Chapter 10:
We bought Orwynne some more clothes as the sun crossed midway between noon and sunset. Sorzo returned a lot sooner than dusk, so I was guessing he just used that like I did, for lack of a better way to communicate later to me.
I paid for what we bought, but the clothes I got Orwynne weren't anything terribly expensive and didn't cut me back much further. I knew it would be worth it to at least have a couple alternative pieces of clothing for us all, in the travels to come.
Personal experience.
I bought myself another pair of pants, some simple boots, and a vested kind of gray-black tunic that went over a loose off-white shirt that seemed quite common among the men, with only a back and forth stitched drawstring to decide how open I wanted it to be down the top of my chest. That part was similar to home.
I'd seen some that might as well have been showing off their belly buttons when their top-tunics were off and strings loosened. When I'd demonstrated and lifted my eyebrow at Orwynne in question, she just kind of laughed and shook her head at me. She didn't seem particularly impressed with any of the clothes presented to her, from what I could tell in general. She just took whatever I gave and moved on, though I'd caught her looking wistfully at the nicer things across the market more than once.
It was a strange realization that many of the slaves I passed likely had their own unique history before they were slaves, their own unique lives they'd lived that they would essentially never again communicate to someone. Those histories were smothered. They were suppressed, indefinitely, and likely forever.
Then there were those that had never had the opportunity at all, and known only one thing.
We met back up with Sorzo as the sun grew closer to distant waters, and he dragged us to a new place where I'd never been, that was full of food and revelry. There were different slaves and people without the marks among the patrons, some of them more and less tattooed. I noticed less tear-drops among the mix, and a larger number of swords.
I wasn't sure if Sorzo just didn't trust me back among the tear-drop women, or if he was taking some advice Orwynne had given him. As far as I could tell, she hadn't made any gestures to accompany words indicating what had happened when she tried to… attend me, but I also wouldn't have understood if she just used words alone.
In the company of warring men, I gulped cup after cup of some thick, purplish-red wine that the proprietor of the place brought me repeatedly.
When I spotted a bard playing and drifting around, I threw more coins at them drunkenly than they'd likely made the whole day elsewhere if their little musical instrument case was any indication at all, drawing laughs from surrounding tables and various shouts in different tongues I didn't know. The bard played a number of songs under our urging, singing and plucking the strings of an instrument that looked a great deal like a lute to me, if less wide and more long.
He sang his ass off, too.
The bard played for so long, and there was so much carousing into the afternoon that I started to feel like I actually recognized the songs -- if not the words, the melodies -- and was able to hum along merrily with the men who took them up singing about who knew what when repetitions inevitably came about.
My good mood seemed to put Sorzo at greater ease. By comparison, the more I drank, the more Orwynne seemed to grow wary from where she was sat between us behind the table, though not seemingly regarding me. She watched our surroundings and I suspected it was out of concern for herself more than anything else, because while I drew the occasional bit of attention, she seemed to draw it more.
Many of the men in the place had already pointed her out and said things I didn't understand. Sorzo's glance at Orwynne's cheek made me fairly sure it had to do with that tear-drop marking.
It wasn't all received poorly. Sometimes, Orwynne seemed vaguely interested in the discussion -- I'd seen her meet the eyes of a well-tanned man with short, curly dark hair for a long while, a chewed lip full of evaluating whatever he said, before it was left for another bite of her food.
Most often she turned herself away from their commentary, content to eat and only lightly sip what was brought to us.
Sorzo usually talked with the people that approached our table and lingered, often pointing me out and saying who knew what. Orwynne came up sometimes.
After we'd been there for a long while and I'd more than had my fill of their pleasant wine and better food, a large man with a thick moustache and an almost red-brown tan came over and posted himself up near my end of the table. His forward lean was aggressive, and there was something of a low-lidded, half-drunken smile that bordered something meaner on his face, as he looked at me.
He said something, lifting his chin and glancing down at me where I sat. I tilted my head with a grin, enjoying my booze buzz as I shot a glance at Sorzo for potential explanation.
Someone in the crowd laughed a little and smacked the back of his hand against a companion, pointing at the man at our table and repeating something the man said in the mix of other words, with a laugh. I saw their eyes on me, and began to feel the odd one out on the humor.
Sorzo's cheeks felt warm.
While it wasn't a night at the Sea's Secret, the food available in places nearer the Black Walls was the best. To try to be polite for Ysmir's generosity, he'd paid for everything of their meals out of his own share, and things were going amazing. Ysmir didn't waste food on his second time around.
While he didn't particularly care for her disrespect of Ysmir who was beyond good to her in her situation, even Orwynne hadn't taken every opportunity in the last hour or two to try to tell him he was still acting like a slave.
Even if that was because she spent most of it listening to the different men proposition her, or Ysmir indirectly, for some time with her.
He'd done his best to tell them that she wasn't for sale even for an hour, on Ysmir's behalf. The sorcerer had been clear. She wasn't a slave. Or wouldn't be, at least, soon enough. Of course, Orwynne wasn't helping, giving some of the men speculative looks when they called across the open eating area.
Not convinced she doesn't belong back where we found her.
Sorzo rolled his eyes. Another man approached, and he expected the big plainsman to be getting a little more direct with it, and was already preparing to tell him it wasn't happening, when he said those words.
Ysmir was looking at him for answers, but Sorzo was fighting back a laugh himself.
How do I explain that?
"Uh… ah…" He closed his eyes, fighting the wine to search for simple words or physical objects that he might display-
Sorzo looked at the food in front of them, and reached out, pointing to some melted cheese.
"He shaid you're…He shaid…" He blinked, words slurred.
I might have gone too far, trying to keep up with him.
That much of the wine was really getting to him. It wasn't even dark outside.
"BIG!" Sorzo said, spreading his hands toward the plainsman, the blatant Dothraki blood standing at their table. He was the only man he'd seen all day that stood taller and broader than Ysmir, noticeably. "Man shays Ysmir… uh…"
The cheese wasn't right. Sorzo looked aside at Orwynne.
Reaching out toward his cup he dipped two fingers in, and before the whore could react, flicked the contents on the edge of her shirt over her left tit, leaving darkening spots. Ysmir's eyebrows shot up from across the table, and Orwynne smacked him on the chest with the back of her hand, turning her arm inward protectively, alarmed.
"You cretin." She muttered defensively.
"BIG man shess… Ysmir…" He motioned toward Orwynne's shirt, looking like she had a leaking tit. "Milky man. Soft."
Sorzo turned over his wrist, tapping at his skin pointedly.
Ysmir shook his head unsurely, glancing from the cheese to Orwynne's shirt. Orwynne scoffed faintly, and turned her nose up at the lot of them, like she wasn't all but blatantly considering taking some man in her ass a minute ago.
Giving her new ideas for what to include in that book of hers.
Sorzo had to give it to her at least, that it was probably the only book he'd ever seen that he was interested in reading. Maybe one day he'd put the time to learning, since he was free and could make his own decisions.
Ysmir still wasn't getting it.
Sorzo reached out and motioned vaguely toward Orwynne's tits, and then pointed at Ysmir's cup. He lifted his own cup, and made a motion with it to suggest drinking. Even held it out aside briefly in suggestion as if to fill it from her, causing her to backhand it from his palm with a scowl.
"MILK." He repeated, louder ignoring where it went for a different cup he pulled closer and repoured fresh wine in. "He sshaid you're a milk man. Shoft milk shkin."
The plainsman looked like he wanted to start something, but Sorzo was too drunk to care. It was kind of funny too. Funny because he had no idea what he was standing in front of. Funny because of how wrong it could go for them all. Funny because he couldn't even begin to explain it.
The corners of his eyes crinkled in continued smile, but something in Ysmir's blues changed.
One moment, he was laughing, smiling. Sorzo was echoing it. Everyone was, except for the one responsible for the intrusion on the edge of their table, the horseman poking a bit of fun. Ysmir's lack of decorum had placed him far below the risen heights of an old blood, or visiting Lysene noble to the rest of the men nearby, so they were dancing on the line of offensiveness.
Men rowdy from a life of violence, with not enough time at the Sea's Secrets, Sorzo was certain!
Ahhhhh I want to go back.
One moment Ysmir was laughing, and then the next, Ysmir was on his feet faster than his heavy eyelids could lift again from a blink. The blond man's hand extended, seizing the larger plainsman by the back of his neck and in one move drove his face down into the table hard enough to send plates flying and crack the wood.
The table tipped and the man just went straight down to his stomach on the floor. Ceramic plates shattered, leftovers scattered, and Sorzo sobered up a fair bit instantly. Ysmir rolled the downed man off his boot and onto his back, all laughter gone.
Ysmir looked at the unconscious plainsman, waiting almost. Orwynne was flinched back, and had her arms up, eyes screwed shut and pinched chin downward and half turned to the side. It practically magicked away her chin, and somehow gave her two at the same time made of neck folds. Her attractiveness vanished as if it had all been an illusion, under the change.
Most of the tables got quieter.
Ysmir nudged the plainsman with a newly purchased boot. The downed man groaned quietly, rolling a little more on his side.
"No milk man!" Ysmir said, throwing up both hands and laughing a second after.
Eh…
What did it matter, he decided drunkenly. If he died, he died.
"No milk man!" Sorzo shouted with a laugh of his own, throwing up his newly filled drink in a victory cheer.
It said something to how much Ysmir had given the man playing his instrument nearby that the man joined in with the shout without prompting, adding his own echo.
Somehow, that all made the table of the downed man's friends laugh, and then the brief pause in the general revelry of the place serving all of the food and sending mummers and singers about, came back.
A couple shouts of "No milk man!" went up in the mix of people lifting cheers of their own. One of the slaves of the man who owned the place came over, and brought up to him the cost of the plates, and warned him that violence was not permitted, but Ysmir just grinned at the man, too ignorant to receive threats or warnings.
Which was probably for the better of everyone involved.
Instead of letting that get out of control, Sorzo simply dug out some coins and pressed far more than was necessary for replacements into their hands, and motioned them away.
"Deliver it to your owner. The North Dragon's apology for the excitement." He said, ignoring Orwynne's snort.
Leaning aside from his seat, to show good will to the owner of the place, he grabbed the edge of the table to begin to straighten it back up. Ysmir helped him, even if everything on it was pretty much on the floor then.
A couple of slaves came over, and with obvious practice, quickly swept the broken mess into containers and carried them off.
The man's friends dragged him up, and I chuckled at Ysmir's call of, "You, milk man." toward the plainsman as he stumbled onto his feet and was pushed back away and to his own table. Thankfully, it appeared that the people running things noticed that there was at least some provocation involved. He saw the same slave as before sharing a blank-faced word with the plainsman.
Sorzo was going to have to remember that.
Don't bring up milk and Ysmir. He's weird about it.
He didn't want to wake up on the floor looking all dumb and confused like that guy.
It was last light when they all stepped out of the place where they ate, drank, enjoyed good music, and casual company.
Less certain that Ysmir knew the meandering route he'd taken in search of the smith, Sorzo took the lead to help guide them in a shorter, more straight path toward the smithy. As the air started to cool with the coastal winds coming in, Sorzo felt some of his drunken buzz ease its grip on him.
Ysmir was gently tilting his head left and right, swaying slightly to the notes he hummed in an unfaltering rendition of Wending the Wild without words. Sorzo doubted heavily that the stubbled man knew the meaning of the words of the song about the Disputed Lands, but was almost unsurprised to hear its musical walk repeated so cleanly.
With a few of his own additions.
Ysmir was more than a little fond of song, it seemed, and skilled at picking up the underlying tones of the performer's words. He captured the music and echoed it, and seemed only to need to hear a song a few times to do so very well.
If he ever gives up burning men alive, perhaps he will make a life of plucking strings.
It was an amusing thought.
When he met Orwynne's eyes briefly, and tilted his head toward the swaying blond man who didn't seem anywhere near as drunk as he should have been for how much he'd had, he was given a spectacularly unimpressed look to suggest her feelings. Sorzo wasn't sure how she could think she could walk back toward some base uppitiness after the things he knew of her, but she seemed to keep up the facade. That or she actually believed it and was just that skewed in the head.
Despite whatever she was trying, as they continued their journey, he still caught the curve of the corner of her lip from her place between them.
They eventually made it to the blacksmith's shop, and knocking on the door roughly, were answered by the bald man from the start of the day, looking a bit more ragged than when they'd last seen him. Probably from all of the work.
He stepped back and invited them in with a motion of his hand.
They all stood around, absently looking at what was still on display as he disappeared into the back to retrieve Ysmir's goods that were already paid off. He returned a moment later with a rough cloth bag and placed it on the table, reaching inside. The smith opened it and pulled out the pieces the sorcerer had selected one by one to show them to him.
Ysmir didn't seem particularly interested in that, but Sorzo understood the smith was just showing them the order was gathered and adjusted to everyone's satisfaction.
Most of the armor that had been displayed at a polished, lighter shine had been rubbed down and coated, leaving all of the metal more of a darker gray closer to black by Ysmir's own request. It had taken them a minute to get the sorcerer's intent by him just picking them up and showing them to them, and pointing to the piece he actually wanted, but they eventually figured it out.
The darker metal was a poor treatment for some of the hotter areas of Essos, but Sorzo also knew there was a practicality to the choice. He assumed that Ysmir knew that the different polish and treatment would hold up better and look less terrible without someone around or available to tend the armor.
It was the kind of thing worn by men who preferred heavier armor, but weren't in the employ of the very wealthy or around cities often enough to go for the beautiful shine that some things could have. It would never be pretty, but it also wouldn't grow to look absolutely terrible over time without attention.
The last thing the blacksmith brought out wasn't in the bag. He had to step back through the door and return with it in his hands, huge fingers curled up around the outside of the helm Ysmir had selected.
Sorzo thought it was a bit of a bad choice, all things considered. If he was going to pay for a good helm either way, one that left the front of one's mouth completely unprotected was a risk.
Probably doesn't even matter for him though.
What was a sword fight to a man that could just ensorcel everything before him to ash?
He watched Ysmir reach out and curl his fingertips underneath one edge of the finished helm, tracing the new bent banding that had been added to support what he'd requested with great pain. He took it from the smith with one hand across its top, squeezing and lifting its altered shape with confidence.
Whatever beast had given Ysmir the two different ends of slightly curved black-brown horns, Sorzo didn't know. He didn't know animals well, and only assisted the slaves Malsero purchased in the past that had some history or training in the trade. When Ysmir seemed dead set on showing the smith what he had and what he wanted moved a particular way, Sorzo hadn't been sure the additions to the man's purchase offered anything protective.
There was something to be said of Ysmir's choice all the same.
Ysmir slid the helmet down over his head and obscured most of his face. The quiet exhale the sorcerer let whisper free of his lips sounded tired and relieved at the same time.
The twinned curve of dark horns from each side of the helm's crown swept downward, cut to balance, in a pair of slightly forward points.
He hadn't often seen helms personally styled. The bravos dueled light and lived life by the sword in that way. When he moved goods with Malsero beyond the reach of the duelers, they didn't often find themselves close with the employ of many of the sword companies that tried to make their own path in the Disputed Lands on behalf of the cities. He'd seen something similar in some cases, regarding them, in the designs on peoples' armor that had nothing to do with banners or colors.
Recognition.
It gave Ysmir a specific appearance that would be memorable if people encountered him. That could wind up being good or bad.
When Ysmir shook the smith's hand, the smith was visibly a little uncertain what to make of the gesture but nodded firmly anyways. Doubtlessly because he thought he was shaking hands with someone of exceptional means and power.
Even if the smith was misled…
He has no idea how right he is.
They departed his shop, and made their way back into the chaos of Volantis's darkening streets. Ysmir was back to leading them, in a roundabout path to who knew where, but Sorzo was content to enjoy the journey.
It might be my last night ever, here.
Some time later, through chance or some other curiosity of Ysmir's, they wound up back near the edge of the grand Temple of the Lord of Light.
There was a surprisingly large crowd there to observe the ceremony the red priests always did as night fell. They were gathered in close, and there was a lot of muttering and shouting going on.
They always lit and stoked a number of braziers and torches around the open plaza that led up to its front as night fell. He'd been informed once long ago that it was meant to be symbolic. A gesture that any may find their way to its front and seek the shelter of the light, where the largest of the lot that bordered on a bonfire would blaze unceasingly until dawn, before it would be let to smolder again. The priests thanked their god for the day that was, prayed for the day to return, and for the night to be short.
Some people said that the flames at the temple's front hadn't been let to extinguish since before it was finished.
Something's different.
While it was normal for some to gather, typically slaves with just enough freedom or the will of their masters to venture nearer for care, at dusk, the crowd was more what might be gathered in the morning light.
The shouting grew, and some people shook their heads, meandering the edge.
Others wandering the streets toward their different destinations in the city slowed out of curiosity, and the number of people in the plaza grew by the second. Ysmir's curiosity drew them to a halt, and Sorzo himself was enough so that he actually stepped forward into the people and began to nudge them apart, curious if there was a new spectacle or demonstration the red priests were showing.
It could have been anything. Creating the symbol of R'hllor or something else of flame, manipulating the light and extending the shadows to move. Sometimes, the things the priests of the temple did were understated, and sometimes, the exact opposite. Not every single one of them could do those things, but those who did held a different manner of respect than the rest that wound themselves intimately with the plights of Volantis's downtrodden.
While the head of the priests rarely came down from the extended bridge to the pillar that connected to the terrace further up in the temple, the torchlit plaza was occupied often by many other priests who gave their time and effort to the people on a more personal basis.
As they pushed their way through the crowd nearer the center, where many people were trying to get their own look at what was going on, it abruptly opened to a number of the Fiery Hand standing in a protective circle around a number of red-robed priests, some kneeling.
The low light and flickering fires of the plaza shined off spilled blood.
A pair of bodies lay crumpled at the bottom of the temple's steps, and the Fiery Hand pushed back against the restless crowd on the fringe of a gap, to give the priests space.
One of the bodies was one of their fellows, red robes obvious.
Sorzo recognized it.
How could he not?
They had traveled together from Meereen to Volantis on a journey every bit as ill-fated as it was a turning point for him.
As the priests rolled him over and drew him up in their arms, and people called out in various degrees of concern, Sorzo watched Denorro's body be lifted from the stone of the plaza. He had a number of darkened spots in his robe to show for wounds. The aged priest's arm hung limply, and he left a trail of blood.
Sorzo's throat tightened.
Nearby laid a second body, a bloodied dagger just beyond reach of sightless eyes. It was a man with gray-streaked hair that might have been black once. He had skin that marked him as having spent a great deal of time in the sun, and likely not a man of means for it to be the case. There was nothing about the man that made him remarkable compared to any of the other gathered slaves, except that he didn't have any sign of a slave tattoo.
The reason for his death was apparent. A huge cut spanned most of the dead man's back, and his skull was split at the rear. He must have been running when one of the Fiery Hand reacted, not fast enough to spare Denorro, but fast enough to assure no one who harmed a priest escaped with their life.
But why?
It was a bit strange. The red priests that came out to speak with the people did not carry or display any ostentatious wealth. It was in their nature of service, within Volantis's walls at least, to R'hllor to live with their focus on spreading their word and their belief. They taught the people without much expectation, and were giving. They spoke of the differences between the good and righteous, and the dark and cruel.
So why did someone attack and kill a red priest, with nothing to gain?
One of the slaves tried to push in, to get between Ysmir and the ongoings to get a look, but the sorcerer's good mood was visibly fouled. He pushed back, sending them tumbling into a few people, and then those people staggering a bit back in the process trying to catch the heap.
Sorzo's eyes caught on the dagger.
It wasn't anything special as far as knives went. It was double edged, narrowing to a fine, bloodied point. It looked fairly cheap and accessible, and just the kind of weapon that most people who felt the need to be armed might allow themselves to carry concealed even when they wished to be free of the weight of a swordbelt to avoid any bravos. He could just make out something familiar about the dagger, as one of the Fiery Hand lifted it from the stone. Its crossguard was a little strange, notched near the end and bearing a Volantene maker's mark.
One he knew.
The maker's mark of a smith on the west side of the river, between the harbor and the bridge. The smith he probably would have taken Ysmir to, if he had known what Ysmir sought before Ysmir took them on a wild adventure through the streets.
It wasn't like the smith offered special goods, or anything. They were convenient and relatively inexpensive. He knew it for only one reason, really.
It was the only blacksmith directly between Malsero's only holding in Volantis near the west bank of the Rhoyne branch and the start of the bridge, where the greatest flow of trade passed. He had purchased from there in the past.
As soon as he knew that, he knew it was no coincidence.
I told him.
"Malsero will be offended, and does not forget." He told Denorro, cautiously.
He'd suffered setback after setback, and in his eyes, an endless disrespect from them for their parts as slaves that had each in their own way sided with or been in support of Ysmir. A merchant that suffered them enough might one day find themselves indebted and pressed into slavery, were it to the wrong people. In a way, his failures stacking up brought him ever closer to them, and that only added insult to injury, even if he wasn't in any immediate risk or anywhere close to falling so far.
The principle of it would bother him.
A dagger wouldn't be enough to lead the Fiery Hand or the slave-soldiers to Malsero if they even bothered to investigate in the first place. The Triarchs and old bloods in general did not much care for the red priests, who often spoke of a fairness in action that simply wasn't represented in their viciously competitive lives. The smith produced many, and if it was even purchased recently, and not something that just sat around, there was no guarantee it wasn't whoever received payment from Malsero who'd purchased it themselves just on the way.
All the same, he knew it. Felt it in his bones.
It was the final straw.
After everything, when Malsero took Denorro to the temple, he was paid only a portion of the ransom, a respectable amount, but not the cut that they had received, on account of having abandoned him. It should have been obvious that Denorro was going to speak with his companions and tell them about his journey before anything was settled.
For whatever personal reasons, Denorro had chosen to speak on behalf of Ysmir, claiming him responsible for his safe delivery to Volantis, and Malsero only the man who had walked him from the gate. That was what he confirmed on their visit, with the surprise of plenty more coin for their part in things.
Maybe Denorro might not have done that, if Malsero hadn't been in such a foul mood the rest of their journey.
I should have killed him.
As Ysmir stepped forward toward the priests that lifted Denorro, parting the crowd around him with force, a member of the Fiery Hand noticed and turned enough to focus their attention on him, lifting one hand in warning, a gesture to stay back, even as their other dropped to grip the hilt of their sword, where it sat at their side.
Sorzo grabbed Ysmir's arm, only to realize after the fact that Orwynne had a hold of the sorcerer's other and was making her own effort to halt his sudden advance.
It was like seizing hold of a horse determined to walk, and his feet slid across the gravel and stone briefly as his legs locked but Ysmir kept going.
Then, just when he was worried something bad was impossible to avoid, Ysmir stilled, expression curled up in a brief moment of fury as he looked at the body being carried away. Sorzo watched the sorcerer's eyes shift between the priests huddled around their fallen and the Fiery Hand, whose sole duty was to protect them. Then, he looked at the roiling flame of the brazier that sat most dominantly before the vast temple, so large it made itself the kin of even the most gigantic hillside.
The red priests took Denorro into the temple, even as a member of the Fiery Hand took their time searching the murderer.
"Ysmir," He said, trying to get the sorcerer's attention. "Ysmir, calm! Calm!"
Ysmir's uncomprehending eyes finally pulled away from the scene and looked down at him, pale and icy as the peaks of snowed over mountains.
He hesitated, just a moment, under that stare. Then swallowed and forced himself up straighter despite the buzz he still felt.
"Malsero." He said slowly, to the blond man.
The pale blue of Ysmir's eyes shifted left and right almost imperceptibly, thinking. The set of his jaw tightened a little further. The crowd around them pushed in, filling the gap Ysmir had created, and others pushed in front of them as the protective circle of Fiery hand pulled back to give way, most of their duty done.
"Malsero." Sorzo repeated, to the most dangerous man he'd ever known, despite something in his stomach uncomfortable with the possibility that he could be wrong. He made a motion to where the blood and fallen man remained.
It could have been random. Or someone who hated magic. Or had a bad experience with a different red priest, and was looking for a random outlet. He knew life was unfair and there were a thousand ways to die in Volantis.
But no.
It didn't feel random. It would pass as random, maybe. But everything about it stunk. A free man, a desperate one who could receive much from them, killing a priest was strange. Especially when he knew for fact Denorro had only just returned to Volantis. Had returned and spurned a wealthy man who'd already been offended by their perceived disrespect.
It was strange unless the assailant was rewarded for doing so, with the means to be worth the risk.
What kind of coincidences would it have to be, for it to be Denorro of them all?
"Malsero." He said again.
Sorzo tightened his own expression up to match Ysmir's, as he watched the sorcerer's right hand ball into a fist.
The crowd continued to move around them. Night had truly fallen.
Orwynne released Ysmir's other arm, looking between them uncertainly.
"Who's Malsero?" She asked, looking toward the temple. "One of the priests?"
Sorzo didn't look away from Ysmir's slightly downturned face. He stayed like that for only a moment, sobered eyes looking after the entrance of the grand temple.
Then, Ysmir turned back and met his eyes again.
He hooked his chin away from the plaza and said, "Malsero." in a single word demand.
Sorzo turned, because slave or free man, that was the difference between him and Orwynne.
He knew when he heard an order.
Orwynne was trying to speak to me, but I couldn't hear her. I didn't need to hear her. My anger was like fire in my veins. Like I'd caught the storm in my hands and was only just able to bend it beneath my skin.
My heart pounded.
They moved around me. People just beyond the touch of my arm, near enough that I could feel the wind of their passage. The night didn't stop them from enjoying their many pleasures, and their many cruelties.
Nigh naked children ran the alleys and men bent generations to their will like they were worthy of such a right, born of their honorless palaces of coins stacked high. Coins stacked high with the blood of those who toiled, those who warred, those who died. They, who were little more than the grass beneath my feet if only I wanted to whisper their end.
I had forgiven them for their ignorance. I forgave a people so far gone from even the vaguest system of true honor and sacrifice, that I could only regret it.
The skies should have wept for Volantis. I could have made them, but I cared only for one who had offended me.
I said he lived.
A thousand of those Dothraki had wanted Denorro's life, and I ended them. I decided that he would live. It was my gift to him. My gratitude.
What arrogance drove him to believe he was above them?
Him, who shied a blade and had never paid a price in blood for anything.
Was I not patient?
The many stalls of the great bridge passed by me in a blur, because I could not see them. Not because we moved fast. When Sorzo turned left beyond its end, taking me further and further from where Denorro had been murdered, I paid no mind to the crowds of people. I paid no mind to the brush of a young boy's desperate fingers picking my pocket for a few gold coins that would change his life potentially. I ignored the looks that Orwynne was giving me, and her conversation growing increasingly frantic with Sorzo as she looked around.
Was I not fair?
Sorzo came to a stop beyond a wall of stone that opened at a single point to the street, where a different color of stone had been cut and shaped to rest in place and form a low arch over a heavy external door to a private area beyond it. Stood beyond its edge, he looked up at the small arch over the gate door for one long moment.
Then he turned to me and gently motioned to the door.
Orwynne stepped forward, speaking demandingly, and looking between us. Looking into Sorzo's eyes, she asked a question and threw a hand out furiously pointing the way we came and then swiping it through the air. She was alarmed. Her lip quivered faintly. She lifted a few words, among them the one for sword, motioning between us.
I didn't need any of the swords we'd left in the wagon for what I was going to do.
The pleasantness of the beet-mixed wine I'd drank had long eased its hold on me, and I needed no more than a direction. I stepped forward, gazing at the little keyhole that held an integrated lock within the door.
"Bex()."
The simple, reinforced door groaned under my command as the tumblers within slid up, vibrating violently. The door rattled on its hinges like I'd seized it and began to shake. The single rumble of thunder that boomed through the evening streets of Volantis announced my warpath.
But by then the door slid gently back and began to swing open.
I pressed a palm to its surface and pushed, stepping through the opening without looking back.
A man sat nearby the door in a chair, a little bucket next to him and a lantern on a hook. He'd been sleeping likely before my command, because he was pushing to his feet in alarm.
The yard beyond the wall that protected the property was mostly stone and sand with patches of grass in unnatural divisions and shapes organized by different collections of stones of different colors.
Two men stood at the steps that led up to the home that sat slightly lifted in the surrounding grounds, each practically unarmored. While they lacked marks on their cheeks and obvious protection, they were dressed in light, airy garments that were clearly not cheap and bore long, curved swords. I'd noticed men like them dueling for coins further from the main line.
Across the yard off on the left side was a different, less decorated building with a closed door like some kind of secondary house.
The man that had been dozing in his chair next to the door was almost completely without armor, but had a faded tattoo on his cheek of a sword, much like the one he immediately reached to draw.
I was in his personal space as his hand seized the hilt. My palm came down and caught the pommel, stopping it in place only five inches free of its sheath as he tried to draw. My other hand seized him by his face and I slammed his head back into the stone.
His grip on the half-drawn sword went slack, and he slumped in the chair he'd only just gotten up from, eyes rolled up in his head. I didn't release my grip on the pommel of the straight sword he'd been in the process of drawing, so as he fell back, and I stepped on, it slipped free of his sheath with a gentle ring of steel.
The men in front of me shouted the alarm, and I took that as my invitation to charge forward, lifting the sword high and shouting a war cry that thundered as if I'd spoken with the thu'um. One of the men lifted his sword and surged forward to meet me, more veteran. The other, met with such aggression, froze for just a moment.
A moment he should have been fleeing me.
Come then, and die.
The horns in my periphery did not cloud my vision. They narrowed it. They gave me focus.
All that matters is forward.
The last three extended steps I took I adjusted my grip just barely, fingers winding tight around the sword. It was longer than a standard one-handed sword if only a little, with a little extra room at the hilt for the potential but not absolutely necessary grip of a second hand. I brought the steel longsword with a more familiar shape around and down brutally.
The veteran lifted his own, angled to catch and allow him to slip in with a thrust. Our blades met, and even with the leverage in his favor, I drove right down through his reinforcement and advantage, his strength to hold up his blade buckling like he'd tried to catch a falling horse.
My blade hacked into his head, spraying blood.
The other young man's brief surprise as I aggressed hadn't lasted, so by the time his comrade died, his own sword was already extending toward me, as he shouted something. I stepped left, dodging out of the way of his swordstroke, as his comrade fell, because all that remained of him was a pile of meat and bone. My grip on the sword remained firm, and though I stepped aside, I kept the blade extended without withdrawing.
He'd made the mistake of stepping just a bit too close, and by the time the first dead man's knees hit the stone beneath him, I'd lined up the extended length of the sword between me and the second. I extended it out in a stab he was already too far extended to parry.
The blade passed into his eye even as his sword made contact with mine in a desperate attempt at recovery.
He fell too, but I was already moving up the steps. The shift at the top from stone to the wood at the front of the large dwelling left my stomping boots loud. I kicked the door open at speed, and wood shattered as it went inward as one cracked but mostly whole single piece. The hinges tore free of the wall sooner than the well-made, heavy door itself gave way.
A man had been either waiting for me behind it or about to pull it open because it landed on him. I was in the open doorway and through in a breath, my boots thumping the door down on the man it landed on as I slid across the surface and then back onto my feet on normal ground.
The front space was clearly an area for receiving people. There were a number of chairs gathered about a low table, some more intended for lounging and backed by intricately carved wood. It all sat on a thick rug that stretched most of the room and had an intricate design of different triangular and circular shapes overlapping in various colors. At the hearth a woman stood in a simple tan dress lacking adornment. She had tattoos on her cheek, and seemed to be in the process of cleaning it, so I ignored her.
She screamed.
The man beneath the door had a sword in hand, so I stepped on his exposed head and ground him beneath my heel before he could prove an issue. The woman's scream peaked higher and she stumbled back from me, kicking legs and crawling as she retreated into a corner of the room.
Unarmed.
I stomped over to look through the nearest larger archway of the stone dwelling and into a different room. Blood on the blade and beneath my heel, I left marks across the spotless floors up to the edge of that room, which turned out to be a kitchen.
Not here.
I turned to the next archway, smaller but narrowing to disappear deeper into the home.
A hallway.
I moved deeper within, into the darker area. A door on my left waited first, and as I got to the edge, I reached out and threw it open.
A small room with a few undecorated and simple beds set against a wall. Something approximating a wardrobe hung open. An old man was hastily getting dressed, having clearly risen with the shouts of alarm and the noise. He saw my bloodied blade and where I stood in the doorway, and froze in fright.
"Sit." I commanded him, in his own tongue.
He lowered down, with wavering breath.
I stepped through and to a smaller door that was in the wall. It opened into a narrow passageway that clearly opened to the outside yard again on the side of the house.
For them to go out and do their duties without being noticed.
I closed the door and stepped back to the one I'd entered without looking at the man who sat unmoving but for shaking hands. I closed him inside from the hallway, and continued on.
The next door on the left opened to a small closeted area, which appeared to be used to stool necessary implements for the maintenance of a house so I moved on. I searched the last door in the hall, but only found it to be leading into an underground larder.
I turned back and when I stepped into the big room at the entrance, the woman that had been cleaning had clearly run out. Through the open door, my eyes caught upon Sorzo standing with a sword claimed from one of the fallen men. The maid sat on the ground nearby, head bowed. Sorzo said something to the woman sitting down, pointing his sword at her in warning, and then he and Orwynne turned toward the house. Orwynne had a sword and a keyring in her other hand, but she was shaking like a leaf and her grip was inexpert.
Through the open doorway, I met Sorzo's eyes momentarily and turned to continue my search through the house.
I went down a different hallway that branched from the main room in the entirely opposite direction, and I checked another series of doors without anything to show for it until the last.
I pushed it open to a room that was more decorated than any other I'd come across in the dwelling except perhaps the entry room.
A familiar smell touched my nose. Sex. Sweat.
A huge bed sat across from the doorway, a trunk at its end and tables at either side. Flowing curtains hung from the walls, and I noticed a series of sectioned, display shelves in one wall, filled with everything from vases to statuettes.
A woman with tan skin and mahogany hair was bent, naked over the side of the bed. Her hair was mussed, and her shoulders sunken in to seem smaller or less threatening, long healed scars striped across her shoulder blades and spine. Her hands shook where they held the covers, and though the angle let me see clearly half her face, she didn't dare look at me for the first moment.
The bedsheets were ruffled. There were clothes on the floor. I could see a dress, that same tan-white of natural, undyed material. Cheap. Identical to the other woman I'd seen.
Some garment that was a little longer was silk though, laid half over it where it was discarded. Boots of dark leather sat nearby, one upright, and the other on its side.
I crossed over the line of the doorway, entering the room. A door in the opposite corner of the room sat closed. As I stepped on the rug, steel in hand and red with blood still dripping gently in a dotted line to mark my passage, she chanced her first glance at me, shaking like a leaf.
Her terrified eyes took me in. Took in the sword in my hand. By the low lantern that cast light over the room, the blade glimmered wetly, still.
Then those dark eyes of the pretty woman shifted just barely off to my left, only the briefest, barest little moment. I heard the shift in the air even as I understood.
I leaned and lifted my sword to intercept what came confidently. Blades met with a shriek of metal, but I wasn't worried. I turned to meet my assailant who'd tried to surprise me and pushed in.
Locking blades, I seized Malsero's shorter, rounder form by the shoulder, and mostly naked as he was and covered in sweat. I pressed him back until his hip met the edge of a low dresser and my force drove him half up and over its surface against the wall.
He squawked and panicked, trying to get the sword he held down but I just pushed it up, releasing my hold on my own while I pinned him in place.
Instead, I seized his hand before he could do something like release his weapon.
Tightening my hand around his until I felt bones crack I hoisted him up higher against the wall, leaning my weight against him to be certain he couldn't wriggle or fall slack. He squealed something, incomprehensible in my ignorance of his tongue and pained as his eyes rapidly darted left and right. I heard movement in the hall just beyond the open door a short ways to my right.
I turned my gaze to the door as a sword lifted just barely into it. Then Sorzo's head leaned in, cautiously. The blade he was wielding bore blood, and he relaxed slightly when he saw me. His eyes passed from me to Malsero, and then he looked at the woman holding her position at the bed.
He said something to her, sharply.
She twitched.
He repeated it, and then I realized it was her name. He motioned with his hand and then shouted something at her.
She immediately threw herself from the edge of the bed, scrambled to grab her dress and ran out into the hall. I listened to the sound of her footsteps, hurriedly thumping along in the other direction.
For a long moment, I met Sorzo's eyes.
He looked around the room after he broke eye contact with me again, eyes lingering for a moment on Malsero.
Then Sorzo gently reached out for the knob of the door and turned. It closed behind him, leaving Malsero and I alone, with a sense of finality.
Malsero was breathing raggedly, and began to speak, words spilling over each other in a rush I couldn't have made sense from. He was rapidly looking around in between looks into my eyes.
"Denorro." I said to him.
The slightest widening of his eyes. The briefest little alarm. So close, so keen to study his features, I didn't need anything more than that.
It was not in my nature as a Nord to deny the souls of most people their opportunity to venture on, to what came after, whole. People lived complicated lives that were filled with successes and failures. We were a people who often lived only to make great our one day to die.
Malsero had just made the mistake of defying me in the most violent and underhanded way twice over.
"Mal-se-ro…"
The house shuddered with the force of my booming voice within its walls.
I should have known.
I'd ignored it. It was right there before me, but I'd given him a chance to prove it wrong. To resist my impulse toward a set of sounds that I heard as a whispered suggestion.
Little related to balance.
Unbalanced and inconsequential.
I tilted my head down, lips peeling back from my teeth. He was too weak of will to potentially resist me.
"...Ziil() Los() Dii() Du()."
She had known dragons before.
It felt like a lifetime ago sometimes, but it was only a handful of years. The last couple had been the least kind, so it was little wonder. She could still remember the moment when her life had been upended to live in service to one. When those who her father owed fealty to called upon her. To the adventures that followed. To the love, the strife, and eventually the loss.
She who had sipped from silver spoons, tasted kings and queens, and chose her own way in life, in spite of what it had chosen to have in store for her.
She did what she needed to do to survive, and her life was better than many still, because she knew what she liked, didn't like, and had gotten good at embracing the things that others called craven and wrong. Maybe there was something wrong with her, but even the first time she'd taken a man twice her age with a cock twice she could comfortably manage to bed, she'd loved every second of it. Whether it had begun as an urge to defy her father, or she was just always destined to fail to uphold the ideals set for her by her family, it was all the same.
She'd yet to know sex that was too far for her mind, and her curiosity and desire bit her long before love found its way into her heart. The act was an undeniable undercurrent that touched every living person that wasn't a eunuch. She made her way well through it all, because she did not hesitate to grasp what came her way, and did not regret depravity if it was going to suit her tastes and benefit her, both.
When she first laid eyes on Ysmir, she'd been led to believe he was an influential and powerful man of some variety, and the coin he and Sorzo had thrown around had meant either they were going to burn through everything they had soon, or they didn't fear its absence. Either of which could have been made to work for her. She needed it to really, because if she had failed to earn then, she would have been relegated to a washrag potentially for cheaper men. Her ability to ever buy her way out potentially, to ever attain freedom or power within the pillow house would have fallen through.
She'd been on adventures with both kinds of men. She'd known the cheap and ambitious, the wealthy and experienced, and then quite a few in the middle during her time as a camp follower. Not that it was just men. She'd known quite a few women too. Her book could attest to that.
She'd had noble cocks on her tongue, and she'd had poor men's seed get in her belly. She'd tasted the finest women, and been bent across the prow of the most crazed.
Even when he was claimed to be "Ysmir, the North Dragon", she was unworried. He bore no heraldry, and there were various factions that made their own claims to Valyrian blood.
She had dealt with the actual dragons before. The rest of the families of Essos that proclaimed their blood traced back to Valyria paled in comparison to the Targaryens. They paled in the violence that came from them, too. No Lysene noble could ever bring about the same degree of destruction with a personal hand. It just wasn't possible. That was why they resorted to poisons, slaves, and trade.
She knew the Targaryens at the height of their political violence in the decline of strife of Maegor's reign, and had known everything from torture to executions. That was part of what allowed her to act in her necessary role.
She could be a lady, because she was a lady. She could be a Valyrian lady, because she had known them, personally. Or the closest thing there really was left in all the lands.
She'd been a tool once to ambitious lords, and the plaything of curious ladies and queens-to-be. She wasn't clean, and she wasn't stupid.
She wasn't blind, either.
Ysmir spoke a word, a word with power, and the gate shuddered like he'd brought it to life before opening itself to him. The violence that followed in front of her eyes was executed ruthlessly and without hesitation. He didn't slow down or speed up as he dealt with them, just passing from one person to the next and snuffing lives like they were candles in a house after dark and it was time for bed.
She'd never heard of a sorcerer that fought like a knight.
Then again, she'd never known someone that could burn scores in a table with their seed.
She just didn't know the line, the limit, or the reason. He clearly had the kind of magic the Alchemists guild worked with Essos to dabble in, the kind of magic that people whispered existed but precious few could actually display. She'd long ago seen a red priest inscribe Valyrian glyphs in the air and proclaim a beautiful dawn, and she'd heard that they could travel wherever fire was.
She'd just known that it was there. Rubbing against his skin had been like pressing to the stones near a roaring hearth and the leak of his desire, even so small, had burned her tongue to the point she still could hardly taste the food. Letting him have her would have been the experience of a lifetime, and she'd meant to have that experience in her book. The dark terribleness of the act would have been something that tantalized and inflamed people for decades, when she eventually began to copy or share her work.
At least, that had been her plan, before she realized how much worse what came out of his sack could be.
She wasn't going to die to know.
Sorzo referred to him, quietly, as a sorcerer.
And she understood even back in the Sea's Secret. She expected mostly small displays. Potentially tricks, potentially alchemy, who knew what it was. An unnaturally hot body was one thing.
The rattling gate was another.
Sorzo crossed into the grounds, following behind Ysmir who cut a bloody path, the two swordsmen felled at the steps having already been forgotten by the sorcerer. While Ysmir went toward the primary residence, Sorzo claimed one of the fallen men's blades and diverted, hurrying over to the adjacent building. She could see the moment Ysmir went through the front door and disappeared into someone's home.
Sorzo pulled open the door to the slave residence, where the ones not necessary for maintaining the house proper would be sleeping.
She looked around the edge of the street where she still stood, and then hurried inside. Turning, she ignored the unconscious -- maybe dead -- man nearby, and pushed the gate closed behind her.
A blood curdling scream came from the house and she tried not to think about what it could mean.
The guards will investigate.
She fought the urge to throw open the gate and run away before she could be caught with them and suffer whatever fate they brought on themselves, undoubtedly terrible. All the same she made sure the door was pushed into place. Then, realizing the slave must have been positioned there for some reason, searched him until she found a keyring and inserted the one key on it into the lock, twisting it until the door was again secured.
It didn't take long at all for Sorzo to have a number of people out of the smaller side house, sitting on their knees in the yard. One man among them tried to go for the remaining blade of one of the dead bravos, and Sorzo cut him down to the screams of people he seemed to know.
He spoke to them using their names.
A slave woman came stumbling out of the house and Sorzo made her sit in front of the group, as he had the rest.
"Do not move, if you want to live." Sorzo told them. "You know I am true to my word. Sit. Be silent. Do not run, do not take up arms, and you will live. He is not here for you."
Then, Sorzo looked at her and hooked his head toward the house, walking on.
Can we leave them? Surely they'll run. They'll tell the guard.
She tightened her hold around the keyring in her hand.
Sorzo glanced at her hand at her delayed reaction, motioned, and continued on.
She hurried to follow him up, and into the house. They had to step sidelong through the front door at an angle over where it was laid on a man's body. His head was crushed, skull and brain and blood all over.
She tasted their long lunch wanting to come back up, but bit it back.
Bloodied boot prints, so malevolently obvious they were Ysmir's, walked from the downed man's head to the edge of the kitchen, and then around and down a hall, before returning. There was something deeply terrible and upsetting about being able to follow, almost like she could imagine him, the murderous path he took throughout the house, searching for Malsero.
Someone who was apparently Sorzo's former master from what little she could gather.
Sorzo found and sent another man outside, and resumed carefully walking around and peeking in and out of doors. One more slave was retrieved from a room down the first hall and sent out to sit among the others, before they ventured down the hallway that Ysmir's bloody boots didn't return from.
There were sounds of a scuffle, and Sorzo ventured down the hall cautiously with her standing at its entry. Near a doorway he turned, peeking inside and leaning until he could get his sword before him and through. He relaxed, and then stepped through a little more.
She heard him shout something twice, and then demand a person get herself dressed, and that she go wait in the yard with the others.
A second later, a woman came running down the hall like she'd seen a demon, naked.
Did Ysmir…?
No.
She shook her head. There hadn't been enough time for anything of the like surely, and she was more attractive than that slave, and had to put in some actual work to get things going. Of course, some men did get consequently more keen to be violent and sexual at the same time. Rape was common enough, for a reason.
It seemed more likely by far that whoever owned the house was enjoying the benefits of being his slaves' master before their arrival.
"Get dressed." She told the woman whose frantic breathing as she came to a halt at the abrupt command told her she was only half listening.
She had to repeat herself another time, before the shaking slave pulled on her dress. Only then, she directed the woman out into the yard, grip on the keyring and loose hold on one of the pilfered swords -- which wouldn't have helped her anyways if a fight broke out -- tightening.
Sorzo stepped back out into the hallway from the room he'd gone in slowly, sword hanging loosely in his grip at his side. He pulled the door to the room closed.
She crept down the hall toward him carefully, eyes glancing toward the door a couple times in indication.
Sorzo slowly lifted his free hand to press a fingertip to his lips.
"Malsero."
The manse shook like a thunderstorm rolled through its walls as Ysmir's voice boomed from just beyond the wall. She could feel every syllable pass through the air like waves did when you were in deeper water and they weren't going to break, so they just moved through you.
She could just hear a man muttering, promising things. Wealth. Asking for forgiveness. Telling him to not. What the not was, she didn't know. Clearly, he was going to kill the man. He hadn't come so far to stop.
"...Ziil Los Dii Du."
She listened, as the house rattled around her with every magical word spoken, as beyond the door a man gasped. Pale light began to spill, flooding out through the cracks of the door. Wind shifted, a breeze drifting around within the hall unnaturally, and the limited light cast by the yellow of fire within the house seemed to almost grow dim by comparison to what came from the room beyond.
Then, the light dissipated.
A rattle of a number of hard objects falling at once, like someone had upended a drawer or something, came from within the room.
She straightened up a little as the heavy thud of boots stepped around and came to the door. Sorzo gave her a once over and shifted his own weight on his feet.
The door pulled back, and Ysmir stepped out, unarmed and leaving bloodied footprints in his wake. His pale blue eyes met hers, and then Sorzo's. The door creaked gently as it eased most of the way closed behind him.
Since she'd met him, Ysmir spoke in such broken, heavily-accented Low Valyrian of the southern variety that it could be difficult to understand even simple verbs for her less experienced ear, given it wasn't her native language to begin with and she was capable thanks to her years of experience hearing High Valyrian spoken around her.
He couldn't string together words very well, and many descriptions and the middling content of sentences were cut out or excluded entirely for his attempts. He referenced his book often, where scribbles like she'd never seen before sat to remind him of words he knew in a tongue only he could seemingly understand. He needed to, to manage even the basic necessity of communication.
"Take whatever seems to be most valuable that you believe can be sold or traded in the next major city. Any documentation necessary to free the slaves outside, see it into their hands." Ysmir spoke, rich low tones inflected with an impeccable Volantene accent. "We'll be leaving sooner than planned."
The door hinge creaked again, shifting as another wind drifted through an empty house and pulled it just barely. The deathly quiet walls seemingly held their breath, emphasizing the three of them as the only thing alive still within.
Ysmir turned and started down the hall.
"We'll bring the cart around if the guards have not yet caught wind of us. My voice is rarely subtle." He said.
He stepped over the body he'd left beneath the door, gripping the door sill for balance, and then walked out into the yard. Unarmed, he approached the slaves there with a long, purposeful stride. One of the women that had run out of the house crawled back from him, terrified.
She watched him come to stand before them, towering in the moonlight and looking down at their faces.
They will not forget their fear even if he helps them.
Sorzo turned carefully, and reached out to press his fingertips to the door that Ysmir had come through. As he pushed it back, it exposed the obvious master's bedroom. Well-decorated, with goods hung up, everything from Myrish baubles to Braavosi blades sat on display. An ostentatious bed, larger than most Westerosi lords would have bothered with, sat as the dominant part of the room. There were clothes littered about.
A lot of valuables.
The door caught on something half-open.
She looked down at the same time as Sorzo.
It took her a second to realize what it was.
Bone.
Sorzo pushed the door open further, and as she leaned, she drew in a breath through her nose.
A pile of bones laid half on top of the short dresser nearest the door, scattered partly along the ground. A skull looked back at them, vacant, expressionless, and pristine.
There were no other signs of a body in the room, and as Sorzo drew in a staggered breath, closing his eyes tight for just a second, she knew confidently that she was looking at Malsero.
What remained of him at least.
Many men climbed the steps to High Hrothgar.
Fewer could manage to brave the environment long enough to receive the company of the Greybeards, who were happy to share their faith in the Goddess Kyne and their peaceful way of life.
Those who did, whether they sought to become a Greybeard or not, might enjoy the benefits of learning from them.
The Voice did not come easy to mortals.
It was not enough to know a word. One had to truly comprehend it. To comprehend it as the dragons did, as those who devoted a small lifetime to understanding a concept so intimately, that when they spoke it just so, they spoke it into being.
It could take men a decade to learn a single word, and truly shout it. To speak the word for fire, one had to intimately know it in the way typically only a dragon could.
Ulfric Stormcloak had been a talented warrior, and a clever man besides. Brutish, but clever, contrary to what many Imperials or the Thalmor thought of him. That he had spent so little time among the Greybeards, and came to know two shouts before giving up the peaceful way and returning to war spoke of his dedication to a difficult path, but also to his mind.
It took that time for men to learn to shout because of the amount of thought and understanding that could be contained in even a single word, a concept, beyond the surface. Beyond simple communication. It required much more to speak to what was and make it what could be.
By comparison, the basic understanding of a word in any language was easy.
What I consumed from my siblings' souls in an instant could be decades of deliberation, of defining a particular concept. They had lived thousands of years in various contemplations, but I could only take so much at once.
Nearly a hundred years in contemplation of Diin was my secondhand understanding, and I instinctively grasped it once I experienced it in part, as other dragons had.
Malsero's entire experience with language could be contained within that one word, a word he might have summed up simply as freeze.
When I tore from him, I took his languages whole and spread, instead. His simple explanations, his inflection, his understanding of many things, because knowledge was all the same in the end. One could have a thousand thousand words to describe one thing, or a thousand thousand things, described with one word each.
The latter would never have made me stronger, but Malsero was no dragon despite his unfortunate name.
Maybe in time I would come to regret my actions. Someone very wise had once told me that it was more impressive to overcome one's instincts than it was to have never had them at all. It seemed almost ironic, that even the most peaceful by pursuit should find admiration in struggle.
As I watched Sorzo finish counting and handing out coins to each of Malsero's former slaves, I couldn't help but think whatever came of them, I'd given them a chance at telling their own tale worth singing songs of, either way.
Sorzo turned to look to me.
"That's everyone." He said, carefully.
"Good." I said, with a nod.
Looking around at the gathered faces of them, people that were as afraid of me as they'd likely been their master, if not more so, I knew there wasn't anything to be done about it. So I didn't waste my time.
"Once we've taken what we want, we'll be on our way. Whatever happens to the rest of Malsero's things no longer matters to us then." I spoke to the group of faces, some streaked with tears, and others rubbing uncomfortably at blood smears that they wouldn't be getting clean of any time soon. "I would advise that you take what you want at that point, as you have served faithfully and received no rewards otherwise. However, be careful trading it away in the markets if it is too easily identified as having belonged to Malsero. Wealthy men will always have friends, and likely debts too. You may find yourself rapidly returning to your position somewhere else."
Sorzo was nodding along with my words, and at his gesture, a couple of the slaves before me did the same. Some hadn't ever lost their disgruntled expressions.
I glanced at Orwynne, who was watching me still with unblinking eyes, somewhere between horrified and fascinated. She fixed her expression when I caught her in it for the second time, and went back to the placid neutrality she gave most people, nodding along with my words too -- far too late.
"Actually, Sorzo, you go get the cart." I said, flicking a hand toward him. "You know the way here better than I do. The rest of you, sit down, and get comfortable for now."
"... you free us, only to keep us here still?" One of the men I hadn't dealt with personally said. Apparently some of them had been in the other structure which I'd taken for a secondary home space or a large shed.
Some of the others gave him fearful looks. Some likely felt he wasn't afraid enough, suiting his position, or that he was speaking above his means. Others probably just wanted to avoid any further confrontations.
"I cannot take the chance that one of you goes for the guards…" I began, speaking plainly.
His eyes narrowed.
"It would put my comrades at risk, and I would have to kill many more, then." I finished.
In the corner of my eye, I watched Orwynne wet her lips slowly, and I saw as she worked her jaw a little, considering my words every bit as much as the slaves in front of me did.
"Sit down. Relax. By dawn, you will have a chance to change your life." I told him, and the rest of them in general by connection. "A chance is more than you had when the sun set."
Once Sorzo returned with the wagon, we took a bit of time gathering things that looked valuable from Malsero's home. A couple of his rugs were rolled up, and things like clothes and jewelry gathered. It seemed like Malsero hadn't made the same immediate leap we had to get rid of everything he'd brought, as I recognized a number of similar garments and styles of clothing that matched what we sold in the market.
I stuck to things that Sorzo seemed inclined to think were valuable, but we didn't pile the cart high either. I had only one horse, and I didn't want to have the same pace leaving Volantis that we'd had coming in.
We didn't have time to go searching for someone to sell me a second. I hadn't lied to the slave. I wanted to be long gone before the jade-striped soldiers tried to throw themselves on my sword.
We left Volantis before dawn. A number of other soldiers at the gates didn't inspect or ask questions regarding our goods, which we'd covered with one of the treated pieces of tentcloth to keep the crates one degree further safe.
I caught Orwynne looking repeatedly back toward the gates, so a short mile or two northwest I turned to Sorzo and made him bring the wagon to a stop.
For a long moment, I just looked across the back of the wagon at Orwynne. I could understand her now, but she'd barely said a word since I'd killed Malsero and consumed his soul. My scrutiny made her visibly a little uncomfortable, the longer we sat in silence.
"I didn't have the words for you before." I told her, after a pause. "I have no need of a slave. I purchased you practically by accident, but I have no regret for doing so."
Orwynne swallowed lightly.
"I do need someone able to write. Someone I can trust to correct me in my use of language. There will be gaps, even in this. Things I don't have a basic understanding of. You may help me with new words I might lack." I explained to her. "I paid a great deal for you, and I would have you earn that value back in this way. In the meantime, I will see you paid, and I shall assure you that I will act in your defense."
I reached down, and digging around in my pack, produced the bag of coins that I'd initially divided up. I considered it in my palm for a moment, before simply tossing it to her. Orwynne reacted by catching it, pulling it in toward her belly slowly.
I didn't need those coins any further.
Malsero had two identical chests to what Sorzo and I had been given by the coin-place. Most of the first had gone to splitting it up among the dead merchant's former slaves, but the latter was mine as far as I was concerned. Sorzo still had at least half of his own.
"Do we have an accord?"
I reached out and presented my palm open to her.
Orwynne looked at my hand for a long moment.
"I don't have to fuck you?" She asked.
I ignored the feeling of a boulder dropping into my stomach at the reminder.
"No." I said, flatly. "I'm afraid that would probably kill you, defeating the whole purpose."
She considered my words for a pause, and then finally reached out to take my hand, squeezing lightly.
"You're speaking in two languages." She said, careful and slow. "You began in low Valyrian, with the southern inflection, but you used the common tongue word for agreement at the end. Whatever dark sorcery you used, you have definitions of words, but you lack the context to identify that the word you used, accord in this case, was the common word in the west for it."
I smiled very slowly at her.
Yes.
She would do quite nicely.
"Low Valyrian," I echoed, aloud. I shook her hand, and released it. "Low as opposed to High. Valyrian is a people. A former people."
I rubbed my nose.
"Westeros, the west. Essos, the east." I continued after a moment. "Am I understanding correctly?"
Orwynne nodded slowly at me.
"Where are you from?" Orwynne asked me, carefully.
I noticed Sorzo turn a little in his seat at the front of the wagon, managing the reins to give us a look. He was interested to know as well.
"You wouldn't know of it." I told her simply. "It doesn't matter."
She took my nonanswer for what it was, pursing her lips faintly.
"Is there an east dragon?" She asked me, after a pause.
"What?" I asked her, confused.
"You are Ysmir, the North Dragon. Yes?" She asked.
I realized I'd gotten the phrasing wrong.
"I spoke incorrectly." I said, frowning a little. I'd tried hard to get that phrase together. "It was supposed to be Dragon of the North."
It was a subtle difference.
"Then the place you come from is to the north presumably." She said, carefully.
"My home was in the north relative to where everything else was. Everything that you will never know, so it does not matter now." I said, amused with her attempt to pry things out of me by making me correct her. "Tell me, is there a place here that has rid itself of slavery?"
"Braavos." Sorzo said from the front.
Orwynne glanced at him, but allowed her head to nod.
"That northern free city doesn't have slaves." Orwynne agreed. "But it's all practically the same in the end, in Essos. Where coins pile high enough, there are slaves to one thing or another."
"I see." I said, with a nod. "What of the dragons?"
"What?" Sorzo asked, turning a little again.
Orwynne's eyebrows were lifting toward me slowly.
"Is that word in the wrong tongue?" I asked her.
"No." She said, with a shake of her head. "The word for dragon is the same, because it comes from only one place. What are you asking about dragons?"
"Where will I find them?"
"Wherever there is a dragon rider." Orwynne said, carefully. "The Targaryen dragons are the only ones that survived the Doom of Valyria."
"Targaryen." I repeated back to her. "A place or a people?"
Orwynne's narrowed eyes on me were full of confusion. "It is the family that rules over the Seven Kingdoms."
Seven kingdoms. An emperor.
"I take it that it was seven separate kingdoms, conquered and united by one force, this family?" I asked.
"...essentially." Orwynne replied with a nod.
Their Tiber Septim or nearest equivalent.
"All dragons are there?" I asked her.
"Every dragon that anyone knows about, at least." She replied. "What is your interest in the dragons? No matter your blood or connection to Old Valyria, the Targaryens will not allow you to claim or ride one. No one but them even can. There's magic in their blood, and the dragons would just eat anyone else who tried, anyways."
I scoffed gently. The wagon continued to gently sway and bump along as the horse pulled us further from Volantis in the pre-dawn.
"I have no intent to ask them to." I said, with a shake of my head. "Do they keep slaves in the Seven Kingdoms?"
"No." Orwynne said, with a slow shake of her head. "Though the trappings of duty might often be perceived that way."
"Duty is a heavy hand." I said, with an understanding nod. "Where are the dragons most common?"
"Well… you'd be most likely to see one at least from a distance in King's Landing, I suppose." She said, after a long pause. "That's the city of the throne. The only other place you'd likely see them is Dragonstone."
"What is Dragonstone?" I asked.
"It's the name of an island." Orwynne explained, tightening her hold around the pouch of coins in her lap. "The ancestral home of the Targaryens before the conquering of the Seven Kingdoms."
I drew in a breath through my nose, and exhaled.
"Well." I said, after a pause. "That settles it."
"What?" She asked.
"We travel for the Seven Kingdoms." I said, looking to Sorzo. "Make whatever adjustments you must."
"This wagon is not a boat." Sorzo said, chuckling.
"Then we will need a boat." I told him, with a grin.
"That is a very long, dangerous journey just to lay eyes on a dragon." Orwynne spoke carefully.
"Mmm. Which means that the one I took these from-" I reached up and tapped the horns of my helm. "-traveled very far to say hello to me. And while I returned the favor, I am keen to introduce myself to those who appear to have some magic intertwined with my kin."
"What?" Orwynne asked, eyes widening slightly.
Sorzo turned fully in his seat to look at me.
I looked between them.
"I thought I made myself clear." I said, more generally. "But once more, I'll say it."
"I am Ysmir," My name boomed through the hills when I spoke it, without my input. "Dragon of the North. The Stormcrown rests upon my brow, and great warriors pray to me for my blessing, that they may know might unfettered."
"Stormcrown…?" Orwynne frowned slightly, and tilted back a little, looking at me. She glanced up at the top of my helm. She snorted faintly and crossed her legs.
I could tell I'd already succeeded in making her at least more comfortable. Her body language had changed.
"I see no crown." She muttered, eyeing me across the slow moving wagon.
"Pray you never do." I said, with a faint chuckle.
I cast my attention to the soft green plains ahead of us.
Post Notes:
Hopefully there won't be a load of mistakes in here, but if I catch any, I'll go back and give them a quick fix. This was always the plan for the conclusion of the "caravan" arc. Yes, for those of you who are wondering, in lore dragons can indeed eat the souls of things which are not only dragons. In fact, one of the things dragonborn are most famous for (consuming the souls of dragons) is actually not relative to being "the dragonborn", it's just related to being a dragon. Which dragonborn are. The irony. Also, for the record, struggling to get QQ to let me intentionally line up translations beneath the dragon tone on a blank line other than spaces, which is how it looks clean in the document elsewhere, and it just sits at the start of the line to the left over here. Pain. There's probably a way to do it but I don't understand it well enough. Oh well.
Huge thanks to everyone who supports me over on the Patreon, links below. We're coming up on a month since it was "up". Extra love for TAtro, Pope Yoda, Gear and Cog, Ceiferos, and Blair, for giving that bit more. Everyone's helped me out a lot since starting this. Here's to hoping we can keep having fun for some time yet.
If you all have any questions or you're not understanding something that isn't related to like, the "ongoing mystery" aspects of the story, feel free to ask. Otherwise, leave a few nice words. It's something you can do to keep your writers writing, and your authors authoring or whatever.