Chapter 124: Making the Cut
Although Drogon had not been injured, the mere fact that Ghis had dared to deploy dragon-killing ballistae was an unforgivable crime.
The three dragons were Queen Daenerys's greatest treasure—her reverse scale.
Anyone who dared touch it would not be forgiven easily.
"Let them offer three times the tribute listed in the document each year."
As Daenerys's Master of Coin, Hizdahr naturally thought first of increasing the tribute.
Not only would this increase the punishment for Ghis, but it would also ease his own financial burdens.
Slaver's Bay had countless freedmen waiting to be fed, and tens of thousands of soldiers who ate but produced nothing had to be maintained.
When he had first seen the tribute list offered by the Ghiscari envoys, Hizdahr had already been secretly delighted.
Now that Daenerys intended to impose harsher terms, he certainly wouldn't miss the chance to push the knife deeper.
Hearing his proposal, Daenerys nodded slightly.
Doubling the tribute was clearly not enough to compensate for the harm Ghis had caused Slaver's Bay.
"Have them hand over the leaders of the Sons of the Harpy operating in Ghis."
As the acting master of Whisperers, Ser Jorah most wanted to eliminate the Harpy organization.
When Daenerys had first offered terms of submission, she had not intended to pursue the Harpies' crimes in Ghis.
But since they had refused to submit at that time, it was only fair to revisit the matter now.
"I believe we should reduce the number of soldiers in New and Old Ghis," Tyrion said after some thought. "The soldiers we remove can be broken up and incorporated into our own army."
When Tyrion finished speaking, Daenerys's eyes lit up.
It was an excellent idea.
Not only would it weaken Ghis's military strength, but their soldiers would also end up fighting for her instead.
"Then have them provide several dozen warships as tribute."
As Master of Ships, Daario was determined to obtain as many vessels as possible for Daenerys.
After hearing his suggestion, Daenerys immediately began calculating how many ships would be appropriate.
And so, ruler and council calmly decided where to make their cuts into the Ghiscari cities.
[Have them surrender the remaining ballistae too. Those could be useful for training those two foolish dragons.]
Hearing Drogon's voice in her mind, Daenerys's expression twitched slightly.
Training with ballistae?
What if one actually hit them?
Although she would never dare to train Rhaegal and Viserion that way, the ballistae themselves absolutely had to be confiscated.
Only after Drogon's reminder did Daenerys realize she had nearly overlooked the issue.
She quietly instructed Jorah to include the demand when speaking with the envoys, and also ordered him to have Varys's little birds in Ghis investigate how many ballistae the cities possessed.
She had no intention of allowing the Ghiscari to secretly aim such weapons at her dragons.
---
After the council concluded its discussion, Daenerys ordered the envoys brought back into the hall.
She informed them of the new conditions of submission.
The envoys were shocked by the harsher demands but did not dare protest.
After leaving the hall, they hurried back toward Ghis as quickly as possible.
Daenerys had given them only two days to respond—barely enough time for a round trip.
If they were delayed along the way and the black dragon flew back to their cities again…
No one could imagine what might happen next.
---
After Drogon's fiery assault on New and Old Ghis, chaos had erupted among the nobles.
A few days earlier, when Daenerys's initial terms of submission had reached them, the Ghiscari nobles had split into two factions:
those advocating war, and those advocating peace.
In the end, the war faction prevailed.
They refused to submit, strengthened the city defenses, and prepared to face Daenerys's army.
What they had not expected was that the army never arrived.
Instead…
A majestic four-legged black dragon descended upon them.
At first they believed the dragon would surely die beneath the bolts of their ballistae.
But then something happened that none of them could have imagined.
The four-legged dragon—something they had never even heard of before—withstood the ballista bolts head-on with its scales alone.
Then it destroyed the ballistae, burned down the walls and pyramids, and reduced the soldiers to ashes.
After the dragon departed, the war faction fell silent.
The peace faction immediately sent envoys to request submission to Queen Daenerys.
Now the Ghiscari nobles waited anxiously for the envoys' return.
At last, the envoys arrived back in New and Old Ghis.
But when the nobles saw Daenerys's new terms, they were completely stunned.
The first three demands were manageable.
More tribute, several warships from each noble house—these were acceptable prices for avoiding disaster.
Even surrendering half of their private soldiers to reinforce Slaver's Bay's army could be tolerated.
After all, if they became subjects of Slaver's Bay, then if New or Old Ghis ever faced invasion in the future, they could request aid from Queen Daenerys.
But the final demand—
to surrender the masterminds behind the Sons of the Harpy—
was essentially asking them to hand over their own lives.
Everyone present roughly knew who those leaders were.
Most belonged to the war faction.
Of course, not all Harpy members supported war.
The organization had originally been created to protect the interests of certain nobles and slave-owners.
But as it grew stronger, it gradually changed.
It became a powerful group using force to maintain its commercial dominance, eventually engaging in extortion, monopolies, and coercive trade.
Accustomed to wielding power and control, they had no intention of submitting to Daenerys—a foreign ruler.
Especially one who had abolished slavery, the very foundation of their enormous wealth.
Refusing to accept their fate, they had organized several assassination attempts against Daenerys and her followers.
Yet each carefully planned attack had been thwarted by her small dragon.
And what they had never expected was that the black dragon—capable of changing size—would withstand ballistae and bring devastating destruction upon Ghis.
Now they had no choice but to surrender.
As the Ghiscari nobles read the new terms of submission, no one spoke first.
Yet each of them watched the others carefully.
Suspicion and fear hung heavy in the air.
The nobles who had secretly orchestrated the Sons of the Harpy attacks feared they would be handed over as scapegoats.
Meanwhile, the nobles who supported peace—those not directly involved with the Harpies—feared that the conspirators might become desperate. They worried the war faction might either refuse Daenerys's terms altogether or even kill them and shift the blame onto them as the supposed leaders of the Harpies.
That very night, several internal conflicts erupted simultaneously in both New Ghis and Old Ghis.
The fighting between noble factions turned violent, and both nobles and soldiers suffered heavy casualties.
The following day, the surviving nobles urgently convened a council to discuss Daenerys's terms of submission.
Based on each house's remaining strength—and their actions during the previous night's chaos—they determined how much wealth each family would contribute and how many soldiers each would send to serve in Daenerys's army.
---
In Meereen, the two-day deadline was about to expire.
Just as promised, the envoys from New and Old Ghis returned.
They accepted all of Daenerys's terms of submission.
They also presented two lists.
The lists contained the names of the leaders of the Sons of the Harpy in Ghis and the noble families behind them.
However, most of those individuals had already been killed or wiped out during the previous night's internal conflicts.
The tribute—wealth, warships, remaining ballistae, and soldiers to be incorporated into Daenerys's army—would all arrive in Meereen within three days.
Ghis accepting all the conditions had already been expected by Daenerys.
In fact, two hours before the envoys even arrived in Meereen, the spies Jorah had sent to Ghis had already reported everything that had happened during the night.
Even so, Daenerys had never imagined that a single condition of submission would trigger such a massive internal conflict within Ghis.
After this incident, she believed that the Sons of the Harpy, who had caused her endless headaches and trouble, would never again be able to stir up such chaos.
The greatest threat to her rule in Slaver's Bay had finally been removed.
Not only that, Ghis's submission brought tremendous benefits.
The tribute alone would cover nearly two-thirds of the army's expenses.
The one hundred warships and over five thousand soldiers they offered would also become valuable assets for her future campaign toward Westeros.
And all of this was thanks to Drogon.
Without him, she might have died during the arena massacre.
There would have been no submission from Ghis.
After the envoys left, Daenerys couldn't resist pulling Drogon into her arms and planting several affectionate kisses on him in gratitude for everything he had done.
Watching the intimate scene between Daenerys and Drogon, Tyrion and the others felt varying degrees of shame.
As the queen's advisors, they had failed to resolve her greatest threat.
Worse, they had nearly led her into a deadly trap in the arena.
Together, they had accomplished less than a single dragon.
Even if that dragon was extraordinarily powerful and unlike any dragon before him, it still highlighted their own shortcomings.
Kneeling on one knee, Tyrion spoke first.
"Congratulations, Your Majesty, on securing the submission of Ghis. We will devote all our strength to helping you claim the Iron Throne."
After Tyrion finished speaking, Jorah and the others also knelt.
"We will devote all our strength to helping Your Majesty claim the Iron Throne."
They bowed their heads, ashamed that they had failed to protect her.
Yara, who had been standing quietly to the side of the hall, also knelt.
Having witnessed Drogon's terrifying power and the submission of Ghis with her own eyes, she no longer considered herself merely Daenerys's ally.
She willingly accepted Daenerys as her queen.
Looking at the Masters kneeling before her—and Yara's sincere pledge of loyalty—Daenerys took a deep breath.
Then she lifted her gaze toward the northwest…
toward the distant lands of Westeros.