A Dance With Dragons

not want to be disturbed. The captain’s news can wait until the morrow.”
    “No.” How could I ever hope to sleep, knowing that my captain so close? “Send him up at once. And … I will have no more need of you this evening. I shall be safe with Daario. Oh, and send Irri and Jhiqui, if you would be so good. And Missandei.” I need to change, to make myself beautiful.
    She said as much to her handmaids when they came. “What does Your Grace wish to wear?” asked Missandei.
    Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario’s delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair. When first they met, the captain brought her flowers every day, all the way from Yunkai to Meereen. “Bring the grey linen gown with the pearls on the bodice. Oh, and my white lion’s pelt.” She always felt safer wrapped in Drogo’s lionskin.
    Daenerys received the captain on her terrace, seated on a carved stone bench beneath a pear tree. A half-moon floated in the sky above the city, attended by a thousand stars. Daario Naharis entered swaggering. He swaggers even when he is standing still. The captain wore striped pantaloons tucked into high boots of purple leather, a white silk shirt, a vest of golden rings. His trident beard was purple, his flamboyant mustachios gold, his long curls equal parts of both. On one hip he wore a stiletto, on the other a Dothraki arakh. “Bright queen,” he said, “you have grown more beautiful in my absence. How is this thing possible?”
    The queen was accustomed to such praise, yet somehow the compliment meant more coming from Daario than from the likes of Reznak, Xaro, or Hizdahr. “Captain. They tell us you did us good service in Lhazar.” I have missed you so much.
    “Your captain lives to serve his cruel queen.”
    “Cruel?”
    Moonlight glimmered in his eyes. “He raced ahead of all his men to see her face the sooner, only to be left languishing whilst she ate lamb and figs with some dried-up old woman.”
    They never told me you were here, Dany thought, or I might have played the fool and sent for you at once. “I was supping with the Green Grace.” It seemed best not to mention Hizdahr. “I had urgent need of her wise counsel.”
    “I have only one urgent need: Daenerys.”
    “Shall I send for food? You must be hungry.”
    “I have not eaten in two days, but now that I am here, it is enough for me to feast upon your beauty.”
    “My beauty will not fill up your belly.” She plucked down a pear and tossed it at him. “Eat this.”
    “If my queen commands it.” He took a bite of the pear, his gold tooth gleaming. Juice ran down into his purple beard.
    The girl in her wanted to kiss him so much it hurt. His kisses would be hard and cruel, she told herself, and he would not care if I cried out or commanded him to stop. But the queen in her knew that would be folly. “Tell me of your journey.”
    He gave a careless shrug. “The Yunkai’i sent some hired swords to close the Khyzai Pass. The Long Lances, they name themselves. We descended on them in the night and sent a few to hell. In Lhazar I slew two of my own serjeants for plotting to steal the gems and gold plate my queen had entrusted to me as gifts for the Lamb Men. Elsewise, all went as I had promised.”
    “How many men did you lose in the fighting?”
    “Nine,” said Daario, “but a dozen of the Long Lances decided they would sooner be Stormcrows than corpses, so we came out three ahead. I told them they would live longer fighting with your dragons than against them, and they saw the wisdom in my words.”
    That made her wary. “They might be spying for Yunkai.”
    “They are too stupid to be spies. You do not know them.”
    “Neither do you. Do you trust them?”
    “I trust all my men. Just as far as I can spit.” He spat out a seed and smiled at her suspicions. “Shall I bring their heads to you? I will, if you command it. One is bald and two have braids and one dyes his beard four different colors. What spy would wear such a beard, I ask you? The slinger can put a stone through a gnat’s eye at forty paces, and the ugly one has a way with horses, but if my queen says that they must die …”
    “I did not say that. I only … see that you keep your eye on them, that’s all.” She felt foolish saying it. She always felt a little foolish when she was with Daario. Gawky and girlish and slow-witted. What must he think of me? She changed the subject. “Will the Lamb