A Dream of a Red Door Ch. 04

Another of Xaro's lies ... the keys were not hidden at all.

One glance at Doreah's face and the exposed skin of her stomach and shoulders made it clear that prior to being tied, she had been beaten.

"Oh no," Jon said in sympathy as he began to move forward, undoubtedly to aid the bound woman.

Daenerys held out a hand, placed it on Jon's chest, and pushed him back. He gazed at her in surprise, and moved to brush her arm away, and then she swiveled her gaze at him and let her eyes burn.

Jon froze, then took a step back.

"This is for me to deal with," Daenerys announced in a cold, imperious manner.

Jon opened his mouth to protest, then closed it when she narrowed her eyes at him.

"She was with them," Daenerys explained as she turned her gaze back to the handmaiden hanging from the ceiling.

Her husband's brow wrinkled in confusion, then he caught her meaning. He stared at the woman, then suggested, "Leave her?"

Daenerys considered it.

The conversation appeared to have woken Doreah. The woman raised her head weakly, stared through swollen eyes at Daenerys, then began to smile ... until something in Daenerys's face must have made her realize the truth, for she lowered her head and began to weep. Deep wracking sobs shook her frame and tears coursed down her face to drop on the floor.

"Give me your sword," she ordered Jon as she held out her hand.

Jon hesitated. "Daenerys, if you want it done, let me do it. You don't need to ..."

"GIVE ME YOUR SWORD!" she screamed at him.

A moment later the hilt was pressed into her hand. It felt warm, likely from the heat of the flames, and was somewhat heavier than she thought it would be. Doreah was still weeping as she stepped forward, raised the sword with both hands, and swung.

The blade cut through the rope holding the woman aloft and she fell to the wooden deck of the cabin. The keys laying nearby jangled as her body hit the floor, and though Doreah tried to catch herself with her arms, they didn't seem to work properly. She fell hard upon knees and chest, then curled up protectively into a ball and clutched her still tied wrists to her chest.

Daenerys had intended to point the sword at Doreah while uttering her next words, but since the handmaiden, after falling, had turned her head to sob in the direction of the far wall, she decided to save herself the effort and instead handed Longclaw back to Jon.

"By all rights, I should make you die a slow death for what you have done," Daenerys said. She drew out every hissing word, enunciating every syllable loudly and clearly so Doreah could hear her. "There is no end I could give you, regardless of how long and horrible, that you do not deserve."

Doreah's weeping intensified as she curled into a tighter ball.

Daenerys breathed deeply. "I find, however, that I have lost my taste for vengeance." It was true. The gnawing, gripping thing that crouched upon her soul only to rear up and blacken her thoughts seemed gone, and she felt confident it had departed forever. Along with the chains Jon had freed her from, she had left the cancer on her spirit in the hold of the ship to sink into the ocean and be forgotten.

She continued, "Lower one of the boats and take your chances on the open seas, assuming you have time, or go jump into the ocean." She shrugged. "Or drown within this cabin, I do not care." She walked over and crouched next to the prone figure. Doreah's snuffling sobs intensified. "That being said, I want you to hear this, and hear it very well: if I ever see you again, or if I ever receive word that you have so much as set foot within my kingdom, I promise you, Doreah, that I will feed you to my dragon."

Jon's eyes were wide with numbed shock as Daenerys slowly stood, turned, and walked towards the door. She brushed her husband out of the way and proceeded back onto the deck. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathed deeply, then put all thought of Doreah out of her mind, forever.

Drogon was flapping a furious storm above them, but the tilting of the ship and the billowing sails and mast made landing an impossible proposition. Even if her dragon were to land, she knew, his weight would likely topple the vessel entirely.

Wait a moment ... how did Jon fly Drogon here without me?

She decided she'd inquire about it later. "What was your plan?" she asked Jon after he rejoined her.

Jon glanced back at the cabin they had just left. "Daenerys, who was that woman?"

"Forget her," she snapped. "We need to worry about getting onto Drogon's back."

"Maybe he can pick us up in his claws?" Jon suggested.

She turned to look at him. "You can't be serious."

He shrugged. "Do you have any ideas."

She looked about wildly. There were a few small boats tied to the sides of the ship but fleeing a sinking ship just to float on the waves in a glorified canoe seemed like a bad idea.

"The mast is the problem," she announced. "It's in Drogon's way."

Jon held up Longclaw. "I might be able to do something about that," he said thoughtfully as he walked towards the front of the ship. That must have been where he'd done most of the battling with his flaming sword, because the yellow-orange flames were thick there, and black smoke billowed above the cargo hatch and fo'c'sle.

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, and then she screamed at him to stop when he kept walking right up to the edge of the flames. Flames might not hurt a dragon, she knew ... but she had long ago decided that trusting magic was a fool's choice. Before the words escaped her lips, the fire whirled and churned in a peculiar manner, then there was a blinding flare of light that forced her to close her eyes, and when she opened them again the fire was gone. She blinked a few times and looked about wildly, but it was not her imagination, the inferno had vanished as if it had never been. The black smoke, choked off from its fuel supply, began to dissipate and drift away above the ship. Doing her best to avoid slipping on blood as she walked across the deck, she joined Jon and stared at him in shocked awe.

"What did you do?" she asked.

He looked at her. "The one thing Samwell Tarly has always warned me not to do," he said in a solemn, grave voice.

Jon quickly explained to her what had happened with the Sorrowful Man, and though she understood little of what he meant, the message was clear.

The magic is growing inside him now ...

The thought made her more frightened than she had been in the cargo hold of this detestable ship. As she laid her hand upon Jon, she was startled by the heat of his skin, and then she realized it was more than mere heat. Her husband blazed. The fire in his blood called to her, and Daenerys felt herself somewhat nauseated at the realization that it was crying for her, for her touch, her body, as though there was a purpose not yet realized that it wished her to embrace.

She shook off the sensation.

"Well," she said. "At least the ship isn't on fire anymore."

Jon held up Longclaw, glanced at it, and the sword blazed into an inferno once again.

"How are you doing that?" she asked.

He looked at her. "It's like a muscle ... you just flex. I can't really explain it." He began to stride towards the mast.

"What are you going to do?" she asked as he stood sideways next to the mast and tightened his grip on the sword.

"When I was a boy in Winterfell, I used to love watching trees get cut down," he explained as he drew back the flaming blade. "There's a trick to making the tree fall where you want." He swung the sword at an upwards angle and carved a diagonal line halfway through the mast. The blade scorched the wood as it bit deep, and Daenerys blinked in shock. The mast had to be two feet thick. "You might want to get behind me," he warned her.

Daenerys, seeing no reason to disagree, did as he asked.

He swung again, this time downward, and the fiery blade once more hacked through the wood. Jon kicked at the mast, and the triangular shaped block that he'd carved fell away to land on the deck. The edges where the sword had cleaved were charred and black.

"Here goes nothing," he said as he swung again.

This time, the sword cleaved through the wood entirely, and both of them ducked as, with a tangle of sails and ropes, the mast snapped free. The force of its landing nearly capsized the boat, then it ponderously slid across the deck to vanish into the ocean. Jon grabbed Daenerys's waist, wrapped his other arm and legs around the far railing of the boat, and for a moment, they dangled in space until the ship righted itself again.

Drogon screeched happily, then flapped lower above the ship. He hesitated a second, then landed in the empty space the mast had previously occupied. His claws sunk deep into the wood and the weight of him drove the ship into the water.

Jon helped Daenerys on first. She was not wearing the thick, leather trousers she normally wore for riding, and thus there were no rings with which to lock herself to the saddle. Jon searched about, found a coil of rope hanging from a spike, then wound the line about her waist and tied her to the seat. She quickly found that the dress she wore afforded her inner thighs no protection from the rough leather of her perch, but there was no help for it. She squirmed and tried to find a comfortable position.

The ship continued to sink beneath Drogon's weight.

Jon leapt into the saddle behind her and, not bothering to latch himself in, kicked at Drogon. Daenerys was surprised when the dragon, at his command, surged into the air.

I always do that ...

The dragon's wings beat a furious tempo as it clawed for altitude, and for a heart-stopping moment she wondered if his tail and hindquarters would crash into the sea, but then the leathery membranes bit hard against the wind and they were aloft. As Drogon steadily began to climb, Daenerys wrapped the reins tightly around her wrists and tightened her legs against the saddle. She glanced back and watched as Jon used the heavy metal clips to secure himself to his own seat, and when he saw that she was looking at him, he smiled.

Drogon needed no directions from them as he flew towards home.