92 AC. Astapor
Corlys and Daeron stood on the deck of the Sea Snake, watching the city their ship was slowly approaching. Corlys had been here once before, and Astapor, with its red brick walls, looked to him just as grim as he remembered it from that last visit. One visit had been enough for him to fully grasp the full monstrousness of the slave trade that had flourished in this city for centuries.
The brothers had left Driftmark a month ago. Corlys had brought a hundred warships with him, so there would be something to carry the army he meant to bring back from Astapor. Besides that, he had given Veylor a separate order - a week after their departure, to send after them another three hundred trading vessels, which would be needed to transport more than just the soldiers themselves.
At first Corlys had thought to bring both brothers on this voyage, but at the last moment he had changed his mind and decided to leave Veylor at High Tide - to watch over the house and safeguard the family's interests while he was away. Veylor had taken some offense at the time, remarking that Corlys always chose to bring Daeron along and left him behind to handle matters at home. Corlys had only laughed it off in response, saying it meant exactly the opposite - that it was Veylor he trusted with the defense of the family more than anyone else, since leaving the house unwatched at such a time would have been a far greater risk than setting out with both brothers at once.
Daeron, studying the approaching city walls, grimaced.
"The architecture here is thoroughly unimpressive," he remarked, shaking his head. "No elegance, not even a hint of taste - nothing but bare brick walls and the odd pyramid of some master or other poking up above the rest of the buildings."
"I doubt the city itself will impress you any more than its walls do," Corlys answered, not taking his eyes off the harbor. "After my first visit here, I never wanted to return to this nest of slavers, and believe me, I had good reason for that."
Daeron looked at his brother a little more closely, catching an unfamiliar heaviness in his voice.
"You've never really told me what exactly you saw here that time," he noted. "Only that you didn't like it, and that you didn't want to come back."
"You'll see for yourself," Corlys answered shortly. "Words wouldn't do it justice, and there's no point souring your mood ahead of time. Better to keep a clear head until we've gone ashore."
Daeron did not press further, though his curiosity only grew because of it. He turned his gaze back to the approaching city, noting how slaves on the docks scurried between the ships, hauling heavy bundles under the watch of overseers with whips at their belts.
"I hope we won't be delayed here any longer than necessary," he said after a short silence. "The sooner we finish the deal and head back to the Stepstones, the better. Veylor is probably already worn thin handling all the preparations on his own."
"We'll try to manage as quickly as we can," Corlys agreed. "But this is not a matter to be rushed."
When they entered the port, they were met by the Good Masters, accompanied by a company of Unsullied drawn up in even ranks along the docks. It was plain from the faces of those greeting them that the sight of a hundred warships at the city's very doorstep had unsettled them considerably. Anticipating this, Corlys had given orders that only three ships would enter the port itself - the rest of the fleet would remain waiting at a respectful distance from the shore.
Corlys and his brother went ashore accompanied by Ser Adam, Ser Duncan, the tame panther Ares, and a small company of household guards. Ser Duncan, a man of three-and-twenty, had been picked up off the street by Corlys's people years before and had, over time, become a skilled killer who had carried out no small number of delicate errands for House Velaryon. When the lad had turned twenty, he had begun to shoot up rapidly, and now stood nearly two meters ten centimeters tall. The stealth so essential to an assassin's trade had become all but impossible for him at such a size - try blending into a crowd at that height. Corlys had in the end taken him into his personal guard, pairing him with Ser Adam.
The Velaryons approached the Good Masters who had come to meet them and made their introductions. Corlys spoke in one of the dialects of the Valyrian tongue peculiar to Ghis, with its harsh, guttural notes. Though Corlys was fluent in the dialect, it still came to him with some difficulty - he had too few occasions to use it. He introduced himself and his brother and explained that he had come to the city for the purpose of trade.
One of the Good Masters - a man with characteristic olive skin, an oiled beard twisted into elaborate patterns, and a tokar richly embroidered with lace - stepped forward and inclined his head slightly in greeting.
"Kraznys mo Nakloz, at your service," he introduced himself, with a coldness of manner polished by long years of practice. "Word of House Velaryon's wealth has reached our shores as well, my lord. Might I be so bold as to ask what a house so renowned for its fortune could want with bringing so many warships to our walls at once?"
"As I have already said, I am here to trade," Corlys answered evenly. "And I have come to buy Unsullied. Many Unsullied."
Kraznys mo Nakloz narrowed his eyes, plainly calculating in his head how many warriors so many ships could carry.
"So many Unsullied, and so many ships, is an imposing force even for a man of your means," he observed, not troubling to hide his curiosity. "Why would a foreign lord ever need so great a number of soldiers all at once?"
"That is my own affair," Corlys answered, his expression unchanged. "And it need not concern the Good Masters, so long as you receive your gold in full."
Kraznys mo Nakloz considered this for a moment, then broke into a broad smile.
"Well said, and fair enough," he said with a faint smirk. "By and large, the only thing that concerns us is being paid - the rest truly does not matter. Come, let us go into the city, and I shall show you the goods. I must warn you, however, that the rest of your ships are forbidden from entering the port for reasons of security - such is the rule for all guests of Astapor."
"I understand fully," Corlys answered. "The order has already been given to my men, and not a single ship besides these three will enter the port without your leave."
"A commendable degree of foresight, my lord," Kraznys mo Nakloz said, plainly pleased by such compliance. "It is not often that foreigners show such respect for our customs."
This particular slaver was not, as a rule, given to such courtesy toward foreigners, but the man standing before him now was one whose wealth was known even here, in the very heart of Slaver's Bay - and profit, as it happened, remained the one true concern of every Good Master.
They entered the city, and the first thing that struck the eye was the stark ratio of slaves to the free men who owned them. The difference was plain to see without needing to look twice. The masters walked the streets in the classic garb of free men - tokars, worn by men and women alike. Only freeborn Ghiscari had the right to that cumbersome, unwieldy garment, slaves, and the children of slaves, had been denied that right since time out of mind. The slaves themselves wore filthy rags, and even without the clothing, they could easily have been told apart by their thin, malnourished bodies.
Along the way, as the Westerosi looked upon the scenes unfolding before them with poorly concealed disgust, Kraznys mo Nakloz kept glancing sidelong at Corlys, as though reassessing him.
"I must say, you handle our dialect quite well, my lord," he remarked. "Foreigners rarely trouble themselves to learn it at all, and I am usually obliged to make use of translators when speaking with most of our visiting guests."
"I speak many tongues," Corlys explained. "I am fluent in Valyrian, quite passable in Ghiscari, and the dialect of Astapor is close enough to both that I managed to master it in my time."
"That is commendable," Kraznys mo Nakloz remarked, a note of genuine respect in his voice. "So then, how many Unsullied does Lord Corlys wish to acquire?"
"How many Unsullied does the city presently have to offer, all told?" Corlys answered the question with one of his own.
"At present there are twenty thousand Unsullied in the city who have completed their training and stand ready for sale," Kraznys mo Nakloz answered, "and another ten thousand besides, whose training is not yet finished."
"Then the answer to your question is thirty thousand," Corlys said without hesitation. "That is precisely how many Unsullied I wish to buy, and had you more than that, I would buy the rest as well."
Kraznys mo Nakloz froze for a moment, plainly not having expected such a number.
"Thirty thousand," he repeated slowly, as though tasting the figure. "I have, of course, heard much of the Velaryons' boundless wealth, my lord, but do you carry with you gold enough to make a purchase of such magnitude?"
"Enough," Corlys answered curtly, in no mood to launch into a long explanation of the size of House Velaryon's fortune before a man he could scarcely stand to be in the presence of.
"I have not even named you a price yet," the slaver observed, "and the untrained Unsullied, in truth, are not for sale at all."
"Whatever the price may be, I have gold enough for it," Corlys answered firmly. "And I am prepared to pay for the untrained Unsullied exactly as I would for the trained ones."
"The Unsullied are the pride and honor of Astapor," Kraznys mo Nakloz said, frowning slightly. "An untrained Unsullied, released from our supervision before his time, could do serious harm to the reputation of the whole city, should he prove himself less than his best upon a field of battle."
"I am prepared to pay exactly the same for the untrained as for the fully made warriors," Corlys repeated, unmoved.
At this, Kraznys mo Nakloz brightened considerably.
"For a thousand trained Unsullied, you would owe the equivalent of thirty kilograms of gold," he said briskly. "Since the various cities of Essos each mint their own coin, we are glad to accept payment in the form of pure precious metal as well, without tying it to any one currency."
Corlys quickly reckoned the sum in his head: a thousand Unsullied came to three thousand gold dragons in Westerosi coin, which meant all thirty thousand warriors would come to ninety thousand gold dragons, or nine hundred kilograms of pure gold.
"I will buy all thirty thousand," Corlys said. "The twenty thousand already trained and ready, and the ten thousand whose training is not yet complete. I will pay in gold bars."
At these words, naked greed flashed in Kraznys mo Nakloz's eyes.
"In that case, allow me to show you the goods myself," he said, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction, "and along the way, I shall tell you a little of how the training of the Unsullied is conducted. I assure you, you will find nothing else like it anywhere else in the known world."
They made their way toward the main square, where slaves were usually put up for sale. Along the way, Kraznys mo Nakloz spoke with great enthusiasm about the training of the Unsullied, addressing himself now to Corlys, now to Daeron - though the latter, while he understood the dialect the slaver spoke, could not speak it himself for lack of practice.
"Among them one finds representatives of every people imaginable," he declared, waving his hands about. "Dothraki, Lhazareen, natives of the Free Cities, Qartheen, Summer Islanders, Naathi, at times even Ghiscari themselves. From the whole mass of slaves brought into Astapor, we select boys no older than five, taking for further shaping the strongest, most agile, and most enduring among them. These children are subjected to full castration, deprived at once of both member and stones - and it is for this very reason that our Unsullied are rightly called the purest creatures in all the world."
Hearing this, Corlys and Daeron felt an open wave of revulsion, though both chose not to let it show, continuing to listen with outwardly calm faces.
"The training that follows is exceedingly harsh," Kraznys mo Nakloz went on, unmistakable pride in his voice, "and on average only one boy in three survives it. From dusk until dawn, the future Unsullied learn to wield the traditional arms of Ghiscari infantry - the short sword, the shield, and the throwing spear. As they grow older, they pass through a whole series of grueling trials of physical endurance, coordination, and unquestioning discipline: we make them run all day in full battle gear, climb mountain slopes in the dead of night, walk barefoot across burning coals without uttering a single sound."
He paused, as though savoring the next part of the tale.
"On the day of his gelding, every boy is given a puppy, which he is bound to care for over the course of a full year. When that year is up, the future Unsullied must strangle the very animal he has grown attached to with his own hands. Those six-year-old eunuchs who refuse to carry out this task are killed on the spot, and their bodies fed to the very dogs still living, as a lesson to the other boys. And the final trial, preceding the granting of the crested battle helm and the spear, is the killing of a true child: the future Unsullied is required to seek out, among the slaves sold in the market, a slave mother with a nursing babe, purchase that child from the slaver for a single silver coin, and then kill it in front of its mother's very eyes."
Daeron had known before now that the training of the Unsullied was carried out under brutal conditions, but even he could not have imagined how much worse the reality of it was, nor to what degree this very city had rotted from centuries of believing itself beyond consequence. He fought hard to keep himself from drawing his sword there and then and killing the man recounting the tale of thousands of broken lives with such relish, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Kraznys mo Nakloz, meanwhile, had brought them to the square, where, beneath the blazing midday sun, some hundred Unsullied stood motionless in ranks. Their dark skin glistened with heat and sweat, yet not one of them showed the least sign of weariness or discomfort - only frozen, expressionless faces.
The slaver walked up to one of the warriors and beckoned him closer.
"To make the Unsullied wholly fearless and impervious to pain, they are given a special drug each day, known as 'wine of courage,'" he explained, circling the warrior as though appraising a piece of merchandise. "It is brewed from poisonous substances and ingredients kept under the strictest secrecy. An Unsullied grown accustomed to taking this potion with every meal, in time, loses the capacity to feel physical pain at all. Allow me, I shall show you."
So saying, he took a dagger from one of the slaves and began cutting into the flesh of the warrior standing before him, along the ribs. The Unsullied did not so much as flinch, remaining exactly where he stood, as though he had not noticed the cut at all.
"You see?" said Kraznys mo Nakloz, turning back to his guests with satisfaction, wiping the dagger clean on the tunic of the slave attending him. "It is precisely because of this immunity to pain that an Unsullied will never retreat in battle, and will remain loyal to his master under any circumstances whatsoever. They cannot be bribed, nor lured to another's side - not even with the promise of freedom."
"And what if one of them should take too serious a wound?" Daeron asked, keeping his voice level though open disgust showed in his eyes. "Would the absence of pain not keep him from realizing in time that he is badly hurt?"
"The Unsullied are trained to fight to their last breath," Kraznys mo Nakloz answered proudly, as though speaking of some remarkable achievement rather than yet another testament to the inhumanity of the training the Unsullied were made to endure. "Many press forward even with their bellies laid open, until they drop dead from loss of blood. No ordinary soldier is capable of such a thing, but for an Unsullied it is second nature, for they are trained to it from childhood."
Corlys listened to this answer with a face of stone, taking great care to betray nothing of the fury raging within him. He had long since learned to mask such feelings behind a veneer of polite indifference, but here, looking upon the mutilated flesh of the silent warrior before him, it cost him no small effort to keep his composure.
Corlys listened to all of it with a heavy weight of sorrow upon his heart - sorrow that they should have to live in a world where the lack of strength and power inevitably turned a man into someone else's prey.
"As I have already said, I am prepared to buy every last one of the Unsullied, without exception," he said, turning to the slaver.
"In that case, I must discuss the terms of the sale with the rest of the Good Masters," Kraznys mo Nakloz answered. "The Unsullied do not belong to me alone, but to a good many other respected families of the city as well."
"My time is not unlimited," Corlys said. "If the deal is concluded by tomorrow, I am prepared to add still more to the agreed sum, and pay a full ton of gold in the end."
Kraznys mo Nakloz froze for a moment, plainly calculating in his head just how much gold that difference amounted to compared with the price first agreed, and whether it was even worth consulting the other Good Masters at all, or whether it would be simpler to present the deal to them as already settled.
"A ton of gold is a most generous offer," he said slowly, taking care not to betray the excitement that had seized him. "I daresay the other Good Masters will greet such generosity with all due understanding."
Open greed flared in Kraznys mo Nakloz's eyes at these words.
"I shall certainly discuss it all with the other Good Masters, and send a slave with an answer at the very first opportunity," he assured him. "And in the meantime, perhaps you would care to be our guest at the pyramid? So long a voyage must surely have worn you out, my lord, and we have everything a weary traveler might need to rest."
"I thank you for your hospitality," Corlys declined politely, "but in my travels I am accustomed to resting aboard my own ship. It is an old habit of mine."
Kraznys mo Nakloz inclined his head, accepting the refusal, but his gaze immediately shifted to Ares, pacing calmly at his master's side.
"I confess, I have never before seen so obedient a beast of prey," he said, with unconcealed admiration. "Would you care to trade him for three Unsullied? I assure you, I would pick out the strongest and tallest warriors from the whole lot for you."
Ares, as though catching the meaning of the words, gave a low growl, and only settled once Corlys laid a hand upon his head.
"Ares is not for sale," Corlys answered, irritation plain in his voice. "Not for three Unsullied, nor for a hundred."
With that, they took their leave, and Corlys and his companions returned to the ship. On the way, Ser Adam, who had been silent until then, could hold his tongue no longer and spoke, poorly concealed disgust in his voice.
"Such people are simply loathsome!" he burst out. "I truly cannot understand how anyone could be so utterly without honor."
"In this world, honor is a rare coin, Ser Adam," Corlys answered wearily, glancing back at the docks. "The slavers have been as they are for centuries, and to their great shame, they see nothing whatsoever wrong in it. Though if we are being honest, no small number of the lords of Westeros itself are not so very far removed from these animals - they merely dress it up in finer words and gestures."
Ser Duncan, who had been silent until then, unexpectedly spoke up, though he generally preferred not to insert himself into conversation.
"My lord," he said, hesitating slightly, as though unsure whether it was his place to speak on such a matter at all, "I myself was picked up off the street once, and I was fortunate that it was you who took me in, and not some slaver. Watching those poor souls today, I could not help but think that I might well have ended up in their place myself, had my own fortune fallen out only a little differently."
Corlys looked at his guardsman with unexpected warmth in his eyes.
"That is precisely why I do not intend to look away from this," he answered. "No man, whatever his birth, deserves such a fate. And I promise you - what we have seen here today will not go unanswered."
Back aboard the ship, Corlys retired to his cabin, meaning to rest a little before the day ahead, but sleep would not come. He lay staring up at the wooden ceiling of the cabin, turning over again and again in his mind what he had seen in the square - the gaunt bodies of the slaves, the blank faces of the Unsullied, the self-satisfied smile of Kraznys mo Nakloz, proudly showing off a cut in a living man's flesh as though boasting of a new blade. He thought of how many more such cities lay scattered along the coast of Slaver's Bay, and of how many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of children were at this very moment passing through the same ordeal the thirty thousand warriors he meant to buy had already endured.
Daeron looked in on him toward evening, finding his brother still awake.
"Can't sleep?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of a chest standing in the cabin.
"I keep thinking about what we saw," Corlys admitted. "About how many more cities like it still stand along this coast, and how many children are going through the very same thing right now, while you and I sit here talking."
"You can't free the whole of Essos on your own," Daeron observed carefully, sensing where his brother's thoughts were leading.
"Not on my own," Corlys agreed. "But one can still begin with something small. First the Stepstones, then this. One step at a time."
Daeron was quiet a moment, turning this over in his mind, then nodded, and bidding his brother goodnight, left the cabin, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
A little later, a messenger arrived at their ship, still standing in port, bearing word from Kraznys mo Nakloz that the Good Masters had agreed to sell Lord Corlys the Unsullied on the terms already discussed. Corlys had the messenger carry back word to the slavers that the deal stood, and that they would receive the promised gold the very next day.
The next morning, Corlys, accompanied by his brother, Ser Adam, Ser Duncan, and a hundred household guards, entered the city and made his way to the main square. Behind them came slaves bearing heavy chests, filled to the brim with gold bars.
A full ton of the precious metal had been divided among twenty chests, so that their procession stretched the better part of a street.
Coming out onto the square, they found before them long, perfectly even ranks of Unsullied - all thirty thousand slaves, who from earliest childhood had been taught only two things: to kill, and to obey without question. They ranged in age from fourteen to twenty. Looking upon this endless mass of humanity, Corlys could not shake the thought of how many broken lives, maimed from the very moment of their birth, now stood before him in silent ranks.
Kraznys mo Nakloz, accompanied by a dozen or so other Good Masters, stepped forward, casting open, greedy glances at the approaching chests of gold.
"Once the gold has been weighed and its purity confirmed," he said, rubbing his hands together, "every last one of the Unsullied will pass entirely into your keeping, my lord."
While the Good Masters' slaves weighed each bar upon massive scales and tested the purity of the metal, Daeron, standing beside his brother, spoke quietly, his eyes on the motionless ranks of the Unsullied.
"Even now, knowing they are about to be sold yet again, they do not move from where they stand, nor show the faintest flicker of unease. As though it makes not the slightest difference to them whom they now serve."
"For years, they have been taught that a will of their own is a vice to be burned out of them root and branch," Corlys answered, just as quietly. "But that does not mean there is nothing left inside them. It only means they have been taught never to show it to anyone - not even to themselves."
The weighing of the gold dragged on for a good two hours, but at last one of Kraznys mo Nakloz's slaves came running up to him and whispered something hurriedly in his ear. The slaver listened, turned to Corlys, and spoke, joy plain in his voice.
"Well then, you have not deceived us, my lord. Both the weight and the purity of the gold match the terms of our agreement exactly."
He held out to Corlys a richly adorned whip - the symbol of dominion over the Unsullied.
"Now that the sale is fully concluded," he said, with a slight bow, "every one of these warriors belongs to you, and to you alone."
Corlys took the whip and asked, "What tongue do the Unsullied chiefly speak?"
"For the most part, they know two languages," Kraznys mo Nakloz answered. "The dialect spoken here in Astapor, and Valyrian, which is widely spoken across all of Essos."
Corlys nodded briefly, stepped forward, and, standing before the assembled ranks of the Unsullied, spoke in pure Valyrian, lending his voice a touch of magic so that even those standing in the farthest ranks could hear him.
"Unsullied," he said, sweeping his gaze over the frozen faces before him. "You have been made victims of this world's cruelty. In your earliest childhood you were torn from your own mothers, and many of you do not even remember the name given to you at birth. You have been tormented, degraded, forced to commit unthinkable acts, turned into cattle sold to whoever offers the most gold, and robbed of the one thing that matters most - the chance to have a family and raise children of your own. Today, your suffering ends."
He held a brief pause, letting the words settle, then went on, louder now.
"I cannot give you back your manhood. I do not ask you to become my slaves, to be punished for the smallest mistake. I do not ask you to follow me blindly, without question. But from this day forward, every one of you is a free man. If any among you wishes it, I will give him a ship, and that ship will carry him wherever he himself wishes to go. But if any among you wishes instead to find a true purpose in life - follow me. Not as slaves stripped of all rights, but as warriors of House Velaryon. Under my rule, you will always have food, a roof over your head, and honest wages for your service to me and my house. I will be a just lord to every one of you, and you will never receive from me either undeserved punishment or unfair treatment. You will become warriors of House Velaryon, you will have a home of your own in Westeros, and you will be respected - not because you are Unsullied, strong and skilled warriors, but above all because you are living men of flesh and blood. So tell me now: do you choose a new life, and service to House Velaryon, as free men - or do you choose instead the freedom to go wherever you yourselves decide?"
Kraznys mo Nakloz, unable to believe his own ears, tried to rush at Corlys, but his path was instantly blocked by Ser Adam and Ser Duncan, standing shoulder to shoulder.
"What is he doing?" the slaver demanded furiously, turning to Daeron in search of some explanation.
"Don't interfere," Daeron answered shortly, without even looking at him.
The Unsullied exchanged glances among themselves, looking uncertainly from Corlys to one another, unsure of what they were meant to do. They had simply never been taught such a thing - they had never been taught to be free at all, and now that what they had never before dared even to dream of lay within their grasp, they did not know what to do with it.
But gradually, one by one, the Unsullied in the front ranks began striking the butts of their spears against the stones of the square, and soon more and more warriors joined them, until the din of spears striking stone filled the entire square from end to end. Corlys watched the spectacle with satisfaction, then raised a hand, calling for silence. The noise died at once.
He filled his voice with magic once more and spoke, his tone now changed.
"Since you have chosen your path, and placed your trust in me, here is my first command to you, as your general and your lord: free every slave in this city, and put the slavers to the sword. Do not touch the women and children, but the men who have tormented you for long years, and sold living people like cattle - put them to the sword."
The Unsullied surged forward against the slavers as one, and within moments a true slaughter had begun in the square. Kraznys mo Nakloz, trying to fight his way toward Corlys, screamed at the top of his lungs that this would not be allowed to stand, that Corlys would answer for it - but Ser Duncan seized him by the throat with one hand and lifted him effortlessly into the air, leaving the slaver helplessly kicking his legs and gasping for breath. Duncan looked to his lord, waited for a brief nod, and with a single motion broke Kraznys mo Nakloz's neck, then simply dropped the lifeless body onto the stones of the square.
Ser Adam and Daeron drew their swords and, together with the household guards of House Velaryon, cut their way through the ranks of the remaining Good Masters, some of whom tried to flee toward the pyramids, while others tried to draw weapons of their own - though most of them had long since forgotten how to fight for themselves, accustomed as they were to having sellswords or Unsullied do their fighting for them. The city held some hundred and fifty thousand people, of whom some thirty thousand were free men directly involved in the slave trade. The Unsullied showed mercy to none of them save the women and children - the men were dragged straight out of their homes and killed in the streets, with no regard for rank or station. Some of the Good Masters tried to buy their lives with gold or jewels, holding them out to the warriors with trembling hands, but such attempts met with no success whatsoever - the Unsullied, trained for years to carry out orders and nothing but orders, simply drove their spears in silence into those who, only the day before, had counted them as their lawful property.
The slaughter went on for a full five hours, and did not end until evening. The Unsullied dealt with every man involved in the trading of human beings, sparing all the women and children without exception. By the time the killing was done, the streets of the city lay strewn with the bodies of the Good Masters and their overseers, and the once-magnificent pyramids of the city's noble families stood empty, stripped of their masters.
The freed slaves, who had at first been too frightened to leave their dwellings, gradually began to gather in the square, scarcely able to believe their own eyes at what had become of their tormentors. Many wept with relief, embracing one another, while others simply stood in silence, unable to grasp that the chains binding them their whole lives had finally fallen away. Some among the elders, who had lived under slavery since their youth, sank to their knees right there in the square and began giving thanks to their gods for their miraculous deliverance. By evening, the crowd of freed men gathered around Corlys and his companions had grown so large that the guardsmen were forced to form a tight ring around their lord, shielding him from a show of gratitude that was wholly sincere, if rather too fervent. Word that foreign lords had freed the city spread far faster than could have been expected, and by sunset, even the farthest quarters of Astapor knew of what had happened.
Daeron watched it all with a mingled sense of satisfaction, though clear pity showed in his eyes as well, especially as they passed weeping women mourning husbands and sons who had been killed. Noticing this, Corlys spoke quietly to his brother.
"Spare them no pity. A society in which the selling of a living person becomes the ordinary way of things deserves none," he said, nodding toward the weeping women. "They lived among this horror for years, growing rich off the suffering of others, and paid not the slightest heed to the grief of mothers whose children were torn straight from their arms. So let them not now weep over a reckoning that found them so long overdue, and let them thank the gods instead that I proved merciful enough to spare even the women and children."
Daeron considered his brother's words for a moment, then nodded slowly, granting him the point, and asked what they should do next.
Corlys stopped, swept his gaze over the city, ablaze in places, and spoke firmly, leaving no room for doubt.
"Now we root out the plague called slavery from the rest of the cities of Slaver's Bay as well."
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A/N
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