Pentos rose from the morning mist like a dream of lost Valyria.
Jon stood at the rail of the trading galley Sweet Sorrow, watching the city's pale towers catch the first light of dawn. After three weeks at sea from Braavos, the sight of land felt almost unreal—white walls and red-tiled roofs, the great manse of the Magisters visible on the hills above the harbor.
He was seven years old now. His birthday had passed somewhere on the Summer Sea, unmarked and unremarked. Another year older, another year further from Winterfell, another year closer to... what? He still wasn't sure.
Yi Ti, Marcus's fragments whispered. The Golden Empire. The answers you seek.
But Yi Ti was thousands of leagues away, and Jon had learned that distance was measured not just in miles but in coin. His savings from Brusco had bought him passage this far, but his purse was growing light. He needed work, and he needed it soon.
"First time in Pentos, boy?"
Jon turned. The ship's mate, a grizzled Myrish named Quarro, had come up beside him. The man had been kind enough during the voyage—not friendly, exactly, but not cruel.
"First time anywhere that isn't Braavos or White Harbor," Jon admitted.
"Pentos is... different." Quarro's eyes swept the approaching harbor. "Slavery is forbidden here, by treaty with Braavos. But the Magisters have their servants, and their servants have servants, and if you look too closely at the distinction..." He shrugged. "Don't look too closely. That's my advice."
"Is it dangerous?"
"Everywhere is dangerous for a boy alone." Quarro studied him with something like concern. "You have a destination? Someone expecting you?"
"No." Jon had learned that honesty was easier than remembering lies. "I'm looking for passage further east. Volantis, maybe. Or beyond."
"Volantis." Quarro's expression darkened. "That's slave country proper. No treaties there, no pretense. A boy like you—pale, pretty, obviously foreign—you'd be worth gold on the auction block."
Jon's stomach tightened. "I'll be careful."
"Careful won't save you if the wrong person decides you're worth more in chains than walking free." Quarro reached into his belt and withdrew a folded paper. "Here. A name—Belicho Staegone. He's a merchant, trades in spices and silk. Valyrian blood, but decent enough for a slaver's friend. Tell him Quarro sent you. He might have work, or at least advice."
"Why help me?"
Quarro's weathered face creased into something almost like a smile. "Because you remind me of my son. He was about your age when the corsairs took him." The smile faded. "I never saw him again. If someone had helped him... maybe things would have been different."
Jon took the paper. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Survive. That's thanks enough."
Belicho Staegone received him in a warehouse that smelled of cinnamon and old money.
The merchant was not what Jon had expected. He'd imagined a fat man in silk, dripping with gold. Instead, Belicho was lean and sharp-featured, with the silver-streaked hair and violet eyes that marked Valyrian descent. He wore simple robes, and his office was cluttered with ledgers and maps rather than treasure.
"Quarro sent you." Belicho's voice was soft, cultured, with an accent Jon couldn't place. "He doesn't send many. You must have made an impression."
"I worked hard on the voyage," Jon said carefully. "I can read and write. I speak several languages. I'm looking for passage east, and I'm willing to work for it."
"Several languages." Belicho's violet eyes sharpened with interest. "Which ones?"
"Common Tongue. Braavosi. Some High Valyrian." Jon hesitated, then added: "A little Yi Tish."
"Yi Tish." The merchant leaned back in his chair, studying Jon with new attention. "That's unusual for a Westerosi. Where did you learn?"
From the memories of a dead man. "My father had books. I learned young."
"Hmm." Belicho was silent for a long moment. Then he reached across his desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers covered in numbers. "Can you read these?"
Jon looked at the documents. They were shipping manifests—cargo weights, routes, tariff calculations. Marcus's fragments supplied context: merchant mathematics, the language of trade.
"I can try," Jon said.
He studied the papers carefully. The numbers swam before his eyes—not because he couldn't read them, but because there were so many, and his tired mind struggled to hold them all at once. He caught one obvious error, maybe two.
"This cargo weight seems too high for a ship this size," he said slowly. "And I think... this tariff calculation might be wrong? But I'm not certain."
Belicho's expression didn't change. "You're partially right. There are three errors in total. You found one and a half." He gathered the papers. "Not perfect, but better than most adults. And honest about your limitations—that's rarer still."
"Does that mean you'll help me?"
"It means I'll consider it." Belicho steepled his fingers. "I sail for Volantis in four days, up the Rhoyne. It's a dangerous journey—Stone Men haunt the Sorrows, and pirates work the lower reaches. But I need a cabin boy, someone who can help with translations and simple accounts. The work would earn you passage and a small wage."
Jon's heart leaped. "I accept."
"Don't accept so quickly." Belicho's voice turned serious. "Volantis is not Pentos. It's not Braavos. Slavery is the foundation of their society—five slaves for every free man. A child traveling alone, without papers or protection..." He let the implication hang.
"I'll be careful."
"Careful is a start. Smart is better." Belicho rose and moved to a cabinet, withdrawing a small leather case. "These are transit papers. They identify you as my employee, under my protection. They won't stop a determined slaver, but they'll discourage casual kidnapping. Keep them with you always."
Jon took the case with trembling hands. "Why are you helping me?"
"Because Quarro asked. Because you seem clever. And because..." Belicho paused, his violet eyes distant. "I had a son once. He would have been about your age." He shook his head. "The Doom took many things from the Valyrian bloodlines. Hope, most of all. But occasionally, I see something in a child's eyes that makes me think the future might be worth investing in."
"I won't disappoint you."
"See that you don't." Belicho's voice hardened. "Be at the Shy Maid before dawn in four days. Don't be late. And Jon—" he caught Jon's eye, "—whatever you see on this voyage, whatever you feel, remember: you are a child. You cannot save everyone. You cannot fix this world. The best you can do is survive it long enough to become someone who might."
Jon didn't understand what he meant. Not yet.
The Shy Maid was a pole boat, flat-bottomed and broad, designed to navigate the shallow reaches of the Rhoyne. She carried a crew of twelve—free sailors from Volantis, a Myrish crossbowman, and below decks, chained to the oars, a dozen slaves.
Jon tried not to look at them. He failed.
They were men and women of a dozen races—dark-skinned Summer Islanders, pale Lyseni, copper-skinned Ghiscari. Their backs were scarred from the lash. Their eyes were empty. When the overseer cracked his whip to set the rowing pace, they moved in perfect unison, like parts of a machine.
"First time seeing it up close?" Belicho had come up beside him, silent as a cat.
"Yes." Jon's voice came out hoarse.
"It never gets easier. That's the mercy—that it never becomes normal." Belicho's face was unreadable. "I use free sailors where I can. But the river trade requires rowers, and rowers require... motivation."
"You could pay them."
"I could. And I would be undercut by every competitor who doesn't, until I went bankrupt and my ships were bought by someone with fewer scruples." Belicho's voice was flat. "I don't ask you to accept it, Jon. I ask you to understand it. This is the world. Wishing it were different doesn't make it so."
"But—"
"There are no buts. Only choices, and the consequences that follow." He put a hand on Jon's shoulder. "You want to change the world? Good. Hold onto that. But first, survive it. Learn it. Grow strong enough that your choices matter. Right now, you're a child on a boat. Your outrage changes nothing."
Jon wanted to argue. He wanted to say that it wasn't right, that someone should do something, that he should do something.
But he looked at the slaves, and he looked at his own small hands, and he knew Belicho was right. He was seven years old. He couldn't even lift an oar, let alone break a chain.
The map is not the journey, he reminded himself bitterly. And the journey is longer than I thought.
He found Kerys on the third night.
He'd gone below to fetch water for Belicho's cabin and taken a wrong turn in the dark. The Shy Maid was a maze of cramped passages and low ceilings, and Jon had never fully learned its layout. He stumbled through a doorway and found himself in a storage hold, surrounded by crates of silk and barrels of spice.
And there, huddled in the corner, was a woman.
She moved before Jon could react. One moment she was a shadow among shadows; the next, she had him pinned against the wall, a knife at his throat.
"Who sent you?" Her voice was a hiss, accented with something musical—Lyseni, maybe. "Who knows I'm here?"
"No one!" Jon gasped. "I got lost! I was looking for the water casks!"
The knife pressed harder. Jon felt blood well up where the blade touched skin.
"You're lying. They sent you to find me. To drag me back—"
"I don't even know who you are!" Jon's voice cracked with fear. "Please. I'm just a cabin boy. I'm seven years old!"
Something flickered in the woman's eyes. The knife didn't move, but her grip loosened slightly.
Jon forced himself to think. Marcus's fragments supplied nothing useful—no combat technique would help him now, and even if it could, he couldn't execute it. He had only his wits and his words.
"Your accent," he said, keeping his voice calm despite the terror. "You're from Lys. And that brand on your wrist—" he'd glimpsed it when she grabbed him, "—that's a Myrish slave mark. You're a runaway."
The woman's eyes widened.
"I'm not going to turn you in," Jon continued quickly. "I don't care about slave catchers or rewards. I just want to get to the water casks and go back to my work."
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then, slowly, the woman lowered the knife.
"You're either very brave or very stupid," she said.
"I've been told both."
Something that might have been a smile crossed her face. "I'm Kerys. And if you tell anyone I'm here—"
"I won't." Jon rubbed his throat where the knife had pressed. "How long have you been hiding?"
"Since Pentos. I slipped aboard while the cargo was loading." Kerys's voice turned bitter. "I was a pleasure slave in Myr. My master... he had particular tastes. When I heard he was planning to sell me to a pillow house in Yunkai, I ran." She laughed, and there was no humor in it. "As if anywhere is safe. As if freedom is anything more than a longer leash."
"Why the Shy Maid?"
"Because she's going upriver, away from the coast. The catchers look for runaways on the sea routes." Her eyes met Jon's. "And because I was desperate. Desperate people make stupid choices."
Jon thought about his own flight from Winterfell. The cold. The hunger. The moments when he'd been certain he would die.
"I understand," he said quietly.
He should have told Belicho. He knew that. The merchant had been kind to him, had trusted him, and keeping secrets was a betrayal of that trust.
But every time he opened his mouth to speak, he saw Kerys's eyes. The fear in them. The desperation. And he remembered what Quarro had said about his son—taken by corsairs, never seen again.
She's someone's daughter, Jon thought. She was someone, before they made her a thing.
So he kept her secret. He brought her food when he could—scraps from his own meals, water from the casks, a blanket stolen from the crew quarters. They talked in whispered conversations, late at night when the rest of the ship slept.
Kerys had been born free in Lys, the daughter of a merchant who gambled away his fortune. She'd been sold at twelve to pay his debts. Five years in chains had taught her that freedom was a fantasy, that the strong did what they wished and the weak suffered what they must.
"But you ran," Jon pointed out.
"Running isn't freedom. It's just a different kind of cage." She pulled up her sleeve, showing the brand. "This mark never comes off. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I'll always be property that escaped. And they'll always be looking for me."
"What will you do in Volantis?"
"I don't know. Disappear, maybe. Find a free company that doesn't ask questions. Or..." She didn't finish the sentence.
"Or?"
"Or die." Her voice was matter-of-fact. "That's freedom too. The only kind they can't take back."
Jon didn't know what to say to that. So he said nothing, and they sat in silence while the Shy Maid drifted through the dark water of the Rhoyne.
Part Three
The Sorrows came on the fifth day.
Jon had heard the stories—the ruined city of Chroyane, drowned by the Valyrians in the war against the Rhoynar. The curse that hung over the water. The Stone Men who haunted the mists, their flesh turned to grey scale, their minds destroyed by madness and disease.
Stories were easier than reality.
The mist descended without warning, a grey shroud that swallowed the world. The crew fell silent. Even the slaves stopped rowing, their oars still in the water. The only sound was the slow drip of moisture from the rigging.
"Stay below," Belicho ordered Jon. "And don't touch anyone who comes aboard. Anyone at all."
Jon retreated to the cargo hold where Kerys was hiding. She was already awake, her knife in her hand.
"Stone Men?" she whispered.
"I think so."
They heard them before they saw them—splashing in the water, the scrape of grey flesh on wood. Voices that had once been human, moaning sounds that might have been words.
The crossbowman fired. Someone screamed. The ship lurched as something heavy struck the hull.
Jon pressed himself against the wall, his heart hammering. He wanted to help—wanted to do something, anything—but he was seven years old, and there was nothing he could do against creatures from nightmare.
This is what it means to be weak, he thought. This is what it means to be a child.
The attack lasted perhaps ten minutes. It felt like hours. When the mist finally lifted and the sounds faded, Jon emerged onto a deck slick with blood. Two sailors were dead—one with his throat torn out, another with grey patches already spreading across his skin. The crossbowman was methodically checking the bodies, a long knife in his hand.
"Grey scale," he said when he saw Jon looking. "Nothing to be done. Quick death is mercy."
He knelt beside the infected sailor. Jon looked away, but he couldn't block out the sound.
Volantis was everything Belicho had warned him about, and worse.
They arrived on a morning thick with heat and humidity, the great Black Walls of the Old Blood rising above a city that sprawled across both banks of the Rhoyne. The harbor was chaos—ships from every nation, slaves by the thousand loading and unloading cargo, overseers with whips stalking between them like wolves among sheep.
Jon saw children his own age in chains. Some carried burdens heavier than themselves. Others stood on blocks, being examined by buyers who checked their teeth and felt their muscles like they were livestock.
This is the world, Belicho had said. Wishing it were different doesn't make it so.
Jon wished anyway. And he hated himself for being unable to do more than wish.
"The ship will be in port for three days," Belicho told him as they disembarked. "I have business with the Triarchs. You may go ashore, but stay within the harbor district. Keep your papers with you. And Jon—" his violet eyes were hard, "—don't do anything stupid. Whatever you see, however wrong it feels, remember what I told you. You cannot save everyone."
"I understand."
"I hope so." Belicho turned away. "For your sake."
Kerys made her escape that night.
Jon helped her—guided her through the ship to a place where she could slip over the side unseen, gave her the last of his coins, told her what little he knew of Volantis's layout.
"The harbor district is watched," he warned her. "But there's a temple to the Lord of Light on the eastern hill. I've heard they take in fugitives sometimes."
"You've heard." Kerys's smile was sad. "You're a strange boy, Jon Snow. Too kind for this world."
"I'm not kind. I just..." He struggled for words. "I can't change what I can't change. But I can do this. It's small, but it's something."
"It's more than anyone else has done for me in five years." She touched his cheek—a gesture that felt almost maternal, though she couldn't have been more than twenty. "If I survive this, I won't forget. And if you ever need help in this part of the world..."
"I won't need it. I'm going east. To Yi Ti."
"Yi Ti." She laughed softly. "The Golden Empire. I've heard stories. They say it's beautiful."
"I hope so."
"Then I hope you find what you're looking for." She pressed something into his hand—a small jade coin, worn smooth by years of handling. "For luck. It was my mother's."
"I can't—"
"You can. You will." She was already moving toward the rail. "Goodbye, Jon Snow. May the gods go with you."
She slipped over the side without a sound. Jon watched the dark water until he was sure she was gone.
Then he went back to his hammock and tried to sleep.
Part Four
Maelor came the next morning.
Jon heard the commotion from belowdecks—raised voices, the tramp of boots, Belicho's sharp protests. He emerged into sunlight and chaos.
Six men stood on the deck, armed with swords and clubs. They wore the colors of no house or company Jon recognized—sellswords, probably, or slave catchers. Their leader was a handsome man in black leather, with silver rings on every finger and a smile that never reached his eyes.
"The runaway is mine," the man was saying. "She cost me five hundred gold. I'll have her back, or I'll have compensation."
"There's no runaway on this ship," Belicho replied, his voice steady. "You're welcome to search, if you don't believe me."
"Oh, I intend to." The man's smile widened. "I'm Maelor of Myr. Perhaps you've heard of me."
Something cold settled in Jon's stomach. He'd heard of Maelor—whispered stories on the voyage, rumors of a slaver known for his cruelty and his long memory. Men said he pursued runaways across continents. Men said he never forgot an insult.
The sellswords spread across the ship. They searched the cargo holds, the crew quarters, every space large enough to hide a woman. They found nothing—Kerys was long gone.
But then one of them emerged from below with something in his hand. A blanket. The blanket Jon had given Kerys.
"This isn't ship issue," the man said. "Someone was hiding down there. Recently."
Maelor's eyes swept the deck. They landed on Jon.
"You." He stepped closer, and Jon fought the urge to step back. "The cabin boy. You've been below more than anyone else these past days. Did you see anything?"
Jon's mind raced. He could lie—claim ignorance, pretend he knew nothing. But Maelor's eyes were sharp, and the sellswords were watching, and Jon had never been a good liar.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. His voice came out thin.
Maelor studied him for a long moment. Then he reached out and grabbed Jon's chin, forcing his head up.
"You're a terrible liar, boy. I can see it in your eyes." His grip tightened, painfully. "Where is she?"
"I don't—"
The blow came without warning—an open-handed slap that sent Jon sprawling across the deck. Stars exploded in his vision. He tasted blood.
"Where. Is. She."
Jon looked up at Maelor through blurred eyes. He thought of Kerys, somewhere in the city, running for her life. He thought of her mother's jade coin, still in his pocket.
"I don't know," he said.
Maelor hit him again. And again. Each blow drove the breath from his lungs, sent fresh pain shooting through his body. Jon curled into a ball, trying to protect his head, but the kicks found his ribs, his back, his legs.
"Stop!" Belicho's voice, sharp with anger. "He's a child! He's under my protection!"
"Your protection means nothing here, Valyrian." Maelor's boot caught Jon in the stomach, and he retched, bile spilling across the deck. "This is Volantis. The only law is gold, and I have more than you."
He grabbed Jon by the hair and hauled him up. Jon hung limp in his grip, too hurt to fight, too proud to beg.
"Last chance, boy. Tell me where she went, and this ends. Stay silent, and I'll sell you to the fighting pits. They always need fresh meat."
Jon thought of Kerys's eyes when she'd said goodbye. The desperate hope in them. The first hope she'd had in five years.
You cannot save everyone, Belicho had said.
But he could save one person. Even if it cost him everything.
"I don't know," Jon whispered.
Maelor's smile vanished.
"So be it."
The last thing Jon saw before darkness took him was Belicho's face—pale with fury, hands clenched at his sides, unable to do anything as the sellswords dragged Jon away.
I'm sorry, Jon thought. I'm sorry I couldn't be stronger. I'm sorry I couldn't be smarter. I'm sorry.
Then there was only pain, and darkness, and the sound of chains.