In the center of the Plaza¹ of Pride stood a red brick fountain whose waters smelled of brimstone, and in the center of the fountain a monstrous² harpy made of hammered bronze. Twenty feet tall she reared. She had a woman’s face, with gilded³ hair, ivory eyes, and pointed⁴ ivory teeth. Water gushed⁵ yellow from her heavy breasts. But in place of arms she had the wings of a bat or a dragon, her legs were the legs of an eagle, and behind she wore a scorpion’s curled and venomous tail.  The harpy of Ghis, Dany thought. Old Ghis had fallen five thousand years ago, if she remembered true; its legions shattered by the might of young Valyria, its brick walls pulled down, its streets and buildings turned to ash and cinder⁶ by dragonflame, its very fields sown with salt, sulfur⁷, and skulls⁸. The gods of Ghis were dead, and so too its people; these Astapori were mongrels, Ser Jorah said. Even the Ghiscari tongue was largely forgotten; the slave cities spoke⁹ the High Valyrian of their conquerors¹¹, or what they had made of it.  Yet the symbol of the Old Empire still endured here, though this bronze monster had a heavy chain dangling¹³ from her talons¹⁴, an open manacle at either end. The harpy of Ghis had a thunderbolt in her claws. This is the harpy of Astapor.  “Tell the Westerosi whore to lower her eyes,” the slaver Kraznys mo Nakloz complained to the slave girl who spoke for him. “I deal in meat, not metal. The bronze is not for sale. Tell her to look at the soldiers. Even the dim purple eyes of a sunset

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