Chapter 9

Reznak mo Reznak had a list. Custom demanded that the queen begin with the Astapori envoy,

a former slave who called himself Lord Ghael, though no one seemed to know what he was lord of.

Lord Ghael had a mouth of brown and rotten teeth and the pointed yellow face of a weasel. He

also had a gift. "Cleon the Great sends these slippers as a token of his love for Daenerys Stormborn, the

Mother of Dragons."

Irri slid the slippers onto Dany's feet. They were gilded leather, decorated with green freshwater

pearls. Does the butcher king believe a pair of pretty slippers will win my hand? "King Cleon is most

generous. You may thank him for his lovely gift." Lovely, but made for a child. Dany had small feet, yet

the pointed slippers mashed her toes together.

"Great Cleon will be pleased to know they pleased you," said Lord Ghael. "His Magnificence bids

me say that he stands ready to defend the Mother of Dragons from all her foes."

If he proposes again that I wed King Cleon, I'll throw a slipper at his head, Dany thought, but for

once the Astapori envoy made no mention of a royal marriage. Instead he said, "The time has come for

Astapor and Meereen to end the savage reign of the Wise Masters of Yunkai, who are sworn foes to all

those who live in freedom. Great Cleon bids me tell you that he and his new Unsullied will soon march."

His new Unsullied are an obscene jape. "King Cleon would be wise to tend his own gardens and

let the Yunkai'i tend theirs." It was not that Dany harbored any love for Yunkai. She was coming to

regret leaving the Yellow City untaken after defeating its army in the field. The Wise Masters had

returned to slaving as soon as she moved on, and were busy raising levies, hiring sellswords,and making

alliances against her.

Cleon the self-styled Great was no better, however. The Butcher King had restored slavery to

Astapor, the only change being that the former slaves were now the masters and the former masters

were now the slaves.

"I am only a young girl and know little of the ways of war," she told Lord Ghael, "but we have

heard that Astapor is starving. Let King Cleon feed his people before he leads them out to battle." She

made a gesture of dismissal. Ghael withdrew.

"Magnificence," prompted Reznak mo Reznak, "will you hear the noble Hizdahr zo Loraq?"Again? Dany nodded, and Hizdahr strode forth; a tall man, very slender, with flawless amber

skin. He bowed on the same spot where Stalwart Shield had lain in death not long before. I need this

man, Dany reminded herself. Hizdahr was a wealthy merchant with many friends in Meereen, and more

across the seas. He had visited Volantis, Lys, and Qarth, had kin in Tolos and Elyria, and was even said to

wield some influence in New Ghis, where the Yunkai'i were trying to stir up enmity against Dany and her

rule.

And he was rich. Famously and fabulously rich …

And like to grow richer, if I grant his petition. When Dany had closed the city's fighting pits, the

value of pit shares had plummeted. Hizdahr zo Loraq had grabbed them up with both hands, and now

owned most of the fighting pits in Meereen.

The nobleman had wings of wiry red-black hair sprouting from his temples. They made him look

as if his head were about to take flight. His long face was made even longer by a beard bound with rings

of gold. His purple tokar was fringed with amethysts and pearls. "Your Radiance will know the reason I

am here."

"Why, it must be because you have no other purpose but to plague me. How many times have I

refused you?"

"Five times, Your Magnificence."

"Six now. I will not have the fighting pits reopened."

"If Your Majesty will hear my arguments …"

"I have. Five times. Have you brought new arguments?"

"Old arguments," Hizdahr admitted, "new words. Lovely words, and courteous, more apt to

move a queen."

"It is your cause I find wanting, not your courtesies. I have heard your arguments so often I

could plead your case myself. Shall I?" Dany leaned forward. "The fighting pits have been a part of

Meereen since the city was founded. The combats are profoundly religious in nature, a blood sacrifice to

the gods of Ghis. The mortal art of Ghis is not mere butchery but a display of courage, skill, and strength

most pleasing to your gods.

Victorious fighters are pampered and acclaimed, and the slain are honored

and remembered. By reopening the pits I would show the people of Meereen that I respect their ways

and customs. The pits are far-famed across the world. They draw trade to Meereen, and fill the city's

coffers with coin from the ends of the earth. All men share a taste for blood, a taste the pits help slake.

In that way they make Meereen more tranquil. For criminals condemned to die upon the sands, the pits

represent a judgment by battle, a last chance for a man to prove his innocence." She leaned back again,

with a toss of her head. "There. How have I done?"

"Your Radiance has stated the case much better than I could have hoped to do myself. I see that

you are eloquent as well as beautiful. I am quite persuaded."

She had to laugh. "Ah, but I am not."

"Your Magnificence," whispered Reznak mo Reznak in her ear, "it is customary for the city to

claim one-tenth of all the profits from the fighting pits, after expenses, as a tax. That coin might be put

to many noble uses."

"It might … though if we were to reopen the pits, we should take our tenth before expenses. I

am only a young girl and know little of such matters, but I dwelt with Xaro Xhoan Daxos long enough to

learn that much.

Hizdahr, if you could marshal armies as you marshal arguments, you could conquer the world …

but my answer is still no. For the sixth time."

"The queen has spoken." He bowed again, as deeply as before. His pearls and amethysts

clattered softly against the marble floor. A very limber man was Hizdahr zo Loraq.

He might be handsome, but for that silly hair. Reznak and the Green Grace had been urging

Dany to take a Meereenese noble for her husband, to reconcile the city to her rule. Hizdahr zo Loraq

might be worth a careful look. Sooner him than Skahaz. The Shavepate had offered to set aside his wife

for her, but the notion made her shudder. Hizdahr at least knew how to smile.

"Magnificence," said Reznak, consulting his list, "the noble Grazdan zo Galare would address

you. Will you hear him?"

"It would be my pleasure," said Dany, admiring the glimmer of the gold and the sheen of the

green pearls on Cleon's slippers while doing her best to ignore the pinching in her toes. Grazdan, she

had been forewarned, was a cousin of the Green Grace, whose support she had found invaluable. The

priestess was a voice for peace, acceptance, and obedience to lawful authority. I can give her cousin a

respectful hearing, whatever he desires.

What he desired turned out to be gold. Dany had refused to compensate any of the Great

Masters for the value of their slaves, but the Meereenese kept devising other ways to squeeze coin from

her. The noble Grazdan had once owned a slave woman who was a very fine weaver, it seemed; the

fruits of her loom were greatly valued, not only in Meereen, but in New Ghis and Astapor and Qarth.

When this woman had grown old, Grazdan had purchased half a dozen young girls and commanded the

crone to instruct them in the secrets of her craft. The old woman was dead now. The young ones, freed,

had opened a shop by the harbor wall to sell their weavings. Grazdan zo Galare asked that he be granted

a portion of their earnings. "They owe their skill to me," he insisted. "I plucked them from the auction

bloc and gave them to the loom."

Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done, she said, "What was the name of the old

weaver?"

"The slave?" Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. "She was … Elza, it might have been. Or Ella.

It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace."

"Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught

them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for

forgetting the name of the old woman."

Reznak would have summoned another tokar next, but Dany insisted that he call upon a

freedman. Thereafter she alternated between the former masters and the former slaves. Many and

more of the matters brought before her involved redress. Meereen had been sacked savagely after its

fall. The stepped pyramids of the mighty had been spared the worst of the ravages, but the humbler

parts of the city had been given over to an orgy of looting and killing as the city's slaves rose up and the

starving hordes who had followed her from Yunkai and Astapor poured through the broken gates. Her

Unsullied had finally restored order, but the sack left a plague of problems in its wake. And so they came

to see the queen.

A rich woman came, whose husband and sons had died defending the city walls. During the sack

she had fled to her brother in fear. When she returned, she found her house had been turned into a

brothel. The whores had bedecked themselves in her jewels and clothes. She wanted her house back,

and her jewels. "They can keep the clothes," she allowed. Dany granted her the jewels but ruled the

house was lost when she abandoned it.

A former slave came, to accuse a certain noble of the Zhak. The man had recently taken to wife

a freedwoman who had been the noble's bed-warmer before the city fell. The noble had taken her

maidenhood, used her for his pleasure, and gotten her with child. Her new husband wanted the noble

gelded for the crime of rape, and he wanted a purse of gold as well, to pay him for raising the noble's

bastard as his own. Dany granted him the gold, but not the gelding.

"When he lay with her, your wife

was his property, to do with as he would. By law, there was no rape."

Her decision did not please him,

she could see, but if she gelded every man who ever forced a bedslave, she would soon rule a city of

eunuchs.

A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dressed up in a frayed grey tokar trailing

silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father's household slaves had risen up the

night the gate broke.

One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother

before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the

murderers was still living in his father's house, and the other had joined the queen's soldiers as one of

the Mother's Men. He wanted them both hanged.

I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had

declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for

rising up against their masters.

When she told him, the boy rushed at her, but his feet tangled in his tokar and he went

sprawling headlong on the purple marble. Strong Belwas was on him at once. The huge brown eunuch yanked him up one-handed and shook him like a mastiff with a rat. "Enough, Belwas," Dany called.

"Release him." To the boy she said, "Treasure that tokar, for it saved your life.

You are only a boy, so we

will forget what happened here. You should do the same." But as he left the boy looked back over his

shoulder, and when she saw his eyes Dany thought, The Harpy has another Son.

By midday Daenerys was feeling the weight of the crown upon her head, and the hardness of

the bench beneath her. With so many still waiting on her pleasure, she did not stop to eat. Instead she

dispatched Jhiqui to the kitchens for a platter of flatbread, olives, figs, and cheese. She nibbled whilst

she listened, and sipped from a cup of watered wine. The figs were fine, the olives even finer, but the

wine left a tart metallic aftertaste in her mouth. The small pale yellow grapes native to these regions

produced a notably inferior vintage. We shall have no trade in wine. Besides, the Great Masters had

burned the best arbors along with the olive trees.

In the afternoon a sculptor came, proposing to replace the head of the great bronze harpy in the

Plaza of Purification with one cast in Dany's image. She denied him with as much courtesy as she could

muster. A pike of unprecedented size had been caught in the Skahazadhan, and the fisherman wished to

give it to the queen. She admired the fish extravagantly, rewarded the fisherman with a purse of silver,

and sent the pike to her kitchens.

A coppersmith had fashioned her a suit of burnished rings to wear to

war. She accepted it with fulsome thanks; it was lovely to behold, and all that burnished copper would

flash prettily in the sun, though if actual battle threatened, she would sooner be clad in steel. Even a

young girl who knew nothing of the ways of war knew that.