Special thanks to the folks on pa-atreon for making this possible. Now without further ado let's get into it.
My first order of business as the King of Astapor was putting out the fires I'd started during my ascension. I'd detained every ship and prevented anyone from leaving the city. News of this would get out eventually but I needed to have things in order before then.
Fortunately, there wasn't anyone important visiting Astapor when I'd performed my coup. I'd also freed the rest of the slaves. I could have held off on doing so till my rule was more entrenched or till things had begun to settle down at least but I decided to just get it over with.
It was chaos. I had to eliminate most of the wealthy merchants in the city. I'd sorely miss them when it came to restarting the economy but they were much too dangerous. People didn't just adapt to losing power. They tried to regain that power and I had no interest in being couped a few weeks after my own coup.
The former slaves were for the most part grateful to me for freeing them. Those who weren't grateful were scared. Greybeard had reported to me that a good portion of them were scared of what the future would hold. Of how they would be fed, clothed, and sheltered without their masters to handle things for them.
That was why I stood where I did. I was at the same stadium I'd begun my coup in. This was the most central location in the city and the crowds stretched for miles. Everyone in the city had shown up to listen to this.
I cleared my throat and then began my speech. I'd written it ahead of time so I had a small army of criers reading out the speech from various points around the city. Everyone in the city should be able to hear it at least.
"Free People of Astapor. I am Theon Greyjoy. I'm sure most of you have heard about me. A year ago, I came to see the splendour of the great city of Astapor and all I found was disappointment. The rot had taken over this city, and I took it upon myself to clear this city of that rot. There are no slaves in Astapor. This is the law. I know you are worried about the future but every one of you who is unable to find food, clothing, shelter, or employment should come to the Great Palace of Astapor. None of you shall be left without food to eat, clothes to wear, or a place to sleep. This I swear to you as the First King of Astapor. To those who remain worried, all I say is watch me."
The crowd started to chant my name as I left the podium. Greybeard's boys had come through. I doubted most of them had their worries truly put to rest but that should prevent them from doing something drastic in the meantime.
I took a horse and rode through the city with my small guard of unsullied. I had some of the soldiers shower the citizens with gold coins as we passed. With most of the merchants gone, the gold was worthless, but they still fought to grab the coins either way.
I was back in my new office and thanked any god that listened for Astapor's former masters. They had enough food stores to last the whole city for three months and the food I'd seized from the merchants would last for another three.
With about six months to solve the food problem, I had some breathing room. The first thing I found myself doing after going through the numbers was asking my new secretary, a former slave that had performed similar duties for Kraznys to secure me a meeting with whoever was in charge of the farmers.
I wasn't even surprised to find out that it was one of the 'good masters'. I just had her find the most experienced slave that had been 'employed' on the farms.
It took him two hours to arrive at my office. I watched him walk in with a genial smile on my face. He was muscular, not overly so but muscular enough that I could tell he was no stranger to hard work. His formerly pale skin had been tanned to a sickly brown after what looked to be years in the sun.
"Welcome, my good man," I said as I stood up to welcome him. He bowed and introduced himself as Dremo.
"Dremo, do you know why I've called you in here today?" I'd normally just go straight to business, but I needed my subordinates to say good things about me. No need to offend this man by being unnecessarily curt.
"No, your grace. I suspect it has something to do with the farms though." He was smart or at least not a complete idiot. I could work with that.
"Yes, it does. Much of the records of the farms perished during the revolution so I would like some first-hand details on how the farms are run, how many workers you have, how much land is farmed, where the land is, that sort of thing." I hadn't seen any farms in the city so I suspected they were outside the city's walls.
"I can provide that, your grace. The farms were run by one of the good masters. He had three thousand slaves working the farms. We work on several acres of land towards the East and West walls of the city. We usually produce enough food for about fifteen thousand. The weather is unpredictable, and the soil is hard. Sometimes we produce much less than that." Bad news all around then. Not unexpected news though. Everyone knew that the cities in slaver's bay couldn't produce enough food to sustain themselves.
"Why only that land?"
"The soil towards the north wall is unfertile, your grace and the sea lies to the south."
"I see," I said while stroking the beard I'd started growing in Valyria. It had taken a couple of months but now I was sporting a semi-respectable beard.
"If the land to the north became fertile, would you be able to farm it?"
"Your grace, we do not have enough men to farm that land. Even the three thousand men working the east and west of the city are overworked. The land is hard to farm and it is very labour intensive."
"I see. Thank you for your counsel, Dremo." My plan for the food situation had come together in my head. The first step was the fertility rituals I'd have to perform on all the acres.
Luckily, I didn't have to transport the sacrifices to the farmland directly. With as many lives as I was sacrificing, the fertility blessing would cover the whole city and the outskirts of the city for miles.
I went down to the cells and started my planning. This wasn't a ritual that required any runes. It was more a prayer than a ritual and I had faith it would work as intended. A full fertility blessing for both plants and animals within the city limits.
I had every one of the guards leave the makeshift prison and I started the distasteful work I'd given myself. There were over two hundred souls within the cells under the palace. It was not built to contain these many people and it showed. There were at least a dozen people crammed into cells designed for single occupants.
If I didn't kill them today, then they'd probably die of disease before the week's end. I performed my assignment slowly and methodically. I used a valyrian still dagger and slashed the throats of every prisoner in a cell as I moved from cell to cell.
Some of them begged some of them cried, some tried to bribe or bargain, some tried to escape, and some tried to fight. It mattered not. Death came for them all. When the last soul was dead, I turned to the skies above and shouted my prayer in ancient archaic valyrian, the ancestor to the high Valyrian I'd learned in Westeros.
I didn't need to see any effects to know my spell worked. It was like I felt something snap into place in reality. Like something beyond my ken had moved through the cells and judged my sacrifice before granting my prayer.
That wasn't relevant right now though. With a successful ritual behind me, I walked out of the cells and towards my room. I needed a shower. Thinking of my room made me realize I needed to choose a place to live. The grand palace was more of a seat of government than an actual place to live.
I ignored the unsullied that tried very hard to avoid staring at my blood-soaked form as I made the journey to the bath that I knew was waiting for me.
I sat in my office the day after the ritual with another project in mind. I started drawing as the idea formed in my mind's eyes. I saw it come to life on parchment and instantly saw a dozen ways to improve it, and that's what I did. It took me three iterations before I finally produced a design I was proud of.
I had Tiwa, my secretary, find me the head o the carpenters and blacksmith's guild. If I wanted the seed drill I'd come up with to be implemented, I needed to know if it was something that could be produced with the materials and expertise I had on hand.
Three hours later, I watched both men staring at the drawings in front of them with shock on their faces. "This is amazing, your grace," The carpenter said with a look of awe on his face.
"Absolutely genius" The blacksmith concurred.
"I know what it is. What I want to know is whether you can build it or not." Both men turned to each other and had a silent conversation with only their eyes. It had been a surprise for me to note that both men were very close friends. Even more than very close friends if I was reading their body language correctly.
"Yes, your grace. We can build it." The carpenter spoke out. He was the more talkative of the duo.
"Good. That's what I needed to hear. I need you to make a thousand of them." I had no idea how many seed drills I needed but I much preferred having too much to too little.
"A thousand is a bit too much, your grace. Even if we end up farming the entire area outside the city. We'll only need about three hundred of them if they work as they should." Hmm. I wasn't sure but I decided to trust the carpenter's advice. I remembered how the machine looked and a bit of how it worked, but I had no experience with actual farming.
Three weeks later and much of my plans were showing fruits. The first batch of seed drills was going to be rolled out for use on the farms today. Since then, I've managed to impose order on the city and get started on some projects of mine.
Neighbouring manses belonging to two of the good masters were being torn down to build my very own castle. It wouldn't be as large as the castles in Westeros but it was going to be more beautiful. I'd make sure of that. That wasn't the priority right now though so the construction was going to be very slow.
We'd also debated opening up the city to allow the visiting sailors and merchants to leave and I was very hesitant to do it. It wasn't until my small council reminded me that holding them any longer was going to give them even more information to spread about the state of the cities. Since then, I'd let every one of them leave and I knew that things would come to a head soon.
Essos was a relatively stable region when compared to Westeros. Taking over a whole city like I just did wouldn't be encouraged. I hoped that I could rely on Bravos' support since I eradicated slavery but I wasn't going to hold my breath.
Speaking of slavery, the lost slaves as I'd taken to calling those who had been left high and dry by their former masters were being efficiently assimilated into the army and the farms. Those were the two places where more bodies would be appreciated the most.
The Unsullied were the most disciplined soldiers in the world but they were all infantrymen. I was having the recruits train as archers. We didn't have enough horses yet for a dedicated cavalry but I'd put Tiwa on the task of finding space and people that could help with the breeding of horses.
I still hadn't been couped out of office so things were going well. The people were content, if not happy with the way things were. We were going to continue in this vain for the next few months at least.
I watched Arrax fly into my office through the balcony and I sent him a smile. He still hadn't stopped growing and was now tall enough to be taller than even me. He was soon going to be too big to fit into this office. I decided to move up the timeline for the castle's construction by a fair bit. Most of the castle's space was going to be dedicated to Arrax after all.
298 AC
A year. Sometimes I found it difficult to believe that I'd been here for so long. The months had simply flown by. Everything was much different than it had been. I looked out from my balcony at the city and could spot the various projects underway. Fountains were being built on every street and the temporary housing I'd once used for the freed slaves was being demolished to be replaced by more permanent housing projects. My head of development, Aaron had managed to crack the secrets of concrete a few months ago after I gave him the ingredients, and it was being used in every building project for increased efficiency.
I looked at the end of the city where my castle would have been with a smile as I saw the children walking in for their daily lessons. I'd changed my mind about having the castle within the city and redistributed the efforts to building a school for the children in the city. There was no shortage of learned men in Essos and they trooped into the city every day with the assurance that I'd have employment for every one of them.
A good portion of them were spies but my body was improving even more as time went by. I'd done a ritual to bind Arrax even closer to me and a dragon's senses were very difficult to deceive. In the same way, I'd taken some of Arrax's blessings, he'd taken some of mine. He showed near human levels of intelligence.
Thankfully, he wasn't interested in going to school or anything and didn't get bored as easily as a human did. He spent his time watching the castle being built a few miles out of town and freaking out the builders with his pranks. In the past year, he'd grown too big to hang out at most of the places within the city. We'd gone on our first flight seven months ago and since then, we'd go on at least one flight every week.
I walked back into my room and started getting ready for the day. I still lived in the city's central palace. It was less a palace and more a government building in truth. This was the administrative centre of the city and even after my castle was built it would remain as such. I wasn't feeling too psyched about having citizens walk miles just to lay their complaints.
I walked to the council room. It was on one of the higher floors in the building. I really needed to find a new name for it. The Grand Palace of the Great Council of Astapor wasn't the best of names all things considered.
My councilors all stood and bowed as I entered. Good, there's no one missing. I'd picked up the habit of showing up ten minutes early and no one liked showing up after the King, so they all started showing up fifteen minutes earlier. I had the feeling that Tiwa, who also served as the council's secretary had begun telling me the meeting would start ten minutes later than it should have to make sure we started on time. It was just a feeling, and I didn't have the interest in finding out how true it was.
"Calling the fifteenth meeting of the small council of His Grace, Theon Dragonborn of Astapor into order" I'd chosen the new name on a lark to separate myself from the Greyjoy family and it had become a whole thing.
I sat down and the rest of the council followed suit. "What's the first thing on today's agenda," I asked Tiwa.
"The bank. We were going to finalize the last of the preparations for the royal bank of Astapor." She replied. Another name I'd come up with. I knew people hated my names but they amused me so I didn't allow anyone to change my mind.
"What preparations remain for the bank?" I asked Greycoin. He was the second Unsullied on the council. When I'd freed them, I gave them the freedom to choose what they did with their lives. Greycoin was one of those who had sailed to Valyria with me and had acted as the fleet's unofficial accountant. He had a good head for numbers so when I needed someone to head the ban the was the one I turned to.
He had a small army of assistants and actual accountants to help him. I'd considered his appointment very carefully, but I went with him since I trusted him above any of the other candidates and what experience he lacked would be made up for by assistants. He was wise enough to listen to them at least.
"We've submitted a proposal for the bank's lending structure to the council, your grace and we also require a headquarters of our own. Operating out of the palace would send the wrong message, I fear." He replied and I allowed the council to debate the lending structure as well as the location.
The ideas some of them had were comical but I was a firm believer that when it came to meetings, there were no bad ideas so I didn't comment on anything except when it came to tellingDremo, the head of the farms that we simply couldn't loan the money to the people without charging interest.
At the end of the day, we decided on a flat 10% yearly interest rate to prevent everyone from just taking out loans willy-nilly. Inflation could be a real thing. The government was going to be spending a lot in the coming years on infrastructure projects so we should be able to avoid deflation or anything like that.
The bank's location was another serious issue. The final decision was to knock down another manse for the bank's headquarters. There wouldn't be space for a very large vault so most of the gold would be stored in my castle. I hoped that the bank would eventually become successful enough to start taking in deposits but that was still a long way off. We also decided to limit the loans to only residents of Astapor.
The Iron bank had a monopoly on banking in Essos and there was a good reason for that. The sheer logistics of managing loans given to people from all corners of the world was beyond us. For now, at least.
From there, we moved on to other matters. The fountains were coming along well and the shipyard was being constructed along with my castle. Astapor didn't have much of a ship-building culture and simply purchased all their ships from Volantis. I'd always been a fan of an interconnected global economy in my old world since it made things better but that wasn't possible in this one.
Volantis refused to trade with me, for one, and Bravos was taking a wait-and-see approach. I knew war would come to my doorstep sooner or later so having the means to build our own ships was essential. Fortunately, a man I hadn't expected to ever see had come into the city yesterday.
When I'd sent a messenger to him with my offer, I wasn't expecting him to even reply but he did. I guess the incentives I'd included were persuasive enough.
The next matter on the agenda was the farms, I turned to Dremo to give his report.
"We'll be getting our second harvest in a month. The seed drills have been instrumental, and the gods have smiled on us once again. The lands have remained fertile and easy to work on since your grace ascended the throne and deposed the slavers."
I simply smiled at him. After the first harvest had been brought in and everyone got to see how plentiful it was, the people had begun referring to me as the Blessed king. Most of them disagreed as to which gods I was blessed by, but I remained silent on the topic. This world was much more barbaric than mine but even here, none one would accept that I'd used blood sacrifices to increase the land's fertility.
We'd also seen a baby boom in the past year. Pretty much every whore in the city had fallen pregnant and most families were expecting children.
We ended the meeting after discussing those points. I walked off and went to my next destination for the day; the training grounds. Greybeard matched my steps and I luxuriated in the silence. He could be incredibly loud when he wanted to be but most of the time when we were alone like this, he was silent as the grave. That was one of the things I liked most about him.
We walked into the yard and were met with several of the unsullied going about their training. Greybeard and I stood at the entrance and watched as the unsullied performed their training. I'd banned the making of more unsullied upon my ascension so these were truly the last of their kind. The boys that had already been cut would still be trained but only if they wished to complete the journey.
I walked into one of the empty sparring rings and gestured for Greybeard to join me. Four more members of the household guard picked up their weapons to support him. Five on one. This wasn't fair. For them.
The spar started with the five unsullied approaching as one. They linked shields and stretched out their spears in front of them. This had been the most effective tactic against me in all our previous spars. It still wasn't going to work though. I was more than strong enough to lift a grown man over my head with one hand. A shield wall like this would be easy.
I approached in a zig-zag, moving from left to right to confuse them. I finally pulled back to strike at the unsullied to the far left. They ignored me and already started reinforcing the one to the right. Given that I'd used this same tactic against them a hundred times, I couldn't blame them for their reaction but complacency kills so I'll do my best to beat it out of them.
I slashed at the one to my left while he was expecting me to feint and move to the right. He was in shock when I cut through his spear and broke into his guard. He dropped it instantly to pull out his short sword but it was much too late. I stomped on his right foot with one of mine and even though he didn't outwardly react, I still got a second's hesitation. More than enough. I bashed into his helmet with my unprotected head and made his brain ring around his skull. From there, I grabbed him up and threw him off the sparring ring.
It all happened in less than 10 seconds, too quickly for the shocked unsullied to interfere. Credit to them though, they recovered their formation like nothing even happened. I attempted the same feint again and this time, they tried to reinforce both sides. I simply pushed the man in the centre out of the formation and dealt with him before the others could interfere.
And then there were three. I picked up a discarded shield and hurled it into the shield of the unsullied at the centre of their now diminished shield wall. The impact sent him reeling and I went straight after Greybeard while they were distracted.
Greybeard was skilled, don't get me wrong, and he'd improved by leaps and bounds in the past year but I was a super soldier. It wasn't even a contest. I weaved through his attacks like the wind I attacked with devastating strength. He only succeeded in lasting 10 more seconds than the others. In that time, he got some reinforcements from his compatriots, but it was child's play to manoeuvre them into each other to prevent their interference.
Greybeard went down and then there were two. I twisted my sword in a 'come hither' motion and they both ignored me. I sweatdropped. Fucking unsullied. They abandoned their formation and tried approaching me from different sides to trap me between them. I allowed them to execute their plan and when they were within reach, I overwhelmed the one to my left, turned him around, and used his body to prevent his comrade from attacking me.
After he went down, the last unsullied was just a formality. I wasn't even winded after everything was over. I waved my sword over and another group of five came forward. The purpose of this exercise was to both improve my endurance and my skill in facing multiple opponents.
I left the training grounds after three hours of training and went back to my quarters. I'd gotten carried away, so I only had an hour till my next meeting. I went to the bath that had already been drawn for me and I relaxed, allowing the day's aches and pains to just fall away.
I got out and went to my office. It hadn't changed much in the last year. I'd personalized it with a tapestry of Arrax that one of the artists in the city had made as a gift. She'd been a slave that had her life changed by my laws- both in freeing slaves and allowing women certain freedoms they hadn't previously enjoyed.
They didn't have equal rights to men, not yet at least. Somehow, that would create more of a shock to this society than freeing all the slaves and upending the entire economy. Absolutely ridiculous. Speaking of the economy, it was all back on the up and up.
My ritual had turned Astapor into the largest exporter of food in Slaver's Bay and that brought a constant flow of gold in. We spent the gold just as quickly on infrastructure projects but that was beside the point. The switch from slavery had hurt as badly in the first few months of our rule. Much of slaver's bay had even started a boycott of our produce. It ended very quickly though.
These people were merchants above everything else and my food was cheaper than the competition. Another idea I had for improving the economy was alcohol. I had some ideas for making whiskey and beer. Better beer than what was already in the market, at least.
We'd wait for the troubles with Volantis to be over. My 'spies' reported that they'd been building ships and preparing an army for months. I had no idea why they'd be coming for me though. It wasn't an issue for them. My actions would not affect their economy or populace so this was all highly illogical.
The other cities in Slaver's Bay had been hostile at first but now things had settled into healthy neutrality. I had no interest in expanding this kingdom of mine for the time beginning. Any expansion would have to wait until we had a stronger military and navy, and our economy was strong enough to sustain warmongering with no negative effects. I wouldn't be the first would-be conqueror to cripple their economy in exchange for unprofitable lands.
The army had also been developing slowly and surely. The citizens recruited had turned into fantastic archers. The Unsullied covered the infantry front and when my horse breeding plans come into fruition, I'll have a cavalry of my own.
A/N; Thanks for reading. We're already halfway through with chapter 16 on the pa-atreon page. Feel free to join me there if you can. Same username as up here. The link's on my profile.
