Slaves obey, men choose: chapter 32: Eos

This chapter was written listening to Standchen S.560 ( https://open.spotify.com/track/4b59u2E74KcDuyHCRBkf5v?si=W-9weWSiSmy0JUqbZ36qDA&context=spotify%3Aartist%3A2p0UyoPfYfI76PCStuXfOP ). I advise you to listen to it while reading if you want to feel completely the vibe of the chapter

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“I never really understood what it meant to be free.”

The words hung in the air between us, soft as moth wings, and I turned my head to find their source.

Grey Worm stood at the balcony's edge, his silhouette cut sharp against the amber light of late afternoon.

The sun bled gold across Astapor's rooftops, turning the red brick to something almost beautiful, almost forgiven.

We were high above it all, perched at my usual sanctuary, the balcony that crowned one of the ancient towers.

Up here, the wind carried only whispers of the city below: market songs, hammer strikes, children's laughter.

The sounds of a place that seemed to have gotten used to live rather than merely survive.

My fingers found the strings again, drawing out a phrase that climbed and fell like breath.

The harp sat against my shoulder, its wood warm from the sun's attention. I knew what people would whisper or think.

I know how they would only see this as another proof that I was Rhaegar’s son because of course in their mind, the guy liking the harpe and me too must mean that we’re father and son when the original Aegor had learned it because Kraznys had ordered him to do, because he had wanted to be more sophisticated.

I really hoped he was suffering where he was.

Anyways, let them whisper. I had spent too many lives, this one and the one before, swallowing down joy because someone else might disapprove.

I liked the harp.

The harp stayed.

The melody wove itself around Grey Worm's words, neither answering nor ignoring them. A minor key, Schubert filtered through memory from a first life and magic, notes that understood longing without needing to name it.

"Did something change," I asked, my hands pulling sweetness from the strings, "or do you still feel the same?"

He was quiet for a breath, two, three.

The music filled that silence like water finding the shape of its container.

When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of confession.

"I don't think I understand it well. That I understand it completely, understand it the way it needs to." Each word came careful, chosen. "The only things I knew, I was taught—they were related to obeying in some way or form. It feels as if I was made for obeying."

My right hand climbed the higher strings, a question asked in sound.

The notes fell like rain on stone, patient, persistent.

"But you weren't." The words came gentle, not quite correction. "No man is made to obey. No man is born a slave."

I let the phrase resolve, then started another, this one lower, darker.

The harp knew anger too, when asked.

"They broke you. You and the others. They broke all of us in different ways so that we may believe this, because if we did—" the music swelled, insistent, "—if we saw it as our bare nature, our bare condition, we would not try fighting against it."

The sun caught on the strings as my fingers moved, turning them to threads of light.

Grey Worm shifted his weight.

I could see him from the corner of my eye, his hands gripping the balcony rail as if it might anchor him against the vertigo of thought.

"I know this." His voice had found something firmer now. "I know this because of you. I know this because you freed us all. I know this because you saved us and helped us and was there when you didn't have to."

The melody softened, became something almost like a lullaby.

Notes that remembered tenderness.

"I know that because you are kind," he continued, and I nearly stumbled on the strings. "Because you allowed everyone of us in this city, days ago, to speak with those we lost. With those we held dear. With those we would have all thought we would never have the chance to ever talk again."

My fingers kept their pattern, muscle memory carrying the tune while my mind pulled back to that night.

The luminaries.

The spell that had felt like dying without the mercy of death's ending. Six hours of holding the dead and the living in the same space, making sure that reality didn’t stretch thin enough to tear.

There were already too many would be apocalypses in this world. I would not add another one on top.

"I spoke to you of a would-be brother who died when I was younger. Died for me. Died because the world was cruel, because our old masters were cruel."

The harp sang something mournful now, without my conscious intention. Grief recognized itself in sound.

"And you gave him back to me for a night." Grey Worm's voice cracked, just barely. "I know you didn't want to admit it, that you probably tried to hide it using your magic, but me and the other members of your household—we knew that you were hurt after. We knew that you were hurt because of what you gave us."

I smiled at the strings, the expression tasting of copper and irony. "I can't hide anything from you, can I?"

The music turned wry, a brief run up the scale that might have been laughter if laughter could be played on wire and wood.

Grey Worm didn't answer directly.

He looked out over the city, his face turned away from me, and I let the harp speak for both of us.

The piece I played had no name here, belonged to a world that would never exist in this one, but longing was something that translated across the borders of reality well enough.

"Freedom, for the me before, was something never to be thought of, held in his grasp." He spoke to Astapor's rooftops, to the horizon, to the past. "But now, even though I don't understand it completely..."

He paused. The harp filled the space, ascending.

"I think that it is one of the most beautiful things in this world. The ability to breathe without feeling guilty. Breathing, knowing with certainty that the next one coming can't be stopped."

My hands found a resolution, let it ring out over the city. Beautiful things deserved beautiful sounds.

"The executive will be chosen," Grey Worm said, and the peace in his voice fractured. "And I can't help but fear."

I let the note die completely before I spoke. "Fear?"

"Indeed." He turned then, looked at me directly. His eyes held something I recognized too well—the terror of having something precious enough to lose. "I don't understand much about freedom. I just know that it is beautiful. That your dream of making the entire world free, to stop slavery in this whole world, is something beautiful. That the world of your dream is one exceptional."

The harp breathed again under my touch, quiet now, contemplative.

"And I don't want to see such a thing tarnished." The words came faster, urgent. "I fear—I am scared—that the executive chosen, the one voted to be the second after you in leading Astapor, will be one that tarnishes it."

I played something soft, almost a whisper. The kind of music you might hear through a door left slightly ajar, private but not quite secret.

"It is normal," I said, my voice matching the harp's volume, "it is human to feel fear. But you must know that things can go the right way."

"They can also go the wrong way." Grey Worm's hands tightened on the rail. "And I don't wish for that."

The sun had moved while we spoke, painting new shadows across the balcony's stone. My fingers traced a pattern that climbed and fell, climbed and fell, patient as waves against a shore.

Still playing, still watching Astapor spread beneath us like a promise half-kept, I asked: "So, what will you do?"

The question hung there with the music, both waiting.

"I think I may enter the vote." He said it quickly, as if speed might make it hurt less. "Sorry."

The melody stumbled, just for a heartbeat then recovered. I sighed, a sound that became part of the music's breathing.

"I am only disappointed," I said, fingers never stopping, "in the fact that you feel so negative. But I can understand. Empathize."

The harp turned warmer, major key sunlight after minor key rain.

"You don't need to be sorry at all. I'm not angry at all. If anything, I am happy."

I felt rather than saw his confusion. The music asked the question for him, a rising phrase that demanded resolution.

"Do you know why?"

Grey Worm thought for a moment, I could tell by the quality of his silence, the way it sat differently than simple quiet. "I don't know."

I smiled at him then, let him see it, genuine and uncomplicated.

My hands pulled joy from the strings, the kind of joy that understood sorrow and chose to exist anyway and thus made it more beautiful.

"Because it is your choice. Because you decided it by yourself. Because none told you, ordered you to do so."

The melody soared now, celebrating.

"Because you were ready to do something you thought I may dislike. Because it means you're changing."

The light caught the harp's curve, turned it to amber and gold. My fingers danced across the strings, no other word for it pulling out phrases that tumbled over each other like children released from lessons.

Grey Worm's face did something complicated, emotions chasing each other too quickly to name.

I played on, the smile settling on my face like it belonged there, like it might stay a while.

"You said to me that you didn't understand much about freedom," I told him, the music punctuating each word with its own agreement. "But in the end, I think you maybe do much more than you thought."

The piece found its ending, not final, just a pause, a breath before the next phrase.

The strings sang their last note out over Astapor, over the red towers and the golden tree, over the plaza where hundreds of thousands had gathered to choose their future.

The sound traveled and faded and finally released itself to silence.

Grey Worm stood straighter.

Something in his shoulders had shifted, a weight set down or perhaps redistributed.

If before he had doubts, I knew now that they were erased.

Grey Worm would enter the run to become the executive.

Below us, the city went about its evening.

Somewhere, a bell rang. Somewhere, bread was baking.

Somewhere, someone was learning to read their own name for the first time.

Somewhere, someone was deciding to be brave.

Somewhere, someone was laughing and happy.

The harp rested against my shoulder, waiting.

Above us, the sky began its slow turn toward night.

And between us, in the space where music had been, something like understanding settled like dust after a storm.

‘’Being Free,’ I thought. ‘I think that this is also what it looks like.’

And I started playing again.