Asha?

  Volantis sprawled across the land like the fat wife of an old merchant one foot into his grave. No city she had ever lain her eyes on was even half as bloated.

  The last time she had seen it, half of its vast harbors were in a state of disrepair. Now those harbors were swarming with the green and white sails of Volantene galleys, even mighty dromonds that dwarfed her Black Wind.

  Across the bay she spied the skeletons of a score more warships being laid down.

  "The Braavosi have certainly stirred the pot," Prince Oberyn commented cheerfully. Nym was more reserved as she idly toyed with her sleeves of pale samite.

  "Not since the Bleeding Years has there been such a sight," Maegon followed more softly.

  Solomon stood between them, even more unpleasantly yellow under the sun, though not as unpleasant as the touch of something slimy that trailed across her skin in his vicinity. Her ironborn avoided him not unlike a plague now.

  "I will command a palanquin be brought to us," the man of Volantis continued, his hair a shifting river of molten silver. "It would shame us to walk the same stones as the slaves."

  "A display of vanity as wasteful as it is empty," Solomon finally deigned to speak, coating her ears in the words.

  Maegon seemed uncomfortable until he chuckled.

  "I understand the necessity. Just kvehching." The queer word was not one she knew.

  Some coin soon saw them seated within a cloth-of-gold palanquin, one able enough to fit the six of them comfortably and carried by thirteen sun-stained slaves. Solomon sat in the center of it with his eyes closed, the air around him like a thing alive, a roiling miasma that only Maegon cared to approach, their whispers too quiet for her to hear.

  A sigh left her own lips as she found her eyes drawn back to her Black Wind, as black as the walls they made for.

  He had made her rich enough that she struggled to find room for it all, yet each new day only left her more uncertain. The line between her dreams and the world around her had grown so thin that she found it hard to tell which was which, the yellow smearing across both like paint.

  Yet she dared not to flee. To face down a monster like the Crow's Eye, she needed a monster of her own.

  "Asha," she heard Qarl whisper in her ear.

  "Don't start," she groused. He had grown incorrigible as if he was vindicated.

  "Your lord father will have crowned himself with driftwood again, and here we are a world away."

  She expected much the same. He had not even spoken of Theon in years.

  "My father can wait a moon longer. With the riches I have taken, I could fashion myself a fleet of mine own."

  He sighed like half a girl. "Whatever game he plays with the Old Blood might see us all lose it all, and shorten us by a head also." His eyes dared to take a glance. "Assuming he even lives to see the new moon. He looks like half a corpse."

  Some yellow smeared on his lips with the words, though it was gone as soon as she noticed.

  Asha distracted herself with the sights and scents again as they neared the black heart of Volantis. It didn't reek of piss and nightsoil like King's Landing, but something sickly sweet instead, like an old rot or milk of the poppy.

  She had oft heard it said that Volantis had five slaves for every free man, though seeing it now, it wouldn't surprise her to hear it was seven, if not higher.

  The guard that met them at the foot of the Black Walls were armed and armored in ornate steel that might have beggared a landed knight.

  "Maegon Laessaryon has returned home, and vouches for his guests."

  The one with the helm in the shape of a shark with sapphires for eyes looked them over slowly. Finally, he touched a gauntleted hand to his heart. "Then be welcome home, scion of Old Valyria."

  The walls of fused black dragonstone stretched so far that it merited torches along its interior to traverse, and the sight that met her on the other side was one that could drive any ironborn to tears. The Old Blood bedecked their sprawling palaces and temples and high towers in the wealth of several kingdoms, gemstones of every stripe decorating their doors and windows, themselves inlaid in marble and granite polished to a shine.

  "Almost seems obscene, doesn't it?" Prince Oberyn's dark eyes shined with some mischief as the sun greeted them again. "Now, daughter, shall we go find your mother? I only hope I will escape with my manhood still intact."

  The palanquin paused a moment for him and Nymeria to step from it, the Dornish prince bearing the Martell sun and spear for all to see.

  Nym met her eyes, sharing a coy smile before she followed after her father. At least she wouldn't be meeting her bowlegged, as she had been after her inspired plan to tease secrets from a sorcerer.

  The palanquin continued along the black stones until they finally stepped beneath a manse white as a dove, a small army of slaves waiting for them. On each of them she spied some tattoo that denoted their purpose.

  There were three that stood without, tall and slender and every inch a Valyrian.

  A beautiful man not much older than Maegon stepped forward with a smile that spurned his lavender eyes. "We thought you lost to us, Maegon, and then we hear that you have somehow found yourself in the Sunset Kingdoms, soon to return home." The flowing darker reds of his ensemble made it appear as if he was bedecked in blood.

  Her High Valyrian was passable now, though the tongue had lost some of its beauty with the words now known to her.

  Maegon soon stepped from the palanquin with a smile as calm as a lake in winter, stepping over the back of a slave. "I have let the fates take me where they will, Aenor." His darker eyes had moved from his elder brother to the beauty at his back, her silver tresses near touching the stones.

  The resemblance was uncanny. Maena, if she remembered correctly. The whole sordid tale that Maegon told them all those moons again…

  She stared back at Maegon with eyes the same color as his, as haunted as they were worried.

  As she followed, the pale lavender eyes of the villain of that sordid tale turned to her with some faint distaste. The sight amused her terribly.

  Solomon was the last to join them on the stones, a sight that drew the eyes of master and slave alike. His waxy lips upturned into a smile that reached his eyes and more, the ghastly sight upsetting even her stomach.

  His black hair tumbled as he performed a mockery of a bow. "Solomon the Magnificent," Maegon introduced. "Also Lady Asha Greyjoy of the Iron Islands, accompanied by a famous warrior from those same isles."

  Hearing herself introduced in so fancy a tongue amused her, though all their eyes remained on Solomon, the yellow of his own ensemble still drinking in the sun like a glutton.

  "Aenor Laessaryon greets you all with glad tidings," the elder brother spoke again, though the words seemed just as false to her. "We will find you rooms."

  The slaves seemed too afraid to even approach the palanquin to retrieve their belongings until Solomon stepped further from it, smearing yellow across the black stones.

  "Where is Father?" she heard Maegon ask, though it was his mother perhaps that answered him, still beautiful despite the lines that crinkled slightly, the purple of her eyes like a plum.

  "A vote passed to call an early election. Those old fools were caught as flatfooted by it as they were by the Braavosi," she softly scoffed. "War is certain whoever replaces them, but he has invested himself anyway."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "The tigers would lead us all to ruin," Aenor argued. "Valyria's bastard daughter needs to be humbled, that much is clear, but the tigers have proved themselves perfidious creatures time and time again. Father is right to push for caution."

  A boy of maybe five or six years soon ran out of the manse with a gaudy toy sword in his hand. "I'll cut down every Braavosi! Just you watch!"

  Aenor gave a fond smile at the sight. His sister-wife only stared at the stones. "When you're older. Now come greet your uncle as befits your station, Maegor."

  Asha felt some pity for Maegon as he beheld the boy, but the name… it was a struggle not to snort.

  "Mother's told me all about you," he said with a messy bow. "As has Father. Is it true you stole away with our Valyrian steel—"

  "Now, Maegor, there is a time and place for such," his father gently scolded. "Your uncle had his reasons."

  Solomon touched a hand to Maegon's shoulder as he cut through the tension, smearing yellow across both brothers. "It has been a long journey."

  "Saena, Saella, see to our guest," their host commanded. "Xhobharro, see to Lady Greyjoy and her… companion." He tried to meet Solomon's unpleasantly green eyes for all of a moment. "After you are refreshed, I would very much like to hear how it was my little brother happened across a sorcerer."

  Two of the slaves had went as pale as their hair, not that their master seemed much inclined to pay it even a passing thought.

  She spied Solomon stalking into the manse irreverently as another of the slaves moved in front of her. A broad-chested Summer Islander with a cup and grapes across either cheek.

  The bath he drew was welcome, and the furnishings fit for royalty, the silken sheets as smooth as cream. It wasn't long until she had Qarl between her pale thighs, his pink cheeks and pretty eyes pleasant to look upon.

  The days that followed she largely spent with Nym, seeming to have found some accord with her lady mother.

  Solomon she knew either secluded himself in his rooms or vanished for hours on end.

  How was she to wield him against the Crow's Eye if she hardly even knew his thoughts? That question was never far from her thoughts, haunting her since she first saw him spill his blood into the narrow sea.

  Perhaps she was more fool than Nym. At least that snake knew when to fold.

  Marshalling what crumbs of bravery she could, she soon stepped into the sorcerer's lair. The first she saw was that his parchment kingdom had grown since leaving her cabin, the opulence of the room almost vanished under the mad scratchings of a script stranger than any she had seen, even as far as Yi Ti and Asshai.

  The sorcerer himself sat with his back to her at the far corner of it, a quill scratching into a fresh sheet of parchment with uncanny speed.

  The yellow smearing across everything only made it seem more mad. It didn't flee from her sight when she blinked; instead she almost fell back on her arse when he had turned and moved across the room in an instant to stare her down.

  "Tsk. Am I going mad?" She meant it as a jest, and yet…

  "No more mad than you were a moon ago." His unpleasantly green eyes showed her nothing she could see. "You were determined to make some sense of me," he continued. "Don't falter now."

  Asha couldn't stop herself crossing her arms petulantly. "Look around you."

  When she next blinked her eyes, the color had returned to his skin, the yellow retreating as a handsome smile found his lips again. His parchment kingdom had also gone.

  "Is this enough to satisfy you, my lady? Or perhaps I should say Your Grace. Your father has crowned himself again."

  The revelation did not surprise her. "This is another dream," she accused.

  "It is an academic difference at this point," he queerly answered.

  He suddenly looked like half a corpse again, and his parchment kingdom had returned. Something slimy slithered around in her skull, something she only noticed when her thoughts turned to it. If not for her stubbornness, she might have fled instead of staring him in the eye.

  "The same blood as in me flows in the Crow's Eye. You can find him if I give you my blood, can't you? Then take it."

  For a breath she saw something almost uncertain cross the horror he had become. "It would be safer to show you Pyke or the Ten Towers. Your uncle might look back and see you instead."

  The thought teared at her resolve. "I would be a fool to wait for him to come to me."

  "Perhaps."

  Her eyes wandered again, scrawlings of countless eyes staring back at her. There were also parts she had no names for.

  Asha pulled her dirk free as she met his eyes again. "I am no craven. Are you?"

  A grotesque smile caught his lips, and soon he was laughing. Was that a good sign?

  A very familiar mirror had appeared in his hand. "Spill your blood, Asha Greyjoy."

  She couldn't turn back now. With a hiss, she cut herself open, the mirror's black depths drinking deep of every drop.

  Her heart almost caught in her throat when she dared to meet his eyes for a third time. His head had split open, and from it spilled a river of yellow.

  "The wages of sorcery," he spoke through cracked lips. "Now, let us go and say hello to your beloved uncle."

  Her mind hurt just seeing what followed those words. It felt like she was caught in a mirror mirrored a thousand times, each reflection of her more a horror than the last.

  "Your blood calls to blood."

  Her reflection became the Crow's Eye. The Crow's Eye became the Silence. Black sails on a black sea.

  The stench of blood stuck to every part of it as she walked its breadth, its crew from every corner of the world. Some even had the bearings of a Greyjoy.

  "You're not looking for his sons."

  Soon a door was all that stood in her way, a door that wouldn't budge no matter how she tried.

  "Sorcery," she heard. "In for a penny, in for a pound."

  With those queer words, a new color touched the Silence, and it was yellow. The blood that drenched the ship did not like it, but it only slowed the advance of yellow as it crawled for the door. With a great, rusty creak, the door began to open, the sorcery undone.

  Inside, the Crow's Eye stood almost bemused, until the yellow followed her into the cabin. She spied a score of maps strewn across the room. Asshai. Valyria. Yeen. And also…

  The world broke as an eye patch touched the floor, leaving only colors that screamed at one another.

  The next breath saw her back in Volantis, Solomon's unpleasantly green eyes staring at her. His head had come together again, the river of yellow that poured out of it stemmed.

  "I don't think he liked my prank. Shame."

  The queer words hardly even bothered her. The disappointment stuck with her more. What had she even learned?

  He chuckled lowly for her question. "You would be surprised."

  The cut across her hand only stinged unpleasantly.

  The scratchings of a quill soon filled the parchment kingdom again, with her the only courtier fool enough to listen. She left as she had entered.

  Could she even be sure that any of it was real? Not today or even the past moon, but the moment she dared to read that bedamned letter signed in a nauseating yellow.

  No… that was one thought she wouldn't entertain, for that was the same madness that stole her mother from her.

  She would sooner slit her own throat.