Chapter 256 - The Purple Dragon Egg
Drogo flipped his wrist and hurled the entire box at the gift-bearer.
It tumbled in midair. The lid sprang open, and a manticore flipped out, tail raised high, the hook tip glistening with an oily black sheen.
It landed on the man's neck. The hook punched down.
The gift-bearer's body locked up for an instant, then began to convulse. His mouth fell open, releasing a string of garbled, bubbling sounds. White foam spilled from the corners of his lips. His eyes rolled back to show mostly whites. His body bounced twice on the grass like a fish flung onto a riverbank.
Barristan Selmy stepped forward and put his sword tip precisely through the manticore, pinning it to the ground.
Daenerys Targaryen rose from her seat and looked down at the man who had stopped moving. "Who is he? Who sent him?"
In this life, she had never been to Qarth. She knew nothing of that city or its secrets.
"The Sorrowful Men," Drogo said. "An ancient assassin guild out of Qarth — religious in character. Before they kill, they always whisper 'I am so sorry.' That's where the name comes from."
His gaze swept the crowd like a blade.
What he couldn't work out was who had the reach to bring a Sorrowful Man all the way from Qarth to King's Landing, and who had the nerve to move during his coronation feast.
"Bring Qyburn," he called out, raising his voice. "See if anything can be done."
He turned toward Vodafar, seated below the bloodriders. "Look into it. Find out who sent him."
Vodafar nodded, glanced down at the corpse, then turned and walked briskly into the shadows at the garden's edge.
A moment later, Qyburn pushed through the crowd. His grey beard had a smear of honeyed glaze near the tip.
He spotted the body, crouched down, pressed two fingers to the man's neck, then examined the puncture site.
"Manticore venom. Already reached the heart." He didn't look up. "Even if you brought him back, he'd be nothing but a walking corpse."
Drogo knew Qyburn's tastes well enough. "Then the body is yours."
Qyburn nodded. He studied the two tiny puncture holes on the man's neck, pressed the skin at the edge of one with his thumb, squeezed out a drop of dark blood, and brought it to his nose. He sniffed it once, then waved for someone to haul the body away.
The whole business was like a stone thrown into a lake. A few ripples, and the feast swallowed it whole.
Wine cups were refilled. Songs started up again. The bloodriders brought out freshly roasted legs of lamb, fat sizzling where the knives cut in, steam curling up into the night air.
The Dothraki had apparently drowned the memory of the assassination in their cups already. Laughter and horn calls filled the garden once more.
Jorah Mormont, Nimiz, Jako, and the other commanders and captains came forward in turn to present their gifts.
Jorah offered a curved blade from Slaver's Bay, its scabbard set with rubies, the edge honed so thin it caught a faint blue tint in the firelight.
Nimiz presented a finely detailed map of the East, the parchment rolled tight and neat, its edges sealed with gold thread.
Jako simply hauled up two large wooden chests and dropped them on the ground. Both were filled with gold.
Near the end of the feast, a figure came through the stone archway on the eastern side of the garden.
Jonina Biyang's hair was shorter than when she had left, hacked ragged at the edges as if cut with a knife, dry and yellowed. On the left side of her face was a new dark scar, the skin curled and shriveled, its edges tinged an angry red, the kind of mark left by a burn that had healed badly. It ran from her cheekbone all the way down to her jaw, pulling at the lines of her once-full face and making her look worse than before.
Melisandre set down her wine cup and looked at her. "So you've come back."
Jonina didn't acknowledge the words. She didn't even glance in Melisandre's direction. She walked straight through the crowd toward Drogo, cradling something in her arms, a spherical shape wrapped in thick cloth, round and blunt, roughly the size of a human head.
Drogo's gaze held on the bundle for a few breaths.
Could it be Euron Crow's Eye's head? What else would bring this red god's priestess back without warning?
She reached the table and set it down in front of him.
"I brought back 2,500 pounds of Valyrian steel from the ruins of Valyria."
She paused.
"And a dragon egg." She pulled back the cloth.
The egg was deep purple all over, like amethyst with its edges smoothed round, its surface covered in a fine pattern of overlapping scales. It lay still at the center of the rough cloth, completely motionless, and yet every eye around the table went to it and stayed there.
Daenerys Targaryen looked at the egg. Her hand rested at her side, her fingers tightening slowly on the fabric of her skirt.
Margaery stared at it, a faint crease forming between her brows. She glanced at Daenerys Targaryen, then looked away, her fingers curling together on her knee.
Sansa looked at it too, quietly measuring what it was worth and what it meant.
Drogo stared at the egg for a few breaths, then reached out and pressed his palm flat against it.
The shell was warmer than the air. Something inside it was releasing heat, slow and steady.
Jonina dropped to one knee. The thud of it against the stone rang out. She raised her head, the burn scar impossible to ignore.
Her voice carried a weariness Drogo had never heard from her before. Something close to pleading.
"Please. Don't send me back to Valyria." She exhaled. "That place is full of monsters and curses. Let me stay by your side and serve you."
"What of Euron Greyjoy?" Drogo asked.
"He is dead."
"Dead? How?"
Jonina drew a slow breath, like she was trying to force the images back down. They came up anyway.
"At first the work in Valyria went smoothly enough. But within a few days of landing, men started showing symptoms. Burning skin. Festering sores all over their bodies. As if they were being cooked from the inside."
"The fleet kept sending slaves from Westeros to replace them. The losses were covered, and the search for Valyrian steel never stopped."
Drogo nodded. He looked at the purple egg, then at the scar on Jonina's face, and tilted his chin.
"Sit. Eat something. Have a cup of wine to wet your throat, then keep going."
Melisandre stood and gave up her seat.
Jonina sat without ceremony and drank deep.
"Then the bodies started producing things. At first they were small, like worms. We could deal with them." She set the cup down. "But then the creatures coming out of the bodies grew larger. Black exoskeletons. Reptilian tails. Fingers and tails both long and sharp, mouths packed with fangs. Their blood was green and it ate through everything it touched."
As she spoke, a memory surfaced in Drogo's mind. Aerea Targaryen.
In the year after Balerion carried her back to the ruins of Valyria, no one knew what she had endured. In 56 AC, when she rode the grievously wounded Black Dread back into King's Landing, she was skeletal, her clothes in tatters, her eyes bleeding, her skin burning hot.
The same creatures had burrowed out of her body too.
The Doom had left Valyria full of terrible things. Things that even the Black Dread of Aegon the Conqueror couldn't withstand. Mortal flesh stood no chance at all.
Jonina picked up a suckling pig and started gnawing on it.
"On the return voyage, the monsters came aboard with us. We fought them the whole way back, throwing the wounded to the stern, but killing them only seemed to make more. And new ones could burst out of the living at any moment."
"I watched one tear its way out of Euron's chest with my own eyes."
The people around her had gone quiet.
2,500 pounds. Over a ton. Even if the plate were hammered thin, that was enough steel for three suits of dragon armor.
As for Euron dying in Valyria, that was exactly what he deserved.
Drogo looked at Jonina's exhausted face. His voice came out quiet. "You've worked hard. There's still plenty of food. Eat, then go wash up and change."
Jonina answered with a muffled sound around a mouthful of suckling pig.
➤ Next: Sacrificing Viserys — Face to Face