The fleet sailed from Meereen on a morning of red cloud and steady wind.

Eighty-four ships. Twelve thousand Unsullied. Three thousand freedmen sellswords who had taken the name the Silver Company and sworn their spears to the two queens who had freed them. A hold full of grain and another full of gold, and six dragons wheeling overhead — even Morghon, who had been bodily dragged aboard the flagship by eight cursing sailors, and who had then discovered that the top of the mainmast was warm in the sun, and had installed himself there as though the ship had been built for him.

Aelya stood at the stern with Dany's hand in hers and watched the Great Pyramid shrink behind them.

They had left Meereen in the keeping of a council of freedmen, presided over by a scarred old Summer Islander named Izembaro who had been a slave for forty years and had, in the past six months, revealed himself to be the most terrifyingly competent administrator Aelya had ever met. Yunkai had a council. Astapor had a council. The three cities had signed a compact of mutual defence and a ban on the slave trade that Aelya had drafted herself, in Valyrian and Ghiscari and Common, and had enforced by the simple expedient of informing every signatory that any breach of it would bring Morghon back across the Bay of Dragons before the moon turned.

She did not truly know whether the compact would hold. She thought it might hold for a year. A year was, she judged, enough.

A year was all they had.

Grey Worm came to her on the third night out.

He came formally, in his bronze-capped helm, with Missandei a pace behind him — which told Aelya, before either of them had spoken, that the matter was personal and that Missandei had insisted on being there as translator not for the language but for the courage. Aelya set down her wine and gestured them to sit.

"Your Grace," Grey Worm said. In careful Common. He had been practising. "I would ask."

"Ask."

"Missandei of Naath is — is not a slave. Is free woman. Yes?"

"Yes."

"And I, Grey Worm, am free man. Yes?"

"Yes."

"Then I ask." His jaw set. "I ask Your Grace's blessing. To wed her. In the manner of free people. If she will have me. Which —" his composure cracked for exactly one heartbeat "— which she has said she will."

Missandei, behind him, was looking very hard at the floor.

Aelya stood up. She came around the table. She took Grey Worm's scarred hands in hers, and then she took Missandei's small ones, and she joined them.

"You do not need my blessing," she said. "You are free, both of you. But you have it. You have it with all my heart. And if you will let me, I will stand witness at your wedding, and my sister at your other side, and we will marry you on the deck of this ship before we sight Westeros, with six dragons in the sky above you. Will that do?"

Missandei looked up. Her eyes were shining.

"Your Grace," she whispered, "that will — that will do. That will do very well."

They were wed three weeks later, in a dawn off the coast of the Stepstones, with Dany reading the vows in High Valyrian and Aelya in Common and the freedmen of three cities cheering from the rigging. Morghon, roused from the mainmast for the occasion by the smell of roasting goat, attended with the bored dignity of a visiting uncle.

Aelya cried. She had not expected to. She cried into Dany's shoulder and Dany held her and laughed, quietly, into her hair.

"You are going soft, my love," Dany murmured.

"I am not soft. I am situationally damp."

"Situationally damp."

"Shut up, wife."

"Make me, wife."

Aelya, who had been planning to be dignified, did not succeed.

They did not sail for Dragonstone.

Aelya had decided this over a week of maps in the great cabin, with Dany and Grey Worm and the Lord Captain and Missandei all crowded around a table spread with every chart the Balerion's Shadow carried. Dragonstone was the obvious landfall. Dragonstone was also where Stannis Baratheon was now massing his ships, and where Cersei Lannister's navy would come the moment word of their return reached King's Landing, and where, most inconveniently, there was no room to land twelve thousand Unsullied and feed them.

"We need a harbour no one is watching," Aelya said. "A place the lords of the realm have already written off. A place where we can make landfall, feed the army, and send out riders before the Red Keep even hears we have come."

"The Stepstones," said the Lord Captain. "Pirates. They will fight."

"The Stepstones will not hold twelve thousand men."

"Dorne," said Missandei, quietly.

They all looked at her.

"Dorne hates the Lannisters," Missandei went on. "Dorne remembers Elia Martell and her children. Dorne has never forgiven. And Dorne has a prince who is clever and patient and has been waiting, Your Grace, for a very long time to be given a reason to move."

Aelya stared at her.

Missandei looked back, composed.

"I read the letters from Illyrio's network," she said. "All of them. Someone must. Prince Doran Martell has been corresponding with Magister Illyrio for eleven years, Your Grace. Since before you and your sister came to Pentos. He has been waiting to see which Targaryen survives into adulthood. I believe — forgive me — I believe he has been waiting for you."

A long silence.

Aelya sat down on the edge of the table.

"Missandei," she said. "When we take the Red Keep, I am making you Master of Whisperers, and I am making the position the second most powerful in the realm."

Missandei, for the first time since Aelya had known her, went visibly pink.

"As Your Grace commands," she said.

The fleet turned west-by-southwest and made for the Planky Town.

Dorne rose on the horizon four weeks later, red and gold and burning in the spring sun, and as the ships approached the mouth of the Greenblood a single galley came out to meet them flying the orange sunspear of House Martell.

In the prow of the galley stood a tall woman in travelling leathers with a long spear across her back, and three daughters ranged behind her, and her face was a face Aelya knew from her oldest memories of stories: olive-skinned, black-haired, with a smile like a knife being drawn.

"Obara Sand," Aelya murmured. "And her sisters. Dany. Look. It is the Sand Snakes."

Dany looked.

"They are beautiful," Dany said. With some feeling.

"Wife."

"I am only observing."

"Observe less."

Dany laughed and squeezed her hand, and the Dornish galley drew alongside, and Obara Sand's voice rang up across the water:

"Queens of the silver hair! My uncle sends his welcome. Dorne has been waiting for you. Come ashore."