The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (73 page)

The girl told them. The answer was still no.

Dany frowned in annoyance. “Very well. Tell them I will pay
double, so long as I get them all.”

“Double?” The fat one in the gold fringe all but drooled.

“This little whore is a fool, truly,” said Kraznys mo Nakloz. “Ask
her for triple, I say. She is desperate enough to pay. Ask for ten times
the price of every slave, yes.”

The tall Grazdan with the spiked beard spoke in the Common
Tongue, though not so well as the slave girl. “Your Grace,” he growled,
“Westeros is being wealthy, yes, but you are not being queen now.
Perhaps will never being queen. Even Unsullied may be losing battles
to savage steel knights of Seven Kingdoms. I am reminding, the Good
Masters of Astapor are not selling flesh for promisings. Are you having
gold and trading goods sufficient to be paying for all these eunuchs you
are wanting?”

“You know the answer to that better than I, Good Master,” Dany
replied. “Your men have gone through my ships and tallied every
bead of amber and jar of saffron. How much do I have?”

“Sufficient to be buying one of thousands,” the Good Master
said, with a contemptuous smile. “Yet you are paying double, you are
saying. Five centuries, then, is all you buy.”

“Your pretty crown might buy another century,” said the fat one in
Valyrian. “Your crown of the three dragons.”

Dany waited for his words to be translated. “My crown is not
for sale.” When Viserys sold their mother’s crown, the last joy had
gone from him, leaving only rage. “Nor will I enslave my people, nor
sell their goods and horses. But my ships you can have. The great
cog
Balerion
and the galleys
Vhagar
and
Meraxes
.” She had warned
Groleo and the other captains it might come to this, though they had
protested the necessity of it furiously. “Three good ships should be
worth more than a few paltry eunuchs.”

The fat Grazdan turned to the others. They conferred in low voices
once again. “Two of the thousands,” the one with the spiked beard
said when he turned back. “It is too much, but the Good Masters are
being generous and your need is being great.”

Two thousand would never serve for what she meant to do.
I must
have them all.
Dany knew what she must do now, though the taste of
it was so bitter that even the persimmon wine could not cleanse it
from her month. She had considered long and hard last night, and
found no other way.
It is my only choice.
“Give me all,” she said, “and
you may have a dragon.”

There was the sound of indrawn breath from Jhiqui beside her.
Kraznys smiled at his fellows. “Did I not tell you? Anything, she
would give us.”

Whitebeard stared in shocked disbelief. His thin, spotted hand
trembled where it grasped the staff. “No.” He went to one knee before
her. “Your Grace, I beg you, win your throne with dragons, not slaves.
You must not do this thing—”

“
You
must not presume to instruct me. Ser Jorah, remove White
beard from my presence.”

Mormont seized the old man roughly by an elbow, yanked him
back to his feet, and marched him out onto the terrace.

“Tell the Good Masters I regret this interruption,” said Dany to
the slave girl. “Tell them I await their answer.”

She knew the answer, though; she could see it in the glitter of their
eyes and the smiles they tried so hard to hide. Astapor had thousands
of eunuchs, and even more slave boys waiting to be cut, but there
were only three living dragons in all the great wide world.
And the
Ghiscari lust for dragons.
How could they not? Five times had Old Ghis
contended with Valyria when the world was young, and five times
gone down to bleak defeat. For the Freehold had dragons, and the
Empire had none.

The oldest Grazdan stirred in his seat, and his pearls clacked
together softly. “A dragon of our choice,” he said in a thin, hard voice.
“The black one is largest and healthiest.”

“His name is Drogon.” She nodded.

“All your goods, save your crown and your queenly raiment, which
we will allow you to keep. The three ships. And Drogon.”

“Done,” she said, in the Common Tongue.

“Done,” the old Grazdan answered in his thick Valyrian. The
others echoed that old man of the pearl fringe. “Done,” the slave girl
translated, “and done, and done, eight times done.”

“The Unsullied will learn your savage tongue quick enough,” added
Kraznys mo Nakloz, when all the arrangements had been made, “but
until such time you will need a slave to speak to them. Take this one
as our gift to you, a token of a bargain well struck.”

“I shall,” said Dany.

The slave girl rendered his words to her, and hers to him. If she
had feelings about being given for a token, she took care not to let
them show.

Arstan Whitebeard held his tongue as well, when Dany swept by
him on the terrace. He followed her down the steps in silence, but
she could hear his hardwood staff
tap tapping
on the red bricks as they
went. She did not blame him for his fury. It was a wretched thing
she did.
The Mother of Dragons has sold her strongest child.
Even the
thought made her ill.

Yet down in the Plaza of Pride, standing on the hot red bricks
between the slavers’ pyramid and the barracks of the eunuchs, Dany
turned on the old man. “Whitebeard,” she said, “I want your counsel,
and you should never fear to speak your mind with me...when we are
alone. But
never
question me in front of strangers. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” he said unhappily.

“I am not a child,” she told him. “I am a queen.”

“Yet even queens can err. The Astapori have cheated you, Your
Grace. A dragon is worth more than any army. Aegon proved that
three hundred years ago, upon the Field of Fire.”

“I know what Aegon proved. I mean to prove a few things of my
own.” Dany turned away from him, to the slave girl standing meekly
beside her litter. “Do you have a name, or must you draw a new one
every day from some barrel?”

“That is only for Unsullied,” the girl said. Then she realized the
question had been asked in High Valyrian. Her eyes went wide. “Oh.”

“Your name is Oh?”

“No. Your Grace, forgive this one her outburst. Your slave’s name
is Missandei, but...”

“Missandei is no longer a slave. I free you, from this instant. Come
ride with me in the litter, I wish to talk.” Rakharo helped them in,
and Dany drew the curtains shut against the dust and heat. “If you
stay with me you will serve as one of my handmaids,” she said as they
set off. “I shall keep you by my side to speak for me as you spoke for
Kraznys. But you may leave my service whenever you choose, if you
have father or mother you would sooner return to.”

“This one will stay,” the girl said. “This one...I...there is no place
for me to go. This...I will serve you, gladly.”

“I can give you freedom, but not safety,” Dany warned. “I have a
world to cross and wars to fight. You may go hungry. You may grow
sick. You may be killed.”

“Valar morghulis,”
said Missandei, in High Valyrian.

“All men must die,” Dany agreed, “but not for a long while, we
may pray.” She leaned back on the pillows and took the girl’s hand.
“Are these Unsullied truly fearless?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“You serve me now. Is it true they feel no pain?”

“The wine of courage kills such feelings. By the time they slay
their sucklings, they have been drinking it for years.”

“And they are obedient?”

“Obedience is all they know. If you told them not to breathe, they
would find that easier than not to obey.”

Dany nodded. “And when I am done with them?”

“Your Grace?”

“When I have won my war and claimed the throne that was my
father’s, my knights will sheath their swords and return to their
keeps, to their wives and children and mothers...to their
lives
. But
these eunuchs have no lives. What am I to do with eight thousand
eunuchs when there are no more battles to be fought?”

“The Unsullied make fine guards and excellent watchmen, Your
Grace,” said Missandei. “And it is never hard to find a buyer for such
fine well-blooded troops.”

“Men are not bought and sold in Westeros, they tell me.”

“With all respect, Your Grace, Unsullied are not men.”

“If I did resell them, how would I know they could not be used
against me?” Dany asked pointedly. “Would they do that? Fight
against
me, even do me harm?”

“If their master commanded. They do not question, Your Grace.
All the questions have been culled from them. They obey.” She
looked troubled. “When you are...when you are done with them...
Your Grace might command them to fall upon their swords.”

“And even that, they would do?”

“Yes.” Missandei’s voice had grown soft. “Your Grace.”

Dany squeezed her hand. “You would sooner I did not ask it of
them, though. Why is that? Why do you care?”

“This one does not...I... Your Grace...”

“Tell me.”

The girl lowered her eyes. “Three of them were my brothers once,
Your Grace.”

Then I hope your brothers are as brave and clever as you.
Dany leaned
back into her pillow, and let the litter bear her onward, back to
Bale
rion
one last time to set her world in order.
And back to Drogon.
Her
mouth set grimly.

It was a long, dark, windy night that followed. Dany fed her drag
ons as she always did, but found she had no appetite herself. She
cried a while, alone in her cabin, then dried her tears long enough for
yet another argument with Groleo. “Magister Illyrio is not here,” she
finally had to tell him, “and if he was, he could not sway me either. I
need the Unsullied more than I need these ships, and I will hear no
more about it.”

The anger burned the grief and fear from her, for a few hours at
the least. Afterward she called her bloodriders to her cabin, with Ser
Jorah. They were the only ones she truly trusted.

She meant to sleep afterward, to be well rested for the morrow,
but an hour of restless tossing in the stuffy confines of the cabin soon
convinced her that was hopeless. Outside her door she found Aggo
fitting a new string to his bow by the light of a swinging oil lamp.
Rakharo sat crosslegged on the deck beside him, sharpening his
arakh
with a whetstone. Dany told them both to keep on with what they
were doing, and went up on deck for a taste of the cool night air. The
crew left her alone as they went about their business, but Ser Jorah
soon joined her by the rail.
He is never far,
Dany thought.
He knows my
moods too well.

“
Khaleesi.
You ought to be asleep. Tomorrow will be hot and hard,
I promise you. You’ll need your strength.”

“Do you remember Eroeh?” she asked him.

“The Lhazareen girl?”

“They were raping her, but I stopped them and took her under my
protection. Only when my sun-and-stars was dead Mago took her
back, used her again, and killed her. Aggo said it was her fate.”

“I remember,” Ser Jorah said.

“I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I
was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but
instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn’t have done that.
He wasn’t just my brother, he was my
king
. Why do the gods make kings
and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”