A Storm of Swords — Daenerys III

“Dracarys.” The whip changes hands, the Unsullied turn, and Astapor's masters learn what a dragon is worth: everything, and their city with it.

The chapter retold

Astapor falls to a single word. Daenerys Targaryen closes her purchase of the Unsullied with Drogon in hand as payment — and then speaks the Valyrian the slavers never imagined she understood, commanding her new army to turn its spears on the masters who bred and sold them. Dracarys, murmured to a dragon rather than an army, does the rest: Kraznys mo Nakloz burns where he stands, and the whip that once commanded eight thousand slave-soldiers changes hands in the same instant the city's ruling caste discovers what it actually sold.

It is the moment the series tips from Daenerys-as-exile to Daenerys-as-conqueror, and the book earns it by making the violence exact rather than cathartic-and-clean: Astapor's markets, its pyramids, its entire slave economy collapse in an afternoon, and Dany walks out with an army that owes her its freedom rather than its purchase price — a distinction she will spend the rest of the book discovering is not the same thing as loyalty.

This movement: The Bear, the Wall, the Bath

• In Harrenhal's bathhouse Jaime tells Brienne the truth of the Mad King and faints in her arms; later he turns back for her and jumps into a bear pit.
• Jon climbs the Wall with the free folk and breaks from them at Queenscrown, arrows in his leg.
• Dany takes Yunkai by night; the Second Sons change sides for a captain named Daario.
• Sam kills his second impossible thing rumor-wise; the Watch's remnants choose a fat man's courage at Craster's.

The fallen — spoilers

• Kraznys mo Nakloz — Sold an army for a dragon; the dragon disagreed with the terms.