The Uncloaking of Braavos

On the hundred and eleventh anniversary of its founding, the Sealord Uthero Zalyne sent ships to every corner of the world to proclaim what the fogs had hidden: that Braavos stood, free and unafraid. The moonsingers had counselled that Valyria's wrath was spent — the dragonlords cared little for the grandsons of escaped slaves — and so it proved, the Freehold renouncing all claim upon the founders' descendants. The Uncloaking is remembered each year in ten days of masked revelry. In the generations that followed, the Braavosi raised the Titan, the colossal fortress-statue of stone and bronze between whose legs every ship must pass, and the Iron Bank, begun by sixteen merchants pooling coin in an old iron vault, grew into the most feared counting-house on earth — for as all the world learns in time, the Iron Bank will have its due.