Aboard The Minnow (98 AL)

Lormelle had the same shocked look on her face as she surveyed the scar where a city had once stood. The great stone port had become half-twisted slag, with only room for a handful of ships to dock where it had once hosted scores at a time. The wholesale destruction had crippled economies across Essos and impoverished many a foreign mechant. Slaves were the only commodity traded any longer. Still, it was better than those who had perished in Balerion's flames. At least ninety percent of the population had been wiped out. All that remained now were those of Valyrian descent and slaves.

"I do not know..." Lormelle finally replied, mouth agape. "Gods, I had heard the tales, but...Gods..."

One of Vira's servants stepped on a shard of black and twisted glass, severing the major arteries and sending him to the ground screaming. He bled to death before anything could be done, adding another body to the millions that had perished in this wasteland. The rest stepped gingerly from then on, making it to the black walls with no further incident.

Four men stood before the gate, all clad in black, marking them as citizen-soldiers of New Valyria.

The slave soldier listened to her request, and as Vira looked over his shoulder, she could see the man to whom she had originally spoken rubbing his ears with a white cloth. She realized that he was cleaning the sound of her voice, as if just hearing her speak had somehow diminished him and made him unclean; even as she watched, a number of his fellow guardsmen jeered at him returned to his place outside the gate with an expression of pure hatred and rage.

The slave-soldier informed Vira that people of their caste (he emphasized that she had the same status as he did, in New Valyria) only passed through the city walls with direct permission from a Freeholder or the Jaes Naqir himself. There was a ramshackle collection of buildings outside the Black Wall, near the docks, and Vira was informed that there were a few inns there, though by the expression on the slave-soldier's face she came to the conclusion that it might be safer to remain aboard the ship, perhaps even anchored in the harbor rather than at a pier, once night fell.

The slave soldier looked taken aback that anyone of Valyrian blood would even tolerate the shame of such a failure, without opening their own veins in penance. "We are all slaves to the Burned Rider, and to the Freeholders," he said in reedy, exhausted voice.

Tavio bit his lip, and stared at his brother, and a look of horror crossed his face. He then frowned, and looked down at his feet. "I'll go too, mother," he said.

Lucero immediately ran off toward the Fighting pit, where the blood-hued dragon had landed. He even forgot to argue against his mother's suggestion and when he was near enough he called out to the dragon in a clear and confident voice, speaking High Valyrian and cracking the whip as Vira had instructed. The dragon roared at him, and released a blast of onyx flame into the air, though it didn't come close to the boy and he didn't even flinch.

Tavio, to his credit, strode toward the cream-and-blue dragon with more confidence and a far straighter back than Vira would have expected. He also called out to the dragon and cracked his whip. His aim was not as true as his brother's, or perhaps this dragon was fiercer, for it lunged forward at the boy, snapping its jaws and spitting blue fire. Tavio reeled backward from the flames, and lost his balance, stumbling backward. He cried out in pain as he landed, his back lacerated by the sharp protrusions of glassy black stone that covered the ground, and tried to scramble to his feet, cutting himself worse as he did so. His fear shone naked on his face at this point and the dragon could sense it as well, darting forward to snap at him. Luckily for Tavio, the dragon was only a few years old, and it only managed to take a bloody chunk out of his left leg before he kicked it in the face with his right to give himself enough space to retreat further.

Lucero fared much better, whipping the crimson dragon once again as he drew close enough to it to put his hand on the beast's neck. It flared out its wings at his touch and hissed, but Lucero cracked the whip again and vaulted up onto the dragon's back. It began to buck scream, lasting fire and twisting its neck to snap at him, but after a minute of this the beast calmed, and bowed its head in clear acceptance of the rider. The crimson flapped twice and then shot into the air, with Vira's younger son clinging to its back whooping and hollering like only a 13 year old boy can.

The cream and blue dragon shot another breath of blue flame at Tavio as he fled, just narrowly missing seeing his shoulder aflame, and the boy reached his mother singed and bleeding, with tears running liberally down his face. There were a few bystanders who had come out to watch the dragon tamings, and while a number of people had cheered for Lucero's success, they now eyed Tavio with suspicion, and even fear.

Most of the mob dispersed at the threat of fire; despite no dragon being present, Vira realized that being burned to death must be a common enough occurrence here such that even a lame threat such as hers would be believed, just in case. A few burly men remained, however, and they spoke a different form of Valyrian, a more bastardized version that Vira could not quite understand. She realized they must be slavers, and one of them produce an iron rod, the end of which had a carved brand. There were small patches of fire burning around, from the attempts of the two sons to tame dragons, and the slaver stuck his brand into one of them until it glowed white hot. When he raised it, Vira could see that it bore the imprint of a burning fist. She'd seen several people passing through the gates with such a brand, and had judged them to be the lowest of the low in Valyrian society, even lower than the caste of the slave-soldier she had spoken to.

One of the slavers pointed the brand at Tavio, and rattled off a sentence. Vira realized it was a bastardized form of Valyrian and she recognized the word 'Buzdari', for slave. Another of the slavers stepped forward, and spoke to her in heavily accented, but understandable, High Valyrian. "All slaves rejected by the dragons must be so marked; orders from the sky." His tone was pleasant, but his demeanor, with his comrades beside him, was extremely menacing.

At first, Lucero's eyes lit up greedily at the thought of his older brother as his slave, but as the gravity of the situation fell on him his face began to fall also. "I will protect him, mother, and you as well. I will not forget my kin," he said quietly. "Jaes Naqir declared that if I can subjugate Pentos, I will be declared its Freeholder."

"Vermithrax," Lucero replied, creating a combination of the Valyrian gods of death and the sea. "He will grow larger, and one day every family in Pentos that sneered down on the name Tovar shall spend their evenings cleaning his scales and feeding him lambs," he added, with the vengeful creativity that only a young boy could think of.

"The King of Kings said that as one of his Dāezvali, I can freely enter the city, any city in the Empire truly, and purchase whatever property I choose. You can become a part of my household, with my protection. Tavio will never be more than a slave, however, inside the domains of the Askiodaryssy," he added, meeting his mother's gaze evenly.