Chapter 206: Let's Make a Deal, Astapor
"Your own eyes just showed you something that contradicts everything those books claim, and you're still going to trust scrolls copied from copies of copies going back a thousand years." Ian shook his head slowly, as if he'd finally run out of patience.
"I would have thought the Ghiscari — the people who built the greatest civilization the world has ever seen — would have a better instinct for chasing the truth than that. But fine. I told you already: you can't afford my dragons."
"I'll trade you every Unsullied in Astapor for one!" Kraznys practically shouted the words the moment Missandei finished translating.
The Unsullied in Astapor didn't belong to Kraznys alone — they were split among eight different Good Masters — but he knew the others wouldn't fight him on this. Not for what Ian was offering.
The difference between a chained dragon and a bonded dragon was everything. A chained dragon was a curiosity, a spectacle, an exotic pet to show off to visiting merchants. A bonded dragon meant Astapor had a dragonlord. It meant the Ghiscari Empire could rise again.
Kraznys knew, on some rational level, that Ian's claims contradicted every book he'd ever read on the subject. But so what? The Andal had said it himself — the Ghiscari were people who knew how to pursue truth. Practice over theory. Evidence over tradition.
Kraznys closed his eyes for just a moment, picturing Ion perched on his own shoulder.
He felt, in that instant, less like a slave trader in a crumbling port city and more like a Valyrian dragonlord stepping out of history.
"How many Unsullied does Astapor actually have available?" Ian's question punctured the fantasy cleanly.
Kraznys refocused. "Counting in thousands — eight thousand, six hundred ready now. Give us a month and we can have nine thousand. Give us a full year and we can add another two thousand on top of that."
"Then tell me honestly," Ian said. "Is eight thousand six hundred Unsullied enough to conquer Westeros? Is nine thousand? Is twelve?"
Kraznys's expression darkened. Even a man of his ego couldn't say yes to that with a straight face. He looked to Fehmar for backup.
Fehmar, whose entire professional identity was built around talking up the Unsullied, looked back at Kraznys with something close to helplessness. He could usually spin the numbers well enough to satisfy buyers who didn't know what they were looking at. But after Ian had just dismantled the Qohor legend in front of everyone, Fehmar had absolutely no idea where to start.
"With you commanding them," Fehmar said finally, "perhaps it would be possible."
"If battles were won by flattery, I wouldn't need a single soldier," Ian said flatly. "You and I both know the real answer is no. Eight thousand six hundred Unsullied — or even every soldier in all of Astapor — wouldn't come close to being worth a dragon."
He let that land, then shifted his tone to something more businesslike.
"What I do have is enough gold to buy every Unsullied you're currently holding. So let's hear it, Lord Kraznys — what's your price for eight thousand six hundred men?"
"No." Kraznys's eyes hadn't left Ion since the dragon had settled at Ian's feet. He couldn't make himself look away. Trading the Unsullied for gold meant closing the door on the dragon permanently, and he wasn't ready to do that.
Rol, reading Ian's signal that it was time to move the scene along, stepped forward and put himself between Ian and Kraznys with a suspicious look on his face.
"Why is he staring at Ion like that? Is he thinking about taking him?"
After Missandei translated, Kraznys's face went hot with outrage — but before he could respond, Ian had already spun on Rol with a sharp reprimand.
"What kind of fool thing is that to say?" Ian snapped. "Would the Ghiscari — the heirs of the greatest civilization in history — break their word to a guest? Would Astapor, a city whose reputation has stood for thousands of years, throw all of that away in a single afternoon? If I'd had even a passing suspicion of that, I would never have sailed here with my dragons and my gold in the first place. A city's reputation is like a mirror — Astapor's has been spotless for millennia. You think they'd let a crack form in it now? Don't embarrass yourself."
Kraznys turned to Missandei. "Tell me exactly what he said."
Missandei translated, word for word.
Kraznys studied her face. "You didn't invent any of that?"
"I couldn't have, Master." Missandei kept her eyes down. "His words came out like a speech."
"No. You couldn't have." Kraznys nodded slowly. When he looked at Ian again, something had shifted in his expression. Barbarian no longer seemed like quite the right word for a man who understood the Ghiscari legacy that clearly. If anything, this foreigner was the most cultured outsider Kraznys had ever dealt with.
The thought of robbery, which had been hovering somewhere in the back of his mind in the vague Astapori way of thinking about such things, had already faded. Ian had just articulated the exact reason why it would be catastrophic — Astapor's survival depended entirely on being a place where buyers could come with gold and leave with soldiers, confident that no one would rob them blind in between. Kraznys could dream about becoming a dragonlord all he liked, but burning that down wasn't a price he could actually pay.
And even if he tried, the Dragon Summoner could simply refuse to teach him anything. He'd have a dragon he couldn't control and every other Good Master in the city demanding his head.
Kraznys looked down at Ion and felt something deflate in his chest.
"Still," Daenerys said — Ian had coached her on the line — "eight thousand six hundred Unsullied still isn't enough for what we need. Where else could we find soldiers of that caliber?"
"That's the problem, isn't it." Ian's expression fell into something that looked genuinely troubled. "If only we could find another force even half as capable as the Unsullied. Even a fifth as capable." He gestured down at the formations in Pride's Plaza. "Ten thousand Unsullied as the core, backed by twenty thousand heavy infantry of reasonable quality, with a few sellsword companies providing cavalry — that's an army that could make landfall in Westeros and hold ground. But we can't find that secondary force anywhere, and buying the Unsullied alone will drain most of our treasury. Nothing left over to hire the horse."
Ian caught Missandei translating the exchange to Kraznys out of the corner of his eye. The Good Master was leaning forward slightly, the look of a man doing rapid mental arithmetic.
"I have a proposal, my lord." Kraznys stepped closer, and Ian noticed he'd dropped the word barbarian entirely without seeming to realize it. "If you're willing to remain in Astapor for two years, we can provide you with fourteen thousand Unsullied and twenty thousand Ghiscari infantry on top of that. The infantry won't be Unsullied — the training is different and the quality is considerably lower — but they would absolutely meet the standard you're describing."
"And the price would be the dragons," Ian said, after the translation, with the measured tone of a man just now putting the pieces together. "And the bonding method."
"If you pay in dragons rather than gold, the coin you keep will be more than enough to hire the Stormcrows, the Long Lances, the Second Sons, and the Golden Company simultaneously for a full year." Kraznys had clearly been doing the math in his head. "And enough left over to charter a fleet large enough to carry your entire force across the Narrow Sea."
"Can you guarantee the quality of those Ghiscari infantry?" Ian let a note of cautious interest creep into his voice.
"On the reputation of Astapor itself." Kraznys pressed his fist to his chest. "I stake everything on it."
(End of Chapter)
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