Chapter 204: The Dragon Queen
Beyond her suffocating beauty, Daenerys possessed a peculiar power that made one's hair stand on end—an instinctive urge to kneel and obey. Only those who had experienced her presence up close would understand: in this world, regal aura was a tangible thing.
Watching her from a short distance, Petyr Baelish realized that this young Targaryen girl's ability to cross half of Essos in a single year—evolving from a barbarian's consort to the commander of an army, mother of three dragons, and bearer of countless legendary titles—was not merely a result of chance or luck.
Even though this wasn't his first time seeing her, Petyr still felt goosebumps rise as he approached the Queen. It was no illusion; even without looking at her face, he could feel with absolute clarity that the person sitting atop the silver mare, basking in the cheers of the crowd, was the Queen, and could be no other woman.
After liquidating his remaining assets in Braavos, the former Master of Coin had traveled south in disguise. Passing through Andalos to Pentos, he purchased some daily necessities and headed east. He intended to distance himself from the western coast of Essos, which was crawling with Westerosi merchants who might recognize him at any moment. He planned to go to Norvos or Qohor, hide his identity, and begin the likely dull second half of his life.
However, a mere two days after leaving the city, he was seized in his sleep by unidentified men, brought back to Pentos, and put on a ship.
Initially, Petyr thought King Robert's bounty hunters had caught him to take him back for trial. For a moment, he felt utterly despondent, nearly seeking an opportunity to end his own life... but his keen observation soon revealed that the ship was not crossing the Narrow Sea. Instead, it was sailing south along the western coast of Essos before abruptly veering east.
Before long, his mysterious captors explained the destination: the ship was bound for Slaver's Bay. Once ashore, he was to seek out Daenerys Targaryen, offer his service to the scion of the True Dragon, and at the most opportune moment, lead the Queen in a counter-invasion of Westeros to restore the Targaryen dynasty.
The feeling of having one's destiny manipulated was undoubtedly loathsome. But as a small man who had left his long-cultivated power base for a strange continent, stripped of his last bit of wealth... without power or status, his intellect had no lever to move. If he left these captors now, he likely wouldn't survive a week.
Left with no choice, he decided to temporarily endure the arrangements of his mysterious puppet master.
The ship docked in Yunkai, but unfortunately, Daenerys and her army had already departed for Meereen. Under the protection of Strong Belwas, Petyr spent a grueling half-month traveling through the desert. He finally located his target beneath the walls of Meereen and declared his intent to serve.
The first meeting was far from pleasant. As a gesture of goodwill and a calculated move for his own safety, Petyr immediately exposed Jorah Mormont as a spy after completing his self-introduction. This sent Daenerys into a towering rage. The knight, once the Queen's most trusted confidant, fell from grace instantly. He was demoted from personal guard and advisor to a sewer crawler, ordered to infiltrate Meereen from below.
Regrettably, other than winning them the right to stay and share their tents and food, the exposure did not earn Petyr immediate trust. In Daenerys's own words: "The man who exposes a liar may simply be a greater liar."
Then the miracle happened. Right before Petyr's eyes, the game-breaking Dragon Queen wordlessly performed another miracle: using a group of sewer-crawling subordinates and a single wooden stake, she seized Meereen—a city many deemed impregnable—in a single night. As the sun began to rise, she commenced her processional entry into the city.
In the plaza before the Great Pyramid, the Great Masters, dragged from their beds in their sleep, huddled together in despair. In the morning light, they looked far from Great. Stripped of their jewelry and silk robes, they appeared lowly, ugly, and ridiculous—crouched together like a troop of shaved monkeys.
"I want your leaders," the Dragon Queen called out, halting her horse before the captives. "Hand them over, and the rest shall be spared."
"How many?" an old woman sobbed. "How many must we give for you to spare us?"
"One hundred and sixty-three," she answered. "All are to be nailed to the stakes surrounding this plaza. Ensure each one points to the next, just like the children I saw on the road to Meereen!"
The captives began to scream and shove, but the armored Unsullied plunged into the crowd with cold efficiency. they dragged out the core members of each family, counted out exactly one hundred and sixty-three, and threw them aside. Some cursed loudly, some begged for mercy, and others simply collapsed into heaps of wet misery, losing control of their bladders...
Petyr frowned.
What was this? Two days ago, the shock of seeing three dragons already the size of men and thousands of disciplined Unsullied, followed by the marvel of Daenerys taking Meereen so easily, had begun to soften Petyr's resistance. Perhaps, following the puppet master's plan to serve the last Targaryen, he really could return to Westeros in his lifetime, reclaiming his seat at the Small Council—or even the Iron Throne?
But damn it all—just when he thought this Queen might be reliable and was trying to find a way to catch her eye, this girl was about to perform a public display of "doing something stupid to push herself into a dead end"?
"Your Majesty," Petyr called out loudly from the surge of followers. "I have heard of the scenes you witnessed on the road to Meereen, and I fully understand that your heart is filled with the fierce, raging fire of the True Dragon. But I must speak the truth—for every Great Master you nail to a stake, you bring yourself one step closer to being nailed to one yourself!"
Unsullied, sellswords, and a mass of slaves with broken chains parted to either side so Daenerys could clearly see the speaker. The Dragon Queen's beautiful face was masked in frost as she stared coldly at the former Master of Coin who had defected from across the Narrow Sea. "This is punishment. A life for a life. Have you come all this way from Westeros just to plead for these slave masters?"
"No. I have no intention of wasting words on these people who are nothing to me. On the contrary, I believe you should not spare a single one of these slave masters. They should all die—not just one hundred and sixty-three!"
As soon as he spoke, not only the Great Masters being hauled away but even those remaining in the crowd began to riot. Even among Daenerys's followers, voices of dissent rose. The young Dragon Queen had expected a plea for mercy; she hadn't expected a more radical liberator, leaving her momentarily taken-off guard.
"No. There must be innocent people among them. I want a just revenge, not a brutal massacre."
"Since our opinions differ, Your Majesty, would you be willing to temporarily imprison these masters and hear my reasoning before making your final decision?"
"Hmph." An exceptionally handsome sellsword stepped forward from the Queen's side. "Her Majesty is of noble status; she has no time to listen to the words of a treacherous man like you."
"Quite right. There are indeed some unfavorable reports about me circulating in Westeros across the Narrow Sea, but those are all malicious slanders." Littlefinger did not recognize the sellsword, but he stood tall in the crowd, meeting Daenerys's gaze without flinching. "Even if those rumors were entirely true, what of it? The man I supposedly poisoned was Jon Arryn, the man who helped the Usurper Robert overthrow the Targaryens. He was your enemy! Faced with a man who traveled thousands of miles to join you, does the noble Queen lack even the time and patience to sit down, hear my views, and see if we might find common ground?"
...
A provocation. Daenerys hated such ploys. She didn't want to deal with a man who—by all accounts—had seduced another's wife and conspired with her to steal her husband's life and property. Even if the deceased was the Usurper's dog and her enemy, it did not change her perception. The phrase the enemy of my enemy is my friend did not apply everywhere. She was a human being first, and a Targaryen second.
Irritated, she scanned the surrounding soldiers and newly freed slaves, all of whom had their eyes fixed on her. She decided to give the man one chance to speak his mind—but no matter what he said, she would have the lives of those one hundred and sixty-three masters.
"Imprison them all. Keep the one hundred and sixty-three separate from the rest!" Daenerys signaled from her silver mare, and her subordinates immediately cleared a path to the Great Pyramid in the center of the city. "Petyr Baelish? Come then. Let me hear your grand theory."
A short while later, in the audience hall of the Great Pyramid of Meereen, Daenerys sat in the cushioned chair that once belonged to the city's most powerful master. She looked with disdain at Petyr Baelish, who had followed her inside. "Very well, Lord Former Master of Coin to the Usurper. What is your opinion on how I should deal with those slave masters? Speak."
Petyr looked around but found no place to sit. Instead, Daenerys's guards watched him with wary eyes. Having no choice, he suppressed his irritation and stood to answer. "Your Majesty, in the slave camps you have been dragging along..."
"They are not slaves. They are freedmen."
"Fine. Having stayed in Your Majesty's army of freedmen for two days, I have gained some understanding of your actions in Astapor and Yunkai... First, allow me to express my admiration. At Your Majesty's age, to be able to so skillfully utilize virtue and mercy to mobilize the lowest slaves to serve you is impressive."
Freeing slaves—how did it become "utilizing virtue and mercy to mobilize slaves" in this man's mouth? Daenerys felt a surge of annoyance, but she couldn't think of a rebuttal. she simply stared at him in silence.
"Unfortunately, while you seized two slave cities using the same methods, you gave the people within them no means of survival before rushing off to Meereen..."
"No means of survival?" Daenerys shifted uncomfortably in her seat to make herself more comfortable. "I established councils for Astapor and Yunkai."
"You established councils, but you left them neither an army nor a way to earn a living."
The respect in Petyr's tone began to fade. He had prepared a speech over the last two days to impress the Queen, but the rash order for one hundred and sixty-three at their second meeting had made him uneasy. Assisting Daenerys in her return to Westeros was a grand prospect, but before betting himself as a chip, one thing had to be made clear: was Daenerys a Queen worth serving, or was she merely an arrogant fool trying to conquer the world with beauty and three dragons—a female version of the Mad King?
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