AN: Sorry everyone. I had a long trip on the 10th the was supposed to take 18hrs but after a cancelled flight and a force stay over at another country, ended up being more like 36hrs. Made this chapter twice as beefy as usual, and the BIW chapter tomorrow will be the same.

Chapter 62

Our ships pulled into Tyrosh's harbor in the early afternoon. 

The voyage from Tarth had taken only four days. Lord Steffon's fleet had picked up favorable winds after rounding Cape Wrath, and we'd made good time across the Narrow Sea. I'd spent the days sparring with Codin, Gerion, and Oberyn on the deck of the galleas, as well as working with Arlan on his maps. The boy turned out to have as much talent for naval cartography as anything else.

It was a relaxing few days with no talk of marriage or campaigns or King’s Landing politics. Just the sea and the sky and the slow rhythm of ship life. Tyrosh ended that.

Because we were traveling as official representatives of the crown—and because Lord Steffon was a great lord himself—missives had been sent ahead of us weeks before we'd left King's Landing. The Tyroshi had been warned and they had prepared accordingly.

Since it was not the king himself coming to visit, the Archon did not meet us at the docks, but a good few magisters had come to bid us welcome. The Archon's own crier, dressed more like a court jester than an official, stood waiting at the foot of the gangplank as well, flanked by a guard of Tyroshi soldiers in their distinctive multicolored uniforms. Behind them, a small crowd of dock officials and minor functionaries had gathered to bear witness. Banners flew. A pair of trumpeters waited with their instruments at the ready.

The crier launched into his speech the moment Lord Steffon's foot touched the dock.

I followed along carefully, listening with both my well-practiced High Valyrian and my less practiced understanding of the bastardized version widely spoken in Tyrosh. The Tyroshi dialect ate consonants and stretched vowels and used grammatical forms that the maesters at Oldtown would have found scandalous. 

It took some adjustment, but I could follow the gist of it. Apparently, Tyrosh had a particular appreciation for the line of the Baratheons, since Argilac Durrandon's defense of the city against Volantis during the Century of Blood, when the Tigers had nearly swallowed all of Essos before being driven back. He also invoked a Baratheon knight who had once served under a Tyroshi Archon after being exiled by King Jaehaerys I, eventually marrying the Archon's own daughter and leaving descendants who still mixed Tyroshi and Stormlander blood somewhere in the city.

It was a good speech, carefully calibrated to flatter without seeming to flatter. And without mentioning the rest of the Tyroshi-Westerosi history filled with wars and blood.

The trumpets blared as the crier finished his speech, and the dock crowd cheered on cue. A small parade formed as we rode out from the harbor, the Archon's men escorting us through the streets toward his palace, with banners ahead and trumpeters in the middle and Lord Steffon's own retinue trailing behind. I got my first proper look at Tyrosh once we passed through the great gates into the inner city.

I had read about it, of course. Maester Rowen had drilled me on the geography of the Free Cities, and Tyrosh occupied a particular place in the lessons—the closest of them to Westeros, the most martial, the most fortress-like. The city was ruled by an Archon chosen from a conclave of the wealthiest magisters. Here, power passed in cycles of intrigue and bribery rather than blood.

And to call it just a city was to do it a disservice. The population rivaled King's Landing, sprawling up the hills behind the harbor, but it was built more like a single enormous castle than a city in the Westerosi sense. The walls that surrounded everything were said to be impossible to bring down because of the fused black dragonstone at their core. Looking at them now, I could believe it. They rose dozens of feet thick at the base, tapering as they went up, polished to a dull black gleam.

Even the buildings inside the walls seemed to lean toward defense. Towers everywhere. Narrow streets that could be easily blocked. Squares positioned to allow archers to fire down from rooftops.

It was an impressive place, but the good impression lasted perhaps a minute past the gates until I started to notice the slaves.

I had known this. Had been told and had read and had been warned, and had even seen a fair few of them in the docks too. Tyrosh was one of the worst proponents of slavery in the entire Slaver's Bay-to-Free Cities corridor. The Magisters here had built their empire on it. Oberyn had even taken me aside before we landed and reminded me, in his way, that I should expect to find it everywhere and that visible reactions would not be diplomatic.

But knowing about a thing and seeing it with my own eyes turned out to be different. 

The slaves were everywhere.

As we rode through the streets, I could not stop looking. Into alleys. Across the sloping hills. Through the open fronts of shops. Into the courtyards visible behind half-open gates.

Most of them were collared. The collars were of bronze or iron or, for the more valuable slaves, of silver and gold. Some wore robes that marked their service—yellow for personal attendants, white for cooks, gray for laborers. Some were tattooed across their faces with the symbols of their masters. 

And I could see children. That was the worst of it. Children walking beside their parents, all of them collared. Children carrying parcels on their thin shoulders. A small boy, perhaps six years old, hauling a pot of water nearly as large as he was, struggling with the weight while a Tyroshi household guard watched him without expression.

I caught a horrible taste in my mouth.

Oberyn noticed. He guided his horse closer to mine and spoke low enough that only I could hear.

"Three slaves for every freeborn Tyroshi in the city. Closer to four, perhaps. And the countryside is worse. The fertile parts of the island are worked almost entirely by them."

I nodded. Did not trust myself to speak yet.

"You will see this in every city we visit," Oberyn continued. "Lys, Volantis. Even Pentos pretends to have outlawed it but still calls them 'bondservants' or 'apprentices' or whatever euphemism suits them that day. The closer we get to Slaver's Bay, the worse it becomes."

"I know."

"Your face is doing the thinking your tongue is not doing. Stop it. The magisters will be watching us at the feast tonight. Whatever you feel, they cannot see it. They see weakness in disgust."

He was right, I knew. I forced my face into something neutral and kept riding.

A small voice in my mind was saying that I was no different. That the smallfolk in Westeros lived no better than slaves. And in a way, it was true. I knew lords who treated their smallfolk worse than some of these slave-owners would treat their property. The peasants tied to a lord's land could not leave, at times could not marry without permission, could be summoned to fight and die in wars they had no stake in, could be flogged for poaching a deer to feed their families.

But no.

I shook my head as I rode, denying the comparison even to myself.

It was not the same. It could not be. A hard life was not a slave life, and beyond perhaps the Ironborn with their thralls and salt wives, both the Faith of the Seven and the older worship of the First Men abhorred the idea of slavery. Particularly the form practiced here, where human beings were chattel to be bought and sold and bred like livestock.

Westeros had its evils. But this was something else.

The thought did not leave my mind even as we rode through the parade route and arrived at the Archon's palace and were shown to our quarters and offered baths and clean clothing and refreshment. I went through all of it on something like autopilot, hardly hearing what was said to me, until well after the sun had begun to slant toward the western sea.

By then it was time for the feast.

xxx

The feast was held in the great hall of the Archon's palace, a long marble chamber where we were thrown toward the magisters of Tyrosh like meat to starving dogs.

That was what it felt like, anyway. We arrived to find perhaps sixty of the city's wealthiest men and women assembled, all of them eager to meet the visiting Westerosi delegation and assess what business might be done. Some had brought their wives. Others had brought what I assumed were their mistresses, given the age difference. A few had brought sons or daughters they were apparently trying to introduce to influential foreigners.

The magisters were a colorful lot in the literal sense. Tyroshi tradition demanded the dyeing of beards in startling colors—blue, green, pink, purple. The dye was made from some local plant and was apparently a mark of status. The rarer the dye, the wealthier the man. Several of the magisters had multi-colored beards in elaborate patterns. One had dyed his bright gold and his hair to match. The effect was distracting, to say the least.

Oberyn was off charming an older woman within minutes of our arrival. The woman had to be twice his age, but she was laughing at his jokes with the abandoned delight of someone who had not been flirted with in a long time. Her hand was already on his arm, the charming dog.

Poor Gerion, on the other hand, had caught a chill on the trip over and had shuffled to his rooms without much ceremony. Oberyn and I had already teased him by saying he was sick of a broken heart, now that he was away from Elia.

Lord Steffon was at the high table speaking quietly with the Archon himself, an elderly man whose beard was dyed so dark a blue it was nearly black. They were not, I noted, looking like men engaged in pleasant small talk. Something was being negotiated even now.

That left me to fend for myself.

A magister approached me almost immediately. An older man, perhaps sixty-five, with a beard dyed a rich, dignified purple and shrewd dark eyes set in a heavily lined face. He bowed in the Tyroshi manner—one hand at the chest, the other extended outward—and addressed me in flawless High Valyrian.

"Ser Galladon Tarth, yes? I am Noro Hallore. My family is responsible for most of the great construction projects in this city. The walls, you see them? Not the original construction, that is older than my line. But the repairs, the additions, the towers. The palace where you stand now. The Archon's pleasure gardens. Many things."

I returned his bow with one of my own, less practiced, and responded in the Tyroshi dialect. His eyes flickered with surprise—it was rare, I knew, for Westerosi nobles to bother learning the local language. Most expected the magisters to speak Common, and most magisters did.

"A pleasure, Magister Hallore. Your reputation precedes you. I have admired your work even on the brief ride from the docks. The stonework on this palace alone is exceptional."

He preened slightly. That was the thing about builders. They could be flattered with surprising ease if you knew how to comment on their work properly. I had spent enough time with stonemasons and architects at Dawnrest to know what to say.

A second magister joined us moments later. This one was middle-aged, perhaps forty, with a beard dyed bright orange and a permanent half-smile that suggested he found most things faintly amusing. He introduced himself as Loreo Moraquis, dealer in ink and parchment, with a near monopoly across southwestern Essos who was always looking for new suppliers.

Now this was interesting. Tarth already produced a lot of ink before I ever stepped into the family business, and I’d only ramped it up ever since. But even then, since I’d never been able to get in trade with the Faith and the Citadel despite my friendship with Ser Baelor Hightower, I had never truly looked into turning our ink-making into a real industry. We simply did not have the market for it before. 

The conversation flowed easily after that. I told Hallore about Tarth's marble, and he was politely doubtful. He said he had never heard of Tarthi marble being of any particular note.

I asked him if he had ever heard of the Eyrie in the Vale of Arryn.

He scoffed and said of course he had. He was a builder at heart before he was a wealthy magister, after all. Every builder in Essos knew of the Eyrie. The most beautiful of the great castles in the Sunset Kingdoms. Built on the side of a mountain. White as fresh snow.

I smiled. "Where do you think its white marble came from?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"My family has been selling marble from Tarth for generations, Magister. The white marble in the Eyrie. The marble in the Eyrie's High Hall and the Sky Cell and the Maiden's Tower. All from Tarth. We have been quietly supplying half the great houses of Westeros for centuries. Lord Tywin Lannister's branch family is currently building a palace at Lannisport using our stone."

Hallore's expression shifted. The polite doubt vanished, replaced by professional interest.

"Send some of your men to Tarth," I continued. "Or to Lannisport if Tarth is not to your liking. See the stone for yourself. Inspect it. Have your own masons evaluate the quality. If your assessment matches my words, then I would be most interested in discussing supply arrangements for whatever great works your House has planned."

He was already thinking about it. I could see the calculation happening behind his eyes. 

Loreo Moraquis, the ink magister, asked a question about how much ink my island could produce if a trade agreement were struck. After some mental math, I gave him an honest estimate, which led to questions about parchment port’s capacity, which led to other questions still, until another magister joined our small group.

This one was taller than both Hallore and Moraquis. He came up to my nose, which made him an unusually tall Essosi. He looked to be roughly Lord Steffon's age, though where Lord Steffon was built like a working stallion, this man had grown soft around the middle. His beard was dyed a deep emerald green, well-tended, and he wore so many rings on his fingers that he looked like he was collecting superpowers from each one. Some of those rings carried gems large enough to be tools.

"I am called Karo Adarys," he introduced himself with a small bow. "A humble magister of the great city of Tyrosh."

The name rang a bell at the back of my mind, but I couldn't place it immediately.

I greeted him back, polite but cautious. There was something in the way the other two magisters had reacted to his approach. Hallore had stiffened, and Moraquis had let out a small, knowing snort.

"There is nothing humble about Karo," Loreo Moraquis said, that half-smile still in place. "Ser Galladon, you should know that this man is the biggest maker of pear brandy in the entire city."

I felt my interest sharpen immediately.

Pear brandy. Tyrosh produced brandy. The fact had hovered at the edge of my knowledge, mostly forgotten because it wasn't a popular drink in Westeros. The Tyroshi distilled fermented pear wine into a strong clear spirit that they sold to other parts of Essos but rarely shipped west. I'd had bigger projects on my mind during my own distillation experiments.

But here was an actual distiller. A man who understood the process. A man with established infrastructure.

Karo Adarys was already protesting Loreo's words.

"You wound me, Loreo. You wound me deeply. To say I am the biggest pear brandy maker in Tyrosh is to do me a disservice. I am the biggest pear brandy maker in the entire known world. There are no others. We Tyroshi created the art. No one else has matched us."

Loreo shook his head with theatrical sadness. "You see? You see what I mean? Humble, this one is not."

I laughed despite myself. "Magister Adarys, I find myself rather interested in pear brandy. Perhaps we should arrange to speak in more detail."

The change in Hallore was immediate.

The man's entire demeanor shifted. The professional courtesy I'd been enjoying vanished. His face hardened. He set his cup down on a nearby table with a sharp clack.

"Ser Galladon," Hallore said, his voice gone cold. "I should warn you. If you do business with this man—" he indicated Adarys with a contemptuous flick of his fingers, "—you will find no further commerce with my House. And I will ensure none of my allies entertain ties with you either."

I stared at him, taken aback by the intensity.

Karo Adarys's eyes had narrowed, but he didn't look surprised. He gave me a thin smile, the kind of smile that suggested this was not the first time he had been so insulted.

"Some old men," Adarys said, his voice pitched to carry to Hallore, "hold so many grudges that they cannot let go of the past."

"Past?" Hallore's face went red. The color spread up from his collar and across his cheeks, made even more striking by the contrast with his purple beard. "Your father and his band of madmen put my brother to the sword. Past? You speak to me of the past?"

"A good thing I am not my father, isn't it?"

The two men glared at each other.

And finally, the name connected for me.

Adarys.

Alequo Adarys. One of the Band of Nine. The merchant who had taken Tyrosh during the war that Lord Steffon himself had fought as a teenager. Adarys had ruled Tyrosh as a king of sorts for half a dozen years after the war, until he was killed and the conclave restored the rule of the Archon.

This Adarys before me, then, would have to be either the son or brother to Alequo, somehow allowed to remain a magister even after the man’s defeat and death.

Hallore, still red-faced, snarled out an answer. "The only reason you still draw breath is that your mother betrayed your father for the Archon. Perhaps such treachery runs in your blood."

More words came after, fast enough I could hardly follow, but I knew two men close to coming to blows when I saw them. I stepped in before that could happen, raising one hand to each of them.

"Magisters. Please. We are at a feast. I would not see this lovely evening disrupted by old quarrels. Let there be peace between you for tonight, at least."

"Peace?" Hallore's voice was a hiss. "You would make peace with your enemies, Westerosi?"

I held his eyes.

"We only make peace with our enemies, Magister. That is why it is called making peace." I gave myself a little pat on the back for that. Littlefinger did have his moments of wit.

Hallore stared at me for a long moment. Then he let out a sharp breath. The flush in his face began to recede.

"You are wiser than your years, Ser Galladon." He paused. "But you would be wiser still if you stayed far away from men like this one. Particularly if you wish my trade." He bowed stiffly to me and excused himself.

Adarys watched him go. Then he turned back to me.

"My apologies for the trouble, ser. I will reach out to you at a more opportune time, when we might speak without old wounds intruding."

He bowed and left as well.

Loreo Moraquis remained, the half-smile back in place as though nothing had happened.

"A decade now," he said conversationally. "They have been doing that for a decade. Always when one corners the other in public. You should not worry about it. Both have enough wealth to bear the loss of each other's trade, and neither will move first against the other while the Archon's peace holds."

"Should I keep my distance from Adarys?"

"I would not say that. Karo's pear brandy is, in fact, excellent. And his coin is as good as anyone's." Loreo shrugged. "But understand: if you do business with him, you also accept Hallore's enmity. Make your choice accordingly. Focus on making gold while you are here in Tyrosh, ser. The political grievances of dead merchants should not be your concern."

I certainly agreed with that.

By the time the night was over, I had signed preliminary deals with Loreo Moraquis for my ink and his parchment. Another magister, who dealt in arms and armor, had expressed serious interest in a long-term supply arrangement. A third had asked for preferential berthing for his ships in Dawnrest.

It had been a productive evening, considered purely on those terms. 

xxx

The next morning, the arms-dealing magister sent his gift. The man was named Vargo Pretarys, I'd learned at the feast. His family had been arming Tyroshi sellswords for six generations, and his connections extended deep into the workshops of the city's master smiths. As a gesture of goodwill following our talk, he sent word that I should visit the workshop of a certain Tarvel Sythos, considered the finest armorer in Tyrosh.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I jumped right in. Sythos’ workshop sat in an industrial quarter on the western slope of the city, far from the marble palaces near the Archon's seat. The streets here were narrower, the buildings older and less ornate. The air smelled of charcoal and hot metal and the leather oils used in armor production.

Master Sythos was a small, sinewy man perhaps fifty years old, with arms that had been corded with muscle from a lifetime of hammering steel. His beard had been dyed a faded blue that had grown out somewhat at the roots, suggesting he hadn't bothered to renew it recently. When I arrived with my three companions, he greeted me in the Tyroshi dialect and immediately began measuring me with practiced hands and a length of waxed cord.

The measuring took most of the morning, and he fitted me for two suits. One for jousting with a great guard on my left pauldron coming down above my heart, and another lighter and built for the kind of fighting where you might be on your feet two hours after the engagement began. 

He asked about adornments. The Tyroshi favored elaborate decoration—gilded edges, engraved patterns, jeweled inlays. Most of his commissions came from sellsword captains who wanted their armor to reflect their successes.

When asked about adornments, the gilded edges and jeweled inlays both the Westerosi lords and the sellsword captains preferred, I made my wishes known. 

"I want it simple," I said. "Accents only with the sun and moon of my house. I want it subtle, Master Sythos. Function first, beauty second."

Master Sythos nodded with what I thought was approval. "Many young lords order armor like jewelry. Like they think it makes them look bigger. A working armorer prefers a working knight."

He promised the suits would be ready in three weeks, and arranged for them to be shipped to Tarth if I had moved on. The price, which came to a respectable sum, was covered by Magister Pretarys.

When we left the workshop, I chose to walk back to the Archon's palace on foot.

I wanted to see more of the city. The previous day had been a parade, a feast, a series of carefully managed encounters. I wanted to walk the streets at my own pace and see what the place actually was.

Codin, Pate, and Arlan came with me. They'd insisted, and I hadn't argued. None of them had been outside the palace much yesterday either.

We walked together up through the industrial quarter, past tanners and smiths and rope-makers and a dozen other crafts, climbing slowly toward the wealthier districts. None of us spoke much.

Because what we were really seeing, all of us, were the slaves.

They were everywhere. Carrying loads. Pulling carts. Sweeping the streets in front of their masters' shops. Standing at attention beside doorways. A blind man was being led down the street by a small girl with a collar around her neck and a tattoo of three crescents on her cheek. A baker's assistant—collared, perhaps fourteen years old—was running with bread loaves balanced impossibly high on a tray, weaving through the crowd with desperate concentration.

Pate kept making small sounds in his throat. Hisses of breath. The starts of words he didn't finish. Codin's jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle working. Arlan kept his eyes mostly down, only occasionally glancing up to take in some detail he wanted to remember for his maps.

We rounded a corner into a small square and came face to face with the worst of it.

A casket of wine had been dropped. Red wine ran across the cobblestones, mixing with the dirt and dust. Standing over the spill was a Tyroshi merchant, his face purpled with fury, dyed beard quivering. Standing in front of him, his back to a wall, was the slave who had dropped the casket. A young man, perhaps twenty, thin and underfed.

The merchant had a short whip in his hand.

He brought it down across the slave's face. Once. Twice.

The slave did not cry out at first. He had been trained better than that. But by the fourth strike he could not help it, and a thin, choked sound escaped him.

I had to catch myself before I caught Pate by the shoulder before he could take a step. My grip was tight enough that he winced.

"No."

"My lord, he's—"

"I said no."

I kept my voice low. Quiet enough that no one but the four of us could hear it.

"We are guests here. We have no authority and no right to intervene. If we draw a sword in defense of that man, we offend a citizen of Tyrosh, and we may cause an incident that ends Lord Baratheon's mission. And in the end, the slave that started it all will probably hang for it. Do you understand?"

Pate looked at me like a kicked puppy, but I did not let go of his shoulder.

The whipping continued. The slave was bleeding from his face now, from the lash that had opened his cheek. The merchant gave him three more strikes before he was satisfied, then turned and walked away, leaving the slave to clean up the spilled wine with his own bare hands.

I forced myself to keep walking.

Codin let out a long breath as we left the square behind. "Poor fella."

"Aye," Arlan said quietly.

Pate said nothing. He was angry. I could see it in the set of his shoulders. But he understood. That was the important thing. The rage could be felt, but it could not be acted on. Not here. Not yet.

We walked another two blocks in silence before we were approached.

The man came out of a side street with deliberate confidence, not bothering to hide his approach. He was middle-aged, well-dressed, with the calm bearing of a professional messenger. He stopped a polite distance from us and bowed.

"Ser Galladon Tarth?"

I inclined my head.

"I bring greetings from Magister Karo Adarys,” the messenger said. “He requests the honor of your company this afternoon. He wishes to show you one of his mills here in the city. He has invited you to see for yourself the operation of his pear brandy production, and to discuss the matters that were... interrupted last evening."

I felt my eyebrows raise. I had not expected the invitation so soon, but it made sense. After last night's confrontation with Hallore, Adarys would want to repair whatever damage had been done to his case in my eyes. And I, frankly, wanted to see his production methods.

"I accept gladly. Where shall I meet him?"

xxx

The messenger led us all the way to the mill, which lay in the industrial quarter we had just been walking through. The mill was set in what had once been a warehouse, with the front converted to offices and the back enlarged to hold the production equipment. Karo Adarys himself was waiting for us at the entrance, his green beard freshly oiled, his rings glittering in the afternoon sun.

"Ser Galladon,” he greeted. “You honor me. Please, come in."

He took us on a tour of the operation with the enthusiasm of a man who genuinely loved his craft. He showed us the receiving area where the pears arrived from his country estates. He showed us the great wooden vats where the fruit was mashed and the juice extracted. He showed us the fermentation hall, where dozens of barrels stood in rows, each producing a different vintage at a different stage of progress.

He bragged the entire time. About the size of his operation. About the number of farms he owned across the island. About his connections in Lys and Pentos and Myr. About how his brandy was served in the courts of magisters from Volantis to Norvos.

I let him talk. I made appreciative sounds at the right moments. I asked the kind of polite questions that suggested interest without revealing how much I actually knew.

Then we reached the distillation hall, and I almost stopped walking.

His stills were made of clay.

Not copper. Not even bronze. Clay vessels, large and well-made certainly, but clay. Worked over wood fires by collared slaves who tended them with long wooden paddles.

I felt my eyebrows trying to rise and forced them back down. Pate had opened his mouth, and I gave him a sharp look. He closed it.

Clay.

In my old life, I had read enough about the history of distillation to know this was actually quite old technology. The Tyroshi had been making pear brandy this way for centuries, and they had simply never updated their methods because they had no competition and the methods worked well enough. Clay was cheap. The vessels could be made locally. Replacement parts were easy. There was no need for the specialized copper-smithing that copper alembics required.

But the efficiency was terrible.

The temperature control was rough. The vapor losses were significant. The clay would absorb some of the alcohol with each batch, contaminating the next one. The shape of the vessels was not ideal for fractional distillation. They were producing pear brandy through sheer brute force, running each batch through multiple times to concentrate the spirit, wasting much of their fruit harvest to inefficient conversion.

My copper alembics, with Lenny's coil condenser and the ice chamber we were planning, would produce a cleaner, stronger spirit using a fraction of the input.

Adarys was bragging that his operation produced more pear brandy than any other in Tyrosh. He thought he was the apex of the craft.

He was a man who had never seen better.

Let him brag. Let him think himself the best. Soon enough, my own production would surpass his by orders of magnitude. The day would come when Tarth whiskey flooded the markets and Tyroshi pear brandy was a quaint local product no one outside Essos cared about.

I made admiring sounds,  asked questions designed to flatter, and acted like I had no idea what I was seeing. 

"Magister Adarys," I said when the tour had concluded and we had retired to a small office where wine—not pear brandy, interestingly—had been served, "I confess to be most impressed by your operation. I had not realized the scale of Tyroshi production."

"Most in the Sunset Kingdom do not,” he said. “Pear brandy is not popular across the Narrow Sea. I have tried to expand into the Westerosi market, but my trading partners in your homeland have been quite… unreliable."

"I am hoping to change that." I gave him a calculated smile. "One of my reasons for traveling with Lord Steffon is exactly this kind of exploration. To find products that might find good markets in Westeros. To establish trade relationships that benefit both sides."

Adarys nodded thoughtfully. His eyes held something now—calculation, ambition, hope.

"I would not wish to impede your dealings with the other magisters of Tyrosh. I know that my family's history weighs heavily in our politics. Hallore is not the only one who remembers." He paused. "But I hope that you, and perhaps even Lord Baratheon, and perhaps even your king himself, might consider my proposals in the future. With time. Once the appropriate channels have been built."

I made my expression carefully neutral.

He was not talking about pear brandy. Or at least, not only about pear brandy. The man was the son of a defeated merchant king. He had once had power in this city, real power, and now he had only wealth. And wealth without power was, to a man like him, only half a life.

Could he be looking for Westerosi backing of some kind? For what, I could not yet say. I had no fingers in the pulse of Tyroshi politics, but I did not expect there to be any appetite for a return to his father’s day. 

"I look forward to discussing those matters when the time is right," I said.

Adarys smiled. He knew I had understood him, so he did not press further. And when we left, he promised to send a gift to my chambers. A token of our new friendship.

I should have been more suspicious.

xxx

The gift was waiting for me when I returned to the Archon's palace late that night, waiting in my receiving chamber. The slave at the door bowed me in with a look that suggested he had been instructed not to comment on what he had been ordered to allow inside.

A woman. And a child.

The woman was perhaps thirty years old, tall and slim and beautiful in the cold, perfect way of Tyroshi pleasure slaves. Her hair was pale blonde, fashionably arranged. Her clothing, what little of it there was, had been chosen to flatter her body without quite revealing it entirely. A silver collar with a small inlay of green stone gleamed at her throat. The colors of House Adarys.

The girl beside her was the woman's daughter. Obviously. They had the same face, the same coloring, the same poise. The girl could not have been older than eleven.

She wore a similar collar.

"Out," I said. My voice came out harder than I'd intended. "Both of you. Out."

Eyes going wide, the woman dropped instantly to her knees. The girl followed her mother's lead a half-second later, mimicking the gesture without seeming to understand what it meant.

"My lord, please." The woman's voice was low, urgent, and trembling. "Please, do not send us away. Please!"

"I have no use for you,” I said harshly. “Tell your master I am not interested."

"My lord, if I leave without…" She swallowed. "If I leave without doing what was asked, I will be punished. Severely. My lord, please."

That stopped me cold, and I forced myself to look at her properly. At her face, at the tremble in her shoulders. Her begging eyes. There was real fear there. It wasn’t a performance.

"Lie to him,” I told her.

"I cannot, my lord." She shook her head. "He always knows. He has ways. The other women who have lied—they..." Her voice trailed off into a kind of horror she could not finish describing.

I let out a long breath.

"And the girl?" I asked, more gently. "Why is she here?"

The woman did not look up from the floor. "The Magister thought... he thought the young lord might prefer a companion closer to his own age. He apologizes for not knowing your preferences in advance. He said to choose freely between us, or to enjoy both, as suited my lord's taste."

The girl was eleven.

I felt a wave of disgust rise within me that was so total, so complete, that for a moment I could not speak.

It made me want to burn the entire city down. Every inch of this cursed place. I wanted to ride to Adarys's manse and put my blade through his soft belly. I wanted to find every magister and every owner and every man who had ever participated in this and give them a fitting end.

Gods, and  I had done business with these men. Profitable business. I had signed deals with them last night. The trade arrangements would bring gold to House Tarth. They would help me build the strength I needed to be more than I was.

I felt dirty.

But I hardened my heart against it.

Change was a currency only the strong could yield. If I ever wanted to do anything worth remembering in this world, anything real, anything lasting, whether in Westeros or here in Tyrosh or across all Essos, I needed strength first. The kind of strength that came from gold and connections and influence and ships and men.

A minor lord's son had no power against the institution of slavery. The slave trade fed half the Essosi economies. It was woven into every law, every custom, every magisterial fortune. I could no more end it with a wave of my hand than I could empty the sea with a bucket.

I had to accept that. For now.

But that did not mean I could do nothing. It did not mean I could not help one person. One young girl.

I walked over to the two of them and crouched down so I was on the woman's level. She still did not look up at me.

"What is your name?"

"Bryssa, my lord."

"And your daughter?"

She hesitated. Glanced up at me for the first time.

"Bryssa," I said again, gently. "Look at me. What is her name?"

She turned to her daughter. The girl looked at her mother with frightened eyes, then up at me. She had violet eyes, I realized. Not common in Tyrosh.

"Rona," the mother said.

"Rona." I tested the name. The girl flinched slightly when I said it. "Bryssa, listen carefully. If I tell your master that I have taken a liking to the two of you, if I make him an offer, will he sell you to me?"

Bryssa stared at me. For a long moment, I thought she had not understood. Then her face changed completely. Confusion. Shock. Then something I could not quite name.

"You..." Her voice failed her. "My lord, I thought the Westerosi did not take slaves."

"I am not buying you to keep you enslaved."

Her eyes widened as she realized what I meant. Tears welled and spilled down her face. She opened her mouth to speak but choked.

Then she shook her head.

"My master—" She had to fight for the words. "My master likes me too much, my lord. He will not let me go. I am one of his favorites. He has had me since I was barely older than my daughter. He has refused offers from other magisters. He will not sell me. But my daughter..."

She paused.

"He cares nothing for her. He has not yet... she is not yet of use to him in the ways he prefers. He has plans for when she comes of age, of course. But for now, she is something he keeps because of me. A token of my obedience. He would sell her, if the price was right and the offer came from someone he wished to flatter."

I looked at her carefully. She sounded a smart woman. "You would let your daughter go? Without you?"

Rona had been listening. The girl lunged at her mother and wrapped her thin arms around Bryssa's waist, beginning to cry.

"Mama, no, no, I don't want to leave you, please don't make me leave you."

Bryssa held her daughter close. She bent her head down against her daughter's hair. Tears were streaming down her face freely now.

"What other future could she have with me?" Bryssa whispered to herself. To me. To the gods, perhaps. "My own? No. Anything but that." There was a haunted look on her face that I would remember for the rest of my life.

The little girl was sobbing into her mother's body. Bryssa stroked her hair with one hand while the other clutched her tight.

"You have to be strong now, little one. You have to be strong, just for a little while. So you can be safe. So you can have something better. I am so sorry. I am so sorry, my heart."

I knelt the rest of the way down on the marble floor, putting myself level with both of them. Rona looked at me through her tears. She was terrified. Of course she was. I was a stranger speaking of taking her away from the only person in the world she loved.

My heart broke at the sight of her.

"Rona," I said softly. "I have two younger sisters. Arianne and Alysanne. They are a few years older than you. They live in a castle by the sea, on an island called Tarth. It is very beautiful. There are mountains and rivers and beaches and forests. My sisters would like a new friend. I think they would like you."

"A friend?" The girl's voice was a tiny whisper.

"A friend. And in my home, no one would hurt you. I swear that to you. On my honor as a knight."

I looked up at Bryssa.

She looked at me for a good few seconds. Her face had hardened in some way I did not entirely understand. When she spoke, her voice was steady.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you doing this?” she asked. “You owe us nothing. You do not know us. I am still here, and you could still take what was offered. Why?"

I shook my head.

"Entirely selfish reasons, my lady."

Her face hardened further. She pulled her daughter closer.

"Tell me."

I let out a long, slow breath.  "Because it shames me that I cannot do even more."