The children were playing in the pools again.
Doran Martell watched them from the shade of the orange trees, as he did every afternoon. Highborn and lowborn, sons of lords and daughters of fishermen, all of them brown and naked and shrieking, splashing through the shallow marble pools of the Water Gardens while the sea wind came in off the bay and set the fountains singing. His grandmother's grandmother had built this place for children. Every child in Dorne was welcome here. It was, Doran sometimes thought, the only thing his house had ever made that the rest of the world had not found some way to break.
His legs ached. They always ached. The gout had taken his feet years ago, and his knees soon after, and now he sat in a chair of ebony and ivory with great wheels at its sides, a coverlet of soft wool across his swollen joints, and watched the world from a distance. His captain of guards stood behind him, silent as a statue, his longaxe resting on the tiles. A servant had brought a dish of blood oranges and set it on the little table at his elbow.
Doran did not eat them. He only looked at them, the way he looked at most things.
Patience. That was what the world said about Doran Martell, when it said anything at all. The Prince of Dorne was patient. The Prince of Dorne was cautious. The Prince of Dorne was a fat, sick, gouty old man who sat in his gardens and watched children play and did nothing—nothing—while the rest of the realm laughed at him. His own brother said it to his face. His own daughter said it behind his back.
They were not wrong.
He had been patient for a very long time.
He could not remember, anymore, when the insults had begun. Perhaps they had always been there. Dorne had come to the Iron Throne not by conquest, as the other six kingdoms had, but by marriage—by choice, unbowed and unbent—and the rest of Westeros had never quite forgiven it. They called the Dornish snakes. They called them sand-eaters and poisoners and lust-mad savages. They smiled at Dornish lords in the halls of the Red Keep and laughed at them behind their hands.
Doran had grown up with that laughter. He had learned to bear it.
He had not learned to bear Tywin Lannister.
His mother had gone to Casterly Rock when Doran was a boy, with Elia and Oberyn in tow, to seek a match. She had been a proud woman, his mother. She had thought to wed Elia to Tywin's son Jaime, and perhaps Oberyn to the daughter. Two great houses, west and south, bound together, a counterweight to the Reach.
And Tywin Lannister had looked at Elia—sweet, gentle, sickly Elia, the kindest soul Doran had ever known—and offered her his dwarf.
Not Jaime. Not his heir, not his golden son. The dwarf. The misshapen creature that had killed his wife in its birthing, that he could not bear to look at, that he would have drowned at birth had the law allowed it. He had offered that to the Princess of Dorne for her daughter, and called it a match, and smiled his cold thin smile, and Doran's mother had taken her children and gone home and never spoken his name again.
Doran had been young. He had been angry. He had sworn, in the privacy of his own heart, that one day the Lannisters would pay for that insult.
He had not known, then, how small an insult it was. How much worse was coming.
Elia had married Rhaegar Targaryen.
It had seemed, for a little while, like the gods' own answer to Tywin Lannister. The Prince of Dragonstone, the heir to the Iron Throne, the most beautiful man in the Seven Kingdoms—and he had chosen Elia. Not Tywin's daughter. Not any of the great ladies of the great houses. A Dornish princess, sickly and slight, whom the rest of the realm had looked down on all her life. Doran had stood in the sept at her wedding and watched his sister smile, and thought: at last. At last.
She had borne Rhaegar two children. A girl, Rhaenys, dark-haired and laughing like her mother. A boy, Aegon, silver-haired like his father. A prince for the Iron Throne with Dornish blood in his veins. Dorne had been a rising sun. For one brief, golden moment, it had seemed as though the old wounds might finally heal.
And then Rhaegar had ridden off with Lyanna Stark.
He had crowned her at Harrenhal, in front of the whole realm, while his own wife sat beside him. He had stolen her away a year later—a girl already promised to another man—and hidden her in some tower in the south, and left Elia behind in King's Landing with his mad father and his two small children, to bear the shame of it alone. And when the realm rose up in fury, and Robert Baratheon came for his stolen bride with half the kingdom at his back, Rhaegar had gone out to meet him at the Trident, and died there, in the middle of a river, with his rubies scattering into the water.
He had not even had the decency to die for Elia. He had died for the Stark girl.
And Elia had paid for it.
Doran did not let himself think about the sack of King's Landing very often. He had thought about it every day for a year afterwards, and it had nearly destroyed him, and so he had learned not to.
But he thought about it now. He made himself.
Tywin Lannister had waited. That was the first thing. He had sat in the west with his host of twelve thousand and done nothing, through the whole of the rebellion, while better men bled. He had waited until the Trident was fought and Rhaegar was dead and the war was decided. And then he had marched to King's Landing, and the Mad King had opened his gates to him, believing him a friend.
And Tywin's men had sacked the city.
Gregor Clegane had found Elia in Maegor's Holdfast. Tywin's dog. His great hulking mad hound of a knight, that he kept on a short chain in the west and let loose when he wanted something done that no decent man would do. Gregor Clegane had found Elia's son first, and dashed his head against a wall in front of her. And then he had raped her, with her son's blood on his hands, and then he had killed her. Another of Tywin's men had found Rhaenys hiding under her father's bed, and stabbed her again and again, half a hundred times, a little girl of three.
And Tywin Lannister had wrapped their bodies in crimson Lannister cloaks, and laid them at the foot of the Iron Throne, as a gift for the new king.
And Robert Baratheon had looked at them, and accepted them.
That was the thing Doran could not forgive. Of all of it, that was the thing. Tywin was a monster; Doran had known that since he was a boy. Gregor Clegane was a beast; no one had ever thought otherwise. But Robert had been the hero of the rebellion. The man who had risen up against the Mad King's cruelty. The champion of justice, the avenger of the Starks, the man who would make the realm clean again.
And he had looked at the broken bodies of two small children and their mother, and seen nothing but dead dragons. He had not punished Tywin. He had not punished Clegane. He had not even rebuked them. He had thanked them. He had taken Tywin's daughter for his queen and Tywin's gold for his treasury, and he had never once, in fifteen years, spoken Elia's name.
Elia had done nothing. Her children had done nothing. They had not ridden off with Lyanna Stark. They had not burned anyone alive in the throne room. They were not mad. They were Dornish—a gentle, sickly woman and two small children, who had never harmed a soul in their lives—and they had paid for every Targaryen sin since the Conquest, and the King of the Seven Kingdoms had looked at their bodies and called it justice.
Doran had not ridden to war. He had wanted to. His brother had begged him to. Half of Dorne had sharpened its spears. But Doran had looked at the board, and seen what the war would cost, and how it would end. The Lannisters and the Baratheons and the Starks and the Tullys and the Arryns, all together, against Dorne alone. He had seen his people dying in the sand. He had seen the Water Gardens burning.
So he had bent his knee to the Usurper. He had swallowed his sister's murder like a cup of poison. And he had waited.
He had not been idle. That was what none of them understood. Not his brother, not his daughter, not the laughing lords of the Red Keep. Patience was not idleness. Patience was a long, slow knife, sharpened in the dark.
The children had fled. Rhaegar's brother Viserys, and his newborn sister, Daenerys—born on Dragonstone in a storm, in the last days of the war, as their mother died. A loyal old knight had carried them across the narrow sea to Braavos. Ser Willem Darry, master-at-arms of the Red Keep under the Mad King, who had served three Targaryens and would not abandon the last two.
Doran had found him. It had taken years, and a great deal of gold, and a great many quiet men. But he had found him, in a house with a red door in Braavos, with a lemon tree in the garden. And he had sent a man to that house, with a letter, and a proposal.
A marriage. Doran's daughter Arianne, his heir, the future Princess of Dorne, to Viserys Targaryen, the rightful king. Dorne would take up the Targaryen cause. Dorne would raise its spears. And when the dragon came home, it would come home with the sun at its side, and Doran would finally have his justice.
Willem Darry had signed it. In secret, in that house with the red door. Doran had the pact still, locked in a chest in his solar, that no one in the world but he and his brother had ever seen.
And then Willem Darry had died.
He had been an old man, and sick, and he had died slowly and badly in that house in Braavos, and when he was gone, the children had been turned out into the streets. No money. No friends. No protector. A boy of thirteen and a little girl of five, wandering from city to city across the Free Cities, sleeping in doorways, living on scraps, selling their mother's crown for bread. Doran's men had lost them for nearly a year.
When they found them again, they were in Pentos. In the house of a fat merchant prince called Illyrio Mopatis, who had taken them in and fed them and clothed them and kept them, for reasons of his own.
Doran had not liked it. He did not trust men who did kindnesses without reasons. But he had watched, and waited, and let it be. The magister was keeping them safe, and fed, and alive. That was enough, for now. Doran could wait. He had always been able to wait. Viserys was growing. Arianne was growing. The pact was still signed. One day, when the time was right, the dragon would come home with the sun at its side.
He had believed that for years.
And then the Usurper's son had been born.
Doran had not thought much of it, at first. Royal children were born and royal children died. But this one had lived. And grown. And grown strong. And the reports had begun to come in from King's Landing, from the quiet men Doran kept there in the kitchens and the stables and the gold cloaks, and every one of them had been worse than the last.
The boy was clever. The boy was strong. The boy was courteous and patient and beloved by the smallfolk. The boy had found out Petyr Baelish when no one else in the realm had suspected him, and hanged him from the walls of the Red Keep. The boy had put forty squires in the mud and handed a bunch of roses to the Tyrell girl—the Tyrell girl, whose eldest brother Oberyn had crippled in the lists years ago, and whose house had hated Dorne for a thousand years—before the whole realm, and the whole realm had understood exactly what it meant. The crown and the Reach, bound together. Highgarden's swords and Highgarden's gold, at the Usurper's back, on Dorne's very border.
The boy had gone to the Iron Islands, and split them in two without spilling a drop of blood.
And Robert Baratheon—the drunken fool who should have eaten and whored himself into his grave by now—Robert Baratheon was alive. Strong. Fighting fit. Training his son in the yard every week, and swinging his hammer at Pyke, and showing no sign at all of the rot that every man in Westeros had been waiting for since the day he was crowned.
And the boy had three siblings. Three more black-haired heirs.
Doran sat in his chair beneath the orange trees, and looked at the blood oranges on the dish at his elbow, and understood something he had been refusing to understand for a long time.
The window is closing.
Every year that passed, the Usurper's dynasty grew stronger. Every year, the boy grew older and cleverer and more beloved. Every year, the great houses bound themselves tighter to the Iron Throne—the Lannisters by blood, the Tyrells by marriage, the Starks by friendship, the Arryns by gratitude. Every year, the memory of the dragons faded, and the memory of Elia faded with it, and the realm forgot that there had ever been anything but stags on the throne.
And worst of all—the very worst of all—the heir to that throne was the son of Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister.
The son of the man who had accepted Elia's murdered body as a gift. And the grandson of the man who had given it.
The blood of both houses that had destroyed his sister, mingled together in one boy, and set on the Iron Throne forever.
A Mutt to rule the Iron Throne and Westeros for years to come.
Doran did not think he could bear it.
The letter had come that morning.
He took it out now, from the folds of his robe, and unrolled it on his swollen knee, and read it again. It was short. His man in Pentos was not a man of many words.
The magister has lost the dragons.
Twelve nights past, the prince and princess slipped from his manse after dark and took ship in the harbour. A Volantene galley, bound east. With them went a woman of the red god—a priestess, tall, copper-haired, with a great ruby at her throat. She has been at the magister's house a month, they say. The prince is besotted. The princess follows her brother.
The magister is beside himself. He has sent men after them. They will not find them in time. The ship is three days gone and the winds were fair.
They say in the market that the priestess has seen the prince in her fires, crowned upon the Iron Throne.
Doran read it three times. Then he rolled it up, very slowly, and held it in his lap, and looked out across the pools at the children playing in the sun.
Fifteen years.
Fifteen years he had waited. Fifteen years he had been patient, and cautious, and careful. He had swallowed every insult and every slight. He had bent his knee to the man who had thanked Tywin Lannister for his sister's corpse. He had watched his brother rage and his daughter despise him and his people mutter that their prince was a coward and a cripple. He had told himself it was wisdom. He had told himself that when the time came, he would be ready.
And while he waited, the Usurper's dynasty had grown strong as an oak. And now the last two dragons in the world had slipped through his fingers into the arms of some foreign witch, while a fat merchant in Pentos wrung his hands.
Doran Martell felt something move in his chest. Something old and deep and very, very hot, that he had kept banked beneath the ashes for fifteen years.
No, he thought. No more.
He was done waiting. He was done sitting in his gardens and watching. He was done reacting to every move the Usurper's brat made, a season late and a dragon short. He was done.
"Areo," he said.
His captain of guards stepped forward. "My prince."
"Send for my brother. He's at Sunspear. Tell him to come at once, tonight, and tell him I don't care if he has to kill a horse to do it." Doran paused. "And send for my daughter."
Hotah's eyes flickered, very slightly. In all his years of service, Doran did not think he had ever heard his prince say at once about anything.
"My prince," he said, and went.
Oberyn came at midnight, on a horse lathered white, with his long dark hair wild from the ride and a spear in his fist and his eyes blazing like a man who had spent the whole of the journey hoping for a war.
He found Doran where Hotah had left him, beneath the orange trees, alone in the dark. The children had long since gone to bed. The pools were black and still, and the stars were reflected in them. Doran had not moved in six hours.
"Brother." Oberyn came to a halt before the chair, breathing hard. "Hotah said it was urgent. Hotah has never once in his life said anything was urgent. What is it? Is it your legs? Are you dying?"
"No."
"Then what—"
Doran held out the letter.
Oberyn took it, and read it by the light of the lantern Hotah held. Doran watched his brother's face as he did. The Red Viper. The most dangerous man in Dorne, perhaps in all of Westeros. A man who had begged him, on his knees, fifteen years ago, to go to war for Elia's sake. Who had begged him every year since. Who had never once forgiven him for saying no.
When Oberyn looked up, his face was very still.
"So," he said softly. "The dragons have flown. And you've called me here at midnight to tell me that we're going to wait a little longer."
"No," said Doran Martell. "I've called you here to tell you that we're not."
Oberyn went perfectly, absolutely still.
"I want you to go to Volantis," Doran said. "Tomorrow. Take whatever men you need. Find Viserys Targaryen, and find his priestess, and find out what she wants. And then remind the boy that he has a promise to keep. Arianne will marry him. The pact will be honoured. Dorne will stand with the dragon." He looked up at his brother, and for the first time in fifteen years, he did not hide what was in his eyes. "And when the dragon comes home, Oberyn, Robert Baratheon will die. Tywin Lannister will die. And Gregor Clegane will die. Slowly. I want you to see to that one yourself."
For a long moment, Oberyn did not speak. Then his lips parted, and he let out a breath that sounded as though he had been holding it for fifteen years.
"And the priestess?" he said at last, very quietly. "The red woman? You'd make common cause with some foreign god's witch, brother? You, who won't even pray to the Seven unless it's raining?"
Doran looked at the dark water of the pools, and the stars trembling in it.
"I don't care what god she prays to," he said. "I don't care if she prays to the Stranger himself. If her god wants Robert Baratheon dead and the Lannisters in the dirt, then her god and I want the same thing, and I will light a candle to him every night for the rest of my life."
He turned back to his brother.
"Elia waited fifteen years for justice, Oberyn. She's not waiting one day more."
And Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne, slowly sank to one knee before his brother's chair in the dark beneath the orange trees, and bowed his head, and laughed—a low, soft, terrible laugh, like a blade coming out of its sheath.
"At last," he said. "Gods, brother. At last."