A Dance With Dragons

and you can watch me die … but afterward the killings will go on.” Hizdahr leaned closer. “Or you can marry me and let me try to stop them.”
    “Why would you want to help me? For the crown?”
    “A crown would suit me well, I will not deny that. It is more than that, however. Is it so strange that I would want to protect my own people, as you protect your freedmen? Meereen cannot endure another war, Your Radiance.”
    That was a good answer, and an honest one. “I have never wanted war. I defeated the Yunkai’i once and spared their city when I might have sacked it. I refused to join King Cleon when he marched against them. Even now, with Astapor besieged, I stay my hand. And Qarth … I have never done the Qartheen any harm …”
    “Not by intent, no, but Qarth is a city of merchants, and they love the clink of silver coins, the gleam of yellow gold. When you smashed the slave trade, the blow was felt from Westeros to Asshai. Qarth depends upon its slaves. So too Tolos, New Ghis, Lys, Tyrosh, Volantis … the list is long, my queen.”
    “Let them come. In me they shall find a sterner foe than Cleon. I would sooner perish fighting than return my children to bondage.”
    “There may be another choice. The Yunkai’i can be persuaded to allow all your freedmen to remain free, I believe, if Your Worship will agree that the Yellow City may trade and train slaves unmolested from this day forth. No more blood need flow.”
    “Save for the blood of those slaves that the Yunkai’i will trade and train, ” Dany said, but she recognized the truth in his words even so. It may be that is the best end we can hope for. “You have not said you love me.”
    “I will, if it would please Your Radiance.”
    “That is not the answer of a man in love.”
    “What is love? Desire? No man with all his parts could ever look on you and not desire you, Daenerys. That is not why I would marry you, however. Before you came Meereen was dying. Our rulers were old men with withered cocks and crones whose puckered cunts were dry as dust. They sat atop their pyramids sipping apricot wine and talking of the glories of the Old Empire whilst the centuries slipped by and the very bricks of the city crumbled all around them. Custom and caution had an iron grip upon us till you awakened us with fire and blood. A new time has come, and new things are possible. Marry me.”
    He is not hard to look at, Dany told herself, and he has a king’s tongue. “Kiss me,” she commanded.
    He took her hand again, and kissed her fingers. “Not that way. Kiss me as if I were your wife.”
    Hizdahr took her by the shoulders as tenderly as if she were a baby bird. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to hers. His kiss was light and dry and quick. Dany felt no stirrings.
    “Shall I … kiss you again?” he asked when it was over. “No.” On her terrace, in her bathing pool, the little fish would nibble at her legs as she soaked. Even they kissed with more fervor than Hizdahr zo Loraq. “I do not love you.”
    Hizdahr shrugged. “That may come, in time. It has been known to happen that way.”
    Not with us, she thought. Not whilst Daario is so close. It’s him I want, not you. “One day I will want to return to Westeros, to claim the Seven Kingdoms that were my father’s.”
    “One day all men must die, but it serves no good to dwell on death. I prefer to take each day as it comes.”
    Dany folded her hands together. “Words are wind, even words like love and peace. I put more trust in deeds. In my Seven Kingdoms, knights go on quests to prove themselves worthy of the maiden that they love. They seek for magic swords, for chests of gold, for crowns stolen from a dragon’s hoard.”
    Hizdahr arched an eyebrow. “The only dragons that I know are yours, and magic swords are even scarcer. I will gladly bring you rings and crowns and chests of gold if that is your desire.”
    “Peace is my desire. You say that you can help me end the nightly slaughter in my streets. I say do it. Put an end to this shadow war, my lord. That is your quest. Give me ninety days and ninety nights without a murder, and I will know that you are worthy of a throne. Can you do that?”
    Hizdahr looked thoughtful. “Ninety days and ninety nights without a corpse, and on the ninety-first we wed?”
    “Perhaps,” said Dany, with a coy look. “Though young girls have been known to be fickle. I may still want a magic sword.”
    Hizdahr laughed. “Then you shall