Harry Potter and the Red Temple Ch.5 (HP/GoT)

“Such devotion demands a price, sister.” Kinvara’s words of admonition rang in Melisandre’s ears as she levered herself from her bed, still seized by exhaustion, a weariness that wasn’t just bone-deep but cut further still.

Three days and nights spent in prayer were taxing on the body, but it was more than that. Kinvara was right; a price was demanded, but it was one that she would willingly pay again and again for even that one glimpse of Azor Ahai.

Not someone who might be Azor Ahai, but the one who had ridden through the flames at the command of R’hllor to spread His light on mankind. And she was his faithful servant.

“Where is he?” Melisandre asked as she set about sorting through her sparse belongings, looking for fresh robes—at least ones that were less stained by soot, frayed by heat, and burnt by embers than the ones that she’d shrugged off before sleeping.

“He resides in a chamber in the inner court of the temple and is there now, poring over a map of the city and its environs,” her sister-priestess explained, an odd tone to her voice. “He wished to know more of the First Daughter and, in particular, of her slaves, the masters.”

“Slaves?” Melisandre managed to conceal a wince, though she was sure that Kinvara, her friend of long years, would see through it. There had been a time when both priestesses had been nothing more than slaves, a product to be bought and sold, and it was something that had left a scar that would forever be raw. Even if it had been the will of the Lord of Light to bring her to this place, this time...

“In the Kingdom of the Lord of Light, there are no slaves. Slavery there is forbidden by law, and slavers are punished harshly, according to Azor Ahai.” Kinvara twisted a fold of her robe’s sleeve about her hand, an idle tic. “He hates the concept of slavery so very deeply, you can feel it. It is… visceral.”

“But are we not all slaves?” As soon as the words escaped Melisandre, she wanted to swallow them. For a lowly priestess to question the chosen of R’hllor, to question the words of Azor Ahai. It was one thing to council, to advise, but quite another to outright challenge his proclamations.

“There will have to be changes about the temple. We are servants of the Lord of Light because Benerro and Moqorro value their continued existence and possession of their limbs more than some did.” Kinvara smiled, a look on her face half amused and half twisted by a cruel satisfaction. “Azor Ahai ventured into the city this morning. We wandered here and about, not seeking out any one thing. There was a master, one of the least of the Old Blood, who struck a girl with his whip. She had a child at the breast, a mere slave who had the misfortune to be before his carriage.”

“And he—” Melisandre began, her question trailing off at Kinvara's look.

“Magic for Azor Ahai is not a flail that scourges his own back. He swatted the master’s guard as one would a fly, wielding a whip of living flame. Then he bound the master and made an example of him by drowning him in the fountain we had been sat by.”

“I should have been with you,” a bitter taste struck Melisandre. “I have failed, wasting away in bed while Azor Ahai has shown us our path forward.”

“He will not blame you. Your devotion is not something he would punish,” her sister replied with complete certainty. “Besides, he has not forgotten you. He left orders that when you arose, you were to be provided a bath, food and drink, and that you would then join him.”

“He honors me.” For a moment, Melisandre felt something brush up against her, another presence, not in the same room but close enough that she could feel a metaphysical gaze on her. “Is that… Him?”

“Yes. He is powerful,” Kinvara admitted with a breathy sigh that was quite un-Kinvara-ish. “He gifted me with something precious, a bond between our minds. We can share memories, meanings, and emotions. It is how I have begun to teach him Valyrian.”

Melisandre found herself struck dumb. The intimacy of such a thing was nearly unthinkable. The mind was one of the most precious and private things a person possessed, and for thousands of years, petty warlocks and sorcerers had sought to pervert it… now Azor Ahai, the holy champion of the Lord of Light, had bestowed upon her sister-priestess such a bond, and she had accepted it.

“Do you think he would offer me such a thing?” She asked, her voice a low whisper.

“You should ask him yourself, and I shall counsel him to share the gift with you, too. I do not think he will deny you it.”

*** 

Harry decided—as he traced the thousands of streets and alleys with his fingers, tapping out a dance on the tabletop—that the map was both extremely useful and, somehow, simultaneously as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Kinvara had even marked out for him the slave quarters, the markets, and the docks where the slave ships moored. Yet it did not answer one of the key questions he wanted, no, that he needed to know.

How could he even begin to put an end to slavery on a scale he’d never even contemplated?

It hadn’t been Hermione, but Fleur, of all people, who had talked him through one of the blackest bits of their countries’ mutual history—slavery in the Caribbean.

Hispaniola was one of the most egregious bits of such horror, and even that had nothing on the extent of slavery that Volantis perpetrated. He was pretty sure that Ancient Rome was the last time Earth had seen slavery on such a scale.

This wasn’t just agricultural plantation slavery, but slavery at every level, from the lowest laborers to skilled craftsmen, sexual slavery, slavery of the literate classes of scribes, and even hosts of slave soldiers.

Harry could see plenty of angles he could attack, striking at the supply of slaves, killing the masters whose gold was made on the back of slaves… but what then?

Volantis would still be a city of hundreds of thousands, many of whom would be freshly freed slaves needing work, pay, and food.

The city’s cisterns and aqueducts supplying water would need to be maintained, taxes collected, and the streets policed. Just annihilating the problem at its source, the masters, wouldn’t work. That was a key reason why he hadn’t gone straight to the black-walled citadel and burned it down with every person within.

Ultimately, it was still an option if all else failed, but a ruined city, famine, war, and death were not legacies he wanted to leave.

A long sigh drew from his chest as he sank back into his chair, his eyes drifting shut as a pair of soft-skinned hands worked under the collar of his shirt, slim fingers kneading at knots of tensed muscle.

Harry decided that Kinvara was an indispensable part of his cause. Not just because he could feel her magical potential or because he enjoyed listening to the musical lilt of her voice. Now that he knew of her massaging abilities, he was sure he would snap and off someone recklessly if deprived of them.

Worry?

“Yes,” Harry replied to the question that his priestess gently pushed across their bond. He responded with a series of images of what he feared: a brutal justice of fire and steel that would uproot the slavers and then leave the city and its people to ruin, famine, civil war, conquest, re-enslavement, and death.

“How… slavery end… you kingdom?” Kinvara asked haltingly.

“How did slavery end in my kingdom? I—” Harry began, then paused. Haiti was a prime example of what he feared… but there had been slavery elsewhere in the world, and for the most part, it had been expunged.

America, though, needed a massive civil war, but even before then, the profitability of the plantations declined. “Money… money.”

How to undertake an economic war against the institution of slavery?

Interrupt the supply, drive up the demand, drive up the price? No, even better, get in at the market, clear it out, then hit the supply, drive up the demand and the price while providing an alternative. 

After the whole breaking out of Gringotts on a stolen dragon affair, Harry had taken to carrying the contents of his vaults in a bottomless bag, so he had plenty of gold, silver, and copper.

Even better, he could develop something like Leprechaun's gold and deal a double blow to the slave economy. But how to interrupt the supply?

Leprechaun gold would be a good start if the slave markets were run by middlemen buying from slavers and selling to masters. Hitting the pockets of the middlemen would send the whole slave economy veering off the rails.

Rails. That was a thought… maybe for another time. He wasn’t such a fool to think he alone could bring about an industrial revolution without tremendous help.

Harry’s musings were interrupted by the arrival of the other priestess—Melisandre—at his chamber doorway. She paused there in the passageway, clearly hesitant.

Harry examined her for a few long moments. Kinvara’s sister-priestess, the first of her order he’d seen upon riding through the fiery portal, was a tall woman, taller than her sister and near a match for him.

Her features were smooth and fine, but there was a hardness to them that spoke of something deeper. He had read many people's faces over the years, and there was a harshness within this woman that he did not think he had seen before.

Maybe… maybe not… it reminded him of flashes of Sirius. Old hurts, old rage. Melisandre wasn’t Bellatrix, but she wasn’t Luna either, the fay girl who had never suffered a blow she could not forgive.

“Come,” he commanded, rising from his seat and gesturing for her to join him.

He didn’t expect Melisandre to glide over with the same grace and self-assurance that Kinvara was so practiced in, and then sink to her knees before him, with what sounded like a prayer on her lips.

Glancing over to Kinvara, he raised an eyebrow. Her response was puzzling, pushing across their bond the memory of the moment they’d introduced themselves to each other.

“Harry,” the day-old mirror of him tapped a hand to his chest.

Kinvara dipped her head in return, understanding the gesture and copied it, bringing her hand up to her breast, a flicker of amusement as she felt the momentary distraction it brought. Azor Ahai was a man chosen by the Lord of Light, but a man all the same.

“Kinvara.”

A light touch, the slightest pressure, questing, not pushing, not physical, but metaphysical and mental. The first touch of foreign emotion, and the responding tide that rose with acceptance before settling into awe and worship.

Then Kinvara drew the memory back and pushed an image of him reaching out to Melisandre with a hand wreathed in flames, reaching for the crown of her head.

“You want me to offer her the bond?” Harry realized that even if he knew that Kinvara wouldn’t understand the words, he could convey the image of a wordless conversation with both her and Melisandre.

“Yes,” she replied firmly, gesturing from her head to his and then to her kneeling sister-priestess.

Harry considered it.

In truth, he’d established his connection with Kinvara hastily, still half-asleep and without much forethought. It was an act of desperation as he realized he had no idea where he was, unable to feel his connections to the enchantments he’d laid on several places in Britain.

It had been a gamble that was paying off, as it seemed that Kinvara was a good person, as far as anyone could be in the moral compost heap of Volantis. He had no such assurance with Melisandre beyond her association with Kinvara. Yet, when Kinvara sank to her knees next to Melisandre, her eyes affixed on his, clearly pleading for him to accede, Harry realized that he could not refuse.

“I will,” he ruthlessly suppressed a sigh. Weakness and indecisiveness, he suspected, would be meat before carrion here, even with friends and allies.

He lowered himself to one knee before the two priestesses and cupped Melisandre’s face, lifting her gaze to meet his.

The first tendrils of his Legilimancy crept up against shields which were the mental equivalent of steel, fresh from the foundry and glowing hot. Kinvara, by contrast, had kept her mind an open field, ringed with blazing beacons and well-defended but not closed off.

It took Melisandre a few moments to tentatively greet the offered connection, a dark, shadowy coil of magic.

Yet, the emotions that flooded through the newly forged bond were whole, genuine, unforced, and frankly, much as he’d come to expect from Kinvara.

Worship, awe, a feeling of her presence rubbing up against his magic, not unlike a cat with a particularly well-liked bit of furniture. Just the intensity of Melisandre’s emotions, compared to those of her sister-priestess, were, if anything, turned up to eleven.

Harry bit back another sigh as he rose back to his feet. Ron had joked often after the war about the Cult of Harry Potter. Thank Merlin the redhead was unlikely to ever encounter the Cult of Harry’s two principal cultists. He’d never live it down.

... Ginny would probably take one look at them and start getting measured up for a set of red robes.

“Has she eaten?” Harry asked Kinvara, pressing the question over their bond.

Harry bit back yet another sigh at the answer. He would have to inflict some basic self-care on the Cult of Harry Potter.

***

Melisandre decided that observing Azor Ahai—Harry, as he seemed to prefer—was curious, if somewhat reassuring. Kinvara had summoned for a meal, brought to the chamber by a handful of acolytes, and presented with all due ceremony.

She had tried to ensure that the Chosen of the Lord of Light ate first and had his pick of the food, as was his right. However, he had simply refused to eat until they had split the meal three ways, equally.

The meal they brought was better fare than all but the High Priest could expect, and even then, only on days of celebration. Delicate white flatbreads, a roast fillet of lamb on a bed of apricots and sweet dried fruits, with a sauce of Volantene wine and the juices of the lamb.

Frankly, after the long journey by sea from King’s Landing, it was almost too rich for Melisandre, who had suffered the rigors of weeks of little more than salt-cured fish or meat.

As his priestesses tucked into a light desert of lemon tarts, Harry retrieved another map he had requested from Kinvara. This was not a simple map of the city of Volantis but a world map, or at least the closest thing she could find. Unrolling it onto the table and weighing it down with their platters, he examined it closely, comparing it with the map of Volantis itself.

“Volantis?” He asked, pointing to a pair of cities marked on a long, broad river that flowed from deep within the continent.

“No,” Kinvara shook her head, pointing to the right bank—on the left-hand side of the map as the river seemed to flow north to south. “Volon Therys.” Then to the left bank. “Sar Mell.” She pushed an image of ruins across their bond. “No. River, Rhoyne.” She traced it further downriver to a branch of the river's delta, which was on the eastern fork if the world and the map were aligned north to south and east to west. “This. Volantis.”

Having procured from the depths of his enchanted coat a pad of paper and a fountain pen, Harry noted the names down, both how Kinvara said them and how they were written on the map.

Irritatingly, the mapmaker did not use a conventional alphabet, as there was no way, even accounting for the Anglo-Norse habit of sellotaping multiple letters together, that these were written letter by letter. It seemed likely that Volantis used some form of pictograms—hieroglyphics.

Kinvara seemed to have understood, however, what he was driving at and began pointing out every city on the map, from Braavos in the top left to Ābrītsos Ghīs in the far bottom right.

However, at the end of her list, she explained the bits he found most interesting.

“Braavos. No slaves.” She pointed back to the city in the northwest. “Slaves escape, build Braavos. First law, no slaves.”

Melisandre, up until then very quiet, though watching him with an odd intensity, murmured a word and, for the first time, actively opened their freshly made bond, showing an image of a dark horizon glowing pink as the sun slowly broached.

“Sunrise,” Harry nodded.

“Sunrise,” she repeated, standing to indicate the eastern end of the map. “Ñāqot.” She tapped the opposite side of the map, sharing an image of the sun going down across the connection between them.

“Sunset,” Harry translated.

“Sunset. Endiā.”

Harry watched her curiously, trying to determine if these were the words for sunset and sunrise… or, he suspected, as she pointed to the top of the map, east and west.

“Jelmor.” she traced from the top of the map to the very bottom. “Vēzor.”

“North. South.” Harry realized. “Ñāqot… east. Endiā, west.”

“Endiā, west.” she tapped the table beyond the western edge of the map. “Vesteros.”

“Sunset Sea,” Kinvara interjected. “Westeros. Seven Kingdoms. One King. Religion, law. No slaves.” She paused, looking to her sister-priestess, who spoke again at length, far beyond Harry’s ability to keep up. “Westerosi lord, kneht.” She pushed an image of an armor-clad man with a crimson surcoat adorned with a golden lion rampant. “Gerion hen Lannister lentro. Ship, here, name Laughing Lion.”

Harry was curious. A few words that Kinvara used were not… dissimilar to English. However, as easy as it would be to get distracted by potential linguistical links, he was not Hermione Granger, and he had bigger problems at hand. He suspected that if Kinvara was right, and this man was a lord and a knight with a ship and men, sworn against slavery as some sort of religious taboo, he could, potentially, be a useful asset.

“Sunrise,” Harry pointed to the chamber’s window and then to an empty chair on the far side of the table. “Gerion Lannister, yes?” He pictured himself and this Westerosi lord at the table, pushing the image across the bond with his priestesses.

They both bowed. Harry, with much recent experience, swallowed back a sigh. At least his cultists were extremely beautiful. Riddle, had he not probably castrated himself in the process of turning himself into a snake-human hybrid, might have appreciated having more than just Bellatrix and Alecto Carrow around. Even if Bellatrix had once been quite good-looking, in a sort of Draculina meets Jack the Ripper fashion.

“Where slaves from?” He changed the subject. “Volantis born? Ships? Roads?”

“Yes,” Kinvara nodded before realizing that her answer wasn’t wholly useful, quickly elucidated. “Slaves born. Slaves come in ships. Merchant carts buy slaves. Horse warrior, Dothraki, many many.” She encircled a huge area on the map. “Hundred Kingdoms. Thousand cities. Dothraki burn all. Make slaves all.”

“Merlin,” Harry muttered, making a note to put these Dothraki on his shitlist and have a good go at wiping them out, or at least destroying their culture if he got half a chance.

“Sea of Slavers. Yunkai, Mereen. Astapor. All slavers and slaves. Cities of slaves. Cities of chains.”

Three more names were added to Harry’s mental list, reflecting with a faint amusement that these cities and their rulers were unknowingly on a clock ticking down to oblivion. Volantis would be the first, he decided, and then he’d turn her men and her industries onto the other slave states and cities.