"No, fuck. Wait a moment."
At Daemon’s words, the hands of the three smiths standing before the workbench stopped at once.
The workshop did not fall wholly silent. Within, bellows breathed hot and endlessly, while hammers struck heated iron at steady intervals. Beyond the open side door, carpenters were fitting wooden rims onto cartwheels, and across from them men dismantling a pulley brought up from the harbor were loudly arguing over a worn axle.
The air, thick with charcoal, hot iron, oil, and shavings, had become familiar enough to Daemon by now.
The problem was the two hinges before him.
Daemon picked them up one at a time. "This one and this one."
The older smith answered cautiously. "They are both hinges for doors, my lord."
"I know that."
The two hinges lay side by side on the bench. Both were good pieces in themselves: the iron was thick enough, their pins turned smoothly, and neither had been crudely hammered out.
Which made it all the more infuriating.
Daemon pointed to one with his finger. "The lengths differ."
He pointed to the one beside it. "The pins are different thicknesses too."
Then he indicated the mounting holes. "And the holes are in different places."
The smiths looked at one another.
"These are for doors of the same size, yes?"
"They are."
"Then why does not a single part match?"
"Because different men made them."
"That is exactly the problem."
Daemon tapped both hinges with his palm. "What happens if the man who made one of these is gone?"
"We make another to fit it."
"Why must one be made anew to fit every time?"
His voice rose slightly. "Whenever one hinge breaks, must we find a craftsman, tear down the door to show him, measure it again, hammer out another, and alter it again if it does not fit? If a craftsman dies, should every door he made be buried with him?"
No one answered at once.
Daemon sighed.
It was not that craftsmen of this age could not make things. Quite the contrary.
Contrary to what later people often imagined when they heard the word medieval, skilled craftsmen made astonishingly fine work. They fitted complex armor, built timber structures that lasted decades, raised vast walls and cathedrals. There were innumerable things—metalwork, glass, cloth, dyes—that a modern person could not reproduce at once merely by being handed a page of instructions.
The problem was how such skills were passed down.
Much of the knowledge lived not on paper or precise drawings, but in hands and minds. A master showed an apprentice directly; parents taught children; men learned through the feeling in their hands over years or decades. Apprenticeship was at the heart of it.
When it worked, it worked splendidly. A skilled man who spent his life in one craft could reach extraordinary heights.
But when the chain between master and apprentice broke, matters changed. The same object might be made differently in every workshop and region. A process tied to one place or group could be largely lost through a single war, disease, or collapse of the supply of materials.
There had been no shortage of such cases in the history of Daemon’s former world. Even high-grade building materials like Joseon’s blue roof tiles, prized enough for royal use, had seen their production base and lines of craftsmen shaken by war; afterward, people had needed to struggle to recover the methods and materials.
It was not because people of the past had been stupid. It was because technology had clung too closely to individuals.
The hinges before Daemon were a small version of the same problem.
Craftsman A made excellent hinges in his own manner. Craftsman B made them excellently in the way his master had taught him. But they did not fit one another.
Both had done good work. Yet when one broke, the other could not simply be brought in and fitted.
Fine craftsmanship, but the compatibility is completely fucked.
"I am not saying everything must be made exactly alike."
The craftsmen looked at him again.
"Hinges for small doors, ordinary doors, heavy doors. Let us settle on several kinds according to use. Match their size, pin thickness, and hole placement."
One man asked, "What would be the benefit?"
"We can make them beforehand and keep them in the storeroom."
Daemon held up a hinge. "This breaks. Instead of calling for a craftsman, take one of the same standard from storage. Remove it. Put the new one in."
He dusted off his hands. "Done."
The smiths’ expressions changed a little.
Another asked, "What if a better method is found?"
"Then we change it."
Their eyes brightened a little. Daemon added, as though he had been waiting for that question, "But we leave behind why we changed it."
Their faces darkened again.
"My lord."
"What?"
"We are not learned men."
"Who asked craftsmen to write papers?" Daemon said incredulously. "Tell someone. A scribe can write it down."
"A scribe?"
"Where the old one broke easily, what was inconvenient, what the new one changed. That is enough. Five years from now, when someone tries the same stupid thing, he can read the record and stop himself."
Daemon pointed at one wall. A cracked axle, iron rings that had worn down too swiftly, warped pulleys, and grooves that had bitten ropes too hard and snapped them hung there. Not every failed piece was discarded. Some remained, with brief tags beside them saying when they had been made, where they had been used, and why they had been abandoned.
"The point is not to fall down in the same place twice."
No one argued this time.
Six years ago, such a sight had not existed. Compared to factories from his former life, it was too small to call a factory without embarrassment. Yet Sea Dragon Point now had workshops of its own, skilled men, and even people assigned to keep records.
A small-to-medium enterprise.
Wait. Perhaps not.
He had a domain. A harbor. Armed men. His mother managed finance and administration; Luwin helped with records and research; Raymund was responsible for the domain’s general security. The Manderlys had their hand in finance and eastern trade, the Glovers supplied timber and other goods, and the Mormonts lent men who knew the sea and had the experience for it.
Above all stood Winterfell, which would not have seemed out of place as the largest shareholder.
Daemon’s expression became strange. ...This really is a company.
Once he thought of it as a company, another matter suddenly bothered him.
There was no signature product.
There was glass, but that had begun in White Harbor. Heating was the same. Hoisting devices had advanced greatly at Sea Dragon Point, but they were far from a product nobles and merchants would buy one by one for their homes. Roads could not be sold in the first place. Timber, fish, leather, and salted seafood went out steadily, but none of those belonged to Sea Dragon Point alone.
No branding.
There was a house name, a sigil, and words. Yet when people heard the name Seadrake, there was no product that would immediately come to mind.
This will not do.
Daemon raised his head. Sea wind came through the workshop’s wide doors. At the end of the yard, a deep blue banner billowed from its pole. Silver waves flowed below, and above them a silver dragon spread its wings.
Seadrake.
It had already been six years since that name was chosen.
At the time, Daemon had not even properly understood what people meant when they said he needed to establish a house name. He had royal approval. He had been granted land. He thought he only needed to go there, mend a castle, gather people, and live.
But he needed a house name. A sigil. Words.
Nobles are such a fucking nuisance.
A modern man lived inside Daemon. The trouble was that this modern man had never been especially sensitive to symbols and appearances in a medieval noble society.
It had been much the same in his former life. He learned what clothes were fashionable long after everyone else, needed someone to explain why a certain brand logo was stylish, and only searched belatedly when people suddenly began raving over some color or design.
A man slow to notice trends in the modern world did not suddenly become a master heraldist just because he had been reborn as a medieval lord.
So he had genuinely asked at first, "Can I not simply be Daemon?"
Valena answered at once. "No, dear."
"Why?"
"Because people must know which Daemon you are."
"Me."
Valena looked at her son for a moment. "Are you the only person in the world named Daemon?"
Daemon shut his mouth.
He was not. Daemon was a more common name than he had expected. It appeared regularly when he dug through the histories of old Valyrian houses and families influenced by them. Men of different eras and houses had borne the name, and while reading history he sometimes had to check twice whether the Daemon who had just died and the Daemon on the next page were different people.
These people reuse names far too much.
In the end, he needed a new name. Daemon spread out a map and looked at his domain.
Sea Dragon Point. Sea. Dragon.
After rolling the words around in his mouth a few times, the answer lay closer than he had expected. Using Sea Dragon exactly as it was would overlap too much with the place name, so he shortened it.
Sea. Drake. Seadrake.
"Seadrake."
Valena’s expression changed almost imperceptibly. Raymund, beside her, looked at Daemon as well.
"Why?" Daemon asked.
Valena replied, "You mean to use a dragon?"
"Yes."
Raymund cut in. "Does it have to be a dragon?"
Daemon found the question strange. "This is Sea Dragon Point."
"I know."
"It is by the sea."
"I know that too."
"Then there you have it."
Raymund was silent for a moment. "Is that all?"
"Dragons are cool."
The room fell quiet.
Only then did Daemon understand why they wore those expressions.
Ah.
His true father was Maelys Blackfyre. The Black Dragon. Go further back and there were the Targaryens: the Red Dragon. A cadet branch split from the royal family had fought the main line for generations to seize the throne, killing, being driven out, invading again, and dying again.
Less a family than one of those broken households that spent every holiday beating one another bloody over property.
Daemon considered it briefly, then reached his conclusion.
So what?
He had not raised a rebellion. He did not wish to sit the Iron Throne. He had even less desire to kill relatives and wear a crown.
But dragons were cool. That was a separate issue.
Dragons have committed no crime.
He had become a lord in a world like medieval fantasy. He would have his own castle. He could make his own banner. He did not want to put a sheep or a fish on it.
Especially not a fish. He would smell sea wind and fish all his life; having fish on the banner too would be too much.
So, a dragon. But he needed to choose its color carefully.
A black dragon was discarded from the beginning. That would just be advertising that I am a Blackfyre. Madness.
Then a red dragon? The reason against that was somewhat different. The Targaryen royal house bore a red dragon as its sigil—more precisely, a red three-headed dragon on black, but heraldic details were not what mattered to Daemon.
The royal house used a dragon in red. A newly established vassal then put a red dragon on his own banner.
Your Grace, I too shall use something resembling the royal sigil.
Daemon liked dragons. He was not that brave.
Am I insane? I want to live.
So he chose silver. A deep blue field. Silver waves. A silver dragon above them.
There was no grand symbolism behind the silver. It suited the North. It suited the sea. And it was pretty.
Thus the house name and sigil were settled with astonishing speed.
The words were different. Daemon thought over them for quite some time. If he was making them anyway, he wanted to leave behind words that were truly useful.
One day he would die. He might have a son or daughter, and that child might have children. After several generations, people whose faces he could never know would go about bearing the name Seadrake.
If they remembered their house words at important moments, then at least he did not want to leave them nonsense.
Be brave. Preserve honor. Never yield.
All were good words. But a brave idiot is still an idiot. If he lacked even fear, he could make an even greater mess of everything around him.
The surest lesson Daemon had learned across both lives was something else.
People were wrong. Professors were wrong. Books were wrong. Kings were wrong. Lords were wrong. He was wrong.
It was impossible to become someone who was never wrong. What mattered was being a little less wrong the next time. Not repeating the same failure in exactly the same way.
So he chose:
By Trial, We Learn.
Through tests. Through trials. We learn.
Valena stared at the phrase for a long while before asking, "Why these words?"
Daemon thought briefly. "So we do not stumble in the same place twice."
"Is that all?"
"Put more elegantly, yes."
Raymund gave a short laugh. Daemon ignored him.
"People make mistakes. I do, Mother does, old books can. Even kings can."
Raymund asked, "Kings too?"
"Kings are people."
Raymund’s eyes fixed upon him. "When you meet lords or important people above you from now on—"
He paused. "Think once before you speak."
Daemon’s mouth opened slightly. "I have at least that much sense."
"You do not. That is why I say it."
He was blunt. "Do not let whatever enters your head come straight out of your mouth."
Daemon fell silent.
"Think once."
Daemon shut his mouth with a dissatisfied expression. Raymund said nothing more, which made it weigh all the more heavily.
That was how Seadrake was born: a house founded by a young lord who chose a dragon because dragons were cool, and a former graduate student sick to death of failure who wished never to fall in the same place twice.
And in the first year that house came to Sea Dragon Point, Daemon had a moment when he truly believed his life had finally turned around.
It was when he found silver.
More precisely, he found lead ore containing silver.
What Daemon had most desperately sought then was something that made money. Raising tax rates could not magically increase revenue in a sparsely populated domain. Taking more from the few peasants was like killing a hen and ordering it to lay more eggs tomorrow.
So he searched for something smaller than timber, longer-lasting than fish, and worth the cost of carrying far away.
Then he saw a vein on a slope.
"...That."
A local turned his head. "Yes, my lord?"
"The exposed stone there. What is it?"
Long erosion had stripped away soil, revealing a bed of gray and black stone.
The local answered without much interest. "Lead comes from it."
Daemon’s eyes narrowed. "Only lead?"
"They say there is some silver mixed in too."
At that instant, every other sound vanished from Daemon’s mind.
Silver. Silver. Money.
Part of the vein was even exposed close to the surface.
Ooooh. I found it. Fuck, I am rich.
It was not gold. But silver was money too. In this age, saying it was nearly money itself would not have been an exaggeration.
Daemon kept his face as calm as he could. "Why do you not mine it?"
The local wore a strange expression. "They used to."
Half of Daemon’s happiness died. "And?"
"Nothing remains after the cost."
The rest died too.
Mining ore took people. It had to be transported. It consumed charcoal. It had to be smelted, then refined again. Silver did come out in the end, but little remained after wages and charcoal costs. So they mined a little when lead was needed, while silver was more like a lucky byproduct.
Daemon did not give up immediately. Not before seeing it himself.
Several days later, he visited the local smelter and stood unmoving before the furnace for a long time.
Ah. Fuck. What was I expecting?
It was not that they lacked the technique. They knew how to select and melt ore, obtain lead mixed with silver, and separate silver again. In fact, it was knowledge accumulated over a long time.
The problem was that much of the process relied on the senses of skilled men.
The firelight is right at this brightness. The smoke should be this color. Results are better when that man works the bellows. Today came out well. Yesterday did not.
Experienced workers could judge those differences to some degree. But there was no way to copy that sense exactly into another person.
Daemon crouched before the furnace.
Lead’s melting point: about 327.5 degrees. Silver: about 961.8 degrees. Such memories were hardly strange for someone whose former profession dealt with heat.
At first, the gap between their melting points caught his eye.
Wait. If the difference is this great—
A few seconds later, he dismissed the thought himself.
No, idiot. That is not the point.
The heart of cupellation—drawing silver from silver-bearing lead—was not merely that lead melted first and could be poured away. Lead containing silver was handled at high heat, exposed to air, oxidized, and then the lead oxide was removed, leaving silver in relative concentration.
PbO. Litharge.
Fragments of memory linked together. Then came a history he had encountered while studying East Asia.
In Joseon, in 1503 during the reign of Yeonsangun, Kim Gambul and Kim Geomdong had demonstrated a method of efficiently separating silver from lead. It was called the lead-silver separation method, or the Dancheon lead-silver method.
Joseon later leaned toward restraining rather than aggressively expanding silver mining. The technique crossed the sea to Japan. At the Iwami Silver Mine, methods passed from Joseon, together with cupellation, were properly used to expand silver production. Japan consequently became a source pouring out immense quantities of silver in sixteenth-century East Asia, silver that changed even the currents of international trade, including that of China.
Knowing the same principle meant little by itself. Where it was used, who used it, and how aggressively determined entirely different results.
Daemon looked toward the vein again.
You never know.
What he saw might be all there was. The vein might run out after a few years of digging. Or no one might know how far it continued beneath the earth.
This might be an insane deposit too.
His heart quickened, but the excitement did not last. Daemon applied the brakes himself.
I do not know.
That was what mattered. Once a man began counting what he did not know as wealth he already possessed, he became an idiot with astonishing speed.
Survey it. Mine a little. See the results. Then expand. That was the order.
Daemon did not overturn the existing smelting process. He was no metallurgist. He could not pick up a piece of ore and identify its composition. Miners and smelters who had watched stone and fire all their lives were far better in that field.
But heat and airflow, combustion and heat loss, controlling process conditions, comparing results—those were his territory.
He separated mining locations and divided ore into amounts as similar as possible. He recorded the charcoal used, the time the bellows worked, and conditions inside the furnace. He altered the structure that forced air to one side and reduced places where heat escaped before reaching where it was needed.
Naturally, it did not work at once. Different ore made results vary. Different bellows-men and charcoal conditions produced different outcomes even when they attempted the same conditions. Through several failures, Daemon combined smelters’ experience judging the color of fire and condition of metal with records. Only then did silver begin to remain after expenses from ore that had previously failed to repay even wages and charcoal.
The locals’ experience. Daemon’s records and comparisons. Either alone had been insufficient. Together, they worked.
Daemon laid the first properly refined lump of silver on his palm and stared at it for a long time.
It was small. In his former life, he might have thought it enough to make one piece of jewelry.
But size was not what mattered. It was the same ore. Its silver content had not suddenly risen. What changed was the process. Ore that had been discarded became a commodity.
Daemon’s mouth curled upward. "Raymund."
"What?"
"I am rich."
Raymund looked at the silver, then at Daemon, then at the silver again. "With that?"
"For now, this. Nobody knows how much lies beneath that slope."
"Then you are not rich until you know."
"You have no romance."
Raymund’s gaze returned to him, and his low, hard voice fell. "You are excessively emotional."
Daemon shut his mouth.
"There is nothing wrong with me," Raymund added after a moment. "You are the strange one."
Daemon looked down at the silver lump. The man has no romance at all.
Even so, his steps were light on the way back to the castle.
He showed Valena as well. Daemon was excited. His mother was not.
Valena gauged the weight of the silver in her hand and listened to every explanation: the vein, the refining method, the improved recovery rate, and the expected profit.
Then she said, "We must hide it."
At nearly the same moment, Raymund said, "We should."
Daemon followed their thought a few seconds later.
...Ah. Right.
An outsider. A newly made young lord. The western coast. A new house that had not yet properly established itself. And though the world did not know it, the last son of Maelys Blackfyre.
That sort of man had acquired a profitable silver mine.
Fuck. This is not something to boast about.
The grand plan for large-scale mine development that had been joyfully rolling through his mind quietly went into the rubbish bin.
Their roles divided naturally. Daemon organized the technology and process. He split work into several stages so no one needed to know everything from mining to final refining. One of the most basic ways to preserve a secret was reducing the number who knew it; a better way was reducing how much any one person needed to know.
Raymund took charge of overall security: who entered and left, who had seen which stage, who knew the production volume, how far outside merchants could come, whom craftsmen met when they left the domain. He put such matters in order one by one.
That did not mean they began by putting blades to men’s throats. Daemon opposed that method too.
Cannot keep mouths shut with money? Then first ask whether it truly cannot be bought with money, or whether there simply was not enough money.
It did not mean every person in the world could be bought. But if a skilled worker had more reason to flee to another domain with knowledge because of better pay and a better life, the solution might be surprisingly simple.
Give him better conditions.
Good wages. Secure work. Sufficient food. A house for his family. Skilled workers above a certain level were guaranteed the treatment and status to match.
Make staying far more profitable than leaving for an uncertain gamble.
Lifetime employment instead of a confidentiality agreement. And salary negotiations.
It seemed more rational than expected.
Raymund added his own method atop it. Do not speak of the process outside. Do not speak of output. Keep the promise, and your pay, home, and family’s stable life continue. Break it—
Raymund did not explain at length. No one cared to ask for details.
Daemon sometimes thought, That old man is much better at playing a medieval lord than I am.
Valena managed the ledgers and contracts, the flow of funds, and information leaving the domain.
They did not hide the vein itself; they could not. Locals had known for years that lead and a little silver came from there. So no lies went into reports.
Partial reopening of an abandoned mine. Increased lead production. Recovery of a small amount of silver byproduct.
All of it was true.
But the word small has a broader embrace than I expected.
There was no reason to announce the precise recovery rate of the new process or the true amount of silver production.
At first, Daemon felt a little uneasy. Am I hiding this from Lord Stark?
Valena settled it simply. "So long as you properly fulfill the taxes and obligations you owe, dear, you do not need to tell Winterfell exactly how many silver ingots are in your storehouse."
Daemon thought for a moment. Ah. It is feudalism. Not a listed corporation. No outside audit. Financial transparency is fucking low.
They kept the silver as ingots rather than coin. There was no reason to mint the king’s coins at will. Daemon imposed his habits even on the ingots: he kept their weights within a fixed range, marked when they were produced, and recorded in internal ledgers which work batch each came from.
Valena asked, "Must you do all that even for silver?"
"If there is a problem later, we need to know which process produced it."
"Even on silver ingots?"
"Ingots are products too."
Valena looked at her son briefly. "At times, it is hard to understand what you say."
"I sometimes feel the same way."
The silver went deep into the castle. They altered an underground space discovered while repairing the old fort’s foundations, making it look like an ordinary storeroom from outside while creating a small hidden chamber within.
At first there were only a few ingots. Then a row. Then two rows. After several years, they filled one side of a small wall.
A Lannister might have scoffed at the amount. For a new house, it was different.
That silver was money. It was also time.
In famine, it could buy grain. In war, it could feed soldiers. If ships were needed, they could be bought. It was time to endure sudden calamity without immediately holding out a hand to someone else.
Daemon would sometimes go below, look at the ingots, and grin.
Heh. A slush fund.
Then Valena’s voice would come from behind him. "An emergency fund, dear."
Daemon flinched. "When did you come in?"
"When you began smiling suspiciously."
"..."
"And it is not your spending money."
That felt a little unfair. His domain. His mine. A process he had touched. Yet he could not spend it as he pleased.
Corporate assets. Fuck. It really is a company.
The mine gave them more than silver. As they worked on smelting, the level of the entire workshop rose little by little. A better furnace was needed; then better furnaces made crucibles the problem. Once bellows and draft channels were improved, joints drew attention; once heat leaks were reduced, the same experience could be used in other processes.
It began with trying to save even a little more silver. Years later, the experience had spread throughout the workshops.
Then one day Daemon saw the pear brandy from Tyrosh that Valena was drinking and stopped.
Tyrosh was known for pear brandy. It was one familiar luxury from his mother’s homeland, and he had sometimes seen Valena pour herself a glass.
He had little interest in drink itself. He had not been a drinker in his former life either. If graduate students drank, it was sometimes closer to a survival skill than a hobby.
The issue was how it was made.
Ferment pears. Heat the liquor. Vapor containing much alcohol rises. Gather it and cool it. Obtain a stronger drink.
Daemon’s eyes changed.
Heating. Evaporation. Vapor flow. Cooling. Condensation.
Oh. This.
Refining silver had meant attaching local craftsmen’s experience to scraps of history he had learned. Distillation was different.
Heat transfer. Fluids. Phase changes. Condensation. All of it touched his own field.
My actual specialty has finally appeared.
That did not mean he knew how to make fine liquor. He knew nothing about yeast, which grains produced which aromas, or when saccharification and fermentation should end for the best result. That belonged to people who had brewed all their lives.
But apparatus was different. He could see where vapor leaked, why cooling was insufficient, where heat was being wasted, and what part was the bottleneck for throughput.
Distillation itself was not a new technology. Daemon did not invent it. The people making pear brandy in Tyrosh had long been distilling fermented drink into strong liquor. Daemon merely took existing equipment apart with his own eyes, made the movement of heat and vapor more efficient, and organized the process so it could repeatedly produce the same result.
After several rounds of adjusting joints, changing cooling-water flow, and controlling fire strength and distillation speed, the apparatus quickly stabilized.
The principle resembled silver refining: fail, compare, correct. The difference was that it went much faster. This was his field.
After several years, the stills used at Sea Dragon Point had become rather different from the things he first saw.
The funny part was that Daemon did not think of them as money-making tools. Luwin used them to extract things from herbs, and they made strong spirits for disinfecting and other experiments. The workshops used them to separate needed liquids in small quantities.
To Daemon, a still was merely an interesting heat-exchange device.
Then, after scolding craftsmen over hinges and looking at the Seadrake banner, he thought of a signature product.
At that moment, everything linked together.
Liquor.
Daemon looked at the still standing in one corner of the workshop and remembered one ancient fact.
People truly loved alcohol.
They had not only loved it after agricultural society emerged and cities were built. Daemon could not know how long people in this life had drunk, but on the Earth where he had lived, the evidence went terrifyingly far back.
At Raqefet Cave in Israel, traces had been found of Natufian people making fermented drink from wild wheat and barley around thirteen thousand years ago. This was before domesticated grain and full agriculture had properly taken root. Hunters and gatherers had been making drink for communal events such as funerals and feasts.
Göbekli Tepe was interesting in much the same way. Reports had found oxalate traces in some enormous limestone vessels—traces that could result from soaking, crushing, and fermenting grain—so scholars had long discussed whether beer-like drink might have been made for large feasts there.
Of course, it was not proven that beer had truly been brewed at Göbekli Tepe. A few fragments of prehistoric evidence could not let someone thousands of years later reconstruct a tavern menu.
But one thing was rather clear. Humans had known fermentation for a very long time. And they liked it.
They liked it enough that archaeology and anthropology even had a hypothesis: Perhaps beer came before bread.
Some scholars seriously considered whether people began cultivating grain not only to eat bread and porridge, but to make alcohol reliably.
The hypothesis was not established as the answer. Explaining an event as complicated as the beginning of agriculture with alcohol alone was too simple.
It did not greatly affect Daemon’s conclusion.
If they were drinking before they even farmed, has market research not already been completed?
Humanity drank. They drank thousands of years ago, and made fermented drinks almost tens of thousands of years ago.
There was no reason people in this world would be much different. In truth, Westerosi loved drink.
Wine. Ale. Beer. Cider. Mead.
The kinds differed by region, but alcohol was never absent from feasts, trade, meals, inns, armies, or voyages.
From Daemon’s perspective, it was nearly the perfect consumer good.
People consumed it. Then they had to buy it again. It was reasonably easy to store. It could sell for more than timber or grain of the same weight. Differences in quality could easily be tied to branding and prices.
Common drink for commoners. Strong and cheap drink for sailors and soldiers. Something better for merchants and knights. Fine bottles aged for longer, sold dearly to nobles.
Hey. This is a fucking good business.
Then there was the condition of the North.
Daemon called the map to mind. It was impossible to match the North of Westeros exactly to any one region on Earth. Even its seasons differed from real climate systems, and within the North itself coastal, inland, and mountain conditions were all different.
Still, in terms of living conditions, northern Russia or Scandinavia naturally came to mind.
Long cold. Short, unstable growing seasons. The importance of preserved food. Food cultures favoring high calories in cold weather. A way of life that kept people indoors long during winter.
The North is neither Russia nor Scandinavia, but from a merchant’s standpoint, they are worth considering.
Even in real northern and eastern Europe, drinking culture could not be explained by the single line, People drank because it was cold and they wanted to warm themselves. Religion, communal rites, grain production and trade, taxes and state finances, urbanization—countless reasons were intertwined.
Drinking alcohol did not truly raise one’s body temperature and help one better withstand cold either. It could instead dilate peripheral blood vessels, making one feel warm while increasing heat loss.
Daemon was not foolish enough to sell liquor as a cure for cold. But human feeling and culture did not follow medical textbooks.
A cold night. A warm room. A glass of strong drink. The sensation of heat spreading inside.
He could already see plenty of people would enjoy it.
The workers at Sea Dragon Point did. Ale after construction. Ale when it rained. More ale when it was cold. Carpenters drank. Masons drank. Miners drank. Sailors were worse.
More than once Daemon suspected those people drank alcohol as though it were water. To some degree, they truly did.
There was a water problem as well. Some wells at Sea Dragon Point, affected by limestone strata, yielded hard water. Whitish traces remained on the edge of vessels that had held it for long.
Daemon made sure that water sent to him passed through cloth, sand, charcoal, and the like to reduce suspended matter, and that it was always boiled.
Of course, boiling does not make limestone evaporate and run away.
Boiling could not remove all dissolved minerals. But in this age it had a much more important effect: it greatly reduced invisible biological hazards.
There was little point explaining that to locals. To people who had lived with ale since childhood, alcohol was part of life before it was a special indulgence.
Daemon finally accepted it.
Fine. In the land of the one-eyed, the two-eyed man is abnormal.
He did not intend to force the entire world to fit the standards of his former life.
And the moment he saw alcohol as a product, this ancient habit became an enormous market.
Timber was heavy. Fish spoiled. Glass broke. Properly made liquor lasted. Its value per volume was high. Above all, people drank it. It vanished. They bought it again.
Daemon’s eyes sparkled.
Repeat purchases.
It was a beautiful phrase.
A wall built once was used for decades. A hoist was used until it broke. Liquor was drunk today and bought again tomorrow.
Moreover, spirits could hold more value in the same volume than ale or wine. Sending a ship from Sea Dragon Point to another harbor cost money. Sailors had to be fed, cargo took space, and there were storms and pirates. If one was using the same section of hold, goods fetching a high price in a small volume were preferable to dozens of barrels of cheap lumber or fish.
High-value processed goods. At last, something worth selling from the domain.
It could also be used for workers’ welfare. Daemon glanced at the smiths he had just lectured.
Pay them. Feed them. Give them a drink sometimes after work.
Wait.
No, fuck. I am still far better than Kim Jaebong.
He was not paying wages in drink. He was not embezzling research funds. He was not slapping his own name onto someone else’s achievement first.
Daemon felt better for no reason.
Yes. Employee benefits.
He deliberately ignored the fact that his standard of comparison was so low.
He decided to make liquor—not cheap rotgut merely meant to get people drunk, but drink he could sell under the name Seadrake.
The work took several months. The first spirits were not merely strong; their smell attacked people first. Some reminded one of furnaces before grain, and one man who took a mouthful did nothing but shed tears for a while.
Daemon asked, "How does it taste?"
The man clutched his throat and answered after a long time, "It is strong."
"That is not a taste assessment."
"My lord."
"What?"
"I have no leisure to think about the taste right now."
Unfit for consumption.
Daemon did not throw it away, though. Being undrinkable does not mean useless.
They changed grain and fermentation conditions. Instead of combining every drop that emerged from start to finish, they divided the run into portions. They cut away the first and last portions, where harsh smells were strongest, and gathered the relatively clean middle. After several months of adjustments, they began producing something people could at least be paid to put in their mouths.
During the process, Daemon missed the craftsmen of White Harbor again and again.
Bennett. Glassworkers. Stonemasons. Bricklayers. Smiths. Men the Manderlys had fed in the city for years, given steady work, and trained.
In White Harbor, when Daemon threw out a strange idea, he did not need to teach people fundamentals first. Here was different.
First, he raised people. He selected those with decent hands. He placed apprentices under skilled workers brought from White Harbor. Some improved quickly. Some remained poor even after years. Some injured their hands. Some married. Some returned home because their parents had fallen ill.
Fuck. Raising people is the hardest part.
When a machine broke, one could find the cause. People were not things one could fix at will even if one knew the cause.
Still, six years later things had changed. Some apprentices Daemon had first assigned now had apprentices beneath them.
Whenever he saw it, Daemon felt strange.
I raised craftsmen.
At times, that seemed stranger to him than the roads or glass he had made.
At some point Luwin began to be in the workshops constantly. At first Daemon thought he came to watch him in case he caused trouble. Later, he even brought copyists and scribes. Whenever he heard that Daemon was trying something, he settled in a corner and spread paper and ink.
Eventually Daemon asked, "Maester."
"Yes."
"Why have you been following me everywhere lately?"
Luwin looked at him. "Because I am your maester, my lord."
"You were not like this at first."
"At first, my lord was four years old."
"I am only ten now."
"That is the problem."
"What is?"
Luwin looked over his records and said calmly, "It is interesting."
Daemon blinked. "What is?"
"What you do, my lord."
The answer was so earnest that Daemon momentarily lost the jest he had meant to make.
"One learns much at the Citadel: history, herbs, minerals, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, languages. But learning answers already organized is different from watching beside someone as those answers are made."
Luwin looked down at the sheets. "You change conditions, record results, seek reasons when you are wrong, and try again."
After a brief silence, he added, "It is study for me as well."
Daemon was somewhat moved. Truly, only somewhat.
"Maester."
"Yes?"
"You have fallen magnificently into corruption."
Luwin’s expression hardened at once. "I still dislike that expression."
"It is the highest praise."
"That is why I dislike it more."
The copyist behind them bowed his head. His shoulders shook. Daemon pretended not to notice.
After that, Luwin appearing in the workshops became unremarkable. They had several more arguments over the phrase corruption, but after working together for years, even Luwin gave up refuting it every time.
Then, one day when the liquor was beginning to take shape, Luwin said Daemon was far too insensitive to his own reputation.
At first, Daemon did not understand what he meant. But the image others saw was quite different from what Daemon himself felt.
A child who had organized glass production in White Harbor in an unprecedented way. A child who spread heating methods. A child rewarded for it directly by Lord Stark with a fief, who established a new house under the Iron Throne’s approval.
To Daemon, it had all been a chain of memories involving broken glass, torn-up floors, carts dragged from swamps, and swearing. To those outside, it was more than enough to make a story.
Furthermore, White Harbor glass was already being sold south through the Vale and the Riverlands. Merchants did not carry goods alone. They also carried where goods came from, who made them, and why they were special.
Heating spread even faster. Glass could not easily be copied without furnaces, raw materials, and skilled artisans, but masons who saw the finished heating structure could grasp its principle. Similar structures passed into the Vale and Riverlands through people traveling between White Harbor and Winterfell, and news reached Luwin that wealthy houses in King’s Landing and the Reach had imitated them.
As Daemon heard this, his expression steadily hardened.
"Wait."
"Yes?"
"Those places were not built by our workshops, were they?"
"No."
"Nor by workshops Mother has established."
"No."
"And the rights Lord Stark recognized do not apply there."
Luwin nodded. "Lord Stark is Warden of the North. He cannot compel southern lords to honor the same rights."
Daemon was silent for a moment. Then he reached the most important issue.
"Then what about the money?"
Luwin blinked. "What money?"
"My money."
"..."
"They are using what I made."
Luwin said nothing for several moments. That silence was enough.
Daemon’s temple twitched. "There is none?"
"Southern lords have no obligation to pay you, my lord."
"Why not?"
"Who recognizes such a right?"
Daemon froze.
That was right. Who?
Lord Stark was Warden of the North, not king of all Seven Kingdoms. A southern mason came, saw the structure, remembered it, returned home. Some noble complained of being cold. The mason made something similar and was paid. The end.
Daemon covered his head. "No."
His voice leaked between his fingers. "My copyright."
He stopped himself. No.
"My patent!"
Luwin blinked. "What do you mean?"
"My money!"
"It would have been easier to understand if you had called it money from the beginning."
"Is that important right now?"
Real history had not been very different. Modern patent systems, protecting technologies and inventions exclusively for a fixed period, were established much later. Medieval protection of craft knowledge was closer to artisans hiding trade secrets, guilds controlling transmission, or cities and rulers granting individual monopoly privileges.
Therefore, Rickard Stark recognizing Daemon’s and White Harbor’s share for a period within the North had itself been remarkably strong protection and an enormous favor by the standards of the age.
Daemon realized that belatedly.
...Ah. There is no patent office.
After a moment of silence: Fuck. A patent granted by the largest shareholder’s authority was the best possible option.
He was angry, but he could not sue all of history.
Luwin finally continued what he had meant to say. Daemon’s name was known in the south for more than heating.
Glass. Heating. A fief received at an early age. A castle and harbor raised in only several years. Lord Stark’s patronage.
All of it was becoming bound beneath one name. And news like that naturally reached Oldtown.
"The Citadel is taking notice of you as well, my lord."
Daemon’s face immediately soured. "...Why?"
Luwin smiled. "You are ten years old."
"I know that."
"Because what you do does not seem like the work of a ten-year-old."
Luwin’s eyes went toward the bottles on the workbench. Daemon immediately pulled one bottle toward himself.
"Do not tell them about this."
"Why?"
"This time, I am getting paid."
Luwin finally laughed.
Daemon was serious. "Really."
"Very well."
"Keep internal records, though."
The scribe behind them, who had stopped his pen, began moving again.
After months of failure, the basic spirit took on a respectable shape. It was nearly clear as water.
It could not be called the same as modern vodka. There was no continuous distillation column or precise temperature-control equipment. It was far from modern processes that steadily produced high-purity neutral spirit.
Still, its direction was similar.
Made from grain. Clear. High proof. Harsh off-odors reduced as much as possible.
More important than anything, it came out similarly every time. Daemon valued that most highly.
"Set aside three bottles of this batch."
The man in charge of brewing asked, "What will they be used for?"
"Keep one as it is now, check one again in half a year, and one next year."
"Does it improve even inside the bottle?"
Daemon shrugged. "I do not know."
The other man blinked.
"That is why we keep them."
On the opposite side stood pale golden liquor. It was among the batches they had put into wooden barrels, and its result was good.
It had only been months, too little to call aging. Yet it had changed. The harsh scent had rounded somewhat; aromas and flavors from the wood had mingled with it; even its color had altered.
When Daemon first confirmed the difference, he had been deeply impressed.
It really works.
He knew the phenomenon from his former life. Whisky. Brandy. Oak barrels. Time.
But knowing it in his head and watching liquid truly change inside wooden barrels in his own domain were entirely different things.
If it is aged for years... We could charge an insane price for this.
He had no intention of fighting the wine market head-on. He was not shameless enough to claim he could devour all the fine wines of the Arbor and drinks of Dorne. Essos doubtless held many excellent liquors he did not know.
But clear grain spirits. High proof. Consistent quality. Strong drink with reduced impurities.
In that field, honestly, we are competitive.
He was confident. The aged batches even more so.
Fine glass bottles. A silver dragon sigil. Production year. Aging period.
A price list was already rising in Daemon’s mind.
Then a boy in one corner of the workshop raised a cup. At first Daemon thought it was water—until he smelled it.
"...You."
The boy looked up. "Yes, my lord?"
"What are you drinking?"
"Ale."
Daemon looked at his face. He was young.
"How old are you?"
"Twelve, my lord."
Daemon said nothing.
Twelve. Broad daylight. Ale. A workshop.
And no one around them thought it odd.
Ah. Right. It is the Middle Ages.
Daemon pressed his forehead. "Do not touch the bottles over there."
The boy looked at the spirits. "Why not?"
"You are a child."
The workshop became quiet. Everyone looked at Daemon—the ten-year-old.
Daemon felt their eyes as well.
"..."
The boy said carefully, "I am two years older than you, my lord."
Someone coughed. It was plainly the sound of swallowed laughter.
Daemon narrowed his eyes. "Did I say I was going to drink it?"
"No, my lord."
"Then there is no problem."
The people around them turned away as though their own tasks had suddenly become the most important thing in the world.
Daemon sighed. He could not remake the entire custom of drinking ale and wine. High-proof spirits were different, however.
"Maester."
"Yes?"
"No tasting our spirits for anyone under sixteen."
Luwin’s brows rose. "Sixteen?"
"At least for this."
The twelve-year-old looked aggrieved. "That is four years away."
Daemon answered immediately. "Live a long time."
"What about ale?"
Daemon stared at the boy for a while.
He lost.
"...I will give up on that one."
Fighting an entire culture was far too poor an investment for the cost.
As he congratulated himself on that hollow victory, the noise at the workshop entrance gradually diminished.
At first he paid it no mind. People constantly came and went. Materials arrived. Stewards came. Soldiers passed by.
This time was different.
A carpenter near the entrance straightened first. A smith set down his hammer. Heads bowed one by one.
Daemon frowned. "Why is everyone—"
"My lord," the steward called.
"What?"
"No, I mean—"
Then a voice sounded behind him.
"You still seem busy."
Daemon’s hand stopped.
It was not an unfamiliar voice. But he had not heard it in a very long time.
As Rickard Stark entered the workshop, he took a moment to find Daemon.
The child in his memory had been small. Naturally: he had last seen him six years ago. He still remembered that child, whose feet barely reached the ground when seated in a chair, standing among grown men and speaking of what soldiers ate, where roads should run, and where a harbor ought to be built.
So, for the first few moments, he did not think the boy in the center of the workshop was Daemon.
He had grown.
If Rickard had not known he was ten, he might have thought him two or three years older. He was not simply tall. The arms beneath his rolled sleeves were still a boy’s arms, but firm, and his shoulders were broad for his age.
It seems his father was a considerably large man.
Valena was not a small woman either. Still, it was natural to see that build as a trace of his father.
Most striking of all was the hair.
Black and red. It had been dyed in nearly exact halves. His naturally wavy hair mingled the two colors and parted them again whenever he moved; under the furnace light, it seemed like flame and soot shifting together.
Rickard knew Tyroshi people dyed their hair and beards in various colors. He had never seen it divided into two colors that way.
Yet it suited the boy strangely well.
His face had changed too. His jaw and nose were more defined than when he had been four. Childhood remained, but his features were handsome enough. There were traces of Valena, and something foreign as well.
Rickard considered it briefly. Was his father Lyseni?
Tyrosh and Lys were close, and Lys was known for people who strongly retained the appearance of old Valyrians. Rickard had no wish to pry. What mattered was the boy before him.
"...Daemon."
The boy turned.
Rickard knew him at once.
"It has been a long time, Lord Stark."
His voice had changed too. It was still a boy’s voice, but no longer as high and light as before.
Rickard studied Daemon briefly.
He has grown well.
Then a small thought followed.
That is fortunate too.
He soon realized why he had thought it. A faint smile touched his lips.
If Liara had lived, she would have known at once. She would have teased him for inspecting the face of a possible son-in-law when his daughter was not even old enough for marriage talks.
The memory still hurt somewhat. But it was no longer a memory containing only pain.
Rickard turned his eyes to Daemon’s hair. "You dyed it."
Daemon touched his hair once. "Ah. Yes."
"In two colors?"
"It looked more interesting."
"A custom of your mother’s homeland?"
"Dyeing itself is. Dividing it this way was my choice."
"Why red and black?"
Daemon blinked as though the question were odd. "They go well together."
That was all.
After a moment, Rickard nodded. "I see."
The workshop came into view again. Luwin was there. So were copyists and scribes. Bottles and cups stood in rows on the workbench, while failed parts hung on one wall.
But what Rickard watched longest was the way people moved.
The master of the workshop asked a question. A craftsman gave his opinion. Daemon listened and answered. Luwin interjected. A scribe recorded it.
No one looked as though the process were anything special. They were accustomed to it already.
Six years before, Daemon had been a clever child. He saw what adults did not and asked strange questions. But he had been a child all the same.
Now it was somewhat different.
He has learned how to move people as well.
There were clever people. There were fine craftsmen. But a lord could not work alone. He needed to listen to people, make decisions, know how to entrust work to those better than himself, and build a structure that continued to function when he was absent.
Ten-year-old Daemon was not a completed lord. He was not of an age to be. But he was at least learning how to move a small domain.
Rickard liked that.
"I heard you had not left this place since morning."
Daemon’s face shifted oddly. "Who said that?"
"Your steward."
"There is a little malice in that phrasing."
"Is it untrue?"
"It is true."
Rickard pointed to the bottles. "Because of these?"
Daemon’s face changed immediately. A moment before, he had been the young lord receiving Lord Stark. Now he looked like a craftsman who had been given the chance to explain his own work.
"It was not all I did."
"Then what?"
"I was making a new product."
"A product?"
"Liquor."
Rickard looked at the bottles. It was overly clear to be called liquor. He had drunk much of what came into White Harbor and tasted strong drink from Essos, but alcohol that looked so much like water was uncommon.
"Did you make it anew?"
Daemon immediately shook his head. "I did not make the liquor itself. The brewing method existed already."
Rickard’s gaze changed by the smallest degree.
Daemon continued, "I improved the apparatus a little, made the process consistent, and tested several grains."
He did not claim credit for what was not his. Rickard liked that too.
He picked up one bottle. "May I drink it?"
Daemon’s eyes brightened. "Of course."
Then he became serious at once. "Only a very little."
"Is it not liquor?"
"It is."
"Then?"
"It is very strong."
Rickard smiled faintly. It was not as though he had never drunk strong liquor in the North.
"How strong?"
Daemon considered. "Strong enough that you will regret it if you drink it as you would wine."
"That much?"
"Truly, drink only a little at a time."
Rickard lifted the cup and drank.
When it first touched his tongue, he thought little of it.
The next moment, he seriously wondered whether he had drunk poison by mistake.
Fire ran from his tongue to his throat. When he breathed in, a sharp force pressed even into his nose, and the sensation of the liquid running down his throat was far too vivid.
Rickard held back a cough.
Daemon said before him, "I told you it was strong."
Rickard did not answer. The Warden of the North could not cough at a sip of liquor before his ten-year-old vassal.
He gathered his breath slowly. After a little while, however, the feeling changed. The first sharp sting settled quickly, leaving a faint grain scent in his mouth. There was less unpleasant odor than expected.
Then, belatedly, heat rose in his belly. A heavy warmth spreading slowly to his chest.
Rickard looked down at the cup.
This will sell well in winter.
People returning from hunts. Sailors on the sea. Soldiers guarding the walls. Nobles on feast days. Demand came to mind at once.
"It is better than expected."
Daemon’s face brightened. "Only better than expected?"
"That was praise."
"The assessment is too vague."
Rickard was silent briefly. The corner of Luwin’s mouth moved.
"Maester."
"Yes, Lord Stark."
"Is he always like this?"
Luwin did not hesitate. "It grows worse by the day."
"Maester."
"It is true."
Rickard did not restrain his laughter.
Daemon fetched another bottle with a displeased expression. This one was pale gold.
"This is the same liquor kept in a wooden barrel. It has only been a few months."
"The color has changed this much already?"
"The scent has changed too."
Rickard drank far more carefully this time. The strength remained, but its edges had rounded somewhat. A faint wooden scent mingled with the grain, and the taste lingering after swallowing was more complex.
"This one is better."
Daemon’s mouth curled upward. "Right?"
"You say it has only been a few months?"
"Yes."
"What if it is kept longer?"
"That is what I am finding out."
Rickard laughed inwardly. Of course. He did not know, so he tried it. He had been the same six years ago, and he was the same now.
"I think it will improve if it is kept for several years," Daemon said.
"You mean to leave it unsold for years?"
"Not all of it. Sell the basic kind, age only some of the good batches. If we can charge several times the price in a few years, that is more profitable."
Rickard thought briefly. Keeping goods tied up for years meant Daemon was not being chased by tomorrow’s money.
He seems to have more financial room than the reports show.
Was support from the Manderlys continuing? Or was income from the domain better than expected? There was no reason to pry now. What mattered was that Daemon did not act with only the next day in mind.
"Have you chosen a name?"
"Not yet."
"Will you give it your house name?"
"That is the thought."
Daemon held the bottle to the light. "This time, even if someone copies it, I want it remembered that Seadrake was the original."
Rickard’s brows rose. "Copies it?"
Daemon’s expression stiffened. Beside him, Luwin quietly shook his head.
"It is a long story, Lord Stark."
Daemon muttered, "The southerners do not pay me."
Rickard did not understand. "What money?"
Daemon shut his mouth. After a moment, he said, "...It is truly a long story."
Luwin laughed again.
Rickard did not press. Instead, he studied Daemon.
His way of speaking remained strange. It was not that he lacked manners; when necessary, he observed them exactly. Yet concepts existing only in his own head sometimes leaped casually from his mouth, and then he would realize belatedly that those around him did not understand.
He had been the same six years ago. What changed was that this strange mind was now learning to handle actual people, money, and land.
Rickard looked at the failures hanging on the wall: broken pieces, bent axles, split rings.
Even those things were probably not discarded rubbish to Daemon. They were records explaining why something had failed.
He has grown well.
This time, it was not about appearance.
Six years ago, Rickard had briefly thought that it might have been good if that child had been his son. Not that Daemon would replace Brandon or Eddard. It had merely been a small selfish wish to have one more child with such a mind among his family.
And over time, that thought had led to another possibility.
Lyanna.
The little she-wolf who followed her brothers on short legs and asked why whenever she was first told she could not do something.
Rickard thought the man she needed would be neither someone who tried to pull out Lyanna’s teeth nor someone who merely watched his footing and was dragged along by her.
A man who stood on his own feet, and allowed his daughter to stand on hers as well.
He did not yet know whether Daemon might grow into such a man. He was only ten. But at least that possibility had not diminished. It seemed to have grown a little.
Rickard looked once more at the red-and-black hair and the face that had grown quite handsome.
One small concern need not trouble me.
A smile nearly came without his awareness. If Liara were here, she would certainly have noticed, and teased him for studying a face before his daughter was even of an age for marriage talks.
For a moment, that memory left one part of his chest empty. But the emptiness no longer held pain alone.
Then the steward entered the workshop.
"Lord Stark."
Rickard turned. "What is it?"
"Your attendants ask where their carriages should be placed."
Just as Rickard was about to answer, Daemon spoke.
"Ah."
"What is it?"
"I have a gift for you."
Daemon looked at the master of the workshop. "The two casks we set aside earlier, yes?"
"Yes, my lord."
"One basic kind, one kept in a barrel. Give them to Lord Stark’s attendants."
Rickard’s eyebrows rose. "Two casks?"
"They are samples. We have not even set prices yet."
"Even so, that is no small amount."
Daemon answered as though it were nothing. "You are the first to come since I became a lord."
Rickard looked at the boy for a moment, then nodded. "I will accept them gratefully."
Daemon raised one finger. "But do not open the second cask at once."
"Why?"
"Leave it longer."
"How long?"
Daemon thought briefly. "If possible, until next year."
"It will be better then?"
"Probably."
Rickard laughed. "You are the first lord I have seen who says probably while giving a gift."
Daemon was not embarrassed in the least. "It is being tested. It is already better than the basic kind if you open it now. I mean it is likely to improve if you wait longer."
"What if the chance is low?"
Daemon considered seriously again. Then he said, "Tell me why it failed."
Rickard finally laughed aloud.
People in the workshop glanced over. Luwin was laughing too.
Six years.
It was a long time for a four-year-old child to become ten.
He had grown taller. His body had changed. His face had changed. He had made people his own. He had built workshops, raised a castle, laid roads, and expanded a harbor.
Yet some parts of him remained astonishingly unchanged.
Rickard stopped laughing and looked at Daemon.
"Daemon."
"Yes?"
"You have done well."
Daemon froze for a moment. He looked more flustered than when he had been explaining his liquor.
"...The liquor?"
"That too."
Rickard looked around the workshop.
The craftsmen. Luwin. The scribes. The failed pieces on the wall. The silver dragon fluttering outside the window.
Then Daemon again.
"All of it."
Daemon said nothing for several moments. Then the corner of his mouth lifted just a little.
"I still have far to go."
Rickard smiled again.
Yes. He had expected that.
Daemon had been the child who built a road and immediately sought the places where water pooled. The child who built a castle and complained that he disliked the line of a wall. He had turned land that held nothing six years ago into a domain, and now held up a bottle of liquor while thinking of the next thing.
Perhaps the day Daemon believed he had completed something would not come easily. Whether that was a flaw or a strength could not yet be known.
But until now, it seemed somewhat closer to a strength.
"Even so," Rickard said, "let us say you have done well today."
Daemon blinked. "Then I will accept it."
"Do so."
Before leaving the workshop, Rickard looked once more at the clear liquor on the workbench. The warmth of the strong drink still remained in his belly.
Outside, the wind of the North flowed along the castle walls. In that wind, Seadrake’s silver dragon fluttered.
By Trial, We Learn.
Through trials, we learn.
Six years ago, the Warden of the North had held out one chance to a child. At the time, it had been a gamble placed on possibility.
Today was different.
At Sea Dragon Point, a lord was already growing.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register