Halfway there, the second Sand Snake caught them.
She appeared suddenly upon a dune, mounted on a golden sand steed with a mane like fine white silk. Even ahorse, the Lady Nym looked graceful, dressed all in shimmering lilac robes and a great silk cape of cream and copper that lifted at every gust of wind, and made her look as if she might take flight. Nymeria Sand was five-and-twenty, and slender as a willow. Her straight black hair, worn in a long braid bound up with red-gold wire, made a widow’s peak above her dark eyes, just as her father’s had. With her high cheekbones, full lips, and milk-pale skin, she had all the beauty that her elder sister lacked . . . but Obara’s mother had been an Oldtown whore, whilst Nym was born from the noblest blood of old Volantis. A dozen mounted spearmen tailed her, their round shields gleaming in the sun. They followed her down the dune.
The prince had tied back the curtains on his litter, the better to enjoy the breeze blowing off the sea. Lady Nym fell in beside him, slowing her pretty golden mare to match the litter’s pace. “Well met, Uncle,” she sang out, as if it had been chance that brought her here. “May I ride with you to Sunspear?” The captain was on the opposite side of the litter from Lady Nym, yet he could hear every word she said.
“I would be glad of it,” Prince Doran replied, though he did not sound glad to the captain’s ears. “Gout and grief make poor companions on the road.” By which the captain knew him to mean that every pebble drove a spike through his swollen joints.
“The gout I cannot help,” she said, “but my father had no use for grief. Vengeance was more to his taste. Is it true that Gregor Clegane admitted slaying Elia and her children?”
“He roared out his guilt for all the court to hear,” the prince admitted. “Lord Tywin has promised us his head.”
“And a Lannister always pays his debts,” said Lady Nym, “yet it seems to me that Lord Tywin means to pay us with our own coin. I had a bird from our sweet Ser Daemon, who swears my father tickled that monster more than once as they fought. If so, Ser Gregor is as good as dead, and no thanks to Tywin Lannister.”
The prince grimaced. Whether it was from the pain of gout or his niece’s words, the captain could not say. “It may be so.”
“May be? I say ’tis.”
“Obara would have me go to war.”
Nym laughed. “Yes, she wants to set the torch to Oldtown. She hates that city as much as our little sister loves it.”
“And you?”
Nym glanced over a shoulder, to where her companions rode a dozen lengths behind. “I was abed with the Fowler twins when the word reached me,” the captain heard her say. “You know the Fowler words? Let Me Soar! That is all I ask of you. Let me soar, Uncle. I need no mighty host, only one sweet sister.”
“Obara?”
“Tyene. Obara is too loud. Tyene is so sweet and gentle that no man will suspect her. Obara would make Oldtown our father’s funeral pyre, but I am not so greedy. Four lives will suffice for me. Lord Tywin’s golden twins, as payment for Elia’s children. The old lion, for Elia herself. And last of all the little king, for my father.”
“The boy has never wronged us.”
“The boy is a bastard born of treason, incest, and adultery, if Lord Stannis can be believed.” The playful tone had vanished from her voice, and the captain found himself watching her through narrowed eyes. Her sister Obara wore her whip upon her hip and carried a spear where any man could see it. Lady Nym was no less deadly, though she kept her knives well hidden. “Only royal blood can wash out my father’s murder.”
“Oberyn died during single combat, fighting in a matter that was none of his concern. I do not call that murder.”
“Call it what you will. We sent them the finest man in Dorne, and they are sending back a bag of bones.”
“He went beyond anything I asked of him. ‘Take the measure of this boy king and his council, and make note of their strengths and weaknesses,’ I told him, on the terrace. We were eating oranges. ‘Find us friends, if there are any to be found. Learn what you can of Elia’s end, but see that you do not provoke Lord Tywin unduly,’ those were my words to him. Oberyn laughed, and said, ‘When have I provoked any man . . . unduly? You would do better to warn the Lannisters against provoking me.’ He wanted justice for Elia, but he would not wait—”
“He waited ten-and-seven years,” the Lady Nym broke in. “Were it you they’d killed, my father would have led his banners north before your corpse was cold. Were it you, the spears would be falling thick as rain upon the marches now.”
“I do not doubt it.”
“No more should you doubt this, my prince—my sisters and I shall not wait ten-and-seven years for our vengeance.” She put her spurs into the mare and she was off, galloping toward Sunspear with her tail in hot pursuit.
The prince leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes, but Hotah knew he did not sleep. He is in pain. For a moment he considered calling Maester Caleotte up to the litter, but if Prince Doran had wanted him, he would have called himself.
The shadows of the afternoon were long and dark and the sun was as red and swollen as the prince’s joints before they glimpsed the towers of Sunspear to the east. First the slender Spear Tower, a hundred-and-a-half feet tall and crowned with a spear of gilded steel that added another thirty feet to its height; then the mighty Tower of the Sun, with its dome of gold and leaded glass; last the dun-colored Sandship, looking like some monstrous dromond that had washed ashore and turned to stone.
Only three leagues of coast road divided Sunspear from the Water Gardens, yet they were two different worlds. There children frolicked naked in the sun, music played in tiled courtyards, and the air was sharp with the smell of lemons and blood oranges. Here the air smelled of dust, sweat, and smoke, and the nights were alive with the babble of voices. In place of the pink marble of the Water Gardens, Sunspear was built from mud and straw, and colored brown and dun. The ancient stronghold of House Martell stood at the easternmost end of a little jut of stone and sand, surrounded on three sides by the sea. To the west, in the shadows of Sunspear’s massive walls, mud-brick shops and windowless hovels clung to the castle like barnacles to a galley’s hull. Stables and inns and winesinks and pillow houses had grown up west of those, many enclosed by walls of their own, and yet more hovels had risen beneath those walls. And so and so and so, as the bearded priests would say. Compared to Tyrosh or Myr or Great Norvos, the shadow city was no more than a town, yet it was the nearest thing to a true city that these Dornish had.
Lady Nym’s arrival had preceded theirs by some hours, and no doubt she had warned the guards of their coming, for the Threefold Gate was open when they reached it. Only here were the gates lined up one behind the other to allow visitors to pass beneath all three of the Winding Walls directly to the Old Palace, without first making their way through miles of narrow alleys, hidden courts, and noisy bazaars.
Prince Doran had closed the draperies of his litter as soon as the Spear Tower came in sight, yet still the smallfolk shouted out to him as the litter passed. The Sand Snakes have stirred them to a boil, the captain thought uneasily. They crossed the squalor of the outer crescent and went through the second gate. Beyond, the wind stank of tar and salt water and rotting seaweed, and the crowd grew thicker with every step. “Make way for Prince Doran!” Areo Hotah boomed out, thumping the butt of his longaxe on the bricks. “Make way for the Prince of Dorne!”
“The prince is dead!” a woman shrilled behind him.
“To spears!” a man bellowed from a balcony.
“Doran!” called some highborn voice. “To the spears!”
Hotah gave up looking for the speakers; the press was too thick, and a third of them were shouting. “To spears! Vengeance for the Viper!” By the time they reached the third gate, the guards were shoving people aside to clear a path for the prince’s litter, and the crowd was throwing things. One ragged boy darted past the spearmen with a half-rotten pomegranate in one hand, but when he saw Areo H
otah in his path, with longaxe at the ready, he let the fruit fall unthrown and beat a quick retreat. Others farther back let fly with lemons, limes, and oranges, crying “War! War! To the spears!” One of the guards was hit in the eye with a lemon, and the captain himself had an orange splatter off his foot.
No answer came from within the litter. Doran Martell stayed cloaked within his silken walls until the thicker walls of the castle swallowed all of them, and the portcullis came down behind them with a rattling crunch. The sounds of shouting dwindled away slowly. Princess Arianne was waiting in the outer ward to greet her father, with half the court about her: the old blind seneschal Ricasso, Ser Manfrey Martell the castellan, young Maester Myles with his grey robes and silky perfumed beard, twoscore of Dornish knights in flowing linen of half a hundred hues. Little Myrcella Baratheon stood with her septa and Ser Arys of the Kingsguard, sweltering in his white-enameled scales.
Princess Arianne strode to the litter on snakeskin sandals laced up to her thighs. Her hair was a mane of jet-black ringlets that fell to the small of her back, and around her brow was a band of copper suns. She is still a little thing, the captain thought. Where the Sand Snakes were tall, Arianne took after her mother, who stood but five foot two. Yet beneath her jeweled girdle and loose layers of flowing purple silk and yellow samite she had a woman’s body, lush and roundly curved. “Father,” she announced as the curtains opened, “Sunspear rejoices at your return.”
“Yes, I heard the joy.” The prince smiled wanly and cupped his daughter’s cheek with a reddened, swollen hand. “You look well. Captain, be so good as to help me down from here.”
Hotah slid his longaxe into its sling across his back and gathered the prince into his arms, tenderly so as not to jar his swollen joints. Even so, Doran Martell bit back a gasp of pain.
“I have commanded the cooks to prepare a feast for this evening,” Arianne said, “with all your favorite dishes.”
“I fear I could not do them justice.” The prince glanced slowly around the yard. “I do not see Tyene.”
“She begs a private word. I sent her to the throne room to await your coming.”
The prince sighed. “Very well. Captain? The sooner I am done with this, the sooner I may rest.”
Hotah bore him up the long stone steps of the Tower of the Sun, to the great round chamber beneath the dome, where the last light of the afternoon was slanting down through thick windows of many-colored glass to dapple the pale marble with diamonds of half a hundred colors. There the third Sand Snake awaited them.
She was sitting cross-legged on a pillow beneath the raised dais where the high seats stood, but she rose as they entered, dressed in a clinging gown of pale blue samite with sleeves of Myrish lace that made her look as innocent as the Maid herself. In one hand was a piece of embroidery she had been working on, in the other a pair of golden needles. Her hair was gold as well, and her eyes were deep blue pools . . . and yet somehow they reminded the captain of her father’s eyes, though Oberyn’s had been as black as night. All of Prince Oberyn’s daughters have his viper eyes, Hotah realized suddenly. The color does not matter.
“Uncle,” said Tyene Sand, “I have been waiting for you.”
“Captain, help me to the high seat.”
There were two seats on the dais, near twin to one another, save that one had the Martell spear inlaid in gold upon its back, whilst the other bore the blazing Rhoynish sun that had flown from the masts of Nymeria’s ships when first they came to Dorne. The captain placed the prince beneath the spear and stepped away.
“Does it hurt so much?” Lady Tyene’s voice was gentle, and she looked as sweet as summer strawberries. Her mother had been a septa, and Tyene had an air of almost otherworldy innocence about her. “Is there aught that I might do to ease your pain?”
“Say what you would and let me rest. I am weary, Tyene.”
“I made this for you, Uncle.” Tyene unfolded the piece she’d been embroidering. It showed her father, Prince Oberyn, mounted on a sand steed and armored all in red, smiling. “When I finish, it is yours, to help you remember him.”
“I am not like to forget your father.”
“That is good to know. Many have wondered.”
“Lord Tywin has promised us the Mountain’s head.”
“He is so kind . . . but a headsman’s sword is no fit end for brave Ser Gregor. We have prayed so long for his death, it is only fair that he pray for it as well. I know the poison that my father used, and there is none slower or more agonizing. Soon we may hear the Mountain screaming, even here in Sunspear.”
Prince Doran sighed. “Obara cries to me for war. Nym will be content with murder. And you?”
“War,” said Tyene, “though not my sister’s war. Dornishmen fight best at home, so I say let us hone our spears and wait. When the Lannisters and the Tyrells come down on us, we shall bleed them in the passes and bury them beneath the blowing sands, as we have a hundred times before.”
“If they should come down on us.”
“Oh, but they must, or see the realm riven once more, as it was before we wed the dragons. Father told me so. He said we had the Imp to thank, for sending us Princess Myrcella. She is so pretty, don’t you think? I wish that I had curls like hers. She was made to be a queen, just like her mother.” Dimples bloomed in Tyene’s cheeks. “I would be honored to arrange the wedding, and to see to the making of the crowns as well. Trystane and Myrcella are so innocent, I thought perhaps white gold . . . with emeralds, to match Myrcella’s eyes. Oh, diamonds and pearls would serve as well, so long as the children are wed and crowned. Then we need only hail Myrcella as the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and lawful heir to the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and wait for the lions to come.”
“The lawful heir?” The prince snorted.
“She is older than her brother,” explained Tyene, as if he were some fool. “By law the Iron Throne should pass to her.”
“By Dornish law.”
“When good King Daeron wed Princess Myriah and brought us into his kingdom, it was agreed that Dornish law would always rule in Dorne. And Myrcella is in Dorne, as it happens.”
“So she is.” His tone was grudging. “Let me think on it.”
Tyene grew cross. “You think too much, Uncle.”
“Do I?”
“Father said so.”
“Oberyn thought too little.”
“Some men think because they are afraid to do.”
“There is a difference between fear and caution.”
“Oh, I must pray that I never see you frightened, Uncle. You might forget to breathe.” She raised a hand . . .
The captain brought the butt of his longaxe down upon the marble with a thump. “My lady, you presume. Step from the dais, if it please you.”
“I meant no harm, Captain. I love my uncle, as I know he loved my father.” Tyene went to one knee before the prince. “I have said all I came to say, Uncle. Forgive me if I gave offense; my heart is broken all to pieces. Do I still have your love?”
“Always.”
“Give me your blessing, then, and I shall go.”
Doran hesitated half a heartbeat before placing his hand on his niece’s head. “Be brave, child.”
“Oh, how not? I am his daughter.”
No sooner had she taken her leave than Maester Caleotte hurried to the dais. “My prince, she did not . . . here, let me see your hand.” He examined the palm first, then gently turned it upside down to sniff at the back of the prince’s fingers. “No, good. That is good. There are no scratches, so . . .”
The prince withdrew his hand. “Maester, could I trouble you for some milk of the poppy? A thimble cup will suffice.”
“The poppy. Yes, to be sure.”
“Now, I think,” Doran Martell urged gently, and Caleotte scurried to the stairs.
Outside the sun had set. The light within the dome was the blue of dusk, and all the diamonds on the floor were dying. The p
rince sat in his high seat beneath the Martell spear, his face pale with pain. After a long silence he turned to Areo Hotah. “Captain,” he said, “how loyal are my guards?”
“Loyal.” The captain did not know what else to say.
“All of them? Or some?”
“They are good men. Good Dornishmen. They will do as I command.” He thumped his longaxe on the floor. “I will bring the head of any man who would betray you.”
“I want no heads. I want obedience.”
“You have it.” Serve. Obey. Protect. Simple vows for a simple man. “How many men are needed?”
“I will leave that for you to decide. It may be that a few good men will serve us better than a score. I want this done as quickly and as quietly as possible, with no blood spilled.”
“Quick and quiet and bloodless, aye. What is your command?”
“You will find my brother’s daughters, take them into custody, and confine them in the cells atop the Spear Tower.”
“The Sand Snakes?” The captain’s throat was dry. “All . . . all eight, my prince? The little ones, also?”
The prince considered. “Ellaria’s girls are too young to be a danger, but there are those who might seek to use them against me. It would be best to keep them safe in hand. Yes, the little ones as well . . . but first secure Tyene, Nymeria, and Obara.”
“As my prince commands.” His heart was troubled. My little princess will mislike this. “What of Sarella? She is a woman grown, almost twenty.”
“Unless she returns to Dorne, there’s naught I can do about Sarella save pray that she shows more sense than her sisters. Leave her to her . . . game. Gather up the others. I shall not sleep until I know that they are safe and under guard.”
“It will be done.” The captain hesitated. “When this is known in the streets, the common folk will howl.”
“All Dorne will howl,” said Doran Martell in a tired voice. “I only pray Lord Tywin hears them in King’s Landing, so he might know what a loyal friend he has in Sunspear.”
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