After days of travel, the view of Yronwood's walls was a welcome sight. She'd spent months travelling, from Oldtown to the Stormlands, through the Boneway and Wyl territory, to finally come before the walls of Yronwood, the usual gates of Dorne proper.
Yronwood was one of the most impressive cities and citadels of Dorne. It wasn't the largest fortress, or the largest city, but it had recently received a boost in activity from the unlikeliest of sources, one that she'd stayed in contact with for nearly a year now.
The first ravens she'd been intrigued by; and as they grew more numerous over the following days and weeks, she could feel nothing but impressed by their contents. And now she would finally be able to meet the person that was at the heart of all of this.
Passing through the city of Yronwood itself, there wasn't much change, except the fact that it was busier than usual, and many houses and streets were littered with plants of all sorts, and the guilds were teeming with more activity than usual.
Peeking into one of the pottery stores, where vases would usually be made, she noticed an abnormal amount of glassware, with several people working on extracting substances from these glasses.
She didn't have time to spend worrying about these, as the citadel came into view. She quickly showed the letter she held to the guards, who let her in.
Putting her horse in the stables, she looked for the person she'd come all this way to see. However, she failed to even identify him. Frustrated, she saw a few boys sparring in the courtyard and came up to one of them.
"Pardon me, ser." She asked one of them, an older boy with blonde hair.
"Would you know where prince Quentyn is?"
The boy looked confused for a minute, before pointing to two men sparring.
"He's the one with the frog."
She raised an eyebrow.
She'd known her cousin had a less than affectionate nickname due to his corpulence and face, but she'd always scorned at the idea of such a moniker being used in a derogatory manner, especially by her own family.
Why were his supposed friends using that same term, though?
As the men finished their spar, one of them acknowledged her presence, put his spear down, turned around, and dropped his helmet.
She became even more confused.
"Thank you, Gerris." The man nodded. "I'll take it from here."
The blonde boy shrugged and went on his way, as the boy before him clapped his hands together.
"Come on, Achilles, let's go."
To her surprise, a tree frog came out of the helmet, ran towards the boy in front of her, and placed itself in a pouch on his shirt.
"Sorry about that, Sarella." The boy smiled. "Welcome to Yronwood."
"Oh." She recoiled. "You're…"
"Does it surprise you that much?" he asked.
Sarella chuckled.
"I expected you to be…"
"A bit rounder?"
"Well…"
"I lost weight, gained a few inches, cut my hair." Quentyn replied. "I don't blame you for not recognizing me."
"And what's with the frog?" she asked, curious, as the tree frog eyed her with malice.
"A wise man once said that it is better to embrace what you are, so that it may never be used against you." He smiled.
"Well, if I'm to be a frog, let's make sure they know I'll jump further than any of them. And Achilles here is a lovely companion, since he doesn't talk as much as the others."
Sarella nodded.
"Shall we?" he said, as he showed her into a room covered in parchments and glassware of all sorts.
"Is that your room?" she asked as she looked around.
There was no bed or any form of drapery. There was a study, though, and many different plants, parchments and books lying around.
"No, my rooms are next door." Quentyn replied. "This is where I work. The guilds have taken most of the work off of my shoulders, but I still help out with anything I can."
"So, I've heard." Sarella looked around as she saw rows upon rows of scrolls, picking one or two up and reading the contents.
"Impressive work. My archmaester is very interested in your works, although the maesters have vastly ignored it."
"Ignored? Why?"
"They think that it's just dornish rabble, and that since there was no real maester involvement in these works; that it wasn't much more than the usual rumors."
"I have tried to keep maester involvement to a minimum, yes. Even Maester Morgan has trouble adjusting to the pace of the guilds' experiments and treatments."
"Any reason why?"
"Trust issues."
"Oh." Sarella raised an eyebrow. "Well, I've got to say this is fairly impressive works. You've managed to beat disease with bread mold…"
"It wasn't much."
"It wasn't much?" Sarella recoiled "Quentyn you've saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people. It is said that your medicine cures the fucking plague. This is massive! And I'm not even talking about the rumored works on heart disease…"
"Heart diseases, pneumonia, fevers…" Quentyn nodded. "Seven hells we've even started experimental treatment in brothels against sexually transmitted diseases. Needless to say, my friends are very happy that they get to go there for free once a moon."
"You've managed to cure the clap?"
"By the same powders and derivatives that we've produced." Quentyn nodded. "Not only that, but we're also working on curing the pox, the goo, lice infections…"
"Sexually transmitted diseases, then."
"It's our priority, yes." Quentyn nodded. "Although what I'm working on are extracting solutions from meadow saffron to cure gout."
"Meadow saffron can cure gout?"
"It would seem so. Although work is going much slower than what I thought. The flower is toxic, which means extracting the solution is extremely difficult…"
The door suddenly swung open, revealing an older boy, with short, brown hair.
"Quentyn could you…oh." He chuckled nervously. "I didn't know you were…I'll come back later."
"Firstly." Quentyn sighed. "Gulian, knock on the fucking door. Secondly, this is my cousin."
"Oh." Gulian Qorgyle suddenly looked around nervously. "Hasn't stopped a lot of us."
Quentyn gave him the stink-eye.
"Right." He shifted uncomfortably. "Well, erm, we're planning a trip to the Isle of Tortoises for next moon, I suppose you're in?"
"Of course."
"Great, I'll tell Arch." He smiled. "Good day, my lady. Hopefully we get to know each other later on. It's rare to see another Martell around here."
The Qorgyle boy then slowly closed the door.
"You forgot to tell me how comely your friends were." Sarella bit her lip, while Quentyn just rolled his eyes. "And what was that about not getting to see any Martells?"
Quentyn looked at her with a bizarre look.
"You're the first family I get to see in years." He finally answered.
"Father obviously cannot come here, Trystane is too young, uncle Oberyn obviously cannot. And well…the female members of my family seem to not consider me as part of it.
I haven't seen Arianne since I last saw Sunspear, and the less said about my cousins, the better. No offence meant."
Sarella nodded knowingly. Her sisters weren't exactly keen on meeting Quentyn, and she knew what Arianne thought of him, a traitor corrupted by the Yronwoods that her father was ready to thrust at the top of Dorne.
As for Trystane, she doubted that he'd be able to remember Quentyn at all. She'd have to see how things had evolved when she'd reach Sunspear at the end of the moon's turn.
She quickly turned her attention back to the books, flicking the pages of one of them, seeing them filled with drawings of various beasts, from whales to insects, with measurements, location and particularities, along with vivid descriptions.
"Your doing, I presume?" she asked.
"While Cletus, Gerris and Gulian like to go visit the whorehouses, I prefer to stay here and draw butterflies, birds and great beasts alike." He replied.
"Someday it'll be nice to draw beasts found outside of the northwestern part of Dorne. Essos, the Stormlands, the Reach, the North, the Summer Isles perhaps…"
Sarella nodded with a smile.
"You'd like it. The Summer Isles have a fantastic collection of creatures of all sizes and colours."
"I hope to see them one day, then."
Sarella nodded, and reached for a parchment, but heard a deafening scream in her ear.
"DON'T!"
She recoiled in shock, as Quentyn stretched out a hand.
"Don't. Give this one back."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because if you read it, I'll need to kill you."
Sarella froze, shifting uncomfortably as she gave him the parchment.
Quentyn looked around, before grunting and throwing it into the fireplace.
"That's something I needed to do the day I wrote this letter." He sighed. "The risks of writing it just weren't worth the results."
"What risks? What results?"
"An emergency plan of mine. But I'll decide to cross that bridge when it comes to it."
Sarella nodded, looking at the burning paper.
What could he have written for him to fear for his own life?
She would probably never know.
"Sorry about that." Quentyn sighed. "But now that I have you here, I need you to enlighten me."
"Enlighten you?" Sarella chuckled. "About what?"
"I need to know exactly what in the seven hells is going on at the Citadel."