Chapter 208: The Time Isn't Right
"Putting her through that will make Daenerys despise slavery on a gut level. Even if she doesn't immediately start thinking about abolition, it won't be long before she does." Celia frowned, then shook her head. "But you can't actually be planning to abolish it. That's a declaration of war on Yunkai, Meereen, Volantis, New Ghis, Qarth, and every trading power along the Jade Sea coast. You're not that reckless."
"So what am I planning?"
"You—" Celia thought it through carefully, then finally shook her head. "I can't work it out."
"Then don't strain yourself." Ian waved her off. "You've got enough on your plate tonight. I need you to organize a banquet for the Unsullied instructors and start making inquiries about acquiring skilled tradesmen from across Slaver's Bay. That's going to keep you busy."
"You promised me an explanation, my lord." Daenerys sat very straight in her chair, doing her best to project the authority of a queen. Her eyes were red at the corners.
"You've been crying," Ian said. He didn't launch into his explanation — he stepped forward and brushed the remnants of tears from the corner of her eye with his thumb.
"I have not!" Whatever composure she'd been holding onto evaporated instantly. She swatted at his hand, missed, and then — in what seemed to be a complete breakdown of diplomatic options — bit down on it instead.
Ian barely felt it. He genuinely wasn't sure whether that said more about his pain tolerance or about how little force she'd actually used.
"I told you I'd give you an explanation." He withdrew his hand without resistance; she'd let go almost the moment he moved. He kept his voice level, but let something genuinely somber come into it.
"What happened in that plaza today — it sickened me too. I meant that. When Fehmar described what they do to those boys, what they make them do to earn that helmet — I wanted to burn the whole plaza down."
"Then why did you buy them?" Daenerys's frustration sharpened into something more like confusion. "Why would you pay those men for what they've built?"
"Because I intend to free them." Ian's tone shifted — quieter, more certain.
Daenerys's mouth fell open.
That's it. The thought hit her like cold water. That's the answer — the one she'd been circling since they left Pride's Plaza. Could she do something for the slaves?
Free them. Of course. How could she have doubted him?
"You'll release them once you've bought them?" she pressed, leaning forward.
"I'll free the ones I purchase, yes. But the moment I do, Astapor will just start the process over. More boys castrated. More puppies handed out. The machine keeps running. Freeing a few thousand men doesn't stop what's producing them."
"Then you mean to conquer Astapor. Destroy the whole system from the inside."
"If I take Astapor, nothing changes in Yunkai. Nothing changes in Meereen, in New Ghis, in Volantis, in Qarth, or anywhere along the Jade Sea. The institution survives."
"You want to abolish slavery." Daenerys barely breathed the words. Yes. Yes, that's exactly it. We want the same thing.
"Complete abolition," Ian said, nodding. "But the conditions aren't right yet. We don't have the strength for it. Moving against slavery means making enemies of half the known world, and we cannot let anyone suspect what we're building toward — not until we've accumulated enough power to make that revelation a declaration rather than a death sentence. We can't even free a portion of the slaves as a first step. The moment we do, every slave-holding power from here to Qarth unites against us. We become the common enemy before we're strong enough to survive it."
"So we do nothing?" Daenerys's expression fell. "We just watch?"
"We build," Ian said. "Quietly. And yes — for now, we have to appear to operate within the system. We have to look like we accept it, even support it, to keep their guard down. That's the only way we survive long enough to actually win."
"But every day we wait, people suffer." She couldn't quite let go of it. Something in his reasoning didn't sit right, though she couldn't find exactly where the gap was.
"The slaves have suffered for a thousand years," Ian said, letting the weight of it show. "After we free them — truly free them, all of them — there will be no more slavery. Not for their children or their grandchildren or any generation that follows. They'll live free, permanently." He paused. "But if we fail — if we move too soon and get destroyed — there will never be a second attempt. Not in the last few thousand years has anyone come close, and a failure of this scale would ensure no one tries again for thousands more. If we rush this and lose, we condemn them to chains forever."
Daenerys went quiet. She hadn't thought it through that far.
Ian extended his hand toward her.
"So — will you work with me? To bury this institution once and for all. To make slavery a footnote in the history books. To give every person in chains their life back."
"Yes." She didn't hesitate. She put her hand in his. "I trust you, Ian."
"Then we endure. Until the time is right."
"Yes." She nodded again, with the quiet conviction of someone who'd just found a cause worth the cost.
Done, Ian thought privately.
It had been a two-part play from the beginning, and both parts had worked exactly as intended.
First, the visceral shock of Pride's Plaza — letting Daenerys see and hear everything without filtering it. Then, getting out ahead of her by proposing abolition himself before she could arrive at it on her own.
The sequence mattered enormously.
If Ian had waited — if Daenerys had eventually reached her breaking point on her own and come to him demanding they free the slaves — and Ian had told her the conditions weren't right, it wouldn't matter how sound his reasoning was. She would have heard excuses. The gap between them would have widened every time it came up, and the trust he'd spent months building would have developed a crack that would eventually split into something unworkable.
By bringing it up first — by making abolition his stated goal before she even voiced it — he'd made it their shared ideal rather than a point of conflict. And by telling her now, unprompted, that the conditions weren't right, he'd inoculated her against ever suspecting him of stalling later. When Ian said not yet, Daenerys would believe him, because he'd been the one to raise it in the first place.
As for when exactly the conditions would be right — that was an open question he had no particular urgency to resolve. Abolition wasn't in his plans unless circumstances forced the issue. For all he knew, some other player out there was sitting back and waiting for him to make that move so they could step in and play the slave-holding cities against him.
The practical reality, as Ian saw it, was this: slaves who were suddenly freed with no trade, no savings, no land, and no network didn't gain freedom so much as they gained a different kind of desperation. The original story had shown that clearly enough — Daenerys's freed slaves had followed her army in vast, directionless crowds, dependent on her for everything, no better equipped to survive than they'd been before. True reform, if it ever came, would require infrastructure — reasonable working conditions, adequate food, a legal framework that gave former slaves somewhere to actually land.
Tearing down the system overnight without building anything to replace it wasn't liberation. It was just chaos with good intentions attached.
For now, Ian had Daenerys exactly where he needed her — motivated, loyal, and pointed in the right direction.
(End of Chapter)
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