Author's Note

I do not own A Game of Thrones.

The three of them, Grey Worm, and Daario Naharis met in what had become the planning and preparations tent in the morning. Missandei hovered in the background, ready to provide refreshments. Aegon glanced over the map. "Where?"

Naharis had mentioned earlier an entrance to the city likely to be only lightly guarded, if indeed it was guarded at all. He laid his hand on the map. "There. It's a back gate. My men use it when they visit Yunkai's bedslaves."

"Your men, but not you," Visenya said.

"I have no interest in slaves. A man cannot make love to property."

She'd give it to him, he knew how to lay it on heavy.

"This is where we enter the city. Very few guards, and the ones there are know me. They'll let me inside."

Aegon shook his head. "We can't sneak an army through a back gate."

Rhaenys studied the map. "But perhaps we won't need to. Their soldiers are slaves. We tell them their freedom is theirs if they surrender the city."

"The Masters won't fall for that."

"The Masters don't have to. Two hundred thousand slaves in Yunkai Aegon."

Visenya saw Naharis raise an eyebrow at Rhaenys's use of Aegon's name. To almost everyone other than them of course he was still Jaemar, first of his name.

She smiled.

That was most likely what he would be crowned as, for who would believe their tale? They would listen and think them mad, to be claiming to be the conquerors long since dead and burnt, their ashes consigned to the wind and sea.

"How many Masters and freemen?"

"Perhaps ninety thousand, your grace," Missandei offered.

Rhaenys smiled. "The slaves would have the numbers."

Naharis gave one of his smug nods. "I kill the guards. I take your two best men and lead them through the backstreets, which I know well, and open the front gates." He shot Aegon a self-satisfied look. Aegon resisted the urge to bare his teeth. They needed the man onside after all.

"Then comes the army. Once the walls are breeched the city will fall in hours."

Those walls were Yunkai's primary defence.

In fact, with the Second Sons now under their command, those walls were Yunkai's only defence.

They had the slave soldiers of course, but as Rhaenys said, they were likely to defect or surrender once they realised the situation.

This plan, however, trusting Naharis…

"How do we know you won't betray us?" Visenya asked. "You could lead our men to the slaughter. The Wise Masters would pay you your gold, and you won't have to share it since your Captains are already indisposed."

"You have a sharp mind your grace, but the Second Sons are sworn to your aid."

Rhaenys turned to Grey Worm. "You command the Unsullied and would be entering the city with him. What do you think?"

Aegon hid his grimace by staring at the map. Grey Worm only gazed at Rhaenys, stricken.

"You are a leader now. Do you trust him?" she asked.

"I trust him," he replied.

Of course, Aegon was fairly sure Grey Worm would trust a wildcat or a direwolf if it said it would give him his freedom.

"Then we strike tonight," Rhaenys announced.

Aegon bit back a sigh and a snarl. "Grey Worm and I will be accompanying you through the gate."

Visenya gave him a sharp look. "You're needed to command the army."

"The Unsullied can follow orders, and the Dothraki know how to pillage without being commanded. And we need to send someone we trust with this Sellsword."

Visenya gazed at him. "Do you trust me?"

"I cannot let you enter a situation like that."

Not again; never again.

"It makes the most sense. You lead the army from the front; I'll let them in from the back." She traced her fingers over the map of the city. "Scissor formation, just like we used to do."

Except then they had fully grown dragons, dragons four times and more bigger than they were now, and would tackle the enemy from the air with fire and black death.

She was talking about entering on foot, with a slave soldier and a man who kept undressing her with his eyes!

"No."

"Aegon."

"Visenya."

He saw Naharis raise an eyebrow.

"You're being stubborn and pigheaded."

"I don't know what it is you feel you have to prove."

Visenya flinched. "You're my baby brother. I won't let you put yourself in that situation."

He scowled at her turning his own words back on him and laid his hands on the table. "You can lead the army. But I won't allow you to enter that city."

Her lips twisted in a snarl of a smile. She seized his tunic and dragged him to the back of the tent, slipping through the flap to the storage area.

"You know it makes more sense."

"For you to die instead of me?"

"He wants Rhaenys and I. He's no use for you. If he turns on us, he's more likely to kill you and take out the competitor than he is to kill us."

He should have known. Visenya was hardly renown for her great acts of heroism and self-sacrifice.

"Very well," he conceded.

Visenya left with Naharis and Grey Worm shortly before it started getting dark and all Aegon could do was wait.

Wait, and worry.

During the conquest, of course, his sisters had flown on their own.

He could never have conquered Westeros without their aid in bringing some of the Kings to kneel.

But this was different.

This wasn't their world anymore.

Their world had gone, passed by in the dust and ash of three hundred years, and in its place was this new shadowland far away from everything they had once called home.

Aegon had never let either of his sisters stray too far. Even when Visenya was married (sold) to Drogo he knew where she was, he knew she was safe, he knew Drogo's bloodriders would fight for her.

Now she was alone with a man they couldn't trust and an untested soldier in a city they only knew from the distant talk they'd heard about.

He couldn't protect her.

Rhaenys danced over to his side. Insanely, he felt a burning burst of fury deep in his stomach at the sight of her. If it wasn't for her and her obsession with those accursed slaves-

"She can protect herself Aegon."

He gazed at Yunkai and its yellow walls and hoped she was right.

Visenya tucked herself out of sight as Naharis approached the back gate. Grey Worm stood behind him, his armour covered by a thick brown travelling cloak and his helmet discarded back at camp. The guards greeted Naharis like an old friend, laughing and clapping his shoulder as they let him through.

They were still smiling when the man cut their throats.

"Quickly your grace," he called.

She snarled at his presuming to give her orders – her, when she was a dragon and there was only one who could command her (and that person was long gone, taken by some unknown enemy while she was trapped outside, screaming and unable to help).

This time the enemy would feel her flames.

Rhaenys waited, watching as Aegon rode to take his place at the head of the army. Had she been right to push this, she wondered?

(and then her mind whispered two hundred thousand your grace, and her own voice said we must be here for a reason)

They could have bargained with Eraz, taken whatever ships they had to offer. It was ships they needed, ships they wanted to return to Westeros, to take their army across the sea to fight the ice, ships they came here for-

(two hundred thousand)

And her siblings could get hurt; they could be killed.

Over what?

A city not their own in a land they didn't know because slaves (people, her mind said, they were people) needed their help.

The Breakers of Chains, the former slaves from Astapor called them, The Whip Breakers, the ones who set us free.

(we gave you your freedom, Aegon said, but you must fight to keep it)

They were here, and they asked themselves why, when she could remember falling and dared not ask her siblings, they were here, and they asked themselves why, when they had conquered Westeros three hundred years ago and it was written in the history books, they were here, and they asked themselves why, they wanted a reason-

And yet her siblings could die.

There was little resistance on the backstreets. Few people were about, mostly leering men and whores looking for easy coin. Several of them approached Naharis or Grey Worm with a coy smile. Visenya kept her hood up carefully over her telltale spun silver hair, though she did notice a young slave girl with the Valyrian features, most likely an import from Lys, outside one of the whorehouses. She made a mental note to keep an eye out for her later.

They ran into one guard patrol, which was swiftly and almost too easily dispatched of. The bodies were dumped in a nearby alley. Visenya fingered her sword, awaiting the ambush that never came as they approached the main gates. Those were more heavily guarded with highborn warriors in yellow tunics and cloaks sewn with copper disks, but Yunkai was an economic power, not a military one.

They fell quickly, with no time to even ring the bells in warning, and the gates swung open.

Naharis grinned a leering grin. "What did I tell you your grace?"

They needed the Second Sons to not stab them in the back, Visenya told herself as she resisted the urge to rip his throat out.

Aegon sat at the head of the army astride his large chestnut horse, his silver hair beneath a helm of black and red, Blackfyre in his hand.

(and he remembered flying into battle, bathing fire on his enemies, but that was then and this was now, here in this strange land)

He led the Unsullied into the city, flanked by some of the Dothraki cavalry. Most of the khalasar remained behind the foot troops, waiting on his command.

He suspected it wouldn't come to that.

Yunkai would submit before being subjected to the Dothraki horde.

And it did.

Aegon looked out at the slave soldiers before him, hard, sullen faces with sunken eyes, and told them their freedom was theirs if they would throw down their weapons.

The first spear hit the ground five seconds later.

Yunkai was theirs.

And yet while their so-called Wise Masters lived they would lust and desire after the power and money that was theirs and Rhaenys's precious slaves would be in danger.

Aegon looked across the city at the tall, steeped pyramids.

"Kill the Masters!" he shouted, echoing a command given once before. "Kill any man or woman who carries a whip but let the children live and strike the chains from any slave you meet! Secure the ships in the harbour!"

The Unsullied surged as one and the first man fell two minutes later.