Dragons and Wolves

Daenerys reached up to Drogo, hoping to put her hand on his cheek but he was too tall. Sensing her intention he leaned down and she grazed his scruffy cheek, “We did it Drogo, we conquered the world. We’ve won our throne.”

He smiled at her and caressed her cheek, “No, you did it, you’ve won your throne.”

“No, I did this for us, I did it for our future and Rhaego our unborn son,” Dany shook her head. He was speaking oddly well in her language.

“You did it, you rallied all the peoples of the world under your banner, you raised the dragons to adulthood, it was you, not me or Rhaego,” His strong face grew sad. “We’re dead, you did this on your own.”

Dany’s chest ached, “I know that, I know it everyday, even so many years later my heart aches for you and our poor son and the future we could’ve had.”

“I know this, if I had my choice I’d stay with you forever but that has not been the path given to us, horses weren’t meant to run with dragons.”

A wolf howled

“My queen! Queen Daenerys!” Someone’s hands were on her shoulders, shaking her.
Dany’s eyes opened and she jumped back, “Gods, what’s going on?”

There were a dozen people gathered in her private bed chamber. She would’ve covered herself more but years in the far east had left her far less modest.

“Khaleesi, you’ve been in a dead sleep, we thought you wouldn’t wake.” Jorah looked near tears.

“It’s alright everyone, I just needed to catch up on my beauty sleep, being the dragon queen doesn’t mean I have to look like one,” She smiled. “Now get out while I bathe and dress.”

“Don’t forget you have a fitting today my queen, you will have the finest clothing westeros can offer.” Jorah said as he directed all of her Queen’s guard out of the room.
Dany was a little excited, she had never worn the fancy dresses with their bodices and corsets that the women of Westeros did. She jumped out of bed.

Arya found being a tall man very dizzy, she could hardly look at the ground. She had had the same problem all through her assassin training. It was just something her masters said came with her being so small, barely five feet tall and wearing the face of someone much taller.

She had somewhat adjusted during her few weeks on the kingsroad but being so tired was exacerbating it. Arya found the Head Servant, “I’m here to do a fitting for her majesty Queen Danaerys.”

The old woman squeaked to follow her and Arya easily kept pace with the woman’s quick little feet,
“How long have you been a tailor?”

“About twenty years,” Arya looked at the woman in disinterest, she had a job to do, no time to chit chat.

“Is there a Mrs. Tailor?” the old woman smiled at her, a slight blush tinged her wrinkled cheeks.

“Yes, we’ve been married since my tailor apprenticeship.” Arya didn’t miss a beat. Part of shapeshifting was having a good cover story.

“Oh.” The woman looked down, a little disappointed. Arya wondered if she had been the head servant when Arya used to live here so long ago. “Queen Danaerys should be in here in a few minutes.”

She left Arya in the room alone. Arya looked around, it was spacious, covered in mirrors, there was a large bay window, the obvious route for her escape. Therefore the way she would not escape, scaling the sharp sides of the gigantic castle would draw enough attention from the crowd and she may lose her shapeshift too. She knelt to the floor and used one of her hidden knives to pry up a floorboard. It was a small spot, she’d have to shapeshift back to her own form to fit. It was risky but if the queen was dead who cared? She’d leave the window open, misleading the queen’s guard and going into the caste walls.

Sometimes she was amazed by her evil genius, Jon would call it conceit but who cared what he thought?

The Queen entered with two Dothraki guards.

Arya knelt and bowed her head, “Your majesty.”

Arya kissed the queen’s hand.

“Thank you tailor, it is nice to me you, I’m quite excited about getting the same clothing as my people,

“ She smiled. “Maybe they’d think me less strange if I wore their fancy dress clothes than my Dothraki leathers.”

Arya grinned back, “You look amazing in your Dothraki rags, just wait until you are in fine garb. Perhaps plum to compliment your pale skin and hair or a teal dress to contrast with those lavender eyes?”

“Well, I have no idea what you said but I’m putting my trust in you,” The queen smiled and stepped forward.

Arya snickered in her head, it would be the worst mistake the dragon ever made.

Jon wandered the corridors of his head quarters, his mind ran a league a minute. Worried, terrified for Arya. Hating himself for sentencing a woman to death, especially someone so young and like him, someone who had fought for survival and won, clawed and crawled their way to power. He hated that he had to send someone else to do his dirty work, like his father, he believed the only way to stay human was to do his own dirty work. But only Arya had the mastery to pull it off.

He closed his eyes, she’d have made her way into the castle by now. His heart thumped with an erratic beat, the queen had been so fierce, hadn’t even flinched when that fireball had consumed her small frame. He closed his eyes, he remembered the fierce draconic gaze in her lavender eyes. In a way that look had reminded of fearless Ygritte, the only woman he’d ever been with and dead more than a decade.

He hadn’t been able to get the dragoness from his mind. And it irritated him. It was fine to break vows under the orders of a superior ranger, undercover and on a mission. Like his relationship with Ygritte but he could never again break his oaths. He had to set an example for his men, chaste and abstinent.

He grit his teeth, rubbing his eyes with the butt of his hand. She was going to die anyway, he had sentenced the object to his late night thoughts to an early grave. Was this what power was? The guilt of having the power of life and death? He had to do it, for his family. For Bran, Sansa, Rickon and Arya he’d do anything to make them a home again. To turn the place they used to play in the snow and run with their direwolves back into it again. They were his responsibility now, he couldn’t give into a curious attraction to the most dangerous woman in all the land. He was the eldest Stark in a way, their father’s eldest son despite being a bastard, he was still the eldest and it was his responsibility to protect little Lord Rickon until he was old enough to defend Winterfell himself. To marry Sansa to someone kind and gentle, the men that were sung about in songs that she loved so much. To give Arya the freedom to do whatever she wanted.

He sighed in relief, he had managed to talk himself out of the guilt. For the Starks, he’d do anything.

They were two hours into the queen’s fitting and Arya was truly playing her role. She had just got done measuring the queen, observing the fine scars that marred the queen’s entire body. Her viewpoint of the woman changed, this throne was not one she’d easily won just by appearing with dragons. If her scars told any story, she’d fought tooth and nail to get where she was. Arya blinked and made her mind go blank. An assassin never got to know their target in a personal way, never sympathize with them, never respect them because at the end of the day a queen’s body was the same as any commoners body, rotting meat.

Arya continued measuring the broadcloth pattern she had pinned to the queen, “This one looks quite elegant on you and does quite well for your cleavage, a fitting dress to attract a king.”

“I don’t need a king to hold my throne,” Queen Daenerys examined herself in the mirror glass. “But I do like this dress, did you say you think it would look well in teal?”

“Yes in teal silk with some seafoam tulle and trim,” Arya continued to pin. Through her glasses, she side glanced the queen’s guard.

“Alright, let’s switch to another dress pattern,” Arya turned back to the little table they’d set up for her and pulled another folded broadcloth dress from her case. “This is the one I think would look good in plum.”

Queen Daenerys moved to undress but Arya stopped her and turned to the Queen’s guards, “A little privacy for her Majesty please?”

The guards seemed wary but the queen had made them leave the first time she had undressed too and after she waved them off, they went out the doors and stood outside. Arya helped her into the pattern.

“It’s very loose on me,” the Queen turned to one side then the other holding the dress against herself.

“Too loose.”

“Here let me pin it for you,” Arya pulled the poison pins from her belt.

Obara sat with her sister’s at a table in the banquet room, stuffing their faces for lunch. Lords and ladies looked on in terror at their bad manners.

“These people of King’s Landing are far too stuck up,” Obara grunted through a mouthful of turkey leg.

“You should have seen it when the Baratheon-Lannisters held the throne, you know,” Nymeria smiled.

“When I, Nymeria Sand, overcame my ill bred sisters and rose to sit on the small council for all of Dorne.”

“You’re far too conceited,” Tyene wrinkled her girlish nose and sipped her wine.

“Nym, who’d you spread your legs to to get the job?” Obara smiled. “Wink wink nudge nudge.”

Nymeria laughed with Obara and turned to Tyene in concern, not only was the blonde not laughing but her face was deathly pale.

She stood up adruptly, almost knocking her two sisters over in shock, “Death’s Nudge! Death’s nudge was the poison I smelt on that old man!”

Arya had put a few dozen unpoisoned pins into the dress pattern before she pulled a few poison pins out of her pocket. She wanted the poison to be very hard to trace and the more pins, the more effort it would take to trace therefore the less likely they would actually trace it to the North.

She nearly had the pin into the queen’s lower back, near her spine, when the door burst open.
It was the three obnoxious girls from the castle’s grand doors, the two guards and the Queen’s hand.

“Stop assassin!” The pretty one Nym yelled.

“What is the meaning of this?” Queen Daenerys asked.

“His pins are poisoned, soaked in Death’s Nudge,” Tyene the poison master pleaded with the queen.

Daenerys backed towards her guards, fierce and dangerous grimace on her face so terrifying Arya almost remembered what fear was.

“Dammit,” Arya huffed, disappointed. She had failed at her mission. What would her old masters say?
She looked to the floorboard, she couldn’t go that way, they would see her true face once she lost the tailor’s. The window was her only option.

The three gold cloaks and the white cloaked Queen’s guard pointed their weapons at her.

Arya smiled and slowly backed toward the window, “Well I guess you outsmarted me today. I guess poison wasn’t the way to do things.”

An archer ran through the door and loosed an arrow at her. Arya ducked, grabbed the window sill and swung herself out of the window and down the side of the roof. She clawed her way higher up, hoping to get to the opposite side of the massive red keep before the Queen’s troops could march all the way around.

Arya was almost to the top when a roar disturbed her.

Bloody hell, I forgot the green dragon, Arya froze, a cold chill ran down her back.

The creature was even more massive close up, it’s scales emerald and completely ethereal.

No time to admire the scenery Arya, time to get back home

The dragon let loose a stream of green fire so hot she could feel the Tailor’s shapeshift begin to melt from her. She grabbed a loose shingle, cramped her butt on it and slid down the roof, it was the fastest way to go.

The dragon flew around her, eager to fry her but she knew it didn’t want to destroy the castle.

She hit the pikes were they used to stick heads and was knocked over them, she quickly flipped with one hand over and into a nearby alley. She could hear the troops gather as she ran into the sewers that led to the Blackwater and the boat that would ferry her home.

She just hopped she could somehow change faces before someone found her.

Daenerys marched through her castle, back in her Dothraki riding clothes. She barged through the grand doors of the Red Keep and down the massive steps up to a troop of Unsullied.

“Have you found the man who tried to kill me?!” Dany cursed. Not angry at her men but at herself for almost falling into the clutches of the tailor.

“There’s no sign of him my Queen but the second we do I’ll hand you my sword and let you take the vile man’s yourself.” Grey Worm nodded, dead serious. Unsullied didn’t make jokes.

It appeased Dany somewhat but made her wary of her new surroundings. She had thought with four dragons, three full grown and surrounding the castle and a baby she kept with her at all times she’d be safe.

She thought wrong.