Beneath Mpehi, older than the city and older than the people who raised it, a system of caverns runs down through the volcanic rock to a depth no quarry ever reached by accident. The deepest of them holds the dragon Bathemiel, wound in chains it forged for itself. The reasons are the dragon's own and live in its entry; what the site is, simply, is the one prison in the Free Isles the Blood Pact has nothing to say about.
The Gattorini palazzo, the Golden Seat, stands directly over the primary cavern, and the family's first duty — older than their gold and older than their name — is to keep the chains sound and the way down sealed. The entrances are warded to kill. Permission to descend is never given, not even to Gattorini blood. Near the cavern mouth sits a vault holding the original terms of the bargain the first patrón struck, sealed in a way no later patrón has been able to open.
The warmth that climbs through Mpehi's streets on still nights rises from here.