The night in Astapor was hot and cloying, sticking to the skin like oil.
Jorah Mormont had departed on his mission, his silhouette quickly disappearing behind the manor's heavy doors of black iron and bronze.
Inside the great hall, a strange silence settled over the room.
Viserys's patience had clearly evaporated. He paced irritably back and forth across the plush carpets, his pale lilac eyes flickering with greed and agitation.
"What exactly are we waiting for?"
He stopped abruptly, practically roaring at Lynn.
"Use your dragon! Burn this damn city to the ground!"
"Burn the Good Masters to ash! Then the Unsullied will be ours for the taking!"
"It's so simple! So fast!"
Lynn didn't even look up. He sat calmly, using a small silver knife to peel a blood orange from the Summer Sea. The crimson juice dripped from the blade, pooling on the golden plate like a startling splash of fresh blood.
Daenerys sat beside him. Watching Lynn's hands—steady as stone—miraculously soothed the fear and anxiety knotting her stomach.
"A King needs a loyal army, not a pack of beasts enslaved by terror," Lynn said, his voice level.
"Loyalty? Hah!" Viserys laughed as if he'd heard the world's greatest joke. "Power is loyalty!"
"As long as my dragon flies in the sky, they will only dare to kneel and kiss my boots!"
He pointed a shaking finger at the slaves standing silently by the windows.
"Look at them, Lynn!"
"They are born to be lesser. Obedience is carved into their bones!"
"Show them mercy, and they'll only think you're weak!"
Just then, a young slave girl in a linen tunic entered cautiously, carrying a pitcher of iced honey wine. She looked even younger than Daenerys, her black eyes wide with terror and unease.
She moved slowly, stepping lightly so her sandals wouldn't make a sound against the polished marble floor, terrified of disturbing these new highborn masters. She didn't dare meet anyone's gaze, staring fixedly at the few inches of ground before her feet.
She reached the long table and prepared to fill Viserys's goblet.
Bam!
Viserys slammed his hand on the table.
"What are you waiting for? Fool!"
He didn't dare vent his frustration at Lynn, so he poured all his rage onto this innocent girl.
The shout struck her like a physical blow. The girl flinched violently, and the silver pitcher slipped from her sweat-slicked fingers.
Clang—
The pitcher hit the edge of the table, bounced heavily, and smashed directly into an exquisite Valyrian glass vase sitting on a side table.
The vase was a deep, ghostly blue, etched with the golden totem of an ancient dragon. It shimmered with a dreamlike luster in the candlelight. According to the steward, it had been dug from the ruins of the Valyrian Freehold—a treasure worth enough to hire a small mercenary company of ten men.
Crash—!
The sound was crisp and heartbreaking.
The vase shattered. Shards of blue glass scattered across the floor.
The entire hall fell into a deathly silence.
Every slave present—whether fanning in the corners or standing by the pillars—froze instantly. They held their breath, their hearts seemingly stopping in their chests.
In Astapor, breaking a master's treasure meant only one thing.
Being nailed alive to a wooden stake on the Walk of Punishment, left for the sun to bake and the vultures to pick clean.
The girl who had caused the disaster was petrified. She dropped to her knees, shaking violently. Her black eyes lost all light, leaving only pure, unadulterated despair.
She prostrated herself on the floor, too terrified to even beg for mercy. She knew begging was useless. She would be made into an example, a brutal reminder to the others of the price of failure.
"You... you stupid bitch!"
Viserys's face turned a deep shade of purple.
He didn't care about the vase; he cared that his authority had been challenged. In front of this Northern savage, in front of his so-called "ally," a lowly slave had made him look like a fool!
"Kill her!"
Viserys pointed a trembling finger at the girl, screaming at Lynn.
"I command you! Kill her immediately!"
"Do it in the cruelest way possible! Let her know the price of offending a King!"
His voice echoed through the empty hall, shrill and manic.
Daenerys's heart seized. She instinctively grabbed Lynn's sleeve, her violet eyes begging him. She couldn't bear to see anyone else die in front of her.
Lynn patted Daenerys's hand, signaling her to be calm.
Then, ignoring Viserys's screaming, he placed the silver knife on the table, stood up, and walked slowly toward the kneeling slave.
His tall shadow engulfed her like a judgment from the gods.
The girl shook even harder. The sharp scent of urine wafted up from the floor; she had wet herself in terror.
Lynn crouched down, ignoring the mess and the shards.
He reached out. But instead of choking her, as everyone expected, he picked up the largest piece of blue glass from the floor and held it in his palm.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?"
His voice was soft. He spoke in High Valyrian, the language of the conquerors of old.
The slave girl looked up blankly, her face a mask of tears and horror, confusion warring with her fear.
"Look," Lynn said, holding the shard before her eyes.
"It is broken. It can never be made whole again."
"But you," Lynn shifted his gaze from the glass to the girl's hollow eyes. "You are still alive."
"A vase, no matter how precious, is just a dead thing."
"Your life is worth more than ten thousand of these vases."
With that, Lynn reached into the leather pouch at his waist and pulled out a gleaming golden dragon.
He took the coin—enough for a commoner in King's Landing to live on for a year—and gently placed it into the girl's cold, trembling hand.
"Take this. Go buy yourself some clean clothes and have a good meal."
"I'm giving you the day off. Forget the unpleasantness of today. Come back tomorrow and continue your work for me."
Boom—!
It felt as though a thunderclap had gone off in the minds of every slave in the hall.
They stared blankly at the man crouching on the floor, and at the gold coin in the girl's hand that seemed bright enough to blind them. They watched the girl's face transition from absolute despair to total confusion, and finally to overwhelming, disbelief-filled joy.
Everything they had known about their world was shattered in an instant.
Mercy?
No, this was beyond mercy. Only the gods of legend, descending to save mortals from suffering, would do something so incredible.
Viserys was dumbstruck. His mouth hung open as he stared at Lynn, then at the slave who had just escaped death.
He couldn't understand it.
A slave. A creature as lowly as dust! How could her life be worth more than a Valyrian treasure?
Was this Northerner insane?!
"You..." Viserys pointed at Lynn, shaking with rage. "Do you have any idea what you're doing?!"
"They are just baseborn slaves!"
"What am I doing?"
Lynn stood up, turned, and looked at him calmly.
His pitch-black eyes held no ripple of emotion, yet they made Viserys feel a sudden, inexplicable chill.
"I am telling you, King Viserys," Lynn said. "A life is always worthy of more respect than a dead object."
"That is the grace and dignity a King should possess."
"You should learn how to treat people with kindness."
Lynn's words were like a slap across Viserys's face. The Beggar King's expression shifted from red to white, a portrait of humiliation.
In the hall, after a moment of dead silence, the slaves fell to their knees in unison.
They pressed their foreheads deep against the cold marble floor.
In the humblest posture possible, they offered their silent, sincere reverence to the man who had given them a dignity and hope they had never dared to imagine.
Daenerys watched the scene, tears slipping uncontrolled from the corners of her eyes.
But this time, they were not tears of fear or sorrow. They were tears of pride, a warmth that seemed to melt her very soul.
She looked at Lynn's back, her tear-filled violet eyes shining like the morning star.
This is my King.
A true King.
---
The night deepened, but the story of what happened in the great hall spread like ripples in a still pond, touching the heart of every slave in the compound.
"Did you hear? The Lord from Westeros, he..."
"He gave a slave a golden dragon for breaking a vase! And gave her the day off!"
"Is it true?"
"It's true! My cousin serves in the hall, he saw it with his own eyes!"
"He said... the Lord said his life is worth more than ten thousand vases..."
In dark corners, outside the kitchen doors, by the haystacks in the stables... whispers passed on the night wind.
Voices filled with disbelief. A spark of hope was being passed from slave to slave.
Just then, the manor gates opened again.
Jorah Mormont had returned.
He walked into the hall, dusty and travel-worn, with a strange expression on his face.
"My Lord," he bowed to Lynn. "I have met with Kraznys mo Nakloz."
"What did he say?" Lynn asked.
Jorah's expression grew even stranger. He hesitated before speaking.
"He said... he is willing to sell you all the Unsullied. Including the ones still in training."
"But his appetite is large."
"He demands twenty gold dragons for a single Unsullied."
"If you want to buy them all... it will cost six hundred thousand gold dragons."
"That is no small sum, my Lord."
Lynn smiled.
"It seems Kraznys has a healthy appetite."
Lynn's entire assets in King's Landing only amounted to two hundred thousand gold dragons. Kraznys was clearly demanding a king's ransom.
It was suspicious.
Clearly, his target wasn't the gold.
It was something else entirely.