Chapter 230: Daenerys After Drinking
"His Grace has left instructions that you're to be shown in directly," Mundo said.
"Your Grace?" Ian pushed open the door and stepped inside. He crossed through the empty entrance hall and stopped.
What exactly am I looking at.
"Ian, give me just a moment," Daenerys's voice came from behind the curtain.
The curtain was the traditional Ghiscari style — heavy tasseled fabric — and the steam from the bath made the air thick and warm. Ian could see more than he had any particular intention of seeing.
"Of course." He turned around without lingering, walked back to the entrance hall, and found a chair.
Once she heard him settle, Daenerys climbed out of the bath. The water had been hot — her skin was flushed from it. Two handmaids moved in immediately, one working scented oil into her skin with practiced efficiency, the other combing out her silver hair until it caught the light like silk thread.
When she came through to the entrance hall a few minutes later she was dressed, composed, and only slightly pink in the face — though whether that was from the bath or something else was difficult to say.
"I'm sorry, Ian. I didn't expect you to arrive so quickly."
"I came the moment your messenger reached me." I'm certainly not going to admit I ran into him two corridors away.
"You don't have to do that," the young queen said, with a small smile.
"I heard you were upset earlier."
"I was, when I first got the news." Daenerys nodded, then added quickly, as though worried about being misread: "But then I remembered what you'd said before. I know you must have your reasons — even if I still don't entirely understand them."
Ian registered the relief that came with that. His earlier groundwork had held. He'd planted the idea of abolition as an eventual goal before she'd had any reason to ask about it — which meant that when she'd stumbled onto the reality of the Worm River slave operation, her first instinct had been to look for his reasoning rather than react to the surface of it. Without that preparation, the discovery would have been a much harder conversation.
"I can answer your questions," Ian said, glancing at the two handmaids standing near Daenerys. "You can go."
"Yes, my lord." They left without hesitation.
Ian had bought them for Daenerys back in Tyrosh. In their order of obedience, Ian ranked above Daenerys — a detail he'd arranged deliberately and quietly. He wasn't dismissing them for privacy in any personal sense. He was dismissing them because one of them was almost certainly Daenerys's source for whatever she'd heard, and having them out of the room would make it easier for his people to work out which one it was.
"What we're about to discuss stays between us," Ian said, keeping his tone easy. "Not even the people closest to us."
Daenerys nodded seriously. "Understood. So tell me — what is this Five Orders system actually for?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. I'm giving slaves a path to advancement — a way to move upward through the ranks until they reach something that, in practice, functions like free citizenship. Even nobility, at the top end. It's the most workable way I've found to move toward freedom without alarming every other city in Slaver's Bay into moving against us."
"But they're still slaves," Daenerys said, frowning.
"They are," Ian said, without argument. "But now they're working for us, under conditions we control."
"So we've become the new masters. Just kinder ones."
"Let me ask you something. Would you have them beaten, tortured, or killed without cause?"
"Absolutely not." No hesitation.
I would, when necessary. There's no running an operation this size without it. But that's not the point of this conversation.
"Would you leave them without food or shelter?"
"No."
"Would you give them work that corresponds to what they're capable of, and treat the results accordingly?"
Daenerys considered it. "Yes. I think I would."
"Then in every meaningful sense, they're as free as most free people in this world ever get," Ian said. "That's what freedom actually looks like for the common man, Daenerys. Food, shelter, fair treatment, a path forward. They have all of that."
She was quiet for a moment, thinking it through. Then, slowly: "Perhaps you're right. For them, right now — this may be the best available outcome."
"Good. Was there anything else? I have a considerable amount of work waiting—"
"Yes." Daenerys's tone shifted. She looked at him directly, expression serious. "There is something else. Something important."
Ian ran through his mental inventory of problems and came up empty. "What is it?"
"Us."
Ian felt the familiar sensation of a situation developing in a direction he hadn't fully accounted for. "Us."
"I asked Lord Grafson a question earlier."
Darren. Ian kept his face neutral. Of all the people in his service, Darren and Dorian were the most trustworthy among the Westerosi — reliable, loyal, and generally careful about what they said in front of people they shouldn't say things in front of. Generally.
"He was evasive about it. I could tell he didn't want to answer. So I exercised my authority as Queen and told him he didn't have a choice."
"What was the question?"
"Why haven't you proposed to me?"
Ian closed his eyes briefly. I knew this conversation was coming. I just didn't think it would arrive like this.
"And he gave you an answer."
Whatever Darren told her, it wasn't the real answer. He doesn't know the real answer.
"He said a queen's marriage is a political asset. That it could secure the support of a major house for the invasion of Westeros." Daenerys's voice sharpened. "That you've been planning to marry me off to a Dornishman. To secure the Martells."
"I swear that has never been my intention," Ian said flatly.
"But it's a reasonable strategy, isn't it?" She pressed forward. "Landing in Dorne, the Martells' cooperation — it makes sense. Doesn't it?"
"I've told you before. We don't need anyone's cooperation. I will put you on the Iron Throne without trading you to get there."
"Then why?" She took a step toward him. "If Darren's answer is wrong, give me the right one."
"You're too young."
Ian said it simply. It was, unusually for him, the honest answer.
"You seem to have forgotten," Daenerys said, advancing again, "that I was supposed to marry Khal Drogo six months ago. I'm old enough." Another step forward, and Ian found himself backing up until the wall stopped him. "How much have you had to drink?"
It wasn't until the smell reached him — warm and unmistakably wine-soaked — that he understood where her courage was coming from tonight.
Daenerys didn't answer.
What happened next was the reminder that beneath the uncertainty and the youth and the careful lessons Ian had been teaching her, there was still a Targaryen — and Targaryens, when they decided to do something, did it without much concern for the consequences.
[Goal Tracker]
PS 500 → 1 Bonus Chapter
Reviews 10 → 1 Bonus Chapter
If you enjoyed it, consider a review.
P1treon Soulforger has 20+advance chapters