Chapter 5: The Water Gardens and the Little Dragon
The ache was deep, a symphony of bruises sung by muscles she never knew she had. Rhae woke with a groan, the first hot lines of sunlight already cutting across her floor. Every movement was a protest. She remembered the falling, the relentless earth, Naria’s voice like a file on stone.
Before she could even consider sitting up, the door to her chamber burst open.
“She lives!” Obara’s voice, loud and grinning, filled the room. She was followed by a whirlwind of sisters: Nymeria, sleek and smirking; Tyene, a blur of golden curls and innocent eyes that missed nothing; and Sarella, her arms full of what looked like pilfered kitchen towels.
“Get up,” Nymeria commanded, snatching the light sheet from Rhae’s bed. “The sun’s been up for hours. You’re wasting the day.”
“I can’t,” Rhae mumbled into her pillow. “My legs are broken.”
“They’re not,” Obara said, practical and unsympathetic. She was fourteen, all sharp angles and impatient energy. She grabbed Rhae’s wrist and hauled her upright. Rhae yelped as the ache flared bright and fresh. “See? They work. Now, clothes. Something you can run in.”
They didn’t give her a choice. Tyene laid out a simple linen shift, while Sarella, the youngest at seven, solemnly presented a pair of worn sandals. “For climbing,” she whispered conspiratorially.
Dressed and pulled from her room, Rhae was swept into the stream of them. They moved through the shaded corridors of Sunspear like a single, multi-limbed creature, laughing, shushing each other, their footsteps a quick patter on the cool stone. The austere silence of the council chamber and the grim intensity of the training pit were washed away in their current.
The Water Gardens were a different world. The air, dry and hot beyond its walls, turned soft and cool here, heavy with the scent of blooming lemon trees and wet stone. Sunlight danced on the surface of a hundred pools, a liquid, shimmering gold. The gentle, constant whisper of falling water from ornate fountains drowned all other sound.
“Last one to the pink fountain is a rotten quince!” Nymeria called, and they were off.
Rhae ran. The pain in her muscles melted under the sudden, frantic joy of the race. Her sandals slapped against the moist walkways, she skidded around a corner, leaped over a low hedge of jasmine, and splashed straight through a shallow reflecting pool, soaking the hem of her shift. Obara was ahead, fierce and fast, but Nymeria cut a clever path through a colonnade and won, tossing her dark hair back with a victorious shout.
They didn’t stop. Obara showed her how to scale the rust-coloured wall beside the old aviary, fingers finding grips between the sun-warmed bricks. They hauled themselves onto a flat, forbidden rooftop overlooking the sea. The view stole Rhae’s breath. The Summer Sea stretched to the edge of the world, a vast, impossible blue meeting a bleached sky.
“See?” Nymeria said, flopping down beside her. “Better than any stuffy chamber.”
From their perch, they launched a raid on the kitchens. Tyene created a distraction by asking the head cook a dozen intricate questions about the use of saffron, while the others ducked behind tables and stuffed their pockets with warm, sticky fig cakes and slices of cheese wrapped in vine leaves. The cook, an old woman with a face like a kindly walnut, saw them. She winked at Rhae before turning back to Tyene.
Back at the Gardens, sticky-fingered and breathless, they found the most secluded fountain, a marble basin shaped like a lotus, hidden by a curtain of trailing purple bougainvillea.
“The guards never come here after noon,” Sarella said authoritatively. “They nap.”
In a flash, they shucked off their shifts and sandals and plunged into the shocking, heavenly cool of the water. Rhae sank beneath the surface, the world going silent and green-gold. She opened her eyes, watching the bubbles from her cousins’ laughter rise like silver jewels. She broke the surface, gasping, and Obara splashed a great sheet of water into her face.
They swam until their fingers pruned. Nymeria taught her to skip flat stones, scavenged from the garden paths, across the pool’s surface. One, two, three, four skips before it sank.
“Not bad, for a landlubber,” Nymeria conceded.
Later, in the dappled shade of an orange tree, Tyene shared a soft leather pouch of candied ginger, each piece a firework of sweet and heat on the tongue. Sarella, her voice low, spun a tale of a smuggler’s cove beneath the palace, accessible through a tunnel that began in the oldest wine cellar.
“We could go,” she said, her eyes wide. “I’ve mapped the first part. There are bones, though. Old ones.”
“Bones of what?” Rhae asked, entranced.
“Spies,” Sarella said with utter certainty. “Or very lost sailors.”
Obara snorted, picking a piece of ginger from the pouch. “The only bones down there are from the cellar master’s missing dinner fowl. Don’t fill her head with nonsense, Sarella.”
“It’s not nonsense!”
“It is, but it’s good nonsense,” Nymeria laughed, leaning back on her elbows. She looked at Rhae, who was licking the sugar from her fingers. “You’re fitting in, you know. For a shy little thing.”
“I’m not shy,” Rhae protested.
“You were. When you came. All big eyes and no words. Like a startled fawn.” Obara nudged her with a foot. “Now you’re just one of us. A proper little hellion.”
Tyene smiled sweetly. “A little dragon, more like. You have a temper when you’re hungry, I’ve noticed.”
The name, tossed out as a joke, hung in the air for a second. Then Obara grinned. “Little Dragon. I like it. Fits. She’s small, she’s fierce, and she snores like a beast.”
“I do not!”
“You do. Like a dragon with a chest ailment.”
The name stuck. It travelled between them as they spent the afternoon exploring, a new secret just for their circle. Little Dragon, pass the water. Little Dragon, did you see that lizard? Hurry up, Little Dragon! Each time, it warmed a cold, lonely place inside her.
As the sun began its descent, bleeding orange and crimson into the western sky, they scaled the Spear Tower. Not the interior stairs—the exterior, using a treacherous, crumbling staircase meant for repairs that Obara had discovered. The wind tugged at their damp hair and dry shifts as they emerged onto the dizzyingly high platform.
The world fell away below them. Sunspear was a toy city of pale stone and terracotta roofs, the Threefold Gates mere ornaments. The sea was a sheet of molten copper.
For a while, they just watched, shoulder to shoulder, the warmth of the day leaching from the stone into their skin.
“Rhae?” Sarella’s small voice broke the comfortable silence. “Where were you before? Really?”
The question, so innocent, was a stone dropped into the peaceful pool of the day. Rhae felt the memories tug, dark and formless at the bottom of her mind.
“Far away,” she said softly. “A city of stone. It was… colder.”
“What was your mother like?” Tyene asked, her head tilted.
Rhae opened her mouth to answer. The image came first: a beautiful face, silver-gold hair, a soft smile. Then she reached for the sound that went with it. The lilt of her voice, the specific pitch of her laughter, the way she said Rhae’s name. She clawed for it, panic a sudden, cold trickle in her gut.
It was fading. Like a colour left too long in the sun. The harder she grasped, the more it silted through her fingers, leaving only the ghost of an impression.
“I…” Her throat tightened. “I can’t remember her voice.”
The confession, small and devastated, hushed them. Nymeria’s smirk vanished. Obara’s bravado softened. They didn’t offer empty pity. Instead, Obara slung a firm arm around her thin shoulders.
“Then you’ll remember ours,” she stated, as if it were a law of nature. “Nymeria’s bossy nagging. Tyene’s creepy sweet-talk. Sarella’s mad muttering. My impeccable wisdom.”
“And my laughter,” Nymeria added, bumping her hip against Rhae’s. “And the cook scolding us. And the sound of the fountains. And Uncle Oberyn’s stories. We’ll make so much noise in your head, there won’t be room for old ghosts.”
The wave of gratitude that washed over Rhae was so strong it made her eyes burn. She didn’t cry. She leaned into Obara’s side, and they watched the last sliver of sun vanish into the sea.
In his solar, Prince Doran Martell held a piece of thick parchment sealed with the great stag of Baratheon. The wax was cracked. Maester Caleotte stood nearby, his hands tucked into his sleeves.
“A grand tournament,” Doran read aloud, his voice devoid of inflection. “To celebrate ten years of peace and prosperity. To be held at Lannisport, sponsored by the Crown and House Lannister. Jousts, melees, archery. Prizes of staggering wealth.” He lowered the letter. “He calls it a celebration of peace. It is a display of Lannister gold and Baratheon strength.”
“Will you send knights, my prince?” Caleotte asked.
“We will send observers. A small delegation. Enough to be polite, not enough to seem eager.” Doran rubbed his gouty knee absently. “The letter is an invitation. The whispers that accompanied it are the true message.”
“The Master of Whisperers continues to be… curious about your brother’s household.”
Doran’s eyes lifted to the open archway, where the sounds of distant, carefree laughter from the Gardens drifted in. “They look for a ghost. A pale, silver-haired child weeping in a tower. A symbol of lost glory.” A faint, tired smile touched his lips. “They will find a sun-browned Dornish girl with dirt on her knees and a stolen fig in her pocket. Let them whisper. A girl who laughs is not a threat to Robert Baratheon. She is a mystery, and he has no patience for those.”
Later, when full dark had settled and the palace was quiet, Oberyn looked in on Rhae. She was deep in sleep, one arm flung out, her face pressed into the pillow. The day’s joy was still etched there, smoothing the worry from her brow.
He moved to brush a stray lock of hair from her cheek and froze.
At her temple, where the hair was finest, the dark dye had faded or been worn away by the day’s water and sweat. A single, deliberate streak of silver-gold shone in the moonlight, a flash of buried truth against the manufactured black.
He did not wake her. He simply stood there for a long moment, his hand hovering near the betraying gleam. Then he pulled her light blanket up over her shoulder.
“Sleep while you still can, little dragon,” he whispered, the words barely a breath. “The world will find you soon enough.”