From ruined Astapor the young queen turned upon Yunkai, the Yellow City, whose Wise Masters grew rich breeding and gentling bed slaves for the pleasure houses of the east. Lacking a proper army of their own, the Yunkai'i had hired two free companies to their defence, the Second Sons under Mero, called the Titan's Bastard, and the Stormcrows led by three captains, Prendahl na Ghezn, Sallor the Bald, and a flamboyant Tyroshi named Daario Naharis. Rather than throw her Unsullied against the walls at once, Daenerys sent to treat with the sellswords, reasoning that men who fought for coin might be turned by the promise of more. The Second Sons took her gold and meant to betray her, but the Stormcrows split: Daario Naharis slew his fellow captains, laid their heads at the queen's feet, and brought his company over to her cause.
With the hired blades broken or bought, Daenerys made her assault by night. Her captains led the Unsullied and her freedmen against the gate, and the defence of Yunkai collapsed almost as soon as it was tested. The Wise Masters, who had reckoned themselves too clever and too well guarded to share Astapor's fate, sued for terms rather than see their city sacked. Daenerys spared their lives and their walls but stripped them of the thing that made them rich, commanding that every slave in Yunkai be freed. It was during this campaign that the old knight who had followed her under the name Arstan Whitebeard knelt and confessed himself to be Ser Barristan Selmy of the Kingsguard, come to serve the last true blood of his old master.
When the gates of Yunkai opened, a great throng of freed slaves poured out into the night to look upon the girl who had unchained them. They pressed toward her calling out a word in the tongue of Ghis, Mhysa, which is to say Mother, until the whole plain seemed to ring with it. Daenerys walked among them without fear and let them lift her up, and from that night the freedmen of the slave cities would name her the Mother, a title that bound her to Slaver's Bay far more surely than any conquest.