The mood of the group never quite recovered after passing by those slave shops.
Though the markets of Volantis continued to dazzle them with new wonders at every turn, the collars had become impossible to ignore by now.
Once seen, they seemed to appear everywhere.
"It's all so unfortunate..." Sansa whispered to Daenerys with a heartbroken look on her face, "And there are so many of them going through this."
"It is said that there are five slaves for every freedman in Volantis," Daenerys replied with a frown on her face, "And since the children of slaves are also born slaves... There is essentially no hope for them to ever escape this life ever,"
And with that grim atmosphere hanging over their heads, the party headed deeper into the city as the district gradually changed around them.
As the bustle of the port market decreased, more colourful residential buildings and commercial shops began appearing on both sides.
Merchants displayed wares from every corner of the known world. From shops selling fruits, vegetables, and grains to those selling mundane items such as kitchen utensils made of brass, wooden brooms, and furniture, there were all kinds of simple but bustling shops around them.
And then Arya smelled bread...
Fresh bread straight out of the oven, with a sweet and warm aroma that immediately made her stomach rumble in response.
Her head snapped around immediately, and the girl instantly took off to follow the smell like a hunting hound, "There!" she exclaimed as she saw a pastry shop inside a small alley.
"Arya!" Catelyn shouted in exasperation as the girl darted off before they could stop her.
"I swear she does this on purpose!" she murmured irritatedly before turning towards Jory, "Well, you please get her back, before she gets lost."
"Of course, My Lady," Jory nodded as he immediately followed after the little head of his Lord's daughter.
"Wait! We will come along," Sansa suddenly jumped up as she followed after the guard. The girl had spotted her favourite lemon cake inside the shop that had attracted Arya's attention, and having gone so long without the taste of her most favourite sweet, she couldn't control her craving, and so she hurriedly grabbed Daenerys's hand and ran off after her sister.
"Honestly, these girls will be the death of me." Catelyn sighed with a vexed look on her face as if wanting nothing more than to just go back and sleep in the cabin to forget about everything.
"Don't worry, my lady. Jory will take care of them," Eddard consoled with a small smile on his face, "And look, there is that flower shop you wanted to look at. We will surely find the seeds of the local flowers you wanted there."
...
The bakery had a big wooden counter at the front, which displayed a large variety of pastries, cakes, sweet breads, honey rolls, fruit tarts, and countless delicacies whose names none of the girls knew.
The bakery's owner immediately noticed the three pretty girls standing outside his shop and looking at his sweets with a glimmer in their eyes.
"Welcome, welcome!" he shouted enthusiastically, his common tongue carrying a thick accent, "What can I do for you today? A fruit tart? A honey roll? Or one of our special cakes? I assure you, once you eat one of those, you will forget every other sweet out there."
"I want the lemon cake." Sansa said immediately with an excited look on her face
"I will take the special ones," Daenerys said with a smile.
"I will have one of everyone," Arya shouted with a raise of her hand, before her sister lightly slapped her forehead
"Idiot! You won't be able to eat them all," Sansa chided before turning back to the shopkeeper, "Just give her your sweetest and brightest cakes."
"Sure, sure," The man chuckled as he took out some wooden plates to fill up the order.
A few seconds later, the girl found themselves seated at one of the tables in front of the shop under a thin yellow eave that protected them from the sun, merrily enjoying their treats.
"It's so good," Arya moaned as she stuffed her face with
"Slow down, no one's going to steal from you," Sansa sighed before she elegantly took a piece of lemon cake with a fork and placed it in her mouth.
"I b'ot b'it," she replied while spraying bits and pieces, making the other two roll their eyes.
The sweets had finally managed to lift up some of the gloom they were carrying, but just as they were enjoying their treats, and Arya reached for the last pastry on her plate, she happened to glance to the right and froze up.
The girl looked a few years older than her, but she was thinner than anyone Arya had ever seen. Her dress hung loosely from her frame, and her dirty, dark hair framed her narrow face. Large brown eyes stared at the pastry in front of her with envy in her eyes.
The moment the little girl noticed Arya looking at her, she hurriedly lowered her gaze with a timid look as if afraid of her.
Arya frowned, and without thinking, she broke off half her pastry and presented it to her, "Here."
The girl froze like a deer in front of a tiger and looked at the offered treat as if it were a dagger, and hurriedly shook her head.
"Come, take it." Arya insisted as she stood up and shoved sweet pastry into her hands, "I am full anyway, so it's going to go to waste."
The girl blinked as she slowly looked at the treat in her hand with desire and fear
"Eat it," Arya ordered again, and finally, the slave girl hesitatingly took a bite... and almost immediately her face transformed as her fear vanished and a smile appeared on her face.
It was small and fragile, but it was beautiful.
Arya nodded with a satisfied expression on her face and turned back to go to Sansa and Daenerys, who were looking at her with a proud expression on their face which left her even more pleased.
And then just as she was about to take her seat, she heard an unpleasant shout.
"What is that? Who did you steal that from, huh?!"
An enormously fat man stood in the doorway of the nearby shop, where the slave girl had been standing in front of.
His cheeks hung in folds, heavy rings covered every one of his fingers, and the purple silk shirt he was wearing strained against his bulk.
The smile had disappeared from the slave girl's face, and her body shivered in pure terror, as she stammered and tried to explain, "M-Master—"
Crack.
But the fat Man was too angry to listen, and immediately backhanded her, sending her sprawling across the floor.
"Filthy rat! Just like your thieving mother!" he cursed as he wiped his hand on his clothes with disgust in his eyes.
Arya was struck dumbfounded, unable to believe what was happening in front of her.
"I am sorry, Master," The girl stifled a sob as she wiped her bloody lips and, shakingly, stood up, all while not daring to raise her head.
"You think apologising will make it right, huh?" the man sneered as he grabbed her by her hair and roughly yanked her up.
"I didn't!" The girl cried out in terror with a painful expression on her face as she instinctively tried to resist, "I didn't steal it, it was—"
"Now you even dared to lie, you ugly little—" he snarled as he raised his hand to hit her again, but something happened that he had never expected in a thousand years.
"Leave her alone!"
Arya screamed as she abruptly unsheathed her short sword and lunged for the girl, and pulled her behind her back while waving the slender blade at the fat Master, her eyes daring him to take a step forward.
The fat man stared in surprise at the new entrant, absolutely flabbergasted by this intrusion, and then he started to laugh.
It began as a wheeze, then built into a full, rolling belly laugh that shook his entire frame and sent ripples cascading across his silk-wrapped gut.
"A little girl?" he gasped between laughs, wiping a tear from his eye with one bejewelled finger. "A little girl with a little stick is pointing it at me in front of my own shop?" He looked around at the gathering crowd as if sharing a wonderful joke with them. "Do you all see this?!"
"You are just a coward who hits children," Arya said through her teeth.
The man's laughter slowed, though his grin did not disappear entirely as he took a single step towards her, towering over her with amusement dancing in his eyes.
"Put that away before you hurt yourself, little girl, and walk away. I have no quarrel with tourists." He snorted before his small eyes unconsciously drifted over her shoulder, and the amusement disappeared and shifted into something else entirely.
Something worse.
Sansa and Daenerys had followed her out from under the eave.
Sansa, with her auburn hair catching the afternoon light, tall and fair and unmistakably beautiful in the way that stopped men in the street. And Daenerys, beside her, even with her hair coloured black, had the kind of face that bards spent their whole lives searching for words to describe.
The fat man's tongue moved slowly across his bottom lip.
"Well, well," he murmured, and his voice had changed completely. The bluster was gone. In its place was the quiet, calculating tone of a merchant who had just spotted something expensive, "Now who are these lovely creatures..."
"Shut up!!" Arya shouted indignantly as Jory suddenly appeared in front of two girls with a frown on his face, blocking the man's line of sight.
"Where did you all come from, I wonder," he continued with eyes narrowed in contemplation, acting as if she hadn't spoken, "Westeros, by the look of you, you are far... far from home." A slow, greedy smile spread across his face.
"Far from anyone who would come looking," he murmured to himself.
"Now, look here—" Jory began, but the man didn't even glance at him and simply snapped his fingers with a nasty look on his face.
The reaction was almost instant, as four big men in leather jerkins with short heavy blades at their hips appeared out of the shop and spread out in front of them in a half-circle, cutting them off from the mouth of the alley
Jory felt his stomach drop as his right hand reached for his sword, while he pushed Arya behind him with his other. He knew he was a good warrior, but there were four of them in front of him, and he didn't like his chances very much, especially when he had to protect his charges.
He searched for his Lord and Lady out of the corner of his eyes, but alas, the old gods were not generous, and there was no sign of them anywhere around the alley they were in, which meant that getting their help in time was... unlikely.
A small crowd had gathered to watch them by now, but none of them showed any sign of intervening.
This was Volantis. Here, if you wanted to live, you needed to keep your head down and not even think of doing anything against a wealthy master.
"Go on, grab them for me," The fat master said with a smooth smile on his face, "And make sure not to ruin the girls. They are... precious."
Sansa tightly grabbed onto Daenerys' hand and tried hard to stop herself from screaming, but she was barely holding on at the moment, as the situation had gone too much out of her hands, and almost instinctively, she turned to ask for help from the one person who always came through.
"Call Jon," she whispered urgently to the rat hiding on Daenerys' shoulder.
///