GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 390 - Meereen's Reinforcements — Words Unspoken
Inside the Golden Pyramid, clouds of expensive incense couldn't touch the blood smell drifting in from outside.
Lynn kicked open the top-floor hall's door, gold and ivory, heavy as history, and walked straight through.
He crossed the length of the hall, stopped in front of the ornate throne at the far end, a thing of purpleheart wood and silk, and dropped into it.
Tyrion limped in after him. He picked his way carefully around the handmaids scattered across the floor, every one of them fainted cold, found himself a corner that wasn't soaked in anything, and hauled a silver flask from his coat. One long pull.
"Well." A belch. "You've won. Yunkai is yours. What exactly do you plan to do with it?"
Daenerys, Jorah, and Grey Worm followed them in.
They stood looking at Lynn in the main seat, waiting.
Lynn didn't answer Tyrion. He looked at Missandei and crooked a finger.
"Parchment. Quill."
"Yes, my lord."
She fetched the writing materials quickly.
"Write down every word I say."
His voice carried through the empty hall.
"From this day forward, in the name of the Conqueror, I hereby decree the following laws in the city of Yunkai."
"First. The abolition of slavery. Every person within Yunkai called a slave — man, woman, child, elder — is hereby restored to freedom. No one may possess, buy, sell, or enslave another person in any form. Violators will be flayed."
Daenerys's violet eyes blazed with a light that hadn't been there before.
She had waited for this day a very long time.
"Second. All lands, properties, and gold belonging to former slave masters are confiscated in full. Grey Worm will handle the inventory and redistribution."
"Third. A council of free men shall be formed to govern the city's daily affairs. All free men have the right to elect its members."
The flask stopped moving in Tyrion's hand.
Elections. A council.
What in the seven hells is this man thinking?
"Fourth. An eight-hour workday is established. Two days of rest in every seven. Forced labor in any form is banned. No feigning compliance , all work must be paid in full, on time."
"Workers have the right to report their employers. Any act of exploitation against free men — exceeding work hours, withholding rest days , will result in full confiscation of the employer's property."
"Fifth. Public academies shall be built. Every child of appropriate age, regardless of birth, must receive a basic education. Tuition: free."
Lynn ran through more than a dozen decrees without pausing for breath.
Every single one of them was enough to shake the whole of Essos to its foundation.
The hall went utterly silent.
Tyrion's mouth hung open. He stared at Lynn the way a man stares at someone who has lost his mind completely.
These decrees were impossible. Not just in Slaver's Bay , in Westeros itself, a land that called itself civilized, they would be unthinkable.
"You... you're going to turn the entire order of the world upside down."
Tyrion's voice came out rough.
"Order?"
Lynn smiled.
"An order built on the suffering of ninety percent of all living people , and you call that order?"
"That's a disease."
He stood, and walked over.
"And I am the physician."
He stopped looking at Tyrion. He turned to Grey Worm and Jorah.
"Carve every one of these decrees onto stone tablets. Erect them in every square in Yunkai."
"Open the granaries. Every hungry free man eats tonight."
"As you command!"
Grey Worm and Jorah bowed and were gone.
---
Lynn's decrees swept through the city like a storm.
The slaves who'd just been handed weapons , still dazed, still unsure what their future looked like , found the tablets waiting for them in the squares. Blood-red letters carved deep into stone.
They stopped.
Freedom?
Their own property?
Children. Free schooling.
They couldn't make themselves believe what they were reading.
Then the carts came. Cart after cart, heaped high, and food pressed into every set of hands.
"It's real." A mother clutching her child was weeping. "All of it , it's real!"
The crowd erupted.
"Long live Lord Lynn!"
"Long live the Liberator!"
They threw down their weapons. They dropped to their knees before the stone tablets and kissed the cold faces of them, again and again, pressing their lips to the carved words.
When they looked toward the Golden Pyramid, what was in their eyes was no longer awe.
It was something older and fiercer than awe.
He was not a conqueror.
He was a god who had come to save them.
---
Inside Yunkai, there was only joy.
In Meereen , the oldest, largest city in Slaver's Bay , there was only silence and dread.
The atmosphere inside the Great Masters' pyramids was suffocating.
"Yunkai... is finished."
An elder Great Master's voice shook.
"Two hundred thousand soldiers. Gone in a single day."
"Grazdan and the Wise Masters , they hung them from the Harpy's statue by their own entrails!"
"He called down a blizzard. He raised an army of the dead!"
"He is a demon. He is absolutely a demon!"
Panic moved through the room like smoke.
"What do we do? What do we possibly use against something like that?"
"Our slave soldiers are useless! Yunkai's soldiers are his now , they're his most rabid dogs!"
A Great Master named Sisdar zo Loraq , a man Meereen knew well for his cunning and his cruelty , slammed both hands on the table.
"We still have a chance."
Every head turned.
"We send for the Dothraki."
The look on Sisdar's face had gone feverish.
"The Dothraki?" Another master's brow furrowed. "Those savages are insatiable. Gold and women. That's all they understand."
"No." Sisdar shook his head. "That Westerosi wants to free every slave. Do you understand what that means? Every slave the Dothraki raid each year , most of them come here. To Slaver's Bay. He's cutting off their livelihood."
"We are on the same ship now."
"We pool every coin we have. We borrow from the Iron Bank of Braavos. We use every scrap of wealth available to us to hire every khalasar that will ride."
"Tell them this: kill Lynn. Tear his army to pieces."
"And Yunkai and Astapor , both cities, with everything and everyone inside them , belong to the Dothraki."
The room went dead quiet.
Every Great Master's breathing had gone fast and shallow.
It was a mad gamble.
But they had nothing else left.
"Do it."
---
Yunkai. The Golden Pyramid.
Lynn stood on the terrace, looking down at the city below , watching it pull itself back into order at a speed that was almost hard to believe.
Daenerys stood beside him. She was looking at his profile, and she had gone somewhere distant.
Then Lynn's stillness broke.
He turned his head slowly, toward the far horizon , toward the Dothraki Sea.
Through the Green Sight, he saw it all.
Dozens of riders from Meereen bursting through the city gates, racing out across the grasslands. A massive khalasar spread across the plain, tens of thousands of warriors with braids long enough to sweep the dirt, howling around their bonfires.
He even heard the proposal the Meereenese messenger carried.
The corner of his mouth curled.
He turned to look at Daenerys, and his voice came out easy.
"Dany. Old acquaintances of yours , the Dothraki are coming for us."
➤ Next: Tyrion's Fealty — The Conversation