Chapter 225: The Envoy from New Ghis
The candles had burned down to nothing by the time the morning light came through the green glass skylight at the top of the pyramid, falling in pale colored patches across Ian's desk and the documents he'd fallen asleep on.
He hadn't meant to sleep there. He'd thought handing the bulk of operations to Celia would free up significant portions of his day. That had turned out to be optimistic thinking.
The troop training alone consumed most of his available hours. The command structures of this world were generations behind what Ian needed them to be. Even the Unsullied — the most rigorously trained soldiers in Slaver's Bay, probably in the world — had been drilled for obedience and formation holding, not for the kind of flexible, responsive command that Ian's plans required.
Reorganizing their structure, working with the Astapori instructors to apply those changes as a template for the new Ghiscari Legion's slave soldiers — it ate time he didn't have to spare.
The ironworks and armor factory had fallen back to him as well. With Celia upstream on the Worm River managing the agricultural conversion, the manufacturing operations near Astapor were his problem again. The current output rate made it mathematically impossible to arm all his infantry within two years at existing capacity.
He needed the factory at least three times larger. He didn't have the gold to build it three times larger. That particular problem sat on a shelf in the back of his mind where he kept things he couldn't solve yet.
He was also spending a portion of each day directing his falcons and cats through the city, running a quiet search for any sign of the Shadowbinder. No results so far.
Taken together, it was enough to knock a man flat at his own desk.
Ian stood, stretched until something in his back released, and walked to the window for air.
A knock at the door.
"Come in."
The door was guarded by Unsullied at all hours. Only his senior staff could knock without announcing themselves first — not even Daenerys or Celia had that access. The knock meant one of his own people.
Yara, one of his Water Dancers, opened the door. "My lord. Lord Fehmar asks if you'd be willing to come to the Nakloz family pyramid. He has a situation."
Ian raised an eyebrow. "If he has something to discuss, he usually comes here."
"An envoy has arrived from New Ghis. They specifically requested to meet with you."
"New Ghis sent envoys?" Ian turned that over. With everything that had happened in Astapor over the past months — the change of lordship, the Worm River campaign, the slave system restructuring — neither Meereen nor Yunkai had sent official delegations. And New Ghis, the furthest of the Ghiscari city-states, had moved first? "What do they want?"
"To protest something, from what I understand. The details weren't shared with me."
"Tell Lord Fehmar I'll receive them here." Ian kept his expression neutral but felt a quiet satisfaction at the framing. If the New Ghiscari envoys had specifically requested his presence, asking him to come to them, making him travel to Fehmar's pyramid would hand them a small but real concession before the meeting even started. "If they want to speak with me, they can make the walk."
"Yes, my lord." Yara withdrew.
Ian called for breakfast — dog and mutton, the Slaver's Bay standard, which he had genuinely adapted to without much difficulty. The diet wasn't the problem. The problem was what Slaver's Bay's livestock practices meant for his military expansion. Building elite soldiers required protein, and the region's agricultural priorities had never been organized around feeding armies. It was a supply chain issue he hadn't found a clean answer to yet, and for now it stayed shelved alongside the factory problem.
He worked through a stack of documents while he ate, and was still working when Yara returned to inform him that the New Ghiscari envoy had arrived and was requesting an audience.
Two men entered.
"This is Lord Regos Emmund," the translator — clearly a slave, from his bearing — announced in the Common Tongue, addressing Ian. "Treasurer of New Ghis and its appointed representative on this visit to Astapor."
Regos Emmund had the look of old Ghiscari blood: amber skin, hair arranged into the distinctive double-horned style that New Ghis had preserved from the ancient traditions, a tokar with gold fringe. He carried himself with less of the reflexive arrogance Ian had come to expect from Ghiscari nobility of his rank — something more measured, more deliberate.
Yara stepped in smoothly on the other side. "Lord Ian Darry, Hand of Queen Daenerys, Servant of the Lord of Light, Dragonlord, Protector of Astapor."
"Lord Darry." Regos Emmund inclined his head with genuine courtesy. His next question was direct. "You are a knight of Westeros, in service to a Valyrian queen. Why do you follow the Lord of Light?"
The translator moved to begin rendering this, but Ian spoke first in High Valyrian.
"My Valyrian has improved since arriving in Astapor. We can manage without the intermediary."
Regos Emmund's expression shifted into something approaching appreciation. "Your fluency is remarkable. A genuine gift."
"Have you heard what happened on the beach? The purification of the seawater, the Dothraki and the horses?"
"I have. It was spoken of as a miracle."
"That's why." Ian's tone was simple and direct. "There is power in the flame. Real power. I follow what I've seen work."
The answer was partially true and entirely useful. Ian's public association with the Lord of Light served a specific purpose beyond the obvious — he was operating in a world where the Red God demonstrably existed and demonstrably had interests, and he had effectively taken the Red God's most important piece off the board by redirecting Daenerys's path. Announcing himself as a servant of that same god was an insurance policy. It sent a signal: I may be useful. Consider patience before hostility.
Whether the Lord of Light was genuinely a potential ally or an eventual obstacle was a question Ian didn't have enough information to answer yet. For now, visible deference cost him nothing and potentially bought him time. If the relationship proved workable, so much the better. If it didn't, he'd deal with that when the shape of the conflict became clearer.
What he didn't want was to accidentally spend the next ten minutes converting a New Ghiscari treasury official into a true believer. He changed the subject before the silence could run too long.
"I don't think you traveled from New Ghis to discuss theology, Lord Emmund."
Regos Emmund blinked, refocused. "No. I did not." He straightened slightly, shifting into the register of official business. "I am here to register a formal objection on behalf of New Ghis regarding the name you have given your newly formed slave legion. Calling it the Ghiscari Legion is an insult to the memory of the Old Empire. A true Ghiscari legion must be composed of free citizens. Slaves — and foreign slaves at that — have no right to carry that name. The suggestion that they do demeans everything the ancient traditions represent."
Ian kept his face composed.
The Ancient Empire, he thought, whose ruins I am currently standing on top of, which ceased to exist so long ago that its actual traditions survive primarily as talking points for slave traders who want to feel like aristocrats.
He didn't say that.
"I appreciate you making the journey, Lord Emmund," Ian said instead, with perfect seriousness. "It's a point worth discussing."
(End of Chapter)
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