changing the horselords' tune precipitously. Nodding and muttering jests to each other is well and good but the first step on a long road is seldom the one that causes you to slip. "That would make the journey easier." Mormont said, years somehow melting off his face at the prospect. The look of a man whose bowels have at long last come unknotted. "The Dothraki won't have to deal with the sea, at least not yet, and the ironmen can be kept out of trouble at their oars." Trust a northman to seize a chance to move away from a city with both his hairy hands.
"It may be a bit ambitious to plan a landing in Westeros proper at this early stage, anyhow. One ought first undress one's lover before taking them to bed, else things will get terribly complicated." Prince Oberyn opined.
"If we're not aiming so high, Volantis stands as a rather attractive alternate destination. It's a bloody big city, plenty of room both within and on the docks…" Tyrion answered. "What we saw with the raggedy bands was a mummer's farce. Proper officers giving proper orders would have men in numbers organized easily enough."
"Well and good," said Ser Barristan, "but as you might recall, my lord, Volantis sent no few ships against us, and no few soldiers. Why would the Volantenes let us rally within their walls for a push further west?"
"We're not going to let them let us, ser." Tyrion said, though he could not have called the man a fool enough times in his mind. "What they had to boast of in terms of strength in the field, they've lost. I should think with a horde of Dothraki and a fleet of ironmen converging on their city, the Volantenes will be glad and more to give us whatever assistance is needed in putting their city behind us."
Tyrion slapped his hands on the table, the sound a contrast to the constant voices.
"There is a way back, rest assured, my lords. What with all the swords at our disposal, to say nothing of arakhs and axes, there must be a way back. We need not belch forth from our ships in a tide of shouts and steel either, though. The only Blackfyre Rebellion that truly mattered was the first, and it ended in a single day of red because the men conducting it thought it would be enough to land with their swords bared. A disaster for all, in short. Even wars may be fought with finesse." If indeed, there will be war at all. Such power as had flocked to Daenerys Targaryen's standard would roll over whatever paltry alliance of lords Lord Tywin might hammer together at the last moment, of that Tyrion had no doubt. And half the Reach still holds you to blame for the deaths of Rhaegar's children, my lord. Your haste to shove golden roses down your balls may get you pricked, more than once and more than slightly. The queen looked to the great bullock across the table from her.
"My lord speaks true. You and yours would be most welcome in our effort to win back the Seven Kingdoms, my lord. If this Seastone Chair is your price, you will have it. If you seek to stand as overlord of the Iron Islands come war's end, consider your terms met. Consider, also, that Westeros is not Meereen, there are no slavers there to kill nor tents full of riches to plunder. Your ironborn will serve as sailors and soldiers, not raiders and reavers." The vein in Greyjoy's forehead danced a bit.
"Fight who you're told and you will profit, my lord. Not meagerly, either, or did I lie when I told you which of the slavers' tents to plunder first?" Tyrion asked. The vein thinned, losing color. The queen's own share of spoils had been something to see, even for a Lannister. I daresay the ironmen even skimmed off less than I credited they might.
"You did not lie." Tyrion's hands came up and he clasped them together, a sound that echoed oddly in the heights of the pyramid.
"Perhaps then you'd be good enough to see your longships are provisioned and your men all accounted for." He looked about, taking in the faces of sellsword captains, Dothraki kos, iron captains and men still stranger. Bears and vipers in bed together. Well, at least it's a bloody big bed. "I should think the rest of you would do well to do the same and make sure we're ready to leave in force within a week or two. Meereen is no man's idea of a fit place to live, I shudder to think we might leave anyone behind."
As disparate as the assembled men were, none took issue with Tyrion's words so far as he could see, even Skahaz mo Kandaq.
"What of Loraq?" growled the Shavepate, looking his usual cheerful self. A few bruises, a few new scars, what has he to complain about? He sits in the queen's council chamber while the erstwhile King of Meereen rots in a cell. Though Daenerys had not inquired further as to the circumstances by which she had nearly come to eat poisoned locusts, neither had she voiced a desire to have her husband or his oily herald freed. If one of us remembers to, they do, and that's the last bit of wit I'll waste on Hizdahr zo Loraq.
"You have your tasks, such as they are. I find the sooner we leave Meereen, the better. Furthermore, the sooner we leave Meereen, the sooner we leave Volantis." The queen waved a hand, dismissing her once-husband as she might a droning fly. Well, both are easily swatted. They began to filter out, Greyjoy in particular looking eager to go somewhere he could bark inane orders all he liked and expect them to be obeyed. I wonder how a squid's tentacles will take to all those stairs down to the streets and the docks beyond. Tyrion sidled out of his seat, stretched, and waited for the way to clear, the viper somehow slithering through the rest to appear beside him.
"King's Landing, Meereen…the Red Keep, the Great Pyramid, my lord. And not a step lost in the change of games."
"The board is different, the pieces, but the rules are the same." Tyrion replied. Oberyn smirked.
"Just so. A skilled cyvasse player is not put off by an unorthodox array of pieces, nor a lay of tiles unfamiliar to him." he said, giving a slow nod. Somewhere at the pyramid's apex, a dragon roared. Drogon, Tyrion knew. Deeper and richer, and his brothers do not much bother with the tune he calls.
"Will you be going above, Your Grace?" Missandei of Naath asked the queen.
"Yes, I think I've been shut up in these apartments long enough." Daenerys replied. "Attend me, my lord." she said, as she passed.
"As you wish, Your Grace." Tyrion replied at once, waddling in her wake. Both her knights, Tyrion did not fail to notice, were not so at ease as the Naathi girl. But is that due to time she spends in Drogon's company? Or in mine?
How many slaves have looked up here and wondered what a grand thing the view must be? Tyrion looked down to see the bricks had been leached of color by ages of unrelenting sun.
"The bricks that built Meereen's streets and cap her Great Pyramid are no different from one another." He observed.
"A riddle, my lord?" the queen asked, a bit louder over the light wind that most certainly did not reach the city streets below.
"No more than riddling at why men claim birth sets one atop another." Tyrion said, looking for the wading pool. As he suspected, Viserion had made himself at home, ivory snout poking up from beneath a brace of lilies. "From what I've read of lizard-lions, you might pass for one but for your white hide." Tyrion told him, Viserion's eyes no more than narrow golden slits. At the base of the apex, lingering at stair's bottom, the two knights waited with the viper, Tyrion musing on whether people would pay to see such a farce play out on a mummer's stage. Drogon was not so ambivalent as his brother, striding toward the queen with an impatient low growl. "I hope I didn't overstep below. You seemed ill at ease trying to be polite to the others, and between you and I, courtesies are wasted entirely on a talking axe like Greyjoy."
"And shout behind a sculptor just as he touches his chisel to the marble? I know better, my lord." She sounded almost amused, Drogon less so as he glowered over her. "I always thought wrangling lords and captains to be as easily done as herding cats, but you seem to know well how to do it."
"It's not so hard when they all want the same thing. Namely, to put all oars, or hooves as it were, toward Westeros and leave Meereen in the past where it seems determined to stay anchored." Tyrion waddled toward the edge of the pool, Viserion's eyes never leaving him. "Once we land in Westeros it will be another matter, to say the least. What an ironman wants and what a Dornishman wants are fundamentally different things, as an example. The sellswords may be easiest to keep in line, I daresay." When he turned to look to her, he was startled by the sight of her nearly beside him, Drogon left to hiss, steam issuing from his nostrils. She stooped, sat down, and dipped her legs into the water, stirring them listlessly.
Fool dwarf. She's been dreaming of home as long as she's known her name. She doesn't want to hear about tomorrow's battles, she wants to breathe now that today's is won.
"Not as you imagined it, I take it." he said.
"Not as such." she replied. Tyrion pursed his lips, pulled off his boots, and sat down beside her.
"There's no right way to feel, Your Grace. No wrong way, either."
"I scarcely know how I'm feeling in the first place, my lord. What I am." She looked into the pool's depths. "My campaign in Slaver's Bay has gone just shy of awfully. I may have broken the slavers, but I've broken their cities as well. What should happen if the same happens in Westeros? If I can do little more than raze castles and spill blood?"
"Westeros is not Essos, Daenerys. I will not tell you every soul in the Seven Kingdoms is waiting with hopeful hearts for the restoration of House Targaryen, but many will turn away from my father and his catspaws if you present yourself as an alternative. That, I know." As if that were any consolation.
"Viserys scarce talked of anything else but returning to Westeros, of reclaiming our father's throne. Flights of fancy I know now, but…"
"But?" Tyrion prompted.
"I've been in Slaver's Bay long enough to have had my fill of being hated. Of being seen as one without. What would the lords of Westeros see me as but that same thing with Dothraki, Unsullied, ironmen and sellswords following me? A barbarian, a conqueror, clad in a white lion's pelt."
"You mustn't forget me, Your Grace. No doubt plenty of minds hold me responsible for my nephew Joffrey's death." Cersei, first and foremost. He snorted bitterly. "I suppose I will seem Maelys the Monstrous come again, down to the kinsman's blood on my hands." Viserion drew nearer, perhaps sensing the tumult bubbling up within Tyrion.
"You don't seem so monstrous, at least to my eyes." The queen said, hand coming up to brush away a few tears.
"If I'm honest, I don't feel so monstrous either. A wonder than never dawned upon Lord Tywin, nor my sister. Then again, perhaps that's fate playing in my favor." The gods shaped a monster and filled it with the spirit of a minstrel. "You want to be loved, Daenerys Targaryen. I know well the feeling. However, you are too wise to the workings of the world to think a ruler, any ruler, is ever truly loved."
"Is it too much to ask to be loved to begin with?" she said. She looked to him, eyes streaming. Brave enough to wear her tears instead of trying to hide them.
Tyrion looked at her a long time, not turning away even as Viserion reared up in the pool, warbling interestedly.
"May I tell you something you may already suspect, Daenerys?"
"No one is stopping you, my lord." she said, sniffling.
"What you're looking for will not be found from atop the Iron Throne. Truth be told, you stand a better chance atop Drogon's back…and you'd be happier up there."
"With the breadth of Westeros beneath me, my khalasar racing behind. Hardly queenly."
"You were a khaleesi before you were a queen, were you not?"
"There are no khaleesis in Westeros, my lord."
"As of yet. I happen to know a few thousand Dothraki who are anxious to open a dialogue regarding that." He looked out across the pool to Meereen rolling out beyond the edge of the Great Pyramid. "You've spent your life building to this careful height. Dragons aside, your assembled power dwarfs the Conqueror's. A voyage west and then we're there. A little hesitance is nothing to fret over."
"It's not things going wrong that gives me pause. You tell me everything should go splendidly once we make landfall. Well and good. What then, Tyrion Lannister?" Tyrion was taken aback.
"Did you think it would be some great struggle? After the War of Five Kings, Westeros will be hard pressed to feed itself come winter, Daenerys. Let alone fighting off all the swords rallying to your banner."
"War is a passing state of things. Waging peace is much the harder, and I find I am ill-equipped to do so. Your help would be incalculably valuable in such an endeavor." she told him. He shrugged.
"I am your man, Your Grace. If it's counsel you ask for, I can provide it, even if I do sometimes exercise my wits at the expense of my reason."
"You are a dragonrider, Tyrion. You were made for more than tweaking noses and tumbling in the council chamber."
"And you for more than nannying a brace of fools in the Red Keep. I'm certain more than one will hope to win your hand, yet another prospect you must utterly relish-"
"They might have second thoughts once I tell them I'm barren." Daenerys said bluntly. "I'll not bandy about the prospect of a house's blood intermingling with House Targaryen's to win support from this ambitious father or that." Tyrion smiled ruefully.
"You wish not to marry, then. I can hardly say I blame you, and until most recently, aided by the whims of a certain viper, I was of that very mindset."
"What changed?"
"The charms of a certain Dornish beauty certainly didn't hurt. As a matter of fact, I find I cannot wait to return to her side and begin irritating her anew." It made Tyrion start to realize he had no difficulty whatever in thinking of Arianne Martell as his wife. Certainly far easier than thinking the same of Sansa Stark.
"As for you, Your Grace, I find your problem is a simple one, if lacking in a similarly simple solution."
"Is it?"
"You wed a lord in Hizdahr zo Loraq. To do the same in Westeros would be a mistake, even without giving thought to your feelings on the matter. You are a queen, a lord will not do. No matter which side of the Narrow Sea you find yourself on."
"I notice you've no outstanding notion regarding an alternative, my lord."
"There isn't one. At least, one I can see just now. It's a long way to Westeros and Westeros itself is large enough for distance itself to present an interesting challenge. Mitigated somewhat by the contributions of your children, granted." His quip won a hiccup and a small giggle.
"If I am indeed a queen as well as a khaleesi, I ought sport the trappings associated with such, don't you think?" He took her in, a sunburnt half-girl with silver fuzz coating her scalp. Younger than Cersei was when she wed Robert in the days after the rebellion.
"I've had some experience with queens preceding your good self, Your Grace. I find you're lacking precious little in comparison." She was quiet for a time, watching the sun dip toward the sea due west.
"There is one matter I'd like to have settled, and that before we even wet our oars, mount our horses and stretch our wings."
"Name it, Your Grace." Tyrion said readily.
"Tyrion Lannister, I would name you Hand of the Queen." Daenerys said. He froze like a deer in the path of a charging shadowcat. The queen bent, plucked a lily from atop Viserion's snout, and tucked it into a road-worn hole in his doublet.
"Your knights-" he choked out.
"Are who they are, and what they are. Missandei told me of what transpired in the council chamber while I was adrift in the Dothraki Sea. It took more than Ser Jorah's bluster and anger and more than Ser Barristan's honor and experience to resolve the siege." Imp magic, Tyrion thought before he could stop himself. And in service of a better queen than Cersei, a better liege than Father.
"Perhaps it's best to set a dragon minding the fleet as well as the horde. The best sailors in the world, the best riders in the world, and both with a dragonrider to spur them on…not to mention they'll be frothing to beat each other to Volantis."
"And Rhaegal?" Daenerys asked. The green dragon alone was not atop the pyramid with them, but that was hardly something to foul one's breeches about.
"If I know him, he'll catch one whiff of the First Daughter and continue west with all his considerable speed. It shames me to say it, but quite apart from the fire and the wings, dragons have thus far shown to have better sense and better taste both than the wealthiest of men." And the reek of Volantis' oily perfumes will set even a dragon's eyes to watering. Gods willing, we'll be there just long enough to break some chains and have a piss before we make for home.