297 AC
It was a strange thing not to wake up alone.
Unlike other highborn women, Barbrey Dustin was not in the habit of keeping bedmaids, nor had she taken a lover, not since Willam. Willam Dustin knew her for Brandon Stark's cast-off, and loved her anyway. In her own way, she loved him just as fiercely, keeping the bed she shared with him all those years ago empty, until now.
Ellaria Sand arched her back like a cat and stretched, making the featherbed shift beneath her weight. "Domeric told it true. I don't think I've ever slept better. In the North, summer nights are cool and dry."
On Barbrey's other side, a prince of Dorne began to stir. He mumbled something unintelligible, which was understandable. They'd had a lot to drink last night.
The moon had waxed and waned and waxed again while the Dornish guested under her roof. They ate hot Dornish food while Domeric filled her halls with song and trained with the Sand Snakes in her yard, waiting for Mordaena's time to come.
"I've never been south of the Neck," Barbrey admitted.
"Why not fly south for winter, as the birds do?" Ellaria asked. "We should be happy to have you."
"I'll consider it, and your other proposal as well," Barbrey said. "In all my life, only two men have ever made me happy."
Oberyn turned over. There was a lazy smile on his face. Rough with sleep, and puffy from drinking, he did not look half so handsome as he did last night, but that was the way of things, especially at their age. "Does that mean I am the third?" he asked.
Ellaria looked outraged. "I did most of the work!"
"Mayhaps two of you together count as one," Barbrey allowed. Her tone turned serious. "You know I am too old to give you children. There was Willam, and Domeric, the son I should've had. If trueborn sons are what you desire, then you had best look elsewhere."
"Daughters I have in plenty," Oberyn pointed out. He sat up in bed and let the coverlet fall away. The man looked paler in the morning light and had half a hundred scars. "And I've never troubled myself overmuch about what side of the blanket they were born on. Ellaria can handle the children. Didn't you say you wanted Domeric to inherit?"
"I did." Barbrey disentangled herself from Ellaria and Oberyn, and rose from the bed. She wrapped a bedrobe around herself and threw open the shutters of her window. A bracing chill filled the room, making her Dornish bedmates retreat beneath the coverlet. "The Dustins are extinct in the male line. I checked. But there are a few distant cousins about whose mothers were born Dustins. They might dispute Domeric's right, and Lord Stark might be inclined to side with them. But if a Prince of Dorne were backing his claim..."
"Say no more," Oberyn said. "If we wed, I could lend my voice to yours. There's no need for trueborn children, not at our age. Your sweet nephew has done much to enrich this place, I say. Why should he not have it after you? It's the least I could do for a lad who pleases mine own paramour and daughters more than any other man could."
"It's true!" Ellaria added. She joined Barbrey on her feet, shivering as she stepped on the cold rushes. "He writes songs just to please us, and he's been helping Elia with her jousting."
"Lady Lance," Barbrey said fondly. "A cute girl, for all her fire. Domeric offered to take her as a squire, you know. Someone of his station could easily have two. He has this whole plan to shame tourneys into letting her enter the lists."
"My daughter would be thrilled!" Ellaria cried.
"And speaking of daughters, it seems we are not the only two who might wed. Obara has taken a fancy to Jack Clarke," Oberyn said. Last and laziest, he rose as well, and started searching for something to wear among the garments they'd discarded last night in their passion.
"Obara and Jack-o-nose?" Barbrey could hardly believe her ears. That greasy, bow-legged sinner with the great beak? "Their children will be hideous!" she declared. All three of them laughed.
"Indeed," Oberyn continued. "It might be two of my daughters riding with Domeric. Poor Tyene has had her hopes dashed, I fear."
Barbrey shook her head. "Domeric has always been terribly pious, ever since he was a boy. He'd play for me in the godswood sometimes, but he was really playing for the gods. He told me one time they inspired him. A girl with a septa for a mother would have no chance at all."
"Lady Nym has some wits about her, at least," Ellaria Sand pointed out. "She approached Mordaena respectfully, which was the wiser course. He would never bed another woman save with her permission. She even offered to plant a weirwood sapling at Sunspear. Might be she'll succeed where Tyene failed." Ellaria took her Barbrey's hands in hers. "I think it was always meant to be. You understood how it was with Oberyn and me, because of Domeric and Mordaena."
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"Aye, that's so," Barbrey agreed. "And Oberyn is the only husband I'm like to have who would support Domeric's claim. Now come along, you two, let's get dressed. Feasts and frolicks are very fine, but I have some ruling to do today."
***
After breaking her fast, Barbrey spent the morning going over accounts with her steward, Gregor. It was a tedium she didn't relish. What was more, her incomes had tripled in the last year, but expenses had actually gone down. Whatever was she to do?
Domeric joined her some time later, still sweaty from the yard, their Dornish guests about him. "Working hard or hardly working, Auntie?"
She looked up from her column of figures. "I'd put the coin to work, if I may. If you suddenly had thousands of dragons you didn't expect to have, what would you do with them, dear boy?"
He wiped his forehead with a cloth Nymeria Sand handed him, and his brow furrowed in thought. "Oh, I don't know. Build a new granary or two and fill it up? Winter is coming, as our beloved overlords like to say."
"Done already, Dom. That's obvious. What else?"
Her nephew considered a moment. "Might be you could do something big. Rebuild Barrow Hall in stone, cobble the streets in Barrowton, things like that. The Bolton Bags are attracting all sorts of people to the town, but there really isn't more work to be had than there was. The Braavosi masters we employ handle all of that. Why not put the extra people to work so they don't get up to mischief?"
There was sense in what he said. Yes, Domeric had always been a sensible boy. They probably needed some stonemasons from Torrhen's Square, so Barbrey was about to draft a letter when one of her bailiffs begged admittance.
"Enter," she said.
He bowed gravely. "My lady, there has been a murder, a stabbing in one of the taverns near the docks."
She sighed tiredly. Another one? "Domeric, be a good lad and fetch my longaxe, won't you?"
"Make sure to do it before the heart tree!" he called over his shoulder.
Honestly, that boy. Doing justice before the gods was his newest notion, but Barbrey was of a mind to indulge him. She had her guards bring the prisoner to the godswood. Domeric and the Dornish guests were already waiting for her.
"Right, there were witnesses?" Barbrey asked. Her man-at-arms nodded.
"Mercy, milady!" the prisoner wailed. He rattled off explanations and excuses.
Barbrey was writing that letter to Torrhen's Square in her head and not listening particularly closely. The prisoner had hair the color of straw and was a sailor out of Lannisport. The man he stabbed was cheating him at dice, or so he claimed.
Let's get this over with. She held out her hand. "Axe." Domeric handed her her weapon.
Oberyn raised an eyebrow. "You do it yourself?" he asked in interest.
"That's the way of it in the North, my prince," she answered, putting on the grave mask of the hard lady. If anything, that seemed to fascinate her lover more. "In the name of Robert of the house Baratheon, first of his name, I, Barbrey Dustin, Lady of Barrowton, sentence you to die."
Her guards forced the murderer to his knees and bent him over a tree stump. Barbrey raised her axe and came down hard. After doing this for over a decade, she only needed a single stroke.
Even as the head was rolling, her nephew was moving. Domeric had a length of hempen rope coiled in his hands. "Auntie, can I string him up now, as I said? He needs to be hung by his heels so the criminal's blood can feed the gods."
She waved her hand flippantly in easy assent. Another queer notion of his, but then again, the heart tree did look a little bigger and healthier than the last time she'd done this. Maybe there was sense to it.
A few days later, Mordaena's time came, and she delivered a healthy baby girl. In the North, such a girl would have the name Snow, but Braavosi customs did not deny names to the baseborn, so long as the head of the family approved. Alandro Solel, Mordaena's father, was more than happy to accept the girl as a Solel. Thus, Yesenys Solel joined their family.