The Dragon and the Hawke 20

The days after Jorah's reassignment to Yunkai were difficult. The entire council was out of sorts, trying to pick up the pieces where they had dropped with the revelation. It seemed as though the whole of Meereen were feeling the absence of Ser Jorah Mormont, and it was in this moment that the worst that Dany had ever seen decided to strike.

She smiled as the former slave, Fennesz, introduces himself and tells her that he can speak in the common tongue, "You speak it very well."

"Before you freed me," Fennesz tells her, "I belonged to Master Mighdal. I was tutor to his children, I taught them languages and history. They know a great deal about your family because of me."

Dany smiles at the slight praise, and even more so when he tells her, "Little Calla is only seven, but she admires you very much."

"I hope I can prove worthy of her admiration," Dany tells him, then cuts to the heart of the matter, "What can i do for you?"

Fennesz licks his lips, and then informs her, "When you took the city, the children begged me not to leave the house, but Master Mighdal and I agreed that I must. So I lost my home."

Dany's smile drops, and she looks down and over to Marian, who is already rubbing her eyes. It is clear that the mage knows where Fennesz would be going with this, but Dany had to continue listening, hoping that it was not the case.

"Now I live on the streets," He tells her next.

"I have outfitted mess halls to feed all former slaves and barracks to shelter them," Dany tells him, her brow furrowing.

"I do not mean to offend, your grace," Fennesz tells her, slowly, and angrily, "But I went to one of those places. The young prey on the old, take what they want, and beat us if we resist."

Dany nods, "I was aware of that problem, but you must have last gone to one some time ago, the new city guard has taken care to stop such activities."

Daario nods, and from beside the queen, he adds, "We've not had that problem for the last week, sir."

"It is not a question of if it is a problem, or if it has been solved," Fennesz tells her, "Who will I be there? What purpose will I serve?"

"Oh no," Marian groans, rubbing her eyes, and everyone looks to her. The mage rights herself in her chair and looks up at Fennesz, the old man having been allowed to ascend the stairs to nearly her platform, and asks, "You want to sell yourself back into slavery, don't you?"

"What?" Dany asks, and she demands to know, "Why would he want such a, why would you want such a thing?"

"You said it yourself," Marian tells her, head turning to her friend, "People learn to love their chains."

"No," Dany declares, definitively

"Your grace," Fennesz, "The young may rejoice at the new world that you have made, but I am old, and I am afraid of a world that I have no purpose in. Please, allow me to sell myself back to Master Mighdal."

"You wish to again be property?" Dany demands to know, "like a goat or a chair!?"

"Please, your grace," Fennesz begs, "There are many outside who wish to ask the same as I, please, allow us this."

"I did not take Slaver's Bay so that i could preside over the very system that I swore to destroy," Dany tells him angrily, and then she takes a breath, and tells him, "But freedom means making your own choice."

All eyes move to Dany, and she tells Fennesz, "i will allow you to enter into a contract with your former master. It may not exceed a period of more than one year."

"Thank you, your grace," Fennesz bows his head, and turns to start moving down the stairs.

Before he can get too far, Marian calls for his attention, and he turns back, "Be sure to tell your master that what the queen is allowing is not Slavery. It is a job."

Fennesz furrows his brow, "Your holiness?"

Marian rolls her eyes at the honorific, but presses on and tells the man, "Your former master is obliged to feed you, clothe you, and treat you as well as he would his own brother. Should he break that, he will incur my wrath. Afterwards, if I leave him alive, the city guard will take him to the dungeons to spend the rest of his life in chains. Is this clear?"

Fennesz nods, terrified. He starts down the stairs again, and tries not to stop when he hears Marian turn to Daario and tell him, "I expect you and your boys to check up on contract holders once a week."

Daario nods as Fennesz exits the throne room and a new person enters. The day continues like this for the next several hours, and like the first former slave, Dany gives permission for six more old slaves to re-enter the services of their masters.

At the end of the day, Dany cannot handle it any more, and takes to her rooms faster than she ever had before. The day's supplicants had gotten to her, and she was reminded to a terrible extent how she had done much the same when it came to wedding Xaro, or with Drogo. Though with her first husband, it had been less a form of slavery than a conventional marriage to an unconventional man.

She stayed in her rooms, alone, for a long time. It took hours for anyone to check up on her, and when they did, they revealed themselves to be Daario. The former mercenary and newly appointed commander of the guard entered the queen's chambers with careful steps, looking around for her. He finally sees her sitting in a chair that had been dragged out onto the balcony.

He made sure that she could hear him long before he joined her on the balcony. He stood in silence, looking over Meereen with her as he waited for her to start speaking. Eventually, once she has grown tired of the uncomfortable silence, she starts to talk, "Why did they wish to return to their masters?"

Daario turns to her, and leans against the stone railing of the balcony as he thought of how to answer her. Once he reached the decision to share his own story, he started to tell her, "Did you know I was a slave?"

Dany looked up at him with surprise, and shakes her head. He nods, "I was, my mother was a whore, and when she didn't have enough money for another bottle of wine, she sold me for one."

The queen stands, and steps up to him. He smiles as she runs a hand over his face and waited for him to continue, "I became a pit fighter in Meereen. I was swift and skilled, and eventually I made my master enough money that he decided to free me as a reward."

He turns himself and Dany around and sits in the now empty chair, pulling her onto his lap. She lays over him as he continues, "Freed, I didn't know exactly what to do, so in the end I just kept doing what I was good at. I am only good at two things, killing and women."

"You have mentioned," Dany agrees, "Though you also seem to be very good at policing."

"True," Daario agrees, "But I didn't know that then. So I went to the Second Sons and joined them."

"You went back to what you knew," Dany nods, "Is that what they wanted?"

"Everyone likes to have a purpose," Daario tells her, "That purpose doesn't have to be grand, or even good, but it gives everyone a sense of fulfilment."

Dany sighs, and asks, "Did I do the right thing? Letting them sell themselves back?"

"But that isn't what you did," Daario corrects her, "And thanks to Marian, everyone knows that."

"She can be rather explicit, can't she?" Dany snorts in amusement

"I have never met anyone with her sense of determined horror," Daario agrees, "I am rather curious as to where she got it."

"From what she has told me," Dany tells him, "She spent a long time dwelling in a realm inhabited by demons, and learnt their trade better than them so that they would avoid her."

"Ah," Daario nods, "And she still insists that she isn't divinely powered?"

Dany snorts, and the two fall into a companionable silence as the night presses on.

Marian, the last subject of their conversation, is having one of her own with Missandei. The pair had been debating the best way to talk to Grey Worm about his staring without making all of them incredibly awkward around each other.

If Marian was being honest, she didn't expect it to come to them furtively avoiding each other's eyes no matter how they talked to him, but all the same it was better to plan for the worst. So far, they had ruled out at least sixteen different ways to bring the subject up gently, and more and more were leaning towards just talking to him about it in a direct and open dialogue.

Unfortunately, they were people, and it seems that people always have trouble being honest with each other. Thus in the end, the debate on how to talk to a young man about his staring at a woman was pushed off for another night and instead the subject was changed to involve Dany's recent capitulation.

"Do you think she did the right thing?" Marian asks, gently running her hand along Missandei's back as she stared up at the ceiling.

Missandei exhales and thinks, her own hand tracing circles along Marian's stomach as she did. Eventually she says, "Yes, I believe so."

"It's not still slavery is it?" Marian asks, "We didn't let that creep back into the woodwork, did we?"

"No," Missandei shakes her head, eliciting a giggle from Marian as the woman's nose plays along her shoulder, "It is close, but it is not. You have made sure of that."

"I hope we did the right thing," Marian tells her

"We do our best," Missandei lifts her head, "The right thing can only be called so after the results are revealed."

"I have no idea what that means."

"Neither do I," Missandei confides, "It was something written by an old maester from Westeros."

"Well we're not in Westeros," Marian tells her, poking her in the nose with a smirk, "So let's come up with our own wisdom."

Missandei nods, and lays back down. A few minutes later, they are both asleep.