They moved in slowly, wary of a trap, every man there expecting arrows or bolts to suddenly fly out of nowhere to murder them.
They didn't.
And so, they began their work setting the ladder.
It was a ridiculously oversized piece of work, of wood and steel, over two hundred feet long.
It was hilariously impractical for a siege, being incredibly unstable and shaky. Not helping the matter was the awkward angle the ladder was set at to go over the moat, so horizontal that it almost seemed as if it was a makeshift bridge instead.
However, as the ladder was set, several men began ascending the ladder, one at a time, while others stood around the piece and held it steady.
No bolts sang from the top of the wall, nor did a stone drop.
Highgarden made no sound, as for the first time in it's ancient history, an invader from the stormlands successfully scaled it's second set of walls.
The mighty fortress that had been raised by the Gardeners had 3 sets of walls, every one of which had a massive moat. The outer set of walls were at 60 feet tall and had a massive moat surrounding it.
Overall the castle was composed of 3 different levels. In between the outer and second set of walls, was a massive maze of hedges and plants of the most beautiful plants imaginable. Between those and the second walls however was another set of walls, these ones 100 feet tall.
Through every wall, there was nothing but a single entrance through a closed gate and a drawbridge. If one were permitted to cross the second moat, one would go through a long tunnel that went sharply upwards.
That tunnel ended at the second level of the castle, at the same height as it's second walls.
Beyond that again, and surrounding the final set of walls was another moat, this one dug out directly from the stone the castle had been built into.
And only then, once one got past the final set of walls did one have access to the actual castle itself.
All of that would have been terrifying enough to take by storm, but it hardly ended there. For on the walls of the mighty fortress mighty and enormous trebuchets usually lined the walls, ready to take any besieger to hell with them if they could.
Add in countless murder holes, and round Towers, and it was a murder machine against any would-be invader.
It was a monster of a castle, the first of the great castles of Westeros, predating the Rock, Winterfell, Storm's End, and the Eyrie. It had withstood countless sieges, and through it's long, long history had only fallen to enemy forces Twice.
Larger than Winterfell, and with similarly monstrous defences, it's one and only weakness was it's size, as it took half a thousand men to man it's walls properly.
However, no matter how strong, a castle with no defenders was not hard to take.
And so, as the sun beamed down, the team of Stormlanders made their way up the walls, and across the moat. Slowly.
It was an eerie sight, as they reached to top, finding the gigantic trebuchets burned to cinders, and seemingly, not a soul alive in the fortress.
In fact, the only thing that greeted them in the enormous structure was the chirping of birds and the buzzing of insects.
Highgarden was utterly, and completely deserted, just as the reports had said.
The Tyrells had fled their home. Though before leaving they had stripped the entire castle of every valuable, every book, every piece of wood or metal that could be taken and carted by hand. They had also smashed every window, burned every wooden structure, put it's mighty and expensive trebuchets to the torch, and as a final insult, somehow managed to close all 3 gates behind them as they left.
Still, the castle was still there. Still ready and able to dominate the great plain.
Robert Baratheon Crow would now fly over the greatest fortress of the Reach.
The only question now, was where it's former occupants had gone?
I
"I keep telling you, this is madness, you utter fool!" The annoying Maester Donal proclaimed.
Daario snorted, as he rolled his eyes.
"No, what is madness here is that she was allowed to become with child at all. Look at her, such underdeveloped hips. Tsck, Tsck."
"I'm a woman grown, Daario." She replied, in a rather annoyed, but also tired tone. And by the gods she truly was.
"By your queer law mayhaps. The way of the human body, however, is quite different. Women should not become with child until their 17th year. It's only after that, that women are fully matured and ready for childbearing. It's no wonder so many of you Westerosi women die in childbirth."
He shook his head.
"Either way, it makes no matter. You are pregnant now, and this is reality we must work with."
"Yes, it is! And we must abandon your insane scheme of cutting open the queen's gut to deliver the child! This is reality! Not some queer, eastern fable!" Donal proclaimed hotly.
Daario was not perturbed.
Lyanna however, felt a sharp fear stab through her heart at the mention of the… Procedure.
"It is not a fable. I have done this procedure myself. And with surviving patients too."
Donal snorted.
"I have read about this procedure before in books. This was done on queen Alyssa, wife of Queen Aenys, and it killed her, you foolish charlatan!"
Of the maesters that Robert had sent to aid her, Donal was by far the most annoying.
The man was apparently very experienced in medicine, as well as helping with childbirth, but he was also incredibly against anything that fell out of his own experience.
As such, he'd come to hate, and denounce Daario, an old and withered healer from Braavos, who practiced other forms of healing, unknown to the Maesters.
Frankly speaking, Lyanna didn't care for either of them.
But what dominated her feelings right now was a mixture of being both incredibly irritated, and there being a... Void where her emotions should have been.
It swung a lot. Sometimes she felt anger, and wrath, where she would curse everyone and everything inside of her own mind(there weren't many to curse in the real world). Other times, all she felt was a depressed numbness, just thinking about everything she had learned.
Everything she had thought hard as stone was now cracking and sinking into the sand.
She had thought of her three guardians as her friends. Her companions, and stalwart shields.
Now… Well, she didn't know what to think.
She wanted to believe that they hadn't known, what… What had happened to her family.
She wanted the image she had of them as honorable knights and her close friends to be untarnished in her mind, even past their deaths.
But she didn't know. She would never know.
Had they known, and just not shared it with her? Had they kept these devastating news from her for these last months, after the messenger came to the tower.
Or had Rhaegar kept them as in the dark about the detail as he had kept her?
They had lived with her for her entire marriage, and other than going out to bring back food, neither she nor any one of them had had any contact with the outside world in all that time.
Not until the messenger had come, and had brought them news.
Rhaegar had spoken with him. Alone.
And when it was all told, he had come back to the tower and announced he would have to go north, to lead his father's army, that was facing the combined might of house Stark, Tully, Arryn, and Baratheon, that had risen in revolt.
When she had asked, "why?" He had hesitated for just a moment.
Then he had simply said that it was in response to them running off.
Robert wanted his bride back.
It was not untrue… But it was not the truth. The truth would hurt her. But he should have told her anyway.
Instead, he had lied to her face and kept her in the dark in order to make Robert look as bad as possible, then after consulting with his kingsguard(also alone) he'd donned his armor and headed north.
That stung. Hard.
What stung even worse, however, was the guilt, the horrible, all-consuming guilt.
Her father and brother were dead. They had died screaming and slowly.
Because of her.
In the nights, she wondered how anyone had found out about it.
Had Benjen told them, despite his promises? Had they been seen on the road, and someone had recognized her despite her disguise? Or had it been one of Rhaegar's friends that had spread the word?
Whichever it had been, the result was still the same. Her father and brother were dead.
She had once decided she would accept her father's scornful eyes and angry words. But only after she and Rhaegar emerged from hiding as husband and wife, with a child, a prince or princess to call her own.
She wasn't stupid. She understood the scorn she would face once they did. She could accept that though.
It was not the scorn of men that she feared, but that of the gods.
She had said her words before a heart tree, on the isle of faces, with the blessing of the green men.
What the seven or their worshippers cared about that, she neither cared, nor worried about. They could whine and rave whatever they wanted about polygamy, but the first men of old had kept more than one wife, as she had learned from the green men. And if her ancestors had done so, then there was nothing wrong with her husband doing so.
Not to mention that by the faith's own laws, the Targaryens were above the laws of common men anyway, and Torrhen Stark had bent his knee to a man with two wives. He had accepted it. Why shouldn't the realm do the same with Rhaegar?
Mayhaps it would have worked if the news that she had been "abducted" by Rhaegar hadn't come out.
But it had.
And her family had paid the price.
Storms… How had it all gone so, so wrong?
And then there were the things she didn't know.
How much did Eddard know? Had Benjen told him? If so, what did he think about it all?
The Eddard she had known would have set out personally to find her, to make certain she was safe, and to see her with her own eyes.
The thought that he would ever have sent men in his stead to do so would have seemed ludicrous to her.
Yet that was exactly what he had done.
Whether that meant he knew and was angry with her, she didn't know.
One thing she was absolutely sure of though, was that if he didn't know, she would NOT be able to tell him.
That brave, she was not.
Then there was Rhaegar and Robert.
Right now, she didn't know what to feel about Rhaegar.
Part of her still loved him dearly. Another part hated his gut for lying to her about WHY this rebellion had actually started. Almost as much as she hated herself.
And Robert… Gods knew how she felt about Robert.
She hated him, though she understood that doing so was… Was not fair.
Robert had not risen in revolt to recapture her and marry her by force. He'd risen in revolt to avenge her father and brother, that her goodfather had brutally executed without trial or justice.
At least with him, she had no conflicting feelings.
The king deserved everything that had happened to him.
Robert however… Well, from what she heard from Ethan and the other Northmen, he was a lot more noble than she had imagined, as he had set out to rally the Stormlands, avenge her family, and "rescue" her. It was quite a more noble picture than she'd gotten from her husband.
She still hated him though. However mixed feelings that she had about Rhaegar, and however angry she had been at him for lying to her, she had still loved the man dearly.
She would have to bite down that anger though.
Robert had proven ridiculously merciful regarding her soon-to-be-born child. She had to make certain he remained so.
If he became wroth by her refusing to marry him…
Well, it might be a pointless question anyway, depending on how accurate Daario was in his prediction.
She sighed, then motioned for Tywin, one of the Maesters to follow her out of the room, and away from Noye and Daario.
The man, surprisingly young and handsome for a Maester, followed without a word out into the corridor, and quietly closed the door behind him.
She went over to a nearby window and looked out across the red mountains in all their glory, their scarlet sides giving them the look of cliffs of blood.
"How likely is the… Operation that Daario wants to perform, to kill me?"
Tywin sighed, then stepped up to beside her, looking up at the mountains as well.
"I shall not lie to you… Nor shall I give you falsehoods on the matter. The answer is high."
"How high? Are we talking one-third, half, or two-thirds?"
Tywin studied her face. Though what he was looking for, she could not tell.
"Not as high as Noye would have it. The operation is a long, long known procedure amongst the Maesters. However, it is rarely performed, as common wisdom says it's impossible for a mother to survive the process."
"Daario sings a different story."
"Yes… In the free cities, the process, known there as a Saarthor delivery, has been… Tried a lot more. The man it is named after… Saarthor did a lot of experiments on pregnant slaves with the process."
She felt sick at the thought of pregnant slaves being cut open and experimented on by an uncaring master. It was a vile thought.
"What he discovered, is that it is actually possible to achieve the process, and not only have the mother survive but also be able to have further children with no issues."
"There is a "but" here I'm guessing."
"Yes… The simple fact of the matter is, that while the process has come a long way in the east since the days of Queen Alyssa… The process remains exceedingly dangerous. The most experienced man regarding this process, a gelder from Qohor, wrote that even he, a master at the operation, still lost 4 out of every 15 women he did it with."
4 out of 15. A bit less than one-third. Those weren't too horrible odds.
The relief must have been visible on her face.
"Keep in mind your grace, that Daario, though he is skilled, is not what I would call a… Professional healer. The man worked in brothels, with the occasional rich clientele. You should not expect quite that good odds."
Great. Perfect.
"And we have to do this damn operation?"
Tywin hesitated, then answered.
"Unfortunately, yes. Daario is not wrong. Your hips are not fully developed. You are tall for your age, but your body is not fully grown yet. Most like you will Not survive a traditional birth."
"So, what you're saying is that if Daario wasn't here, I'd have no chance at survival?"
"No, not really."
Another thing to add about how conflicted she felt about Robert. If she survived, it would only be because of the fact he'd sent this man to aid her.
"Also your grace… If you do survive, you should know that not only would you have to spend at least half a year recovering, but…"
"Yes? What more bad news do you have for me?"
"There will also be a scar. A long, and large scar across your lower stomach.
She snorted.
A scar.
Tens of thousands of people were dead because of her. Brandon was dead because of her. Her father was dead because of her. Ethan had been tortured because of her. Rhaegar, Gerold, Arthur, and Oswell were dead because of her.
Hell, the poor servants of this tower were dead because of her, having been butchered quietly in the night with that valyrian sword of the Boltons by one of the Bolton men as revenge for the death of his son at Arthur's hands.
So many people were dead because of her.
If the only thing that happened to her, was that she got a scar, then it was far, far less than she deserved.
I
Hoster Tully surveyed the maesters that were currently busy measuring the land, and drawing up maps for the coming city streets, sewer, and castle of his family's coming capital.
Robert Baratheon had many, many plans for Westeros under the Baratheon regime.
And for the most part, he'd been a big fan of most of them. He and Arryn had both wanted a kind of permanent council, where the Wardens and Lord Paramounts had more say in the governing of the realm.
Robert's "Parliament" wasn't quite what they had had in mind, but it would serve.
Once every 3 years every lord of the realm above the rank of a landed Knight would come to the capital to discuss new laws, taxes, and plans for the nation.
Robert hadn't been entirely forthcoming with what kind of laws would be the prerogative of the king, and which would require the majority of lords to be on board with it. Other than the topic of taxes, Robert had been rather vague on the subject.
Truthfully, he wasn't entirely happy with the fact that every lord would have a say in the governing of the realm. He would much have preferred only the lord paramounts and wardens getting a say in the governing of the realm.
But it certainly was still better than what they had had before under the dragons.
He also had other plans for the land beyond this great council of his.
Roads, infrastructure, knightly order, canals, and City charters. So, so many bloody city charters.
Frankly speaking, the thought of his already overmighty vassals getting MORE power had terrified Hoster.
Robert however had already planned for that. And his plan was to make house Tully far, far stronger and richer than any Riverlander house had ever been before them.
The plan was simple. Robert would have two massive Canals constructed that would link the Trident and the Gods eye to the south, and the Trident and the Mallister bay(formerly known as Ironman's Bay) to the north.
Trade would flow through these two canals with abandon, and so long as they managed to harness that trade flow they would rise above all.
And so Robert had ordered him to found a new city on the spot of land where the northern branches of the Trident parted.
Anyone who wanted to travel from the Trident to Mallister Bay, or from the Trident to the Gods eye had to come through the city to get the paperwork they needed to make it through Robert's Canals.
It would by that nature, it was destined to become one of the greatest cities in all of Westeros, and through that, turn it's Lord and master into one of the richest and most powerful men on the continent. Mayhaps even the second greatest, only to the king.
Making it all even better, was that as the master of the Trident, he was incredibly well situated to take full advantage of the King's new watermill smithies.
And with the canal that allowed easy transport to and from the Iron Islands and their inexhaustible iron deposits, the Riverlands were poised to rise above all other regions of Westeros, only short of the new, royal Crownlands.
Not to mention that situated as it was, the city would be supremely defensible, with water on two sides, and city walls on the third.
Hell, he was planning on digging a giant moat as well, along with a smaller wall further north as well. Any attacking army would have to cross the river and smash themselves against his walls, or march around all the way north, and either go around the blue fork or cross at the twins, then lay siege to the city from the northern side.
And while they did that, they also had to control every single bank around the city in order to cut it off from any way to resupply.
It was Riverrun, writ large.
Yes, it was all going swimmingly for house Tully.
Hell, there was even a bit of petty revenge on his part, as the spot allowed him to create a ferry across the green fork.
He'd make that a free service, both to help facilitate trade, but also to make certain every farmer on the east bank would go through the regional capital, rather than through the Twins. Let that bastard Walder Frey Suck on that!
Yes… It was all perfect.
Except for one, tiny thing.
"Seems the planning is going well, brother."
He felt his mood sour instantly.
"Indeed. I've made sure to be diligent in my duties. Unlike others, I can mention."
Brynden trotted up beside him on that black beast of his.
"I resent that remark. I am here on Robert's orders after all."
"Yes… You listen to your king. Unlike your elder brother. Your Lord through most of your life by all the laws of Gods and men."
"One cannot force a man to marry another without their leave Hoster. By all the laws of the Gods at least."
"Mayhaps not. But if you haven't forgotten, Our words are Family, Duty, and Honor. You've got that final part down, I'll grant you… But it was your Duty to marry for the good of the house. A duty you failed bloody spectacularly!"
The Blackfish sighed.
"Does it matter? House Redwyne is no longer lord of the Arbor. In the Long run, that blasted marriage didn't matter."
"If you had married the girl, You would now be the new lord of the Arbor. Instead… It went to a bloody smuggler."
"Instead I have a white cloak and am now the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. I'd call that a good tradeoff."
Hoster scowled at the pride in his voice, but before he could respond, one of the Maesters unexpectedly came up to them.
Hoster hadn't even been looking in their direction as they talked.
"My lord, we've discovered a bit of rocky soil on the western bank."
He quickly turned to look at the man, glad for a distraction from his brother's face.
At least until the Maester continued.
"We'll need a team of diggers with pickaxes to clear it out if we want Blackfish's sewers to run where we want them to go."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his brother force himself to put on a stoic expression. He knew Brynden too well though. He was infuriatingly happy about the fact that Robert had named this city, Hoster's coming capital, after him.
History would remember the grand capital of the Riverlands… As Blackfish. Named after the black sheep of the Tully flock.
I
Laying siege to a city that wanted to surrender was a weird, awkward thing.
Ashara had led fort her army from Dorne, marching almost unopposed along the plains.
They had captured a whole score of small, knightly towers, alongside 3 castles of actual relevance. They had taken the large town of Sunhouse and it's castle, found the formidable fortress known as The Ring abandoned by it's owner, and then finally taken the three towers.
All nice and relatively clean, and within the rules of war.
They had sacked no settlements and put no orchard to the torch.
It was quite the difference between them and the Blackmonts, but it was what it was.
The Blackmonts were raiders, and the Daynes were knights. It was their nature to be cruel. Complaining about how wretched the vulture was, was like the Starks complaining about the Boltons flaying people alive.
And unlike the Boltons and Starks, the Daynes of Starfall made no claim of sovereignty over the Vulture. What they did to the north was not their responsibility.
After taking the Three Towers, her host had marched north. Towards the real target. Oldtown.
The city had been left dry of manpower, having had almost every able-bodied man taken for the war, only to die either at the Trident or at Storm's end.
It was as such, defenceless.
Relatively speaking.
It still had massive walls, and defences far, far too strong for them to storm.
They had recognized that, and as such, they had made sure to take enough lumber with them to make proper trebuchets.
This would boil down to a siege.
Or so it had seemed.
But when they had come to the city, they had been greeted by a surprising sight.
Robert's new banner flying above the city.
At first, they had thought that Robert had beaten them to the punch, but that was not the case.
As it turned out, the Hightowers had left their ancient stronghold. Or so the man who'd come out to treat with them had said.
The man in charge had been an old greybeard by the name of Samwell, who had glowered at her like she was some vile demon.
It was a look that Ashara Dayne was not used to seeing from men.
"Gone? Gone where? The Arbor?"
"They went east. Where east, we weren't told. And even if we were, what does it bloody matter to you?"
Well, they might be attacking her home while she was away.
But something told her that if the Hightowers, one of the oldest lordly families in all of Westeros, had really abandoned their truly ancient stronghold, it had not been to stop at Dorne.
After that, she'd asked him to open his gates for them, if they really were Robert's men, and join them in subduing the rest of the former Hightower lands.
The man had laughed.
"Bugger that. We do recall "The Starfire" in Oldtown. You ain't burning down the city on my watch. I ain't gonna let you filthy dornish wenches enslave our women, and geld our boys."
That had almost led to a brawl, which could have turned catastrophic. But she had defused the situation with calm words.
And when she'd asked for whom he'd open his gates, he'd simply replied "Proper andal knights. Or heathen Northmen. Or whoever the hell king Robert sends down to take charge here. But not to you bloody lot, let me tell you that. Oldtown has suffered enough from you bloody snakes. You ain't getting inside of here, as long as old Samwell Walls has the charge here."
And that had been that.
Now they were at what one called an impasse.
Every single one of the men she'd brought along knowledgeable in warfare had told her they could not risk pushing farther with Oldtown at their rear. Not when the city might turn hostile and take them in the back.
They might also send a force south and attack their garrison at three towers.
And so, they'd had to either retreat back or begin what might be the most awkward siege in Westeros history.
In fact, calling it a siege might be an overstatement.
What it boiled down to was that they had taken control over the roads, and dug pits, and set sharpened stakes around their camps, just in case there was a sortie.
There wasn't. Not on the first day, and not on the tenth.
Traders or farmers were let through, though their goods were searched and they were forced to surrender any form of weaponry they might carry before they let them through.
They didn't actually want to take the city, not when it had pledged to Robert, but given it was far, far easier to commission supplies here around one of the 3 richest and most fertile areas in the entire Reach, and they needed to make sure that no army poured out from it's gates, the choice between here and the Three Towers had been easy.
There was one other advantage to being here though.
News. The folk they stopped at the roads were eager to chat, and talk, and they did bring news. Talk of Robert's great host, of the entire Reach having seemingly fallen to the massive invasion from the east… News of Blackmont, which seemed to be the most common reason people were fleeing south...
And also talks of a siege up North on the ancient fortress of Starpike.
Led by the newly minted Prince in The North.
The first time she'd been told about it, her heart had almost stopped.
It had brought forth a surge of painful, fresh memories.
Memories of what should've been a happy day, despite the war, only for it to turn to ash, after a long, long, and painful night of struggles and pain.
Though her body had recovered… Her soul had not, despite all the comforting words of the people she had grown up alongside.
It wasn't as if she blamed the… Prince for it all. She didn't. But the fact that he was there, so relatively close to her was… Well, it brought so many mixed feelings to her mind.
Bitter feelings mostly.
She had enjoyed herself at Harrenhal. It had been a wondrous time for all. A tourney unlike any she had ever experienced in Dorne and the Valley she had grown up in.
And at the tourney, she had met a wolf.
He had been the true highlight of it all.
She had invited him to come south and visit her at Starfall… Once his brother's wedding was done and over with of course.
That he was so close, just opened her wounds, the thoughts of roads that would never be taken now, dancing through her head.
And to make it all the worse, she still didn't know what had happened to Arthur.
Her brother was still in hiding. Probably at that damned tower, doing who knew what.
And the rest of her family… Well, they were now at the Red Keep, with a sword above their necks. Their lives depended upon her, and her effort here in the Reach.
It was amazing how just a year ago, all had seemed right in the world, and she and everyone had been full of hopes and dreams.
Now, after everything, it seemed like the entire world was a dull grey, and any feelings she used to have had disappeared into nothing.
Leaving only a… Void. It was hard to remember that there had ever been such a thing as happiness at all.
That there would ever be good times again.
Something had changed in Westeros. An era was about to come to an end. And what followed was only… Uncertainty.
I
The old whore looked at him with a decidedly neutral look.
"Only 9042? I was under the impression you bred and trained Unsullied in the tens of thousands."
Kraznys mo Nakloz snorted.
This barbaric, foolish western sow.
He would have preferred to speak openly, but alas, the old whore spoke both Ghiscari and Valyrian.
"My 'lady', training our glorious unsullied is no small task. We train them by the tens of thousands, yes, but only one-third survive their training. First we-" "I am well aware of how you train them. That concerns me little at the moment. What I want are numbers. How many are currently in training?"
Kraznys was annoyed. GREATLY annoyed by the tone of the Western whore. She could use a whip across the face to teach her her place.
But she was a customer, so instead, he forced a smile and answered. We currently have some 16 000 in training that has been cut, but only 2500 of those are even approaching earning their caps, to do so they must-" "I know how you train Unsullied aye, as I have told you, what...? 14 times now? One would think a businessman would recall numbers well enough."
Another pang of rage went through his mind, but he forced himself to remain calm. If he screwed up this bargain, it would not go well for him with the Good Masters.
A month ago, a massive armada of several hundred warships and countless smaller vessels had shown up at the shore of Slavers Bay, all laden with incredible riches. In particular, there had been more Wine than all the lands of the Ghizcari had consumed in the last half-century.
There were huge amounts of coin as well, and many, many other things of great value.
Their leader, an ugly old crone of a woman that looked as if she was past her hundredth year, fancied herself as the new Namyria, having taken her fleet east to conquer a realm in "The eastern lands" as she said.
And for that, she had come here, to Astapor, for the finest soldiers in the world.
"Barely 9000 men will not do. I must have ALL of them. Every unsullied in training."
"We cannot do such a thing!" He protested. "We only sell unsullied in a century or a thousand, and ONLY after they are-" "I am not planning to return to this city to buy more slaves, warriors or not. We'll deal with their training ourselves."
"The good masters-" "Will get the same price for every unsullied in training as they'll get for fully trained ones. I trust that will be a bargain they'll accept?"
She truly was an insolent wench this one. Talking as if she had any real authority. Though truth be told, her "Knights" were even worse. There were lots of tales about the power and danger of the Westerosi knights.
The men in plated steel however struck him as complete cowards, the way they constantly glanced to the side, and the way they moved spoke of men that were expecting an attack at any time.
"The good masters might agree to such a bargain, though I have little doubt they would prefer to make this bargain directly, mayhaps we can arrange a meeting-" "I think not. Making a deal through an intermediary works just fine for me. Not to mention I have very little interest in tasting your food. I much prefer eating at my own table, thank you very much."
He almost struck her. Almost. Instead, he grit his teeth, took a deep breath, and plastered on the most forced smile of his life, and said.
"As you prefer. In that case… I shall take your offer to the good masters. The same price we discussed the last time… For every single slave, we sell you, regardless of age?"
"Yes. And once you've consulted with your masters, please be a good little boy, and do hurry back quickly. I want this over with as quickly as possible. After all… There is an empire to be made."