Chapter 65

Slaves. 

Slaves everywhere. Every ten paces, a quiet figure with a golden collar stood at attention beside a doorway, or polished a piece of statuary, or carried something for someone. Every fountain had a slave to skim leaves from its surface. Every chandelier had a slave whose only task was to maintain it. 

The whole palace existed in a state of impossible perfection because hundreds of human beings worked themselves to the bone every hour of the day to keep it that way. They were like tiny little gears clicking along inside a clock, unseen and as silent as humanly possible.

I walked through the palace’s halls the morning after the feast and could not stop noticing them. They knelt as I passed them by, knelt and pressed their foreheads to the ground and stayed there likely until I was out of view. 

And all around them, wealth. So much wealth on display that it would’ve downright awed me had I not already grown sick of displayed wealth.

Paenymion was an Elephant, the merchant faction, and he wanted everyone who entered his home to know exactly how much wealth he and those of that faction commanded. Murals along the corridors depicted the great trading expeditions that had built Volantine fortunes, daring caravans crossing the Demon Road north of Valyria, fleets of cogs returning from Yin with holds full of jade. Tapestries showed the markets of distant cities where Volantine merchants held court, each one marked with a tiny banner bearing the elephant of the faction.

The display celebrated commerce. But it celebrated commerce the way a soldier might display severed heads. See what we have taken, it said. See how far our reach extends. See how rich we have become at the expense of all of you.

It was all gaudy. Too much gold leaf. Too many gems. Too many marble busts of Paenymion ancestors looking down from their pedestals with carefully calculated expressions of wisdom. The man was trying to prove something, and I suspected that something was that he deserved to be Triarch and keep being one, as they had yearly elections for the three posts. Seemed like endless campaigning was the name of the game here.

To be fair, I did not mind the gaudiness. Old Blood meant old money and deep pockets, and deep pockets meant business opportunities. The night before, after I had finally escaped from Elyssa Vhassar's calculated attentions—and after we had exchanged more than a few fiery glances across the hall, the woman seemed determined to remind me of her existence whenever I caught the corner of her eye—I had managed to speak with no fewer than fifteen wealthy Volantene nobles before the feast ended.

The deals were already bubbling up, if not yet signed and sealed. An old merchant trying to get into the wine shipping business who was willing to discount steeply for an exclusive contract with Dawnrest. A textile magnate who looked greedily at our vast herds of the prized Stormlander sheep. A spice trader whose connections reached into the Jade Sea itself. A man who wanted to import Tarthi marble for a temple his family was constructing. 

So much wealth flowed through Volantis that making money here was not even the hard part. The hard part was usually getting access to the people who controlled the flow of that wealth, and Lord Steffon's mission had already done that work for me. I was inside the Black Walls. I was being received in the homes of the Old Blood. The only thing left was to take advantage of it before we sailed home.

I was thinking through the order in which I should follow up on the previous night's contacts when I reached the wing of the palace where Lord Steffon's apartments lay. Technically, it was the same wing I was in, only the wing itself was so big it had wings of its own. It was a marvel the whole palace hadn’t suddenly taken flight yet.

That was when I almost walked into Ser Oswell Whent.

The kingsguard was leaving Lord Steffon's chambers. His white cloak was flung back over one shoulder. His brows were furrowed in a way I had not seen on him before, and his mouth was set in a hard line. He looked like a man who had just received unwelcome news.

"Ser Oswell," I said, stopping to greet him properly.

He looked up. For a moment he did not seem to recognize me, which was odd. Then his eyes focused, and he gave me a curt nod.

"Tarth," he said.

That was all. He shouldered past me without another word and disappeared down the corridor at a brisk walk.

I turned and watched him go for a moment.

Ser Oswell had been jovial throughout the voyage. He had told stories at the table. He had laughed at Gerion's jokes. He had even sparred with me twice on the deck of the galleas, and had given me the kind of polite, professional advice that a senior knight gave a younger one despite our matching strengths. We had not been close, to be sure, but we had not been strangers either.

Shrugging, I walked the rest of the distance to Lord Steffon's door and knocked. The door opened a few seconds later, but only a few inches. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a harried steward or the like on the other side. 

Lady Cassana Baratheon looked out at me still wearing a morning robe rather than a proper court dress. It was early, sure, but not so much that a lady of her standing would not be ready for visitors. Her expression, normally warm to me, was tight and composed.

"Ser Galladon," she said.

"My lady," I said, bowing. "I had hoped to speak with Lord Steffon about our return date."

"My lord husband is indisposed this morning," she said. "He will not be receiving visitors today. I am sorry to disappoint you."

I blinked at her clipped tone. The Lady Cassana I had come to know across these weeks at sea had a maternal warmth to her that she extended even to grown men like me. We had talked on several occasions, and she would ask after my mother and my sisters as much as I would about her sons, particularly my soon-to-be squire. 

This morning, none of that warmth was in evidence.

"Of course," I said carefully. "I hope it is nothing serious. Should I send for a maester?"

"That will not be necessary," she said. "Good day, Ser Galladon."

She closed the door before I could say anything else.

I stood in the corridor for a few seconds, staring at the polished wood.

Something was happening with Lord Steffon.

I had been watching the man grow more weary across the past weeks. The dark bags under his eyes. The bottle that he could not seem to set aside. The conversations he refused to have. Something was eating at him, and it had been doing so since before we left Tarth.

And now whatever it was had become serious enough that he could not see anyone. 

For a moment, I thought about knocking again and insisting with Lady Cassana as to what was happening. But only for a moment. Then I simply shook my head and walked away from the door, reminding myself that some problems were still above my pay grade. 

I had more than enough shit of my own to attend to without picking up the scraps out of someone else’s pile.

xxx

I found Codin sharpening his sword on the floor of my receiving room. Arlan was sketching at the small writing desk, working from memory on what I assumed was the harbor we had sailed into yesterday morning.

"Get ready," I said. "We're going into the city."

Codin looked up. "Where to, my lord?"

"I want to meet someone first. Then we'll see what the city offers."

I had a plan, though it was a long shot.

The Widow of the Waterfront. I had been thinking about her since I decided to join Lord Steffon on his journey east, and my growing revulsion with all the slavery I’d seen throughout it had only sharpened my interest.

I knew her only by what she would become decades from now when Tyrion Lannister and Ser Jorah Mormont sought her favor. A former bedslave who had been freed and then married by her master, the Triarch Vogarro. She had inherited his business when he died some ten years ago, and from there, she would grow her commercial holdings into one of the largest fortunes in Volantis. 

That made her a near-certain bet in my eyes. A woman who had endured what she had endured, who had built what she would build, was not a woman whose star was going to fall during my lifetime. If I could get to her early—now, while she was still consolidating Vogarro's holdings and most of the city saw her as just another rich freedwoman to be tolerated rather than respected—then I could begin a relationship that would compound in value for decades.

And there was more than commerce to it. Of all the people I might meet in Volantis, she was the one most likely to understand what I actually thought about slavery. She had lived it. She had been freed from it. And from what I remembered, she hated it.

I had no intention of inciting a slave revolution any time soon, but that did not mean the Widow and I might not find ways, much further down the line, to work toward the same kinds of ends. Quietly. Patiently. The way change happened when the people pushing for it had time on their side.

It was worth the morning to find out if she would even see me.

We went down through the palace, retracing my path of yesterday in reverse, until we reached the great main entrance. A dozen slave-guards stood at attention there in matched bronze armor. The captain of them stepped forward and bowed as we approached.

"Honored guests," he said in heavily accented Common. "How may we serve?"

"We are going out into the city," I said. "Please have the gates opened."

The captain hesitated.

"My lord," he said. "A hathay can be summoned within minutes. The walk to the outer gate is long, and many beneath the rank of esteemed guest move through the streets. It is only fitting."

"I prefer to walk," I said.

The man's eyes flicked to one of his fellows. The other guard's expression had grown tense.

"My lord," the captain tried again. "We can have a hathay here very quickly. It would honor our master if you would accept his generosity."

"I appreciate the offer," I said. "But we will walk. We are armed. We will be fine."

The two guards exchanged another look. This one had open anxiety in it. The second guard spoke quickly to the first in the Volantene dialect of Valyrian, his voice low and tense.

I had not studied that particular dialect with the same intensity as the Tyroshi one, but I had been working at it hard during the voyage. Maester Rowen had once told me that the dialects of the Free Cities were like cousins of High Valyrian, in that you could understand them with enough exposure if you started with the parent language. He had been right. After three weeks of sustained effort, with help from Oberyn and from one of the older sailors on the galleas who had grown up trading in Volantis, I could grasp the meaning even when the speed and the unfamiliar consonants made full comprehension difficult.

"—the master will have us flogged," the second guard was saying. "Run. Hurry the drivers. Run."

The first guard nodded sharply and gestured to one of his fellows, who immediately turned and sprinted off into the palace at full speed.

The captain turned back to me. His expression had been wrestled back into something polite, but I could see the strain in it.

"A hathay is coming, my lord," he said. "Only a moment more."

I let out a sigh. The poor man had likely been told not to let any of the foreign guests leave on foot. The Volantene had this whole deal about walking on your own two feet being a sign of poverty and a quick path toward dishonor in society’s eyes. 

Quite the foolish and impractical custom, if you asked me. But whatever the rationale, the order had been given, and the consequences for him and his fellows if I walked out on foot would be severe, I imagined.

I felt the anger rise. The same anger I had felt in Tyrosh watching a merchant whip a slave for dropping a wine cask. Anger at a system that put men into bondage and then punished them for failing to please their masters in ways that were not their fault. Anger at myself for being part of it, for benefiting from it, for participating in the elaborate diplomatic theater that pretended none of this was happening.

I almost decided to walk anyway. Damn the consequences. Let the slaves explain to their master that the foreign guest had insisted, and let the master punish me through diplomatic channels if he chose. I was a guest, after all. I was untouchable.

But the slaves were not.

The slaves would still bear the brunt of any punishment, even if it was officially directed at me. The master would not whip me. He would whip them and make sure I never heard about it.

So I waited. A minute turned into five, turned into ten, and for a second there I almost changed my mind on the whole slavery business due to this slight inconvenience, until a great palanquin came up the marble path that led to the palace entrance. 

Not a hathay, I noticed. That one’s supposed to be a sort of carriage pulled by an elephant.

Twelve slaves bore the palanquin on their shoulders instead, perfectly synchronized. The thing itself was the size of a small house, hung with silk curtains in deep purple and embroidered with silver thread. A small crest had been worked into the side: three crossed lances and a stylized sun.

The curtains parted as the bearers brought the palanquin to a halt at the foot of the steps. Nyessos Vhassar stepped out. At spotting me, the Old Blood noble gave me a smooth smile and inclined his head.

"Ser Galladon," he said. "What a pleasant surprise to meet you at the door."

"Magister Vhassar," I said, returning the bow. "Are you here for the Triarch?"

"I am. We must discuss the upcoming elections. There are many subtleties to navigate before the voting starts in a fortnight."

"Of course."

He glanced at the slave-guards. Then back to me.

"Are you having difficulties with our hosts' staff?" he asked.

I waved a hand. "Just a minor misunderstanding."

Nyessos's expression cooled in a way that the slave-guards could clearly read. He spoke a few sharp words to the captain in Valyrian. I caught most of them, particularly the promise of a whipping due to the inconvenience of the honored guests. 

The captain bowed deeply, eyes on the floor.

"My apologies, Magister Vhassar," he said in Common, for my benefit. "We will see to the lord's needs immediately."

"You will not," Nyessos said. "I shall see to them myself." He turned back to me with that smooth smile. "My palanquin is at your disposal, Ser Galladon. It seats six within. You and your companions are most welcome to use it for the day. My slaves know the city well and can carry you wherever you wish to go."

I almost accepted straight away due to sheer irritation at being made to wait, but I something made me hesitate. The offer was generous, of course, but Nyessos Vhassar was not the kind of man who simply happened to be passing by at exactly the moment I needed transportation.

I looked at the slave-guards. The captain was sweating openly now. The fellow guard would not meet my eyes. Was that because of the coming whipping, or was it something else?

Frowning, I took a quick glance down the wide road that led down from the palace. Hathays and their elephant drivers were big and visible from a long distance, and they made an enormous racket as they moved. If anyone had actually sent a runner for one, I would be able to see the elephant coming for half a mile.

There were no elephants visible.

There had never been any hathay coming for me, I realized. The guards had been stalling.

Stalling, until Nyessos Vhassar arrived to offer a more generous alternative.

Fuck.

How long had I been watched? Had Vhassar's spies followed me from my chambers? Had they followed Gerion and Oberyn as well? Or was I getting the special attention because Elyssa had decided to recruit me last night and her father needed to keep me in close orbit while she did her work?

Instead of spiraling, I forced my face into something I hoped was simple, grateful pleasure.

"Magister Vhassar," I said. "Your generosity humbles me. I gladly accept."

The smile he gave me was full of pleased certainty. He had wanted me to accept, and I had accepted, and now I was riding around the city in his palanquin instead of walking on my own feet. He probably thought he had managed me.

Well. Let him think that.

I climbed into the palanquin, with Codin and Arlan following behind. The inside was lavish and full plush cushions, low tables, a small bowl of grapes already laid out for the convenience of the passenger. The curtains closed around us. The slaves lifted us as one. The palanquin began to move.

Nyessos Vhassar waited for a moment longer outside, then turned and ascended the steps into the Triarch's palace. As I watched him go through the gap in the curtain, I saw him glance briefly at the slave-guards.

The captain was nearly trembling.

I sat back in the cushions. "Where to, my lord?" Codin asked quietly.

I thought about it.

I could not go to the Widow now. Not in this palanquin. Whatever Vhassar's slaves saw, his ears would soon hear. If I rolled up to the Merchant’s House in Vhassar's palanquin and spent the morning closeted with her, he would know about it by sundown.

I needed misdirection.

"To the Sept of the Seven," I said, raising my voice for the bearers to hear. "On the western side of the Long Bridge. I wish to pray."

"The Sept, my lord?" the lead bearer called back in broken common.

"The Sept," I confirmed.

We changed direction with the same eerie synchronicity as everything else these slaves did. The palanquin angled toward the great central road that led to the Long Bridge.

I leaned over to Codin and dropped my voice.

"When we get there," I murmured, "you and Arlan will wait outside. I am praying. A very long, very intense prayer. I am known for my piety. Do you understand me?"

Codin's expression shifted into the careful neutral he used when he understood without needing to ask questions.

"Aye, my lord. A very pious lord. Could take an hour. Maybe two."

Arlan was watching us with wide eyes. He was still learning. 

"Maybe three," I said, then sat back against the cushions and let the palanquin carry me toward the Long Bridge.

xxx

The sept Nyessos’ slaves brought us to stood small and modest amid a row of other religious buildings on a side street in central Volantis.

If there was one freedom the Volantene enjoyed more than their counterparts in Westeros, it was religious. Here, while the Lord of Light held the most adherents, other gods could still be worshiped without an issue. You try and open a red temple in the middle of King’s Landing and see where that gets you. Then again, with Aerys Targaryen and his hard on for all kinds of fire in the helm, perhaps Melisandre might be able to convince him despite the grumbling of his lords and the Faith. 

Western Volantis was not as ostentatious as the eastern half within the Black Walls. The buildings here were older and more practical, plastered over with the dust of the trade roads, weathered by decades of river-damp and sun. 

The Sept of the Seven was wedged between a small temple of the Old Faith of the Rhoyne and a shrine to some god I did not recognize, with a hooded figure carved above its entrance. None of these places looked busy.

I climbed the modest stone steps with Codin and Arlan trailing behind me. The palanquin slaves set down their burden at the curb and waited in the patient stillness of men who had been trained never to question what their burden did once it was set down.

Inside the sept, the air was cooler and dimmer. Seven small altars lined the walls of the seven-sided room, and only half a dozen or so worshippers knelt before their chosen aspects, mostly Westerosi traders from the look of them. A septon in the dusty white robes of his order moved quietly through the chamber, lighting candles and offering nods to the faithful.

Giving the man a few coins for the sept’s upkeep, I politely requested he left me to my prayers undisturbed and hee simply bowed and withdrew. I knelt before the Warrior for show while Codin and Arlan settled themselves on a bench near the door, taking up the posture of guards waiting on a pious lord.

I gave it three minutes. Long enough that anyone watching from outside would believe I had truly settled in to pray.

Then I was slipping out the back door and into a shadowy alley, with a hooded cloak thrown over my shoulders that hid my face well enough at a distance.

xxx

Volantis hit me like a wet cloth as soon as I left the cool stone of the sept.

The city was hot. King's Landing hot, but worse, with a thick, cloying humidity that crawled into the lungs and stayed there. Within minutes of starting my walk, I could feel sweat soaking through the linen shirt beneath my cloak. Ten minutes out and I was drenched.

I welcomed the discomfort. A man dressed plainly, walking on foot, and sweating like a pig in heat was not the sort of figure that drew the attention of Old Blood spies. I would pass for any other Westerosi vagrant trying to find his way through a city that had not been built with foreigners in mind. And walking through Volantis was an entirely different experience than going around inside a panaquin with curtains drawn and slaves moving in perfect rhythm. 

Now, I could truly see everything. The cracked pavement of streets that should have been the finest in the city. The shanties pressed up against the walls of fine houses. The press of human bodies on every corner.

And the slaves.

I knew the number beforehand, as I did for the other cities. Five slaves for every free man in Volantis. But I had not understood what that number meant until I walked through these streets.

The slaves were everywhere. Carrying. Hauling. Sweeping. Fanning their masters. Holding parasols above the heads of women who might otherwise have to feel the sun on their pampered skin. Selling fruit from baskets they balanced on their heads. Pulling small carts. Pushing larger ones. The slaves outnumbered the free people on the street so thoroughly that I had to consciously look for the few free citizens to verify they existed at all.

The tattoos got most of my attention. In Volantis, slaves were marked on the face with symbols that indicated their function. A wheel for hathay drivers. A tear for prostitutes. Tiger stripes, jade green, for slave soldiers. Hammers for smith's apprentices. Simple geometric patterns for household slaves of varying ranks. And stranger ones. Lightning bolts. Leopard's spots. A man passed me with what looked like a tree branching across his cheek and forehead, the lines reaching nearly to his eyes. I had no idea what his function was supposed to be. 

I moved through the press of bodies, keeping my hood low and my pace steady. I made one stop only. A wine merchant's cart standing at a small junction, where I bought a small cask of Volantene red. The merchant did not look at me twice. 

The Merchant's House sat at the western end of the Long Bridge, dominating one side of Fishmonger's Square like a fortress that had decided to disguise itself as an inn.

The square was busy. Fishmongers shouted from their stalls. The smell of fish, old and fresh in equal measure, hung over everything, mixed with the river smell and the city's general miasma of incense and sewage. A cracked statue of some dead triarch stood at the center, headless, its body weathered and pissed-stained. No one paid it any attention. It had been there long enough to become invisible.

Warehouses lined the waterfront beyond the square. Brothels and taverns crowded together in the side streets. A fight had broken out somewhere down toward the docks and I could hear the shouting from where I stood, though no one in the square seemed to care. And no one cared when I crossed the square and slipped into the inn.

The common room of the Merchant’s House was a cavernous warren larger than the great halls of many Westerosi castles.

I had not been prepared for the scale of it. The hall stretched on and on, with no clear architecture to make sense of its boundaries. Maze-like passages led off to private alcoves and nooks half-screened by hanging vines or wooden lattices. A central courtyard at the heart of the building was open to the sky, with a trellis of flowering vines throwing intricate patterns across its flagstone floor, and green and purple moss growing between the stones. The dim interior was lit by oil lamps in iron brackets and by the shafts of light that fell from the courtyard into the deeper recesses.

Hundreds of people occupied the place. Sailors. Merchants. Mercenaries. Slavers in long coats. Slaves of a dozen different functions moving among the tables to serve flagons of ale, wine, and an iced green drink that smelled of mint and herbs I could not identify.

I made my way to the long wooden bar that ran along one wall of the main room and slid onto a stool.

The barkeep was a thick-necked Volantene with skin tanned to the color of saddle leather and a full beard down to his chest. He looked at me with the polite incuriosity of a man who’d seen every type of foreigner come through his establishment and no longer cared much about any. He also knew where I came from after a single look.

 "What does my lord drink?" he asked in passable Common.

"Ale," I said in High Valyrian. "Whatever you have that is decent."

The barkeep's eyebrow rose slightly. A Westerosi who spoke the high tongue was not a common sight. He set a wooden flagon in front of me and poured from a pitcher, then waited.

I laid a small gold coin on the bar. The barkeep eyed it.

"I am told," I said, keeping my voice low and conversational, "that the Widow of the Waterfront takes her business in this establishment."

The barkeep did not look at the coin. He kept his eyes on me. "She takes her ease where she pleases. As she has earned the right."

"As is just." I touched the coin with my finger. "I wonder if she might find a moment for a humble traveler from across the sea. I would be most grateful for the opportunity to pay my respects to a woman whose reputation has reached even my distant lands."

The barkeep grumbled something in Volantene under his breath, but he picked up the coin. "She is a busy woman."

"I am a patient man."

"Wait, then."

He walked away, taking the coin and the message with him. I sipped at the ale. It was decent enough.

I waited.

Then I ordered food when the wait grew long. Warm bread fresh from the ovens. A sausage thick with honey and pepper that turned out to be excellent. Roasted duck in a sauce I did not recognize but which complemented the meat beautifully. The Merchant's House did not become the largest inn in Volantis by serving poor food, and I was hungry enough from my walk to appreciate the meal.

I ate slowly. I drank little. And I spent most of the time people-watching.

Half the alcoves around me were occupied by serious-looking men in serious conversations. Merchants negotiating cargoes. Sellswords negotiating contracts. Two men in slavers' coats arguing quietly with a third over the price of something I did not particularly want to identify. The Merchant's House was, I realized, the kind of place where serious business of all kinds was done. The Widow had not chosen this place for no reason. 

A full half hour passed before a small slave girl approached me at the bar.

She was perhaps fourteen, slender, with cropped dark hair that might make life harder for any wandering lice. A small symbol I did not recognize was tattooed beneath her left eye. She curtsied without quite meeting my gaze.

"My lord," she said in Common with a Volantene accent. "The lady will see you now. Have you brought her a gift?"

"I have."

I produced a small silver coin and pressed it into her palm. Her eyes flickered up to mine briefly, then back down. She closed her fingers around the coin.

"This way, my lord."

I followed her through the maze of alcoves and screened passages toward the rear of the building where the courtyard opened up. She led me past tables of arguing merchants and curtained nooks, past a small staircase that I assumed led up to the rooms, until at last we came to a particular alcove near the back, half-shaded on one side by a leafy trellis.

A figure sat at a heavy wooden table with her back to the wall, steeped in shadow.

That’s when I realized I had been picturing her wrong.

The Widow I had read about in my old life had been described as an old bent woman with white hair so thin you could see her pink scalp. The image had stuck with me, and I had brought it across the sea expecting to meet a withered crone hunched at her table.

This was not that woman.

She was still around her mid fifties, by my reckoning. Her hair was mostly black, with streaks of silver running through it where age had begun its work. Her face was lined but firm, with high cheekbones that age had only sharpened, and a strong, slightly hooked nose that gave her face character. 

She was, frankly, a striking woman. She would have been beyond beautiful in her youth, I could tell, and she remained handsome now.

But her eyes were what fixed me in place as I approached. They were dark and intelligent and  seemed to miss nothing as I crossed the last few feet to her table. By the time I stood before her, I had no doubt she had already formed a half-dozen working theories about who and what I was.

I also noted, as the slave girl bowed and stepped aside, the men half-concealed by the leafy alcove to her side. Three of them, all armed and attentive. The widow’s sons, they were called, though I doubted she had actually borne any of them.

There would be no strong-arming this woman into a deal she did not want.

I sketched a casual bow and the Widow inclined her head slightly in return. Though I knew from reading about her that she wished for respect more than any amount of gold, I was still a knight and future lord. If we were to have a working relationship in the future, the respect had to be mutual.

"Thank you, dear," she said to the slave girl, her voice as soft as silk and somehow as sharp as a knife. The girl curtsied and left without a word.

The Widow turned her attention to me.

"A Westerosi," she said. "How quaint. Have you brought me a fine gift from your faraway land, stranger?"

"Fine gifts for a fine lady," I said, and set the cask of wine on her table beside several other gifts she had clearly already received that morning. Silks. A small carved box. A pair of velvet gloves. "I heard you enjoyed wine."

She raised an elegant eyebrow at me. The expression pulled at a thin scar beneath her left eye, where the tattooed tear of a pleasure slave had once been. The scar was old. Decades old. Someone—perhaps she herself, perhaps Vogarro for love of her—had cut the tattoo off her face after her freedom.

"You heard correctly, then."

She took up the cask, opened the small wax seal, and gave it a single small whiff. Her face twisted instantly into a grimace.

"Heavens." She set the cask down with the careful, contemptuous gentleness one used for an unpleasant insect. "Good wine, Westerosi. Not whatever this filth is."

I opened my hands.

"My apologies, my lady," I said. "I was in something of a hurry, and that was the only wine I could find on my route here."

"Is this meant to be a jape?" Her eyes narrowed. "Have you come to have a laugh at Vogarro's whore?"

Her hand drifted to a jade fan that lay folded on the table beside her. At the edge of my vision, I saw the men at the nearby table shift very slightly. A hand moved closer to a hilt. Another set down a cup.

I did not move.

"No jape at all," I said carefully. "I did mention they were gifts, no? Plural."

I reached slowly inside my cloak. The men at the next table stiffened. I made certain my movement was visible and obvious, and that what I drew out was clearly not a weapon.

A bundle of leather and iron, which I placed carefully on the table between us, beside the cask.

The Widow looked at it. Her hand stilled on the fan.

"Chains," she said.

"Chains, yes."

She studied the iron. It was small. Made for slender necks. She picked it up and turned it slowly in the lamplight. Her eyes traced the shape and the markings.

"Not Volantene," she said.

"Tyroshi."

She set the chain back down on the leather. Her eyes came up to mine. The hand on the fan finally released. The men at the next table eased back, though they did not relax.

"Whose chains?" she asked. Her voice had changed. The silk was still there. The knife edge was sharper now.

"They belonged to a girl younger than the slave you sent to bring me to this table. Her and her mother were sent to my rooms as gifts by a Tyroshi magister, to do with as it pleased me."

"And it pleased you to free her, did it." She sounded skeptical.

"No, my lady. It shamed me enough that I decided to come and meet with you." Pulling at the edge of my hood, I let my face come out into the light. 

Her eyes widened slightly.

"My name is Galladon Tarth," I said. "Son and heir to Lord Selwyn Tarth of the Stormlands. And I wish to do business with you, dear Widow, now and for years to come."

xxx

AN: Can you tell I got a bit too into Volantene world building? To be fair, Tyrion’s chapter there in ADWD is one of my favorites, and the character of the Widow of the waterfront really stuck with me upon a re-read, so I really wanted to use her here.