Chapter 7:
It took a week further at our much slower pace.
The uneasy peace that had fallen between the survivors of the caravan hadn't gotten better with our approach to the city of Volantis. I didn't know the details of the conversations ongoing most of the time obviously, but they hadn't improved any in tone. I suspected the losses that Malsero had accumulated in his venture with the caravan had really settled in for him, and without the pressing threat of death, it was easy for people to fall back to grieving what had gone wrong.
Loathing what they couldn't change.
Given he couldn't seem to take it out on Sorzo, who obviously wanted to take a blade to him, the merchant's words for Denorro had grown more biting with time. The sight of travelers on the roads and distant black walls brought a palpable form of relief to the three of them.
I was excited, myself.
Even from a distance, I could finally judge the size of their cities, or whatever amounted to their holds.
Huge.
I could only assume this wasn't the common size of them, and must have been a major center of people. Given all of the surrounding lands were at constant risk from the Dothraki, it seemed all the more likely that people would gather closely in the protective walls of their holds if at all possible.
A river went through part of it, and I could tell the walls continued to either side. The passage of boats along its waters told me seafaring was going to be common for the area. Interestingly, there weren't a great many by comparison going upriver.
Another thing that stood out to me was that the walls of Volantis had two distinct sections for lack of a better word. The black walls made up one portion, and were what I'd originally thought stood out most. It was almost like one side of the river was elevated, and far more heavily fortified.
A keep, maybe, but more wide than tall by far.
The rest of it was as if a town had sprung up surrounding the keep, and then simply grown to extreme proportions, and then been refortified. The walls that surrounded the rest of Volantis were of a different, more grey material mostly.
It was stone all the same I was fairly sure, but there was some familiarity to the darker section. I'd seen its mirror similar before, in the stone of the road, and some of the foundation of the stoneworks where I'd landed in this Not-Nirn.
We moved slowly down the road and approached the huge gates where a queue was formed.
The guards of Volantis were interesting. They all had matching tattoos, but not the same as the one that Sorzo had burned off of his face. They were a bit larger, more distinct.
Maybe to be more easily noticed.
A short, dark-stubbled man with stripes of light green on his cheeks looked over our goods and made commentary to Sorzo, Denorro, and Malsero. At one point, he asked me something, but I could only lift my hand unsurely and look to Denorro and Sorzo for help. Denorro looked to Malsero, who simply shook his head and turned his cheek away.
The mage-priest spoke up on my behalf after a pause. A moment later, the soldier made a bouncing motion with a hand and then waved over another of his comrades to indicate the wagon I'd been "paid" for my part in preventing the Dothraki from having all of Malsero's goods.
I watched them go through my newfound things. What they were looking for I was unsure, but whatever interaction they'd had with Sorzo and Malsero had the former giving the latter a new glare.
It was only when different guards were speaking with Malsero aside with his wagon that I began to get an inkling what it was they were asking Denorro and the others about. The merchant went into his little chest again and retrieved paper to hand it off. It was delivered to a different man who sat aside who looked it over critically and then eventually made a few marks on a book in front of him. Malsero exchanged some words with the guards who took the coin from him and placed it in a chest marked with a mammoth.
Taxes or tolls. Something like that.
I glanced at my wagon and further realized that the documentation that Malsero had supplied was likely a writeup of his goods and where they came from.
I frowned.
He would have had this wagon I'd claimed included in that or at least have had documentation for it if he had it for the other.
I settled my eyes on him over the edge of our wagons and slowly lifted an eyebrow when he glanced at me again. The sounds of the soldiers looking through the crates in the wagon continued as the foot traffic continued by.
A bit petty.
Of course, I couldn't be too surprised.
He didn't look at me beyond a brief curl of his lip.
While I was mostly free of the experience in Skyrim, I couldn't be surprised. To lose half of their goods was an extreme loss by the standards of most merchants, and once the immediate threat to taking them was vanquished, someone else having taking half instead might be enough to make a trader come to feel they were the same. I'd been trying to avoid that for the most part, but at least it seemed like he wasn't going to try anything out of place. He was still sticking to our agreement and leaving the second wagon to me without real fuss and not trying to point the guards at me or something.
He just wasn't going to be helpful or courteous.
Somewhere along the way of the feelings getting mixed with the facts, once the initial threat stopped to the goods, the most greedy always perceived things as if they still had everything they'd started with and any losses further were to be brought against someone new.
That was me, in an illogical way.
Of course, in Skyrim, when they knew I was the dragonborn they tended to defer on the side of caution. My legend alone could curb many negative outcomes before they fully formed in my interactions with people. Because again, no one wanted to be the one arguing with the godborn Nord whose sole purpose in life was vanquishing evil, violently.
All the same, a shame.
Denorro tried to say something to Malsero as one of the jade-striped soldiers said something else, coming down from my wagon with a shrug. The merchant snapped something back to him and turned to look at the red priest, pointing to his own wagon, and then lifting his chin. The soldiers shifted uneasily, and looked at the priest with narrowed eyes. Denorro's frown was a disappointed thing, weathered and emphasized by the flames that adorned his face in full.
Still, he crossed over and lowered to sit on the edge of Malsero's wagon and rubbed at his eyes, but not before calling something over to Sorzo who glanced at me. Sorzo went and dug into my wagon and after a few words with the soldier digging through my things, retrieved-
My coin pouch.
He retrieved it from my pack.
I straightened up a little in confusion, but then he dug out some coins, held them up toward me, and then handed them off to the soldier, and motioned to the man sitting at the table nearby with the mammoth-marked chest. The soldier took the coins, and after a short few seconds further inspecting the goods of the wagon I'd claimed, went over and deposited them in front of the man sitting there.
I noted absently that the man had a green feather quill tattooed under his right eye alongside the stripes that marked the other soldiers' cheeks.
He made a few notes in the book, spoke a couple times further with the soldier that had been inspecting my wagon, looked me and Sorzo over and then nodded. He made a few marks in his book, glanced at Sorzo and asked something.
Sorzo glanced at me.
I lifted an eyebrow at him.
"Ysmir." Sorzo told the soldier.
The man nodded, and wrote it down in what I was realizing was a kind of trade ledger. Sorzo answered a handful of what were clearly questions, mostly with the repeated word for no. In the meantime I noticed Malsero begin to guide his wagon away, with Denoro still sitting on the back of it.
I lifted my hands at him, confused.
I hadn't exactly expected us to stick around forever, but it was at least typical to share some kind of goodbye before parting ways. On the back of the wagon moving further into the bustling foot traffic, Denorro lifted a hand and pinched the material of his replaced robe, giving it a few shakes with an emphasis I didn't understand. He pointed vaguely off into the city, and waved.
Now what could he be trying to say?
I reached out and smacked the back of my right hand lightly to the outside of Sorzo's arm to get his attention and pointed toward where Denorro was going.
"Denorro?" I asked him, for lack of a better way of phrasing anything. My book wasn't going to help me.
Sorzo looked off into the crowd further in as the wagon disappeared into the city.
"... … Denorro … … payment … … .." He said, flicking a hand dismissively. There were a number of words in there, but those were the only ones I understood.
I glanced at the soldiers keeping us waiting around. Sorzo caught my look and pressed a hand flat in the air toward me, as if to encourage me to stop, and said a word I didn't know.
After a second he rested that hand of his on my shoulder. I looked at him, and then his hand slowly. He gave me a squeeze with it that I was fairly sure was meant to be reassuring and then withdrew it, so I gave him a slow nod.
My eyes were drawn briefly to the new wrap that was around his arm a little higher up. It was our treatment of the wound he'd taken distracting the second Dothraki rider while I was getting my measure of their swordsmanship.
He's doing a lot better.
The soldier called something over to us, drawing our attention back to them.
He motioned us through with a hand and a nod.
Relieved, I reached out and took the reins of the workhorse and gave them a tug. With Sorzo at my side, I took my first true steps into the city of Volantis.
There was a central column, a huge number of bodies coming and going, other wagons forming different left side passes that I fell familiarly into. Private dwellings clearly above makeshift shopfronts lined either side of the way, and as I looked down different sections that opened up, I realized it was continuing to branch out in every direction. Short balconies with the odd person enjoying a bit of sunlight were here and there, usually accommodating those chatting and enjoying drinks.
What we were on was clearly a main thoroughfare. A great deal of the structures at either side of the center line were made of stone, and high archways gave room for beasts I was horrified to see.
They had bald, small mammoths pulling things around.
The first I saw had a carriage being pulled along by it. Then I saw another, larger, walking with pendulous sways with a whole rugged tent-thing on its back.
I looked to Sorzo to see if he was surprised by it, but pointing the creature out to him, he laughed and shook his head. He said a word, and then pointed to the beast.
I handed the reins off to him, and retrieved my book.
Elephant.
What an ugly thing.
Ysmir was a striking figure among the many slaves of Volantis. Large, blonde, and pale, he stood out among most of the coming and goings.
Even aware of the potential range of destruction the sorcerer could bring to bear, there was something humbling about seeing such a person reduced much the same to curiosity and obvious interest in every little thing happening in the walls.
Volantis has its own charm.
Sorzo hadn't been born in the walls, but he could vaguely remember his own childhood arrival. He and his mother had been in chains, but even still, he'd marveled at the strangeness, the wrongness of its gates carved from the earth and built high. His mother had cursed the evil that made men do such a thing to the first mother of all things.
He'd been distracted by the variety of people he'd never laid eyes on. The difference of colors. The use of armor. The lack of horses. How few people really had them.
He and his mother had been sold together.
Likely because I was only just young enough to be considered her tagalong still.
It was the first time he'd ever been sold, but it was not the last. His mother died of a sickness within a year. After that, he passed hands a couple different times, and it was only that children are fairly widely recognized as being poor at most skilled labor that his cheeks hadn't been adorned with many a scratched-out or inked-over tattoo to show his passage from everything from cobblers to stables.
As he and Ysmir passed under another colorful cloth canopy, he watched the blond-stubbled sorcerer slow in his inspection of a number of trinkets laid out for display by an old jeweler, with wrinkles like canyon cracks and green, watchful eyes.
So close to the mainway, the prices were marked up a fair deal, and he reached out to grab the man's arm encouragingly, motioning them on. They could look around later if Ysmir was so inclined, but bringing a wagon to a halt in the central flow of trade wouldn't win them any good favors with the traders.
We'll need to find a place to put up his goods until he decides whether he's getting rid of things or what we're doing.
Part of him lamented that even having just attained his freedom from the old debt that had made him a slave all over again, he was kind of stuck looking after someone else's affairs. That was a small, insignificant part that he was ignoring mostly though.
He wasn't stupid enough to miss what Ysmir represented.
Opportunity.
The power to bring a Dothraki horde down in a breath was one that people would rush to have a hand on. That he called himself a dragon could have been a metaphor for his sorcery as much as a claimant of his ancestry. Given he didn't speak the languages around him at all seemingly, and announced himself a dragon, whether he meant one of the old blood Valyrian, or he truly believed himself to be one, it would be no time until someone had their intent to say something about it.
The first king across the sea had called himself the Dragon, and the kings that came from him who rode them purportedly said the same even if he had obviously never interacted with them. Even the Tigers of Volantis and the Lysene nobility saw themselves as the heirs to Valyria, with different approaches to a similar perspective.
Denorro had made it abundantly clear that if Ysmir kept his course, it would invariably lead to interacting with these kinds of people. People of power and means. A journey fraught with peril, but also potential.
Sorzo might have been Malsero's right hand for years, but that hadn't been the kind of preparation necessary for what was probably coming. Still, he'd stay the course as well for this strange path his life had taken since first laying eyes on the blond man.
It might have been a silly sentiment besides, but the "dragon" had saved his life. If Ysmir was going to make his way in Essos, he should have some help that was actually intent to see him doing well.
I have a debt to pay.
So he couldn't get distracted.
First, they needed to get the horse stabled and cared for. The goods from the wagon needed to be appraised and then people found to trade them to. Given Ysmir didn't have a number of slaves like Malsero, it wasn't like they could afford to have guards stationed nearby. It was better to simply have the horse and the coin itself probably.
Sorzo glanced at the sorcerer again.
Ysmir wasn't what came to mind when one thought of one. He didn't even seem to use his magic much. He didn't wear robes, or cover his skin in strange markings.
He fought that Dothraki with a sword instead of just burning him like the rest.
Whatever horrible art fueled his power, he seemed far more martially inclined than the learned men who practiced such things, most of which were part of the faith of R'hllor or barely more than paltry tricksters as far as he'd seen. There were whispers of those with true power, who butchered slaves and made dark offerings in quiet council, but he'd never seen such individuals if they were real.
Flee his company if I must, when I must.
If things passed too far, at least he'd feel he tried to settle his debt.
That was the best way to handle it. If he'd never seen the fire, he might have thought Ysmir courteous, perhaps a little overconfident. Looking back on how he entreated with Malsero initially, despite the ability clearly to take anything and everything at his whim cast the man in an odd light.
Maybe there are limits to how often or when he can bring it to bear.
Sorzo wasn't sure whether that was more or less comforting.
On one hand, the thought that the old blood could at any moment unleash the flame that he'd brought to the Dothraki wasn't one that instilled a lot of confidence in nearby safety. He hadn't even been adjacent to the target's general direction, and the heat had been enough to leave some of his skin peeling all the same. If it was possible that Ysmir could at any moment, at least he didn't have to be concerned much about repaying his debt with the man's general safety in the new lands he found himself in.
Clearly.
On the other hand, if he could unleash that flame at any moment, then it suggested that Ysmir drew the Dothraki into melee combat instead of burning them to death to satisfy his curiosity, or worse, his blood lust.
A likelihood that seemed more and more likely, the longer he really observed the old blood's behavior and rolled his actions over in his head. It made the most sense for explaining why he didn't look like most of the priests or other sorcerers, as well.
Whatever his conditions for appearing on the edge of the Valyrian peninsula to meet them that night, Ysmir behaved with some kind of… morals or guideline.
And whatever they are, they're warlike.
He'd been stunned when Ysmir had interfered on Malsero's behalf. The merchant should have been killed. It would have been better for them all if he died.
Opposing Ysmir in that moment had felt like asking for death instead. It had been enough to freeze his fury in his veins.
… and then Ysmir had just given the merchant a sword, before motioning them on.
It was too late though. The heat in his own anger was no longer enough to turn the blade to the man who he'd been slave to for ten years, good and bad mixed. Malsero had been a good master most of that time.
But Ysmir encouraged a fight. Not simply an execution.
The way Ysmir interacted with the Dothraki, it was ruinously violent. He butchered them. Even beheaded the one without hesitation. He rifled through their dead bodies like they were already nothing.
There was something to his movements though.
Ysmir had liked that they wanted to battle.
He'd relished the sight of their horde. The look on the old blood's face as the Dothraki rode them down was ingrained in the back of his mind. It could have been something like their deaths fueling his dark art.
He'll fight more.
It was inevitable, with a disposition like that.
All the same, watching and listening to the sorcerer hum some low melody he'd never heard before, Sorzo smiled to himself. Despite whatever of it would come, Ysmir was good company in the meanwhile.
I'll need to make it worth my while.
Repaying his unspoken debt was one thing, but he wasn't dying for the sorcerer if he could avoid it. He wasn't a slave that someone could just toss aside like an old kitchen knife, anymore.
Where Sorzo was leading me, I had no idea.
We passed deeper into Volantis, and the sights I saw grew somehow more and less diverse as we traveled. There were businesses I had little frame of reference for, and open air places that were clearly intended for lounging and dining. There were others still, that featured a great many of only loosely clad women wandering among diaphanous silk drapery to sprawl and tantalize the obvious patrons enjoying themselves.
I noticed it wasn't limited to just women, but it did quite dominantly lean in that one direction.
We even passed a place of business that had rounded tables and a hazy atmosphere of smoke so bitter and simultaneously acrid that my eyes watered, and I sneezed violently from across the thoroughfare. What they were smoking I did not know, but I resolved not to go nearer.
Eventually we made our way off of the main byway down different side streets. We passed by what seemed like a very large house with an open front gate and side gate leading to stables on the opposite side of the road and passage of people, only for Sorzo to loop us back around and take us inside from the right side.
I only realized after the fact it was not to upset the passage of people with the wagon. There were kinds of unspoken rules seemingly about when a wagon should or shouldn't cross or stop. Thankfully, on top of knowing where he wanted to take me clearly, he seemed to have a wealth of knowledge about the area and the little things like that necessary not to cause a scene.
I'd never really been the one controlling wagons on my journeys, so it might have even been the case in Skyrim's major areas, and I just never noticed. Together, we guided the wagon into what was clearly a kind of stabling structure, where a young boy with a tattoo on his cheek of a horse approached us immediately and piped up a few short words brightly to me. I pointed him at Sorzo, and he repeated himself after a beat.
I heard the words for horse and wagon in the mix.
My companion looked at me and made a motion of pinching his fingers together and then indicating the stable and the house. He lifted his hands and cupped one beneath his ear, head tilting.
He repeated a word a few times, and it wasn't until I was listening intently to the intonation that I recalled it as, "Rest."
I pointed to the house and lifted an eyebrow at him.
He nodded and made the pinching motion with his fingers again, rubbing them together, and then went to dig in the wagon. He came back with the pouch of coins he'd used to pay the soldiers at the gate, and gave it a shake.
I nodded to him, and made a dismissive motion, casting my attention up to the place of lodging. Studying it closer, I could see it for what it was. There were familiar elements. I expected stables mostly near the edge of the city, as was often the case for the holds, but that there was an option this far in as well meant likely that this was a slightly better inn by whatever standards amounted to the local norm.
It mostly looked like what I expected when I stopped to study it as not just a very large house with open front doors. Maybe that should have been the most telling part. Every window and every door in the place was open where it faced the side street.
Once he'd paid the stablehand my presumed fee for putting up my wagon and horse, I took the chance to quickly grab my pack and we made our way across the yard and toward the front doors. When we stepped through and inside, my eyes adjusted quickly.
A lot of structures in Skyrim were actually built with slightly lower ceilings on account of helping keep in warmth, and requiring less effort to heat an area. It was a sign of some relative status to not require that. Here, where it was so hot, it seemed like they did everything they could to get a breeze through the place.
There were a number of tables just within the entryway. The floor was stone, something rubbed very smooth and relatively even. Even though it was midday, the place was quite busy with people sitting around and enjoying themselves. The smell of food was obvious, and I spotted cups of various sizes at different tables being drunk from. There weren't a wealth of plates out on them, but I noticed wooden bowls were common.
A man approached us almost immediately upon entry, a working apron tied off around his back.
Looking between us, he asked something. I didn't understand it, but I was fairly sure the gist given the place was an inn.
Sorzo nodded with a glance at me, and I echoed the gesture to the younger swordsman.
He still has my coin pouch.
I wasn't really bothered by the thought. He'd probably have a better understanding of prices and the necessity of payment. Realistically, he could have been fleecing me somewhere in the mix, but if he did and I figured it out later, I'd just deal with him then.
And if I never found out, it didn't matter to me anyways.
Sorzo went about digging out and counting coins before handing over some mix of them to the man who nodded approvingly. The man asked something else, with a lingering look toward me.
Since I didn't understand him, I didn't pay him any mind. My attention was for a game being played by two men in a back corner, little carved pieces being moved around on a board of alternating square colors. While it didn't have the triangular shapes of the Imperial game, the way they were considering the board and the different colors immediately made me think of Strife, alongside a few other games played usually to teach strategy.
Interesting.
A man with an empty cup sat at the edge of a different table, idly strumming a stringed instrument I had also never seen before, and as a frequent patron of bards, I'd seen many in Skyrim.
Sorzo replied to the proprietor who nodded and said something else, motioning toward a stairway nearby and digging up a simple keyring from his pocket. He pulled one of the keys from it and handed it off to Sorzo who thanked him and offered it out to me, before hooking his head toward the stairs.
I followed him, and we made our way up the stairs. Looking down at the key, I noticed it had a little piece of cloth bound to the ring that it used to rest on the keyring, with a square depicted in the stitching.
Sorzo brought me to a stop at a door that bore the same simple symbol carved into a kind of wooden plate across its horizontal surface. Seeing it for what it was and sliding my key into the lock, I turned the mechanism until it was free to move. Then, I pushed open the door and stepped in with Sorzo on my heels.
The room I'd paid for was simply but pleasantly adorned.
A bed clearly meant for one or two with smaller statures than my own waited against a wall, with a simple side table and a tin with a candle waiting on it. Nearby in the other direction sat a table like a desk with a chair drawn up to it. A curtain covered the lone window of the room. As I stepped over to trace the bed's threads with a fingertip, I knew that the linens my coin afforded me weren't the height of expense, but they weren't even close to the worst condition I'd ever slept, my trip across the dusty land I'd arrived in aside, even. Most beds were good beds, and it was more than satisfactory.
I did glance over and give Sorzo a bit of side-eye at the fact there was only one bed.
Heedless to my scrutiny, he pulled back the curtain on the window nearby, exposing a kind of wooden flat that blocked out the light beyond, mostly.
I moved over to join him where he indicated a little flat piece of wood attached, and pulled it down. It pushed the wood beyond the window up, allowing light in. Then he let it fall, clearly demonstrating.
I nodded to him, and pulled it back down to let the light filter in. Sorzo stepped away.
The view wasn't any kind of special one like one of the places I'd stayed in Solitude with the cliffs and ocean in sight. It was just of the yard and street beyond, but that was fine.
"Ysmir?" Sorzo asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I turned my attention back to him, curiously.
He motioned about the room and lifted a hand in a wordless question, speaking a word I didn't know. I got the general idea he was seeking my approval though, so I nodded and pulled my pack from my shoulder, depositing it at the foot of the bed with a dull thud.
Sorzo made a motion with his right hand, drawing it up to his mouth and voicing a word I knew.
Food.
Or meal. Or lunch. Or dinner. It was something that meant food, but I didn't know the nuance or context.
Him asking it like a question like that got the idea across.
"Yes." I told him, in his own tongue, nodding. "Food."
He grinned and stepped back toward the door, but not before tossing me the pouch that was working its way toward entirely empty.
I'll need to do something about that.
Presumably Malsero's wagon and the goods within would handle it.
"You're certain?" Jaehaerys asked Rogar, looking between him and Harmon.
Over the last tenday, they'd been narrowing down passes that could have been frequently used by people. Any population of people needed to eat consistently, and a number of bandits even capable of some basic hunting left signs of their occupation if someone got close enough.
Thankfully, they'd already known they were attacking somewhere out of the mountains. The only question had been vaguely which area or areas.
"According to my huntsman, it's all but certain that they're acting out of one of a few passes east of the Stoneway." Harmon reassured. "There's only so many they could be using and they found impressions of a number of people moving fast. It's likely they caught sight of some of our men and quickly fled the area deeper into the narrows. If we pushed them unprepared, it's possible they could have different areas of ambush prepared."
He wasn't wrong.
"Unnecessary." Jaehaerys agreed, reaching out for his cup again.
As he took a sip for an opportunity to gather his thoughts, he looked over the surface of the map of the area. It couldn't have been the most accurate, because it lacked the perspective of a dragon. The vertical was obviously difficult to convey well on something flat already. He'd have to keep in mind the general landmarks when he flew to make sure he didn't miss any small passes. Some of the small ones on the map might even be duplicated from having been cross referenced or carrying over mistakes. He put as much of it to memory as he could then, because pulling up a map and studying it while flying atop Vermithor would be practically impossible at that height.
"I'll be riding them down." He explained as he placed the goblet back down. "These are not well trained and experienced men who have devoted their lives to the kingdom like your own. Without something stopping them, we'll spend the next few months hunting them across every crack and crevice of the mountains like rats even though they never really put up an honest fight."
Rogar nodded his agreement with a gruff grunt.
Reaching out and pointing to a passage on the map, Jaehaerys looked to Harmon and asked, "This area is wider. Is it forested or barren?"
Harmon looked at the map and after considering the markings on its surface nodded. "This area is barren like much at that height, your grace."
"Good." Jaehaerys said with an immediate nod. "It connects through here, and this is where I want you and the men to push through into the mountains. I want you to send the rest of your men to cross the border of Dorn and close up the other side of the Stoneway. Send a raven to the Prince of Dorne and inform him of your men's passage at his border by my command, as he was so kind as to avail us of his assistance without providing actual arms."
His words provoked something of a laugh from Rogar. He offered a placid echo of a smile in response but continued by indicating the connecting point to a number of spreading passages that ended mostly in heightening elevation, to emphasize his point.
There would likely be caves somewhere in the area, but otherwise, the only direction the bandits could go was up.
"There are a number of places in the mountains there where horses will not be capable of safely traveling." Rogar cautioned, with crossed arms. "If they retreat, we'll not be able to follow them."
"That won't be possible for them." Jaehaerys informed him, straightening up. "Leave that to Vermithor and I."
He turned and reached for his gloves, pulling them on.
Harmon blinked in surprise and stepped around the edge of the table slightly, looking from him to the map.
"You intend to fly immediately?" He asked.
"Every day I give them time is days they spread, and some potentially flee beyond our reach." He explained to the Lord Dondarrion. "I do what I must to secure an immediate victory."
Harmon was old and unpleasant to look at besides with his nose having been cut two decades ago by the first Vulture King, but his approval was obvious. Even Rogar, who studied the table in front of them with the map spread upon it intently, nodded.
Jaehaerys followed the Lord Baratheon's gaze to where his goblet sat, just aside Storm's End.
Thinking of home?
"Not to ignore your grace missing the queen back at King's Landing." Rogar said suddenly, with a throaty chuckle. There was something almost wistful about the lord's words. Probably thinking of his own wife and children.
Jaehaerys didn't want to linger on the kinds of thoughts that might make the man wistful over his departed mother.
"Two sennights you've dropped everything at the Red Keep for this now, isn't it?" Rogar continued, heedless to his internal distaste.
Jaehearys snorted softly at Rogar and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They'd been apart for longer than that before, and they weren't children anymore clinging to one another besides.
"There are a number of matters I'm looking forward to returning to." He replied in good humor, nevertheless. "Not the least of which, the tournament celebrating the opening of the dragon pit. You should both be excited for that as well. Is your son going to participate?"
Even as he directed the conversation away from his relationship with his queen and personal life in general, directing the latter question at Harmon, Jaehaerys's thoughts drifted to Balerion and his elder sister's refusal to return Aerea to the capital.
"I think he'd ride out without my blessing if I tried to stop him." Harmon said, with a soft chuckle.
The last letter he'd received from Alyssane hadn't been as thorough on the details of her stay on Dragonstone as he would have liked. She wrote mostly about spending time with Rhaena and her attending, but briefly mentioned having observed Aerea's first permitted flight and Balerion responding well to her. It was possible she had other thoughts she just didn't feel like writing, but he doubted she would be wary enough to hold back.
Still, despite whatever stubbornness drove his niece to the insanity that was mounting Balerion, it appeared she was beginning to settle into her new life as a dragon rider. It would remain to be seen whether that was for the good or ill of House Targaryen.
He nodded to the pair of lords, turned, and started for the door.
"Send the raven to the Martells and then depart. Order your men that are cutting off the Stoneway on the other side to not pass near enough to be argued a threat to any individual Dornish holding." He ordered briskly on his way out.
He had a couple of long days ahead of him and only on the first would he have all his energy.
The inn's food was alright. A little too close to my caravan experience, but at least slightly more varied in its content. I wasn't absolutely certain what all I was eating in the stew, but among the different things I recognized were some vegetables. The bread they gave us to enjoy with it wasn't by any means soft, but it was better than the oat or whatever it was we had to thicken the stew on the road at times. The whole thing seemed to be an included meal so it wasn't a surprise it wasn't too expensive.
Or maybe midday eating is kept very light here.
Sorzo hadn't obviously paid in any way for the bowls when the innkeeper brought them to where we'd sat, so I was inclined to think it was just an included benefit in the cost.
Once I'd eaten my fill, Sorzo motioned me back to the wagon where he went digging through the stacked wooden crates. Eventually he retrieved one of them, and hefting it most of the way out, dug inside until he produced a bit of the soft cloth that made up my peculiar, comfortable pants.
He shook it briefly, and then deposited it back on the top before saying a few words. Then he reached out to where I had the pouch of much diminished coins he'd returned to me, at my side. He grabbed the edge of the pouch and gave it a shake, and then motioned vaguely out toward the street.
Speaking again and motioning between us, Sorzo indicated the coin pouch and then the inn we were staying at. He lifted the cloth once more and motioned to the street.
"... … coin … … payment … … food …" He explained, slowly.
I didn't understand most of it, but I got the general gist well enough. We should try to sell off what we found. We were already in agreement.
Holding up a hand to him to wait, I returned to the room I'd paid for long enough to retrieve my pack. By the time I came back, he was carrying the small crate in his arms near the edge of the path. As he turned to head on, I quickly went to dig around in the wagon and found where I'd stashed the bag of different bits of loot from the Dothraki. It was everything from jewelry to decorative trinkets that had appeared to be metal and potentially valuable.
I caught up as he slowed for me and we fell in step. I hefted the little bag up and gave it a shake. He nodded approvingly.
That's how I found myself on a long and meandering journey back through the throng of people in the early afternoon trading pavilions, watching Sorzo discuss and show pieces of cloth to different shopkeeps and stalls. Occasionally I got odd looks for just standing aside and watching on, and I heard Sorzo say my name a few times, but given I couldn't speak the tongue fluently at all, I was content mostly to observe.
I'll need to figure out some way to compensate him.
It was my experience that people who were paid fairly and promptly rarely had reason to seek nefarious means of achieving the same ends. I obviously had no kind of formal agreement with Sorzo, and he was going out of his way to help me still.
Probably because I saved his life twice over.
I'd experienced that kind of gratitude plenty among people in Skyrim. Eventually it would wear thin if it wasn't reinforced.
Surprisingly, it didn't take long to rid ourselves of the first crate entirely. Whether it was Sorzo undercutting the price or the demand of the goods, I couldn't be sure, but in a short while we were returning to the inn to retrieve another crate to sell the goods from.
We spent the better part of the first day doing just that. We returned to collect goods, and then wandered the markets nearby the inn to find different people who would pay for what I'd taken from Malsero. We even eventually found a trader that just made a flat bulk offer on the mixed jewelry. I was tempted to keep some of it as potential barter, but then decided I just didn't want to deal with it.
All throughout the day, I saw all manner of people.
Among thousands of individuals coming and going, a thought occurred to me, and once I realized it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
There were bronzy-tan people, and others so dark-skinned and dark-haired that they might as well have been made of ebony. There were people like me, pale skinned and fair-haired, but quite rare. There was even red hair, and then completely separate, shocks of bright coloring from unknown dyes.
Everything in between, too.
But there were no Khajiit. There were no Argonians. There were no elves. It was a city of man and man alone. Once I realized it, in a hard to put way, I found it disquieting. It was easy in the many things that were familiar to establish some comfort, of normalcy. People were still people. Violence was still violence.
There was just something a little unsettling about it. In the throng of the many of Volantis, I was left to wonder what it could mean even beyond that I was truly beyond the reach of those who had created those peoples, like Azura or the Hist. That we had emerged the same in some way, but they had seemingly not. Something had gone different or there was some underlying truth beyond what even Nirn knew.
Maybe they're just not… in this area.
The land could have been far more vast, and no wars on a scale that drove the people to migrate as my own ancestors had.
The consideration weighed heavily on my thoughts even as the bag of coins I'd been carrying was eventually forced to be swapped to a small chest to keep the contents safe as much as deal with the growing weight and size of the haul. It would not fit any simple pouch.
I noticed after we were given it at a place where everyone was handing off their coin that there were other people moving about similar little marked chests. They were all the same size as ours. It seemed to all be designed to be matching, with a little symbol of a skull with a scale on its forehead.
Our journey took us all over the city.
Among the many sights of Volantis, few could be argued as grand and yet understated as its bridge. The separation of two areas, the area of black stone, and the major rest of the city was distinct, but the bridge that leapt the waters of the river that Volantis was staked at the mouth of was truly a great work, smothered by every random attempt at trade, business, and life.
I spent the better part of a half hour admiring the view of a harbor of ships from its edge among the many stalls and minor shops that had grown its length, before finally traveling closer to the other side.
There, a familiar and oddly different sight greeted me near where the bridge began to butt up against the black stone walls. It sat in an open plaza off the left side.
By then, I'd seen the occasional procession of elephants and even the people who were clearly of importance atop them at times, usually halting the flow of traffic as those they carried cut through the trade of the area. Sorzo used a word to describe them, and then it was only when I considered their heraldry that I noticed the marker of the difference he was making. Some of them bore different markings of an elephant. Others, a kind of long-tailed, lithe sabre cat. He referred to me, and them, with one set of words sometimes, suggesting some similarity he perceived. Other times, he referred to their other beast as tiger.
I was all but certain they were Volantis's nobility or equivalent, and if it was that that he was comparing us for, I wasn't sure where he'd been given the idea. Not that it should be entirely wrong, but because I had not made any effort to communicate my mantle to him and short of my introduction I had not stood upon any expectation with him, and I didn't expect them even with my display and statement what it was to be dragonborn.
What drew my gaze to the plaza was gallows. At least, I thought they were gallows. There was an unusual number of the elephants that carried or pulled the noble people about gathered there. A number of others gathered in the crowds, but up above and within the roost of shaded canopies in the marks drawn by elephants, it was interesting that even the powerful were inclined to observe.
Our approach into the crowd drew no attention.
As a man I thought at first might be a kind of headsman or official for reading off peoples' crimes continued to rattle off words I didn't understand, a new procession of people were brought up on the lifted platform.
They were in various states of dress, age, and appearance. Most of them bore bruises, and signs of captivity. As the man guiding things continued to lift his voice aloft and speak, I noticed a man dressed in blue nearby one of the noble's hideaways, a prominent symbol of a tiger on its side, lift a hand.
Some of them are a little young for this…
It would take a quite severe crime to see a boy barely a man executed in Skyrim. There were a number of other options, and generally the guard and the jarls were more lenient on those who were young, and could be put to a different path in life.
Some things change, some things stay the same.
The officious man at the front of the raised block before the criminals spoke again, looking around.
Where is the headsman?
Different people in the crowd spoke up, other hands rising and falling, and eventually, the people on the platform were escorted off.
Strange.
That continued a number of times, and I watched as various people went to and from that central platform to the different people that had lifted a hand and communicated. The people moved in chains were taken to a nearby pavilion, disappearing inside.
Execution out of sight?
Coin traded hands. People shook, or clapped each other on the back approvingly in some cases. There was an air of business and opportunity to the ongoing events that I wasn't grasping and the more I watched it, the more disgruntled I began to feel for not understanding the proceedings.
It was only when I saw one of the first people that had been on the platform, a young man maybe sixteen, being brought to the cat-adorned carriage, that it began to dawn on me what I was watching.
The young man bore a very fresh, bloodied tattoo on their left cheek, a black triangle with three distinct horizontal blue stripes through it. He was chained to one of the wagons that had a covered back and a clear point of entry for someone out of sight of the sun. He was forced to kneel there.
My eyes went to the people chained, that had not yet been brought up to the platform. In the injuries and dirt that marked them, the signs I'd taken initially for captivity in the form of jail, I recognized something else.
Conquest.
Then a small girl was brought from among the crowd to the block. The first I'd seen her age.
Distantly, I watched her limping steps as she came to a stop in the center among a few others. The hollow voices of people around me touched my ears, but their words were blurry and indistinct, away and through water and wind.
I watched her be sold, working my jaw.
Slaves.
Volantis practiced slavery.
I looked slowly over to Sorzo, and the burn on his cheek where there had once been a small sword. He met my eyes unsurely, looking between me and the dealings ongoing. After a moment, under my scrutiny, he lifted the chest he was carrying for me full of coins like it was a question.
He's wondering if I intend to purchase a slave.
Because I'd come here to observe, to where slaves were being sold, like I was shopping for a trinket.
I shook my head gently at Sorzo.
I realized that it was normal to them. Mundane and casual. While slavery had been outlawed and done away with hundreds of years before by the time of my birth in Skyrim, it was no secret that Windhelm had been built upon the backs of slaves taken in acts of conquest. Dominantly elves, at that.
I reached up to keep myself from speculating out of control, and gently tapped the edge of my cheek under my eye where his own sword tattoo had been, and then motioned to the selling block. I made a motion with my hands, bringing them in close as the slaves had been bound, and then hooked a thumb to him, in wordless question.
Sorzo shrugged slowly, adjusting his hold on the box of our coins, and then nodded after a second.
He was a slave.
"Denorro?" I asked him after a moment, remembering the excess face tattoos.
Sorzo's eyebrows furrowed and he nodded, but then kind of made a side to side motion with his head and shrug.
A yes?
I directed my gaze back to the lifted platform where people continued to be brought forward and sold. My eyes scanned the crowd, and among the many faces I saw that weren't waiting to go up the platform, I noticed staggeringly few unmarked by a tattoo or a burn where one had once sat.
I pointed to the people on the equivalent of a viewing podium for sale, and then made a motion with my hand to my lips, curving my fingers away to encourage him to speak. Familiar with my way of asking him the word for something, he responded after a few seconds with a word I'd heard come from Malsero's mouth more than once. I'd thought it an expletive of some variety in his heat, particularly when addressing Sorzo and Denorro before he fled the Dothraki.
"Slave?" I echoed the word to him, reaching down to retrieve my book of words. Retrieving my quill and wordlessly turning to lower the book on the top of the container he was holding, I used it to jot down the sounds of the word as I had many others.
Sorzo repeated it again for me, with a nod.
I returned his nod, and then in as broken of his tongue as I could manage, I told him, "Sorzo… no… slave."
He furrowed his eyebrows at me a little and nodded lightly.
"Sorzo… payment." I continued after a second, referring to my journal for the word.
I didn't have a good word for soon I realized, so lacking anything better for it, I added a word I had written down, "...dawn."
Then, I repeated it all slowly to him.
"Sorzo no slave. Sorzo… payment, dawn."
I must have gotten something slightly wrong, because he gave me a bit of an uneasy look, but nodded all the same.
What could it be?
Another shout from the front drew my attention back to the sale ongoing and I shook my head. I started to turn.
It wasn't the greatest evil I'd witnessed. Not even close. Whether it was a matter of my own history and unwilling service of Hermaeus Mora or not, all the same, I turned my back on their business. I wanted nothing to do with it, but right then it was a fact of life.
"Sorzo." I said to him, snapping my fingers as I started to walk. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was going somewhere. He twitched slightly at the snap, straightening up and hurrying to fall in step as I continued away.
"Denorro." I said, in wordless command, pointing left and right with my fingertip.
At first he didn't seem to get it, but my insistence eventually got through and he started to point me in a direction. With his guidance and repeatedly unsure looks, I cut a path through Volantis streets to a place unknown to me.
Eventually, we crossed a wide open square, and I bore witness to the single tallest temple I'd ever laid eyes on. I didn't need more than a glance to know I was looking at a temple. It wasn't just the iconography, which was present in a number of red-marked lengths of cloth that hung at intervals along its edges with a repeated symbol of a fiery heart, but a great bowl at its entrance that even from afar I could see burned brightly.
Likely part of a ceremony or some other meaning.
The second clue was a man stood upon its steps, shouting words to a gathered group of people in various states of wealth.
The third was his markings. He wasn't Denorro, but all the same, on his cheeks, forehead, and chin were tattooed in the same manner of flames.
The crowd seemed absorbed in his words, and for lack of a deeper understanding, I lamented all over again that I couldn't grasp most of what was said around me.
Still, I'd come with a purpose and I made my way closer to the temple. As I did, I noted a number of men placed near the obvious front entrance. They bore much of the same marks as Denorro had, but to a considerably lesser degree, and were well armored and armed, clearly duty bound.
Are they all slaves?
No one stopped me as I approached the temple's front, but all the same I glanced at Sorzo. He didn't seem particularly interested in listening to the man preaching out to the crowd gathered at the steps, but at my glance he lifted his chin toward further in.
The four people stationed near the entrance didn't come forward even when we made it to the open doorway. A short way inside we were confronted by a flat wall where a large length of cloth in the same reds and yellows as the others was presented prominently, and a metalwork was suspended ornamentally in front of it of the same fiery heart.
There were a few more of the flame-marked guards waiting to the left and right, where the entrance branched, presumably to lead deeper. There were also a number of people in the flowing robes similar to what Denorro wore.
One immediately approached us, a bald man with a slight smile and the same tattoos on his cheeks, brow, and chin.
He offered a greeting I was coming to recognize, and I returned it without knowing the exact details of what the greeting meant. Then I looked aside at Sorzo and motioned to the priest.
"Denorro." I said, simply.
The priest looked between us curiously.
Sorzo wet his lips and then spoke to the priest, motioning with a fingertip between us. Denorro's name came up, and then Malsero's.
The bald priest across from us tilted his head back slightly and suddenly smiled, speaking a few times quickly, and motioning us deeper with a curl of his fingers. We passed that entryway into the corridor on the right, and I realized as it looped, that it actually just divided incoming traffic in a larger chamber into two distinct paths that reunited. The inside of the temple was far more open, lit brightly by a number of open windows high up. Despite the wealth of light, and everything being stone, it was the same temperature as outside essentially.
Warm.
While I wouldn't have said I was happy with the general heat, I'd adjusted over my trip to Volantis and maybe I was continuing to with each passing day. I wasn't caked in dried sweat like my first day, even after walking around for a while.
The priest motioned us into an alcove off of the main area, and when I took the indication to sit down and did, Sorzo soon joined me.
The priest held a hand and disappeared back around the corner with a few words.
It was only a few minutes later before a familiar face turned the edge of the alcove, as Denorro's wrinkled face looked back at me.
"Ysmir." He said immediately, stepping forward with a cautious smile.
I pushed back upright and gave him a once over.
He was still wearing the robe we'd appropriated from among Malsero's abandoned goods, but he looked fresher than he'd been on the road to Volantis for certain. I wasn't sure how he'd wound up back at the temple beyond presumably Malsero having brought him to the place, but it seemed he was doing better.
It wasn't really the reason for my visit though.
"Denorro," I said to him in their tongue, tilting my head. "Slave?"
He blinked at me uncertainly and looked at Sorzo, speaking briefly.
The swordsman gave him a shrug and a nod, and motioned to me, and then where his burn was healing in the wake of his tattoo. He spoke a number of words, and I heard the word for slave again in the mix, but not long after Sorzo just fell silent and waved his hand dismissively.
Denorro rubbed at his eyes and glanced around. When he looked at me again, I could tell he was considering his words carefully.
"R'hllor," Denorro said, speaking the word slowly. He made a motion to a nearby symbol of a flaming heart and then upward. He motioned to himself gently with fingertips. "Denorro…"
He paused, and then made a motion with a hand, speaking a different word.
The self.
Something at the back of my mind whispered it. Vague context. It was the word for oneself.
He repeated, "I…"
His hands came together and he made a motion with them, dipping his head. "R'hllor."
My eyebrows furrowed.
Worship?
"Denorro… slave… R'hllor." Sorzo said, from my periphery.
For a moment, I wondered if I'd gotten the meaning of the word slave misconstrued. If in my identifying something that seemed like the case in my own culture didn't have an equal approximation in another. To be fair, perhaps the word they used didn't mean slave how I thought of slave.
Despite that, Denorro nodded to him, and looked at me.
Regardless of the interpretation, people were being sold and purchased, and in shackles, so whether it was criminals for sale or something else, it was enough to mean what I thought.
I just didn't know how to voice it.
The irony.
I worked my jaw, unsure how to begin broaching a complicated subject like whether I should purchase him, to give him a way out. I owed it to him to try either way for his kindness and assistance. He had been the best company I could have asked to find when I arrived. Coins seemed to move the people of Volantis plenty, and if that wasn't the way it had to be done, I could find a different way.
"Denorro…" I began, trying to think of a way to communicate what I desired. I reached for my book, and started flipping through it. I knew with each passing word and page that I wouldn't find something to easily sum up what I wanted to make certain. I knew most of the words by heart already. Not all of them, but most.
Irritated, I closed the book to Denorro's lifted eyebrows and Sorzo watching me aside. I rubbed my hand at my eyes and then exhaled and then straightened up.
Feeling ridiculous, I made a motion with my right hand to my face and smiled at him.
He looked awkwardly between me and Sorzo for my attempt.
I made the motion for a word that I'd used plenty of times before, arcing my hand away from my mouth.
"Denorro," I began, and then performatively touched at the edge of my lips, smiling at him, and then motioned around, "...slave… R'hllor…?"
Can someone be satisfied with being a slave?
I couldn't imagine so, but then again, I also couldn't imagine wanting to go be Hircine's dog for eternity, and there were people who loved that thought. People I respected, even. That was a kind of slavery, effectively.
I could tell by Denorro's general expression of incomprehension and look at Sorzo who shrugged at him again that I hadn't gotten my point across.
How does one communicate happiness with nothing else to indicate?
And also retaining something like my dignity.
I could only repeat what I was doing, and try different ways of smiling and touching my lips, and pointing to Denorro to try to convey the vague idea. I even pointed at the little chest of coins that Sorzo was carrying for me, and reached out to give it a shake.
It was on my third attempt trying different things to convey him smiling, or him leaving with me, that abruptly Sorzo said something, and Denorro looked at him.
When Denorro looked back to me, his expression brightened and softened at the same time. Then he broke into a bit of a laugh, something nervous in his posture as he glanced around. His hands came to his stomach briefly, before he lifted one flat toward me in a motion I recognized to be plainly a stalling gesture.
Or to stop.
He suddenly touched fingertips to his lips, and smiled at me in turn, crows feet tightening at either side of his eyes, and spoke a word, tapping his chest.
Sorzo looked to me and smiled, indicating his lips with a fingertips and pitching his voice up like a question. He reached down and rubbed at his stomach, and then smiled a little more as well.
They were repeating a word over and over, so I took the opportunity to open my book and after retrieving my quill and risking a lick at the dried bit of ink, touching the reservoir and adding it to my words.
I added a definition of "happy or smile?" with it, because I still wasn't certain he'd understood the nature of my question.
All the same, the fact that Denorro had lifted both hands and pressed them flat toward me as if to put a barrier between us was fairly universal in suggestion. He was still smiling though, something about the nature of my communication having clearly pleased him.
It was then that the bald priest we'd met at the entrance suddenly returned.
As the priest I didn't know stepped closer into the alcove, my eyes fell to the simple wooden box he was carrying. It was not the same design as ours, or the same size. It was more like half it. He lifted it slightly, speaking to Denorro and looking to Sorzo and I, as he stepped forward.
Denorro motioned to him, and then Sorzo and I with a nod.
I looked uncertainly between them.
Sorzo seemed surprised as well, but placed aside the little money box we were already carrying quickly enough, pushing up to receive the priest's offering.
"... ... Malsero … … payment?" Sorzo asked Denorro, grinning.
Before Denorro had even answered, Sorzo was already turning to open the box he'd been carrying. He started shaking and pouring the contents of the new, smaller box into it. Coins rang and clicked audibly as he shook it.
It was a multitude of the small round ones.
It was the standard currency of Volantis, I was fairly certain by now. Most of the coins we'd dealt with were of that variety. The smaller ones with skulls.
Denorro tilted his head left and right and gave Sorzo a slight smile and a lift of his hands, a shrug of his coming after.
"Malsero … … …" He said in reply, but I only caught the merchant's name itself. I didn't understand any of those following words.
Sorzo laughed. After a moment though, as he was handing the empty box back to the other priest, the swordsman said something to Denorro that was a bit lighter.
"Malsero… … .. .. … … forget." He spoke, almost cautiously.
In the multitude of words, I'd never heard the last one before, but as I had with some other words, I immediately grasped an understanding of it. I could tell enough about the way they were talking that Sorzo was warning Denorro, but I didn't understand the specifics beyond that it had to do with Malsero.
Given I was the last one sitting, I pushed up, feeling once again clueless but at least vaguely satisfied that whatever Denorro's conditions were, he seemingly wanted me to stay out of them. For all I was willing to assist the man that had been so helpful, I wasn't going to interfere in his relationship with his divine.
Slave to a god.
It rang a familiar note to many dealings with Daedra. Not the least of which, my own unfortunate "destiny" as it might have been.
I glanced at one of the mounted metal symbols on the wall. The burnished bronze sheen of the metal fixture shined with a flickering flame of a nearby candle under my eyes. As I watched the flame wobble momentarily more than it should have on its surface, a sign no doubt that I'd garnered at least a moment of attention for my presence, I put the name to memory in the back of my mind.
R'hllor.
A god of fire clearly. Maybe magic, given Denorro was the only other person I'd seen so far display anything of the like.
Are they all mages?
I found myself wondering about it as I looked over at the other priest standing nearby.
Eventually, I cast the thought away and stepped forward, presenting my hand out to Denorro, open.
"Thank you." I told him, in his own tongue.
I couldn't tell him what it was for, but I tried to convey as much I could with a look and a brief shake of my book with my other hand, what I meant.
Denorro looked between me and the book, and kind of tilted his head side to side, glancing at the symbol of his god on the wall. He lifted his chin, slightly.
"Ysmir…" He began, slowly. Denorro brought his hands together in a gentle suggestion of a word I didn't know as he spoke it, "... … R'hllor?"
I looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"Ysmir slave R'hllor?" Sorzo said, speaking up with a snort from the side.
I glanced at him, frowning. I noticed Denorro's expression mirrored mine.
I shook my head immediately, and lifted my offered hand to flatten it out in a reversal of the gesture that Denorro had given me a short time ago.
"No." I said, sharply.
Denorro's annoyed exhale through his nose was directly mostly at Sorzo, but he gave me a lingering look all the same. After a second though, he smiled again and reached out to clasp my raised hand in both of his, lowering it down.
He gave me a firm shake.
"Thank you." He told me.
I nodded at him in turn, smiling, before pulling my hand gently from his.
He said something, and made an odd gesture with his hands. When I heard the word, "R'hllor" mixed in with the bunch and my own name, I was fairly sure that it was some kind of prayer.
A quiet part of me was amused by that. That someone would pray to their god to assist me.
As I made my way out of the temple and back into Volantis's streets, I wondered if R'hllor was confused by the request.
Post Notes:
There we go. Ysmir's finally been confronted with the nature of what's been going on around him the whole time. It's a tricky thing, because in a relatively feudal society, it's a few specific things that differentiate slaves from say, peasants, and a lot of the time, those things might not even come up quickly. I'm glad a lot of people have enjoyed the story so far. While I wouldn't say the next chapter is the full depths of depravity, it's definitely a lot more spicy and that's something for you all to look forward to. If you're one of the people who become a Patreon member, try not to spoil things over here, but still engage! The best way you can inspire an author is discussing the events of the work or talking about what you like, or even dislike if you're respectful and constructive as some people have been.
Until next time.