The King of Winters

Chapter - 81

Inside the manse, the air was heavy with the scent of spices, pinchfire and sweet lemon and cinnamon. They were escorted across the entry hall, where a mosaic of colored glass depicted the Doom of Valyria. Oil burned in black iron lanterns all along the walls. Beneath an arch of twining stone leaves, a couple of Unsullied stood on the flanks. The nine-towered manse of Illyrio Mopatis sat beside the waters of the bay, its high brick walls overgrown with pale ivy. It had been the biggest building Jon had seen in Pentos, far more larger than the mere brick houses that littered the streets around it.

The Free Cities did always focus more on wealth and finer things in life and so was the man the Hand of the King was meeting now on his King's commands. The magister met him at a pillared courtyard overgrown in pale ivy. The sunlight painted the leaves in shades of bone and silver as the guests drifted among them.

Jon doubted that his quest in the east would yield any results but he still had to try for his King's need. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savoury things. He would not be the man one would like to come asking for an army but Jon Connington knew what Illyrio Mopatis was truly made of.

He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the JadeSea. It was also said that he'd never had a friend he wouldn't cheerfully sell for the right price. Jon knew about the man with his dealings with Rhaegar Targaryen in the past. If it was in his say, he would have kept the man as far away as possible. But Jon couldn't question his King's decisions. What the King dreams, the Hand builds, that was what they said in the Seven Kingdoms. And now his king dreamed for the support of the wealth and swords of his friends from the east and it had fell to Jon to get it for him. But that didn't mean he trusted the magister. Any friend of Varys the Spider is someone Jon Connington would trust just as far as he could throw him.

Beneath the balcony where they met six cherry trees stood sentinel around a marble pool, their slender branches bare and brown. A boy stood on the water, poised to duel with a bravo's blade in hand. He was lithe and handsome, no older than sixteen, with straight blond hair that brushed his shoulders. So lifelike did he seem that it took the Hand a long moment to realize he was made of painted marble, though his sword shimmered like true steel. Across the pool stood a brick wall twelve feet high, with iron spikes along its top. Beyond that was the free city of Pentos. A sea of tiled rooftops crowded close around a bay. He saw square brick towers, a great red temple, a distant manse upon a hill. In the far distance, sunlight shimmered off deep water. Fishing boats were moving across the bay, their sails rippling in the wind, and he could see the masts of larger ships poking up along the shore. If only he could convince this one man, I could get Rhaegar a new fleet to make up for the one lost in Oldtown.

Pentos was a different place, different from King's Landing or the Stormlands. Even the air smells different here. Strange spices scented the chilly autumn wind, and he could hear faint cries drifting over the wall from the streets beyond. It sounded something like Valyrian, but he did not recognize more than one word in five. He had learned to read High Valyrian as a boy from the maester of Griffin's Roost, though what they spoke in the Nine Free Cities was not as original as the one spoken by the Dragonlords of the freehold.

"So the King of the Seven Kingdoms need my help to put down the dog who threatens to bite his hand off," the magister of Pentos said. "I am a merchant, Lord Hand, not a warlord. I deal in wine and cheese and other lavish items, not soldiers. You should have gone to Braavos or Tyrosh or Volantis or any of the slaver cities if you wished to find an army for your king."

Jon had visited them on his way here. Half of them had given the same answer as this one did. It was all profit with the merchant princes of the Free Cities. Should a day ever dawn when Illyrio Mopatis saw more profit in a dead dragon than a live one, Jon had no doubt that they would soon find the wealth of Pentos turned against them, and his friends following him.