JORAH
On the northern horizon, Meereen lay like an open wound, broiling in the midday heat. The stepped pyramids shimmered, the golden domes of the Temple of the Graces flashed like molten sunlight, and even the brown water of the Skahazadhan had turned to glass, though it reeked more pungently of shit than ever. Not that anyone was like to notice. The Yunkish camp was strewn about with corpses, victims of the pale mare, whom nobody had troubled or lived to bury. Feral dogs roamed free, gnawing on brown-stained bones and other, more recognizable extremities. Altogether, the smell would have felled an aurochs.
Inside Brown Ben Plumm's tent, the air was better, but not by much. The Second Sons were all trying to breathe through their mouths, and Jorah thought they would not face much difficulty in convincing the sellsword company to abandon this hell. The question remained very much up in the air, however, as to whether they would then turn their cloaks back to Meereen. Brown Ben had already deserted Daenerys once before, when he heard that she could neither control her dragons nor consent to unleash them against the Yunkai'i, and Jorah, who lay awake nearly every night replaying the memory of his own confrontation with her after his treachery had been unmasked, very much doubted that she would welcome him back with the kiss of peace and a pat on the head.
Dany. The thought was with Jorah every morning and every night, a brand more painful than the demon's head that Yezzan zo Qaggaz's overseers had burned into his cheek. I was already ugly enough before, there's no looks to worry about spoiling. No, she would not welcome back either him or Plumm gently, assuming that she lived to do so at all. The gossip from Meereen overflowed with lurid tales of how she had flown away on the back of the black dragon – or fallen, or been burned to death, or assassinated by her new husband, the noble Hizdahr zo Loraq, who as yet balanced atop an ever more teetering rule of the city. And the thought of every moment that that preening bald bastard spent prancing around and styling himself as the Dragon Queen's loving consort made Jorah want to murder something. Preferably Hizdahr.
The big knight shifted his position. Sweat dripped down the scarred flogging welts on his back. While he and the Imp and the dwarf girl were still the property of Yezzan zo Qaggaz, he had been beaten a hundred times for resisting them, for fighting back, the same insubordination that had won him the brand on his cheek. But when he had heard that his queen had remarried, all of the spitfire had gone out of him, all the life. They had whipped him to blood and raw meat afterwards, and he had never felt a thing.
I was a fool to think that she would love me. I was a fool to think that she would take me back. In one rational moment, which had nearly died of loneliness before the next happened along, Jorah had tried to reason with himself that Dany deserved a wealthy, powerful husband, a man who could give her actual armies and land and peace. Not a penniless, ragged, disinherited, branded former slaver and spy, who could offer her not so much as a pot to piss in. Only my protection. My loyalty. My heart. My soul. But what would the queen have need of that for? And if half the tales were true, Daenerys had not kept a cold bed before she married Hizdahr, had been taking her ease of the flesh with that obscene blue-haired sellsword. Naharis. Jorah remembered him. By the time he was done, the Tyroshi would wish that he'd never laid hands on any woman who wasn't the naked golden one on his sword hilt.
I could do it, too. Daario remained a prisoner here in the camp, some looking should turn him up. True, it would be a delicate matter to murder the man while the Yunkish hostages were still trussed up in Meereen, but provoking the city into an open attack on its besiegers would likely break the last feeble remnants of Yunkai's power. Then the Second Sons, if Dany had not returned and demanded their heads, might feel justified in rejoining their original employers at once.
The one fly in this otherwise very soothing ointment: Jorah very much doubted that King Hizdahr would be in outstanding haste to bestir himself on behalf of an amoral sellsword captain who'd been fucking his wife. We need to get inside Meereen and steal a better hostage, but we can't get inside Meereen until we break Yunkai. And we can't break Yunkai until we persuade Meereen to attack, which we can't do until we get inside Meereen. It almost drove Jorah mad. At this rate, all we can do is hope that the shits get the rest of them before the ghostgrass gets the rest of us.
To achieve even part of this plan, therefore, Jorah was dependent on the others sitting around the table. And seeing as he trusted not one of them further than he could throw them, that was a problem.
He and Brown Ben had known each other back when both were working for Daenerys, but Jorah was not like to forget that Brown Ben had attempted to buy him as a slave – thankfully being outbid by Yezzan – in order to cut off his head and give it to the queen as a wedding gift. (Whether because he thought Dany would genuinely enjoy it, or because he merely wanted to loose a final parting shot, remained unclear.) Kasporio, Ben's second-in-command, and Inkpots, the company paymaster, were more likely to side with Tyrion, who had at least the ability to promise them vast riches when he (theoretically) became Lord of Casterly Rock. And as for the Imp himself, although Jorah could throw him the furthest, he trusted him the least.
Tyrion had saved his life by persuading Qaggaz to buy him as the "bear" for the dwarfs' mummery, and they were working together (again, theoretically) to get the Second Sons back onto Meereen's side, but Jorah knew the saying as well as anyone. A Lannister always pays his debts. And he had kidnapped Tyrion, dragged him across half the world, been inadvertently responsible for getting them sold into slavery and fetched up in this miserable reeking sty of a Yunkish camp, rather than safe within the walls of Meereen – though considering what Dany was likely to have done to them, or at least him, that was for now a dubious mercy. But the Imp would pay that debt, with interest. If Daenerys does not first. Jorah was unsure who didn't want him dead, rather than those who did. Struggling, as usual in vain, not to see her face in his head, he turned his attention back to the debate.
"No," Brown Ben was saying. "I don't care if the little queen is gone, those monsters will be even worse without her. And I should hope the lot o' you have heard the stories coming from the Windblown. They tried to capture one of them dragons for some Dornish lordling, and the beast roasted him like a harvest-day goose. I'm not going near them again, not for all the gold in our little friend here's shit."
"I believe you're confusing me with my lord father, Plumm," Tyrion Lannister said with a twisted smile. "And I can attest from personal inspection that that particular legend is a grievous fallacy. But as for the Dornish boy, perhaps the dragon was merely curious. Dornish flesh is known to taste most exotic, after all."
"Nobody cares about your whores, Imp," said Kasporio, instantaneously raising Jorah's estimation of him by several notches. "Or where they bloody go, for that matter."
Tyrion raised one brow in mock surprise, but his mismatched eyes were savage. "I don't recall saying anything about that."
"You talk in your sleep," Kasporio informed him. "Don't he, Ben?"
"I've never been after noticing, myself," Brown Ben said shortly, irritated that the conversation had been dragged back to whores when they were attempting to hammer out a plan of action. "And as commander of this company, I've made my views plenty clear. I'm more n' willing to abandon these mooncalf Yunkai'i who don't know which spear you use for pissing and which for fighting, but I've burned my bridges with the little queen. And our bear here could tell you a certain something about hopin' for her forgiveness once you've wronged her." He shot a cold, challenging look at Jorah. "I've a drop of Targaryen in me, I know how that goes."
"Yes, we all mistook you for Aegon the Conqueror reborn," said Tyrion, which was his favorite rebuff whenever Brown Ben started going on at any length about his purported dragon blood. "But one would think if that was the case, Plumm, you could charm the beasts for us. Or did you piss out that drop with last night's wine?"
To his credit, Brown Ben laughed. He does laugh often, and well. It made Jorah mistrust him still more. "Be that as it may," he said. "I've decided we'll go back to Volantis. There'll be the new triarchs to choose soon, there'll be plenty o' work for any sellsword with a sharp blade and a stout heart."
"Which would exclude you then, Ben," said Kasporio.
Brown Ben laughed again, but the merriment never reached his eyes. "I've always said it's better to be old than bold, but if the tigers win the election, there'll be even more. And if so – "
Tyrion cleared his throat.
"Did you have something to say, Lord Lannister?" Plumm asked, with exaggerated courtesy.
"I did, in fact. And that is: While Ser Jorah and I would be delighted to renew our acquaintance with the charming city of Volantis, the tigers and their warmongering ways have not elected a majority to the triarchy for over a hundred years. Which means that while we would have every kind of debauchedly good fun for ten days or so, we'd eventually wake up with the mother of all headaches and realize that the elephants were still in power. Thus meaning we would be back to looking once more for gainful employment."
"Maybe we might, Imp," said Kem, a swaggering young sellsword who'd joined the Second Sons before he was old enough to grow a beard. "As for you, I'm sure the mummers are always hiring."
Tyrion smiled. Or at least, he bared his teeth and pulled back his lips. "Falling off pigs is not the sort of thing a man can grow old doing. Especially not around here. I heard lions are often involved."
Kem feigned surprise. "But that would be you, wouldn't it?"
"Thank you very much, that was precisely the caliber of wit I expected from someone from Flea Bottom. Alas, I am as much able to tame lions as our friend Ben here is able to tame dragons. Now, as I was saying. The elephants will win the triarchy elections in Volantis, and if I never see that place again, it would be too soon. So – "
"You did just say you'd be delighted to see it, Imp," Kem pointed out helpfully.
"That's called sarcasm. Ask Kasporio to explain it to you one day, he'll use smaller words than I will." Tyrion turned to Brown Ben. "May I remind everyone here that the rewards I promised to you – which you will get, due to that saying which I needn't quote at you all again – are contingent upon us rejoining Meereen. The queen still could return, you know, and if she finds the Second Sons have cleaned out the Yunkai'i, located the Harpy, and maybe decorated the solar and cooked a nice dinner, even her flames might be appeased. Ser Barristan Selmy is the captain of her Queensguard, and even if he doesn't think the Second Sons are worthy to scrape off his boots, he will be in our debt if we find out once and for all if Hizdahr zo Loraq is a villain or merely a pawn."
"Selmy is an honorable man?" said Kasporio, sounding leery.
"Yes, it's a disease some of us have to suffer with. Not me, fortunately. But if Ser Barristan is half the man I knew, he'll have to put in a good word for us. And Brown Ben, I'm sure you still have all sorts of contacts within Meereen. Rats. Or as a friend of mine used to call them, little birds."
"Where are you going with this, Lannister?"
"I should think it's obvious." Tyrion shrugged. "Yunkai offers us little. Volantis offers us less. Meereen, conversely, offers us the gratitude of the dragon queen. . . some of us, at any rate." He too shot one of those oblique looks at Jorah. "Unless the Volantene elephants self-immolate before our eyes, or whatever other drastic event it would take for them to lose power, we have no choice but to – "
"We could always kill them," Kem suggested. "The elephants. If we wanted the tigers go to war with the rest of the Free Cities, that'd keep us busy for a – "
Tyrion gave him a wintry smile. "That's a remarkably cynical sentiment even from a sellsword. I used to know this man named Bronn, the two of you would get along famously."
"Enough," Brown Ben interrupted. "The dwarf does have a point. I'll think on it, and don't nobody make no jokes about how I'll strain something. Get out, see if you can find a bit o' bloody shade."
Grumbling, scratching, swearing, and sweating, the Second Sons dispersed. For lack of anything better to do, Jorah followed Tyrion out into the full fetid blast of the camp, but barely noticed it; his stomach had of necessity turned to iron. He scratched at the chafed raw skin where his collar had been. Oftentimes he woke – if he had slept at all – still feeling its weight. A bear there was, a bear, a bear. All black and blue and covered with hair.
"If your lord father was here, he would think this rivaled the Wall for the amount of dead men spotted walking," Tyrion said, as they ducked through the ragged remnants of picket lines. "Or so the tale goes, at any rate."
"Don't talk about my lord father, Imp. Not unless you want me to talk about yours."
"Touché." Tyrion waddled cautiously around something that was too red to be mud and too brown to be blood. "But as I've told you before, I respected the old man and was saddened to hear of his death. Truly."
"Is this the part where you remark on how at least I didn't kill him?"
"Try being a bit more surly, Mormont, I don't think I got your point the first time. And if you keep this up, I won't see any reason to tell you the news I didn't share with our friends in the meeting just now." Tyrion took several large steps backwards, out of Jorah's range. "It's about your maiden fair."
Jorah almost lunged. He restrained himself, barely. "Talk, Imp," he growled. "Or you can join your – "
" – precious father down in hell? You do need to learn a few new withering putdowns, I'm sure you've used that one before. But I didn't want to bring it up before the Sons because it's only rumors. But so far as I know, the tale is this. Khal Jhaqo's khalasar, in the Dothraki sea, has supposedly captured a silver-haired woman and a bloody big dragon. Well, I don't know if captured is the right word to use in this instance, but it is undoubtedly a dragon. The identity of the woman is up for debate."
"Daenerys," Jorah breathed. "It has to be her. The dragon – the black one, Drogon, its name was Drogon – it wouldn't let them – "
Tyrion eyed him curiously. "I do hope you're not thinking of doing anything stupid. More so than usual, I mean. There's still the Second Sons and – "
"The Others can take the Second Sons."
"There's still me."
"The Others can have you too. Especially you."
"I'm wounded," Tyrion said. "I don't like you, Mormont, and I expect you know that, but we're far from home and we're not among friends. I know you know it as well as I do, especially seeing as you've had prior experience with the Second Sons and their ironclad loyalties, but they'll agree to everything I say so long as the gold is in play, then the instant I give it to them, stab me in the back. Or shoot me in the belly, if Kem ever grasps the concept of irony. And you will notice, I hope, that I was doing everything I could to argue us into Meereen back there."
"I did." Even that was given grudgingly.
"I have no desire to return to King's Landing unless it's on a dragon's back," Tyrion said flatly. "And I can't decide whether I'd want said dragon to roast my sweet sister and my gallant brother to a crisp first, and then eat them, or merely skip the preliminaries and get down to business. My reasons for wanting to join Queen Daenerys may not be as noble as yours, but they're full as valid. And she does have the dragons. Young Griff only has the Golden Company."
"Young Griff," Jorah repeated skeptically. "You've mentioned him before. Who is he?"
"No one who needs to concern us." Tyrion turned away, sweeping his thin fair hair out of his eyes with one blunt-fingered hand. "So, then. I'm not as mad to ask for your friendship, but I doubt it would be beyond all fathoming to hope for your cooperation. If we can get into Meereen – "
"It will still take too long." Jorah's big hands closed into fists. "I should go to her. Find her. I speak Dothraki, I know the land, I am not entirely without friends. I might – "
"I've heard it said the Dothraki only kill their friends, for a frothing horde forty thousand strong has no enemies."
"Is that the number of Jhaqo's khalasar?"
"Twenty thousand, if it makes a difference. There's still only one of you. And it's bloody presumptuous to assume Daenerys needs rescuing, don't you think? There's the dragon. If you're lucky, it will have made a few thousand corpses for you already. Then you only need kill eighteen thousand of them yourself."
"I would not kill them. All."
"Charm them with your wit and culture, would that be it? If you intended to follow that plan of action, you'd need me. And I'm not going."
"Why?"
"Because it's lunacy. That's why."
"And that's stopped you before?"
There was a very long pause. Tyrion stared up at Jorah with his head cocked, so still that the knight could see the heat moving around him. Then the dwarf said, "You know, you're absolutely right. I am perhaps the least qualified individual in this world to tell you not to suffer pangs of horrible guilt for a young and beautiful girl whom you loved long ago, subsequently savagely betrayed, and so turned into a vagrant, drunken exile whose only hope for redemption rests on performing spectacular acts of public idiocy in order to capture back the beauty of a lie. But this is a bit more than falling off a pig."
"Yes," Jorah said. "I know."
"And you don't care." Tyrion's voice was the closest thing to gentle that he'd ever heard. Sympathy from the Imp? He must be imagining it.
"No," Jorah said. "I don't."
"Have it your way. Suicide by khalasar is one of the more inventive methods out there; mine own, I fear, only involved a flagon. If you will permit me to offer advice which you will speedily disregard, stay with us. I know the current situation has nothing to recommend it, but you might actually achieve something for your lady love if you help sort out the mess here in Meereen. Hare after her, her dragon, and a very large khalasar, and you'll die. That's all there is to it."
"I don't – "
"And you're under contract to the Second Sons, you know. You can't desert whenever you like."
"I joined the Second Sons for Daenerys. That was all."
"Seven save you," Tyrion said, not unkindly. "You're even more demented than I am."
Jorah turned on his heel. He was tired of listening to the Imp's barbs, wanted to hit him again but felt that that would somehow prove Tyrion's point. If only he could push away this great formless agony that always enveloped him, eating him alive. It had shrunk his own soul down to a small pale thing in a cage, an ugly naked wingless butterfly that someone had stuffed into a cocoon and left to turn back into a caterpillar. He started to walk away.
"Mormont," Tyrion said. And when he didn't stop, "Ser. You. Jorah."
"What?"
Tyrion paused. "Go, if you must," he said at last. "At least your lady lives. At least you know where to start looking for her. But I'd advise doing it quietly, after dark. I won't see you again, so I hope you get the heroic death out of this you so badly seem to want. I intend to enter Meereen with the Sons, do for the old man what I can. Even if Daenerys never returns, there are still the other two dragons."
"They are hers by rights."
"And if you should come flapping valiantly up on Drogon's back with her swooning in your arms, we'll all be in a great haste to congratulate you and hand them over. Goodbye, Mormont."
"Goodbye, Imp." Jorah paused. "Tyrion."
He didn't wait for the dwarf's answer as he strode away.
The hours until nightfall were the most excruciating of Jorah's life. He did his best to act nonchalant, until realizing that this was in fact suspicious behavior for him; he could hear Tyrion's voice in his head asking if he'd been surly enough the first time. He surreptitiously packed what things he could, made sure his sword was sharp, and gave it a few practice swings. It still felt lively in his hand. It could still sip the blood of a man or two or three or twelve. I don't care any more.
When Jorah stepped out of the tent, the evening was still hot enough to instantly stick his clothes to his skin. The sunset was a streaky crimson like an infected wound, Meereen had been swallowed in veils of shadow, and the stink had become almost sweet. He began to walk. There was one service he could still perform for his queen before he fled.
He found the stockades after only a brief search. Naharis did not see him approaching. The sellsword was chained so he could neither sit nor stand, his blue hair gone limp and faded and his gold tooth missing, his fine clothes stained and ragged with dirt and sweat. But at the sound of Jorah's approach, he looked up, stared blankly, then landed (so to speak) on his feet like a cat. His mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile. "The last time I saw a face uglier than yours was in a back-alley whorehouse in Qohor. I am thinking it must have been your mother."
Jorah had not come to trade insults with the Tyroshi. Silently, he put his hand to his longsword.
Daario's eyes flicked to it. He shrugged. "It was not me who made you hideous and a traitor, Mormont. Nor was I the one who made it so that Daenerys did not love you. It was me that she wanted up her cunt, so go ahead and kill me now, and I'll close my eyes and think of it."
Jorah stared at the sellsword with a hatred he would never even have thought existed, if he had not spent his bitter days and broken nights haunted by it. His queen had asked about his feelings for Lynesse, after he'd told her their sordid history. Do you hate her? Dany said, horrified. Almost as much as I love her, he had answered. Pray excuse me. I am very tired.
I have no luck with women. But Dany was more than Lynesse's ghost, more than anything, or anyone. She lives, I know she lives. No matter what it took, he would find her. Even if to lay his sword at her feet and let her smite him through the heart with it. But first, Daario.
"Courage is also one of your virtues, I see, that you only dare to approach me when I am chained," Daario went on. "In truth, I am tired of being kept on show in this reeking mire, though I am luckier than poor Groleo, whose head they already chopped off. Yet you are still standing there. I offered to take your head when the queen banished you, but she would not permit it. A pity."
Daenerys stopped him from killing me? It was a vanishingly slender consolation, the only kind that existed any more. Jorah drew his longsword a few inches clear of the scabbard. He could do it, and do it quickly, before Naharis had time to cock anything up by shouting and alerting the camp. He would delight in it. It would be some small, small revenge.
"I am growing bored standing here and watching you struggle with your conscience," Daario said. "Please, get on with it."
Jorah drew his blade another few inches. A swift stroke. To the heart, or the head. A cleaner death than the shitstain deserved. Now.
"Perhaps you should bring me a cup of wine," Daario prodded, when he still did not move. "After all this, I am thinking we will be friends."
After one long, unending, agonizing moment, Jorah slammed his sword back into the sheath. "I hate you," he informed the sellsword captain. "More than anything or anyone, and I know how happy it makes you to hear that, and so I hate you more. I hope the Stranger racks and flays and rapes you, and I hope you die screaming and shitting yourself. But I will not be the one to kill you. Because for some day, some moment, you made my queen happy, and she cared for you. Think of it all you want. Take it or leave it. It matters all of a brass dam to me."
"You are a very funny bear." Daario's lips peeled back like Tyrion's had, but this was even less of a smile. It barely looked human. "Don't worry, the favor is not returned. I will still kill you the instant I have the chance."
"You're welcome to try." Jorah pulled his hood up and turned his back. You're mad, you're bloody mad. Corpses sprawled in the light of the rising moon, flies gathering on them so thickly that they looked almost black. The air smelled of blood and shit and despair and death. Torches were being lit on the walls of Meereen. Do they pray for their queen's return? Or does Hizdahr plot her demise even now? Briefly, he found himself hoping that Tyrion and the Second Sons would succeed, infiltrate the city and stop the attacks. Selmy never needs to know about me.
He reached the edge of the Yunkish encampment. It couldn't be this easy, it couldn't, but he knew that it wasn't, and wouldn't be. But somewhere out there in that great dark world, his queen still, for the moment, drew breath. And that, for now, was enough.
"Valar morghulis," Jorah murmured. It was a Braavosi saying, and for a moment he thought of how Dany had longed for the house in Braavos with the red door, the closest thing she had ever known to a real home. Kill me if you will, my queen. My life is yours, my death as well. But I will die with a prayer for you on my lips, and my eyes full of you, and my heart given to your praise. And I will die happy.
Considering what his life had become, even that sounded like a miracle to Jorah. He tightened his swordbelt, allowed himself one last moment of regret for not killing Daario, and struck out into the wild.