Crown Town's harbor bustled with life, and the salty sea breeze carried the fresh scent of newly sawn timber.
Oberyn stepped onto the solid wooden planks of the dock and surveyed this unfamiliar land with surprise on his face.
Beside him, his lover Ellaria Sand watched their surroundings warily.
They had come on Doran's orders to negotiate with the Easterner who occupied the Stepstones and the Three Daughters, and bring the Targaryen siblings back to Dorne.
They had originally arrived in Tyrosh, only to learn that Liu Qian lived in Conqueror's Holdfast beside Crown Town.
Oberyn prided himself on having traveled throughout Essos, yet he had never heard of such a fortress rising in the Disputed Lands.
But when he arrived, the sight astonished him beyond measure.
Their carriage traveled east for several hundred feet along a broad, newly paved stone road. A thriving town spread between the coast and the hills, its orderly stone houses rising at different heights amid a dense network of roads that reached in every direction.
A swift, clear river divided the town like a silver ribbon, with several sturdy stone arch bridges connecting its banks.
Oberyn sat in the carriage with a grim expression as it continued into Crown Town.
Both sides of the street bustled with people, the vast majority silver-haired, purple-eyed Lys men and women, their faces glowing with unusually relaxed smiles.
Vendors' cries, laughter, conversation, and the rumble of wheels over flagstones mingled into a curious scene of prosperity.
Yet another sight soon captured Oberyn's attention.
Of the Lys women on the streets, dressed in plain but neat clothing, seven or eight out of ten had heavily swollen bellies.
They supported one another, stopped at stalls to choose goods, or carried baskets filled with fruit and vegetables, forming a scene brimming