George Martin - A Dance With Dragons. Part 2 After The Feast

But when the sun rose upon her wedding day so did Daario Naharis, donning his clothes and buckling on his sword belt with its gleaming golden wantons. “Where are you going?” Dany asked him. “I forbid you to make a sortie today.”

“My queen is cruel,” her captain said. “If I cannot slay your foes, how shall I amuse myself whilst you are being wed?”

“By nightfall I shall have no foes.”

“It is only dawn, sweet queen. The day is long. Time enough for one last sortie. I will bring you back the head of Brown Ben Plumm for a wedding gift.”

“No heads,” Dany insisted. “Once you brought me flowers.”

“Let Hizdahr bring you flowers. He is not one to stoop and pluck a dandelion, true, but he has servants who will be pleased to do it for him. Do I have your leave to go?”

“No.” She wanted him to stay and hold her. One day he will go and not return, she thought. One day some archer will put an arrow through his chest, or ten men will fall on him with spears and swords and axes, ten would-be heroes. Five of them would die, but that would not make her grief easier to bear. One day I will lose him, as I lost my sun-and-stars. But please gods, not today. “Come back to bed and kiss me.” No one had ever kissed her like Daario Naharis. “I am your queen, and I command you to fuck me.”

She had meant it playfully, but Daario’s eyes hardened at her words. “Fucking queens is king’s work. Your noble Hizdahr can attend to that, once you’re wed. And if he proves to be too highborn for such sweaty work, he has servants who will be pleased to do that for him as well. Or perhaps you can call the Dornish boy into your bed, and his pretty friend as well, why not?” He strode from the bedchamber.

He is going to make a sortie, Dany realized, and if he takes Ben Plumm’s head, he’ll walk into the wedding feast and throw it at my feet. Seven save me. Why couldn’t he be better born?

When he was gone, Missandei brought the queen a simple meal of goat cheese and olives, with raisins for a sweet. “Your Grace needs more than wine to break her fast. You are such a tiny thing, and you will surely need your strength today.”

That made Daenerys laugh, coming from a girl so small. She relied so much on the little scribe that she oft forgot that Missandei had only turned eleven. They shared the food together on her terrace. As Dany nibbled on an olive, the Naathi girl gazed at her with eyes like molten gold and said, “It is not too late to tell them that you have decided not to wed.”

It is, though, the queen thought, sadly. “Hizdahr’s blood is ancient and noble. Our joining will join my freedmen to his people. When we become as one, so will our city.”

“Your Grace does not love the noble Hizdahr. This one thinks you would sooner have another for your husband.”

I must not think of Daario today. “A queen loves where she must, not where she will.” Her appetite had left her. “Take this food away,” she told Missandei. “It is time I bathed.”

Afterward, as Jhiqui was patting Daenerys dry, Irri approached with her tokar. Dany envied the Dothraki maids their loose sandsilk trousers and painted vests. They would be much cooler than her in her tokar, with its heavy fringe of baby pearls. “Help me wind this round myself, please. I cannot manage all these pearls by myself.”

She should be eager with anticipation for her wedding and the night that would follow, she knew. She remembered the night of her first wedding, when Khal Drogo had claimed her maidenhead beneath the stranger stars. She remembered how frightened she had been, and how excited. Would it be the same with Hizdahr? No. I am not the girl I was, and he is not my sun-and-stars.

Missandei reemerged from inside the pyramid. “Reznak and Skahaz beg the honor of escorting Your Grace to the Temple of the Graces. Reznak has ordered your palanquin made ready.”

Meereenese seldom rode within their city walls. They preferred palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs, borne upon the shoulders of their slaves. “Horses befoul the streets,” one man of Zakh had told her, “slaves do not.” Dany had freed the slaves, yet palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs still choked the streets as before, and none of them floated magically through the air.

“The day is too hot to be shut up in a palanquin,” said Dany. “Have my silver saddled. I would not go to my lord husband upon the backs of bearers.”

“Your Grace,” said Missandei, “this one is so sorry, but you cannot ride in a tokar. ”

The little scribe was right, as she so often was. The tokar was not a garment meant for horseback. Dany made a face. “As you say. Not the palanquin, though. I would suffocate behind those drapes. Have them ready a sedan chair.” If she must wear her floppy ears, let all the rabbits see her.

When Dany made her descent, Reznak and Skahaz dropped to their knees. “Your Worship shines so brightly, you will blind every man who dares to look upon you,” said Reznak. The seneschal wore a tokar of maroon samite with golden fringes. “Hizdahr zo Loraq is most fortunate in you … and you in him, if I may be so bold as to say. This match will save our city, you will see.”

“So we pray. I want to plant my olive trees and see them fruit.” Does it matter that Hizdahr’s kisses do not please me? Peace will please me. Am I a queen or just a woman?

“The crowds will be thick as flies today.” The Shavepate was clad in a pleated black skirt and a muscled breastplate, with a brazen helm shaped like a serpent’s head beneath one arm.

“Should I be afraid of flies? Your Brazen Beasts will keep me safe from any harm.”

It was always dusk inside the base of the Great Pyramid. Walls thirty feet thick muffled the tumult of the streets and kept the heat outside, so it was cool and dim within. Her escort was forming up inside the gates. Horses, mules, and donkeys were stabled in the western walls, elephants in the eastern. Dany had acquired three of those huge, queer beasts with her pyramid. They reminded her of hairless grey mammoths, though their tusks had been bobbed and gilded, and their eyes were sad.

She found Strong Belwas eating grapes, as Barristan Selmy watched a stableboy cinch the girth on his dapple grey. The three Dornishmen were with him, talking, but they broke off when the queen appeared. Their prince went to one knee. “Your Grace, I must entreat you. My father’s strength is failing, but his devotion to your cause is as strong as ever. If my manner or my person have displeased you, that is my sorrow, but—”

“If you would please me, ser, be happy for me,” Daenerys said. “This is my wedding day. They will be dancing in the Yellow City, I do not doubt.” She sighed. “Rise, my prince, and smile. One day I shall return to Westeros to claim my father’s throne, and look to Dorne for help. But on this day the Yunkai’i have my city ringed in steel. I may die before I see my Seven Kingdoms. Hizdahr may die. Westeros may be swallowed by the waves.” Dany kissed his cheek. “Come. It’s time I wed.”

Ser Barristan helped her up onto her sedan chair. Quentyn rejoined his fellow Dornishmen. Strong Belwas bellowed for the gates to be opened, and Daenerys Targaryen was carried forth into the sun. Selmy fell in beside her on his dapple grey.

“Tell me,” Dany said, as the procession turned toward the Temple of the Graces, “if my father and my mother had been free to follow their own hearts, whom would they have wed?”

“It was long ago. Your Grace would not know them.”

“You know, though. Tell me.”

The old knight inclined his head. “The queen your mother was always mindful of her duty.” He was handsome in his gold-and-silver armor, his white cloak streaming from his shoulders, but he sounded like a man in pain, as if every word were a stone he had to pass. “As a girl, though … she was once smitten with a young knight from the stormlands who wore her favor at a tourney and named her queen of love and beauty. A brief thing.”