Chapter 206

Ser Eyris Claw.

"Morgan, the situation on Redfort's timber volumes over the past six months." The sun bronzed Dornishman quickly pulled out a massive ledger and, flipping to the right page, handed it over to Lord Arryn. "Hmm. Otto, write a letter to Lord Redfort and voice my displeasure over the delivery delays and the attempts to inflate prices. Don't drop into outright threats, just hint that I can find more capable men." The scribe nodded and set to drafting the letter.

Watching the scene unfold, Eyris felt torn between the urge to lose his temper and drink himself into a stupor, and the urge to fall to his knees and pray to the Seven. Men are not born equal, and never will be. Not merely a matter of station, but of individual talent as well. The one constant is that a moment comes in every life when a man grasps what it means for one person to simply outmatch another. Bureaucracy and the endless tangled schemes of aristocratic maneuvering had long been this knight's sworn enemies. What had once cost him endless headaches and sleepless nights had just been dispatched in a couple of hours by five men working together.

"...ris... Eyris!" Realizing he had drifted too deep in thought, he snapped back to attention. "Did Winterfell send a letter about revisiting the 'shipbuilding matter'?" There was little point asking how his lord already knew about the letter.

"When?" Eyris named the date, at which the Falcon's eye let out a short laugh. "Ha! This Jon Snow might be a talented young man, but he can't see past the next season. Now that he's thrown every resource he has at the Wall, and the ironborn have had their collars taken off, he's suddenly found himself in urgent need of supplies to defend the western coast. And only now has the bastard remembered our offer. Shameful. Write back accepting, but cut the total price by ten percent and saddle them with quality inspections on every ship the Greyjoys build."

"My lord, the second part I follow, but why agree at all, and cut the price so gently at that?" After a quick exchange of glances with Morgan, Eyris voiced the question on both their minds; the Falcon's eye was hardly known for his mercy, after all.

"There's no such thing as too many ships. Trusting the Greyjoys is asking for trouble, and we badly need somewhere to put all this gold, or the whole region will suffer for it."

"But we're already working on that, aren't we?" Under his lord's interested gaze, Morgan looked briefly flustered, but pressed on. "We're pouring huge sums into building up domestic production, lending our own merchants money, loading imports with heavy taxes, and so on. Isn't that enough?"

"It helps, but between the enormous flow of money now moving through the region (the houses of the Vale have had their own share of it too) and tens of thousands of newly wealthy soldiers about to start spending in the coming months, the value of money is going to drop sharply, and prices on basic goods will climb right along with it, which, with winter bearing down on us, could be deadly. What we need now is a way to keep 'men of means,' across every rank, from spending their coin inside the Vale and flooding the market with gold, while also keeping foreign merchants out, since they'd undercut us on price and strangle local trade. With help from our own enterprises (shipbuilding demands a whole web of supporting industries), the Manderlys can bring their seafaring trade up to a decent standard without muscling into our own market."

"But that's still just a drop in the bucket." Money was pouring into the fleet in a steady stream, but set against the region's overall state, it barely made a dent.

"Next, we need to limit how much gold the houses of the Vale are sitting on. No one expected we'd see this kind of windfall out of the Riverlands. Our economy will collapse under the weight of all this 'loose' money. At the tourney, I'll be announcing a new 'War Spoils Levy.'" The older knight could already sense trouble brewing.

"And what would that entail?" Morgan asked, a note of nerves creeping into his voice.

"Forty percent of all profits handed over to House Arryn." At first Eyris couldn't quite process what his lord had said, simply refused to believe his own ears, but then he snapped alert. "That's madness! The houses will rise in open rebellion." Even Eyris Claw, a man who kept well clear of politics, understood exactly where this would lead.

"I'm not simply taking this gold for nothing," Lord Arryn explained, just as calmly as before. "This money will go toward building our own Vale Bank. Or the Falcon Bank. I'll need to think on the name. Not the point. What matters is that this single move solves several problems at once, and secures our future against even the worst turns of fortune."

"Is this because of the scheme that came to light in King's Landing?" A collapse in trust for the coin of the Seven Kingdoms would strike a heavy blow across all of Westeros.

"Among other things." Clearly, that was as much as Eyris and Morgan were meant to know. "Here is what I'll need from the two of you..."

At last it became clear why Lord Arryn had chosen to work out this plan with the two of them alone, rather than with his more influential supporters. Lord Yohn Royce, Robar Royce, Jasper Redfort, Desmond Redfort, Gilwood Hunter, Symond Templeton, and the rest all belonged to houses of the Vale, and each of them, first and foremost, looked after their own interests. Morgan and Eyris, by contrast, owed allegiance to no house at all, loyal only to Lord Arryn himself.

Truth be told, Eyris did not care for his lord's plan; to his mind, it carried far too much risk. If things went badly, it could spark a fresh civil war within the Vale. Beyond putting a decisive end to any hope of modernizing the whole region, there was a real danger of the Arryns being toppled from their seat as Great House. No foreign restraining power like the Iron Throne stood ready to step in this time, the Eyrie itself sat beyond easy reach, and a good number of their allies might simply switch sides at the first sign of trouble. But if it worked, the crisis would pass them by entirely, the Vale would have a bank of its own, Essosi influence in the region would weaken, and Arryn power would stand stronger than it ever had, and that was only what Eyris himself had managed to think through. There was almost certainly more to be gained beyond that.

If only it worked.