296 AC — Astapor
Anakin had always been troubled by strange dreams.
At first he had heeded Griff's lessons, schooling himself to dismiss them with cold discipline, to turn his thoughts aside and deny them meaning. Yet the visions did not fade. They returned again and again, shrouded in fire—not wild or ravenous flame, but fire held in check, purposeful fire.
These were no common dreams. They were his dragon dreams, as real as waking, and they clung to him long after sleep was over. So Anakin tried something new. He listened to them.
On the sea, the night before Astapor's red walls rose from the haze, he saw the recurring vision that led him here.
A monstrous statue of a woman, carved in bronze and stone—torso bare, wings spread like a bat's, talons ending in hooked claws. Below her waist her body twisted into a scorpion's tail, the barbed sting lifted as if to strike. Chains hung from her claws, thick links ending in manacles. In the dream the chains shattered.
Anakin awoke with his heart hammering and the taste of ash in his mouth.
He went up on deck before dawn. The sea lay flat and metallic, beaten bronze beneath a pale sky. In the east, the horizon had begun to bruise purple.
Duck was there already, huge shoulders hunched under a cloak that looked too small for him. His breath steamed faintly.
"Can't sleep, Your Grace," he asked.
"I can," Anakin answered, "just can't seem to rest."
Suddenly, "Your Grace," another voice called from behind them.
Jon Connington had come up without a sound, as he always did. The years had carved him leaner. His hair—once bright as a fox's coat—was shot with gray at the temples.
"Word has come down," he muttered. "Strickland speaks of seceding the Golden Company with his men. Says coming here is bleeding coin. That we've no business dealing with slavers."
"Harry says a great many things," Anakin replied, and the contempt in it was old and familiar. "He said Lys would fall easily. He said the Usurper offered a fortune for my head. That the Stepstones would be quiet."
Griff's jaw tightened. "I only told him what he needed to know."
"And now he's telling the captains something else," Anakin returned. He kept his voice level. The sea didn't need to know he was angry. "Half the Company is still his, Griff. And more than half the ships…" A pause. The only sound was the creak of rigging and the soft slap of water against hull. Anakin could have lied. He'd been taught that, too. Instead he said, "I brought us here because if we sail west with what we have, we land with banners and a prayer. If we land divided, we die divided."
"And the Unsullied change that," Griff asked, flat.
"They change the 'math'," he replied.
"They are slaves," said Griff. The words came out like steel. "Bred and broken from childhood. I've seen you look at a whip and your face turns to stone, yet you speak now of buying an army with chains around its neck."
Anakin stared ahead as Astapor's walls began to show through the morning mist—red bricks wavering in heat like a bleeding mirage.
"I don't intend to keep the chains," he said.
Griff's eyes narrowed. "That is a child's answer."
"No," Anakin replied, "it's a king's."
Griff's face tightened.
Anakin looked back to Astapor.
(Later…)
The Red City greeted them with stink. Salt, tar, sweat. Fish rotting in baskets. Blood old enough to turn black, soaked into brick. The heat lay on the city like a wet cloak, pressing breath from lungs. Red walls rose high, crowned with harpies that leered down in bronze and gold. And sand… So much sand…
They docked four black-hulled ships in a harbor choked with masts.
Men of the Golden Company moved on deck with the restless energy of sellswords promised something expensive. Anakin felt their eyes on him: the young dragon in gilded armor, the boy king with the famous sword. Blackheart's heir. Half of them believed. Half waited to see if belief would pay.
Harry Strickland had stayed behind in Myr, claiming gout. Anakin knew better. Harry did not like Astapor. Harry did not like risks he couldn't count. Harry was waiting to see whether this 'eastern folly' made Anakin richer or killed him.
Anakin walked the city with Griff, Franklyn, Duck, and a handful of guards. He wore a plain cloak over his gilded cuirass, hood up against the sun. It did nothing. Heat found him anyway, sliding under cloth like a hand.
They came to the Plaza of Pride. The name made his mouth taste sour.
Chains hung from stalls like jewelry. Iron collars lay piled like dead snakes. Men and women and children were displayed on blocks, naked or half-clothed, skin scarred with lash and brand. Some stared at him with dull eyes. Some stared with hatred. Some stared with a hungry, impossible hope that made him want to look away.
Above it all loomed the harpy: twenty feet of bronze and stone, wings spread, talons extended, chain links dangling from her claws like trophies.
"The Unsullied," Duck announced.
They stood in ranks—shaved heads, bare chests, spears grounded, shields aligned. The sun beat down on them. Flies crawled on their skin. None moved. Not a flinch. Not that Anakin could see.
The man selling them moved enough for all. Kraznys mo Nakloz strutted along the line in embroidered silk like a rooster with jewels in its comb. He shouted in High Valyrian, spitting contempt into the air, and laughed as if cruelty were a game.
At his side walked a scribe. She was young, though older than Anakin had thought at first glance; certainly older than him at least.
Her skin was the warm brown of sun-kissed teak. A cloud of dark curls framed her face in gentle coils. Her features were delicate yet striking—high cheeks and full lips. A collar ringed her throat, plain iron. Her eyes were a molten gold that held steady even while Kraznys shouted filth beside her.
"The Good Master says they have stood here a day and a night with no food or water," she translated in the Common Tongue, voice careful. "They will stand until they drop. Such is their obedience."
Her accent was soft, lilted. Naath, Anakin thought. The Isle of Butterflies. A place even slavers spoke of with a kind of greedy reverence.
He forced his face into the mask he'd worn in Pentos: young prince, bored and arrogant, weighing men as if they were horses.
"Tell me of their training," he said. "I like to know what I'm buying."
Kraznys barked something foul in Valyrian. The girl's lips tightened—so slightly he might have imagined it—before she translated.
"They begin at five. Each day they drill from dawn to dusk until they master sword, shield, and spear. Four boys begin for every one who earns the spike. The rest die along the way."
"Die how?" interrupted Duck, blunt as ever.
"Of beatings, disease, the trials the masters set. Their discipline and loyalty are absolute. They fear nothing," the girl said. "Those who live are… what you see."
"Even the bravest men fear death," Griff said, eyes hard.
Kraznys laughed and shouted again. "The Good Master says," the girl replied, smoothing his ugliness into politeness, "the Unsullied are not men. Death means nothing to them."
As if to prove it, Kraznys snatched a shield from one of the soldiers and drew a curved blade. He sliced a strip of flesh from the Unsullied's chest. Blood welled and ran down, darkening the dust. The soldier did not flinch.
Kraznys preened on. The girl's voice stayed level when she translated the next piece, but Anakin saw her swallow.
"To win his shield," she said, "an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find a newborn, and kill it before its mother's eyes. This way, my master says, we make certain there is no weakness left in them."
Anakin looked at the Unsullied ranks. Shaved heads. Blank faces. Spears held perfectly. Thousands of men made into a weapon by forcing them to murder the world's most innocent thing.
Something hot rose in his chest. He held it down with both hands. He heard bells, faint and far, as if someone was still ringing them, ringing and ringing until…
"How many?" Anakin asked, voice cold.
Kraznys held up eight fingers and laughed.
"Eight thousand," the girl said. "Master Kraznys asks that you hurry," she added, "other buyers are interested."
Anakin nodded, slow, and turned away before his hands did something that would ruin everything.
As they walked out beneath the harpy's shadow, Griff caught his arm.
"This is bait," he said low. "He wants you to feel insulted. He wants you to overpay. He wants to see what you are."
"No," Anakin said, "he thinks he already knows who I am."
Griff's grip tightened. "Which is?"
"Weak."
On the way back to the ships, they passed through a narrower district. Here the red bricks were stained darker, and the smell was different—sweeter, fouler, the smell of too many bodies in too small a space.
Anakin slowed. Through iron bars, he saw them: children, hundreds of them, packed into pens like animals. Some were no older than three or four. They sat in their own filth, staring at nothing. A few cried. Most were silent.
A guard walked past with a bucket of slop—grey, watery, hardly food—and tossed it into a trough. The children surged forward, pushing and clawing, the stronger ones shoving the weak aside. One girl, smaller than the rest, couldn't reach. She fell, and others trampled her, and she didn't get up.
Anakin kept his cloak tight and his face blank and felt something inside him coil tighter with every step.
He dreamed that night of the harpy again. Only this time, the chains did not break. They burned.
(The Next Day…)
The Good Masters' fortress crouched at the end of the seawall, a round tower of red brick crowned with a golden harpy. Armed men lined the walls, watching Anakin and his retinue with hard eyes.
Inside, the hall felt like a pit.
It was open to the sky, ringed with iron bars. Beyond the bars cages stacked like shelves, shapes moving in shadow. Chains clinked. Gulls cried overhead. The distant crash of waves sounded like slow applause.
Three thrones squatted on a dais. Kraznys sat in the center. To his left, Greizhen mo Ullhor, fleshy and suspicious. To his right, Hazdahn mo Rhaohl, thin as a whip, eyes gleaming like coins.
The scribe from yesterday stood below them, hands folded, collar around her throat.
Kraznys began in High Valyrian, speaking as if Anakin were deaf and stupid. She translated, voice calm. "The Good Master welcomes you. He is honored by your interest in our Unsullied."
"Tell him I want them all," Anakin said.
The scribe's eyes flicked up—one heartbeat of surprise—and then she was only a scribe again. She translated. The dais stirred. Greizhen protested loudly. Hazdahn muttered. Kraznys laughed.
"Master Greizhen says they cannot sell half-trained boys. If they fail on the field, they bring shame upon all of Astapor."
"The boys will not bear your harpy," Anakin said. "They will bear my sigil." He spoke in the Common Tongue, letting arrogance sit on his voice like perfume. "Tell them: I am not buying perfection. I am buying a spear wall. To break and be replaced."
Her mouth tightened at 'replaced.' She translated anyway.
Kraznys leaned forward, greedy now. He asked, in Valyrian, how Anakin would pay.
Anakin let his gaze drift upward, beyond iron bars to where faces peered down—children, thin and wide-eyed, collars tight around necks. He looked back to the dais.
"I have more gold," he said. "And a few ships as well, should you be interested."
Duck made a sound like a choked curse.
Griff went rigid. "No," he hissed under his breath. "Anakin, you cannot—"
"Stop talking," the Targaryen said, firm, without looking at him.
Kraznys's eyes gleamed. His caution—whatever thin sliver of it existed—drowned in desire. "Done," he said in Common, too fast.
"Done," Anakin echoed in the Common Tongue. Then he added, as casually as if asking for a cup of wine, "And you. You will be mine as well. Master Kraznys's gift to me. As a token for a bargain well struck."
The scribe's breath caught before she translated. Kraznys shrugged. A slave was a slave. He said something along those lines and laughed.
Anakin nodded once, slow, like a boy accepting his gift. Inside, his stomach twisted.
Outside, the sun beat down as they walked back toward the harbor. The scribe kept pace at his side, eyes lowered, hands steady.
When they boarded the decks of one of his ships, he stopped where the sea breeze could cut the stink for a moment. He looked out at the bronze sheet of water.
Four black-hulled ships. He promised six. A number he did not have. Already Anakin knew the captains would grumble that he spent their coin and promised them songs instead of gold.
"Do you have a name?" he asked her, seeking to get his mind off that.
"This one is called Missandei," she said automatically, the trained answer.
"Do 'you'?" he insisted, gentler. "Not what they call you. What you call yourself."
Something shifted. A small crack in her shell. "In Naath," she said quietly, "my mother named me the same. It is the only name I have had."
"And your family?"
"Gone," she said. No drama, no plea. A fact like stone.
Anakin looked out over the water, lips pressed thin. "Is it true? What Kraznys said," he asked. "That the Unsullied obey without thought?"
"They obey," Missanei answered. "They do not choose. They do not question. That is their purpose, as the masters see it."
"And you? What is your purpose?"
Her eyes went distant for a moment. "I am a slave," she said softly. "Purpose is given to me."
"So, you're as fearless of death as the Unsullied?"
"Valar morghulis," she replied.
"Stupid saying," Anakin answered with a faint sneer.
He turned and saw Griff watching him from the foot of the gangplank, face pinched, suspicion carved deep.
Anakin spoke to Missandei once more. "Find Duck," he said. "He'll show you where to sleep. Eat if you can. Tomorrow will be… busy."
Missandei hesitated. "If I am yours," she said, very carefully, "may I ask, what it is you wish of me?"
Anakin looked at her, and for a heartbeat he felt something. Not softness. Something sharper. "If I could ask but one thing of every man who crosses my path…" He said, "Never betray me."
She bowed and went.
Griff waited until she was out of earshot before he came aboard deck and spoke.
"What do you think you are doing?" he demanded.
Anakin walked the deck. The boards creaked beneath his boots. "You'll have to be more specific."
Griff moved closer, voice low and fierce. "You trade ships for slaves. You buy an army in chains. You take this girl for gods know what. You—"
"I am not keeping her," Anakin cut in. "Or them."
Griff's eyes narrowed. "Then tell me what it is you're doing."
"You know. Deep down you've known this whole time."
Griff studied him as if searching for a lie in bone. "You plan to take Astapor," he said.
"I plan to break it," corrected Anakin.
"You cannot do that, not with the four or five hundred men we have," Griff hissed.
"But I can with the Unsullied," he said.
"I see," Griff replied. "This city will not die quietly. Yunkai will march. Meereen will answer. Volantis will fund knives."
Anakin only smiled, thin and sharp. "Do you remember the stories?" he asked. "The ones they tell of Maelys Blackfyre?"
Griff's expression darkened. "I remember enough."
"Then you remember this," Anakin said. "The night Maelys killed his own cousin. Storm raging, thunder shaking the ground, right there in the command tent." His voice had gone quieter, steadier. More dangerous. "The men heard it," he went on. "Heard the struggle. Heard the screams. And not one of them stepped inside. When Maelys came out," Anakin continued, "no one asked questions. No one spoke a word." His pale eyes met Griff's. "They bent the knee."
Griff's jaw worked, the muscle there twitching. "Maelys was a monster," he said at last. "Is that what you aspire to be?"
Anakin shrugged, careless as you please. "He was obeyed."
"He was feared," Griff snapped.
Anakin had no answer ready for that. He straightened, folding his arms once more. "If Maelys the Monstrous could do that with his own hands," he said, almost lightly, "you think I cannot kill Strickland and take his half of the Company by force? That we cannot ward off whatever slaver funded knives?"
Griff stared at him—truly stared now, as if seeing something he had hoped was not there. Arrogance.
Griff's voice softened, dangerously. "And if the Unsullied refuse you? If you free them and they walk away?"
Anakin turned then, eyes cold. "Then they go. And I will have lost no sleep because of that." Griff held his gaze. Anakin's voice hardened. "I'm only doing what you taught me a king's duty is."
Griff stared at him for a long moment. "And what is that?"
"Justice."
(The Following Day…)
The Plaza of Punishment groaned open under iron and oak.
The courtyard beyond was flat packed earth, ringed by walls and arcades. The sun beat down, heavy as a hammer.
The Unsullied filled it. Eight thousand men, ranks perfect. Spears grounded. Shields locked. Behind them, thinner lines of boys barely into their growth, helms low, hands tight on spear hafts as if clinging to the only certainty they had ever been given.
Opposite them gathered the Good Masters—a cluster of silk and flesh and perfume, guards with whips at their belts, mercenaries with hard eyes.
Chests of gold were wheeled into the courtyard by Golden Company men. The lids were thrown open. Coins spilled like water.
Kraznys waddled forward and plunged both hands into the gold as if he might drown in it. He laughed. He shouted filth in Valyrian about how quickly dragons became beggars when they needed soldiers.
Missandei stood near Anakin. Her face remained smooth, but her jaw was tight. Kraznys's eyes slid over her and he said something that made the air feel colder.
Missandei's voice was careful when she translated for Anakin, the words polished, the cruelty dulled. "The Good Master says… he hopes you have enjoyed your gift."
Anakin understood well enough the meaning coiled beneath Kraznys's words. The slaver's tone had been oily, his smile knowing, as if such indulgences were no more than common courtesy between men of rank. The suggestion—that a slave might be offered for his pleasure, as one might present a cup of wine—settled over Anakin like a foul stench.
In that instant, it was no longer a matter of coin or contracts, of spears bought and banners raised. It was a question of worth. Of who deserved to live. And who didn't.
Kraznys presented him with a whip—short, coiled, nine leather lashes tipped with iron claws. The handle was carved from pale bone; the pommel was a woman's head with her mouth open in a silent scream.
"The Harpy's Fingers," Missandei said, voice flat.
Kraznys shoved it toward Anakin, impatient. "{Take it. Take your army. Now give me my ships.}"
Anakin closed his fingers around the handle. For an instant, he felt the whip like a living thing. Not magic—memory. Pain soaked into leather. The carved woman's face fit too neatly beneath his thumb. He imagined the lash biting skin. He imagined the ease of it.
A part of him—the part that had learned the world obeyed when he was angry—whispered that it would be 'simple'. Crack the whip, and men would move. Fear would do what honor could not. Control would end chaos.
His pulse beat hard. The bells in his skull tolled. He swallowed, forcing breath through teeth.
Then he turned toward the Unsullied ranks. "{Unsullied!}" he called, in Valyrian.
Missandei's head snapped up. Her eyes widened. The courtyard went still.
Kraznys blinked, confusion stumbling across his face. "{Y–You—You speak Valyrian?}"
"That," Anakin said, voice calm, "is the least of your concerns."
He did not draw his sword. He raised a hand.
The world narrowed. Sound dimmed. Heat pressed in from every side. A pressure built behind his eyes like iron bands tightening. He felt something answer him—something that had always been there, coiled in his blood, in his bones, in the space between breath and thought.
The air between his palm and Kraznys thickened.
Kraznys jerked upward. His feet left the ground as if slowly reeled in by an invisible hook. His hands flew to his throat, clawing at nothing. His face purpled. Veins stood out. He kicked, helpless, above the dust.
Gasps burst from the gathered masters and slaves. Some cried sorcery. Some crossed themselves. Guards faltered, eyes wide and faces sweating.
Anakin's vision tunneled. The bells were loud now, loud enough to drown the courtyard.
He held Kraznys in the air for all to see.
"{Unsullied! Hear me!}" Anakin's voice rolled across the plaza, unnatural in its strength. "{You have been slaves all your lives. Today you are free.}"
A heartbeat of silence. Then, very close, Griff whispered, almost without meaning to: "No, Anakin. Stop this."
Anakin did not look at him. His hand trembled. His head throbbed. Kraznys choked and gurgled above the dust. 'Yes,' a comforting feeling coiled in Anakin's thoughts. In his eyes, Kraznys was no more than an animal.
"{Kill the men who hold the whips,}" he commanded. "{Kill the soldiers who defend them. Break every chain. Spare every slave. Strike down every master who tries to flee.}"
For a moment nothing moved. Then a spear slid forward, wet and clean, into a Good Master's belly. A scream split the air. Another spear. Another scream. Silk bloomed red.
The Unsullied surged, discipline turned inward now, unleashed. They did not shout. They did not laugh. They killed with the same obedience they had shown standing under flies.
Golden Company men moved on the flanks. Some hesitated. Some did not. Some, much like the Unsullied, looked at Anakin as if he were a god.
Kraznys wriggled above the courtyard, eyes bulging. "{Y–You…said…}" he croaked.
Anakin drew him closer, holding him aloft at eye level.
"I lied," he whispered.
His hand clenched. There was a sharp crack—bone, neck, the sound of something that should not be so easy. Kraznys's head lolled at an unnatural angle.
The body dropped, thudding onto the ground.
The whip still hung from Anakin's hand. He stared at it as if it were a snake. Then he tossed it into a brazier. Leather caught at once. Flames licked hungrily up the coils. The carved woman's face blackened, her silent scream swallowed by fire.
The courtyard became violent.
Some freed slaves fled screaming. Some fell to their knees, weeping. Some seized stones and clubs and rushed masters with a fury so raw, Anakin could taste it in the air.
A boy—no older than twelve—leapt onto a fallen slaver and began smashing his face with a brick, over and over, sobbing as he did it. Blood spattered. Teeth flew. Another slave moved, ripping the boy off the corpse and holding him as he kicked and screamed. The child's hands were slick with blood.
"He killed my mother," the boy shrieked, words breaking. "He killed her—he—"
Anakin watched, chest tight. Was that justice, or vengeance? The difference alluded him.
By dusk, smoke rose from half the city. Red bricks ran black with soot. Old blood washed loose by new. The bronze harpy in the Plaza of Pride stood staring over chaos, her chain links rattling as freed men and women began to haul ropes around her.
In the great plaza, the Unsullied formed ranks once more as if the day's slaughter had been a drill. Eight thousand spears rose like a forest.
Anakin rode out before them on his brown horse spattered with ash. Missandei, Griff, Duck, and the men of the Company clustered behind, faces grim, eyes searching for what the day had made of him.
"{Unsullied!}" Anakin called out. "{You were slaves. Bought and broken and bled. No more. I am not your master. I cannot be. Not if you are to be men.}"
A ripple went through the ranks—subtle, like wind through grass. Confusion. Suspicion. Something like longing.
"{Any man who wishes to leave may leave,}" he said. "{No one will touch him. Not my men. Not theirs. Walk away now, and you are free. I swear it.}"
He waited.
Then, slowly, one spear butt struck the ground. A dull, solid sound. Another. Then a hundred. Then a thousand. Not shouted. Not cheered. A rhythm—thunder building. Spears and shields and feet, a sound like a heartbeat made of iron.
They were choosing. Or they were obeying the 'idea' of choice because they didn't know anything else. Anakin could not tell which. In a way, he recognized his own qualities reflected in the Unsullied. It did not matter to the men striking their spear butts into the earth. But it mattered to him.
"Do you see?" Anakin said to Griff later, riding out through the gate while behind them the harpy statue toppled and crashed, bronze screaming against stone.
"Yeah, I saw," Griff replied, voice tight. "Remember this when the whispers reach Westeros. Gods know what they'll call you."
"Let them," Anakin said. He meant it. He also meant the quieter thing he did not say: 'This was only the beginning.'
Griff watched him and felt something twist in his gut—pride and dread braided tight.
He had wanted a prince who could reclaim Rhaegar's throne. He had not thought carefully enough about what sort of man was forged in those fires.
(That Night…)
The camp outside Astapor's walls was ringed with Unsullied in silent ranks, spears upright. Stars burned overhead.
Inside the command tent a single lamp burned. A battered trestle table stood at its center, scarred by knives and ink and war.
Anakin, after dismissing his council of most trusted Company captains, stood over a table strewn with maps and counters. His armor lay discarded in a heap. Without it he looked younger, or rather looked his age.
He lifted his eyes.
The tent flap stirred. Missandei entered, hesitant. She had washed soot from her hands, but not memory from her gaze. She looked at him as if he might vanish if she blinked.
"Your Grace," she said, and her voice trembled despite her effort to keep it steady.
"You're still here," Anakin observed softly. His gaze lingered on her face, searching it as though it were a page he might read.
"I… I wished to thank you," she confessed.
"For what?"
"You saved me," she replied. "You saved… so many."
"I didn't save anyone," he said, mild. "I just opened a door. The rest is on them."
Her hands twisted together. Then she forced them still. Resolve crept into her posture—quiet, fierce. "I–I'm not really sure how to thank you."
He waved the thought aside with an idle flick of his hand. "No need," he said. "You are your own person. You don't belong to me, or to anyone else. You are free to choose as you wish."
"Then I choose," she said softly.
Anakin lifted a brow. "Choose what?"
"To follow," Missandei replied. "Not because I must. Because I want to." Her breath came quicker then, words tumbling out as if she feared she might lose courage if she paused. "The Unsullied have sworn themselves to you because they wish to follow you. I wish the same. Let me fight for you."
For a heartbeat, Anakin only stared at her. Then a corner of his mouth twitched. "You?" he said, amused. "An Unsullied?" His eyes swept her slender frame, the delicate hands that had never known spear haft or shield rim. "You'd last about a day. Two, if you were feeling ambitious."
Color bloomed across her cheeks at once. She looked away, embarrassed, her courage faltering under the weight of his teasing.
"I did not mean…" she began.
Anakin caught it then—the way her shoulders drew inward, the faint sting of humiliation. His smile faded, replaced by something gentler.
"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it. "I wasn't mocking you."
She dared a glance back at him.
He straightened, resting his palms against the edge of the table. "Fighting isn't the only way to stand beside someone," he went on. "And truth be told, I could use help on a different matter."
Her curiosity flickered. "Different?"
Instead of answering, he stepped aside and gestured to the table. "Come here."
Missandei hesitated only a moment before moving closer. The map spread before them was vast—Astapor marked with a smear of red wax, the coast curving north and west, cities named in harsh ink: Yunkai. Meereen.
"This," Anakin said, tapping the parchment lightly, "is only the beginning. If Astapor was a wound then Slaver's Bay is the disease."
Her eyes traced the lines, her mind quick, already working. She saw how the cities fed one another, how chains in one place strengthened chains in another.
"You mean to go on," she said quietly.
"I do," Anakin replied. "And I'd rather not do it blind."
He looked at her then—not as a freed slave, not as a supplicant, but as someone he was choosing to trust. "You know these cities. Their customs. Their lies. If you wish to stand with me, Missandei of Naath, then stand here."
He left the words hanging between them, an invitation rather than a command. Missandei's heart hammered in her chest. Slowly, deliberately, she placed her hand beside his on the edge of the table.
Outside the tent, the Unsullied stood watch beneath the stars, witness to the birth of a new empire.