Chapter 36: The Serpent in the Garden of Vipers

Chapter 36: The Serpent in the Garden of Vipers

297 AC, Month of the Bleeding Star

The overland journey from Volantis to Slaver's Bay was a descent into a world of dust and heat. The lush banks of the Rhoyne gave way to the parched, ochre-coloured plains of the Slaver's Coast. Alaric's party travelled as a wealthy merchant caravan, a guise of commerce that masked a core of military steel. Fifty Onyx Legionaries, their black plate covered by simple linen dust-cloaks, rode as outriders and guards, their discipline a stark contrast to the shambling slave-soldiers they occasionally passed. The wagons, ostensibly carrying trade goods, were laden with water, weapons, and the gold required to buy anything—or anyone.

During the long, hot days of the journey, Alaric prepared his lieutenants for the alien culture they were about to enter. In his command tent, pitched each night in a defensive circle of wagons, he would brief Ser Damon and Nervo.

"Yunkai is not Pentos," he explained, gesturing to a map of the city he had drawn from memory and Prometheus's data. "Power here does not flow from commerce in the way we understand it. It flows from the ownership of human flesh. The rulers, the Wise Masters, are a decadent oligarchy of slavers. Their pride is immense, but their courage is thin. Their entire military is composed of slave-soldiers who will fight only as long as they fear their masters more than they fear us."

"Slave armies…" Ser Damon grunted, the concept clearly distasteful to his Westerosi martial sensibilities. "An army that has to be whipped into battle is no army at all."

"Precisely," Alaric said. "It is their critical vulnerability. But do not underestimate their cunning. Their society is a garden of vipers, built on poison, betrayal, and intricate, formal courtesies that mask deadly intent. We will not be conquerors here. We will be merchants, scholars, observers. We will be polite, we will be patient, and we will be utterly ruthless when the moment comes to strike."

Their first sight of Yunkai, the Yellow City, was of its great, stepped pyramids of yellow brick rising from the dusty plains like unnatural mountains. The city was a vision of heat and haze, its walls and towers all the same uniform, sickly yellow. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine, spices, and the underlying, sweetish stench of human misery. Everywhere, there were slaves. Slaves with tattooed faces carrying water, slaves with bronze collars pulling litters, slaves with branded cheeks standing guard with spears they held with listless indifference.

Alaric viewed the scene not with moral horror, but with the cold eye of a systems analyst. This was a society built on a single, inefficient, and deeply unstable economic model. It was powerful on the surface, but brittle beneath. A single, well-placed shock could shatter it.

He established their base of operations with his usual caution. Not a grand manse, which would attract unwanted attention and invitations, but a large, fortified trading compound on the city's outskirts. It had high walls, a single, defensible gate, and its own well, making it a self-contained fortress. Blackwood Mercantile (Yunkai Branch) was officially open for business, dealing in uncontroversial goods like timber, wine, and Westerosi wool. The Onyx Legionaries became its silent, intimidating guards. Their public presence was that of a serious, but not ostentatious, foreign trading house.

With the mask in place, the true work began. The trail of the dragon egg was half a century cold. The slaver, Grazdan mo Eraz, was long dead. Alaric knew that asking about a priceless Valyrian artifact would be like shouting "I have gold!" in a den of thieves. He needed a more subtle approach.

He created a cover story, a piece of academic misdirection. He instructed his agents, led by a clever freedman from Meereen named Skabaz whom he had hired for his deep knowledge of the Slaver's Bay underworld, to spread a specific rumour. A wealthy, eccentric Westerosi lord-scholar had arrived in the city. He was writing a definitive history of the great slaving families of the past century and was paying handsomely for any records, ledgers, or personal effects of the once-great, now-defunct House of Eraz.

It was a plausible, even boring, reason for his interest. It attracted the attention of scribes and history-brokers, not treasure hunters and assassins.

While this slow, patient investigation unfolded, Alaric's other enterprises moved forward. Blackwood Mercantile began to trade, its profits a small but steady stream. Alaric, however, saw an opportunity in the city's primary industry.

"Nervo," he said one evening, after reviewing the city's commerce reports. "The slave collars and manacles used here are of poor quality iron. They are brittle. There are frequent… asset-management failures."

Nervo looked up. "You wish to enter the slave trade, my lord?" he asked, a hint of surprise in his voice.

"Certainly not," Alaric replied with a faint look of distaste. "It is an abhorrent practice and, more to the point, a volatile and inefficient business model. However, the tools of the trade are another matter. We control some of the finest iron resources in Westeros. I want you to commission our smiths back in Blackport to forge five thousand sets of manacles and collars. Not of iron, but of high-quality steel. Brand them with a small, discreet serpent. We will sell them to the Wise Masters as a premium security product. We will make a fortune from their paranoia."

Nervo simply nodded, his mind already calculating the profit margins. His lord's ability to find profit in any situation, no matter how grim, was a constant source of wonder.

The long arm of his dynasty reached him even here, in the heart of the slaver's world. A fast courier ship, dispatched from his Volantene office, brought a pouch of letters from Westeros. He read the one from Lynesse first. Her script was elegant, detailing the mundane high politics of Blackport society, the progress of the keep's construction, and the health of their children.

Tyber is proving a prodigy at cyvasse, she wrote. He defeated Maester Helliwise twice last week. He has your mind for strategy. Cassia remains quiet, but she has a way with animals that is almost… uncanny. The stable master swears she calmed a panicked stallion with just a touch and a whisper. She is a strange and wonderful child.

Alaric felt a surge of pride, the pride of a scientist whose experiments were yielding successful results. The dragon blood was breeding true. His heir had his intellect. His daughter was developing the subtle, charismatic magic of the Valyrians. The legacy was secure.

The pouch also contained a coded message from Pate at the Citadel. The news from King's Landing was more interesting. The court grows more decadent, Pate wrote. The King's debts to the Lannisters are now mountainous. Lord Arryn's health is failing. He spends his days poring over old lineage books, a strange pursuit for the Hand of the King. He has been asking many questions about the King's children, and his own wife, Lady Lysa, grows ever more fearful and erratic.

Alaric read the words with a cold, detached certainty. He knew exactly what Jon Arryn was investigating. The Hand was uncovering the truth of the Queen's incest and the illegitimacy of her children. A truth that would get him killed. The great gears of the future were beginning to grind. Jon Arryn's death would be the catalyst that brought Ned Stark south and began the War of the Five Kings. Alaric knew it was coming, perhaps within the year. His presence here, a world away in Essos, was the perfect alibi, placing him far from the chaos that would soon engulf Westeros.

Weeks of patient investigation by his agent, Skabaz, finally bore fruit. The lineage of Grazdan mo Eraz was a sad tale of decline. The great slaver's fortune had been squandered by his son and grandson. The last of the line was a man named Grazdan the Younger, a pathetic figure who now managed a small, third-rate fighting pit on the city's edge. His debts were massive.

"The man is a ghost," Skabaz reported, his face gleaming with sweat in Alaric's study. "He has sold everything. His manse, his slaves, his family name. He has nothing left of his great-grandfather's legacy… except for a few old heirlooms he keeps in a chest. A collection of worthless curiosities. And among them, Wise Master," Skabaz's eyes gleamed with discovery, "is a heavy, polished stone egg of black and red. He believes it is a good luck charm. He brings it to all his fighter's matches."

Alaric felt a cold thrill, the feeling of a hunter who, after a long and patient stalk, finally has his prey in his sights.

"He is in debt to a rival pit master, a man named Pono," Skabaz continued. "Pono has given him until the next full moon to pay, or he will take everything Grazdan has left, including his 'good luck charm'."

The timeline was now critical. The asset was about to be moved. Alaric could simply buy it, of course. His gold could purchase anything in this city. But that would leave a trail. A great Westerosi lord paying a fortune for a worthless stone egg would create talk, rumors. It was inefficient and messy.

"Pono is known to be… ambitious?" Alaric asked, his mind already formulating a plan.

"He is a viper, Wise Master. He would sell his own mother for a copper," Skabaz confirmed.

"Excellent," Alaric said. He dismissed the informant with a heavy purse of silver. He then summoned the commander of his personal guard, a dour, brutally effective Onyx Legion Tribune named Kael.

"Tribune," Alaric said. "Tonight we will be conducting a private business transaction. I have just learned that a certain pit master named Pono plans to unlawfully seize the assets of one of his debtors. This cannot be allowed to stand. It disrupts the sanctity of contracts."

He gave Kael a set of precise instructions. A small team of legionaries, in plain clothes, would observe the transaction. They would wait until Pono and his thugs had taken possession of Grazdan's belongings, including the egg. Then, in a dark alley far from the pits, they would intervene.

"Pono and his men are common criminals," Alaric concluded. "They will be resisting arrest. Lethal force is authorized. There are to be no witnesses. Recover the stolen property and bring it to me. Specifically, the stone egg. The rest can be disposed of."

It was a perfect plan. It was not theft; it was the 'lawful' recovery of property from a known criminal. The Yunkish city guard would likely give them a medal if they knew. It was clean, efficient, and left no trail back to him.

That night, Alaric sat in his study, reading a Volantene history of the Rhoynish wars. He waited. Just before dawn, Tribune Kael returned, silent as a ghost. He placed a heavy, sackcloth-wrapped object on Alaric's desk.

"The transaction is complete, my lord," Kael reported, his voice flat. "Pono and his associates will no longer be troubling the merchants of Yunkai."

"Well done, Tribune," Alaric said, dismissing him.

Alone, he unwrapped the package. There it was. A second dragon egg. It was almost identical to the first, a perfect ovoid of black stone, but the veins running through it were not crimson, but a deep, angry gold that seemed to shimmer with a light of its own. He picked it up. It felt impossibly heavy, and it was cold, so cold it seemed to steal the warmth from his hands. But deep within, he could feel it: a vast, sleeping ocean of potential.

He now possessed two of the most powerful magical artifacts in the world. He had the reagent, and he had the knowledge from the Volantene library. He had everything he needed to complete the next stage of his own transformation.

He looked out the window at the rising sun, its light turning the yellow bricks of the pyramids to gold. He had come to the heart of the slaver's world, a place of decadence and decay, and had stripped it of its secrets and its treasures. His business was thriving, his family was secure, and his arcane power was about to take another monumental leap forward.

He thought of the news from Westeros. Of a good man, Jon Arryn, digging his own grave with his honour. Of a foolish king, drinking and whoring his way to an early death. Of the great, chaotic storm that was about to break over his homeland. He was a world away, perfectly positioned, perfectly prepared. Let them have their wars and their Iron Throne. He was playing a much deeper game, for a much higher prize.