THE QUEENSGUARD

Reznak informs Barristan Selmy he will not guard Hizdahr at the Yunkai’i audience; pit fighters will instead. Barristan reflects on Hizdahr’s eroding support, the sidelining of Daenerys’s loyalists, and the plague-stricken, besieged city. He remains steadfast that Daenerys lives and contemplates his age and past failures.

From the queen’s terrace, Barristan surveys the Yunkai’i camps and Meereen’s fear after Drogon’s flight with Daenerys. He comforts Missandei yet worries about rival khals and the city’s despair. Missandei relays that a Brazen Beast—an owl—seeks a secret meeting on Skahaz’s behalf.

That night, Barristan goes in disguise through guarded corridors and dragons’ pens to the stables, where Skahaz—masked as a cat—awaits. Skahaz claims to have the confectioner coerced by the Sons of the Harpy to poison the locusts, his daughter later murdered in pieces. He declares Hizdahr’s peace a sham, worsened by Yurkhaz’s death, infighting among sellswords, and news that a Volantene fleet is coming.

Skahaz warns Hizdahr will open Meereen’s gates and re-enslave the freed. He urges a preemptive strike: break the Yunkai’i siege, kill slaver lords, and turn their sellswords while disease and disorder weaken them. Barristan resists breaking Daenerys’s peace without her, but Skahaz argues she would protect her “children,” the freedmen.

Barristan demands to question the confectioner and extracts Skahaz’s promise that Hizdahr will be unharmed until guilt is proven. Remembering Hizdahr urging Daenerys to eat the locusts, Barristan prays for wisdom and agrees to speak to Grey Worm, aiming to bring the Unsullied into the plan.