Archive of Our Own

“Blackness...is the last degree of reds.
The secret blood of reds.”
— H. CIXOUS

Milk of the poppy sat thick on the tongue. And bitter. Much, much more bitter than an olive’s skin straight from the branch.

It coated her teeth. Pooled, oozed. Trickled.

Down her throat, trickling muddily like globs of someone else’s spittle.

Tanselle’s lips trembled of their own accord.

More wails ripe to burst, most like. She was sore all over. Her body had been sobbing and writhing on its own whilst she herself seemed far off, huddled at the back of her uncle’s wagon in her new socks, woollen and tongue-pink, a bit cold up here north of Dorne’s red mountains but safe amongst the brushes and the pigments and the puppets—

Something rubbed against her lips.

Slowly, at first.

A cool, thick thumb. Tanselle shuddered. It smeared coolness along the teeth marks dimpling her bottom lip, her teeth marks,

across the swollen ache left by the princeling on the bow of her upper lip,

trickled down her throat, thick and sticky as the mush of dates and winter peaches already chewed by her mother,

a coolness so crisp that it left her lips tingling, wobbling into a

word, shape
less a cry

a soundless
gasp

gasping

and

*

She was a seed swaddled by fluffy, cottony fibers. Singed by fire. Fire tricks.

She was floating,

head in the clouds

everyone said so, that

Tanselle was tall for a girl her age. It was not easy playing hide and seek in open fields, but here amongst Meraxes’ bones was a feast of hiding spots for a too-tall girl.

Her uncle did not like her venturing into the ruins. “Those old bones, sweetling,” he would say, “most of them are thicker than a ship’s mast. If one should fall on you, gods forbid, well, you’re clever enough to put two and two together, now. Let’s not tempt the Stranger, hm?” Uncle was a worrier. He worried that the soles of Tanselle’s shoes had grown too worn to be comfortable for running out in the sun. He often worried that the stuffed grape leaves he made for her didn’t have enough ground lamb and rice to match her healthy appetite. He even worried that she was not japing when she’d told him, and her mother in a letter, that she wanted to be disguised and sent up to Oldtown’s Citadel so she could become a maester and serve in Ghost Hill, live by the deep blue waters of the Sea of Dorne. Tanselle wished her uncle didn’t worry so much. She was twelve. A big girl. And growing every day. Like as not, she would grow taller than him.

And what were some old, sunbaked bones to Dornish folk like them?

Tanselle knew the songs. She wasn’t too worried about stepping into the dragon ruins.

She was chewing on a bolt of her blue-green veil to stifle her laughter. She glanced over her shoulder. Her playmates were scrambling to hide, giggling and shushing one another, a score of children from the docks of the river Brimstone and Hellholt’s castle and town. Tanselle let them have the ancient dry well, the crumbling stones of an abandoned watchtower, the wreck of a scorched courtyard.

She picked her way through the coarse red soil and the sun-mottled dragon ruins.

Once upon a time, these bones were black as a starless night and hotter than high summer sands. Tanselle knew the songs. She sat in the warm shadow of a towering rib. She scratched at it. It didn’t stir. It wasn’t tickled. Her nails left no mark on the bone, now the shade of charcoal. Purplish, smoky. The colour of plague. Here and there were swathes of dull red, like long-opened sores. A red so deep that it looked black at first glance. Her palms and fingertips trailed faint, fast-drying smears of sweat, though. Thirsty fingerprints. Tanselle chewed and sucked on the moistening bolt of her veil as she tapped out a song’s melody on the warm bone to pass the time. The sun slipped fatly into the red dunes in the distance. Shrieks and laughter and ululations were ringing out. She imagined herself burrowing into the lung of this sick, benighted giant.

Tanselle burrowed under three blankets and a shawl in a sun-dried brick house, her mother’s childhood home by House Uller’s olive groves and lemon and pomegranate orchards. It had been a long winter. It was Tanselle’s name day. Wretchedly sick. Miserably cold. Sweating yet shivering. Couldn’t enjoy her favourite foods, masgouf and maqlooba and ka’ak and baqlawa as Mother made them. Couldn’t keep any other food down, really, not even her name day cup of sahlab. And so weak she could scarcely lift her head from her sleep-stale pillow. Her mother’s face was a warm moon floating over her. Tear tracks stained Mother’s brown cheeks. “You need to eat, my baby. Eat so you can regain your strength. Fight off this vile sickness.” And so, Mother would chew the simple fare of dates and winter peaches and flatbread herself. She would spit out each thick sticky mush on a wooden spoon. Tanselle would need only swallow. Tanselle swallowed weakly, gratefully, as Mother told the gods yet again to desist in their attempts to take Tanselle away from her. She had a funny way of praying, Mother. More like she was scolding each of the Seven. Scolding, commanding, and bartering with them like they were no more than common merchants. “Not my baby, too,” Mother would say each time her spoon gently but firmly clicked past Tanselle’s chattering teeth and as she waited for Tanselle to swallow. Still Mother’s baby, though Tanselle was seven already. But Tanselle didn’t mind. “Not my little girl, no, not her. I will not allow it! I do not allow it! Not my Tanselle, you hear me? You, oh you! You have taken enough from me!”

Tanselle’s memories of her father were very few. A guardsman at the citadel that the Lords of Hellholt had built for their Summer Sea port. Like looking through a window blurred by a sandstorm, she could make out broad shoulders, the top of a thick mane of black hair, loud laughter, soft singing, sun-burnished dun hands holding her hips and calves securely as she flew. She remembered trailing him often and raising her arms, asking, demanding, and she remembered how often he had indulged her. She couldn’t remember if her father had ever refused her. In more than half of her very few memories of him, she was always by his hip or perched on his shoulders.

She had been very young when her father answered Prince Maron Martell’s call to war. One of the several hundred Dornishmen who had marched under the banner of the red dragon and perished amongst the cold red grass far north of the Red Mountains of Dorne. Tanselle often heard the song from her uncle.

It was a fine spring day on the road to Ashford when she and Uncle stopped by an inn in Blackmont and she insisted, despite his protests, on asking the cook to bake a cake specially for them. Olive oil cake with cardamom and cinnamon and ginger, almonds and walnuts, yoghurt and sea salt, blood oranges and persimmons and Dornish plums. It would have been her father’s thirty-ninth name day. “Be generous with the eggs, please. I have the coin for them,” she said and, smiling, added: “My name’s Tanselle.” On the inn’s courtyard terrace, hung with beaded curtains and carved lamps, she and Uncle ate the cake straight from the pan. They finished the entire thing whilst half-listening to the dull roaring of the Torrentine out in the night.

Uncle was deep in his cups. Weary sadness. Dornish strongwine. He was the image of her late father, Tanselle had heard it said, though of the two her uncle was the quiet brother, almost shy, and more at home with chisels and saws than with spears and double-curved bows. He was meandering down that familiar road of grief again. How he and his brother, together with their sister and parents and cousins, used to harvest baskets of dates and blood oranges from the Hellholt commons far to the south, well away from Upper Brimstone’s sulfurous waters and within view of the Summer Sea; how he blamed himself for not getting home in time from his trips to Shamyriana and Qarth, for being late in learning that Blackfyre had finally turned against Targaryen, dragging Dorne along in the muck; how sorry he was that he hadn’t been there to protect her father from the dragons; how shamed and furious he was that he couldn’t even bring his little brother’s body back to Dorne.

Tanselle sank into her mother’s soft, lovely belly.

She rubbed her cheek against her mother’s. The most beautiful woman in all the realm, Mother. Tanselle had always been certain of this. Proud of this, wasn’t she. Happy to show off her mother to her friends, wasn’t she. Little wonder, then, that Lord Gargalen had made her mother his paramour. It was widely said that the Old Man of Salt Shore was the comeliest lord in all of Dorne. His tastes were so exacting, it was also said, that he avoided whores older than a certain age and he hadn’t taken a paramour for nigh on five-and-twenty years until his barge, comfortably sailing down the Brimstone during a visit with the Ullers, passed by Tanselle’s mother on her way to town to sell her handmade soaps and body butters.

“This isn’t quite goodbye, sweetling,” said Mother, whose embrace was now richly scented with spiceflower. “You know your letters. Write to me.”

“I’ll be brave,” she promised her mother, but Tanselle’s eyes stung with tears all the same.

She understood that it would be quite a while before they could see each other again. Mother’s wide dark nose twinkled with an emerald-encrusted gold ring. Her full-lipped wide mouth was daubed with pomegranate-red paint. From her wide hips hung a pouch of Myrish velvet stitched with pearls. Her wide thighs were clad in sumptuous sandsilk the colour of jade. Her waist-length black braids smelled of olives. Tanselle, loath to break their embrace, pleaded for one last song from her mother and there in the olive grove of her mother’s childhood, nourished by the Lords of Hellholt’s jealously guarded network of clearwater canals, she chewed on and, with faintly sweaty fingers, played with her mother’s new gold braid cuffs.

Before the show, Tanselle had bundled her long braided twin tails together with pretty blue ribbons. A shimmery deep blue like the Sea of Dorne, glinting with starlight or sunlight as seen by Lord Toland’s brave, mad fool from the parapets of Ghost Hill before he faced off Aegon of Dragonstone and bought Dorne more time with his sacrifice. Tanselle knew the songs. Uncle’s loud, frantic “Run!” was still ringing in her ears when the princeling Aerion snatched her by her ribbons, his other hand seizing her wrist. She was taller than him. She squeezed out furious and frightened tears, shamed tears, as he dragged her to her knees as though she were no more than a saddle bag, no heavier than a tourney lance. “All the royal lapdogs want a Dornish whore of their own,” he was hissing against her cheek, his spittle stinking of rare, bloody beef. “I only want one if it’s—that’s right, keep fucking screaming—if it lost its maidenhead to a dragon bite.”

By the banks of the fresh, bitter stream, the princeling talked of fire and Tanselle’s fingers. It was a cold afternoon. She had looked up from Ser Duncan’s shield at the sly rustling sounds in the misty woods. “Who’s there?” she’d challenged, the words springing out from her, unbidden, laced with fright, and got the answer, “Ah, a Dornish wench.” He told her that she need not bother hiding her “Dornish drawl” now that he’d heard it. Tanselle didn’t like the careless, bored way he tossed out his words at her, like crumbs to a cat. She wondered if she could get into that mouth’s accent. “Lower those pretty Dornish eyes.” He was the king’s grandson, he went on, which immediately clarified plenty of things to her, and the tediously dull journey to Ashford had tired him quite a bit. He commanded her to resume her task. He only wanted to watch. Unblinking, he lounged next to her on the grassy bank as she mixed pigments and painted over the old shield with the colours of sunset. Now and then, he would sip from a cup he’d brought down from Ashford castle. Sweet Dornish red. Her hands were perfect for a saddle, he remarked in that starchy, funny northern accent. He said he liked her long olive fingers. Her green veins. The smears of yellows on her knuckles. The streaks of oranges under her nails. The splotches of red all over her palms.

Palms up, Tanselle stretched out her arms. Bronze. Amber honey. Her olive hands had been burnished by Hellholt’s gaudy summer sun. Jumping and running, she still wasn’t too tall inside a dragon. She fit just right.

In these ruins, the desert air was never still. Old shadows flickered and frothed and boiled the sunlight. She skipped from Meraxes’ ribs down to its belly. She danced. Tanselle knew the songs by heart. Dragon meat cooked with peppers, lemons, thyme, mustard seeds, and olive oil. Dragon eye jelly, a delicacy. The iron bolt that had pierced Meraxes’ eye and felled the beast, displayed in a sept like a holy relic. The defenders of Hellholt who had manned the scorpions were but commonborn, lowborn, baseborn yet two hundred years on they were still breathing in songs and tapestries and here amongst these ruins, each of their names learned by every Dornish child from the cradle. Tanselle knew the songs by heart. Dragon teeth fashioned into prized daggers and pendants and buttons and combs. Dragon blood kept as paints, ointments, spice, scents, and aphrodisiacs. Shrieks and laughter were ringing out. Ululations, harvesting songs, trillings, hunting songs. The bones were still dripping with fat. Tanselle happily stuck out her tongue. Her blue-green veil fluttered against her dimpling cheeks. She cloaked herself with dragonskin. She ran a long, satisfied hand down the dark hide, its scaly thickness, its dull oily sheen. Scents of ash, brimstone, and burnt meat clung to her hair. Dragonstink. She would wager that this would suitably warm her north of the Red Mountains. Tanselle knew her songs by heart.

If only Meraxes’ skull had remained at Hellholt! Tanselle had never scratched or tickled or licked fat off a dragon’s skull before, never put her foot into a dragon’s mouth before.

Her uncle had ventured to King’s Landing years before Blackfyre’s rebellion. The queen consort was a Dornish princess born and bred. It was a time of peace. What could go wrong for a Dornish craftsman like him? “I don’t care to go back up there,” he said, “and that’s that.”

It had only been five years since Dorne was wedded to the Iron Throne when Tanselle was born. After two hundred years of failed attempts through fire and steel, the Targaryen kings finally brought Dorne into the realm through kisses and compromises.

In dragonland, the rights of trueborn sons always came before the rights of trueborn daughters. One thing that the Martells of Sunspear had done right in this sour marriage, said Mother, was to insist that Dornish laws should still rule in Dorne. Elsewise their vassals, half of whom were female lords—who still remembered Daeron the Boy Dragon’s failed conquest—and their heirs, male or female, would have turned on Sunspear and buried House Nymeros Martell in the deep sands. “Even House Uller?” asked Tanselle, thinking of the 80-year-old Lord of Hellholt the Lady Ellaria, and her stern heir and exacting steward the Lady Dorea, and Lady Dorea’s heir Ser Harmen the Horror of Redgrass Field. And Uncle nodded, “Especially an Uller.”

Mother was caressing Tanselle’s cheek with her stern, exacting hand. Tanselle didn’t need to tip up her face and crane her neck to meet her mother’s gaze anymore. Reeds were drooping and kissing the murky waters of the Brimstone. The Old Man of Salt Shore was no more.

My name’s Tanselle.

Tanselle of Hellholt? Tanselle of Brimstone? Tanselle of the Summer Sea?
She chewed on the sounds.
Tanselle of the Old Grove?
Tanselle of Dorne?

Tanselle slid a long forefinger into the moist cake. Cream and crumb and fruit warmly making room for her.

Father.
Wine-soaked name day.
A little brother will always be a little brother. Protect him from dragons.
Which dragons, Uncle?
Does it matter.

Uncle rushed forward, knocked into the black dragon puppet, shoved Tanselle behind him, the air stuffy with smoke and pollen, seeds swaddled in fluff.

RUN.

“Now, now, good-brother,” said Mother, her long black braids softly clicking with pomegranate-red beads, veiling Tanselle. “You know as well as I. Better be a simple Dornish knight’s paramour than a northern king’s mistress.”

I’ll be brave, promised Tanselle.

Coarse red soil turning into sweeping red dunes turning into fat red petals.

Tanselle shuddered.

She spat. Caught Aerion’s eye and then, half-blinded and snarling, his hardness never faltering pressed up against her, he was backhanding her mouth and yanking her blue ribbons and forcing her fist open with two of his cruel calloused fingers, a burst of pennies and iron on her tongue.

Dornish soaps and Dornish whores.
All the rage at court.
Apparently.

In King’s Landing these days, after Redgrass Field, black hair and black eyes and warm-toned skin were fashionable, and lickspittles were dyeing their hair dark like the queen’s and the Prince of Dragonstone’s with Tyroshi wash, and everyone seemed to be raring for real Dornish whores.

Raring and whores and Dornish sounded funny in that starchy northern accent.

The tip of Tanselle’s tongue vibrating fast behind her teeth. RRRRRRRRRR. Spear-sharp, rolling Dornish Rs.

Half of these northerners, said Uncle, would spit at you or knife you or worse.

All of them who lived north of the Red Mountains were northmen to Mother. “Piss on the Boy Dragon’s ignorant book about us Dornish,” she would say. “What do these northern maesters and singers truly know about us?” 

Tanselle was helping her mother make soaps. Olive oil soaps, half of the batch scented with lemons, the other half with pomegranates.
—Remember when you wrote me and pleaded to be disguised as a boy? So we could send you up to Oldtown’s Citadel? Why?
—Maesters are smart and well-known. Called knights of the mind, aren’t they?
—Not that well-known. Some not even that. Not even either.
—Just thought it’d be nice if someone from our clan left their name in song and story. Like the defenders of Hellholt.
—And you thought it’d be you?
—Just. Yeah. Why not, yeah.
—My sweet baby. I’m not disagreeing.
—I wish I could. I want to be.
—Ought to be a singer, then, sweetling. Smart as maesters, and more well-known. And well-loved, to be sure.
—I’ve thought of that, but my voice isn’t good enough. Not as lovely as yours.
—Well, yours is good to these ears. Stay here and tend these orchards with us in the meantime.

What is that pout, hm? Come now. The gods know we’ve been tending and guarding life in these red sands long, long, long before Rhaenys of Dragonstone’s grandmother was a spurt in her mother’s womb.

Head in the clouds.

Tanselle dug into her pouch and gave Ser Duncan’s inquisitive squire a fistful of black and reddish honey-yellow dates. She told the boy their names and added, “The best dates in Dorne.”

She’d never been to a field of poppies before, but once she’d seen a Myrish painting in a Crownlander adventuring vessel docked at the mouth of the Brimstone. A field of fat petals, done in wonderfully immodest red. A whole world out there.

“Have you a thirst?” said the princeling, Aerion. “Here. Go on, have a sip. Sweet Dornish red. None of that. Your prince commands you.”

She still had her milk teeth. That was what the princeling said as he nudged her lips with his cup, a bit of wine slopping down her chin. He was still staring. Unblinking. He himself was like the mist, bloodless, drained of warmth in hair and skin and eyes.

“Begging your pardon, my prince,” she said stiffly, “but I’m a woman grown.”

But the princeling shook his head, a strange half-smile on his grey face. “Milk-breath. Maidenhead. I know these things.”

Tanselle knew she was half-awake, somehow. Floating. Fluffed up at the edges. She couldn’t feel her fingers.

A familiar soap smell, made from olive oil and scented with lemons.

Someone was lurking in the cold red shadows. She glimpsed the black of his eye. Dark stubble on his jaw.

Had the Stranger come at last?

Lips parched. Teeth coated in poppy milk. Tanselle mumbled, “Father?”

*

Cherrywood. Dried blood orange peels.

A flickering brazier.

She woke up to hot shadows, papery-thin dreams, shapeless puppets dancing and tumbling across the oaken ceiling of her own wagon.

A mere armspan away from her bedroll, a stranger was sat by the folded-open window.

A tall, tall man. He was sat the way she herself often did in this cramped space, with his long legs stretched out in front of him. His shoulders cast a broad, fatherly shadow. A lace-like web of very fine raindrops sprawled down the folds of his thick brown mantle, smelling of freshly turned loam, spring rains in orchards. Big, sturdy ankles primly crossed. Woollen toes, dry and toasty. No boots on.

A sheaf of papers that he was holding up to the window’s pale light obstructed his face from her view, but she saw that his hands were ungloved, ten long fingers, two rings.

It was his soaped skin that she’d smelled.

Maybe Tanselle had died on her sickbed in Hellholt’s old groves, after all, whatever else her poor dear mother said about how surviving the illness would armour you from it henceforth and how fortunate Tanselle had been that it happened to be her seventh name day, maybe the gods hadn’t been appeased, after all, maybe that dread Stranger had still been tempted, and this man here was—

He lowered the papers.

A striking face, brown and finely cut.

Tanselle felt her breath catch.

It would have intimidated her to gaze too long upon it were it not for the fact that it was also a worn face. Strong jaw offset by what looked like a broken nose. One eye more heavily lidded than the other. Troubles and tedium and toil caked deep into its dry flesh. But it wore patience well. So very well that grooves of weariness and the grime of sleeplessness had sprouted all over it, tempering the harsh finality of its beauty.

A vaguely familiar face. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to encounter it amongst the tradesmen and craftsmen and farmers and sailors of Dorne, amongst her own cousins and uncles.

But these were thoughts that brought Tanselle only a fleeting second of comfort for there was also something uncanny about this face. About his bearing. He was too still. The black of his eyes too dry. Starchy.

Just then, a mild ripple.

A flicker of a smile. Remote, almost kind.

“Maester Yormwell did say you would wake at around this hour,” the stranger said by way of greeting, and Tanselle knew at once that he wasn’t her father. “A credit to his considerable talents, to be sure, and I trust, from experience, promises good things about your recovery. Mine own nose has been broken twice but thank the gods the good maester is possessed of a deft healing touch.”

Tanselle’s eyes drowsily flicked from his mouth making those strange shapes around familiar words to the rugged slope of his nose and back to his mouth again. Studying, studying.

Would she be able to get into that mouth’s shapes?

I bet I could, she thinks. The sailors and merchants in those Crownlander vessels, I learned the bones of their accent, but this here’s mighty different. Not like Ser Duncan’s neither. But I bet I still could.

Tanselle kept staring.

The stranger had a mild voice. He spoke like the maesters she’d encountered, in an oddly helpful yet indifferent tone. He would greatly care that prayers weren’t sufficient cure and would personally haul carts of tinctures and poultices to villages, but a sick body was a sick body to be puzzled out and reported to his lords and archmaesters, not a person who ached, who was frightened.

You might hazard to trust this voice but would surely find no comfort in it. However handsome it was.

“You slept through two nights and a day,” he was saying. “How are you feeling?”

How was she feeling?

Lightheaded. And somewhat irritated, though she didn’t know why.

Tanselle felt fluffed up at the edges, that was how she was feeling. The cold numbness from her lips had faded; now, there was a dull sensation of pins and needles crackling up and down her arms and even along her calves and toes. She wasn’t wearing any socks, she realised. Only a blanket over a tunic and loose linen trousers.

“Yes, but you need not worry,” came the man’s mild voice. “That must only be the ebbing effects of the milk of the poppy. Maester Yormwell had to administer it to you twice in the process of mending your finger.”

She blinked blearily.

Gods, had the poppy milk loosened her tongue as well? What else had she said out loud?

She could feel her cheeks grow warm.

Her right hand did feel funny, and Tanselle blinked again, she blinked hard, and all at once everything, the show, Uncle, the princeling, Ser Duncan, the little squire, her finger, everything came rushing back in a lurching, bilious wave.

And there was a strange man in her wagon.

She propped herself up on her good elbow, which made him stir a bit.

She sat up. Glanced at her injured hand. Her right hand—her brush and quill hand, her strong hand. All she could see were bandages and some sort of splint. Sweat started to break out under her arms. She looked away from her hand and uneasily settled back on the stranger.

There was a trace of a frown on his brows now.

Tanselle’s tongue felt too swollen for her mouth. But she unstuck her teeth all the same. “Who are you?”

Her voice had a new rasp to it. Sleep-warm, to her ears, but also quite afraid. She didn’t bother with her northern mummer’s voice. She spoke as she’d been speaking all her life in Dorne.

She licked her parched lips and braved it again: “No pretty word games, please. What do you want from me?”

The stranger’s dry black eyes flickered.

His shoulders seemed to fill up the wagon then, looming over her, or was it only because she’d sat up too quickly in her condition?

“Very well,” he said, still in that mild tone. Infuriatingly mild. “I am Baelor, Prince of Dragonstone. I have come back to see how you were taking to Maester Yormwell’s healing arts and, as you may have already guessed, to ask you about the other night’s incident. But first, will you take a cup of wine? Your lips are very dry. You haven’t had food or drink in over a day. It is more than apparent that you need refreshment before we can proceed.”

*

The other night’s incident.

It is more than apparent that you need refreshment.

Remote, almost kind.

Tanselle was chafing against it.

She’d rather face the princeling Aerion again. His hateful words were cleaner. Stark as bones.

And his uncle, the Prince of Dragonstone and Hand of the King, the Baelor Breakspear, was in her wagon. This was an interrogation, then, and surely not in her favour, no matter the appearances.

Must keep her wits about her.

Tanselle lowered her eyes.

She sent out a quick prayer to Crone, Smith, and Warrior. Breathed in. Made sure her voice came out steadily.

“Might I pour Your Grace a cup of ale?” she said. “I have ale. In that chest. Your Grace is my guest, and I’ve been a poor host. Please accept my apologies.”

“Your guest,” repeated Prince Baelor, a mild smile in his voice. “Very well.”

Tanselle made to stand, but the prince waved his hand in a graceful gesture. “No, please,” he said. “You mustn’t tire out your hand for now. Allow me. Did you mean this chest, here beside me?”

“I—yes, Your Grace.”

Prince Baelor scooped up his brown leather gloves from atop said chest and tucked them into his silver-buckled belt. He was folding his papers into the dark green sleeves of his long velvet tunic when he caught Tanselle peering up through her lashes. His eyes crinkled at the corners.

“Worry not,” he told her. “It is still your ale that I will be drinking, and your hospitality I am accepting. We are bound by guest right. Too, a knight of the Kingsguard stands just outside. I do mean to only ask you some clarifying questions as I’ve already asked those witnesses I could find whilst you were under the milk of the poppy.”

Witnesses?

“What of my uncle? Please, Your Grace. And Ser Duncan? And the troupe, my companions, they only—”

“Your uncle had been knocked unconscious but was tended to that same night. He is fine, I assure you, save for some bruises. I’ve already spoken with him.”

That wasn’t good enough.

“Is he sat in a dungeon?” she said.

Prince Baelor tilted his head slightly. She caught the small quiver of his nostrils, the mild twitch of his mouth, a brisk plume of his foggy breath. Distantly, she knew at once that she had misspoken in some way or other, who knew with these grand princes, but what else could she do? You couldn’t take back water already spilled, could you. What else could she do but let her question stand and try to mask her fear.

Tanselle straightened her back. She didn’t bother checking her lip-chewing. She refused to lower her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. She would think of something else.

The brazier snapped and licked at the cold air.

His eyes unlatched from hers and began to rove all over her face, slowly, slowly. Slow as date syrup. Considering. Watchful. Hoarding only the gods knew what. But there seemed to be no trace of anger on his face, only a new sort of alertness, dry and thick enough to be perceived by her.

So, then. This was the face of the man who’d personally led her father to death.

“No, Tanselle,” said Prince Baelor, “your uncle has been safe in his wagon all this time.”

Her name in that starchy, northern mouth startled her. “Your Grace—”

“Forgive me, I learned your name from him. And from mine own nephew, Prince Aegon. Ser Duncan’s squire, as you may recall. A beautiful name, Tanselle. But you really need to have some food and drink first.” A brown dimple peeked through his stubble. “And I assume you are keen for me to drink your ale of hospitality.”

“As you say, Your Grace.”

Tanselle watched Prince Baelor touch her things. How surreal. Surely this must still be a poppy dream, she thought, as the famed Hammer of Redgrass Field, he who now spoke with the king’s voice, carefully lifted the lid of her painted chest, moved aside the teal linen covering, and pulled out a bottle of ale and two cups.

Was Tanselle in the makings of a song now?

But there were two ways a song could go.

Head in the clouds.

Wits! she reminded herself harshly. Keep your wits about you!

“Would Your Grace care for dates?”

“Of course,” he murmured. “Point them out for me.”

Her clean new socks and blank book for scribblings were sticking out amongst the contents of her chest.

And was that—oh, gods, her doll.

She hoped that Prince Baelor hadn’t noticed it. A little doll she’d bought days ago from a Riverlander stall out in Ashford Meadow’s merchants’ row. She hadn’t meant to play with it. She was a woman grown, seventeen in a few more moons, she’d bought it only out of admiration for the craft and for love of the colours and look of the doll, and besides she rarely saw Riverlander goods in the markets and poleboats of Hellholt, and she’d only wanted something pretty to remember her first show outside of Dorne by.

Cheeks hot, Tanselle leaned forward and pointed out the small cloth-covered earthenware of dates, her elbow brushing against the prince’s mantle.

Prince Baelor poured out the ale. His movements were efficient and contained, no flourishes, no spills. She waited for him to lift his cup to his mouth before she did so with her own.

Black ale, brewed with honey and ginger and cinnamon and pepper.

Prince Baelor nodded at his cup with a soft hum and took another sip, more generous this time.

“Red Mountains. The Torrentine river, or thereabouts.”

“Yes, Your Grace. Blackmont.”

Tanselle was wiping her mouth with the inside of her left arm when she realised how fast she’d drank, how thirstily, and that the prince had been watching her, his eyes crinkled at the corners again.

She gingerly lowered her empty cup.

He pushed the dates towards her. “Eat.”

Tanselle didn’t need to be told twice, really. Red dates, amber, black, honey-gold. Her teeth sank into them gratefully. She had meant to pace herself, but she couldn’t stop chewing and swallowing like someone possessed, her vision narrowing hungrily, though Prince Baelor didn’t seem to mind because his smile had become faintly dimpled and now and then he would nudge an exceptionally plump and sweet date towards her side of the bowl.

“Mine own lady mother,” he said, chewing, “eats the sweetest dates from the Summer Sea paired with chilled milk. Dates have grown in popularity all over the realm since, but they were a rarity even in King’s Landing during my childhood. Nevertheless, my lady mother used to have them served to me and my brothers all the time, not just during our visits to her rooms. She always said one has to keep up with a growing son’s appetite, never mind four. I see now that the same could be said about daughters. A pleasing thought.” Prince Baelor smiled at her, then added, “Her Grace does not have daughters nor, sadly, have I.”

Tanselle didn’t know what to say to any of that.

Good milk, the creamy and fresh sort, was costly. And it wasn’t like the prince was talking about a fishmonger’s wife down at the Summer Sea port; this was a Martell of Sunspear and the queen consort of the Seven Kingdoms. The woman might as well be living in another realm.

She nodded politely all the same.

He was looking at her like he was expecting her to remark on his little story or to share something similar of hers, but when she stayed quiet, chewing and licking at her fingertips, he let the silence settle with the mildest of twitches of his mouth and only nudged another date towards her.

*

“Witnesses,” began Prince Baelor, pouring her another cup, “my nephew Prince Aegon chief amongst them, are all united in saying that it was Prince Aerion who attacked you. You were merely in the middle of a performance when Prince Aerion, from his position amongst the spectators, leapt towards you. He ordered for his guards to destroy the puppets and the tent, grabbed you, hit you, and broke your finger. Prince Aegon fetched Ser Duncan, who was the one who punched and kicked a prince of the blood. Is this not correct?”

Tanselle slowly nodded, keeping an ear out for the play of words of each statement. “Just so, Your Grace.”

“Aerion, however, says that you attacked him, too. You spat on his eye.”

“After he attacked me.” Gods help her, but Tanselle couldn’t keep the scoff out of her voice, newly fortified as she was by the ale and dates. “Was I supposed to just let him drag me to the ground?”

“He is a prince of the blood, and it is against the law to assault him.”

“I spat on him when he had his fist round my hair and his other one twisting my arm!”

The prince saw her hesitate. “Go on, say what you mean to say.”

“And he—he called me—his whore. And he was pressed up against me, Your Grace, and he was—his—I could feel—you have to believe me. I just didn’t think. I couldn’t move my head out of his grip, and he was saying things about a dragon biting off my maidenhead. You have to believe me, please, Your Grace.”

Prince Baelor had briefly squeezed his eyes shut at her words. Now he nodded once, brusque, and said, “I believe you.”

“He smacked me right on the mouth soon as I spat on him and twisted my arm even more and next thing my finger—he wanted to break all my fingers. He said so. Thank the gods for Ser Duncan’s arrival.”

Prince Baelor looked even more wan. “Ser Duncan has spent the past couple of nights in a holding cell at the castle. His actions are beyond dispute. He laid his hands on a prince of the blood.”

“Ser Duncan saved me,” Tanselle gritted out. “He did nothing more than an act of kindness.”

“Prince Aerion would like his head, but I assure you that will not happen. He will have a fair trial.”

“He was responding to an attack,” Tanselle insisted, finding herself hating the mildness of Prince Baelor, as though the law had him in fetters, the way he sounded like someone reading out a story long written, the ink already dry on her fate and Ser Duncan’s. “He didn’t attack unprovoked. Please, Your Grace, he didn’t attack out of malice.”

“Be that as it may. All of it will be considered in his own trial.”

She must keep speaking or she might lose her nerve. “And his squire, too, by the looks of it. The lad also saved me by fetching Ser Duncan.”

Prince Baelor tilted his head again, heavily lidded eyes flickering. “Prince Aegon.”

“Prince Aegon, then. The gods had heard me, so the little princeling fetched me a true knight.”

“You are quite bold. I admire it, but I must also caution you.”

“Have I misspoken? I speak nothing but truths, Your Grace.”

“I need you to hear what I say: Ser Duncan’s case is independent from you. He is a knight of the realm, besides.” His tone grew sharper. “You would do well to keep in mind, moreover, that striking against your king and his line would endanger you.”

Prince Baelor’s long brown hand was laid flat on the tiny folding table between them, like a pressed seal. The grooves and etchings on his signet ring made an unmistakable shape. 

This was no Dornishman.

Tanselle chewed on her lip and took another deep breath.

“Forgive me, Your Grace. I only want justice.”

“And I only mean to see justice done, I promise you.”

“Will I be on trial, then? For defending myself? Even though I already paid with a smacked mouth and a broken finger and my wares destroyed?”

The prince’s black eyes roved all over her face again.

“No,” he said quietly. His tone slipped back into mildness. “No, you won’t be on trial against Aerion. You won’t be on trial. Your uncle means for you to make haste for Dorne once you have woken. Well gone is well forgot. His words. I am inclined to agree with him.”

Gone. Forgot.

There were hot thumbs pressing against Tanselle’s eyes. She blinked away the moist scratchiness. “So, this is to be my punishment from the gods.”

The prince raised his brows. “Punishment? For, as you say, defending yourself?”

“For not knowing my place.” Tanselle smiled bitterly. “My uncle wasn’t even supposed to be with me up here, and now he’s hurt. He makes palanquins and lamps, carved chests, folding screens, not puppets. But he wanted to make sure I was safe up here. I’ve been doing shows for a couple of years now, all in Dorne. But I couldn’t miss my chance when I heard that some royal princes would be in attendance here. I always meant to be remembered like the singers. Like the great singers. Like the great muses and heroes of great singers, even. Forever breathing in songs and tapestries. Well-loved and well-known to generations of people. More loved and more known than some knights or maesters or some kings. And why not? Why not? I want that, though I am born lowly. A woman, too, and so can’t be a knight nor a maester neither. But I will have that. With whatever means is within my reach, and yet to be in reach, even if I have to stand on tiptoes and stretch and strain to reach those means, with a broken finger now, gods help me, I will have that. And why not? But might be this is the gods telling me that my mother was right, and my uncle, too. Ought to get my head out of the clouds, right? Return to tend to the old groves. Shouldn’t have stepped in here.”

The worst part was that she barely believed what she had just said.

And even as Tanselle could see the mixture of pity and incredulity in Prince Baelor and what might have been the mildest of contempt in what he was hearing, her mouth was still moving.

“But I don’t believe that. This moment, right now, I am still refusing to believe it, that this was what the gods had figured I deserved. It’s not. It’s just poor luck, is all. It’ll run out.”

Too late, she realised the tears had fallen.

Tanselle swiped at them angrily, then cried out in pain, recoiling and whimpering—she’d used both hands.

And then Prince Baelor was quickly, gently clasping her right arm, keeping her right hand from instinctively pressing against her body.

In the same motion, he’d pushed aside the folding table and sat beside her on her cramped bedroll. Efficient. Contained.

His thumb, cool and dry and so callused it felt leathery, was nudging her lips open. “Milk of the poppy, just a little,” he was saying. “Careful, now, with your hand.”

Tanselle wanted to say that she could drink the milk on her own, but Prince Baelor then cupped the back of her head with a big hand whilst tilting his other wrist in that precise, efficient manner of his, tipping the small bottle just so.

Did princes administer poppy milk?

He seemed to have read the question in her eyes. “Just a small sip, for the pain. I have consulted with Maester Yormwell. He is also outside this wagon as we speak, the man with the bright yellow beard and rows of chains round his neck. Come now, to help with your pain. We don’t want you falling asleep again, though.”

Tanselle blinked up at him, lashes wet, and swallowed.

“There,” smiled Prince Baelor. “Well done.”

She sniffled at the bitter taste. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

The prince was looking at her right arm. She still hadn’t changed from the show. Her sleeve had gone up, revealing the dark bruises mottling across her olive skin.

“I had hoped,” he said, “to restore House Targaryen’s honour by seeing to it that you are tended to, and your uncle and hurt companions as well.”

“You believe me, then, Your Grace?”

“I do. But Aerion is spinning your show as an act of high treason. A dragon was killed. He calls it a veiled attack on House Targaryen, an incitement to revolt.”

First the spit, and now this?

“But it was not, Your Grace. The show wasn’t meant to be that.”

“Once my brother returns to Ashford, and he and the Lords Tyrell and Ashford judge the situation with me, it may well be that you might find yourself in Aerion’s net. It would be your word against his. I do think you should leave as soon as possible.”

“But do you believe him, Your Grace? Prince Aerion? He was not even there for the whole show, I didn’t see him from the start.”

“It matters not what I alone believe,” he said gently. “It’s what the other senior princes and lords aside from me would believe. Thus is how the law is enforced and maintained throughout the realm. A king’s word is not enough. My word as the Prince of Dragonstone and the Hand is not either. Law. Legitimacy. You also benefit from this order of things. I can say with certainty, too, that killing a dragon, the sigil of the royal house, was unwise. Even in times of peace. Even in songs. Especially in songs, don’t you think?”

For a moment, Tanselle could only blink at him, barely believing her ears.

It all seemed like a dream. A nightmare she couldn’t wake from.

A sudden urge to strike at him with a barbed switch rose up in her like bile. An urge so strong and new that it frightened her, excited her, sent a sticky shudder down her spine.

“Are you cold?” came the prince’s voice.

Tanselle licked off the film of poppy milk from her upper teeth.

She blinked at Prince Baelor, at how tall and close he was. Even his heavy lids looked dry and scaly. He ought to butter his skin. Mother made excellent body butters. Was he staring at her bruised lips? She hoped that he knew that though his nephew had done that, the teeth marks were her own.

He smelled of ink, the costly kind.

Wits.

“It was a black dragon,” she said.

Tanselle felt him go rigid against her at once, it almost felt like she had lashed him. His mild visage spasmed, cracked, and revealed a much older face, haunted and angry, its weariness coarser. His wide hand, still cradling the back of her head, twitched and tightened unbearably against her skull, then abruptly froze, nails grazing her scalp.

Her bare toes curled on the wooden floor, accidentally brushing against his own woollen feet.

A small moment of silence from her were two more lashes.

She went on, “The puppet was a black dragon. How could it be treason, then, to show a black dragon like Blackfyre being killed?”

There was a moment when the dry blackness in the prince’s eyes blistered hatefully, like it would peel off, like he was about to do something rash, the same look from Mother just before she doled out the rare leg-whipping.

But then he let out a laugh. Soft and low.

Tanselle shivered.

What was so funny?

“Forgive me, I am not laughing at you.” The prince sighed, long and a touch jagged, his scalding breath lapping at her cheek, the tip of her nose, the bow of her lip. He tilted his head. There was a new warmth in his eyes, molten. “Only that, yes, I agree, one could make the sound argument that it was meant to be Blackfyre. Very well, let it be your official reasoning.”

Tanselle’s lips twisted in distaste. A dragon was a dragon was a dragon.

She had always liked word games, but she was not liking the way the prince was playing it. It was a different game here.

She ought to hold on to her nerve.

“Should my uncle and my companions and I leave for Dorne within the hour? And, Your Grace, will you remember my name even after I’ve left?”

Prince Baelor’s dimpled smile began to fade.

Tanselle pressed on, “And Ser Duncan—”

“You are cold, Tanselle,” he said, in a mild but firm tone. He finally lowered his hand, fingers skimming down her dishevelled ribbons, the knots of her sleep-warm braided twin tails. His jaw and mantle smelled of her cherrywood and dried blood oranges. “You ought to have socks on. Warmth and rest. Allow me.”

*

Tanselle blinked hard again, just to be sure of the sight before her in the gauziness of the early morning light.

Her new socks were woollen and tongue-pink.

Prince Baelor unrolled them with care, almost polite.

He patted his knee. She perched an ankle on it, cold toes shyly squeezed together.

“When did you start wanting to be immortalised in song and history?” He sounded genuinely curious despite himself.

“As long as I could remember, Your Grace. When I was little.”

“How old are you now?”

“I turn seven-and-ten in seven moons.”

Prince Baelor cupped her calf, his leathery fingers tugging the sock securely over the flute of her ankle. “And you are still certain. You are still resolute, then, despite what has happened here?”

“Well. Yeah.”

An odd twist in the prince’s mouth. “I would advise you to lay low in Dorne for a year.”

“If I may be so bold, Your Grace—”

“Are you ever anything else.” His eyes crinkled up at her, wry and warm, only a touch unsettled. He patted his knee for her other foot.

His fingertips slipped and slid past the cinched ankles of her loose linen trousers. Tanselle’s leg jolted. The prince adjusted his firm grip round her, a rough rub and slide of skin against skin, his signet ring nipping her heel, and pulled her foot back into place.

Tanselle’s cheeks were hot.

“Your Grace must hate that, what I’ve said about wanting, well, that. But I don’t think I could lay low for an entire year. Are you saying that I shouldn’t go back up over the Red Mountains?”

Prince Baelor didn’t answer for a moment. He looked almost sad, almost wistful.

“On the contrary. After a year in Dorne, I say you may go wherever you wish. The Reach and the stormlands are not the ideal options for a Dornish girl, as I am certain you already know, but Lannisport is there. Casterly Rock, Driftmark, Riverrun. Dragonstone. My son Matarys and his good-sister the Lady Kiera enjoy a lively court and love the company of singers, mummers, bards. You are of an age with them, besides.” He finished clothing her foot and laid it back, gently and properly, on the cramped bedroll. “I do know that when I was your age, I certainly would have loved to know that a prominent Dornish artist or two, more, served in the great courts of the realm.”

They sat like that for a moment. Through the folded-open window the light pouring in was slowly turning into faint gold. Poppy milk sat bitter on her tongue. She reached for a Hellholt date, black, the sweetest.

In the silence, Tanselle said, “Well, I still mean to see it through.”

“I can see that.”

Prince Baelor’s gaze flicked down to her feet, now warm and fortified. His hands were primly back on his lap. Tanselle was studiously fascinated with the way his mouth was straining against his teeth. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with something close to mild resentment, something pleased yet resigned. “So clearly, I can see that.”

Good, thought Tanselle. She sniffled, knuckled off her tear tracks with her left hand.

“I pray you won’t have too rough a time with it, sweet girl.”

fin