Chapter Text
Having women as guards for women had a certain long tradition in Westeros, ever since Queen Alysanne had appointed Jonquil Darke as her sworn shield. But for all that, it was very rare. The Uzbek Guards had been something else to most of the Westerosi exiles, as weird as the customs of the Bone Mountains. For all that, they were nothing alike. The Uzbek Guards were modest professionals, capable of leading troops in their own right.
Over time, Daenerys had learned that there was actually a country called Uzbekistan, and an Uzbek people, though none of them had been born there. The name originated when, in a past war, Daena had been commanding a regiment, the Death Hussars, which had suffered severe losses on a scale, in a war unimagined by their own world. To replace the losses she had conducted a mass recruitment of women shamed and dishonoured or who simply didn't fit in and needed a home, or who were one more mouth to feed than their families could afford at home, in the aftermath of a terrible round of fighting in the cities of Tashkent and Samarqand and Bukhara, and they were gearing up for another.
In the end, these women had followed her away from their homes, first across the trackless Karakorum Desert and then across the sea. They had settled in the lands Daena had owned, and formed an obscure and secretive community. In exchange for maintaining their secrecy, they were educated, provided for from cradle to grave and paid lavishly. Over time many other ethnicities had married into them, and they had mixed and mingled through the generations until they represented twenty nations worth of people in their blood, but the name 'Uzbek Guard' remained.
Daena had still not explained what she had offered to them to get them to follow her here, but follow her, they had, a squadron's worth of horsewomen. Most held the same religion, which was similar to Daena's, but different. Both worshipped One God, a God of Clear Air who gave His followers books....
Daena said He was the same God for them both, and the majority religion of the Uzbeks merely represented a different book, given for a different time and place. Nagurash actually agreed with her. "The Maharani knows that there is No God but God."
Nagurash had remained behind, the seniormost of the Uzbeks with gray flecking her dark hair, where it crept out from her headscarf in coiled ringlets. The others had gone on with Daena--and with Jon and with Barristan and with her husband's bloodriders.
My husband.
The attendants around her, she wished to trust--Irri and Jhiqui and Doreah--but they were slaves, and Daena's lessons bore home sharply. To trust them was to betray them, for to give them trust was to put them in an impossible situation. Give them nothing that conflicted between her own real needs and interests and those of her husband, their Master in fact.
Still, while Nagurash could be alone in the Khaleesi's Lodge with her, she could not escape the handmaids. They watched, curiously, as Nagurash spread her prayer rug--facing to the west, for the shortest way to her Holy City was surely through the portal.
To King's Landing, in fact. There was some irony in it.
"Allahuma salli Allah sayyidina Muhammadin, we Allah ali Muhammadin, wa Sahbdihi wa sallim," she began her prayer. This was a tongue that Daenerys had not learned.
"Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim..."
The careful ritual of rakat, Daenerys knew that much, the name for bowing and prostration in cycles, some spoken and some silent, consumed the attention of her handmaidens, for whom it must have seeemed impossibly alien. Then Nagurash rose and folded the rug as neat as she could, and moved to sit at Daenerys' sit, though with her legs folded on the ground and not on the low traveling divan that the Khaleesi had. The handmaids would serve her, too; there was a hierarchy here, and one of the strange women bloodriders of Daenerys' kinswoman ranked higher than they did.
But Daena had not taught Daenerys to see it that way. And Nagurash didn't see it that way, either. "I see that you're curious," she said, addressing the girls. "Ask me your questions about my faith, I will answer them." There was a small smile on her face.
It reminded Daenerys of the small congregation that Daena had formed in Pentos, of Sikhs. Obviously a certain number of people in that city, especially freed slaves, had no interest in its Gods. The one monotheistic religion of their land, native to Essos, the worship of R’hllor, was esoteric and demanding. A number of Pentoshi, especially those trusted in the regime--the ones who had gone from indentured to Officers of State--had seen her conduct, had sought out her faith and converted to it. It now occurred to her that the same had likely occurred among those who had learned to fight or learned trades from the Uzbek Guards.
Nagurash had a conversation with them; Jhiqui seemed the most curious, but Nagurash remained circumspect. She likely does not intend to deny the existence of the Gods of the Dothraki publicly.
I also deny their existence, privately.
The conversation had led to tea, though, and everyone being relaxed as it was shaved from the brick, boiled, and served around blazing hot, mixed with a small measure of sugar, a fancy for the Khaleesi's lodge. It was then and only then, with other things on their minds, that Nagurash switched to the tongue of her world that Daenerys and Viserys and Rhaella had all learned. English was necessary for technical matters, so it had become more common in Pentos.
Punjabi was strictly a private language for the Targaryen and their closest guards and retainers to be absolutely secure in. "Your Highness, no woman is a slave except by main force, and your blood can never be impure. You are loved. The Maharani swore to return you to the Queen, at all hazard. She has a plan."
"Should she execute it? I have made a deal with the Khan." The chance was an abrupt improvisation; but it removed the only hint that they might be speaking of the same man. The vowel was pronounced differentialy, anyway... "I had little choice, but I made a deal and went to his bed willingly, Nagurash."
"Your Highness, force majeure is not willingly. Do not fool yourself. You made an agreement under duress to prevent yourself from being raped and enslaved outright. A woman should not be subjected to this. Particularly not a woman raised as a daughter by The Maharani. You will be freed."
"That will mean war with the Khan. I know you brought the best guns and arms with you, but is khalasar is larger than all the militias in Pentos. And what is this plan...?"
"Don't ask about it, but prepare yourself for it. Your part in it is convincing the Khan to go along with what we ask of him. We will separate you from him by his own will, at first, because he will be given the chance to believe that it is part of a plan which will great him the greatest victory of any Khan in the history of the Dothraki. So, in fact, while I appeal to you, do not gain a sentiment in your heart for him, and hold that while you married to him and you cannot be dishonoured, a marriage can also be easily ended--yet for all that, I must ask you to pretend to like him a while longer, and keep convincing him that you are a partner in his schemes and aggrandisement."
"I can do this. It's my natural temptation. I apparently give good advice, and I can see a situation clearly," Daenerys answered. "Well, surely you know my mettle?"
"What you have been through is hard, Your Highness. I am here to support."
"I understand, but I would rather you had gone with Daena to the City of Sorcerers. She must be kept safe."
"The Maharani, or Jon Snow?"
"Both," Daenerys answered, and then flushed more than a little. Well, Nagurash is very experienced in the ways of the world. "I will be careful and keep my eyes away from him."
"Best if you wore a veil," Nagurash grinned and stuck her tongue out. Daenerys giggled manically. It was good cover. It made their conversation seem some private and trivial thing, to the handmaids.
"--Thank you, Nagurash. But I do fear for them, in Qohor, truthfully. The plan has no choice if they do not make themselves look very impressive before the whole khalasar."
"I know the sorcerers of Qohor have power, Your Highness, but al-Basir sees us still here. We have our own means of resistance. And you have not yet seen The Maharani's mettle tested."
Night crept in around the Lodge, casting shadows against the skin walls and the ash-poles. Irri and Jhiqui were working on a fire in the brazier at the centre. Doreah came over to rub oil into her hair, the usual nighttime custom, and Daenerys gave her permission. She would not learn to speak Punjabi simply by being closer to them, though it felt more dangerous.
"I will trust your faith," Daenerys sighed softly, and refilled her small cup of tea. She felt like her stomach was an empty pit, but feared the opposite. "What if I have his child, Nagurash?"
The Guard Captain's eyes were dark and expressionless, like cut flint. "Then he is the father of a Prince of the House Targaryen. And you will raise the child as you see fit, and not on these plains."
It was now obvious how this was going to play out. She didn't know the details, but she wouldn't need to, and she didn't want to. "Volantis is a lure to separate me from the Khan."
Nagurash said nothing, but that was an answer of itself.
"I will be the Khan's woman, as I must until the hour I am not," Daenerys tossed back the last of her tea. She had always preferred things hot, hotter than most, even than the rest of her family. "I will be good and wait. But you remind me that I've put myself in a trap of my own devising, and I chafe at that."
"You chafe at that because you a dragon and a dragon is not a slave," Nagurash murmured. "Nor as these women, even though they are called that. Nor is any soul before God. Force majeure, Your Highness. Drink the poison, wait patiently until the day when all is in place, and we have the local strength to reverse the situation in such a way as to obtain the maximum advantage. I will be accompanying you, when we go to Volantis. And it will be for us to obtain the maximum advantage. Your scheme will not go to waste. The Khan will be working for us, and that he doesn't realise it, so much the better."
The thought immediately flashed through Daenerys' head: Daena is planning something really crazy.
She had garnered from her mother that this was not an uncommon occurrence. They were all here, after all. But why are you so confident against the sorcerers of Qohor?
The first patient wisdom was no doubt to just not ask until Daena returned. I know my mother put so much effort in raising me to be a Sevener for the realms; but I think I would sooner trust Daena's God of the Clear Air. She had a feeling that the religions Daena and her Uzbeks had slowly, tentatively begun to spread, the Sikh and the Muslim, might yet be far more important than the mere act of saving the House of the Dragon.
Or we are a tool in the divine plan, and it is all forewritten.
Daenerys suspected both Daena and Nagurash might approve of that attitude, most of all. She bid goodnight to Nagurash, and focused on the almost impossible task of not focusing on what she had given up.