A Feast for Dragons

a display of courage, skill, and strength most pleasing to
your gods. Victorious fighters are pampered and acclaimed, and the slain are
honored and remembered. By reopening the pits I would show the people of
Meereen that I respect their ways and customs. The pits are far-famed across
the world. They draw trade to Meereen, and fill the city’s coffers with coin
from the ends of the earth. All men share a taste for blood, a taste the pits
help slake. In that way they make Meereen more tranquil. For criminals
condemned to die upon the sands, the pits represent a judgment by battle, a
last chance for a man to prove his innocence.” She leaned back again, with a
toss of her head. “There. How have I done?”
    “Your Radiance has stated the case much better than I could
have hoped to do myself. I see that you are eloquent as well as beautiful. I am
quite persuaded.”
    She had to laugh. “Ah, but I am not.”
    “Your Magnificence,” whispered Reznak mo Reznak in her ear,
“it is customary for the city to claim one-tenth of all the profits from the
fighting pits, after expenses, as a tax. That coin might be put to many noble
uses.”
    “It might … though if we
were
to
reopen the pits, we should take our tenth
before
expenses. I am
only a young girl and know little of such matters, but I dwelt with Xaro Xhoan
Daxos long enough to learn that much. Hizdahr, if you could marshal armies as
you marshal arguments, you could conquer the world … but my answer is
still
no
. For the sixth time.”
    “The queen has spoken.” He bowed again, as deeply as before.
His pearls and amethysts clattered softly against the marble floor. A very
limber man was Hizdahr zo Loraq.
    He might be handsome, but for that silly hair
.
Reznak and the Green Grace had been urging Dany to take a Meereenese noble for
her husband, to reconcile the city to her rule. Hizdahr zo Loraq might be worth
a careful look.
Sooner him than Skahaz
. The Shavepate had
offered to set aside his wife for her, but the notion made her shudder. Hizdahr
at least knew how to smile.
    “Magnificence,” said Reznak, consulting his list, “the noble
Grazdan zo Galare would address you. Will you hear him?”
    “It would be my pleasure,” said Dany, admiring the glimmer
of the gold and the sheen of the green pearls on Cleon’s slippers while doing
her best to ignore the pinching in her toes. Grazdan, she had been forewarned,
was a cousin of the Green Grace, whose support she had found invaluable. The
priestess was a voice for peace, acceptance, and obedience to lawful authority.
I can give her cousin a respectful hearing, whatever he desires
.
    What he desired turned out to be gold. Dany had refused to
compensate any of the Great Masters for the value of their slaves, but the
Meereenese kept devising other ways to squeeze coin from her. The noble Grazdan
had once owned a slave woman who was a very fine weaver, it seemed; the fruits
of her loom were greatly valued, not only in Meereen, but in New Ghis and
Astapor and Qarth. When this woman had grown old, Grazdan had purchased half a
dozen young girls and commanded the crone to instruct them in the secrets of
her craft. The old woman was dead now. The young ones, freed, had opened a shop
by the harbor wall to sell their weavings. Grazdan zo Galare asked that he be
granted a portion of their earnings. “They owe their skill to me,” he insisted.
“I plucked them from the auction bloc and gave them to the loom.”
    Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done, she
said, “What was the name of the old weaver?”
    “The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She
was … Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she
died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.”
    “Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you
shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the
girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting
the name of the old woman.”
    Reznak would have summoned another
tokar
next, but Dany insisted that he call upon a freedman. Thereafter she alternated
between the former masters and the former slaves. Many and more of the matters
brought before her involved redress. Meereen had been sacked savagely after its
fall. The stepped pyramids of the mighty had been spared the worst of the
ravages, but the humbler parts of the city had been given over to an orgy of
looting and killing as the city’s slaves