Myr Part II

Allaquo was a sailor who worked for a slave trader, he lived alone just fifteen minutes from the Salt Market in a modest house, and his house is an ideal hiding.

Staying in an inn or in the safe houses that his spies have in the city is very risky. No one can know that Prince Doran is currently in Myr, the only ones who know are Lothar, who is his partner in this mission, and his grandparents. As far as the world is concerned, Prince Doran is in one of his mansions in some oasis in the Dornish desert recovering from his injuries.

Doran found this place and decided to make it his base of operations during his stay in Myr so he killed Allaquo and disposed of his corpse with his magic. After meeting Lothar at The Hammer they both came here to plan their next moves.

"It's a good hiding place." Lothar commented as he looked around the small house, it has two rooms: one being the bedroom and the other being the kitchen/dining/living room. The house only has two small windows facing the street, both of which are closed.

"Yes." Doran replied, he is sitting at the table with a map displayed in front of him. The prince is looking at the map of Myr carefully. "What did you discover in the third wall?"

"As our informants said, the magisters appear to be indifferent to the change in leadership."

"Appear?" Doran looked up and stared at his friend.

"Appear." Lothar responded with a nod. "They are not happy with a foreigner being the king of Myr, even those who accepted bribes from Nine Eyes are complaining about the pirate and his men. They complain and complain but none of them are planning to do anything. "

"They fear Nine Eyes and his allies. News of the conquests of Tyrosh and Lys should have reached Myr by now, if Nine Eyes is smart he will have let it be known that the new kings of the isles are his allies."

"You are correct, my prince. I heard Magister Kahil complain about it, they will not dare to rebel against Nine Eyes while the threat of the new kings of Tyrosh and Lys looms on the horizon."

"There is also the matter that Nine Eyes has been a good king, he did not make any changes that negatively affected the free population or the magisters and noblemen."

"Aye, that just complicates things." Lothar nodded. "But you've already taken action on the matter." Lothar heard about the riot in the Salt Market and knows his prince is responsible for it.

"The little riot in the Salt Market is just the beginning, now I have to choose the perfect scapegoat." Doran places a hand on his chin and looks carefully at the map again, his eyes looking in the center of it, in the area where the mansions of the magisters and noblemen of Myr are located.

"A scapegoat?"

"Yes. I hired a mercenary to start the fight, I paid him with a very heavy bag of gold coins."

Doran could have used his magic to control any man in the market to start the fight but his plans require the spark that started that fire be traceable.

"Coins that the mercenary will spend in a brothel or tavern." Lothar's eyes began to shine with understanding.

"Yes, and not just any tavern. My good friend Gaemon will go to the best tavern in Myr, one that only wealthy merchants can afford, there he will get drunk and let all the customers know how he got rich by starting a fight in the Salt Market. His words will be heard by some of Nine Eyes' men and by the time the sun rises Gaemon will be in the dungeons. Nine Eyes will want to know who hired him."

"There are still a few hours until nightfall, we have to choose a scapegoat and place the incriminating evidence in the correct places." Lothar also sits at the table and looks at the map.

"Remind me who are the richest magisters in Myr."

"Magister Daeron, he is the one who has the most ships; a total of seven hundred, of which only a hundred are in Myr, the rest are sailing the seas trading. Magisters Amin, Kahil, Teorys, Laenor, Mathis and Saathos are the owners of the glass industry; they are the richest and most prestigious nobles in Myr."

"There were ten magisters in charge of the glass industry, if I remember correctly one is in Braavos, one in Volantis and the other two were killed."

"Yes, Magisters Vaegon and Zahrin were visiting some trading partners when Nine Eyes conquered Myr. Magisters Harys and Daegon were killed by Nine Eyes, they were part of Myr's ruling council."

Doran's eyes move to a mansion with a huge garden and a small lake within it.

"Master Daeron?" Lothar asked.

"His sister is married to Magister Vaegon, they and their children are currently in Braavos." Doran passes his hand over the mansion of the magister in question. "Nine Eyes bribed Magister Daeron because of the large number of ships he owns: seven hundred ships of which two hundred are warships. Having a sea battle in the Sea of Myrth would delay their plans."

"If you frame Magister Daeron, he and his family will be killed."

"Exactly, and once they're dead all of Magister Daeron's possessions will become the property of his only living relative: his sister." Doran smiles slyly.

"Sister who is married to one of Myr's wealthiest magisters, one of the few currently outside the city." Lothar also begins to smile.

"With Daeron's six hundred ships, as well as the ships he manages to gather on his own, Magister Vaegon will have a good chance of winning against the fleets of the Band of Nine Bastards." Doran stretches his back. "To tell the truth I don't expect Magister Vaegon to win in a naval war, I just hope he weakens that damned alliance's fleets and slows them down."

Doran would love to kill Nine Eyes, he can imagine how easy it would be: he just has to sneak into his mansion and a quick Avada Kedavra will take out one of his enemies before the pirate can even blink. But that would be disastrous, the news of the death of one of the nine members of Maelys` faction would reach the other members in a matter of days.

Doran only knows the location of some of the members of this alliance and before he can kill them all they will realize they are being hunted. It is not likely that they will guess the identity of the assassin but it won't be hard for them to guess his affiliation as there are only two possible factions that would want to destroy them: Daemon`s faction and the Targaryen.

Doran does not know if Daemon made a deal with his cousin, without having information about it he assumes the worst; that Daemon and Maelys agreed to some kind of alliance. If that is the case then the Band of the Nine will assume (correctly) that the Westerosi are hunting them.

They will not wait for their enemies to hunt them down one by one, they will attack Westeros with all their might. Of all the western kingdoms, only Dorne is preparing its defenses, so a sudden attack will end with countless deaths. In the worst case, all of Westeros will end up being conquered by the Blackfyre.

Dorne and all of Westeros need time to prepare for war and that is why Doran is in Essos.

The prince has to weaken his enemies and delay the invasion, all while acting from the shadows.

Myr is one of the wealthiest cities west of the Bone Mountains, second only to Braavos, Volantis, and Qarth, the latter being a moot point. The Band of Nine plan to use the city's wealth to sponsor their invasion of Westeros, which Doran has to sabotage. Causing chaos in the city and weakening the control of Nine Eyes is only the beginning.

"Your plans have a very obvious weak point, my prince, one of which I am sure you are already aware of."

"Vaegon." Doran nods. "Not many men have what it takes to oppose such a powerful alliance. Without the proper motivation he will remain in Braavos where he and his family are safe."

"What would motivate him to risk everything and fight for Myr?" Lothar sees the prince's dark eyes gleam like a viper's.

"What motivates most men, my good friend: gold." Doran takes a gold coin out of his coinbag and starts tossing it into the air. "Myr's main source of income is its glass industry, if that industry were to be jeopardized by Nine Eyes... Well I don't think even the most cowardly of men would let their golden hens be slaughtered without doing anything. "

***

By nightfall, the men of Nine Eyes finished hanging hundreds of corpses in different parts of the city. Every market, inn, and tavern has a corpse hanging nearby, and this darkens the spirits of the free men and women of Myr greatly.

The slaves didn't care about the macabre decorations because they are used to seeing similar things or even worse. Every time a slave doesn't live up to their owner's expectations, or every time these owners find themselves in a particularly bad mod they torture and kill some slaves. The corpses are always hung in the district of the city where the slaves live, and most of the time those corpses are mutilated and dismembered. If one were to walk through that part of the city, one would see rotting corpses hanging every several hundred meters.

That's not the worst, no, corpses are easily ignorable. The worst are the slaves still alive that are locked in gibbet cages, those poor souls are left there to die of hunger and thirst. The other slaves hear their wailing and crying but they know they cannot help them in any way because if they were to do so they and their families will end up suffering the same fate.

Another person immune to the ghoulish decorations is a middle-aged man dressed in the garb of a sellsword, with his sword at his waist and a heavy coinbag on the other side. The man whistles happily as he strolls through town to The Silver Goblet, one of the city's most famous taverns.

The Silver Goblet is an upscale tavern, with an exquisite array of drinks ranging from Golden Arbor to Far Eastern rice wines. Its clients tend to be mostly wealthy merchants, nobles from distant lands and captains of important ships. That clientele is due to the high prices of the drinks, with the coins a man could get drunk in most taverns in this one he can barely buy a goblet of wine.

"You won't be able to afford two sips of liquor, sellsword, go back the way you came." Outside the tavern, two guards are leaning against the door frame, one of them sneering at Gaemon.

"No need to be rude, Faeros." The other guard berates his partner before turning to the sellsword. "No matter how rude his words are, they are true, the prices of the drinks are very high, my good fellow, I would recommend The Basket or The Drunken Duck, both taverns with good drinks and good prices."

"Not tonight, dear friends." Gaemon replies cheerfully, he takes out a gold coin from his coinbag and tossed it to the guard who was polite. "Today is a night to celebrate! I've been wanting to try that famous rice liquor ever since I met a traveler from Jinqi!"

Gaemon enters the tavern with a wide smile, none of the guards standing in his way having seen the heavy coinbag hanging from Gaemon's belt.

"Hn." Faeros snorts and crosses his arms, glancing angrily at his companion who is grinning widely as he pockets the gold coin.

"That's what you get for being rude, Faeros. I've told you a thousand times that courtesy is always rewarded but you never listen."

"How did some fucking unknown sellsword earn enough gold to afford to waste it here?"

"No idea."

"Tsk. Legally surely not." Faeros continues muttering to himself.

"That's none of our business, Faeros."

Faeros ignores his companion and continues to mutter under his breath.

***

Gaemon entered the tavern and after taking two steps inside it, he looked around with wide eyes.

The floor is very clean, the chairs are padded, the tables seem to have been taken from some nobleman's mansion and on the walls there are exquisite paintings.

The sellsword noticed he drew several glances, all the customers inside the tavern are dressed in silk robes while he is dressed in his cotton pants and leather armor. With slightly reddened cheeks, he walks up to the bar, where a man slightly younger than him looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Give me a bottle of that famous rice liquor from Yi Ti." He says with regained confidence.

The bartender looks at him questioningly, he notices the coinbag and his raised eyebrow is replaced by a polite smile.

"A bottle of sake." He says and Gaemon nods. "Do you have any preference?"

"Preference?"

"We have sake from Yin, Leng Yi, and Jinqi." Gaemon looks lost and the bartender's eyes begin to shine with greed. "Personally I recommend Yin's sake, being one of the oldest cities in the far east, it is the one who has the most experience when it comes to making sake."

What the bartender is not saying is that this is the most expensive sake. Yin is truly one of the oldest cities in the Known World but it is also the most xenophobic, the emperor hates foreigners and looks down on anything or anyone that does not come from his empire, which is why getting permission to dock in Yin is very tedious. Only a handful of merchants are allowed to trade with that city, so anything from Yin is sold at exorbitant prices.

"Give me a bottle of that liquor!" Gaemon begins to salivate imagining how good the liquor must taste.

The bartender brings out an oddly shaped bottle, almost looking like a small vase, and a small odd glass.

The first sip is followed by another, and soon Gaemon drinks the entire bottle. That bottle was followed by another and then another, before midnight the sellsword was so drunk he could barely stand.

In a corner of the tavern sits a short man dressed in a golden robe, he is taking small sips from his goblet of wine and looking at the sellsword. When the doors of the tavern opened and two men dressed in clothes from the Summer Islands walked in, his eyes began to shine.

He waited for the men to sit down and get comfortable before moving his hand in a seemingly random pattern. When he finished pronouncing a few words in a low voice, Gaemon's eyes glazed over.

"This liquor tastes better than a Lysene's cunt!" The sellsword said. "A heavy bag full of gold just for starting a fight in the market! The easiest gold won in my entire life!" Gaemon started to laugh out loud.

The heads of the islanders turned abruptly in his direction.

"A fight?"

"In the market?"

They look at each other and quickly get up from their chairs.

"In which market?" One of them puts an arm around Gaemon's shoulders while the other runs out of the tavern.

Gaemon seems to realize that he said something he shouldn't and starts to shake his head.

"No market." He drawls the words. "I didn't start any fight."

The islander narrows his eyes but doesn't say anything, he just tightens his grip on Gaemon and when he tries to free himself he just smiles.

"Careful, good man, you're so drunk you might fall." His words are kind but his eyes are cold.

In a short time his companion returns accompanied by several guards and they apprehend Gaemon, who protests and tries to break free of their grasp. He is so drunk that he trips and falls face down to the ground.

"Call the king, he has to hear what this man said."

As Nine Eyes's men take Gaemon away, the Dornish prince smiles from where he is sitting and raises his goblet in Gaemon's direction before taking a sip.

***

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