278 AC Essos, Astapor
POV Alexander
It had finally been a year. A year since I was taken, a year since I was sold by my own mother. Now I was in Astapor being trained to be one of the unsullied . Unlike the children who are here from a young age I was taken here at 7 and I was about to have my manhood cut and though to be honest I couldn't care less. All I wanted to do was to see my father again. I still remember the look on his face when he died. It wasn't a face of horror though I'm sure he felt it. It was a smile… the last thing I saw of my father was a smile I guess that was the gods only mercy.
My parents weren't rich. We were far from it but we still lived a good life on the outskirts of the great cities. And one day they came. At first I thought it was an earthquake. Gods know we had a lot of those but then we heard horses and then soon screams. My father hid me in the closet and when they came into our home my father fought back. He hid behind the door and when they opened it he appeared behind them and snapped one's neck and then threw one of the Dothraki's arakh at another's head.
He took down more but eventually he was overwhelmed and pinned to the ground. And next they took my mother and right in front of my father they defiled her. They all took turns, I wanted to scream, I wanted to jump out and help my mother but my father just looked at me in tears and his eyes. And then when they were finished they cut his head off and the last thing my father did was smile at me. After that my mother saw me and screamed and said it was my fault and the Dothraki found me and they sold me and now I am here.
And today was to be the day I was to be cut. You boy come here, said a fat man with cheesy yellow teeth. I stepped forward and he looked me up and down. Oh you're a pretty one aren't you black hair with a streak on white hair and blue eyes.. White patch shall be your new name now step forward
The fat man's fingers were wet with grease when they took Alexander's chin and turned his face toward the light.
The yard of Astapor stank of old blood baked into brick. Even after a year, he had not grown used to that smell. It lived in the air like a ghost. Boys stood in rows behind him, bare feet in the red dust, eyes empty or burning or already gone. He did not look back at them. He had learned not to look back.
"White patch," the man said again, savoring the name as if it were sweet. His breath was sour. "A lucky mark. The Good Masters will like you. A fine soldier. A fine—" He chuckled to himself. "—sacrifice."
Hands closed around Alexander's arms. Not cruelly. Not kindly either. Just hands doing what they had been taught to do. He was led across the yard, past the training posts slick with sweat, past the racks of spears aligned as neatly as graves. Each step felt strangely light. He had imagined this day a thousand times in the dark. In most of those imaginings he had screamed, or fought, or begged the gods to wake him.
Now there was only a hollow calm.
The cutting room was a low stone chamber, cool compared to the sun outside. A single oil lamp burned on a hook, its flame trembling. Shadows crawled along the walls. A table stood in the center, stained darker than the rest of the stone. The smell here was sharper. Vinegar. Herbs. Iron.
The fat man waddled in after them, wiping his hands on a cloth. Two other men waited by the table, faces hidden behind plain cloth masks. Their eyes slid over Alexander without interest. He was a task. A number.
"Lay him down," the fat man ordered.
Alexander climbed onto the table without being told. The stone kissed his back with a chill that ran through his bones. He fixed his gaze on the ceiling. The stone above was cracked in a thin line that split and forked like a river on a map. He traced it with his eyes, pretending he was somewhere else. Somewhere with open sky.
The fat man hummed as he worked. He selected tools from a tray with loving care, metal whispering against metal. He spoke while he worked, as if to soothe a skittish horse.
"You will not die," he said. "Most do not. And if you do… well." A shrug. "The city always needs more boys."
Alexander wondered if his father would have laughed at that. His father had laughed at everything. Even the little things. Even the bad harvests. Even the day the roof leaked and they all had to sleep in one corner of the house like a pile of puppies. He tried to remember the sound of that laugh and found it slipping away from him like water through fingers.
A hand pressed his shoulder. Another gripped his wrist. He did not fight. Fighting would change nothing. He felt the air shift as the fat man leaned close.
"Look at me," the man said.
Alexander turned his head. The man's eyes were small and bright with anticipation. A butcher eager for the cut.
There was a soft sound behind them.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a small, wet cough.
The fat man frowned. "What—"
A thin blade bloomed from his throat.
For a heartbeat, nobody moved. The blade was so slender it looked like a silver needle, glistening red. The fat man's mouth opened and closed. A bubbling noise escaped him. His tools clattered from his hands, ringing against the stone.
The men holding Alexander froze. Their grip slackened.
The blade vanished. The fat man swayed. A figure stood behind him, so close it was as if he had grown from the man's shadow. Plain clothes. Dust-colored. A face so unremarkable it slid from the eye the moment one tried to hold it. The assassin caught the fat man gently as he fell, lowering him to the floor with almost tender care.
The lamp flame fluttered.
One of the masked men found his voice and shouted. It died in his throat as the stranger moved. There was no flourish, no wasted motion. A step, a turn, a whisper of steel. The shout ended in a gurgle. The second man tried to run. He made it two steps before his legs folded beneath him.
Silence returned to the chamber.
Alexander could hear his own breathing, fast and shallow. The stranger wiped his blade on the dead man's robe and looked at him. Their eyes met.
They were brown. Ordinary. Calm as still water.
The man tilted his head, studying Alexander as if he were a puzzle. Then he stepped closer. Alexander tensed, expecting pain, expecting the end of the calm. Instead, the man cut the ropes binding his wrists. Alexander hadn't even realized they'd tied him.
"You should not be here," the man said quietly.
His voice was soft. Not kind. Not cruel. Simply certain.
Alexander slid off the table, legs shaking. The stone floor was sticky beneath his feet. He stared at the bodies, at the spreading dark that crept along the cracks between the stones.
"I… I live here," he whispered. The words sounded foolish the moment they left him.
The man's gaze flicked to the door, then back to him. Shouts echoed faintly from the yard outside. Distant. Confused.
"No one lives here," the stranger replied.
He pressed something into Alexander's palm. A small coin, cold and heavy. It bore a face Alexander did not recognize, worn smooth by many hands.
"If you wish to live," the man said, "remember that you were never meant for chains."
Then he turned away.
The door opened. For an instant the bright Astapori sun spilled into the chamber, turning the stranger into a silhouette. Then he was gone, swallowed by the noise outside. Steel clashed. Men screamed. The city roared on, indifferent.
Alexander stood alone among the dead.
The coin lay in his hand like a promise or a curse. He closed his fingers around it and felt, for the first time in a year, something stir in his chest that was not grief or rage or emptiness.
A thin, fragile thread of hope.
___________________________________________________________________________
I stood there for what felt like an eternity. I thought the rest of my life would not be my own to decide, but I was given a chance at freedom so why do I hesitate. I looked down at the coin in my hand and looked closer. My father taught me how to read and I could scarcely make out the writing on the coin. Valar morghulis it said, which meant all men must die. I heard that somewhere, I think, it was while I was huddled up with some of the children taken just like me. One of them spoke of the faceless men he said were the killers sent by the faceless god. They lived in the house of black and white and lived by those words valar morghulis. And the boy kept saying that over and over again.
I spoke the words valar morghulis and with that I took a step which then turned into a full on sprint I had to get out of there I had to leave Astapor. And so I ran I ran so hard that I thought my legs my truly fall off until I found an ally way no one was there the ground was not rock or stone it was mud and it was there I slept in the mud which reminded me of my fathers embraced… truly a blessing from the gods was mud