The yurt's hide flap was flung aside, and a smell hit her—thick, cloying laurel perfume trying and failing to smother the sour stench of a chamber pot. It was the scent of cheap luxury covering up filth. Two young Dothraki slave girls walked out backwards, holding the flap open for the woman who followed, her own swollen belly a mirror of Dany's.
Dany found herself staring. The woman wasn't in a painted leather vest, but a light lace dress from Myr. The color, a pale bud yellow, made her fair skin seem almost luminous. Her silver hair was cut to fall just at her shoulders, framing a face with hazy, purple eyes. For a half-second, a wild thought flared: Another one. Another Targaryen.
The thought was followed by a rush of memory. The seed is strong. Jon Arryn's dying words. A truth that held across the great houses: the black hair of the Baratheons, the auburn of the Tullys, the gold of the Lannisters, and the almost transparent silver-gold of her own family, the Targaryens. People of the same blood often shared the same features.
But silver hair and purple eyes belonged first to Valyria. Four hundred years had passed since the Doom destroyed the ancient dragon civilization, and its bloodline had been scattered across the entire continent of Essos. To see another with the Valyrian look, even here, was not impossible. It still didn't stop the cold prickle of unease on her skin.
Unlike Dany's own petite and slender frame, this woman was built on a larger scale—tall, with a full chest, wide hips, and a strong, square face. She was older, too, likely close to thirty. Her strange eyes raked over Dany, filled with a toxic mix of ridicule, pity, jealousy, pride, and a smug, insidious confidence. Dany disliked her instantly.
"So, it was the Khaleesi," the woman drawled, her voice slick with false sweetness.
"You must be Lyra," Dany said, keeping her voice even. "Jhogo's… companion?"
A slow, venomous smile crept across Lyra's lips as she rested a hand on her stomach. "Hehe," she purred in the elegant High Valyrian tongue. "And perhaps I'll be Khaleesi soon enough."
The threat was naked. When he dies. She didn't have to say it. When Drogo finally fell, the strongest would become the new Khal, and his woman would take her title. Dany knew how little the word "Khaleesi" could mean. It wasn't a unique honor. Just days ago, Drogo had dispatched a group of riders to escort two new widows—the Khaleesis of Khal Ogo and another horselord he had killed—to Vaes Dothrak. The city was filled with forgotten queens.
Dany's guards didn't understand the ancient tongue, but they felt the malice. Ser Jorah, however, understood perfectly. His voice was a low growl at Dany's side. "Jhogo has no wife. Khal Drogo has lain with many women, but the Princess Daenerys is the only one he has named his Khaleesi." He bit down on the word 'princess,' making it a weapon.
Lyra's face flushed a blotchy red. When she spoke again, it was in the harsh Dothraki tongue. "You would defy our traditions, Khaleesi? You would steal the spoils of another warrior?"
She was throwing Dany's own past actions in her face. The girl she used to be had been kind, naive. She'd tried to "rescue" captured women from the warriors who claimed them. It had been a disaster. The rescued women felt little gratitude, and the Dothraki who had been robbed of their 'property' now hated her to the bone.
"It is just a goose," Dany said, the public scrutiny making her feel hot and clumsy. She reached for the belt of silver medallions at her waist, unhooking one. She tossed it into the mud at Lyra's feet. "And you cannot refuse a gift from your Khaleesi."
With a sharp nod from Dany, her guard Quaro acted. The bowstring twanged. The arrow sliced through the air and struck the goose that was waddling away. The arrowhead pierced its long neck and drove it into the earth with such force that the shaft stuck nearly four inches deep in the dirt. The bird's white feathers gave a final, feeble flutter, stained with a spreading blot of red.
Dany pointed at the dead bird. "It is mine now."
Her fingers brushed against the other medallions on her belt, the cool metal a stark reminder of the brutal Dothraki gift economy. Everything was a gift. She herself had been a gift from Viserys to Drogo, traded for the promise of an army. The Dothraki tradition stated that a gift must be met with a gift in return, but on their own terms, in their own time.
Viserys, in his all-consuming madness, had never understood that. He had whined, pleaded, and threatened. He had publicly screamed that Drogo had cheated him, that he'd whored out his sister for nothing. He had beaten and insulted her, his own sister, trying to provoke a reaction. He'd even tried to steal her dragon eggs to sell for passage on a ship. The final, fatal error came when he brought a blade into the sacred feasting tent in Vaes Dothrak. In front of countless Dothraki, he had pointed his sword at her pregnant belly and shrieked his threat at Drogo: if you don't give me my crown, I'll cut your wife and son to pieces.
Drogo had given him his return gift then. A crown of molten gold, poured over his head.
The Dothraki gift trade was a cruel game, and Dany was learning to play it. Lyra knew the rules, too. She could not refuse the gift.
Dany turned her filly to leave. But she paused. Winning wasn't enough. She had to leave a scar. She twisted in the saddle, looking back at Lyra, who was trembling with silent fury.
"You speak of tradition," Dany said, her voice quiet but cutting. "So you should understand this. A Dothraki rides. A Khaleesi rides. Even with a child in her belly."
She let the words hang, a perfectly aimed dagger. In the khalasar, the inability to ride was the ultimate shame. It meant you were less than human—a cripple, a eunuch, a slave. She remembered how the riders had jeered at Viserys when she'd forced him to walk, nicknaming him Rhaesh Andahli—the Sorefoot King. When Drogo had offered him a place in a cart, Viserys had eagerly accepted, earning himself an even more contemptuous title: Khal Rhae Mhar—the Cart King. To be seen supported by slaves was a declaration of weakness.
Lyra's face contorted. She was biting her plump lower lip so viciously it looked as if it would surely bleed. Her hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides.
Dany gave her one last, cool glance, then nudged her filly with her heels and rode away, the rhythmic clatter of hooves a declaration of her victory.
Behind her, Lyra's voice was a low, venomous growl as she spoke to her slave girl. "Get me a horse. A silver filly, just like that bitch's. Have it ready by morning."