At the Old Anchor
Twenty-Seventh Day of the Seventh Month 293 AC
Rather than wasting time trying to speak to the admiral's staff or simply entering uninvited and risking being ignored on principle, you send Varys off with a letter to Gylliros Paenyl. Though it is undeniably more difficult to argue through the written word, absent the other side's reactions and retorts, you are reasonably confident that between your message and Varys' own efforts you can at least get the admiral to meet with you. The answer you receive is curt enough to be counted a deadly insult in Tyrosh or Volantis while being only just polite enough for the Braavosi norm: an hour and a place together with amusingly enough a pledge to pay for lunch.
***
The Golden Anchor is a traditional gathering place of Braavosi officers horseshoe-shaped inn built of wood long since blackened by time even while the salt waters flowing in from the Purple Harbor bleached its pillars. Ancient trophies of wars long past hang from the rafters, from tattered Volantene banners the gold thread only just glinting from amid the rotting cloth to the fanciful colors of sellsword companies dead and gone three centuries and more. Even the spout for the largest beer barrel passes through the mouth an an old Pentoshi figurehead in an admittedly comical form of mockery.
It is there that you and Wyla take seats, the former vampire looking around with faintly predatory interest, like a well-fed cat on a sunny windowsill.
The admiral has been waiting for you, dark deep-set eyes staring out of a face toughened by wind and rain, marked by dozens of scars and pockmarks. A carved wooden leg knocks rhythmically against his seat.
It can hardly be worse that Stannis Baratheon, you tell yourself by way of encouragement. It does not help too much.
You wait in silence until the servant brings a trencher filed with meat and another smaller one filled with salt. "Though this is home and hearth to nether of us, let it be that we stand under guest right, whatever words must be spoken," you proclaim.
Gylliros' eyes flash with annoyance, for in spite of your words you had overturned what aught to have been his turf by being the one to offer bread and salt in the Westerosi manner. To refuse now would be an insult, and childish one at that, as you had not come to discuss any substantive matter. He quickly eats a piece of bread with salt sprinkled atop it, but touches neither wine nor food otherwise. "Speak. I am listening..." That much at least you trust. He will listen, little though he might wish it.
"My lord, let us not mince words like courtiers hiding behind twisted turns of phrase. I know you have little love of me and less for many of my subjects, but I wonder had you met me four years ago if you would have given me even so much attention as to feel disdain. A curiosity I was then, the seed of Aerys the Mad, discounted by East and West alike. Is it any wonder then that I sought to raise my banner in the place where east and west met, that I sought to raise a realm from lands that knew no king?"
"In the company of brigands thieves and murderers?" the old sailor growls. "It is not my place to say if I am surprised or not."
"Some men in my service have committed crimes before, but in each instance those worst perpetrators were punished duly under the law as it was written or drawn for the purpose as the case may be by my own hand, keeping in mind always precedent and the fiber of individual character," you reply firmly and in full honesty. "I have seen slavers who have committed atrocities hung and sellswords who swung their banners up and down for different masters, the same banners who have dipped and waned in like for countless generations, into raising ones out of loyalty to us, for they will never again live as they have done these last four-hundred years."
"So the future excuses the past, does it?" Gylliros gives a short ugly laugh. "I've herd that tune before mostly, from killers grown fat on blood and now wishing to buy their way into the company of honest men."
At that Wyla giggles, the sound startlingly natural, though you are quite certain she planed it. "Pardon, my lord, but as one who can rightly be claim to have been born into a respectable family and grown to power by, er,
feasting on blood as the conquerer of Naath, I find the dichotomy disingenuous. A sufficiently clever raider can realize that taxing wealth is more profitable than taking it just as the first sheepherder now lost to the depths of time must have realized that it is better to pen sheep rather than hunt them with a spear. Go back far enough and you will find something of the hunter in all our most exalted lines I would wager."
"Lines may change in the fullness of time mayhap, but I have not found men to do so," the admiral replies stubbornly. "The thug turned taxman will take from his share, the killer turned lord might pay another man to do his murders but a killer he shall remain."
"Though they might
sorrow for that fact?" you ask, stressing the word ever so gently. The blow lands as you had expected it to, but you do not give him time to answer. "The corsairs who sailed the Narrow Sea when we first arrived in what would later be known as Sorcerer's Deep had no great store of foresight. No mighty armies came at my command, merely a company of friends and what sailors we could gather with gold made from trade. And while our magics had seen us through many a peril, they were not the earth-shattering and sky-cutting wonders they are now. They had merely hope for a better tomorrow and trust in our given word to buoy spirit that they were not passing into the hand from one maddened spell-weaver into that of another. It was those men who helped end slavery. Is even that not worthy of forgiving the evils they may have done before? Then surely forgiveness should never be given, the worst of all evils."
"If you want forgiveness you should talk to a priest," he answers, the surly words doing little to hide the gathering flicker of doubt in his gaze before he takes a long rink of wine. "The realm you are making is
theirs, Valyria come again they call it, and they praise you for your magic and your pretty face, for the blood of old masters even as you free the slaves. How many of those slaves do you think look at you and see not a liberator but just a better master farther away? What do you think your heirs will make of that trust?"
The answer that springs at once to your lips is not one you can blurt aloud. Claim's of mortality do not generally say much for one's sanity. Yet answer the question you must if you are to shift the admiral's position, and through him those Braavosi who see your realm as the heir to Valyria's tyranny.
What do you reply?
[] Write in
OOC: I had to modify the write in to fit with the rolls, but hopefully this will give you a better idea of why you have an opposition in Braavos.
