"It seems I have no other choice. Tyene, my good child. She is sweet, and devout."
"And dangerous."
Chapter 255: Sand Snakes and Sisters
For several hours, apart from the brothers' conversation, the only sound in the Water Gardens was the laughter and play of children by the fountain pool, occasionally interrupted by a soft thud as another orange fell.
The fragrance of blood oranges filled the Water Gardens. The Red Viper stood beside Doran, while Hotah, the captain of the guards, watched the archway.
Tap! Tap! Tap! A moment later, the maester arrived to the sound of boots striking the floor. The Sand Snakes had come as well.
The first was Obara. Prince Doran knew her stride: long, hurried, and irritable. She always rode stallions, and people had heard her boast that she could tame any horse in Dorne... and any man.
Prince Doran truly envied the way they walked. His flabby body had lost its shape beneath his linen robes, and his legs were painful to behold. Gout had left his joints red, swollen, and grotesquely misshapen: his left knee was an apple, his right a melon, and his toes were ripe, dark-red grapes that seemed ready to burst at a touch. The weight of a bedsheet was enough to make him tremble, yet he bore all his suffering without complaint. Silence was a ruler's friend.
"Uncle. Father," Obara said.
Obara was the eldest of the Sand Snakes, nearly thirty, tall, with close-set eyes and the same mouse-brown hair as the whore in Oldtown who had borne her. She wore a mottled dark-gold sand silk cloak, and her riding clothes were old brown leather, worn soft and supple-the softest part of her. A whip was coiled at one hip, and a round shield of copper and iron hung