Chapter 215: Everyone's an Informant
"You can flesh out the full promotion criteria later — no rush," Ian added to Celia's already considerable workload with the ease of a man who wasn't the one doing the work. "For now we'll open some temporary fast-track channels to deal with the immediate situation."
"To sort out the Worm River slaves?" Celia read ahead of him without difficulty.
"First: the initial thousand slaves who register with Rol get bumped directly to Fourth Order." Ian laid out the first point. Astapor's baseline slave rations were already barely enough to sustain a working body — even raising them by a third wasn't going to meaningfully strain his resources. "Second: any slave who identifies and reports another slave passing themselves off as a free citizen gets an immediate Fourth Order promotion. Report three or more and they get the foreman position on top of it, with the reported slaves assigned to their team."
He continued without pausing.
"Any slave who reports a thief and leads us to the stolen goods gets Fourth Order on confirmed information. If the recovered goods are significant in value, they jump to Third Order — and the reported thief goes under their jurisdiction, with ten percent of the recovered goods kept as the informant's personal property."
"Any slave who reports the location of a runaway slave gets Fourth Order on confirmed information. Lead us to five or more runaways and they earn Third Order, with those captured runaways assigned to their team."
"Any slave who personally assists the Unsullied in running down runaways: capture one and earn Fourth Order, capture three or more and earn Third Order. The captured slaves go under them."
"The ten slaves who contribute most to the recovery operation overall get promoted to Second Order. Each one receives a house and three Third Order slaves as subordinates."
He leaned back. "Beyond that — have Lord Fehmar send word to Yunkai and request they post forces along the border to intercept slaves who've crossed over to their side. We'll pay one-third of each slave's assessed value as a recovery fee."
Slave cities helping each other recapture runaways was established tradition throughout the Bay. Ian had no real concern about Yunkai cheating on the arrangement. If anything, it would be useful if they did — that would give him a reasonable basis for accepting Yunkai's own runaways when the time came.
And Yunkai would have runaways soon enough. Their lords would understand why once things progressed a little further.
"That's the framework. If you think of anything I've missed, bring it to me." Ian looked at Celia.
She took a moment before responding. "This is going to create enormous friction within the slave population. Particularly the rule that reported slaves are assigned to work under the person who reported them."
"That's the point. It prevents them from organizing into factions."
"It could slow production."
"Then set firm output targets. Any team that misses targets loses its members' promotion eligibility permanently — and make sure every slave understands what that means. If the foreman and the whole team lose their eligibility, they're working under whoever betrayed them for the rest of their lives. And a foreman who's lost his own advancement path has no reason to go easy on anyone beneath him." Ian paused. "I don't need to draw that picture in detail."
"Seven hells," Celia said under her breath.
"Save it. We're still on the work portion of this conversation."
"…"
"One more thing for when you're building out the full promotion system," Ian continued. "Structure it so that competition between slave labor teams is fierce, but competition within each team stays relatively contained. You want the relationships between Second and Third Order slaves across different teams to be adversarial, while the Fifth Order slaves within any given team maintain enough internal cohesion to actually function. That balance serves production. Keep it in mind."
Celia looked up from her notes. "I have a question. Won't the reporting mechanism create an incentive for slaves to falsely accuse free citizens of being slaves in order to earn a promotion? Or worse — accuse free citizens of being thieves, and claim their property as stolen goods?"
"Let me ask you something first. Where did most of the slaves in Slaver's Bay come from originally?"
"What do you mean?"
"Before they were slaves. What were they?"
Celia caught his meaning before he finished. "Free people."
"Free people from Lys, from the Dothraki Sea, from the Summer Islands, from the coast of the Jade Sea," Ian confirmed. "So tell me — why exactly can't the free people of the Worm River be enslaved?"
"You're going to let it happen."
"If slaves make false reports, is that my doing? I didn't instruct anyone to file false accusations." He shrugged. "If someone reports it, we arrest them. What happens after that is between the accuser and the process."
"If that becomes known, everyone will do it. There won't be a free person left on the east bank."
"What exactly does Slaver's Bay need free smallholders on the Worm River for? Without them in the way, the entire river basin falls under our direct administration."
"The Astapori nobility will object."
"Then you'll manage their objections." He could see that was too vague, so he added, "If a lord submits a specific claim — particular slaves or particular free persons they want protected, with some basis for the claim — and it isn't completely unreasonable, accommodate them and phrase it generously when you respond."
"And the unreasonable demands?"
"Give me the list of whoever makes those. I'll demonstrate personally what an unreasonable demand looks like." His voice stayed even but his eyes didn't. "Tell the Astapori lords I'll compensate them through other channels. The important thing is that consolidating control of the Worm River basin requires one administrative framework, not a patchwork of exemptions. That means one category of people subject to that framework."
He leaned forward slightly. "There's a second reason. If the slave ranks expand to include tens of thousands of newly enslaved former free citizens, they become natural enemies with the veteran slaves. Each group will watch the other constantly. They'll compete for advancement, they'll look for openings to report on each other, and the cultural divide between them will keep them from ever building the kind of trust that solidarity requires."
"Layer that on top of everything else — the inter-team competition, the reporting incentives, the assignment of reported slaves to their informants — and you have a population where everyone is watching everyone else. Where anyone considering organizing toward something else has to calculate that every person around them is a potential informant." Ian's tone was matter-of-fact. "Even the most gifted outside agitator couldn't light a fire in that environment. There's nothing to light."
Celia stared at him for a moment. She'd almost forgotten, somewhere in the day-to-day of managing Ian's operations, that this wasn't a straightforward campaign. There were other players out there — people with the same kind of outside knowledge Ian had, the same capacity for unconventional thinking, and their own agendas entirely. The vigilance required to account for that could never be relaxed.
She ran the scenario forward in her head. Some player arriving in Astapor with grand ideas about freedom and rebellion, looking to turn the slave population into a weapon. On one side: fight the Unsullied, die or succeed. On the other side: report the agitator, earn a promotion, get a house and three subordinates.
The math wasn't complicated.
"One more thing," Ian said, cutting into her thoughts. "When you're finalizing the promotion system — add a military service track. Make it the fastest advancement path available. My new forces and the Ghiscari legion will both draw from the slave population during the soldier selection phase."
It had come to him just now as a logical extension. Purchasing soldiers from other cities or slave traders — the original plan — would mean bringing in men who hadn't been through the Worm River system, hadn't internalized the advancement structure, and hadn't yet fully accepted their situation. Newly enslaved people were unpredictable in ways that veteran slaves weren't.
The free citizens that Rol and Polon were about to sweep up along the Worm River would need seasoning before they were useful. Two years working within the slave system — genuinely integrating into the advancement structure, earning their own promotions, building something to protect — and then they'd be worth recruiting. Willing, even.
Time could do what force alone couldn't.
(End of Chapter)
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