The house of Luthar Veylin crouched at the bend of a narrow street, its upper storeys leaning out over the cobbles as if eavesdropping on the comings and goings of Norvos below. From the outside, it looked like any other merchant's dwelling, brick walls whitewashed against the damp, carved shutters painted a peeling green. Inside, it smelled of spice and smoke and the faint, metallic tang of old steel.
The cellar was Alexander's world. The air there was cool and close, lit by the flicker of tallow candles and the thin shafts of daylight slipping between the floorboards overhead. He shared the space with two other house-slaves, an older woman named Mirra who cooked and cleaned, and a broad-shouldered man called Karr who had gone half-mad after a season rowing the galleys of Tyrosh.
Luthar had not bought Alexander for strength or skill. A five-year-old boy was no use at the docks, and too small to haul sacks of grain. But the merchant had a habit of collecting "clever little hands", children who could slip through market crowds, carry delicate goods, and remember instructions.
What Luthar did not know, or perhaps guessed, and chose to encourage, was that Alexander's cleverness was not only in his hands. He listened. He remembered. He pieced together the scraps of conversation that passed over his head, stitching them into a picture of a world far wider than Norvos' walls.
Every evening, when the day's trade was done, Luthar would take his supper in the main hall, a low-ceilinged chamber hung with rugs from Qohor and Braavos. The merchant would sit at the head of a long table, flanked by caravan guards, stevedores, and the occasional sellsword passing through. They drank heavy red wine from Myr, tore at joints of goat and platters of river fish, and talked.
The boy was sent to pour their cups. He moved quiet as a shadow, refilling goblets, wiping spills, clearing plates, all the while listening.
From these men, he learned of roads that ran from the stony passes of the Bone Mountains to the steaming coasts of Sothoryos. He learned the names of princes in Volantis, of the Black Walls where no slave might tread, and of the Triarchs who ruled there with smiles and daggers. He heard of battles, how the sellswords of the Second Sons broke the Mantaryan spearmen at the Ford of the Three Shrines, how a captain named Mero drank a skin of wine in the saddle while leading a charge.
It was at these suppers that Alexander first understood that the world beyond Norvos was not only vast, but fractured, full of rival cities, ambitious captains, and gold enough to make a man's name echo through the ages.
In Luthar's study, propped against the wall beside a map of the Disputed Lands, hung a longsword. Its hilt was worn smooth, the leather grip darkened with sweat. Alexander had seen Luthar's eyes drift to it when wine loosened his tongue, and once, when the merchant was deep in drink, the boy dared to ask.
"A gift," Luthar said, staring past him, "from a captain who thought I'd die in the mud at his side. Second Sons steel, boy. I've bled for it."
That night, when the house was asleep, Alexander crept up from the cellar and stood before the sword. He could not lift it, but he ran his fingers over the pommel, feeling the faint dents where it had struck helm or shield. It was the first time he felt the pull of steel, not as a tool of his master, but as something that might be his.
Luthar was not a gentle man. His discipline was a sailor's, quick, harsh, and over in a moment. But he was not without a strange sense of investment in his property. When Alexander failed at a task, the merchant would cuff him hard, then make him repeat the work until he could do it blindfolded.
"You'll be no use to me stupid," Luthar told him once, after a missed delivery cost him a silver stag. "You've got a head on you, use it. A sharp blade's worth little without a sharp mind to guide it."
Sometimes, after the others had gone to sleep, Luthar would call the boy into the study and point at the painted maps on the walls. "Tell me the road from here to Pentos. What rivers will you cross? Which cities will take tolls?"
At first, Alexander guessed. He learned quickly not to.
In the winter of 289 AC, two years after the boy had first carried silk through the market, Luthar took in a pair of old comrades from his sellsword days. They were lean, scarred men, one with the dark skin and coiled hair of the Summer Isles, the other a squat, hawk-nosed Myrman with a limp.
They stayed a fortnight, sleeping in the hall and drinking most of Luthar's wine. By the second night, they had noticed the boy watching them.
"You've an eye for blades, little rat," the Myrman said, tossing him a blunted practice dagger. "Ever held one before?"
Alexander shook his head, but his hands closed around the grip as if they'd been waiting for it all his life.
The men taught him to stand, to step, to strike. They laughed when he fell, cuffed him when he got lazy, and cursed him in three languages. But they kept at it. And Alexander, aching and bruised though he was, kept coming back.
By the time the sellswords left, he could parry a slow thrust and slip past a clumsy guard. It was nothing, a child's game, yet in his mind, something had changed. Steel was no longer a mystery.
That spring, Luthar's caravan took him to Pentos, and Alexander was left behind in Norvos with Mirra and Karr. But the boy's mind was no longer in the cellar. Each night, he dreamed of roads stretching east and west, of cities beyond the hills, of armies marching under banners he did not yet know.
And somewhere in those dreams, there was always a crown.
290 AC — The House of Luthar Veylin, Lower Norvos
The bells were tolling again. Not the market-day chime, but the slow, measured peal that rolled down from the high hill of the bearded priests to mark the hour before dusk.
Alexander was kneeling in the courtyard, scrubbing the flagstones with a rag soaked in lye, when Luthar's shadow fell over him. The merchant was dressed in a wool tunic dyed deep blue, the color of Norvos' river, a silver clasp at his throat.
"You there," Luthar said, squinting down at him. "Come with me."
Alexander wiped his hands on his tunic and rose, careful to keep his eyes lowered, not in fear, but in the way that slaves learned to avoid inviting trouble.
They went inside, past the smoky warmth of the kitchen, into Luthar's study, a high, dim chamber lined with shelves of scrolls, ledgers, and maps. The air smelled of ink and beeswax. In the corner, as always, the longsword leaned against the wall, catching a faint glint of candlelight.
"Sit," Luthar said, pointing at the low stool by the desk.
Alexander obeyed, unsure if this was the beginning of a beating or some other chore.
The merchant sat behind his desk, unlatching a leather case. From it, he drew a folded scrap of parchment and a small pot of ink.
"You're quick with your feet," Luthar began, "quicker with your tongue. But quick hands and quick wits aren't worth a copper if you can't read the marks men make on paper. Every fool can swing a blade, but to hold coin, to bargain, to command… you need this."
He dipped a quill in ink and scratched a single mark onto the parchment, a bold, curling shape.
"This is the word for water in the Braavosi script," he said. "Say it."
Alexander frowned. "Vatra."
"Good. Now write it."
The boy hesitated, then took the quill in his small hand. The ink bled thick where he pressed too hard, thin where his grip faltered. The letters came out crooked, but Luthar only grunted.
"You'll do it again tomorrow," the merchant said. "And the next day, until your hand moves as quick as your tongue."
The days that followed were unlike any Alexander had known. Mornings still began with errands, carrying bolts of cloth, fetching oil from the market, hauling water up from the cistern, but afternoons, Luthar would call him into the study.
There, he learned the shapes of numbers in the merchant's own hand, and how they shifted in the tongues of Qohor, Lys, and Pentos. He learned how to tally goods and reckon the worth of a wagonload of grain after a month on the road.
"You think war is won with swords?" Luthar asked one evening, leaning back in his chair. "It's won with coin. A hungry army is a beaten army. Keep the men fed, the mules shod, and the pay on time, and you can march from here to Asshai without losing a man."
Alexander stored the words away like coin in a chest.
On the colder nights, when the braziers glowed red and the wind rattled the shutters, Luthar would tell stories. Not the painted, polished kind one heard in market squares, but the ones sellswords told around their own fires, blunt, ugly, and brimming with blood.
He spoke of riding under the banners of the Second Sons, a golden coin on a field of black, through the cracked hills of the Disputed Lands. He told of sieges in the stifling heat of summer, of arrows hissing down like rain, of nights spent sleeping in armor because an enemy's knives were close.
"Remember this," Luthar would say, tapping the table with a thick finger. "A captain's job is not just to fight. It's to choose when not to. Men who fight every battle they can end up buried in strange dirt."
Alexander listened, memorising not only the deeds, but the thinking behind them. He began to see war not as chaos, but as a game of moves and countermoves, where the clever could bend the strong to their will.
In the study hung a map of the Free Cities, inked in black and gold on vellum. Alexander found his eyes drawn to it every time he entered.
One day, Luthar caught him staring.
"Find Norvos," the merchant said.
Alexander pointed.
"Now trace the road to Pentos."
The boy's finger followed the painted line northward.
"Good. Now tell me three ways to reach Pentos without touching that road."
Alexander hesitated, then began to trace other paths, through Qohor and across the forest, by river down to the coast, and overland past the hills into Pentoshi fields.
Luthar smiled faintly. "There's always more than one road to where you want to go. Remember that."
Steel in Hand
By the time the first snows of 291 AC began to fall, Luthar had added a new task to Alexander's training.
In the small walled yard behind the house, the boy was given a wooden sword, no more than a stick with a wrapped leather grip, but weighted enough to sting his wrists after a while.
"Footwork first," Luthar said, showing him how to stand, how to move without crossing his legs, how to keep his weight balanced. "A fight's won before the first blow lands, if your feet are right."
The practice left Alexander bruised and sore, but the ache was a good one, the ache of something learned, not merely endured.
By the year's end, Alexander could read and write in the merchant's script, reckon coin in three currencies, trace half a dozen caravan routes by memory, and parry a slow strike without stumbling.
He was still a slave, still sleeping on straw in the cellar… but in his mind, the walls of Norvos no longer held him.
The world was a board, and he had begun to learn the game.