GOT: The Great — Chapter 235 - The Pyromancer — The Conversation

Barristan Selmy had been hiding in Flea Bottom for four days.

He was staying in the attic of an abandoned dye workshop. The stains on the floorboards had aged into the color of old rust. The ceiling beams were riddled with wormholes. But the roof held, and it kept out the snow.

4 Unsullied sent by Grey Worm were crammed in with him. They had shed their armor and pulled on rough wool cloaks and mud-spattered leather boots. Ash rubbed into their hair made it a dull gray. They looked like country folk who had fled the villages around King's Landing.

The Unsullied always fell a little short when playing refugees. Their skin was too conspicuous, and they drew second glances on the streets. Barristan kept them in the attic as much as possible.

That morning, he parted the tattered window covering a crack and peered outside.

Two women stood at the bakery door, a crumpled piece of paper clutched between them, heads pressed together, murmuring. When they finished reading, one woman traced a seven-pointed star on her chest.

The bakery owner snatched the paper from their hands and threw it into the oven. But after it burned, he stood in front of the flames and stared. The batter in the pot began to smoke. He didn't notice.

Drogo's leaflets had fallen all over the city like pigeon droppings. The Gold Cloaks went house to house trying to collect them.

Barristan watched a fishmonger woman fold one into a square no bigger than her palm and tuck it into her hair bun, then walk right past the Gold Cloaks without lifting her eyes.

Once a message stopped being paper and became mouths, it couldn't be stopped.

Barristan closed the window.

The night before, he had used the chaos Drogo created to slip out and scout the Alchemists' Guild Hall.

The place sat at the foot of Visenya's Hill, east of the Great Sept of Baelor, close to the city's central crossroads. The entire building was black marble. Above the lintel, a flame sigil had been carved into the stone, the paint worn almost entirely away.

The main gate was bolted from the inside. He got in through a side delivery passage.

At the passage's end was the Iron Torch Gallery, a long empty hall flanked by two rows of black metal pillars. Each pillar was topped with a bracket built to hold wildfire jars. Normally the brackets would have been lined with finished product waiting for transport. Now every one of them was bare.

The ceiling vaulted high overhead. A ring of narrow ventilation slits had been cut into the dome, and moonlight leaked through them in thin silver bars across the black stone floor.

A faint sulfur smell lingered in the air. Not sharp enough to sting, but if you stayed long enough, the inside of your nose went dry.

At the far end of the gallery, a stone staircase spiraled down.

He descended one level. The air turned noticeably colder and drier.

The underground level was a row of stone cells. The iron doors stood half-open, their hinges rusted badly. He pushed open the nearest one.

Behind it was a small stone chamber. Wax-sealed clay jars were stacked in rows along the wall. Broken glass and dried green stains lay scattered across the floor.

The ceiling of each production room was packed with sand. If something exploded, the ceiling would collapse. The sand would smother the fire instantly, and bury whoever was inside.

He went deeper. At the far end of the corridor, in the last room, he found Hallyne.

During the reign of the Mad King Aerys II, Hallyne had been an assistant. Now he was the head of the King's Landing Alchemists' Guild.

Hallyne looked up when Barristan walked in. He didn't call for help. Didn't reach for anything.

He set down the copper ladle in his hand and studied the visitor.

"You are Barristan Selmy."

Barristan confirmed it.

Hallyne turned and walked toward the rows of clay jars stacked along the far wall. Barristan followed.

The jars covered the entire wall from floor to ceiling, stopping just below the sand layer overhead. Every jar was sealed with wax. On each one, a flame sigil and a serial number had been painted in white.

"13,000 jars," Hallyne said. "All made in recent months. If King's Landing weren't under siege and the raw materials could still come in, I could have made more."

"You made this many, knowing Queen Regent Cersei intends to use them to blow up King's Landing?"

"She never said so outright. But from how everything was positioned after being moved out, even a fool could guess."

"Then why did you keep making them?"

"Because if I refused her orders, I would have been killed long before any wildfire got the chance to burn me. Those of us in the Guild have no choice, Ser Selmy."

"Tell me where the wildfire has been placed."

Hallyne waved a hand.

"The fact that you got in here at all is dangerous enough. If someone finds us, neither of us walks out."

He paused.

"Go to Flea Street. Find an apprentice named Roy. He worked under me. He knows the entrance to every storage point. Tell him I sent you."

"You won't come with me?"

"I'm old. I can't run anymore."

Barristan didn't press him. He retraced his steps and slipped back out through the delivery passage.

Outside, the night was still thick and dark. Wind off Visenya's Hill carried pellets of snow that cut at his face.

When he got back to the dye workshop, all 4 Unsullied were still awake. He didn't light a candle. He sat in the dark until dawn.

The apprentice lived in a dead-end alley deep in the heart of Flea Bottom. His door was two coffin planks nailed together. Rags had been stuffed in the cracks to keep out the wind.

Barristan found him squatting at the doorway, boiling water in a cracked clay pot. A few leaves of some unidentifiable kind floated on the surface.

He looked under thirty, but half his hair had already gone white. His fingers were mapped with burn scars, and green dye that no amount of scrubbing could remove was packed under his nails.

When he saw Barristan standing at the mouth of the alley, his first move was to pull the cracked clay pot to his chest and hide it.

Then he recognized the face.

Not every person in King's Landing knew Barristan Selmy. But this one did. He got to his feet and his knees were shaking.

"Ser Selmy." The apprentice's voice sounded like a hand had closed around his throat. "I haven't done anything."

"I'm not here to arrest you." Barristan rested his hand on his sword pommel, not as a threat. The same tone he had used in his Kingsguard days when speaking to frightened squires: low, level, steady.

"I'm here to talk to you about one thing. There are 500,000 people in King's Landing. Cersei Lannister has buried wildfire beneath their feet all across this city. When the walls fall, she intends to burn all of it. You were Hallyne's apprentice. You know where those jars are hidden."

The apprentice's face went the color of lime plaster. He stepped back. His shoulders hit the door and the whole frame shuddered.

"I don't know. I don't remember. I..."

"I have no intention of putting a sword to your throat." Barristan said. "Hallyne sent me to find you. When I was young, I swore an oath to protect the innocent people of the Seven Kingdoms. I came to King's Landing to save those who have no reason to die."

The apprentice stared at him for a long time. His lips were shaking. His fingers too.

"Every day, we divided the finished wildfire into clay jars, sealed them with wax, and carted them to the storage points on a pushcart. I was usually the one pushing."

"You remember the locations?"

The apprentice licked his cracked lips. "There's an old sewer tunnel beneath Flea Bottom. The entrance is in the backyard of the leather shop that burned down. At least 50 jars inside."

"The Steel Street point is in the Ironworkers' Guild cellar. The entrance is blocked by a heap of scrap iron, but I know the way around it."

"The point at the Great Sept of Baelor is in an inspection shaft on the outside of the north wall, about 50 paces from the Sept. Down 2 levels. Third archway on the left. At least 80 jars."

Barristan listened without a word.

"The batch in the Red Keep's cellars, I never saw that one myself. Only Hallyne ever went in. No one else was allowed near it. But whatever's down there has to be more than everything outside put together. I heard Hallyne say it once: the wildfire under the Red Keep is enough to turn the entire castle and everyone in it to ash."

Barristan held the pyromancer's eyes.

"This concerns the lives of every person in this city." His hand stayed on the pommel. "Can I trust you? You know too much. By any logic, Cersei should not have left you breathing."

The pyromancer let out a short, bitter laugh.

"We pyromancers know what wildfire does better than anyone. We're not fools. We have no interest in going into the ground alongside the Lannisters and their boy king." He paused. "The Gold Cloaks sent men to kill me. But the Guild faked my death first. Handed over a charred corpse. The whole point was to get me out, so I could find someone willing to stop this madness."

"Take me there. I'm going to clear out the wildfire."

"How many men do you have?" the pyromancer asked.

"Five."

"Then you'll fail. Every one of those locations has soldiers on patrol."

"No." Barristan drew himself upright. He still carried weight in King's Landing. He still had standing, and he knew it. "Soldiers aren't fools either. They know that if the wildfire goes off, they're the first to die. I'll turn them."

The pyromancer looked at the old man standing in the alley. Looked for a long time.

Then he pushed himself up off the ground, pulled his tattered cloak tight around his shoulders, and said:

"Steel Street. We start with Steel Street."

Barristan didn't say another word. He turned and walked.

➤ Next: Barristan Selmy — Steel and Blood