It wasn't like Dothraki didn't like the sea. They just hated it.

Most of them couldn't even stand it, so they spent the majority of their time below deck and came up only to give what little they ate to the eager waves underneath them. Those who could stand it walked on the deck like they were made out of the same wood, their legs stiff and their movements rigid and clumsy, always reaching out to hold on to something even when the sea was flat and calm and the wind was kind. Kurt had to stop himself from laughing, because he knew he had to be nothing but grateful to them, but sometimes it was way too hilarious.

The only ones who seemed at ease were Finn, Rachel and Mercedes, since none of them was Dothraki-born. That gave him the opportunity to learn more about his early personal slaves, bought by his evil brother as a wedding gift: Mercedes was born a slave in the Summer Isles, just as he had figured from her complexion, while Rachel was born in the Free City of Norvos and then caught by the slave-catchers along the river Rhoyne as she fetched water for her family.

"The first time I ever took a ship, I was in chains" he heard her tell Finn one morning, while his dragons swirled in the air above them.

After a whole day of complaining, the three had decided to take matters into their own hands – or claws, in that case – and burn the wooden cage; Kurt had given orders to build a new one with iron bars, waiting for the time when they would melt that too, and resolved to let them fly overhead in the meantime. He was too tired of keeping them from doing what they wanted; it just wasn't right.

So they flew, and fed themselves by catching fishes; they kept them in their claws, then threw them in the air long enough to burn them before catching them again in their mouths. Everyday they looked bigger, their shadows longer over the sails, their wings wider.

"I wish I was a dragon" Rachel said, looking up at them with wonder, then down again at Finn. "And if you were too, we could just fly away and see the world."

That made Kurt smile sadly to himself. He knew what it felt like; he had wished the same, back when he felt trapped and sold and used. How could someone feel that way every single day of their lives?

The thought took residence in his head for the next couple of days, until he decided to talk about it with Blaine, even though he knew his husband's culture could be a major obstacle in their conversation.

"What is your opinion about bought slaves?" he asked his sun-and-stars as they were gazing up at the night sky together, lying on a blanket. Apart from the sailor maneuvering the helm, the deck was silent and empty, and small swaying lanterns bathed it in a pleasant orange glow.

Blaine propped himself up on an elbow to look down at him curiously.

"Where does that come from?" he asked, frowning.

"I just- I've been thinking that maybe I should free them. The ones Sebastian bought for me."

Blaine frowned even more, shifting on the blanket. He stayed silent, so Kurt looked up at the stars again, but then his husband answered.

"Slaves taken in battle can't be freed" he said slowly, as if he was still considering what to say as he spoke. "They lose their freedom in exchange for the life they didn't lose. Bought slaves, well... I don't understand it very well, but I guess you could, since they are yours. It's like when you have something and then you realize you don't need it anymore, so you give it away."

Kurt cringed at his choice of words.

"Don't put it that way" he whispered. "They're not... things."

He was quite the hypocrite, preaching about humanity on a ship heading to Astapor to let him buy an army of slave warriors. Maybe it was his slight reluctance about it that was causing him all those doubts about slavery in general. He still wasn't sure they were what he needed, but meanwhile he was at least moving west. He was not obligated to buy them once he saw them, after all.

"But- someone sold them, and someone bought them, like things" Blaine reasoned. "Also, what if they were defeated in battle by someone and then sold? In that case, you shouldn't free them."

"They weren't" Kurt said, sitting up suddenly. "Mercedes is a slave because her mother was and Rachel was born free and taken captive. What you say only applies to Brittany, and Santana... wait, why is she a sex slave if she's a Dothraki? Did you take her from a defeated khalasar?"

Blaine blinked at him in confusion.

"I thought you knew" he said cautiously, sitting up as well, their knees touching as they crossed their legs. "Every khalasar has sex slaves. When a woman has her moon blood five times and no man chooses to take her as his wife, she has to become one and please all men until that happens."

Kurt gasped in shock.

"Are you serious?!"

"Yes" Blaine said sharply, looking suddenly wary. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"I just- I can't believe you allowed it to happen" Kurt said before he could stop himself. "You're the Khal, you- you could make your own rules!"

Blaine bristled visibly, turning around to look at him, the blanket twisting under his thighs.

"This is my culture" he spat, pointing at his own tattoed chest with a finger. "You don't get to judge it. And for your information, I did make my own rules. I married you."

Kurt stared at him wordlessly. He didn't know why he was arguing on something like that after all the things he'd seen and learned, after having witnessed killings and sackings and rapes. He didn't know why it made such a difference how Santana and Tina had come to be what they were, bodies trained to be filled and emptied for convenience, but somehow it did: their only fault was having no one to want them. No one had defeated them, no one had sold them, and still, they needed someone to claim them to be free. It was unfair.

It also wasn't Blaine's fault, per se.

"I'm sorry" Kurt apologized, sighing. "I just think it is unfair. They did nothing wrong."

"Life is unfair" Blaine replied stiffly, even though he looked less angry. "I don't get why you're worrying about this kind of things all of a sudden. You never did before."

Kurt looked at him sadly, watching the stars' reflections in the black pupils of Blaine's eyes.

"I heard Rachel say she wished she was a dragon" he explained, but Blaine just furrowed his brow, so he kept going. "She wishes she could fly away. She is unhappy."

"Then free her, if it means so much to you" Blaine said dismissively, shrugging, still not understanding what the big deal was. "Although I don't think Finn will like that."

Finn. Kurt hadn't thought about him. As a knight under oath – to serve him and protect him in his father's name – he couldn't leave Kurt's side, unless of course Kurt himself dismissed him, but that would cause him great dishonor. Maybe he could make Rachel a free woman, but still keep her around, like a servant or something, unless she wished differently. And when everything would be over, Finn and her could get a house somewhere in the countryside and get married and have lots of noisy children.

Okay, now he was thinking too much.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He kept his thoughts locked safely away from his mindless tongue for the rest of the voyage, until they slipped to the back of his mind when they reached Astapor.

Where Qarth had been elegant, shiny and rich, Astapor was simple, rough and poor. It looked like an oversized massive keep rather than a city, with red brick walls so thick and high that the only thing Kurt could glimpse from afar was the big harpy standing on top of the Great Pyramid.

It had a woman's torso, with the wings of a bat, the legs of an eagle, and a scorpion's tail; the symbol of the Ghiscari Empire, the great power of the East way before the rise of Valyria. Even so, Valyria itself had been its doom, defeating the Ghiscari people with the dragons they desperately wanted for themselves. After burning Ghis to the ground, the Valyrians had sowed its fields with salt and the survivors had spread and built new slave cities: Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen.

When they actually got inside the city, Kurt's impression of it didn't change. Guards patrolled the streets, which were covered in a thick layer of sand brought there by the wind as if no one bothered with keeping them clean, and the only other people he could see were either slavers or slaves. The former all wore tokars, intricate silk tunics draping from one shoulder that had been symbolizing their status for hundreds of years; the latter were dressed in plain white cloths tied at the waist with a rope, iron collars around their necks all linked to one another with chains as they walked in straight lines with their heads bowed and their bruised feet bare.

This was a mistake, Kurt couldn't help but think. Just like Qarth, just like the House of the Undying.

Even Blaine looked slightly disgusted by what they were seeing, which really said something.

Wes and David had remained aboard to guard the dragons, and Kurt had wanted to spare his slaves the sight of such cruelty, so he was accompanied only by his husband and Finn. The knight had gone in before them, to announce Kurt's arrival to whoever was selling Unsullied.

Kurt had told him to be discreet and say he was just some lord coming from Westeros in hopes of enlarging his armed strength. The presence of Blaine could be justified by saying that Kurt had met his khalasar along the way and had given the Khal gifts to be spared from his wrath, and the deed had been sealed with a Dothraki warrior being given to him in return. It happened all the time: the great cities of the East spent a fortune to keep the khalasars away from their walls every time they so much as got close to them, which was less than what they would have spent in fighting them anyway.

The three of them passed under a curved stone arch and found themselves at the beginning of a long boulevard looking down over the bay, punctuated with wooden crosses raised over squared platforms a few feet from one another. Each cross had a slave pinned to it by his hands and feet, skin whipped and burned and beaten in dozens different places, their eyes dull and empty as they watched them pass. Kurt found himself shocked by the nothingness he could see in their eyes, rather than rage or sadness. They didn't even look at them pleadingly, to ask for help, water, anything. They were corpses who happened to still have breath in their lungs.

"This isn't right" Blaine muttered under his breath as he looked at the crucified slaves with a hard-set jaw. "There is no honor in killing people this way."

"Why did they leave them like this?" Kurt asked in a horrified whisper, turning toward Finn.

The slavers' pyramids surrounded them from every side except the one behind the crosses, where the sea was; long narrow stairs led to their tops where the rich Astapori lived, basking in the wealth gained by the trade of human beings. They were red, just like everything else, and some people said the color – from which came the habit of calling Astapor "the Red City" – came from the blood of the slaves seeping through the cracks of the bricks over the years. Kurt was starting to believe it, too.

"Because they didn't obey" Finn answered in a monotone, his eyes set straight ahead to avoid the sight.

When they reached the end of the boardwalk, they turned a corner and stepped into a large square, occupied by a dozen ranks of soldiers. They were bare-chested and wore tall spiked helms on their heads, and when Kurt, Finn and Blaine walked among them in a straight line, Kurt noticed they were sort of lithe, like he was, which made him think that maybe they were in the wrong place. He was expecting muscular, thick-shouldered seasoned men, not green boys. When he looked at Finn questioningly, though, the knight nodded in confirmation.

At the far end of the square, a couple of steep stone steps led to an elevated platform where a structure made of thick wooden poles supported a swaying roof of multiple layers of cloth, under which a woman wearing a red tokar was sitting in the shade amidst a flock of girls of various origins, some set on relieving her from the heat with long white ostrich feathers, others occupied with jars of water or wine, Kurt couldn't tell. They all wore the same white and red tunics, and they all had their hair tied up in impossibly tight ponytails.

When the woman noticed their presence at the end of the stair, she clapped her hands together and smiled.

"Here they are!" she said in High Valyrian, only slightly tainted with the gruff Ghiscari accent. "I feared I would turn forty sitting here to wait for this damned Westerosi idiot."

Kurt arched an eyebrow in amusement.

She thinks I don't understand her, he thought, smirking. And she's well past forty anyway.

Her skin was quite fair, to be honest, but time had marked her face with lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Her hair was cut short at the nape of her neck and its color was a dull blonde that looked as if the sun was slowly washing it away.

"Quinn, be a dear and translate what I say so that the elf of the forest, the striped gorilla and the trunk-less elephant can understand" she said to one of the girls, a pale blonde beauty around Kurt's own age, to be sure.

Let's play a game, then.

When the summoned slave was at her side, the slaver put on a perfect welcoming fa�ade and stared at Kurt with a smile on her face, not knowing her words were betraying her.

"Welcome to Astapor, you little Westerosi fairy. Didn't know they made lords out of porcelain in the Seven Kingdoms. What does my doe-eyed lord want to do with my ruthless Unsullied? Have them paint his nails and brush his hair?"

The slave, Quinn, must have been accustomed to her mistress' manners.

"My mistress Sue Sylvester kindly welcomes you to Astapor, my lord" she said automatically as if she knew that by heart. "She wishes to know what brings you here to buy her Unsullied, in hopes to be as useful as possible to you."

Fire and blood, Kurt might have answered. Death.

Instead, he replied: "I thank your mistress for her welcome. Tell her I just need more soldiers around me, but I'm sick of poorly trained peasants and smiths, of scared boys prone to desert. I need loyal men, and fearless."

That caught the slaver's attention, just like he'd imagined. After hearing Quinn's translation, Sue Sylvester's smile turned wicked.

"Then tell him he is in the right place" she stated. "My Unsullied are the best soldiers he can hope to find. They will never desert and never retreat before his enemies, unless he wants them to. The only thing they know is obedience. Nothing in the world scares them."

It all seemed an empty boast to Kurt, the words of an eager seller.

"Every man is afraid of something, even if he doesn't know it" he said when Quinn was done. "And most of all, every man fears death."

Every man except my sun-and-stars, he thought with secret pride.

Sue Sylvester chuckled when she heard his words translated, as if he'd said the most ridiculous thing in the world.

"Not my Unsullied. They are trained to feel nothing except the need to do what their master commands. If I told them to kill themselves, they would. If I told them to snatch their eyes out of their sockets and eat them raw, they would. They can't feel happiness, nor pain. We cut off their cocks and balls so they can't experience pleasure, and harden their hearts so they can't love."

Eunuchs. Finn hadn't told him that. He felt sick.
The shock on his face must have looked like disbelief to the woman, because she rolled her eyes in annoyance and stood up from her chair.

"Let's give you proof of that, shall we?" she said as she walked down the few steps, her slave scrambling down behind her.

Sue Sylvester stopped in front of one of the soldiers in the first raw and told him to give her his sword. When he did, she put the blade against his right nipple and slowly began to cut it out of his chest. Kurt suppressed a gasp.

"There is no need" he urged in the Common Tongue, but the slaver ignored him.

When she was done, there was a bleeding hole where the nipple had been, the red trickle slowly making its way down the soldier's stomach. The man didn't even flinch through it; he just stood still where he was, his eyes fixed straight ahead as if looking past his mistress' head.

She tossed the little brown bud to the ground behind her and gave the sword back to its owner.

"I never understood why men have nipples in the first place" she complained, shrugging.

"This one is pleased to have served you" the Unsullied said.

When Sue Sylvester had made her way back to her chair, Kurt shook himself out of his astonishment and made himself say: "Tell me of their training."

Even though the slaver surely had to tell the tale many times a week, she seemed eager to share it, a glimmer of cruel pride in her eyes.

"We buy them at the age of five or six, then we put wooden swords in their hands and teach them the art of war day and night, until it is all they can think about. Whatever other thought they may have is whipped away from their minds. Then, when my masters-at-arms deem them ready, they have to take a test, and if they pass, they are officially Unsullied."

He hadn't noticed them before, but the masters-at-arms were there, too; clad in tokars, but of slightly poorer quality than their mistress', they walked among the soldiers with three-tailed leather whips in their hands. Kurt dreaded to ask the question that popped into his mind, but he did.

"What kind of test?"

"You're such a little curious boy, aren't you, lady-face?" Sue Sylvester said mockingly. "Very well. They have to go to the slave market, take a random child from his mother's arms, and kill him in front of her. That way, we are sure they don't feel anything. Afterward, we compensate each loss with a silver coin."

Kurt was grateful he had not eaten that morning, because he was sure he would have vomited right then and there on the red bricks of Astapor. Finn had said there were ten thousand Unsullied on sale, which meant ten thousand children slaughtered before their mothers' eyes. He couldn't help the bitterness in his voice even if he tried.

"So you make them kill innocent babies, and then you pay for them by giving their mothers silver coins?" he asked in a somber tone, his eyes narrowed.

Sue Sylvester huffed and shook her head when she heard that from Quinn, staring at him patronizingly as if he was a little kid.

"Of course not, you silly girl" she said, and for a moment Kurt hoped there had been some misunderstanding before. "The coins are for their masters."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as they were back in his cabin, Kurt rounded on Finn in an angry scream.

"Are you out of your mind?!" he yelled, making the knight take a step back. "Why didn't you tell me any of that?"

"I didn't know about the test" Finn said defensively, lifting his hands in apology. "I knew about the other thing, the... cutting, but I didn't think it would make that much of a difference. Everybody knows eunuchs fight better."

Kurt stared at him as if he'd grown a second head.

"You didn't think it would make that much of a difference?!" he spat, hands on his hips. "Well, here's a news: it does. They're just a bunch of maimed, tortured boys grown up too fast and turned into child murderers!"

Blaine was strangely silent, his back against the closed door and his arms crossed over his chest, simply staring at the exchange with an unreadable expression.

"They are the best army you could ever hope for" Finn replied stubbornly. "You heard what she said. They will always do what you say, without questioning. And I know you will make them so much more than what they are now. You will give them a real purpose, and a just one."

The fact that his words actually made sense set Kurt's rage on fire even more.

"They don't have a purpose!" he yelled, his arms up in the air above his head. "They are empty shells, they don't even care anymore. How could you bring me here? What would Rachel say if she knew you set me up to buy people so utterly broken?"

Finn's face crumbled. Blaine disentangled his arms from across his chest and stood up.

"Kurt. Enough."

The way he said it, as if Kurt had disappointed him so badly, made him feel suddenly younger, the silly, inexperienced boy he still was deep down, where no one but himself could look.

"Finn-"

"I'll be on the deck" the knight cut him off, staring at the wooden floor under his feet. Then he turned around and left.

After a brief moment of silence, Blaine spoke again.

"What's gotten into you?" he whispered, the same disappointed expression of earlier still painted on his face, making Kurt squirm under his skin as if he could crawl out of it and disappear.

"Okay, that last part was mean" Kurt replied in a thin voice. "But the rest is what I think. Blaine, did you see them?"

"I did" Blaine said simply. "They looked like good soldiers. I would have flinched myself if someone cut out my nipple."

"And this is all you have to say?" Kurt asked, shocked.

"This is all that matters, Kurt" Blaine replied. "You need an army to get back your throne, and along the way I could use them to claim another khalasar as mine. They are exactly what we need."

"The children" Kurt blurted out helplessly, changing the topic altogether. "Did you hear about the children?"

Blaine's serious face softened, and in three quick steps he was in front of him and then Kurt was in his arms.

"Moon of my life" the khal whispered, guiding Kurt's head against his chest. "They are gone now, whether we buy the Unsullied or not. But who knows how many other children they will kill, if some fucked-up butcher king buys them instead? Think about this."

Kurt did. He thought about some other thing, too, and he said it three days later when he announced to Blaine and Finn that he had made up his mind. Finn remained silent, too shocked to speak, and probably still mad at Kurt for the way he had treated him; with Blaine there was some yelling, and various synonyms of the word "crazy" thrown in the air, but somehow, eventually, Kurt's decision was accepted.

When they went back to Sue Sylvester, she looked even more annoyed by their presence, if that was possible.

"So, what has Baby Butt Cheeks decided?" she asked, her question turning kind and honey-sweet coming from Quinn's lying lips.

"I want all ten thousand Unsullied, plus the boys you have on training" Kurt said, before eyeing the girl with a little smile. "And your slave, too, as a gift to seal our smooth transaction."

The slaver scoffed and arched an eyebrow.

"And how much are you willing to pay, my lady?"

Kurt listed half of the golden items Chandler had given him; they would need the other half to continue their voyage. It was a fortune nonetheless, but Sue Sylvester looked unimpressed when he was done.

"Has your Dothraki craft project fucked your wits as well as your ass?!" she mocked, and Kurt thanked the Gods Blaine couldn't understand High Valyrian, because his own self-control was faltering. "You could buy two thousand of them with that, and I'm being generous. Get the hells out, I have wealthier buyers than you doll to see."

Kurt gritted his teeth. He had to do it. There was no turning back now.

"I have dragons" he said.