Chapter Text
His brother is smiling.
Enjolras has come to dread that look. The cool curve of his brother's lips has always been an ill omen.
He has dreamt of running away a thousand times in his eighteen years. Yet every time he considers it, he remembers a little brick house, a red door, and a woman’s voice, soft and sad.
You must look after each other.
When he was a child, he believed that the voice was his mother’s. Now he knows that she died in her bed the night he was born, and the words cannot be hers. But he holds to them anyway.
Looking after Montparnasse means pulling him out of taverns before he gets knifed for any number of reasons. It means following him from city to city in search of an army they cannot afford to raise. It means enduring the frequent storms of his rages, setting himself in his brother’s path so that his ire does not fall upon servants or strangers.
It is true that Montparnasse is the elder, with the rightful claim to the throne. But he has less the look of a Targaryen—his hair is too dark, a bronze that fades to brown in the sunless rainy season, though his eyes are violet like the portraits of their father. Rather, it is Enjolras whose pale blond hair favors their bloodline. Montparnasse has always resented him, for his looks and for killing their mother at his birth.
When Enjolras was seven years old, a man suggested that Montparnasse was a bastard, and Enjolras the true heir. Enjolras had watched his brother carve out the man's tongue for the insult.
It was foolish and hot-headed, and only lent more credence to the rumors. He would have done better to ignore it, or to make light of the insult, but Montparnasse is not wise. It pains Enjolras to admit it, even to himself, but it is the truth.
And now Montparnasse is smiling, and Enjolras is afraid. The dinner laid out on the table before them had been enough to whet his appetite only a moment ago, but now it is all he can do to reach for a stuffed fig. Montparnasse will notice if he does not eat.
So he sits, and sips his wine, and waits for his brother to tell him his news. He will not have to wait long—Montparnasse is as patient as he is wise.
Montparnasse raises his glass as though he means to give a toast, but he only turns the goblet in the light, admiring the ruby color of the wine. "I have made you a suitable match," he says. He might have been commenting on the vintage, for all the emotion he shows.
Enjolras stills. "Have you indeed?" He had expected something worse—still expects worse. He has never had an interest in marriage, as his tastes do not run towards women, but a spark of hope lights in his chest. If the match is suitable, then she must have land somewhere, an inheritance of her own. Enjolras does not care if she lives in a palace or a hovel, so long as it means he will be far from here.
Montparnasse gives him a scolding look. "I have done so much for you, to arrange this match. Do you not care to know to whom you are promised?"
Enjolras controls his temper, knowing now that he will not have to play his brother's games for much longer. "To whom am I promised, brother?" he asks, skirting the edge of mockery.
His smile broadens, turns feral. "You are to marry a Dothraki khal."
"I see," Enjolras says evenly.
"Are you not pleased?" Montparnasse continues, gesturing with the wine-glass. A few drops splash over the rim onto the white linen of the tablecloth—this is not his first cup of wine tonight. "You see how well your brother cares for you. Knowing that you do not favor women, I have made a more fitting arrangement.”
“You are very kind.”
He acknowledges the praise with a careless wave of his hand. “It is all for the better. After all, I cannot have you fathering a Targaryen line of your own, to muddle the succession. Not that it would have been likely, given your preferences, but it is better knowing that any child you father would be a bastard.”
It is shrewd thinking, and Enjolras wonders uncharitably who had put the idea in his head. But he says nothing.
“He is eager, this khal,” Montparnasse continues. “He says he has never fucked a prince before."
Enjolras keeps his face carefully blank; he will pay if he flinches.
"And he doubled his price when I said you were a virgin."
That only means that the khal offered him a price, and Montparnasse simply demanded twice the sum. Yet the khal's acceptance of the terms does not mean anything good for Enjolras. He cannot help but wonder what price he has commanded. Perhaps it is enough to buy Montparnasse the army he has sought for so long. Perhaps, at long last, he will be satisfied.
He would like to be gone from here, to be far away from his brother. But what sort of a man is this khal? Who would pay such a monstrous sum for the privilege of being the first to lie with him?
"What does he look like?" Enjolras asks, as though it is an idle curiosity.
"It does not matter what he looks like," Montparnasse hisses, and Enjolras knows that his brother has never met the man who bought him, only his servants and interpreters. "You will please him all the same."
"As you say."
He must have made some mistake. Perhaps, in struggling to keep his voice light, he has not sounded fearful enough, and Montparnasse senses the lie. He surges up out of his seat, sending dishes clattering to the floor as he reaches out to seize Enjolras' arm.
"You will please him," he repeats, and his fingertips dig painfully into the hollow of Enjolras’ wrist. "If he returns you to me, he will expect his gifts returned as well, and I mean to buy an army with his gold. I will be displeased if he returns you, do you understand?"
Enjolras is more than familiar with the consequences of his brother’s displeasure. He nods, his jaw clenched tight against the urge to pull away. Resistance only makes matters worse; he knows this.
Montparnasse releases him. He sits back down, ignoring the figs now scattered across the table, and flicks a hand in the direction of a servant, who steps forward to pour him a new glass of wine.
Enjolras lowers his hands to his lap, where he can rub the ache out of his wrist unnoticed. "When will he send for me?" he asks.
"In the morning."
“Tomorrow?” He cannot quite keep the shock from his voice. Montparnasse must have been hiding this arrangement for a long time. Even if Enjolras had hoped to escape, he could not manage it in the few hours that remain. He casts about for an excuse. "Am I to leave without making my farewells to Magister LaMarque? Without thanking him for the hospitality he has shown us these last six years? He will be back in a week. Surely the khal could wait that long."
"A khal does not wait for anyone, or anything. I will convey your sentiments to the magister. By the time he returns from the city, you will be leagues away, already across the Rhoyne."
The thought does not comfort Enjolras, but it was not intended to. "Tell me more about the khal," he says instead. "Does he speak the Common Tongue?"
Montparnasse lifts one shoulder in a lazy shrug. "I doubt it. The horselords prefer their own barbaric tongue to anything civilized. Even the old man he sent to speak for him had a dreadful accent. I could barely understand a word he said."
The first real fear seizes Enjolras as he realizes there may be no one in the whole khalasar who can understand him. "At least send a servant with me, one who speaks Dothraki. As a gift," he pleads.
"The servants are not mine to send. Only you."
Magister LaMarque would not begrudge him a servant. He would send an interpreter with Enjolras, to ease his first days in the khalasar, and probably a small retinue of other servants as well. Out of pride, at least, if not affection. It would not do to send his ward away with nothing.
But then, the magister has always favored him, and Montparnasse knows it. He must have arranged all of this to take place while LaMarque was away from the city, knowing that he would make objections if he were here.
Enjolras sees now that it was unwise to plead with Montparnasse for his own sake. He cares nothing for Enjolras’ comfort, only for what he can gain from this match. With such matters in mind, Enjolras tries once more. "How am I meant to please him if I cannot understand what he wants of me?"
Montparnasse gives him a look of fond contempt. "These savages are simple in their desires. I should not have to explain that to you. You are untried, but I know you are not ignorant. In any case, I imagine the khal has better uses for your mouth than speech." He rises from the table, carrying his cup of wine with him. "Sleep well, little brother. You have an important day ahead of you."
Enjolras lies awake in the darkness of his room for what feels like hours. The warm salt breeze from the Narrow Sea billows the gauzy curtains, and he wonders idly what it will be like, to feel a breeze off the grasslands instead. Tomorrow night, he will sleep in a khal’s tent, in a khal’s bed...
His stomach twists with nerves, his curiosity at war with his fear and shame. He knows that his desires are wrong, that the Seven will not look kindly upon him. Perhaps the Dothraki gods are more forgiving.
Though it does not seem likely. He knows little enough of the Dothraki, but none of his knowledge suggests gentleness. Everyone in Pentos knows something of the Dothraki—they ride horses, they live in tents, they are marauders and thieves. Magister LaMarque has lost more than one trading caravan to a Dothraki raiding party, and the survivors of these attacks tell chilling tales of their savagery.
Yet he wonders...is it better or worse, to be bound to a man who wears his savagery plain, instead of hiding it behind silks and smiles?
Somewhere in the magister’s household, there must be a servant who can aid him. He waits until he is certain his brother has gone to bed, and then he lights a candle and slips out of his room. He pads barefoot through the corridor and down two flights of stairs to the servants' quarters. He knocks gently on the fourth door.
At first, there is no response, and Enjolras wonders if he has miscounted. Then the door opens a sliver, suspiciously, and Miriya peers out at him. She is years younger than Enjolras, perhaps eleven or twelve, indentured to the magister to pay off her father’s debts. Her parents are learned people, though poor gamblers, and Miriya speaks four languages with ease.
The open door widens somewhat when she sees that it is Enjolras. "Yes, my lord?"
"I am sorry to wake you, but—do you speak Dothraki?"
"A little," she says.
Enjolras holds out a sheaf of paper and a bottle of ink. "Can you teach me?"
* * *
He creeps back into his room just before dawn, and he barely closes his eyes before a servant knocks on the door to rouse him and bring him down to breakfast. He manages only a few bites under his brother's watchful eye before excusing himself.
"I have a gift for you," Montparnasse says, before Enjolras can gain the stairs.
"Is it an interpreter?" He would not dare try his brother so openly if he did not know that he would be free of him before nightfall.
Montparnasse does not reply. Instead, he casts a folded bundle down at Enjolras' feet. Enjolras picks it up, and the bundle reveals itself to be clothing—doe-skin leggings, tall black riding boots, and a finely made black tunic with the three-headed dragon of the Targaryens embroidered in crimson silk thread.
"I thank you," he ventures uncertainly.
"You should. Everything in this house that does not belong to Magister LaMarque belongs to me. These clothes are a gift to you, so that you need not approach the khal naked."
Enjolras swallows back his anger, and with it the urge to throw the ‘gift’ back in his brother’s face. Montparnasse may excuse rudeness, but defiance will see him punished, khal or no. "You are generous indeed," he says, forcing the words through a tight throat.
Montparnasse preens, the bitterness slipping past him undetected. "I am. Now go and dress. Your intended will be here soon."
Enjolras returns to his quarters, where he is scrubbed and dressed and fussed over by a dozen servants. The clothing that Montparnasse has given him is fine indeed, suitable for a prince in exile. Enjolras dons a belt as well, though he has not been given permission to take it. It is simple, a band of unadorned dark leather with a silver buckle. It will not be missed.
More importantly, there are a dozen gold dragons sewn into the belt's lining. He has been squirreling the coin away for three years now, in copper stars and silver stags that his brother is too careless to count at the end of a night of drinking or gambling. Once he had hoped to use the sum to buy passage on a ship, and escape his brother that way, but he had always quailed in the face of such an irrevocable choice. He does not know what use the gold will be among the Dothraki, but if the khal casts him out before they cross the Rhoyne, he will have enough coin to survive.
He takes the ink-scribbled pages from the night before, covered in what little Dothraki he gleaned from Miriya overnight, and tucks them close to his skin. He has only a precious few words, but Enjolras hopes that they will serve until he can find someone willing to teach him more. The grammar is difficult, which might have pleased him if he were studying the language for leisure. In his current state, it only frustrates him. He is ashamed at himself for expecting the language to be simple. Perhaps his brother's talk of 'savages' had begun to root itself in Enjolras’ mind, as well.
His room looks out over the sea, not the road, but Enjolras can hear the khal’s arrival even over the sound of the waves. The horses' hooves rumble over the lane in front of the house like a distant summer storm.
The door is flung open without warning; Montparnasse does not bother with such courtesies as knocking. "I hope you are ready," he says, a threat lurking at the edge of the words.
Enjolras stands up straight, knowing that it makes him half an inch taller than his brother. "I am."
"Then come with me."
They descend the broad staircase to the front door, and a servant draws it open for them. Miriya is already waiting on the terrace to serve as an interpreter. As Enjolras passes her, he slips a silver stag into her hand without breaking stride.
Beyond the terrace is a sea of men and women and horses. The dust raised by their mounts clouds the sunrise, and Enjolras' impression is only of the herd, horses steaming and whickering in the cool morning. Dozens, perhaps as many as fifty—an honor guard for the khal.
Enjolras stands beside his brother and waits for the khal to approach. At first it seems as though no one will come, and then two men dismount to climb the broad, shallow steps to the terrace.
The first is easily six and a half feet tall and thickly muscled. The parts of his bare chest that are not covered in scars are traced in blue swaths of ink or paint. His companion is powerfully built, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, but somewhat younger than the first and a great deal shorter—Enjolras thinks he himself might overtop the man by an inch or two. Both men wear their hair braided, with bells woven in among the strands.
The khal, then, and a bodyguard.
Montparnasse steps forward eagerly, beckoning to Miriya. He nods his greeting to the taller of the two men, careful not to offer any suggestion of a bow. "Khal Grantaire," he says. "I present to you Enjolras Targaryen, rightful prince of the Seven Kingdoms."
Grantaire. At least now he has a name.
Miriya echoes him in Dothraki. The khal nods and replies. His words sound thick and sharp and entirely alien, and Enjolras despairs of ever understanding. It sounds very little like the words he had practiced last night.
But it seems that she understands, because she turns to Montparnasse. "He says that they have ridden far, all through the night, and would be pleased for a cup of wine."
Montparnasse waves a hand to another servant, lurking near the door. "Yes, very well. Bring wine, but one of the lesser vintages. There is no point in wasting good wine on these barbarians."
"And bread," Enjolras adds swiftly. Bread and salt to seal the guest right. It may be that the Dothraki do not understand the import of the gesture, but Montparnasse does, and he would not dare to try any mischief against these Dothraki if it meant breaking guest right.
Montparnasse gives him a furious look, but he cannot raise a hand to Enjolras in front of the man who has bought him. The thought sends a secret thrill through Enjolras—he is no longer his brother's thing to torment.
Montparnasse smiles instead, a false and simpering expression. "Indeed, bring us bread—and salt, to ease my dear brother's mind."
The servant hurries inside, and Montparnasse gestures to the chairs that stand on the terrace. “Please sit,” he says.
Although Miriya translates the offer, the Dothraki make no move to sit, forcing Enjolras and his brother to remain standing as well. Of course, if they had ridden through the night as the khal said, they would be glad of a chance to stretch their legs.
Enjolras rather likes seeing his brother's plans so innocently thwarted, but he has learned better than to show his amusement.
The servants bring a flagon of wine and a platter of bread and meat and cheese. Montparnasse is plainly disappointed when the Dothraki sip their wine and take only a few small morsels of bread. Clearly he had been hoping to see some fit of savagery, the better to frighten Enjolras.
But he needn’t be disappointed. Enjolras has long known that fine manners may hide all sorts of terrible things.
When the wine is finished and the servants take away the cups, Montparnasse cuts to the heart of the matter. "Now I will have the gold that was promised to me, if you please."
Miriya translates, and the khal nods, gesturing to the riders behind him. Ten of them dismount to bring forward small wooden chests, and when the lids are lifted there is a gleam of gold within.
"He says that this is the price you asked," Miriya tells them.
Montparnasse stares greedily at the gold, and the khal looks everywhere, but his bodyguard has eyes only for Enjolras. He finds himself standing taller beneath the dark, steady gaze, determined not to show fear. Enjolras' eyes stray briefly from the other man's face, drawn despite himself to the muscles and scars of his bare chest. He has tattoos as well, though these are more delicate than his companion’s. His shoulders are set easily, his body relaxed and confident. A bodyguard should be more alert, more tense, even if there is no visible threat to his khal...
And then Enjolras understands. He takes a deep breath and prays to all the Seven as he steps forward. "Khal Grantaire," he says, without taking his eyes from the shorter man. "I am most honored to make your acquaintance."
It is the only sentence he has learned in Dothraki. The true khal smiles, a bright and pleased grin, and Enjolras nearly laughs aloud at the irony. Given time and choice, he might have gone to such a man willingly.
Montparnasse stammers out an apology, immediately dismissing the presence of the tall bodyguard. He is ashamed of his error, and furious with it; Enjolras can see the rage in the flush of his cheeks. Enjolras wonders uneasily who will suffer for it, now that he will not be there.
Khal Grantaire speaks at last, his eyes never leaving Enjolras. Enjolras can only smile and shrug, looking to Miriya for the words.
She clears her throat. "He says that he is pleased to meet the prince of the Targaryens, and that he finds the rumors of his beauty to have been entirely inadequate."
Enjolras blinks, and he feels his face grow hot under the praise. He nods his head to the khal. "Miriya, please give the khal my thanks."
She hesitates for the first time, enough to make Enjolras wonder if he has committed some sort of Dothraki indiscretion, but then she smiles and speaks to the khal.
The khal replies to her.
"He has a gift for you, he says," Miriya tells him. It is already as though Montparnasse no longer exists.
"A gift?" What sort of man buys a gift for someone who is little better than a bed-slave?
Khal Grantaire turns and beckons to one of his riders, who swings down off her horse and leads a riderless, saddled mare to the foot of the terrace. The horse is pale gold, with a silver-white mane to match Enjolras’ hair. She is light and lean, not at all like a destrier, and she seems a strange mount to be found in a Dothraki khalasar.
Khal Grantaire catches the horse's bridle in one hand and stretches the other hand out to Enjolras. "Yer adothrae mae," he says. Enjolras thinks he recognizes the word for ride, but beyond that he is lost once more. He looks back at Miriya for one last explanation.
"He says that she is for you to ride."
Enjolras nods and descends the broad stairs to where Grantaire stands, ready to help him mount. The golden mare's saddle is different from a Westerosi one, but there are recognizable stirrups and Enjolras is a capable rider. He vaults into the saddle unaided, and Grantaire nods in approval before mounting his own horse.
They ride towards the rising sun, with Enjolras beside Grantaire at the head of a long column of riders.
He does not look back.