The wine was a sweet, cloying Tyroshi pear brandy, and Aaryan Lannister found it utterly revolting. He let it coat his tongue anyway, savoring the awfulness of it as he lounged on a silk divan. Before him, through the grand arch of his rented Pentoshi manse, the setting sun bled orange and purple across the bay. It was a painter's masterpiece, and it bored him to tears.
"The deal," Magister Voran began, his voice a wet slap in the tranquil air, "is unacceptable."
Aaryan didn't look at him. He swirled the syrupy liquid in his crystal glass, watching the light refract through it. Voran had brought eight guards with him. They were large men, Unsullied knock-offs with braided beards and hands thick around the pommels of their curved blades. They were meant to be intimidating. Aaryan found them quaint.
"Unacceptable?" Aaryan repeated, his voice light with amusement. He finally turned his gaze to the Magister, a portly man sweating in his fine velvets. Aaryan's smile was bright and effortless, a flash of Lannister charm. "But you already accepted it. You shook my hand. Your man witnessed it. My man witnessed it. The deal, as you say, is quite thoroughly… accepted."
"I was misinformed," Voran blustered, gesturing to a stack of ledgers on his table. "Your shipping consortium is not worth half what you claimed. You have swindled me, boy."
Aaryan chuckled, a soft, pleasant sound. "No, I gave you an accurate valuation based on projected assets. It's not my fault you lack the imagination to see them. Besides," he took a slow sip of the foul wine, "the deal is done."
The Magister's face purpled. "The deal is what I say it is. You are in my city, Lannister. You will take half of the agreed price, or you will take nothing at all. You will not leave this manse with my coin." He nodded curtly to his guards. "And you will be taught a lesson in humility."
The guards fanned out, their movements practiced. Aaryan sighed, placing his glass on the marble table beside him with a soft click.
"Humility," he mused, as if tasting the word. "A peasant's virtue." He looked at Voran, his startlingly blue eyes losing their playful glint, replaced by the chilling stillness of a frozen lake. "You've made two mistakes, Magister. The first was thinking you could renegotiate with a lion. The second…"
He didn't finish. The guard on the far left moved first, his blade whispering from its sheath.
To anyone else, it would have been a blur of violence. To Aaryan, the world seemed to slow, to arrange itself for his convenience. He mapped the trajectory of the blade before the man's wrist had even finished its turn. He noted the slight tremble in the second guard's stance, the beads of sweat on the third's brow. Amateurs.
He moved.
He kicked the low-lying table, sending it spinning into the shins of the two guards on his right. As they stumbled, he flowed to his feet, snatching his wine glass. The first guard's blade sliced the air where his throat had been a second before. Aaryan's hand moved in a blur, smashing the crystal glass against the guard's temple. The man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Aaryan didn't pause. He ripped a dagger from the fallen guard's belt and spun, parrying a clumsy swing from a second. He didn't counter with a swordsman's flourish. He drove his elbow into the man's throat, collapsing his windpipe, and as the man gargled, Aaryan plunged the dagger into his kidney.
Two down. Six to go.
The others, seeing this, charged together. It was a foolish, panicked move. Aaryan met them not as a warrior, but as a force of nature. He was a whirlwind of precise, economical motion. A disarmed blade used to slit its owner's wrist. A boot to a knee to cripple. A pommel to a nose to blind. Each movement was perfectly calculated for maximum effect with minimum effort.
It was over in less than ten seconds. Eight large men lay dead or dying on the fine Lysene carpets.
Aaryan stood in the center of the carnage, his breathing perfectly even. He smoothed a wrinkle in his fine linen tunic, his expression one of mild annoyance, as if he'd just had to clean up a spilled drink.
He picked up the half-empty bottle of pear brandy from the floor and walked back towards the divan, where Magister Voran sat, frozen, his face the color of ash. Aaryan refilled his glass.
"Your second mistake," he said conversationally, his charming smile returning, though it now looked terrifyingly sharp, "was thinking eight were enough."
He sat down, crossing his legs. "The deal stands. And now, you will add a... 'gratitude tax,' for the lesson in economics. And for the mess. My servants will present you with the new bill tomorrow."
As the Magister trembled, unable to form words, Aaryan's own man, a quiet servant named Renn, entered the room, unperturbed by the bodies. He carried a sealed scroll on a silver platter. The seal was a direwolf. The stamp, however, was that of the Hand of the King.
Aaryan took the scroll, broke the seal, and read. His eyes scanned the parchment, his expression unreadable. Then, a slow, genuine smile—the first he had shown all day—spread across his face. It was a smile of pure, predatory delight.
He looked up from the scroll, past the terrified Magister, and out towards the setting sun. Towards the west.
"Well, well," Aaryan Lannister said to the dying light. "It seems the cubs have misplaced their claws. Time to go home."