Jorah was not wrong about the arithmetic.
The three-stage water collection — advance riders digging well-holes, mid-column teams filtering at the pools, rear-column using the residual seepage — worked. It was also, as he had observed, expensive in terms of time and effort from her strongest people. The riders coming back from the forward digging arrived at the rest stops with the drained, deliberate movements of people who have spent their reserves.
Daenerys watched them and said nothing to contradict the observation.
"They're not dying for nothing," she said. "They're keeping the khalasar alive."
"The khalasar includes seventy people who cannot meaningfully contribute to the khalasar's survival," Jorah said. His voice was level, not unkind — he was not making a moral argument, he was making a logistical one. "The effort to keep them alive is being drawn from people who can."
"I know."
He waited.
"I know the numbers," she said. "I've done the same calculation. My answer is the same as the first time I did it: we keep everyone." She looked at him steadily. "These people stayed because they had nowhere else to go, or because they were too old or too sick to be useful to anyone else. That is not their fault. I am not going to leave them in the waste because they are inconvenient."
Jorah was quiet for a moment. Then he said, very quietly: "There is another option."
She waited.
"Your gold. Your eighty strong riders. The water technique you've developed." He met her eyes. "We leave while they sleep. We reach the coast in half the time, with all the strength preserved. From there you buy passage anywhere — a free city, a quiet estate somewhere warm, time for the dragons to grow." A pause. "A hundred people live instead of the alternative."
Daenerys looked at him for a long moment.
"Don't say that to me again," she said.
He nodded, once. Not arguing. Not agreeing with the decision — she could see that in his face — but acknowledging that the decision had been made and that it was hers to make.
"Then prepare for losses," he said. "You're not a god. You can't save everyone."
"I know that too," she said. "I'm trying to save as many as possible. That's different from not trying."
She turned back toward the camp.
"Oh," she added. "And start thinking about the horses we can't afford to keep."
He looked at her.
"We're going to need to cull," she said. "The lame ones first. Then the old. Afanti already knows which ones." She paused. "And—" she glanced at him with an expression he couldn't quite categorise— "make sure you're drinking enough water."
"I'm drinking fine."
"Good," she said. "Keep it that way."
She walked back to the camp with a thoughtful expression and her lips pressed together.
Afanti was waiting outside her tent on his old mare.
"Vhaeson," he said, before she could speak. "He's going."
She sighed. "I'll come."
"What about the funeral arrangements? He's asking—"
"I'll handle it. Come with me."
The tent held three sleeping mats and not much else. The other two occupants withdrew without being asked, leaving Daenerys, Afanti, and the old man from Volantis.
Vhaeson was lying on his mat with the boneless quality of a body that has decided to stop insisting on its own shape. His blue eyes were open, tracking. His breathing was the shallow, careful breathing of a man managing each breath individually.
"The funeral," he said, without preamble. "I want fire."
"Volantene tradition," Daenerys said. "I know."
"I was born a slave by the Rhoyne. Slaves don't get fire. But my son—" a pause for breath— "my son was a khal. He died like one." The blue eyes found hers. "I want to go the same way."
"You will," she said. "I freed you from your collar the first day. You're Dothraki now, under my protection. When you go, you go with fire and with your horse, and you go to the night country the same as any of my riders."
He looked at her for a moment. Then, with some difficulty, he raised himself on one elbow.
"Will the horse god take me? I'm not—"
"I will tell him personally," Daenerys said. "Out loud. In front of everyone. Drogo is watching us from the comet — you know this, everyone knows this — and when I call up to him, he will hear, and he will tell the horse god to open the gate." She paused. "Drogo was the greatest khal in living memory. No god is going to refuse him a personal request."
Vhaeson lay back down. The expression on his face shifted — the specific loosening of a man who has been carrying a weight for a long time and has just been told he can set it down.
"Good," he said.
Then he grabbed her pant-leg.
"One more thing," he said. "I have something for you."
He directed Afanti to a saddlebag in the corner — worn dark leather, cracked along the seam, the kind of bag that has been carried on many horses over many years. Afanti brought it over with the eagerness of a man grateful for the chance to be useful after being glared at for obscure reasons.
He extracted a book.
It was substantial — the size of a large journal, the thickness of a dictionary, the cover a soft grey sheepskin worn smooth by handling. The pages were a heavy cream vellum, hand-cut and hand-sewn. The binding was good work.
Afanti handed it to Daenerys. She reached for it.
Afanti fumbled. The book fell.
It landed spine-up, fell open, and lay on the ground between them showing a page somewhere near the middle.
Daenerys looked down at it.
The illustration was rendered in fine charcoal, with colour washes applied over the linework in what she could recognise as considerable technical skill. The subject matter left no ambiguity about the nature of the work. The marginal annotations were dense Valyrian script, which she could read, and which were — from the brief glance she got before her hand moved to close the cover — extremely detailed.
She closed the book firmly.
She cleared her throat.
"I accept your gift," she said. "Thank you."
Vhaeson's face had gained a faint, contented expression. "Sixty years," he said. "I have been adding to it for sixty years. Every technique I learned, every refinement, every—"
"I understand."
"There are things in there that were lost in the Doom. Passed down through the dragon-lords' households and—"
"I understand," she said again. "I'm very grateful."
The white dragon had climbed from the basket onto her shoulder and was investigating the air near her ear with the detached curiosity of a small creature with excellent senses and no social awareness. Vhaeson's milky eyes tracked it with sudden alertness.
"I thought—" he started. Then stopped. Then started again. "When I first heard that the Khaleesi had walked out of the fire with dragons, I thought it was the kind of thing people say when they want to believe something." He looked at the white dragon steadily. "It's not, is it."
"No," Daenerys said.
"No." He exhaled slowly. "That book — I thought it was for a Khaleesi who needed to understand the world she was navigating. But now I see—" he smiled, and it was the genuine smile of a very old man finding something unexpectedly funny— "you are navigating a completely different world than the one I was thinking of."
"I expect so."
"Still," he said. "Keep it. Some of it may be useful anyway. The chapter on negotiation alone—"
"I'll read it thoroughly," she said, with absolute insincerity and complete good grace.
He gripped her ankle lightly — the dry, weightless grip of a hand that has almost finished its work.
"You're a good woman, Khaleesi," he said. "I'm sorry I can't stay longer to—"
His head tipped sideways.
His hand relaxed.
The expression on his face — pleased, at peace, looking forward to something — stayed exactly as it was.
Daenerys straightened up slowly. She stood in the small tent for a moment, the book under her arm, the white dragon on her shoulder, the old man on his mat with his sixty years of careful documentation and his half-finished sentence and his face set in the expression of someone who had, at the very end, gotten most of what he wanted.
"Afanti," she said.
"Khaleesi."
"Find him a good horse. Gentle. And prepare a pyre. Small — we don't have much wood — but real fire." She paused at the tent flap. "And tell the column we move at dusk."