Chapter 211

The Vale. Gates of the Moon. 300 AC.

Axel Arryn.

For thousands of years now, feudalism had flourished across Westeros. That was neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Given how much time had passed, an enormous imbalance had developed between different fields. In some, things were relatively tolerable: medicine, metallurgy, mercantile trade, even seafaring. In others, it was a quiet horror: lawmaking, taxation, blacksmithing, the clergy, mining, and so on. Even Númenor, with its constant internal strife in its later centuries and the endless games, had developed far faster than Westeros at any point in its history. But you couldn't simply smash the old order over your knee and expect to build a "better world" on the rubble. That's not how it works. Either it all ends in war, or someone quietly does away with you.

Every reform needs its own time, its own place, its own circumstances. In the first five years since I became master of the Eyrie and Hand of the King, I carried out small reforms and prepared the ground for something more serious to come. Then came the war of all against all, and the "Rotten Fish Rebellion." The opposition was crushed, my own people were set in every key position. The Vale became a single unified body. Then the campaign in the Riverlands brought in surplus capital enough to fund a whole new set of reforms, one of which was the bank. That undertaking would become one of the leashes guaranteeing the loyalty of my subjects.

I had given my vassals far too much freedom. And a strong vassal is a bomb waiting to go off. I wasn't worried for myself, but I was worried for the Arryns who would come after me. Give it a generation, two, it doesn't matter, but sooner or later a rebellion will come, though I would want my descendants to be capable enough of handling this on their own. A vassal will start thinking of himself as equal to his liege, and that's when war begins. I had no use for that, but crushing loyal men without thought wasn't an option either, for many reasons. The bank would give me control over my region's economy, and it would bind every vassal to me not only through oaths of loyalty, but through something far more tangible: gold. It's difficult to wage war against a man who controls your purse.

I had the capital, the land, the authority, and the cooperation of the other nobility. The first branch was already waiting in Gulltown. On the surface, everything looked promising, even the Iron Bank wouldn't be able to stand in the way of what I had planned. Their favorite tactic, destroying enemies by turning others against them, simply couldn't be applied to the Vale right now. But then a staffing problem cropped up. The bank hadn't been part of my original plan. It had come about purely from an opportunity that presented itself, which meant no proper preparations had been made in advance.

I had to improvise. The houses of the Vale that had earned my trust were consulted, connections in Essos were called upon, and my companions found themselves stretched thin. Lysono Rogare, some distant son of an impoverished great house, had served alongside me in the Golden Company, followed me to Westeros, and taken part in putting down the "Rotten Rebellion" and in the "Ravaging of the Riverlands." His motive was simple enough: he wanted to earn himself a piece of land and a lord's title. And that's exactly what happened, since Lysono had served me loyally and long, but as they say, appetite grows with eating. My companion decided he wanted to restore House Rogare to "its former glory," and over the years he'd taken a number of interesting steps toward that end. First, after the blockade of Gulltown, its old guilds had been pushed out, replaced by new bodies under my control. Lysono had invested a substantial sum at just the right moment and turned a handsome profit from those dealings. Second, he'd tied his friend, the head of Gulltown's merchants, Laplashe, to him by marrying him off to his younger sister. By noble standards it was a mismatch, since House Rogare belonged to the high nobility while Laplashe himself was merely a merchant's son from Myr. Even a Targaryen king had once married a woman of that house. Now Laplashe gave priority treatment to his relatives in Lys, which had helped them get back on their feet considerably. Morgan reported all this to me, but since both Laplashe and Lysono knew when to stop, I didn't interfere beyond sending the two of them a brief letter. Third, while Laplashe kept expanding further into trade, Lysono raised a company of three hundred knights and rode with me into the Riverlands. Once again, success in the gold rush had opened up horizons neither of us had foreseen.

Now I'd reached out to House Rogare through the two of them, and we'd struck a deal of mutual benefit: they, through Laplashe, would help me get the bank organized, and in return I'd grant their merchants certain concessions. In a time when nearly all trade across Westeros had frozen solid, it was the best possible outcome for everyone involved. Trusting my own proven men was one thing, but trusting their family, greedy merchants that they were, was quite another. I needed both a counterweight and a filter, all in one. Administrators were hired from various houses across the Vale, tasked with keeping the whole mechanism running smoothly. Ser Creighton Redfort, Ser Harlan Hunter, Ser Marcus Melcolm, Ser Geoffrey Stone, Lord Alek Taylor, and others became managers of my Falcon Bank, each with a fixed salary, clear obligations, restrictions, and incentives. The Falcon Bank now had its managers, but it still lacked lower staff. Literacy was a rare thing among the lower classes.

"Won't you even come out to say goodbye?" An uninvited guest pulled me from my thoughts.

"I assumed you'd be sitting with your kin until the very last moment." I needed to have a word with my guards, they'd gotten far too lax. My guard kept a list of people permitted through without warning, and somehow Elena had wound up on it. Strange, that. "How are they doing, by the way?"

"Sansa looks lost, and Bran is trying hard to seem strong... Honestly, I expected worse." A natural reaction after King's Landing. Snow had become the unofficial leader and spiritual anchor for the children.

"Sometimes children are stronger than they look. So why have you come?"

"To say goodbye," Snow surprised me. "I owe you a great deal, after all."

"...Very well." Rising from my desk, I walked slowly toward her. "I wish you luck in the times to come, my lady."

"Well, that's one of the rare times you haven't taken a jab at my birth." She was pushing her luck, but why?

"Don't get too full of your..." Before I could finish, she closed the distance and kissed me. It wasn't the best kiss, her inexperience was obvious, but Elena made up for it with all the passion and abandon she had in her.

I made no move to push her away. The moment had caught me off guard, and I won't pretend it wasn't enjoyable. But like all good things, it came to an end, Elena ran out of breath. Breaking the kiss, she looked up at me with those unique slightly violet eyes of hers. They were beautiful, like the finest sapphires of Middle-earth, and the dozens of conflicting emotions swirling in them only completed the picture. I found myself staring, unable to look away. The seconds stretched on as we simply gazed at each other. At the moment when I should have said something, I said nothing at all, lost in the sight of her. That silence proved to be the turning point. Elena turned and fled.

Perhaps it was a mistake, but I didn't call after her, didn't chase her down. And so I remained alone in my solar. Turning back to my documents, I knew at once they wouldn't be getting looked at tonight. After finishing a single glass of wine, I heard the sound of the gates opening below, which meant Elena was riding out of the castle at that very moment.

The minutes passed, and the creak of the gates sounded through the air once more, and still I sat there in my solar.