Chapter 78: The City Takes Sides
Braavos greeted Artos ,The salt wind off the water, the narrow canals, the layered sounds of trade and argument and footsteps over wet stone — all of it was the same at first glance. But Artos had lived long enough to know that cities never stayed still.They only learned how to hide their shifts behind familiar streets. And Braavos, more than most, knew how to smile while sharpening a blade.
The journey back had done nothing to ease the weight in him. If anything, it had only made the city feel stranger, because every time he rests he thoughts back to North , to his son.
Seraphine was not with him now.
That absence had its own shape.
She had gone home.
But somewhere beneath the practical matters of arrival, one thought kept pressing at the edges of his mind: Seraphine had returned to Lord Valen's house to face what had been left behind.
And that could not be clean.
He dismounted with the others and turned at once toward the waiting bustle of the city. There were already men watching. Braavos always watched. It was one of the things Artos had learned to respect about it and distrust in equal measure.
Ronan was waiting not far from the dockside route, with that same look he always wore when he had both bad news and the patience to deliver it badly. His expression changed when he saw Artos, though only slightly.
"You look disappointed to be back," Ronan said.
Artos gave him a flat look. " Aye, the city doesn't love a men like me too much."
Ronan grunted once. "That depends on what you think happened while you were gone."
"Tell me." Artos dreaded the politics that is about to come.
They moved out of the crowd and into a narrower lane where the noise of the harbor softened behind them. Ronan did not waste time once they were alone as the situation is quite dire.
"The Sythans moved faster than most people expected," he said. " Rumours and stories. You know how the cities work, but that wasn't even the worst for the Valens.
Thier priced merchants have been taken. Some killed. Enough fear spread to make the rest careful and halter thier support for the Valens."
Artos's jaw tightened.
Ronan kept going. "The Valens have lost more than money. They've lost confidence of Merchant and traders That matters the most in Braavos. If merchants think a house cannot protect its own people, they start looking elsewhere."
"Who started the killings?" Artos asked.
Ronan's mouth hardened. "No one knows. Some suspected even the faceless one are involved but that seems just rumours."
Artos looked away for a moment, "And Valen?"
"Trying to hold what's left," Ronan said.
"Angry. Frustrated. Doing what he can to keep the damage from becoming public ruin."
Artos gave a short exhale through his nose.
Artos nodded once. That he understood very well. As he is hired way too many times for a tasks like this for both protection and ruins. Thats why they are so popular, They dared to take any enemy and party .
In Lord Valen's house, the air was colder than the stone should have allowed.
Seraphine stood before her father with her hands still at her sides and her face set in the sort of controlled stillness that came only after shame had already burned its first way through. Lord Valen did not sit. He paced.
Valen stopped pacing and turned toward her. "Do you understand what your absence did?"
Seraphine did not answer at once
He went on, voice roughening. "The city is talking, Merchants are talking,Houses are talking. Men who never had the courage to say your name out loud are suddenly brave enough to use it as an example. And all of it becomes about us. About our control. About our weakness."
Her jaw tightened. "I know."
"No," Valen said, his frustration sharpening. "You know parts of it. You do not know the cost. A house is not held together by blood alone. It is held together by the appearance of order. You gave them disorder. A weakness they could exploit. They are enemies outside we could handle but by doing this, you have given power to enemies inside the family as well."
Seraphine's eyes flashed then, though her voice remained steady. "I did not mean to become a weapon."
"Yet you did," he snapped.
Silence followed that.
When he spoke again, his anger had cooled into something more dangerous. "The Sythans have made use of what you left behind. They have taken merchants. Some are dead. Others have been turned. Every one of them chips at our standing."
She breathed in slowly, then said, "What do you want from me?"
Valen stared at her as if the question itself had exhausted him.
"What I want," he said at last, "is for this house to stop bleeding from places it should never have been cut."
Seraphine's face tightened.
He looked at her for a long moment before turning away, No matter what she still is his blood. "Sit down," he said at last, his voice lower now. "We will speak of what can still be salvaged."
Seraphine sat.
By the time Artos reached the meeting point with Ronan and the others, the city already seemed to have another heartbeat beneath its usual one.
The Sythans had done more than injure a few rivals. They had altered the way people stood in the streets.
That was how power worked in Braavos.
Artos listened while Ronan laid it out in fuller detail.
"They've been working the merchants," Ronan said. "Those tied to the Valens are being pressured, bought, threatened, or simply removed. Some were pulled off the board. Some disappeared entirely."
"Convenient," Artos muttered.
Ronan gave him a look. "Convenient is what weak men call deliberate." Ronan in a serious tone , not in a mood for Artos japes.
Artos did not argue.
Artos let that sit for a moment. "And the Sealord?"
"The Sealord is watching," Ronan said. "For now."
That answer drew a low breath from Artos. Not surprise. Just the recognition of another layer in the game. In Braavos, no one rose without being seen. And no one bled without someone deciding whether the bleeding was useful.
Ronan studied him. "You're taking this hard."
Artos looked at him for a moment before answering. "It concerns me you know. I need to do what I can for them. So keep looking and i don't need to tell you how we work our things then"
"That it is. But it is Bravos. That worries me the most."
"Then we are past the stage of pretending otherwise."
Ronan's mouth twitched once, though there was no humor in it. "That we are too."
Artos pushed a hand through his hair and exhaled slowly. The Valens had been wounded. Seraphine had returned to face the cost. The Sythans had moved from plotting to killing. And Braavos, with its beautiful façades and careful manners, had begun to reveal the teeth beneath.
He did not like that feeling.
Later that night, when the city had settled into its other kind of noise, Artos stood alone near a window and looked out over the water.
Artos closed his eyes briefly.
He could still hear the sea against the docks. Still hear Ronan's voice. Still picture the look on Lord Valen's face through Seraphine's silence. And beneath all of it, there was the nagging awareness that this was not the end of the matter.
It was only the first real payment.
Below him, the city moved on, untouched in appearance and changed in every meaningful way.
Artos opened his eyes and kept watching.
Braavos had chosen its course.
Now it would have to live with what came next. Now it is his turn to take a payment from Bravos.
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