The Dothraki were rarely subject to sickness. How could they be, when they lived on the clean plains under the purifying sun instead of packing themselves into stinking cities where the streets flowed with shit? And when someone did become sick, there were ways of isolating them from the rest of the khalasar, attended only by the shaman and the oldest of the mercy-men, until the illness ran its course and the person either died or healed. These ways had worked for time out of mind, until they were embedded in the collective soul of the nomads.

Which had made the plague that had struck Drogo's khalasar all the more frightening. As they rode away from the ruin of Qohor it had struck, inflicting a cough that quickly turned bloody and a fever that burned the sufferer's flesh away. As it was rare for a Dothraki to be fat, this latter symptom was especially dangerous; within three sennights of its appearance almost two thousand of the khalasar had died from this almost visible withering of their frames, and many more were on the verge of death. Even more alarming was the fact that it had infected their horses. The same cough and fever that had struck the khalasar went through their herds like wildfire, until almost a quarter of the horses were reduced to skinny, shambling, coughing ruins of their former proud selves. Even isolating the sick had not prevented the spread of the disease, and the formerly triumphant progress of the khalasar across the plains ground to a halt on the banks of a stream so small it did not even have a name.

It was the shaman, his already-lean frame made almost skeletal by his labors among the sick and his dancing and drumming to divine the cause of the disease, who discovered an answer. The Black Goat of Qohor, he explained, had been angered by the ruin of His city, and in revenge he had sent this plague upon its destroyers. The fact that none of the slaves they had taken from Qohor had fallen prey to the illness proved its origin Fortunately, he had claimed, there was a cure. Each family in the khalasar must choose the richest piece of loot it had taken from Qohor and give it up to be burned. This offering to the horse god would invoke Its protection against the Goat, while also weakening the Goat's ability to sustain the plague it had sent. Drogo had sent his riders through the camp, ensuring that no one held back, for the shaman had explained that doing so would render the ritual powerless, and ensure the Goat's ability to continue and even worsen the plague.

Drogo had endured many glares, and many insults, from the same people he had led to the greatest victory of their people over the walkers in generations, when he had put the torch to the pyre of wealth, but it had worked. Those who had been too far gone in the grip of the disease had died, but others had recovered, and not one man or horse more had developed either the fever or the cough. Indeed, those who recovered seemed even stronger than before, now, as if the sickness had burned whatever weakness they possessed out of them.

So it was a khalasar like none other that Drogo led into Vaes Dothrak under an angry sky muttering with distant thunder. The riders sat their horses silently, sitting tall and grimly proud as they rode under the arch of the two stallions. Instead of chanting the praises of their khal and his warriors as they entered, the women of the tribe were also silent, walking behind their men with their children, letting the air of pride they wore speak for itself. Straight through the great city of the plains they marched, clearing the streets before them with the wave-front of pride and strength that seemed to travel before them and drawing the people of the city after them by the awe of the spectacle they presented, from children to warriors to greybeards. Even foreigners joined the throng, drawn by the magnetism of the silent khalasar and the khal who rode at the head of his people like a brazen image, bare of any decoration save for the copper bells that tinkled in his braid and dressed only in the loose trousers and sleeveless leather vest of a warrior prepared for battle. At last they came to the foot of the path up the Mother of Mountains where, in defiance of uncounted years of tradition, the dosh khaleen had descended to welcome them. There Drogo halted his horse and gestured sharply to his riders, for there was another thing the shaman had said must be done in order to break the power of the Black Goat. One by one each rider in Drogo's khalasar rode by the dosh khaleen, casting to the earth at their feet the spiked helm of an Unsullied and the braid of human hair that had adorned the spears of the eunuch-warriors. As the last helm clunked into the dirt, joining a pile that stood almost as tall as a short man, Drogo rode his horse a pace forward. "Behold the remains of Qohor," he declared, "which with the god's help we have broken into the dust. Khal Temmo is avenged."

There was a moment of silence, followed by an earsplitting thundercrack, and then one of the dosh kahleen stepped forward and raised her hands in salute; Jeshi, oldest and most revered of the only body of people that the Dothraki universally respected. "See, O People!" she cried in the high, wavering singsong that shamans used when invoking the power of the god. "A hrakkar has risen up from among you! He rides upon the storm-wind, and the bells in his hair shall be as the stars of the sky! His shadow shall fall like death upon the walkers, and at his name the strongest among them shall be afraid! His horses shall trample down the cities, and none shall be found to stand against them! He is Drogo, son of Barbo, khal of khals, favored of the god, the Stallion Who Mounts the World!"

The bloodscream that rose from seventy thousand throats outrang the thunder as Drogo's heart swelled to bursting. Tremble, dogs, he thought at the walkers that huddled in their cities on the shores of the poison water. Tremble, for death is come upon you. Tremble!

XXX

The following is an excerpt from Iron Flash, the fifth instalment of the Flash Papers by George Dand

Now, if you've read my previous memoirs, you know that my relationship with the gods is, shall we say, complex. On the one hand, I've seen too many things that can't be rationally explained to discount them. Look at what I did in Tyrosh, for instance. And I'm morally convinced that the Lord of the Seven Hells exists, given some of the things I've seen, and the existence of a thing logically implies it's opposite, I suppose. On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe that the gods much care what we do here below. If they did, they'd have done something about some of those things I've seen, and not relied on cretins like me to take out the trash for them.

All that being said, while the gods might or might not be so many myths, religion is most certainly as real as rocks, and just as dangerous. Especially when someone decides to take one up and start beating people over the head with it. Which, now that I think on it, is not that bad a metaphor for what happened in Stannis' court during the early nineties.

What happened, you see, was that Queen Cersei went through a whole string of misfortunes one after the other in the span of a handful of months. First, her pregnancy proved to indeed be twins, but neither of them were the second prince that everyone had been praying for. Now two new princesses is nothing to sneeze at, marriage alliances being as valuable as they are, but they don't do anything to secure the line of succession. If anything they make it overcomplicated, for the same reason they're so valuable. The last thing a sole male heir needs is a group of ambitious in-laws who view his sisters as pathways to the Throne, especially when he's the sole male heir of a new dynasty that came to power by the sword. Moreover, and here I have to slip into conjecture a little, but conjecture based on more than twenty years observation and knowledge of the people in question . . . To my mind, part of the reason for Queen Cersei's pridefulness was that she saw herself as her father with different plumbing. She didn't just think that she was the smartest, cleverest, and most forceful of her siblings, she knew it. So failing to measure up to Lord Tywin's level of competence, even if it was by chance rather than intent, was a hard blow for her.

Add to which the fact that, by all reports, Cersei came within a shaved hair of dying in the delivery of the twins, and again shortly thereafter from childbed fever. Nothing like a near-death experience to make one remember the religion they were raised in. I've seen more than forty battlefields, in my time, from skirmishes between patrols to clashes between armies, and I've never seen men pray as fervently as they did on those fields. And gods know it's always the most bloody-handed killers who are the most devout of men, either to the gods or to their choice of devils. Look at Lyn Corbray, or Ned Stark. Combine that with the fear (false, but no one knew that at the time, did they?) that Queen Cersei would no longer be able to bear children, and you had a recipe for potential disaster right there.

Then there was that absolute balls-up with Jaime Lannister refusing to come home and hieing himself back to Myr. By all reports, Queen Cersei loved no one in the world as much as her brother, except maybe her children, and the very idea that he might turn his back on her I'm sure never once crossed her mind. And then he didn't just do exactly that, but he turned heretic into the bargain. I wasn't in the room when Cersei got wind of her brother's conversion, but I could hear the screaming and ranting and crashing of breaking knickknacks three corridors away. If I ever needed proof that His Nibs was a braver man than I could ever be, I got it when he went straight into the chamber Cersei was destroying and told her to cease and desist. I wouldn't have done it for a lordship and a pension.

Given all of the above, it's probably not surprising that Queen Cersei got a bad case of religion, but I think even those who thought worst of her were surprised by how bad a case of it she got. Before the month was out she had her own confessor, as opposed to sharing one with Stannis, her ladies were required to attend Divine Office with her daily and twice on Fathersday, all courtly love was banned except for the most chaste of gestures on pain of queenly displeasure, and gods pity anyone who even hinted that the Great Sept might not be all it was cracked up to be. At first I thought that it was just one of those phases people go through from time to time and that it would be over as soon as His Nibs got her pregnant again, but then Septon Colyn came up for trial. If I doubted that Cersei's newfound devotion was sincere, I didn't doubt it after she summoned me into her presence the day before I was to give evidence to the Most Devout. She all but instructed me to dig Colyn's grave, even if that meant perjuring myself, and the look in her eyes reminded me of the look in Colyn's during some of his wilder sermons.

Of course I bowed and said that I would do my humble best; what else was I supposed to do, with the Queen looking at me like that and three Stormguard knights within two arms-lengths? There are times when I can be as dense as a short plank, but you just don't naysay an enthroned monarch if you know what's good for you. And I knew as well as anyone that Colyn needed to be found guilty. It wasn't just the Faith that needed it, but the Realm at large and especially the Vale. Jon Arryn had handed in his papers after His Nibs returned from Balon's Rebellion, citing age and exhaustion and the need to set the Vale back in order. As well he might; he had personally interviewed me on my experiences in Gulltown and I hadn't minced words regarding his nephew's incompetence. If Denys and Gerold Arryn weren't reined in, then Gulltown would erupt into full-blown revolt sooner or later, and it just might take the rest of the southern Vale with it. If Colyn were convicted and sentenced without a hitch, then at least Lord Arryn would have the Faith united behind him, and that's not the sort of following wind to sneeze at. If, on the other hand, there appeared to be any hesitation on the part of the Faith to either convict or sentence Colyn . . . well, I doubted it would do much to change the minds of my former fellow heretics, their minds already being made up, but nothing shakes loyalties like a display of uncertainty. If Stannis and Robert were so loved by the men who followed them, it wasn't just because they gave them victory so often; it was also because no one ever saw either the elder Baratheon brothers at a loss, at least not in public. When the world's going to hell around you, it's really comforting to see someone who at least has an idea of what to do next.

Well, I did my part to convict Colyn anyway. Or tried, at least. See, under the rules of theological inquisition, the accused has the right to hear the evidence against them and confront the prosecution's witnesses. And when I took the stand and was sworn in, Colyn immediately started tearing into me. Virtually every sentence out of my mouth was met with a shout of "Objection!" and the claim that since Colyn knew me to be such a masterful liar, my evidence could not be trusted. The fact that his objections had been overruled almost from the start by the High Septon's ruling that, since I was incognito on the official business of the Iron Throne, my lying during that time had been under orders and therefore excusable, didn't have much effect. The revelation that I had slept with one of Colyn's followers, on the other hand, certainly had an effect. Not that my testimony was thrown out or anything, but the Most Devout viewed me with a jaundiced eye through all the rest of my testimony. I advanced the explanation that I had done so as part of the ruse under which I had joined Colyn's little band, in order to prevent Kathryn from becoming suspicious, but apparently it didn't help much. No sooner had the prosecution rested its case than I was told, by no less than Lord Tarly himself, the new Hand, that as soon as Colyn was safely hanged I would be going to the Iron Isles. The Queen, he said in that stony voice of his, was of the view that any man who had carnal knowledge of a heretic was a man who was not welcome at Court until he had done penance for it, and a few months attached to the Knights of the Sea, as a junior recruit, would be just the thing, in the Queen's estimation. Her initial impulse, he said, had been to make me undergo a test of faith in front of the Most Devout, but His Nibs had talked her down from it on the grounds that I was one of his knights and he had every confidence in my loyalty. Which, for a wonder, he was right about; I wouldn't have unhitched my fortunes from Stannis' for a throne. Not only was he the best bet on the table, but he had definitively proven that double-crossing him was bad for your health by then and the whole world knew it. I might have objected, but for two things. Firstly, butting heads with a queen just isn't done when you're only a landed knight. Fighting above your weight rarely ends well. Secondly, I got the hint that Tarly was just passing on Stannis' orders; Tarly was as strong-minded as any lord, but he was far more a natural lieutenant that Jon Arryn could ever have been. Which is why he got the Handship instead of Mace Tyrell, I dare say.

And I was glad enough of an excuse to leave, to tell the truth, with the Court in such upheaval. Stannis had had to replace not only his Hand but also his Master of Laws, since Lord Bolton opened one Small Council meeting by submitting his resignation on the grounds that Queen Cersei had tried to convert his son. An infestation of priests he could live with, I'm told is what he said, but not an attempt on his son's faith. Since he could not challenge the Queen to a duel, he and his people were going back to the Dreadfort, where he wouldn't have to worry about people trying to twist his son's arm into abandoning his faith. His Grace, I heard later, was wroth, in that cold fashion of his, as well he might since Cersei had trod on the very edge of the laws of hospitality and deprived him of one of his most useful ministers into the bargain. Add the fact that His Nibs didn't have a candidate lined up and ready to step into the office and everyone and their brother was in town, jockeying for the post. I don't know if you've ever lived in a city suddenly stuffed full of lords vying for royal office, but you can take it from me that it's not a pleasant experience. Not a moment's peace to be found amid all the strutting and chest-thumping and occasional dueling between vassals, even without the Faith sticking their oar in by making their own recommendations.

So I packed my bags, took on one of my goodfather's distant cousins as a squire, said my goodbyes to Maryam while my valet Baldwick packed my bags, and hit the road for Lannisport and a ship to Pyke. I thought it would be easy traveling, but, in the event, I turned out to be hilariously wrong . . .

XXX

Jaime Lannister had some experience of sea voyages, of course, but none like the voyage from Myr to the Summer Isles. Instead of only a few days sailing as part of a fleet, this voyage constituted several sennights of confinement in what amounted to an extremely well-engineered wooden box, with nothing else to see but ocean after they cleared the Stepstones. Even without Ned Stark's antipathy to the waves, it was terribly wearing to be a speck on the surface of the world, with nothing on any side but the abyss and whatever monsters might live in it. Fortunately, he was not a naturally anxious man, or he would have eaten his guts out with nerves.

Unfortunately, he had found himself isolated in more ways than one. Ser Wendel Manderly might be entirely courteous in their interactions, but the other functionaries attached to the embassy seemed to view him as an unnecessary and distracting appendage at best, with attitudes ranging downward from there to barely-disguised loathing; it seemed that not only had he provoked a suicide but he had supplanted none other than Victarion Greyjoy on this particular mission, and the Lord of Ironhold was famously popular. Moreover, there was an astonishing lack of good swords attached to the embassy; Ser Wendel was a perfectly adequate man-at-arms with a surprising turn of speed for a man his bulk and Roryn Pyke was a fine, if unsophisticated, man of his hands, but they were the only three knights or equivalents thereto on the embassy, with the other officers being gentlemen-at-arms at best. Apparently, Ser Wendel had explained, it had been decided that this was an embassy of peace and friendship, not intimidation, and so only a pair of knights and a single Ironborn housekarl would be necessary. And since one of those knights was arguably the best knight of his generation, it couldn't be argued that the chivalry of Myr was poorly represented.

It was a somewhat flattering explanation, but the problem was that there was virtually no one for Jaime to hone his skills against. When the daily sparring hour arose he had to resort to facing men two or three at a time to get an adequate degree of practice, and finding that many men who were willing to pit themselves against him and keep it a clean fight was difficult. There was a species of politics on the training ground that was just as serious as that at Court, and every master-at-arms knew better than to let people with a mutual grudge train against each other. The one bright spot was Darabhar Xhan, who had the strength and the speed to give Jaime a decent fight and a fighting style unfamiliar enough to make it interesting, but there was a catch involved. Darabhar had joined the embassy as an advisor and teacher, and took his duties in that role seriously enough that he had quickly taken a personal interest in Jaime's scholarship. Only if Jaime had paid sufficient attention at his lessons, either with Darabhar or with the Braavosi secretary attached to the embassy who had spent a decade in Tall Trees Town, would he consent to spar. It was enough to make Jaime want to spit; to be punished or rewarded over his lessons? Did so many truly think him so childish?

It hadn't helped matters that the few times they had sighted potential enemies, none of them had been willing to fight. The Nutmeg was a Summer Islander ship, flying the colors of one of the many Princes of those Isles, and all of them were, for now at least, neutrals in the war between slaver and freeman. And while the Summer Isles were famously insular, taken as a whole, they were not so inconsequential that provoking them to war was done lightly. The swan ships were arguably the finest warships on the world-ocean, and the slavers knew from bitter experience the power of the goldenheart bows that were the favored weapon of the Islanders. So there hadn't even been a fight in which to vent long-bottled emotions.

In sum, even if the embassy had been bound for Lorath, the sight of land would have made Jaime offer thanks to the gods. The fact of their true destination was even greater cause for rejoicing.

Jaime had heard much of the Summer Isles, of course. What young man hadn't heard of the sultry islands where the people's most favored deity was a love goddess whose first commandment was All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals? You could not devise a land more suitable for adolescent fantasies if you tried.

Significantly fewer stories were told about the martial culture of the Isles. Fortunately, the embassy had had Darabhar Xhan to tell them what to expect. "When visitors come from outside the rohe, the territory of the people," he had said, "they are challenged to prove whether they come in peace or war. The challenge also tests the, hmm, steadiness, of the visitors, to see whether they are worthy of the people's regard."

It was a warning that had been welcome when the embassy had gone to present its credentials to the court of Molanta Chonaq, Princess of Tall Trees Town. No sooner had the embassy, all dressed in their finest except for Jaime, Roryn, and the two squads of Legion infantry who were the embassy's defense in their armor, turned onto the wide lane leading to the Princess's hall than the gate had opened and a trio of warriors had sprinted out, shrieking battle cries. Only the strength of discipline had prevented the legionaries from forming a shield-wall in front of the embassy and kept Jaime's sword in its sheath and Roryn's axe on his shoulder, but the embassy had come to a halt in the middle of the lane and waited patiently while the warriors paraded before them, whooping and flourishing their long spears through cuts and covers as they pranced stiff-legged and leaped and crouched. There were more than a few parallels, Jaime mused, to fighting-cocks reacting to the appearance of a strange bird, but saying so would probably be impolitic.

As the warriors slowed their frenetic exertions, the gate opened and an elderly woman in a feathered cloak with an erect bearing that could only be described as regal strode forth. "Who comes?" she cried, in the high, wavering style the Summer Islanders used for such ritual challenges but in Common Tongue, doubtless as a gesture to the foreigners. "Who comes to be the guest of Molanta, daughter of Lorana, daughter of Lalhola, Princess of Tall Trees Town? Who comes to beg the friendship of the Princess, Guardian of the People, who keeps these lands and these waters on behalf of the gods? If they come in peace, then let them be welcome, for our fires are warm and our storehouses full to feed guests. But if they come in war, let them beware! Our bows are strong, our spears are long, and our warriors hunger for the flesh of enemies!" As she sang-chanted, the warrior in the center drew a wooden plaque from the back of his kilt and slowly placed it on the ground in front of the embassy, lolling his tongue and bulging his eyes in a ferocious grimace. If an Islander warrior stuck out his tongue at you, Jaime remembered the Braavosi tutor explaining, it was not a childish insult but a declaration that the warrior would eat your corpse after he killed you. It was rarely done, he had hastened to add, but not unknown, even in these more civilized days.

Ser Wendel, who had stood with his hands folded before him and a calm expression on his round face, stepped forward as Darabhar Xhan, the only Summer Islander among them and so the only one with the knowledge to answer the ritual challenge, cleared his throat. "It is Ser Wendel Manderly son of Wyman, son of Wymarc, Ser Jaime Lannister, son of Tywin, son of Tytos, and Roryn Pyke, son of Andrik, son of Donnel, who come," he replied in the Summer Tongue, drawing starts from the audience; it was traditional for a woman to make the karanga, the call, but none of the women attached to the embassy had a word of Summer Tongue between them and Ser Wendel had decided that it would be better to break with tradition than to risk a misunderstanding. "They come in peace," Darabhar continued, following the script he and Ser Wendel had drawn up between them on the voyage south but chanting in the Summer Tongue, "as ambassadors of King Robert of Myr; Robert, son of Steffon, son of Ormund, Robert the Strong, whose hammer breaks the chains of slaves and shatters the armies of the slavers! They come to speak with his voice, to see with his eyes, to hear with his ears, that he may make friends with Princess Molanta and the people of these lands and waters." As Ser Wendel knelt, his cloak pooling around his feet, to pick up the plaque while continuing to stare the central warrior in the eye, the warrior threw his head back, let out a high whoop, and then turned and pranced back towards the gate.

Jaime let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. That was the first part of the powhiri, the traditional welcome, done to satisfaction. Now they simply had to enter the hall, listen to the Princess and Ser Wendel make speeches at each other for a few minutes, share dinner, and then the business could start. Hopefully, he mused, a demonstration of prowess would be called for. The warrior who had lain down the plaque had been a likely-looking fellow, almost as big as Darabhar and apparently able to jump chest-high from a standing start while whirling his spear through a flourish-cut. The Summer Isles had no true equivalent to the tourney, Darabhar had told him, but perhaps he could introduce it.

XXX

Radalfos Solazzo knew full well the causes of his lack of contentment, but he still couldn't help but wonder at it. He had reached the pinnacle of power in Braavosi politics, receiving the hat and scepter of the Sealord at a younger age than any electee in the past century, despite the odds against his election being described by even his closest advisors as laughably long. He was not unpopular, not by any means, but he simply didn't have the name and fame, or the alliances, that were normally associated with those who clawed their way to the Sealord's chair. He had always been a man of moderation, in personal habits, business, and politics alike. He had grown his family's fortune the safe way, building on the web of customers and contracts his father had bequeathed him rather than chasing down elusive rumors of great profits that could only be had by bold action and the favor of the gods. 'Steady as she goes' had been his motto as a captain on his father's ships, and he had kept that motto when he ascended into the Sealord's Council, enough so that some had taken to calling him 'Solazzo the Slow'. The naturally-resulting japes had never grated on him as they might a more prideful man; he knew that none met their destruction so readily as those who rushed ahead heedlessly.

It was for that reason that he had been so aghast at the Sack of Myr.

He had never loved slavery, despite the accusations of his detractors. He might have called slaveowners friends, before the wars broke out, but he had always been mindful that slavery was not just economically questionable but socially unsound; from considering only a certain subset of people to have only monetary value to applying that view to all of humanity was but a short step, and a potentially disastrous one for anyone with any access to power. The greatest atrocities were always committed when people weren't viewed as being entirely and equally human. Look at Valyria. But burning out the pollution of slavery by setting the whole world on fire, condemning the good along with the bad? That was the act of a madman, not a hero.

So he had joined the Whales, even though Robert the Bloody's wars had been far more successful than any man of any wisdom had foreseen. He was willing to admit that there was some satisfaction to seeing the slaver cities proved to be the empty shells that they were; it had long been a tenet of Braavosi civic belief that slavery hollowed a city, rotting away the virtue of its citizens until even the masters were slaves to cowardice and greed. But the Sack of Myr, and then the Destruction of Tyrosh, had horrified him. There had been men and women in those cities that he had known for thirty years or more, with whom he had shared both triumphs and disasters, whose children he had played with, and Robert the Bloody and his band of murderers had killed them like rats and divided their goods for spoil. It was simply unbecoming of any man who claimed to be civilized to act with such mindless savagery. Even the Dothraki were not so blind to reason. It was one of the reasons that he had, privately of course, welcomed the news of the Expulsion; it was a fitting penance for the Commune's sins in facilitating the massacres of Myr and Tyrosh, and hopefully it would be a sharp enough blow to bring the Commune to its senses.

It had certainly been sharp enough to force old Antaryon's resignation, and open the way for his own candidacy, which he had advanced by walking the knife's edge. He would not, he had made known, countenance the ideas of his more extreme fellows among the Whales to relax the First Law in the Commune's possessions overseas, or pressure the Kingdom of Myr to return certain frontier zones to the slavers. To do that would be to spit on the graves of the brave men who had done so much to advance the cause of Holy Freedom, and was not to be thought of. But neither would he countenance further adventurism; the Commune and its Andal allies had been unbelievably fortunate thus far, and a wise man did not push their luck further than it could go. If surrendering the progress made so far would be an insult to the valiant dead, then losing it through hastiness and lack of consideration would be folly. Not one step back in fear, but not one step further in rashness had been the slogan he had adopted, and the people had heard him.

As well they might. Seven years of blood and thunder were enough for one lifetime; let the next seven years be ones of repair and regrowth, in order to balance the ledger of blood. And not just for Braavos. King Stannis of Westeros might have beaten down all who had risen against him thus far, but his treasury needed peace as desperately as his soldiers did, in order to recover from the last three years of near-constant war. King Robert of Myr had also needed peace, however loath he might have been to admit it in public, in order to turn his kingdom into a proper state and not merely a landed army with no more than a fig's-leaf of true moral justification; Robert and his tame priests might fulminate about the holy mission of their kingdom as they liked, but Radalfos knew how little difference there truly was between a peasant farmer and an enslaved fieldhand. Fortunately, Braavos had been perfectly placed to profit from both kingdoms' period of enforced idleness. His own house currently held an array of highly-profitable contracts with Lord Stark in the North of Westeros, so much so that one of his cousins had become a resident agent in Winterfell, both to oversee those contracts and to offer financial and scholarly advice to Lord Stark, while another cousin had taken up residence in White Harbor. The cousin in Winterfell had even been engaged as an occasional tutor for Lord Stark's heir.

Even the slavers had seemed inclined to peace. The Lyseni were evidently restraining themselves to patrolling their own waters, except for their pet pirates, while the good sense shown by the Lorathi had been seconded by the bearded priests of Norvos. That alliance would not just have seen slavery driven out from yet another city-state, if more gradually than by force of arms, but it would have been just the thing to shore up the Commune's eastern flank. And nothing could have been better suited to demonstrate the viability of negotiation as an alternative to violence.

So the news that the pro-slavery faction in Norvos had pulled off a coup had made Radalfos want to strangle every idiot one of them with his bare hands. All the pieces so neatly lined up, and all dashed to pieces by one act of rash stupidity. His jaw clenched with renewed fury as he wished, with all the fervor of prayer, that the dead Voices and Tribunes be gnawed at by vermin in hell for eternity; why, in the names of all the gods, could they not have controlled their own buggering city? He spared a curse for the Tribune of Mercy, who had endorsed the coup. Whether he was sincere in his support or whether he was a captive in his own palace was irrelevant; the Sharks had wasted no time in declaring that the coup proved that negotiation with the slavers was a fool's errand. How could the slavers be negotiated with, when they had proven themselves willing and able to kill their own for daring to consider even gradual emancipation?

The Voice of Noom was also deserving of a curse or two, in Radalfos' opinion. The old man had managed to escape the purge of the abolitionist faction with a handful of followers and his lone surviving bodyguard, but instead of rallying a counter-coup or taking shelter in the Braavosi enclave the fool had fled the city, turning up three sennights later at the fort outside Ghoyan Drohe requesting asylum. And the idiot commandant of that border post overlooking the old ruins had not only been soft-hearted enough to grant it, but stupid enough to let it be known that the Titan would shelter anyone fleeing the tyranny of the slavers, whether slave or free. That was not a position that could simply be abandoned, even if the commandant who adopted it had absolutely no authority to do so and doubly not on behalf of the Sealord and the Council.

Hence the dilemma that so disturbed his equilibrium. He could not disavow the commandant's actions and retain a shred of honor, much less the support of the Sharks that had agreed to support his government after he ratified the Commune's de facto recognition of the Norvoshi government-in-exile that was forming in Ghoyan Drohe. At the same time, he could not fight the war he had all but declared on the new government of Norvos with that declaration of recognition; the treasury just wasn't in a position to fight such a war, especially given the suspicious and begrudging nature of the peace with the Lyseni and the new coldness the Ibbenese were displaying. So now he was faced with the same warm peace that the Kingdom of Myr was facing on its southern border; the frontier garrisons had already sent reports of skirmishes between rival Norvoshi factions in their border districts and standoffs with contingents of Norvoshi Common Guards that often seemed unsure of which way to jump, the whole affair being complicated by the raids being launched over the border by the Norvoshi exiles and by ad hoc warbands made up of the settlers that had been invited to colonize that frontier. On top of which, the Podesta of the enclave in Norvos had sent word that his office was being swarmed with more asylum seekers than the enclave could comfortably shelter and requested instructions as to whether he should negotiate an evacuation or start turning people away. Either way, he had added, the pro-slavery faction in Norvos was making increasingly virulent threats about smoking out traitors, and he doubted his ability to fend off any attack more serious than the average mob. It was the sort of fluid situation that could lead to either a new round of conquest that would expand Greater Braavos to the upper reaches of the Rhoyne, or to catastrophe.

Radalfos glanced at the fireplace of the Sealord's office, home to one of its more unusual decorations. The back wall of the hearth was etched and inlaid with a lighter stone than the brick that constituted the rest of the structure to show the skyline of Braavos, where it would be illuminated by the flames. Apparently some long-dead Sealord had ordered it made so, as a reminder to his successors of the consequences of failure. A reminder given new teeth by the events of the past years, and the attempt that the Tyroshi had made against the city.

Radalfos snarled. His plans for de-escalation might be dead and buried, but he had more cards in his hand than that. By all the gods, he vowed, he would not allow these mad wars to destroy his city and its liberties. Even if he had to fight them himself against every other corner of the world arrayed in arms against him. He emptied his glass of the last finger of brandy and rang a handbell for his secretary. There was much to do.

XXX

The Coup would mark a dark chapter in the annals of Norvoshi history, as the unusually bloodless politics of that most peculiar of cities were shattered by unprecedented violence. To make matters even worse, the violence was compounded by mutual incompetence. Although Norvoshi scholars and apologists for the faith of the Unspeakable One have attempted to characterize this as stemming from the innocence fostered by the classical Norvoshi approach to politics, the truth is rather less flattering; both sides were not only amateurish in both planning and execution, but they were also, to use a modern phrase, gun-shy.

That it was the abolitionists' fight to lose cannot be disputed. Later events and surviving primary sources both indicate that despite the rhetoric of the reactionaries, neither the common citizens of the city nor the Guards had much loyalty to the institution of slavery, especially if it came at the cost of domestic violence. If the abolitionist leaders had protected themselves better, or if the Voice of Noom had chosen to stand and fight rather than flee, it is entirely possible that the plotters would have faltered and the Coup smothered. As it was, the news that the Voice of Noom had fled the city sparked panic among his fellow abolitionists, with many either surrendering or choosing to join him in exile in the belief that the day was lost.

The plotters also made a number of serious errors. To begin with, they prioritized their targets by the rank they held rather than by their fervor for the cause of abolition. It was this that allowed Mycan Banderis, who held the position of Master Archivist at the time, to survive the attempt on his life by overpowering his would-be assassin and rally his juniors to follow him in a running fight to the Braavosi enclave, which resulted not only in his surviving the Coup but in his personal prestige skyrocketing. In addition, the slaughter of many public figures who were known to be moderates, or who only supported abolition on the basis of pragmatism, alienated many who would have otherwise have welcomed the maintenance of the status quo, even at the cost of significant bloodshed.

The most serious error of all that the plotters committed, however, was their claim that their actions were committed solely to maintain the position of peace and prosperity that Great Norvos had occupied for so many centuries. The sennights immediately after the Coup gave the lie to this protestation; not only did the plotters confiscate or sequester the property of many of their victims, but they proved unable to wholly control either the City or its further hinterland. The neighborhoods surrounding the Braavosi enclave quickly became a no-man's-land of ambuscades and skirmishes between abolitionist gangs who used the enclave as a base and their pro-slavery counterparts, while the further reaches of the Norvoshi hinterlands proved to be only conditionally loyal to the City at best. The settlements on the Upper Rhoyne and the Axe would straddle the fence until the arrival of abolitionist envoys supported by Braavosi regiments and galleys persuaded them to change sides. The villages of the Darkwash outright refused to acknowledge the coup, although at the same time they did not declare for the government-in-exile either, choosing instead to name themselves a 'free confederation'. Only the districts closest to the city, with the highest proportion of landed aristocrats (and, not coincidentally, of slave-worked plantations owned by those same aristocrats) were solidly behind the plotters.

Within a matter of months, the border between Braavos and Norvos resembled that between the Kingdom of Myr and Lys, with raid and counter-raid flying across the moorland. The stories of those raids are beyond the scope of this work and deserving of more clinical research than has been done heretofore, considering the legends that have sprung up around them, but a surviving letter of Sealord Solazzo from the period refers to the border country as 'a debatable land, where there is little law beyond that of the sword and the torch.'

It was this instability that put Norvos on the cyvasse board of the Slave Wars in earnest, despite the best intentions of slaver and abolitionist alike. The last holdout of the mores of the Free Cities had been caught in the whirlpool, and the Generation of Blood had finally become all-consuming . . .

- History for Dummies: The Generation of Blood