Chapter 207: Too Many Good Masters
"I have a few additional conditions," Ian continued. "If you can agree to them, we have a deal."
"Go ahead."
"I want the eight thousand six hundred Unsullied transferred to my command today — right now. For the next two years, I want to use Astapor's military camp to quarter them. Astapor provides their provisions, and I'll pay for every meal. Fair compensation, not a gift."
Kraznys hesitated. "That's outside our usual arrangements."
"Think it through. If you hold the Unsullied for two years and hand them over all at once, you're still feeding and housing them for those two years regardless. Under my arrangement, you at least recover some of that cost. You come out ahead."
Kraznys blinked, ran the numbers in his head, and found he couldn't immediately argue with the math. "But why do you need them now if they're just going to stay in Astapor anyway? Wouldn't it be simpler to take delivery of everything together in two years?"
"Because I'm not planning to sit in Astapor for two years doing nothing." Ian shook his head. "During that time I'll be making regular trips north to the Lhazar region — training soldiers, conducting operations."
"Operations." Kraznys repeated the word carefully. "What kind of operations?"
"That brings me to my second condition." Ian raised two fingers. "I want the right to establish a shipyard and supporting facilities on the east bank of the Worm River. I'll need access to labor from the river villages and logging rights in the southern mountain range." He paused to let Missandei catch up with the translation. "I intend to build my own fleet — one that will dock at Astapor's harbor, naturally."
The previous evening, after the fleet had anchored, Ian had sent his eagle out to survey the surrounding terrain and get a clear picture of the region's population and geography.
Astapor sat on the west bank of the Worm River at its mouth — open sea to the north, a modest plain across the river to the east, the untamed Ghiscari Mountains pressing in from the southwest. The city's population ran somewhere between sixty and eighty thousand, with roughly two thirds of them slaves. East along the riverbanks lay a scattering of villages — another eighty to a hundred and twenty thousand people, more than half of them serfs bound to the land.
The farmland outside the city walls couldn't feed Astapor on its own. The city imported most of its food, which made it vulnerable in ways the Good Masters had apparently never bothered to think about.
The harbor side to the north had no walls at all — completely exposed to any fleet that wanted to sail in and start shooting. The other three sides weren't much better: low, thin walls with no serious fortifications to speak of. The Astapori had apparently operated on the theory that their Unsullied were the city's defenses. There was a certain Spartan logic to it. There was also the simpler explanation that Astapor had never offered enough value to make anyone bother conquering it.
That was the core of Ian's assessment. No resources worth seizing, no population large enough to matter, no walls worth the name, and a food supply that could be strangled from the sea in a matter of weeks. The mountains to the south had genuine economic potential — timber, minerals, room to develop — but turning that potential into something real would take years and a workforce Astapor didn't have.
Taking Astapor by force and making it his base would also brand him as exactly the kind of man no city in Essos would deal with again. Yunkai and Meereen would unite against him before he'd finished unpacking. It wasn't worth it.
In Slaver's Bay, only one city was worth controlling outright: Meereen. Everything else was positioning.
So the play here was straightforward — secure garrison rights in Astapor and development rights to the land along the river, without triggering the kind of betrayal that would follow him east. Let Astapor's training infrastructure keep working. Pay for what he used. Leave when the time came.
"The shipyard and the rest of it — those decisions aren't mine to make alone." Kraznys shook his head more firmly this time. He could personally authorize stationing Unsullied in the camp. Opening industrial operations on land that belonged to multiple Good Masters was a different matter entirely. "I can't commit the other Good Masters to something like that without their agreement."
"Then my position is simple," Ian said. "If you can't bring them around, I'll buy the eight thousand six hundred with gold and sail out of Astapor tomorrow. The deal as I've described it or no deal at all."
Kraznys looked at Ion. His jaw tightened. "Fine. I'll speak to them."
"I'll be waiting on my ship."
Back aboard the Breeze Goddess's Kiss, Celia made sure Daenerys was settled in her cabin before tracking Ian down on the deck. She'd spent the entire visit to Pride's Plaza playing the role of handmaiden — silent, eyes down, observing everything.
"Is the deal going to happen?" she asked.
"No," Ian said without hesitation.
Celia raised an eyebrow. "How? You're offering them dragons and the knowledge to bond with them. Can any of the Good Masters actually walk away from that? Even if your conditions cut into some of their profits, I'd think the dragon would override everything else."
"They can't resist the offer," Ian agreed. "The problem is that only one of them gets to be the dragonlord."
Celia went still.
It was true that Kraznys mo Nakloz held the most Unsullied and carried more weight among the Good Masters than any of the others. But most weight wasn't the same as all the power. The other seven Good Masters weren't going to quietly sacrifice their own interests so that Kraznys could ascend to something none of them could touch. They'd find reasons to object. They'd drag their feet. Some of them would actively work to kill the deal rather than hand him that kind of advantage.
"So everything you did today was about driving a wedge between Kraznys and the other Good Masters." Celia put it together quickly. "You put a dragon in front of him, made him want it more than he's ever wanted anything — and then made sure the only thing standing between him and it would be his own colleagues. Whatever goodwill existed between them before today is going to curdle into something ugly."
"Eight Good Masters is too many for one city," Ian said simply. He left the rest of it unsaid — he wasn't ready to walk Celia through the next phase yet.
"How is Daenerys?" he asked instead.
"Not well. At all." Celia paused. "Honestly, I still don't understand why you insisted on bringing her today. I told you I could have kept her on the ship."
She crossed her arms. "And even if you were set on bringing her — you already knew everything Fehmar was going to say about the infants and the dogs. You didn't need to hear it again. You could have steered the conversation away from it without her being any the wiser. So why did you let it play out in front of her?"
"Why do you think?" Ian asked, with a slight smile.
"You wanted to provoke a reaction in her."
"There it is. When you actually use that mind of yours, you get there every time."
(End of Chapter)
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