They moved her again. The third ship she'd boarded in a fortnight.
The planks beneath her bare feet felt different, older, dryer, the grain ridged like scar tissue. The air here smelled less of pitch and tar, more of salt and metal, as though the hull itself had been soaking in the sea's blood for years.
Men watched her as she crossed the deck. A few held her eyes too long, their stares like greasy hands, but each one turned away when her gaze didn't break. She kept her chin level, though inside her belly coiled tight.
Her escorts were the same who had pulled her and Viserys from the wreckage of their fate. Gums, the larger, broad through the shoulders, his thick neck rolling above them, kept looking at her in sidelong glances, his lips working against toothless gums. The other was shorter, wiry, his brown hair slicked back with seawater and sweat. He moved quick and light, and his eyes darted like a sparrow's.
"I'm Cyril," the small one said without looking at her. His voice was low, meant only for her. "Captain'll want you soon enough. For now, your cabin."
Cabin. The word promised more than it gave. The space was barely larger than a closet, lit by a single round porthole filmed over with grime. But there was a bed. Hard as stone, but a bed. And no chains.
The men left her there. Outside, their voices mixed with the shouts of others, hauling crates and barrels from the prize they'd taken that morning. The thud of boots, the groan of rope under strain.
She sat, hands in her lap, staring at the floorboards until her vision blurred. Then the tears came.
How had it come to this?
She saw Viserys again, the way he had been smiling, flushed, drunk on the Magister's invitation. He had promised her the voyage would change everything. And it had. She had been giddy herself as their ship slipped free of the docks, the ocean opening before them, each swell a slow breath of the world. She had loved it then, the calm, the beauty, the endlessness.
Now he was gone, leaving her alone.
Her last hope was that these men would ransom her to the Magister, and that he would see reason, see value. Anything was better than ending in some pillow house, or as some Yunkish master's bed slave. She would rather—
A knock.
She froze, breath held. It came again.
When she opened the door, Gums filled the frame. "Captain wants you," he said.
She wiped her cheeks quick, smoothed her stained and dirty dress.
She had nothing. No one. Whatever came, she would face it upright.
As they walked, she asked, "Why do you keep staring at me?"
He seemed startled, looking away. "I wasn't," he muttered. His voice was deep, but soft as water moving under a pier. He kept his eyes ahead.
She let it go. There were bigger dangers ahead than the curiosity of a toothless man.
At the far end of the deck, Gums opened a heavy door without knocking.
The captain's quarters were nothing like the rest of the ship. Here, the air was cooler, the wood polished dark and slick under the light of a swinging brass lamp. A chart table stood against the far wall, maps and compasses scattered across it, their edges curling from use. But the thing that drew her eyes was the jaw—massive, pale, mounted over the central desk. The teeth curved like ivory scythes, each as long as her finger. She had seen that shape before, on the armbands worn by the crew. A shark's jaw.
Behind the desk sat the man himself. Captain Elric.
His silver-gold hair, hanging forward just enough to shade eyes the color of deep water over sand. He wore no show of status, only a plain shirt open at the chest, the lines of his build clear even at rest. One hand rested on the lid of a small chest on the desk.
Elric's gaze took her in slow, unblinking, patient.
A nod to Gums, and the big man nudged her forward before shutting the door behind her.
She lowered her head, the way she had around her brother when he was in a temper, careful not to wake the dragon.
"I apologize for the delay," Elric said, voice steady, almost polite. "Much to move aboard. You understand."
"Yes," she said quickly.
"I should introduce myself," he started off before pausing, "I go by many names, but you may call me Captain Elric."
A Westerosi name, she thought. Perhaps real, perhaps not. Yet, his striking appearance marked him: of the blood of old Valyria, not from Westeros, he surely was from somewhere in Essos.
"It's a pleasure," she replied, falling into the manners she'd used before lords.
He smiled faintly. "No need for formality. We pirates have no use for it. We do as we like. We take what we want." His eyes moved from hers, down her frame, then back again with the same slow inevitability of a tide.
She pressed on. "Will you take me to Pentos? To the Magister? I'm certain he will pay you whatever you ask for my safe release."
"Whatever I ask?"
"Yes!"
His lips curled. "And how much do you think you're worth?"
She faltered. "I—"
"A girl with your looks, your blood… A thousand gold for a pillow house. More, perhaps, from a wise master of Yunkai, to train you in the seven sighs and the sixteen seats of pleasure. Tell me, will your Magister pay me more than that? You must ask yourself: are you worth that much to him?"
Her breath quickened. She didn't know. Viserys had handled such matters; she barely understood the worth of a single coin, let alone a thousand. She had been allowed along because she was his sister, nothing more.
If the Magister did not value her enough to pay whatever ransom this captain demanded… she would be sold. Sold to the highest bidder and carried to some far shore where her name meant nothing, where she would become nothing but a warm body in another's bed. Better deaths cold embrace than the hands of some master who would use her as he pleased.
Her fingers gripped her dress until the fabric twisted. Her shoulders trembled. Tears came again.
"I don't want to die," she thought.
A cool hand touched her shoulder. Then she was drawn into him, the firmness of his abdomen firm against her cheek. Close enough to hear his heart beat slow, unhurried.
"Don't cry," he said beside her ear. "There is another way. You can become mine."
She pulled back, staring. "What!?"
"If you become my woman, I won't sell you."
"Why… why would you want me?"
"Why?" His eyes narrowed, his gaze moved over her. "You're beautiful, any fool can see that, who wouldn't want a beautiful girl by their side. Perhaps what I'm after is your name, princess Daenerys Targaryen. Or maybe…" His mouth curved, though it was not quite a smile. "…maybe I want to keep you near as one might keep a rare bird in a gilded cage."
He leaned closer, close enough that she caught the salt tang of his skin. "But in the end…" He shrugged smoothly. "Does it matter? I won't mistreat you. And you certainly won't be a slave."
She dropped her gaze, searching for words, for space to breathe. "I… I don't know. I need time. Time to think."
Time to weigh her choices, if choices they truly were. Time to imagine some other escape, some miracle that might come with the dawn.
He laughed sudden, full, sharp. It filled the cabin, rebounding off the paneled walls. He bent forward with it, bracing a hand on the desk to keep from falling. Then it died as quickly as it had come.
When it stopped, he stepped forward, movements smooth and circling like a shark sizing its prey. His hand seized her chin, tilting her face toward his.
"Don't misunderstand," he said, each word deliberate, a nail driven into wood. "You have no power to bargain with me."
Behind him, the pale curve of the shark's jaw yawned wide, teeth bared in eternal hunger, crowning him like some ocean god's cruel halo. "You're on my ship. You're life, in my hands."
Her feet shuffled back on the rug, the press of the desk edge against her calf.
"So," his voice rose, "what will it be?"