A few days before the letter reached the hands of the Lannister Lord.
On this day, inside the city of Sunspear, the seat of House Martell, a very large crowd had gathered near the docks.
And while it wasn't unusual for a location like the port to be busy with sailors and Merchants hailing from the nearby ports in both Essos and Westeros.
But if the crowd abruptly increases by five to ten times in just a few hours, with most of them being local smallfolks, then there was sure to be something strange going on.
Especially considering that most of the people were not there to buy seafood, board a ship, or even to find work as labourers; instead, they were just standing there idly on the street talking with each other, as if waiting for something to happen.
"Oi! Do you know why everyone's gathered here?" someone in the crowd asked a familiar shopkeeper standing nearby.
"Why? You don't know?"
"No, I just saw the crowd and came to join in the excitement," he replied sheepishly.
"Good for you then," The shopkeeper replied with an amused snort, "And none of us know the reason yet either," he said, waving his hand at the crowd of people present beside them, "We came here because the Martell guards rode into our street and called for all of us to gather here,"
"Me too," another burly man standing nearby joined in, "I also came because they went to my smithy to call for me, and all of my apprentices."
"I think it has something to do with Prince Oberyn returning from his trip," a young man standing in front of them turned his head and said, unsurely, "I heard it from my uncle who works for the Portmaster."
"Prince Oberyn? The Red Viper?"
"Why? Wasn't he still in Dorne? When did he leave?"
"Yes, where did he go?"
"I don't know where he went, but it has got to be something big he's bringing in his ship, right? Otherwise, they wouldn't have called for all of us here, and not to mention, "They" all wouldn't be here waiting for him," he said, pointing at the very front, where stood a group of nobility surrounded by a lot of Martell guards.
Everyone turned in that direction and stretched out their necks to peek at the gathering of beautiful men and women who made the very air feel expensive just by standing there talking with each other.
"Those are the young sand snakes, right?" someone asked hesitatingly while pointing towards the three young girls of varying ages standing at the front, whispering to each other with mischievous expressions on their faces.
"And that's Arianne standing there, right? Oh my, she really is as beautiful as they say," a man exclaimed with a mesmerised expression on his face.
The girl looked a bit short next to her cousin half-sister, but other than that, her buxom body and her otherworldly features made her stand out from every other girl present there.
"Which means that the ugly boy has to be Prince Quentyn, the heir of Prince Doran," he said, pointing towards a boy who had a square face with ordinary features, but his plain looks really did make him look a bit ugly against his beautiful siblings.
"Wait, is he the heir or is Princess Arianne the next Princess?"
"Probably Quentyn, right?" someone replied, a bit unsurely.
"But isn't Arianne older?" a woman standing nearby immediately retorted.
"But she is a lass!" a young captain from Reach, standing nearby, joined the conversation with a bewildered look on his face, as if asking why this was even a point of discussion.
"You are in Dorne, my friend," a dark, burly man explained with a pat on his shoulder, "Here we have had plenty of female rulers before."
"Yeah, I don't really care who it is as long as it's a Martell," an old man standing nearby nodded with a wise expression on his face.
"Aye," most of the Dornish people present nodded their heads, confusing the shit out of the foreigners nearby.
"What I am more interested in is what those are?" one of the older men asked while pointing towards the two large cross-shaped contraptions placed in a cart that were being transported towards the platform, "What use could they be?"
"I think I may have seen something like this in the slavers' bay before," an old sailor with a wooden hand mused out loud, "They were used there by the Masters to punish their unruly slaves."
"What?!" the men exclaimed with shocked expressions on their faces as everyone standing nearby fell silent, looking at the two contraptions with trepidation in their eyes.
Slavery was a big taboo in Westeros; everyone knew that. After all, it was the one thing that these people here had over the Essosi that they could be proud of, "B-But why would they carry it out here then? They are not... bringing slaves into Dorne, are they?"
"Don't be absurd," someone immediately retorted, "There is no way a Martell would do something like that."
"R-Right! You're right. I spoke without thinking. This must be for something else,"
"But then what could—"
"It's here! It's here! The ship is here!" a young fellow at the front shouted while pointing in the distance where a large galley flying the sun pierced by a spear, the symbol of House Martell, was slowly entering the docks. And since this was the only ship moving into the port at the moment, the people present immediately realised that this was the one they had all been waiting for.
...
"Did your father really not tell you anything about why he called all of us here?" Arianne asked from the corner of her mouth, as she looked towards the ship getting docked.
"For the last time, no, Ari," Tyene replied with a roll of her eyes, "I would have already told you everything about it if he did. All he ordered me to do in his letter was to gather everyone in the castle, as well as get the guards to get as many of our people as I could. That's all."
"Then how come your sisters are out there on the ships?" Arianne suddenly asked while pointing towards the helm of the approaching ship, where people were now becoming visible to them, among whom stood Oberyn Martell at the front with his two daughters a few feet beside him, waving their hands right at them.
"Those Bitches!!" Tyene cursed in an eerily similar way to Obara when she caught sight of her sisters, feeling shocked and a little betrayed that they hadn't even told her before leaving for whatever this secret trip was for, 'I'll show them later,' she swore menacingly, her eyes screaming vengance that wouldn't be pacified until she had seen them suffer from laxatives at least a few times.
"Then this is just too strange," Arianne murmured a little frustratedly, as her eyes narrowed in contemplation.
Too many things had been happening around here in Sunspear, without her knowhow over the past few months, and the girl felt very annoyed with the fact that no one was telling her anything.
First, her father suddenly left the Water Garden and appeared in Sunspear with the miraculous ability of somehow being able to walk on his own feet as if it was normal.
And then out of nowhere, he abruptly decided to leave for Kingslanding to attend some Northern bastard's Tourney whose name she had never even heard of before, and now her Uncle was doing something like this.
It all left a bitter taste in her mouth, as if everyone was conspiring against something while completely ignoring her, 'The so-called heir of the Dorne,' she thought bitterly while looking resentfully towards her younger brother, who was standing some distance away all by himself.
Watching a ship dock was a very slow and boring process, especially a large one like this.
But none of the people present there complained, as there was hardly any time for entertainment in the busy lives of smallfolks in this era. And so this was a rare chance for them to openly take time off from their work and mingle among their fellows and gossip, so no one was in any hurry.
But eventually the ship managed to line properly, and the plan was lowered for the people to disembark, and the very first ones to come down were obviously Oberyn, and his two daughters.
The young sand snaks, as well as Arianne and her brother, all immediately came forward to greet them with hugs, smiles, and angry pinches.
"What did you bring for us, sister?" The youngest sand snake, Loreza Sand, who was only seven years old at this time, immediately jumped into the arms of her older sister, Nymeria and asked while looking at the ship with an eager look on her face, "Did you bring me a gift? Is it a dress?"
"Yeah, tell us uncle," Arianne joined in with a spoiled expression on her face, "What gift did you bring that it needed for us to prepare such an extravagant welcome?"
"It is indeed a gift," Oberyn looked towards them as he looked at his daughter's faces with a small smile, "But the gift is not for you, but for the whole of Dorne as well as the Martell family."
This single sentence aroused the curiosity of everyone present there, and Oberyn also did not want to keep them in suspense, so he turned around and, with a simple wave of his hand, signalled the waiting captain of the ship, "Bring them down!"
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