The chair was comfortable, and it was carved from pale sandstone and layered with cushions of burnt orange silk that smelled of warm cedar and crushed citrus peel. The armrests were smooth and cool under my palms.
The table between us was a low slab of red-veined marble, polished to a mirror sheen, with a spread of food that could've fed Harren's family for a week. Layered pastries glazed with honey and ground pistachios, dates stuffed with almond paste, sliced blood oranges on a blue ceramic plate, and cured meats that smelled of smoke and fennel. Two cups of fine porcelain sat at either end, white with gold trim, filled with tea that steamed.
Nymara Martell's cup was half-empty.
My cup was full, and I hadn't touched it or the food.
Princess Nymara Martell was tall for a woman, lean and sharp-featured, with black hair that fell in loose waves to her shoulders and dark skin. Her eyes were dark and warm, and she wore a simple gown of pale gold linen with the sun-and-spear of House Martell embroidered at the collar. She was maybe fifty but moved like she was younger.
I liked her immediately. Which was exactly why I didn't trust her yet.
The solar was a broad and airy room on the upper level of the Tower of the Sun, one of the three pale spires that crowned the Old Palace of Sunspear. The walls were plastered white and decorated with geometric mosaics in blue and gold and deep red. Arched windows on three sides let in the afternoon heat and the sound of the shadow city below; voices and cart wheels and someone playing a stringed instrument. Orange trees grew in ceramic pots along the windowsills, and their blossoms scented the air.
It was beautiful. Sunspear was beautiful. And unlike Valyria, the beauty didn't make me want to vomit.
Mellaria Sand stood by the door in deep orange silks, arms folded, her expression politely blank. Two guards in orange cloaks flanked the entrance with spears held upright, and beyond them I'd counted six more in the corridor and a woman carrying a satchel that clinked when she moved.
Nymara set her cup down and looked at me, and she chuckled, warm and low.
"Lady Taela," she said. "If we wanted you dead, you would have been dead the moment you set foot in my city. We broke bread and salt; calm yourself. Drink and eat."
She gestured toward the table with an open palm, and the guards didn't move.
I breathed in, and the flow answered.
The working was quick and precise and cost me more than I would've liked. A membrane of sorcerous protection layered across the lining of my mouth, throat, stomach, and intestinal tract, hardened against any toxic compound. It burned through a chunk of my reserves I'd been saving for the flight back to Annette's Haven. But refusing hospitality in Dorne was apparently somewhere between a diplomatic incident and a declaration of war.
I picked up the cup, and the porcelain was thin and warm under my fingers, and the tea smelled of cardamom and something floral.
I looked Nymara Martell in the eyes and drank.
The tea was good. Really good, actually. Spiced and slightly sweet, not a flavor combination I would’ve picked, but not one I’d reject.
I set the cup down and reached for one of the layered pastries and took a small bite. Honey and pistachio and a buttery crumb that dissolved on my tongue. I chewed and swallowed and the sorcerous membrane did nothing, because of course the food wasn't poisoned.
Nymara smiled, slow and satisfied.
"See?" she said. "You can trust me. Our ancestors may have waged war against each other, but I have no personal quarrel with Valyria."
"I suppose so," I said. "The war with the Rhoynar was waged far before my time."
"Far before mine as well, though the Rhoynar remember it as though it were yesterday." Nymara reached for a blood orange slice and ate it in two bites, juice darkening her fingertips. "My great-grandmother was Nymeria's direct descendant. She used to tell me stories about the burnings, the rivers boiling, the dragons descending on the water palaces while the children screamed. She'd been told those stories by her mother, who'd been told by hers, and so it went all the way back to the woman who stood on the deck of a ship and watched her home cook."
She wiped her fingers on a cloth napkin and folded her hands in her lap.
"I tell you this so that you understand the weight of what I am doing by receiving you here, Lady Taela. There are people in my court who believe that allowing a dragonlord to sit in the Tower of the Sun is an act of treason against the memory of every Rhoynar who died in the fires." She glanced at Mellaria. "Mellaria thinks I've lost my mind."
Mellaria, at the door, said nothing.
"I am grateful for the risk you have taken in receiving me, Princess Nymara," I said. "And I shall endeavor to be worth it."
"Yes, well." Nymara leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other. "You mentioned a kind of alliance, yes?"
I nodded. The plan had been forming for a decade, and the pitch I'd prepared had been rehearsed so many times it felt less like a speech and more like a memory. But the rehearsed version was too long and too careful, and sitting across from Nymara Martell with the taste of her tea still on my tongue, I threw it out and went with the truth.
"Yes," I said. "I am going to free a large number of slaves from Valyria. As many as I can. They will need a new home to resettle, and someone to protect and govern them. I will protect and shelter as many of them as I can."
"A large number," Nymara repeated. "How large a number are we discussing, Lady Taela?"
"Millions… if I’m being hopeful. If I’m being realistic… probably a few thousands."
Nobody spoke for a while.
"Millions," Nymara said. “Thousands… that’s quite a leap.”
"The Valyrian Freehold holds between four and five million people in bondage. The actual count fluctuates, but the magnitude is consistent. I intend to break their chains, all of them, on a single day, and provide them with the means to leave Valyria before the consequences of that act make remaining untenable."
"The consequences being what, precisely?"
"Volcanic instability across the Fourteen Flames. The mechanism I intend to use to break the slave collars will disrupt the sorcerous workings that keep the volcanic chain stable. The disruption may be temporary and manageable, or it may be catastrophic. I cannot predict which with certainty."
Nymara looked at me for a long time.
"Mellaria," she said without turning her head.
"Princess?"
"I'm going to need more tea."
Mellaria disappeared through the door, and the guards stayed.
Nymara uncrossed her legs and leaned forward and placed her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands.
"Walk me through it," she said.
So I did. I told her about the slave collars and the glass candle network that connected them, and the pulse I'd designed that would shatter every binding simultaneously. I told her about Annette's Haven and the harbor I intended to build and the transport ships I intended to construct, and the timeline, the years of preparation still ahead.
I did not tell her about the stabilization protocols or how the volcanic chain might destabilize. That was too dangerous to share.
Mellaria returned with a fresh pot and poured for both of us, and Nymara drank and listened and asked questions that were sharper than I'd expected.
"I do not claim to know what sort of insanity you have planned," she said. Her voice had dropped. "And frankly, I don't want to know. The less I understand about how you intend to burn the Freehold, the better I sleep."
She paused.
"However," she said. "Dorne was built on the backs of refugees. Princess Nymeria was a refugee. She was the founder of Dorne. If you bring them to me, and if they are good people, willing to work the land, willing to bow to their lord, then I do not see why I should turn them away."
Something loosened behind my sternum.
"They will be good people. They have been beaten and chained and worked to the edge of death for their entire lives, and they will come to you with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the will to survive. But they will work. They will build. And they will remember who sheltered them."
"Remembrance is a fine currency," Nymara said. “Very well. I… tentatively agree to this agreement.”
I very nearly deflated in relief. “Thank you. Princess Nymara.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “Words are wind. The real work is far ahead of us.”
“Of course.”
"You know, I have never seen the eyes of a Valyrian up close," she said, and her voice had shifted, the cadence slower. "It is as they say. Purple. You have beautiful eyes, my lady."
She paused.
"Quite a shame," she said. "I would so very much like to bed you were I younger."
I choked on my tea.
The cup rattled against my teeth and the tea went down the wrong pipe and I coughed hard enough that the sorcerous membrane in my throat nearly activated, and my face went hot from the neck up. I sat there coughing and red-faced while the Princess of Dorne watched me with open delight.
Nymara laughed, and it made Mellaria cover her mouth with one hand.
"I appreciate your candor, Princess Nymara," I managed. "Though I shall have to decline the invitation, at least for the present."
"Oh, the present." Nymara waved her hand. "The present is very long, Lady Taela, and we have plenty of it."
Mellaria cleared her throat.
"Perhaps," the seneschal said, "we might return to the matter of the alliance?"
"Yes," I said, probably too quickly. "Yes, let us do that."
Nymara put the cup down and folded her hands, and she straightened in her chair.
"In return," Nymara said. "You promise to lend your power to Dorne?"
I nodded. "Yes. I will not be your subordinate, but I shall aid you when you need help. When you need dragons."
"Dragons," she said. "Defending Dorne."
"If the need arises."
"And if the need arises against your own people? Against the Freehold? Against your own house?"
"The Freehold was never my people. Whatever I am, Princess Nymara, I am not theirs."
Nymara was quiet for a moment.
"Mellaria," she said.
"Princess?"
"Bring me the parchment."
Volaena stared at her own reflection. She’d been staring at her own face for weeks now. She’d stopped monitoring Taela. Whatever machinations her daughter had involved herself with were bound to be interesting. She didn’t care now. She stared at her face. She stared at her eyes and the dark bags beneath them. Her lips, red and healthy. She stared at her white hair. Her skin… perfect, unblemished, untouched by age or by the slow decay of time. Her eyes, glimmering with whatever color she wanted.
She didn’t recognize herself.
No… that wasn’t quite right. She didn’t recognize the silhouette – that ghostly silhouette of a face she’d been seeing in her dreams as of late, or at the corner of her eyes whenever she passed by a mirror. A face she didn’t recognize, black of hair, long and wavy. A different smile. Spectacles about her eyes. Laughter that wasn’t hers and yet felt like hers.
And it all began the moment she heard that damn name.
Annette…
Who in the blazing flames of the fourteen was that? She’d never heard of that name before and yet it felt more familiar than her own name.
She hadn’t slept since she heard that name. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to. Each time she heard it whispered in her mind, an irrational surge of humiliation and anger would rise through her, and ten slaves had been turned into beautiful couches in her fury.
Annette…