A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Daenerys III

ÔÇ£Dracarys.ÔÇØ 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 ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö spoilers

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