The Mountain of Ice and Fire

Esther hadn't learned to sing, but she was a girl with a naturally good voice.

She had just come of age, with delicate features and a slender build, and had her first period last month.

Esther and her grandfather, Boaz, sold their famous 'Brown Soup' on the streets of Flea Bottom.

Flea Bottom was the slum district of King's Landing.

The name 'Brown Soup' referred to the color of the soup, which was named after its yellowish-brown hue.

Brown Soup was made by boiling all sorts of things together in a large pot, throwing in whatever was available and simmering it repeatedly, turning vegetable leaves, meat, and shells into a mush. Then, anything that couldn't be boiled down, like shells, would be fished out completely, and water would be added to simmer it into a thick soup, sprinkled with salt. It tasted very good.

For people who couldn't afford a proper meal, it not only filled their stomachs but also contained various nutrients and was very cheap, costing only five copper pennies.

Five copper pennies were equivalent to about five cents in Earth's civilization.

Brown Soup was a major specialty of Flea Bottom's streets.

Esther's family's Brown Soup sold very well; it tasted fresher than the Brown Soup of other vendors.

She and her grandfather had set up a rat trap in their shack in Flea Bottom: a small bucket with a bit of meat inside. A thread was tied to the meat, which was connected to a small stick. As soon as a rat jumped into the bucket and pulled the meat, the stick would move, and the iron lid would fall, trapping the rat inside.

There were a lot of rats in the Flea Bottom tenements. Sometimes, if they were lucky, they could catch a large, fat rat.

Esther and her grandfather would catch the rats, skin them, remove the entrails, wash them clean, chop the snow-white rat meat into small pieces, and boil it into the old soup, giving the Brown Soup a meaty flavor.

In the evening, Esther and her grandfather would go to the Mud Gate fish market to scavenge for rotten fish and shells in the garbage heaps. They would cut off the rotten parts, pick out the edible fish meat and shells, remove the fish bones, and throw them into the old soup to boil.

As for the unwanted garbage vegetables they picked up from the vegetable market, they carefully picked off the blackened and rotten parts, leaving the good, edible portions, chopped them into small pieces, and threw them into the Brown Soup to boil.

Esther's family's Brown Soup was clean and flavorful, completely different from the Brown Soup of other vendors.

Other vendors' Brown Soup had more and larger pieces of meat than Esther's, but the meat inside was not clean. No one dared to delve too deeply into what kind of meat it was. Everyone knew in their hearts that the meat was from dead people.

Flea Bottom had no shortage of people who died from illness, starvation, or fighting.

Boiling dead people's meat into Brown Soup was a phenomenon that everyone here was aware of but no one talked about.

Before Esther and her grandfather, Boaz, came to sell Brown Soup, people who came to drink Brown Soup would drink it in silence, not asking what kind of meat it was or where it came from.

Although the soup was… not to be investigated too closely, it was cheap, and more importantly, a bowl of Brown Soup could save the lives of the homeless and the poor.

But since Esther and her grandfather, Boaz, came to sell Brown Soup, many people who drank Brown Soup came to Esther's stall to drink it.

Because Esther and her grandfather also drank the soup themselves every day. This reassured everyone.

And the other vendors who sold Brown Soup did not drink the Brown Soup they made themselves.

Five copper pennies, standing, for a large bowl of Brown Soup. It warmed the body, filled the stomach, and provided nutrition.

Grandfather Boaz was originally a worker in the mint, said to be a master responsible for casting various coin models. In addition, he was also responsible for grinding and polishing the formed coins. Coins had to be ground and polished before they could be circulated on the market.

He was kicked out by the mint officials because he was old and slow. Boaz had no one to rely on. His only son was a gambler who did nothing but gamble and visit brothels or get into street fights. His only granddaughter, Esther, depended entirely on her grandfather's meager salary from the mint.

After Boaz was kicked out of the mint, he took his granddaughter Esther to the gathering place for the poor: Flea Bottom. After renting a single, low shed, he spent three months guarding Littlefinger's brothel entrance waiting for him.

Littlefinger, Petyr Baelish, was the highest-ranking official in the mint. Master Boaz hoped that Lord Petyr could give him a retirement allowance. Boaz had worked in the mint for more than fifty years and didn't even receive his last month's salary when he was kicked out by the officials, let alone the retirement money he should have received.

Three months later, he finally waited for Lord Petyr Baelish once. Lord Petyr Baelish didn't give him a single copper penny, but he gave him the opportunity to set up a Brown Soup stall on the streets of Flea Bottom.

From then on, among the dozen or so Brown Soup stalls on the streets of Flea Bottom, a pair of grandparents and granddaughter squeezed in.

Before long, because of Esther and Grandfather Boaz's clean, tidy, and flavorful Brown Soup, their business surpassed that of the other vendors. Every day, only after Esther and Grandfather Boaz's soup was sold out would the other vendors' business pick up.

The grandparents and granddaughter never used rotten, inedible vegetable leaves or that unspeakable meat to make soup. They broke the unspoken vicious cycle, and Brown Soup could be made clean, flavorful, and safe to eat.

But this was not a good thing.

Grandfather Boaz and Esther had already had several conflicts with the surrounding vendors. Although they had all ended without incident, it was clear that if they continued to do business, these people would not make it easy for them.

Littlefinger, Petyr Baelish, had only shown his face on the first day the grandparents and granddaughter set up their stall and had never come again.

The vendors who dared to set up stalls selling Brown Soup in Flea Bottom were not ordinary people: either they had the support of local thugs, or they had connections with fierce mercenaries, or they were familiar with and had friendships with the local petty officials. It was the first time that someone like the Boaz grandparents and granddaughter had squeezed in here based on the face of a Master of Coin.

As time passed, and Littlefinger, Petyr Baelish, did not appear again, many people saw the signs that the grandparents and granddaughter had no special relationship with the Master of Coin, Littlefinger.

Thus, conflicts began.

Flea Bottom was also the most chaotic place in the entire city.

At night, outsiders generally dared not enter those alleys.

King's Landing had the largest floating population in the Seven Kingdoms, far exceeding Oldtown in the south.

Even mercenaries from across the Narrow Sea tried to avoid the streets of Flea Bottom at night.

However, as long as it was daytime, although there were many fights in Flea Bottom, the street where Brown Soup was sold was generally safe.

This seemed to be a kind of divine rule in the dark.

After all, it was a place where the homeless, the poor, the pitiful retired old workers, the sick poor, etc., could drink a bowl of soup.

The poorer and more mixed the population, the more violence there was.

Because the rent was cheap in Flea Bottom, low-level mercenaries also rented here in good locations. More often, gangsters from various gangs also lived here. They liked to steal from the rich and sneak in here to hide.

One morning, a mercenary came to Esther and Grandfather Boaz's stall to drink Brown Soup.

This mercenary was not from the Seven Kingdoms but from across the Narrow Sea. He was bald, wearing a single shirt and thin trousers, with an arakh curved sword at his waist.

This bald man was a member of the Company of the Rose, a member of the Windblown, a mercenary band with a very bad reputation. He came from across the Narrow Sea and was a Dothraki who was good at using curved swords.

The Windblown was one of the largest and most notorious mercenary companies in King's Landing. This company also had a chilling name: the Bloody Mummers.