Chapter 44: The Price of Freedom
The city of Pentos, in the weeks following its liberation, was a raw and vibrant wound, healing into something new and unrecognizable. The opulent manors of the Magisters were repurposed into public granaries and orphanages. The great slave markets, once the economic heart of the city, were now a field of rubble where the foundation of the first Essosi Temple of the Great Order was being laid by an army of volunteer laborers. The air smelled not of perfume and despair, but of sawdust, sweat, and a strange, unfamiliar hope.
Ellyn the Weaver, now the de facto spiritual governor of the city, met with the newly elected council of the Freed. They were a mix of men and women from a dozen different lands, their faces etched with the hardships of their past lives but their eyes now holding a fierce, proprietary light. They were led by a former Ghiscari scribe named Grazdan, a man whose quiet intellect had quickly made him a leader.
"Lady Ellyn," Grazdan began, his Common Tongue still bearing the harsh accent of his homeland, "the people work with a fervor I have never seen. They are building a new city on the bones of the old. But they are afraid. They ask what comes next. Are we now subjects of the Westerosi queen? Are we a new Free City?"
Ellyn looked at the council, at these people who were learning the very language of freedom. "You are not subjects of any empire," she said, her voice carrying the calm authority that had come to define her. "You are the first citizens of the Great Order in Essos. You will govern yourselves, under the one true law: that no man shall ever again own another."
"But the other cities…" a woman from Lys, a former bed slave, spoke up, her voice trembling. "Myr, Volantis… my own daughter is still in chains there. Will the god… will he free them, too?"
"The Great Work has only just begun," Ellyn assured her, her gaze distant, as if she were seeing the future battlefields. "The god does not leave a task half-finished. The untidiness of this continent will be made clean. All chains will be broken." Her words were a promise, a prophecy, and a death sentence for the old world.
The fall of Pentos sent ripples of terror and opportunity across the Narrow Sea. Envoys began to arrive at the sprawling Westerosi camp, not with armies, but with carefully worded questions. The first, and most surprising, was a delegation from the Secret City of Braavos. Their envoy, a woman with the quiet, unsettling poise of a water dancer named Tycho Melis, was granted an audience with King Viserys and Prince Jacaerys.
"The Sealord of Braavos extends his congratulations on the liberation of Pentos," the envoy said, her voice smooth and unaccented. She made no grand bows, her posture one of polite equality. "The end of the slave trade has long been a prayer of the founders of our city. We are… pleased… to see it answered so decisively."
Jacaerys, standing beside his brother's campaign throne, regarded her with undisguised suspicion. "A prayer you never saw fit to answer with your own famous fleet, envoy."
"Our strength is in coin and shadows, not open war," Tycho Melis replied smoothly. "We fight our battles in ledgers and back alleys. A crusade is a rather… loud instrument." She allowed a faint smile. "But we wish to discuss the future. Your god has overturned the chess board of the world. The Iron Bank of Braavos, which values stability above all things, wishes to understand the new rules of commerce. A world without the slave trade will require new markets, new investments."
"And the assassins you serve?" Jace asked bluntly. "The Faceless Men? What do they wish to understand?"
The envoy's smile did not waver, but her eyes grew cold. "The Many-Faced God is a god of death. It is a gift given to those who suffer. Your god seems to deal in the same currency, but on a scale we have never witnessed. It is a matter of professional interest. We merely wish to understand the nature of a power that can give the gift of death to thousands, and the gift of life to thousands more, all in a single morning."
Viserys felt a chill. The Braavosi were not here to pledge fealty. They were here to assess a new, cosmic competitor. "Tell your Sealord," the king said, his voice firm, "that the Great Order values stability as well. As long as Braavosi interests do not create… disorder… we will have no quarrel."
It was a delicate, dangerous dance, a conversation between the king of a god and the envoy of a city of assassins.
The next delegation was one of desperation. A secret ship arrived from Myr, carrying two of the city's ruling Magisters. They were brought before King Viserys at night, their faces pale with fear. They did not posture. They begged.
"King Viserys," the elder Magister, a man named Fregar, began, his hands trembling. "We have seen what happened in Pentos. We… we understand that the world has changed. We have come to offer terms."
"Terms?" Viserys asked, his voice quiet. He felt a flicker of pity for these terrified, powerful men.
"We will free ten thousand slaves," Fregar said, the words tasting like poison in his mouth. "Immediately. A third of our city's bonded population. As a gesture of our goodwill. We ask only for time. Time to adjust our economy, our way of life."
"A gesture?" Viserys replied, his heart aching with the terrible simplicity of his position. "You would free a third of your captives and call it goodwill? The god's decree was not that some chains be broken. It was that all chains be broken."
"But you must understand!" the younger Magister pleaded, falling to his knees. "Our entire society, two thousand years of culture and commerce, is built upon this system! To end it overnight would mean chaos! Famine! The city would collapse upon itself! Is that the 'order' your god truly desires? We are asking for a generation. Twenty years. We can phase out the practice. We can build a new way. A gradual emancipation, with less bloodshed, less chaos."
The offer hung in the air. It was logical. It was, from a mortal perspective, reasonable. It offered a path to the same goal with less suffering. For a moment, Viserys felt a surge of hope. Perhaps there was a way to fulfill the god's will without burning the world to do it.
He brought the proposal to the war council the next morning. Jacaerys listened patiently, his face an unreadable mask, until Viserys had finished.
"A gradual emancipation," Jace repeated, the words dripping with a cold irony. "A reasonable compromise. They are very clever, these slavers. They have judged you correctly, brother."
"Judged me?" Viserys asked, confused.
"Yes. They see the good man in you," Jace explained, his voice hard. "They see the king who wishes to avoid bloodshed, who wants to find a better way. And they are trying to use your own virtue against you. They are buying time. Time to re-arm, to hire assassins, to find a poison for our wells. They see a chance to negotiate with the king because they know they cannot negotiate with the god."
"But a peaceful solution…" Viserys began.
"There is no peaceful solution to a cancer!" Jace snapped, his voice rising. "You do not ask a tumor to shrink itself over twenty years! You cut it out. All of it. At once. The god's command was not 'reduce slavery.' It was 'end it.' It is an untidiness to be corrected. There is no room for compromise in the mathematics of a god. He will see your 'peaceful solution' as disobedience. As a flaw in his chosen instrument."
Lord Stark nodded his grim agreement. "The prince is right, Your Grace. A half-measure is an invitation to future conflict. The work must be finished. Completely."
Viserys looked at their hard, resolute faces and knew they were right. He was a king, but his god was not one of mercy or compromise. It was a god of absolute, terrifying clarity.
Larys Strong, from his comfortable chambers in the Red Keep, had already reached the same conclusion. He sent a brief, efficient thought towards the hill.
The Myrish lords offer a partial, phased liberation, Great One. A compromise, they call it. An attempt to introduce mortal inefficiency into your perfect design.
The response was instantaneous and utterly cold.
"A COMPROMISE IS A FORM OF DISORDER. IT IS AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN TWO FLAWED POSITIONS. THE CORRECTION MUST BE ABSOLUTE. THE CANCER MUST BE EXCISED, NOT MANAGED. PROCEED AS PLANNED."
Larys smiled. The god was predictable in its magnificent, terrible logic.
The Myrish Magisters were given their answer. Their offer was refused. They were sent back to their city with a simple message: "Surrender your slaves, or suffer the fate of Pentos."
King Viserys II gave the order. The Grand Army of the Great Work, now bolstered by the First Legion of the Freed—an army of ten thousand former slaves, their eyes burning with the zealous light of the converted—began its march down the coast towards the city of Myr.
The diplomatic phase of the Great Work was over. The sermon of the sword would begin anew.
That night, King Viserys stood with Queen Jaehaera in their tent, watching the endless column of soldiers march past, their torches a river of fire in the darkness.
"I tried, Jaehaera," he said, his voice heavy with a sorrow that went beyond the coming battle. "I truly did. I thought… perhaps we could achieve the goal without all this. Without becoming… them."
"You have a good heart, my love," she said, taking his hand. "It is your strength, and your burden." She looked out at the marching army, at the glowing eyes of the Blessed, at the determined faces of the freed slaves turned soldiers. "But we are not here in this land to be good. We are here to be effective. We are the instruments of its will. The hammer that breaks the chains."
Viserys watched them march, the army of saints and former slaves, the most righteous and terrifying army the world had ever seen. "I know," he whispered, as a cold wind blew in from the sea. "And that is what frightens me the most."
The great army moved on, an engine of divinely-sanctioned, uncompromising liberation, leaving no room for the messy, imperfect compromises of mortal men. The next domino was about to fall.