GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 393 - The Return Journey

"Move!!"

Illyrio Mopatis's roar shook the entire manse.

Two maidservants crumpled to the floor in terror, shrieking and clutching each other.

Illyrio stood naked and enormous, water streaming down the folds of his body. He didn't notice. He charged out of the bath, hit the smooth marble floor, and went down hard.

He was back on his feet in an instant, screaming at the guards who came running.

"Ships! Every ship in Pentos!"

"Clear the docks! Every vessel that can sail, I want them gathered now!"

"Now! This moment! Move!"

The guards had never seen their master like this. They stared for half a second, then scrambled over each other getting out the door.

The entire governor's palace erupted into chaos.

Illyrio gasped, his heart hammering so hard he thought it might claw its way up his throat.

That voice. The one that had sounded directly inside his skull, bypassing his ears entirely. It was ten thousand times more terrifying than the most fearsome Dothraki Khal he had ever laid eyes on.

That wasn't a command.

That was a divine decree.

Servants were still fumbling to dress him when the doors burst open again. Several merchants stormed in , richly robed, pot-bellied, faces twisted with panic and outrage.

"Illyrio! Have you lost your mind?!"

The leader was the largest spice trader in Pentos. He jabbed a finger at Illyrio's face.

"You had no right to order the docks sealed! Not without our consent!"

"Do you have any idea what this is costing us?!"

A slave trader shoved forward beside him.

"I just received word — Yunkai and Meereen are gone! That Westerosi, Lynn, he slaughtered them both with black magic!"

"He's a demon! We cannot have any connection to him!"

"Yes! We declare Pentos his enemy, immediately!"

They all shouted at once, tripping over each other's words, working themselves into a frenzy. The news from Slaver's Bay had broken something loose in all of them.

Illyrio finally had his silk robe on.

He looked at them , these screaming idiots , and the fear drained slowly from his face, replaced by something cold and sharp.

"Losses?"

He walked to the spice merchant and grabbed him by the throat with one fat hand.

"That sad little spice business of yours, and you want to talk to me about money?"

The merchant went red-faced, feet kicking at empty air.

Illyrio threw him to the floor, then turned and looked at the rest of them.

"Do you know what White Sugar is?"

"Do you know how much I made in half a year , half a year — through the sugar trade Lynn gave me?"

He held up five thick fingers.

"Five times."

"Not five times my old business."

"Five times the combined net worth of every single one of you."

He let that land.

"And that was only the beginning."

"Lynn gave me sugar. He can give us things ten thousand times more valuable than sugar." His voice took on something raw and fevered. "He can also crush us like ants — every one of us, all of Pentos — and wipe us off the map without blinking."

"So I'll ask once more."

A hard smile spread across Illyrio's face.

"Who objects to me preparing a fleet for the Lord?"

The hall went dead quiet.

They looked at Illyrio's wild eyes, and then they thought about the man who could call down blizzards and raise armies of the dead.

Cold crept up their spines, one by one.

"I... I agree."

The slave trader caved first, raising a trembling hand.

Then the second. Then the third.

Illyrio nodded, satisfied.

Not entirely hopeless. Lynn had proven himself, and those who stayed close to a winning hand always came out ahead.

...

The days of flying back to Westeros were long and monotonous.

For Daenerys, they were the happiest of her life.

No more grinding through political affairs. No more watching her back around every scheming slaveholder in the region. She could just be a girl , an ordinary girl , and stay close to Lynn from morning to night.

They watched dolphins breach and flash in the sea below. They lay back on the dragon's scales and looked up at the stars together. Lynn told her stories about Westeros: the deep snows of the North, the rivers of Riverrun, the noise and gold and grandeur of King's Landing.

Daenerys listened and couldn't stop. She felt like she could already see it , her future home, taking shape before her eyes.

One evening, the sea breeze was soft and easy.

Daenerys leaned against Lynn's chest, watching the moon hang full and brilliant in the sky, a smile on her face she couldn't quite keep contained.

"Lynn , when we get back to Westeros, will you take me to Dragonstone? I want to see where I was born."

Lynn stroked her silver hair slowly. He was quiet for a moment.

"Dany. There's something I need to tell you."

She heard something shift in his voice. She looked up, her violet eyes uncertain.

"What is it?"

He met her gaze and spoke carefully.

"In Westeros... I'm not alone."

"I have other wives."

The smile died on her face.

She stared at him. Blank. Like the words hadn't reached her yet.

The air went still. The sea breeze moved through it, carrying a thread of cold.

"You..." Her voice was unsteady. "What did you say?"

Lynn held her gaze. "I said, in Westeros, I have other wives."

Something detonated inside Daenerys's head.

She shoved him back hard. In an instant her eyes were bright and wet , not with gratitude, not with tenderness, but with the raw, burning grief of someone who has just been lied to.

"Liar!"

Her fists hit his chest like rain, each one wrung through with tears.

"You lying , you stood here and said all those things to me , and you had women waiting for you back in Westeros the whole time!"

"What do you think I am to you?!"

Lynn didn't move. He didn't dodge. He just raised his hands gently to make sure she couldn't hurt herself, and let her go until there was nothing left.

She ran dry. She sat curled with her knees pulled to her chest, crying the way children cry when they've been abandoned , open, undignified, total.

All of it felt like a joke now.

Tyrion heard the noise from somewhere further along the dragon's back. He came over with his wineskin, took one look at the scene, and quietly turned around.

He resolved to spend the night getting thoroughly drunk up here on the dragon, relieve himself in a magnificent arc from ten thousand feet in the air, and wake up tomorrow knowing absolutely nothing.

Some unknowable time passed before Daenerys's sobs finally thinned.

She raised her red-eyed, tear-streaked face and glared at him.

"Who is she?"

"Is she beautiful?"

"Do you like her more than me?"

The questions came in a volley, one after another.

Lynn crouched in front of her and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks.

"It's complicated."

He walked her through it , the North, the survival calculus, the great houses and the alliances he'd had to build through marriage because there was no other way.

Daenerys listened without interrupting.

As she heard how Lynn had maneuvered between powerful families, doing what he had to do to hold the North together, the anger in her eyes shifted. It softened into something closer to ache, and then, slowly, to understanding.

She wasn't a naive girl. She had grown up in exile and she knew what political marriage meant. She knew, too, that the enemies Lynn faced in Westeros were sharper and more dangerous than any of the fools she'd dealt with in Slaver's Bay.

He must have had such a hard time.

The thought arrived quietly and settled.

"So..." She chose her words with care. "You only married her for the alliance?"

"Yes." Lynn nodded.

Something loosened in her chest.

Just for the alliance. That's fine. That's manageable.

She began working through it in her head. Which king or lord in Westeros didn't have a string of mistresses and a handful of bastards he didn't bother to count? Lynn had married one woman, for a cause, and he hadn't hidden it. He had told her. He was bringing her home with him.

That meant something. That meant she was the one he cared about most.

By the time she reached that conclusion, the worst of the grievance had already burned away.

She stood. Wiped her face. Sniffled once. Squared her shoulders and attempted to look gracious about the whole thing.

"Fine."

"I... I forgive you."

"But." She pointed one finger at his chest. "You're not allowed to add any more after this. Promise me."

"I promise." Lynn said it with a smile.

More or less finished anyway...

"And one more thing."

Daenerys bit her lip, a faint blush rising.

"When we get home, you introduce me as your queen."

"No problem."

With that settled, Daenerys's mood lifted like weather clearing. She even found herself curious , what kind of woman had Lynn felt compelled to marry for an alliance? She had to be formidable. A powerful noble daughter of some major house.

She would be gracious. She would make the effort. She wouldn't make things difficult for Lynn.

Daenerys quietly made up her mind.

...

The coastline of Westeros appeared on the horizon.

Lynn put down briefly at White Harbor to resupply, then followed the White Knife inland until the grey walls of Winterfell rose ahead of them.

The air of the North hit differently , a cold that had teeth, nothing like the heavy, sweltering heat of Slaver's Bay. Daenerys pulled the coat Lynn had brought for her tight around her shoulders and looked out at a world she had never seen.

A cavalry unit was already waiting.

The moment they saw Lynn, every rider dismounted as one and dropped to a knee.

"My Lord!"

Something moved in Daenerys's chest , warm and proud.

Lynn took her hand. Surrounded by the crowd, they walked toward the walls of Winterfell.

Grey stone. Ancient and heavy with time.

Daenerys's heart was going fast. Nervous. Expectant.

She was about to meet her rival.

The great iron portcullis of Winterfell ground slowly upward.

Daenerys drew a breath, put on the smile she had been quietly rehearsing for the entire journey , poised, warm, the smile of a queen , and walked through beside Lynn.

Then her smile stopped working.

The castle courtyard was full of women.

Not a line of them.

Rows.

At the front stood a girl with long auburn hair, dressed in Northern finery, her bearing cool and elegant. Beside her, a dark-haired girl with a sword at her hip, sharp-eyed and light on her feet. Next to her, a golden-haired princess with blue eyes, exquisite as a doll. Then a red-haired woman in wildling furs, chin up, expression carved from defiance. A woman in a red robe whose eyes seemed to hold something burning underneath. A golden-haired queen, poised and full-figured, effortlessly regal. A brown-haired girl with a ready smile and eyes that knew exactly what they were doing...

Sansa. Arya. Myrcella. Ygritte. Melisandre. Cersei. Margaery. And beyond them, faces Daenerys didn't recognize , women she had never heard of , each one stunning in her own way.

Any one of them could have made a man lose his mind.

All of them stood there now, watching Lynn, watching the silver-haired girl in the fur coat beside him, with expressions that were complicated in their particulars and entirely unified in their direction.

The smile on Daenerys's face went completely rigid.

Her mind was blank. Totally, utterly blank. No thought could get purchase on what she was seeing.

She... they...

What... what was this?

He had said just one.

He had said just one.

Daenerys felt her world come apart.

➤ Next: Ned Steps Down