They brought Mirri Maz Duur to the center of the camp at dusk, bound with horsehair rope and dragged behind a dun mare that wanted nothing to do with her smell. The khalasar formed a rough circle—warriors with tight jaws, women with hard eyes, children peering from behind skirts. The evening wind pushed smoke along the ground, and the flies were merciless.
Drogo stood straight, bare-chested, bells steady in his braid. Daenerys stood at his right shoulder, violet eyes bright in the falling light. Jorah kept a respectful half-step behind, watchful and silent.
"Cut her bonds short," Drogo said. "Not enough to run. Enough to stand."
Leather whispered. Knots bit tighter. They hauled Mirri to her feet. Blood matted her hair; ash and sweat streaked her face. Even so, her gaze never left Drogo's. There was no fear in it. Whatever had been burned out of her had left iron behind.
"You brought this to us," Drogo said, voice even. "You opened your tent. You named your price. Speak now and speak plain."
Mirri's lip curled. "Plain? Your riders were plain. Torches plain. Laughing plain. When they broke my doors and dragged my sisters by the hair, they were plain. When they burned the house where I healed men—plain. When they set me before them one by one—plain."
A murmur rolled around the ring—some guilty, some defensive, some blank and uncomprehending. Dothraki faces did not beg forgiveness; they measured force.
Daenerys's chin lifted, a tremor in her voice that hardened into steel by the last syllable. "You took my child from me."
Mirri's eyes flicked to the Khaleesi. "Your child would have taken a city from someone else."
The words landed like thrown stones. But the sentence did not settle. It hung, ugly and heavy.
Drogo let the quiet sit until even the horses stopped tossing their heads.
"You bargained," he said at last. "You said a life for a life."
Mirri laughed once, low and without joy. "I said what you were ready to hear."
Jorah took a half-step forward, jaw working, but Drogo lifted his hand by the smallest measure and the knight stilled.
"What did you intend?" Drogo asked. "Say it."
Mirri's stare was flat. "I intended for your breath to be a lesson. To lie warm and empty. To keep you from making more graves."
Daenerys flinched. She did not look away.
"Life that cannot laugh is not life," Drogo said.
"Life that cannot do harm is mercy," Mirri said back.
A rider barked: "Mercy is for weak throats."
Another spat.
Another—older, thinner—said nothing and rubbed the heel of his hand along a cracked knuckle.
Drogo's gaze slid across the ring and returned to the bound woman. His voice dropped.
"You knew the cost of your song."
Mirri held his eyes. "Only death pays for life."
"Whose death?" Drogo asked.
Mirri's shoulders rose and fell. "The boy's. And more besides."
Daenerys's breath caught, a soft sound that hurt worse than a blade.
Drogo didn't blink. "You speak of price. I speak of judgment."
He turned, so the whole ring had his face, so no one could pretend not to understand.
"This woman twisted bargains until they snapped," he said. "She took what was not hers to take. She used the fear of a Khaleesi and the pride of a Khal. She gave back a breath without a soul."
Mirri's mouth bent. "The world taught me the lesson first."
"I do not sit in judgment of the world," Drogo answered. "I sit in judgment of you."
The murmur thickened—approval, relief. The Dothraki feared gods only when storms were bad and grass was poor. They feared Khal's indecision more.
Daenerys stepped forward. The light kissed her hair into pale fire. "You will not speak of my son again," she said, not loud, but with such steadiness that silence came after it whether the crowd wanted it or not.
Mirri watched her for a long breath. "Your son is gone," she said at last, voice almost gentle—almost. "That is the only mercy I could still give you."
Daenerys did not answer. She took Drogo's hand, not as a plea, but as a claim. He let their fingers meet and part again. It was enough.
Drogo raised his head. "Hear me," he said. "There will be no more words that pretend to be cures." He pointed to a patch of open ground where the wind would carry smoke away from the horse tents. "Build the pyre."
Orders snapped into motion. Temmo the arakh-smith shouted for sound timber and dry brush. Boys ran, thin legs pumping. Women hauled bundles. The singer with the cracked zither set his instrument aside and carried wood with the rest. The camp moved like a single animal rediscovering how to breathe.
Mirri stood in the middle of it, a still thorn in a field of grass. She watched the pyre climb. She watched the logs stack, the brush layer, the oil poured. When they lashed the stake upright, she tilted her head at Drogo and smiled a broken smile that had no warmth in it at all.
"You will get nothing from this," she said. "Only heat. Only smoke."
"Heat cleans," Drogo said.
"Smoke blinds," Mirri replied.
"The blind learn to listen," he returned, and lifted a hand.
They brought her forward. They tied her to the stake. The ropes bit. She didn't cry out.
Daenerys stood very still. She could feel her heartbeat as a pulse in her lips, her wrists, her throat. She should have felt triumph. She felt… nothing she understood. The emptiness had teeth.
Jorah leaned closer, low enough to be respectful. "My lady—"
"No," Drogo said, not looking round. "No words now." He didn't need to see the knight to know what he would say. Knights talked too much when the world wanted to watch.
Drogo addressed the ring. "This woman is no rider's daughter. She is no sister of ours. She is not kin to our dead. She wants to teach us emptiness. We will not learn it."
He took a brand from the nearest fire. He weighed it in his hand, then passed it to Daenerys. The orange glow painted her palm.
"You will light it," he said.
There was no order in his voice. There was a certainty that made orders unnecessary.
Daenerys looked down at the brand as if it might speak. It said nothing. Or perhaps it said everything too loud to hear.
Her fingers tightened. She stepped forward until she stood close enough to smell the oil sweat in the wood. Mirri lifted her chin. Their eyes touched and did not move.
"Do you wish to say a prayer?" Daenerys asked.
Mirri's smile sharpened. "I already have."
Daenerys lowered the brand. Flames took with a whump and then a greedy crackle, licking along the base, hungry as wolves.
The smell came at once—oil, sap, old wood, a hint of something sweet and rotting in the brush. The fire breathed in, breathed out, grew.
Mirri began to sing.
Not to the horse-god. Not to the mountain. Not to any name the Dothraki would recognize. It was a Lhazareen melody, high and thin and carrying, like a shepherd's song across empty plains. There were no words in it, or else there were too many to separate. It lifted, fell, turned back on itself, refused to end.
Daenerys felt tears she had no use for burning at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away. The heat pressed against her skin like a hand that meant to warn and could not decide from what.
The flames climbed to Mirri's feet. The song did not stop.
A child in the third rank started crying. His mother shushed him, voice shaking. Men did not speak. The singer with the cracked zither looked down at his instrument as if ashamed to hold it.
Drogo stood unblinking.
When the fire reached Mirri's knees, she laughed in between notes, a raw, wild sound that made several warriors flinch. When it took her dress, ate at the cloth and leapt higher, she stiffened, jaw grinding, but the song did not break.
Daenerys's fingers whitened around the spent brand. Her breath came slow, deliberate, as if each one needed permission. The heat surged and surged.
Something inside her stirred.