The four guards did not immediately make a move; instead, they slowly but surely completed a full encirclement at the mouth of the alley, so that they could launch a simultaneous attack to decrease the chance of any injuries.
'It won't be long now,'
Jory could feel it in the way the nearest one shifted his weight, the way the fat merchant behind them stood there with an arrogant smile on his face, his small eyes focused on the faces of the scared girls behind him.
"Listen to me," Jory whispered in a quiet voice, without turning his head, "All three of you. The moment the steel rings, you run through the right, and I will make space for you. Go straight for Lord Stark, and the Merchant Sam, they should be able to protect—"
"NO!" Arya hissed back with a scared but determined expression on her face, "I-I will help, I can at least take on one of them—"
"Absolutely not." Jory said through gritted teeth, "Don't argue. We do not have time." he continued, knowing his charge well enough, he didn't need to look back to know the indignant expression on her face, "Lady Sansa, I will be counting on you to lead the way for them. Please."
"I-Yes, I will," Sansa replied with a nod, unable to hide the tremor in her voice. With her right hand, she grabbed Daenerys' hand, who had gone completely still beside her, and placed her left on Arya's shoulder, who thankfully knew well not to resist at this moment.
The slave who had been shivering against the wall behind them was also smart enough to grab the end of her clothes as if ready to follow them.
And at this moment, when the tension was at its peak, and the guards had simultaneously taken a step forward, an anxious shout cracked across the alley, startling them all, and making them stop in their steps.
"Stop!"
The man who came, shouldering his way through the crowd, was red-faced and breathing hard with a bright, colourful bird sitting on his shoulder.
And unlike the local Shopkeeper and his guards, who looked frustrated and confused at the interruption, the Westerosi party all had relieved looks on their faces after seeing the man's face, acting as if their lives had been saved.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Merchant Sam rushed through his words as he hurriedly approached with both of his hands raised, giving the universal signal that he did not want to be stabbed, "There has to be a misunderstanding here. A misunderstanding! Do you not know who they are?!"
"Get away, Old man, there is no misunderstanding here," The shopkeeper replied in a disdainful voice, uncaring of who this man was, as no matter who these people were or which family they belonged to, even if they were the relatives of a king, it did not matter much here in Volantis, as no power in the world can make them lower their heads, "This is none of your business, so if you don't want to lose your—"
"Rhiso! Wait!" The bakery owner, who had been standing by silently watching so far, suddenly interrupted and rushed forward, and hastily whispered something in the shopkeeper named Rhiso's ear, which finally brought a change in his expression.
Merchant Sam, seeing the look of hesitation on the shopkeeper's face, did not look surprised at all as he knew how recognisable his face was, so using this brief moment, he fearlessly rushed through the encirclement of the guards, who, after a single look at their master, realised that the situation had changed and did not dare to halt him.
"What exactly happened here?" Merchant Sam asked in a low voice, looking a little anxious.
Tweety vague gestures and frantic pulling of his collar towards this commotion had only told him that something had gone wrong, but what exactly the matter was, he still did not know, and he had to be aware of the full details to find a good solution.
"It is like this..." Jory said as he lowered his sword a little but kept it ready, and began explaining the sequence of events in a quick report, "...and then that fat man sneered and sent his guards after us," he said with disgust in his voice, knowing well enough the real reason behind this assault.
"Is that really all?" Merchant Sam said in a relieved voice, as Jory nodded his head, "Then that is no trouble at all." He was certain that as long as no major loss of personnel or goods had occurred here, he could smoothly resolve the situation at hand.
Giving a comforting nod to the girls, Merchant Sam turned around and began walking towards the shopkeeper. His eyes moved without seeming to, to the storefront behind the fat Shopkeeper, to the banners hanging above its doorway.
And seeing the deep blue cloth, stitched with a pair of golden scales, a symbol that he was very familiar with, he became even more assured of his chances at resolving this peacefully.
"Now, listen here, I don't care who you are, or who your master is," The shopkeeper named Rhiso began fiercely, but anyone looking closely would notice that he was looking a lot more cautious now, and lost much of his aggressiveness, "This girl here was the one—"
"Do you happen to be familiar with Master Qhoro?" Merchant Sam interrupted with a smile on his face as he calmly approached the shopkeeper, "You belong to the same party, so you must, right?"
Marelo Qhoro, the man whose name he just spoke of, was a senior elder of Golden scales, and the banner hanging in front of this man's shop signified that he was a junior member of the same organisation.
Volantis was one of the oldest free cities in Essos, and was deeply conservative, governed simultaneously by three leaders called Triarchs, always elected from the Old blood families, who could prove unbroken descent from Old Valyria.
The triarchs usually belong to one of two political parties: the tigers and the elephants.
The elephants are the party of the merchants and moneylenders, while the tigers are the old aristocracy and warriors.
The elephants advocate trade, and the tigers advocate conquest.
And since the rise of the elephants at the end of the Century of Blood, no more than one tiger has been named triarch at a time, the other two always being elephants.
Master Qhoro, who belonged to one of the founding families in the elephant faction, was a man of enormous wealth, well known for being utterly unforgiving to members of his consortium who cause disruptions to profitable trade relationships.
And the Northern Wolf Company has been a reliable and lucrative partner of his for two years now.
Qhoro dearly valued this relationship precisely because their company's ships reach ports that Volantene galleys could never, and would definitely not mind him invoking his name in this minor matter.
And hearing that one of his junior consortium members roughed up their people on a Volantis street would surely embarrass him... and Marelo Qhoro was a man who did not like to be embarrassed.
This fact, the shopkeeper named Rhiso knew very well, which was why he had fallen silent the moment the man's name had been uttered out in the open street, because no matter how much he calculated it in his mind, he knew that he did not have much of a room here.
Merchant Sam immediately jumped on this chance and approached the man for a short but intense conversation, the contents of which remained known only to the two of them, but the result of which was a reluctant nod from the Shopkeeper.
Rhiso looked at the alert guard standing in front of the three girls, who had not moved, nor lowered his sword, and finally made a small, irritable gesture with his two fingers.
The guards responded immediately and stepped back to come stand beside him.
"Take them," he said, turning away from him, his voice sour and unhappy, "But you would be better off teaching your girl some manners. After all, not everyone in this city is as generous as I am," he scoffed as he began walking away, "And keep the thief if you like her so much," he said glaring at the slave girl who kept herself hidden behind them before leaving the alley.
Then he was gone, back into the shadow of his shop, and the guards filed in after him without a backwards glance.
The crowd, finding nothing left to watch, slowly began to drift away.
Jory let out a breath, and finally, slowly, sheathed his sword.
"Let's go back to the others," Merchant Sam said, and all of them quietly nodded their heads as they moved out of the alley, back into the streets at a hurried pace.
The slave girl followed behind them at the very edge of the group, as if not yet certain what to do and if she was a part of them...
...
"It was wise for you to let them go, friend," said the owner of the bakery about half an hour later, as his neighbouring shopkeeper joined him at the back of his shop to share a glass of wine with him, while sitting there with a frown on his face, "Those people from the Northern Wolf Company are not easy to deal with."
"It wasn't like I was given much of a choice... after he took the name of Master Qhoro," he snorted with an unhappy curl of his lips.
"Well, I think it was better that it was handled like this, without too much of a loss," The baker said with a shake of his head. "After all, we have both heard what happened to all those who went after them," he said with a meaningful look on his face, and Rhiso merely grunted and overturned the glass into his mouth.
He knew exactly what the baker was talking about here; in fact, most of the people who were running a business would be aware of this.
After all, the rise of this few-year-old shipping company was just too fast and stable, and they almost had something of a monopoly on most of the trade that passes through the Stepstones.
So it wasn't very surprising that some powerful people were greedy and decided that it was too lucrative a business to leave to some snot-nosed brat from a backward place in Westeros, and that it was better if it belonged to them.
And that's where things went, as it turned out that the boy was not as easy a target as he looked from outside, and no matter who it was that went after him, whether they were powerful merchants with the gold of Old Nobles behind them, or a Naval powerhouse capable of commanding a dozen ships, the result was always a failure.
Coercion, threatening and bribing sailors, no method seemed to work against him, and what was worse was that everyone who went after him ended up either bankrupt with their fortune disappearing overnight because of various incidents which looked completely unrelated from the outside.
Such as their cargo spoiling for no reason, their ships getting wrecked while staying idle in port, or simply having all their gold stolen in a single day.
No one would know how he did it, or if it was even him behind it; there was no way to be sure, but one thing they knew for sure was that everyone who went after that man's wealth suffered dearly for it.
All this left a deep-seated fear in the local nobility about the Northern wolf that they were not to be provoked... but no amount of fear has ever stopped merchants from making money.
So, seeing as there was little chance for them to make easy money by forcing the issue, the true leaders, who always stayed in the shadows and never took impulsive actions before examining situations closely, finally decided that the Westerosi man was a long-term player and agreed to begin a cooperative trade deal with him as partners to have their goods at all the ports he had access to, and one of those partners happened to be Master Qhoro, who had a lot of his gold invested with him.
It was at that moment that one of Rhiso's servants entered the shop and came to his side to whisper something in his ear, and the moment he heard the news, his eyes lit up with a delighted look on his face, "Go go, make sure to send a few to keep an eye on them."
The baker looked at the leaving servant with a suspicious look on his face and quietly asked, "What was that?"
"I was suspicious of something, so I sent my men to find out about them," he said as a satisfied expression appeared on his face, "And sure enough, my hunch was right, the Northern Wolf Company's fleet is not in fact in Volantis at the moment, instead these people arrived here with just four ships, three are thin longships, and one a large trade galleon."
"And?" The baker asked with a confused expression, unable to understand why his friend looked so excited with this piece of information.
"Don't you realise, my friend, that no matter how smug they act, these foreigners have no real power with them to protect themselves out there this time... and without the might of their fleet, they are simply like all the other idiot nobles out there trying to travel to all the free cities to pass their boredom,"
"Wait! You are not thinking of—" The baker whispered as his eyes widened in shock, "You must not, my friend. You really mustn't. Do you not know what happened to—"
"I know, I know," Rhiso said with a roll of his eyes, "No need to remind me again about the dangers of offending that Jon Snow fellow," he said while dismissively waving his hand, "But he is not here at the moment, is he?"
'And no matter how powerful he is, and how dangerous the men under him are, it would not matter because by the time he gets the news...' he mused with a look of contemplation on his face, 'He knew it was dangerous. Perhaps suicidal. Yet the rewards...'
And if he guessed right the relationship between those little girls and that Westerosi fellow, then he may just have a way to deal with him permanently.
Finally, he seems to have made a decision as a look of determination appeared on his face.
...