POV: Peiroz
The Fourth Day of Sigmarzeit. The Tenth Year of the Founding of Moro.
Peiroz had written that line in his ledger every morning for seven years — since the Council had decided that the kingdom's official history began on the day Moro first became Khal. Not from the day of the city's founding. Not from the day the Imperials arrived. From the day a thirteen-year-old boy killed a Khal twenty years his senior in a duel no one expected to end the way it did.
He set down the quill. Looked toward the horizon.
The wind at a hundred feet was nothing like the wind on the ground.
It came without warning, splitting the cloak and striking the face and carrying with it the smell of grass that stretched to the horizon — that horizon which did not end, which Peiroz had been looking at for three years and still could not quite believe. In the old town, the horizon had been rooftops and towers and walls. Here it was simply emptiness. Emptiness without end in every direction, broken now by the white city's walls and towers rising like a dream grown from the grass.
He stood atop the great keep's tower and looked down. A hundred feet of polished stone ending in cobbled streets where people moved like small points below. Freed slaves carrying rolls of cattle-hide. Engineers arguing over a wall's angle. Two foot soldiers exchanging words he could not hear from up here.
A real city.
It still struck him like a blow every morning.
Peiroz remembered the first time he had seen Moro.
It was not what he had expected. When men said "a Khal at thirteen" he had imagined something — a boy surrounded by warriors who spoke on his behalf, a puppet on a saddle. What he saw was different.
He was tall in an unnatural way for his age — the kind of height that was a promise rather than an achievement, a body that outpaced itself. His long black hair fell smooth and loose across his shoulders with a freedom unlike the usual Dothraki braids — save for one main braid that chimed with a few golden bells, the bells of the first Khal he had killed. His skin was a light brown. And his eyes — pale grey in a way that surprised you from a man of the Grass Sea, watching you as though calculating something you could not see.
He sat across from Peiroz inside his tent at Lhazar, hands still bound from the cage he had been rescued from, and looked at him with those grey eyes. Then he spoke in Dothraki with a tone that suited no thirteen-year-old by any measure:
"You know how to count."
It was not a question.
"Yes," said Peiroz.
"Good," said the boy. "I need someone who can count."
That was how everything began. Two sentences in a tent in Lhazar.
Peiroz extinguished the memory the way one snuffs a candle. The past always comes when you have not called it. He placed his hand on the stone railing and felt the cold beneath his fingers — the cold of stone that holds the night long after the sun has risen.
Then the second memory came, as it always came after the first.
The first time he had seen this place — when Moro brought him here directly after Lhazar, his wrist still bearing the mark of the chain. There was nothing. Ancient stone ruins floating above the plain like the bones of a city dead for centuries. Vaes Khiwo — what remained of it was three collapsed walls and scattered stones no one knew who had built or when.
"Here," Moro had said then. A single word.
"Here what?" Peiroz had asked.
"The capital."
Peiroz had said nothing. He did not have the right words for a boy who saw a city where there was nothing but wind and broken stone.
But then he witnessed something he had never seen before.
He watched Moro build.
The building was not as people imagine it. There was no bursting sorcery, no blinding light, no screaming. Moro would stand before the site he wished to raise and fall silent. Then the air would begin.
The air was the first thing. A subtle distortion as though the space itself breathed wrongly — as though you looked through cracked glass that did not break the image but made it move in ways images do not move. And after that came the hum. A hum so faint you needed to close your eyes and be still to hear it — as though the stones groaned in surrender as they found their place in a wall forming in ways no one could explain.
The priests said it was Sigmar's blessing. Peiroz did not say what he thought. But he wrote it in his journal every evening.
Ten years. That was how long everything had taken. The white city was not built by Moro alone. It was built by everyone who carried a stone. And something else built it too — language. The Dothraki tongue, which had never been written in all its history, was given a script by the Imperials and Peiroz together. Now every contract and every law and every map was written in Dothraki with Imperial letters.
A tongue that had never known writing had begun to write history.
That — more than the walls and roads and mortar — was what made Peiroz feel that something had changed which could not be undone.
He heard footsteps behind him.
"Grand Vizier."
He turned. The horseman stood at the roof door — polished steel armor catching the morning light, the hammer-and-eight-pointed-star emblem on his chest.
"The council is assembled."
"Since when?"
"A quarter hour, Grand Vizier."
Peiroz closed his eyes for a moment. A quarter hour. Heinrich would have rearranged his papers five times. Volkmar would have stood and sat and fiddled with his hammer twice. And Kako — Kako would be standing behind his chair as always, as though sitting were an insult he would not accept.
"Tell them I am on my way."
The descent from the tower took time. Three turns of the spiral stair and then the long corridor that cut through the great keep. Peiroz knew every stone in that corridor — he had walked it thousands of times — but each time he passed through it he paused for a moment at the point where you could see the Great Door from outside.
Sixty-six feet of polished bronze.
He always stopped here a moment. Not from admiration — admiration had ended in the first month. But as a reminder to himself that he was truly here in this place bearing this strange title.
"The Grand Vizier."
A word found in none of the books of the old town. In the society he had grown up in everything was plain — the lord owned the land and the peasants toiled it and the Maester served and advised and power was inherited and passed down like blood through veins. The feudal order. Old as stone, slow as rock, firm as death.
Then Moro had come with his strange words.
"The Themata." A word that existed in no language Peiroz knew. He had spoken it with the tone of a man describing something obvious and self-evident and looked at Peiroz, waiting. "The military and civil province. One. One commander. The land to the farmer. The farmer fights."
What had troubled him was not the clarity. What troubled him was that this idea made the entire system of lords and feudalism suddenly look like a temporary solution to a problem that could have been better solved from the beginning.
"The Strategos." The province commander. Appointed by the king, the position not inherited. The lord inherits, the Strategos is chosen. The lord's loyalty belongs to his family first, the Strategos's loyalty belongs directly to the crown.
And then the Yasa — the king's law. No slavery. Not a single line in the Yasa mentioned slaves as property. Only citizens of different grades and service to the state in exchange for the state's protection.
When Peiroz first read that line he read it again. Then read it a third time. Then set down the page and looked out the window for a long while.
The council chamber differed from the rest of the High Gate's palace in one essential way: no mosaic on its ceiling. The ceiling here was flat dark wood carved with the names of the six Themata in plain unadorned script. And beneath it, a round table of ebony wood. The chairs were of heavy crimson leather.
Maps covered the walls. Not paintings or portraits — maps. The Themata in their colors. The kingdom's roads in red lines. The forts in black dots. Everything in this chamber said: we are here to work, not to decorate.
They were all waiting for him.
Volkmar sat straight as though his back were stone — a mountain of flesh and bone, completely bald, his skull filled with old white scars like cracks in rock. The sun of Essos had burned his skin to rough copper. His grey eyes did not blink often. His thumb pressed the head of his silver hammer in a slow rhythm — not from anger. From thought.
Heinrich had scrolls spread and rolled and spread again before him. A thin man like a bird of prey, his nose hooked, his blond hair cut with an air of carelessness. His copper spectacles with thick lenses made his eyes appear larger than they were. His fingertips were always stained with ink and charcoal — part of his hands rather than dirt upon them.
Valerio was wiping his brow with his silk handkerchief. A fat, full man, his skin olive, his black beard parted into two points oiled with care. He always sweated in this chamber — not from heat but from the chronic tension of being surrounded by killers and fanatics and madmen. His gold rings set with stones made a clinking sound when he rubbed them together.
And Kako was standing behind his chair. As always. A young man in his late twenties, lean as a panther, his skin dark copper, his eyes almond-shaped and sharp. The sides of his head were shaved clean and in the middle were deep ugly scars — two braids he had cut himself. He wore his wide Dothraki belt with its copper bells but the armor above it was matte black, reflecting no light.
He had not looked at Peiroz when he entered. He was watching the map.
Peiroz sat in his seat. Opened his ledger to a blank page. Dipped his quill.
"We have thirty thousand people waiting outside the walls. The king wants a decision before the week's end. We begin."
Heinrich rose and pushed his copper spectacles up his hooked nose and began to unfold a map with his stained fingers.
"Before anything," he said. "The mines."
"The mines?" said Valerio. "Now?"
"Always the mines, Valerio. Because everything else depends on them." He pointed to a range of mountains in the northeast. "The survey team returned last week. They found what we had thought were ruins from the days of Sarnor." He placed a paper before Peiroz. "Silver. Iron. And middling veins of gold."
"Middling," repeated Valerio in the tone of a man hearing a word he disliked. He rubbed his rings together and they made their metallic clink.
"Middling means sufficient." The voice of an engineer with no patience for the difference between good and perfect. "The iron alone solves the problem of equipping three thousand recruits with full armor."
"And the labor?"
"The freed slaves who finished the northern road. Fair wages."
"Who guards the mines?" said Kako. He had not moved from behind his chair, but his almond eyes had shifted from the map to Heinrich. "The northeast is close to lands we have not yet reached."
"A small fort. A company of foot," said Peiroz. "Heinrich — add that." Heinrich scribbled hastily on the margin of his map, pushing his spectacles up and down.
Heinrich came with a new scroll. He unrolled it slowly.
"There is another matter. It was originally the king's idea."
"Say it," said Peiroz.
"The cannons."
One word was enough. Valerio stopped wiping his brow. Volkmar raised his head. Kako did not move, but something in his posture changed.
"We thought we were done with this subject," said Valerio.
"We are not done," said Heinrich. "King Moro mentioned it before his departure — said that what approaches will not be stopped by stone alone." He spread the map. "We placed three cannons in the northern forts two months ago."
"And the results?" said Peiroz.
Heinrich paused. He pushed his spectacles up and brought them down — the gesture that meant he was choosing his words. "The second fort — the cannon works. We fired six shots over three days. Four found the mark."
"And four out of six is not bad," said Valerio.
"True," said Heinrich. "The problem is the seventh shot."
"What happened?"
"The barrel burst," said Heinrich in the tone of an engineer reading a report he did not wish to read. "The sidewall could not bear the pressure. Three men were standing beside it." A pause. "Two of them are still alive."
No one spoke in the chamber. The only sound was Valerio's rings going still.
"And the summit fort?" said Kako.
"We built it with double thickness. Heavier — it needs six men to move it. But it did not burst."
"How many times did you fire it?"
"Once."
Kako looked at him with his almond eyes. "Once is not enough."
"I know," said Heinrich.
"What is the real problem?" said Peiroz. "The powder or the cannon?"
"Both," said Heinrich. "The powder — we know its composition. Sulfur, charcoal, saltpeter. But the correct ratios—" He looked at his stained hands. "In the Empire we had specialists. I am an architect. I understand how powder works in principle." He placed his hands on the table. "But the difference between principle and practice is one man dead and two who will never hold a sword again."
"Then are you proposing we halt the project?" said Valerio.
"No." Heinrich's voice rose slightly — the first time in the session. "I am not proposing that at all."
Volkmar looked at him. "Tell them why, Heinrich."
"Because I have seen what this weapon does when it works," said Heinrich slowly. "In the Empire I watched a single cannon bring down a siege tower that had taken us three weeks to build. I watched an entire rank of enemies vanish in one plume of smoke." He looked at the map. "What approaches — King Moro sees it. And he said stone alone will not be enough when it comes."
"Volkmar," said Peiroz. "Your opinion?"
The high priest straightened and his thumb pressed the silver hammer with doubled force.
"In the Empire we used cannons," he said in a voice colder than usual. "I watched them shatter city walls in hours. I watched them kill a hundred men with a single ball." A pause as he recalled something he disliked recalling. "And I watched them burst and kill our entire gun crew in a single day. Fifteen men. Nothing left of them to bury." He looked around the table. "But I did not say that day that we must halt the project. No one said that."
"Why?" said Kako.
"Because what we face does not stop if we stop," said Volkmar. "And the weapon that surpasses them in power — whatever its cost to develop — is the difference between mankind's survival and its extinction." He stared at the table rather than at any of them. "That is what we learned in our world. With blood."
"Human casualties so far?" said Peiroz.
"One dead. Two permanently wounded — one lost his right hand."
"And how many men do you need for safe trials?"
"Ten volunteers. Five with experience in metals and furnaces. And three alchemists."
"And where do you find alchemists in the Grass Sea?" said Valerio, his rings moving again.
"The Free Cities," said Heinrich. "In Pentos and Myr and Braavos there are alchemists who have spent their lives studying materials and reactions. They don't know powder — but one who understands alchemy can learn what we know and build on it."
"The cost of bringing them?" said Valerio.
"Less than the cost of another man losing his hand," said Heinrich simply.
"The problem is we would be giving them knowledge we do not want spread," said Kako. "An alchemist from Pentos who learns what we know goes back carrying some of that knowledge."
"Ilaria," said Peiroz.
She had not been there and then she was — standing by the left column as though she were part of the shadow.
"The alchemists who come — under your network's supervision. They do not depart without my approval."
She gave a small nod. "Understood."
"We continue," said Peiroz. "The trials move to an open site away from the forts. Heinrich — the budget from the Sarnor mines when they begin. Volunteers receive double a regular soldier's wage." He looked at him directly. "And any new trial is presented to me before execution."
"That will slow—"
"One man died, Heinrich," said Peiroz quietly. "The powder is not yet understood — we do not put men who do not understand it in a place they cannot escape from."
Heinrich nodded. He said nothing — and that was agreement.
"And the king?" said Kako. "Does he know what happened in the second Thema?"
"Moro built the forts," said Heinrich. "He sees where we placed the cannons."
"Did he comment on the burst?"
"He did not comment," said Heinrich. "But he sent a man the following day to measure the thickness of the burst wall."
Peiroz looked at the map. Moro measures. He does not comment, does not order a halt, does not order continuation. As though he is calculating something he has not yet shared with them.
At that moment one of the guards opened the side door and brought in a vessel of hot tea — a daily habit no one asked about and no one noticed. But Peiroz noticed that Valerio immediately reached out and grasped the cup in both hands like a man who needed something to hold. And that Volkmar did not look up at all. And that Kako followed the guard with his eyes until he left.
Three men. Three different ways of meeting a moment that held nothing.
Peiroz set down his quill.
"The thirty thousand. This is today's primary matter."
He opened his ledger to a page filled with figures. "Twelve thousand capable warriors — the king is handling their integration into the Yasa himself. The remaining eighteen thousand — women and children and slaves of the Bharru tribe and those who joined it. These are our problem today."
"They are not a problem," said Volkmar directly. "They are material."
"Explain."
"Eighteen thousand. We distribute them across the villages and new towns in the Themata. Each village absorbs two hundred and fifty — seventy Themata and the matter is finished." His thumb pressed the hammer. "The priests handle teaching them Sigmar before they enter any village."
"Compulsory conversion," said Kako in a tone that neither objected nor agreed.
"Necessary education," said Volkmar. "The difference matters."
"And if they refuse?"
"No one refuses when they are hungry and their children are with them." Volkmar said it with the same coldness he spoke of mines.
"This costs," said Valerio, setting down his cup. "Seventy villages absorbing two hundred and fifty new people each — food, shelter, farming tools. Then priests for each village. Where does that come from?"
"From the Sarnor mines," said Volkmar coolly.
"The mines have not begun yet."
"Then start them faster."
"The issue is not speed," said Valerio, his tone rising. "The issue is that we are pushing eighteen thousand people into an infrastructure not built to absorb them. The new villages in the Themata are still under construction."
"Then we house them in the larger towns first," said Heinrich, already unrolling a second map with his usual haste. "The white city absorbs five thousand in the new northern districts. The remainder across three medium towns."
"The northern districts are still stone and mud," said Valerio.
"In two months they will be ready."
"The Dothraki woman who has lost her husband and carries a child is not a soldier on campaign," said Kako. "A tent in winter kills children."
One sentence. But it stopped everyone.
"Pregnant women and children first," said Peiroz. "Heinrich — how much can the city absorb now?"
"Two thousand five hundred if we open the southern warehouses."
"Open them."
"The religious matter," said Volkmar.
"We know your view, Volkmar," said Peiroz.
"My view is not a view — it is a condition," said the priest. "Everyone who enters the kingdom's communities receives instruction in Sigmar. Not forced conversion — instruction."
"And the priests' wages?" said Valerio.
"From the Church's treasury, not the state's."
Valerio stopped. For the first time in the session something had genuinely surprised him. "You are funding this yourself?"
"Sigmar does not need the treasury's support to spread. He needs only that no one be placed in his way."
Kako looked at Volkmar with something resembling careful respect. "And if the Dothraki wish to keep their old gods?"
"In their homes — their business. In public spaces and in the army — Sigmar alone."
"This is acceptable," said Kako. "On condition that no one is forced to cut their braid. The braid is a personal symbol, not a religious one."
"The braid—" began Volkmar.
"Is in no text of Sigmar's," Kako cut him off. "I looked."
Volkmar looked at him for a long while — at the young man who had cut his own two braids and then searched through the texts of a faith not his own to find an argument for it. Then he said:
"True."
"The deeper matter," said Peiroz. "The Dothraki who do not wish to farm."
"All Dothraki do not wish to farm," said Kako.
"But some will farm because they have no choice. And some will not farm whatever the circumstances," said Peiroz. "These — what do we do with them?"
"Give them a sword," said Kako. "And land they guard, not land they till. Border guard. They fight on the edges of the Themata and eat from what the Thema produces."
"Border guards need discipline," said Volkmar.
"A Dothraki who knows his family eats in winter has sufficient discipline," said Kako.
"That has not been proven."
"That is what I am," said Kako. One sentence with no defense in it and no apology.
Volkmar looked at him — at the scars on his head and the bells on his belt. "Very well."
"Trade," said Valerio, and for the first time something in his voice resembled relief. Numbers always comforted him.
"Say it," said Peiroz.
"The kingdom's roads have changed everything." He spread a sheet in his small precise script. "Before the roads a merchant from Qohor needed fifteen days to reach the nearest Thema. Now — eight days on a road protected with horse stations and safety posts every twenty miles. Trade with Qohor has doubled in a single year. The northern Themata sell grain, cattle, and wool. Qohor sells worked textiles, metals, and timber."
"Timber," said Heinrich, his ears sharpening.
"Yes. The timber of Qohor's forests. We need it to build the new villages — volcanic cement is fine for walls and forts but timber is faster and cheaper for houses and markets and schools."
"Which means we depend on Qohor for something essential," said Kako.
"Mutual dependence is not weakness," said Valerio.
"One-sided dependence is," said Kako.
Peiroz looked at the map. Qohor — the city ruled by priests of the Black Goat, a few days from the northern border. Their trade was growing with the kingdom. But their trade did not mean their trust.
"Ilaria," said Peiroz.
"Qohor watches us," said Ilaria from her place by the column. "They have a man in the third Thema. A merchant. He asks more questions than he buys."
"Does he know he's been made?"
"No. And he will not."
"Then what does he see?" said Kako.
"What we want him to see," said Ilaria simply.
No one asked more than that.
"Qohor fears," said Kako. "Not our trade — our size. They see a growing city and roads cutting the plain and a disciplined army unlike any Khalasar they have known. The priests of the Black Goat see a rising power on their doorstep and they do not know what it wants."
"What do they want?" said Peiroz.
"To remain traders, not neighbors," said Kako. "A great difference."
"The green stones," said Volkmar.
It was not a question.
Ilaria came forward and placed two sheets before Peiroz. "The first is more important."
Peiroz read the first. Then the second. He pushed them toward the center.
"Three Khals negotiating an alliance. Thirty thousand warriors combined at minimum." He paused. "The second — reports from western Free City merchants. Green stones falling in scattered areas. They lit fires that would not die. Animals grazed on the grass beside them and changed."
Volkmar struck the table with his fist — but not because of the alliance. He was staring at the second sheet.
"When?" said Kako — he was asking about the alliance.
"The negotiations began three months ago," said Ilaria. "Before the battle of Bharru."
"They were watching," said Kako. "And calculating."
"Thirty thousand," said Valerio, wiping his brow. "And we have?"
"Far fewer," said Peiroz. "But King Moro said he will deal with this alliance when he returns."
"Three Khals — what brings them together?" said Peiroz, looking at Ilaria.
"Fear of the white city. And shared hatred."
"And what divides them?"
"Everything else."
"Then find what divides them and make it larger."
"That takes time," said Ilaria.
"Buy the king what he needs," said Peiroz. Then: "Kako — the raids."
"Two hundred black cavalry. Reconnaissance only." Kako said it before Peiroz had finished. "Agreed."
"The green stones," Volkmar repeated.
He took his silver hammer in both hands and placed it on the table with care — as though setting down something heavy he had been carrying for a long time, something that hurt to carry and hurt to put down in a different way.
"Warpstone," he said.
"What is that?" said Valerio.
Volkmar looked at the table and began to speak as one who reads from a memory he would rather not have. "In our world we knew the signs of its fall. First the birds would stop. Not fly — stop entirely. They would sit and not move as though they had forgotten how."
He paused. Not for effect — because he was seeing something in his memory he did not wish to see.
"I once saw a wolf beside a site where one had fallen. It was sitting and staring at something no one else could see. It was not ill. It was seeing."
"Seeing what?" said Heinrich in a voice quieter than usual. His hands had stopped moving — for the first time since the session had begun.
"I don't know. It could not tell us." said Volkmar. "After the animals the plants come. They grow wrong."
He stood. He walked two steps toward the window — not to see anything outside, but because sitting no longer suited what he was saying.
"I once saw a tree whose fruit were faces," he said, his back to them. "Not like faces — faces. I tried to burn it. It would not catch."
No one in the chamber spoke. No one moved. The candle on the table swayed in air that was not moving — only heat making a small wind.
"And the people?" said Peiroz.
"They begin with dreams. They wake from them weeping. Then they hear voices." said Volkmar slowly. "And sometimes they do what the voices tell them."
Volkmar returned to his chair and sat. He placed his hands on the table before him like a man who has decided he has said what must be said and that is the end of it.
"The commercial cost?" said Valerio in a quieter voice. "If it spreads to the Free Cities—"
"The cost cannot be counted in gold," said Volkmar.
Valerio opened his mouth. Then closed it.
"Far away for now," said Kako. His hand was on his belt.
"For now," said Volkmar. One word carrying the full weight of everything he had not said.
In that moment Peiroz looked at Volkmar — at the man who had refused at the beginning to follow Moro and then followed him with a loyalty he had explained to no one. A man of this hardness does not follow anyone easily. But he had followed. And Peiroz had not understood why until the night of fire years ago when Volkmar said in a voice unlike his usual one:
"I saw a man in a vision I did not know by name. I saw him build in a place where nothing grew. And when I saw Moro standing before the ruins of Vaes Khiwo — I knew."
He had explained no further. And Peiroz had not asked.
Some things do not bear questions.
"What do you do when you find them?" said Peiroz.
"We burn them. And everything they touched. And fill the earth with salt and cement." He returned his hammer to his neck. "And we pray."
"And if it is large?"
"We pray more and send to the king."
The Summary
"Then," said Peiroz, dipping his quill. "The summary."
"The mines begin with a guard. The artillery moves to an open site and the alchemists are brought under Ilaria's supervision. Pregnant women and children first to the southern warehouses. The remainder in three phases. The Dothraki who refuse farming — Kako classifies them for border guard. Ilaria works on the three Khals and watches Qohor's merchant. Volkmar handles the stones."
"And the king?" said Kako.
"We wait for him," said Peiroz. "And we preserve what he built until he returns."
After
They left one by one.
Heinrich first — his scrolls longer than his arms, muttering numbers. Then Valerio — his steps faster than usual, wiping his brow even as he walked. Then Volkmar with steps that shook the floor — he stopped at the door for a single moment without turning, as though remembering something or deciding to leave it. Then went. Then Kako without sound — as though he had never been there at all.
Peiroz remained alone.
He extinguished two candles and gathered his ledger. Walked to the heavy door. The cold of iron beneath his hands before he opened it.
The stone corridor in this hour was colder than it should be. The sound of his lone footsteps filling what had been an hour ago filled by all their voices.
Volkmar's words still in his ears.
The tree with fruit that were faces. The wolf that saw. The people who did what the voices told them.
He tried to place them in a logical framework — as he had trained himself to do with everything. But the framework would not hold. It was splitting at the edges.
He pushed the outer door open.
Night had come in full.
The guards at their posts. The torches moving with the wind. The white walls of the city grey in the dark.
Peiroz raised his eyes.
The white moon in its place. But beside it — larger than he had seen it before, greener than it should be, casting a faint-colored shadow on the white stones.
Morrslieb.
Peiroz stood in the courtyard and something cold moved into his stomach — not from the air.
He rubbed his neck. The place where the chain used to rest.
In the old town he had read about kingdoms that fell from within. He had never read about a kingdom that fell because the sky began to drop green stones.
But in this place built on the ruins of a city time had forgotten he was beginning to understand that his old books had not known all the questions.
He looked at Morrslieb one last time.
"Oh," he said in a voice no one heard.