TBOV: AEMOND I

TBOV: AEMOND I

The floating city stank of smoke and fear.

From the arched windows of the Sealord’s manse—his manse now, at least in the reckoning of those who lived long enough to learn his new titles—Aemond watched dawn burn along the drowned streets. The canals below ran sluggish with debris and pale bodies. A sullen wind brought the tang of brine and charred timber. Even here, atop the city’s spine, the air reeked of violence, new and raw.

Aemond stood alone, save for the hush of scurrying clerks and the distant thump of soldiers’ boots. The great marble desk was a battlefield of its own: sheaves of parchment, ledgers bound in cracked seal leather, sealed missives, the thin glint of a Braavosi stiletto recently plucked from the folds of a would-be assassin’s robe. The day’s work awaited him, a greater labour than any dragon’s fire or host’s sword.

Braavos had fallen, but conquest was never the end of a war.

He closed the shutters against the city’s wailing and turned to the ledgers, settling into a high-backed chair of weirwood and whalebone. He dipped his quill into the inkpot, the motion precise, economical. His eye—his one good eye—traced the columns of numbers; the heart of his new empire, bled onto paper in the spidery script of Iron Bank scribes. Aemond had spent the better part of a week locked in this room, personally auditing the spoils of his greatest conquest, and what he found there offered him little comfort.

Nine hundred and sixty-three thousand golden dragons, in gold and ingots, sealed within the Iron Bank’s vaults. Twice that in silver, some six dozen rooms of gems, rubies, pearls. Debts owed from every king and council from Old Volantis to White Harbour. The numbers dazzled the eye, but he saw past the surface. Money was breath and blood, but always with a cost.

A hand swept a pile of coins aside, their clink sharp in the morning silence. Westerosi minted dragons and Braavosi moons, Tyroshi spindles, Lysene lilies, all scattered in untidy heaps. They seemed legion, yet the empire he had conjured—no, won—devoured wealth with the appetite of a starving kraken. Each new city conquered, each new ship built, each man levied meant coin flowing out as swiftly as it came.

The Iron Bank’s reserves were vast, a king’s ransom that would make Casterly Rock look like a pauper’s hovel. But it was a finite resource. Thirteen dragons, a navy to choke the Narrow Sea, armies sprawling across two continents—such power came at a cost. Eighty per cent of the realm’s coin bled into war, into the Red Cloaks’ steel, into the keels of ships and the stone of fortresses. Men did not fight for promises, after all. They fought for coin, for food, for the bounties their prince had offered them. The grand fortifications rising at Ghoyan Drohe, Ny Sar, Chroyane, the Iron Isles, and the Stepstones devoured gold as voraciously as Vhagar devoured sheep. The dragons themselves were not cheap.

As a result of this continual drain on resources, the Dragon’s Bank teetered on a knife-edge, its vaults strained to breaking. A year, perhaps, before insolvency. Less, if the harvests failed.

Aemond leaned back in the Sealord’s throne, its cushions embroidered with fading sigils of fish and keys. The chair creaked under his weight, a reminder of the fragility beneath grandeur. His mind churned, Mentat sight flaring behind the lid. He saw not a grand vision of the future, but a thousand smaller ones, a cascade of grim possibilities. He saw granaries in the Reach running empty. He saw the consequences of his levies. Nearly forty per cent of able-bodied men now serve abroad. Forty per cent. Men taken from fields, from forges, from fishing boats. He saw the faces of their wives and children, gaunt with hunger. He saw minor lords, unable to meet their quotas, looking to their neighbours with envious eyes. He had stockpiled grain, enough to ward off the immediate threat of famine, but it was a poultice on a festering wound. The only permanent solution was to bring the men home. But if he brought them home, the garrisons in Pentos and Lys would thin, the blockade would weaken, and the beast he had just chained would begin to stir.

The empire he had carved from chaos now strained beneath its own weight. It stretched across seas and deserts, from Winterfell to Braavos, Ghoyan Drohe to Lys. Its boundaries seemed infinite, its problems equally so. Dragons alone would not hold this empire together. Gold, grain, and men—these were the true sinews of power, and all were running thin.

“The Iron Bank will have its due,” the Braavosi had boasted once, as arrogant as kings. Now the bankers' heads adorned spikes at the Titan's feet, debts called in with steel rather than silver. Yet, as Aemond studied page after page detailing the vast, intricate web of obligations and assets seized from that mighty institution, he knew the Iron Bank would still have the final laugh if he failed to master what it left behind.

His gaze lingered on a single, battered gold coin. A dragon’s face, nearly worn smooth—Aegon the Conqueror, first of his name. Did Aegon ever ponder grain prices, or the cost of a siege engine? Did he ever lie awake, as Paul did now, recalling the meticulous arithmetic of his house’s Ducal obligations to CHOAM and the imperial treasuries, the delicate balance between feeding armies and ruling subjects? Or was his peace the peace of the sword? Aemond couldn’t say; he didn’t dream enough of the man to have a proper grasp of the life he lived.

A knock at the door, sharp and deferential. “Enter,” Aemond called, his voice low but edged with command.

In slipped two men: a pale, spindly man in black velvet, flanked by the Speaker assigned to the realm’s monetary affairs in Maester’s grey.

“The final vaults are secured,” said the velvet-clad auditor, voice as brittle as frost. “The remaining Braavosi keyholders have been accounted for. Three executed, two confined. We’ve begun inventory of the private reserves.”

“And the books?”

The man hesitated. “The books are… elaborate, my prince. Many debts, some of dubious standing. Some clients will not pay, now that Braavos is fallen.”

Aemond’s mouth curled in a light smile. “They will pay. If not in coin, in land or blood.”

A pause followed before the auditor cleared his throat discreetly. "The Iron Bank's vaults yielded enough in hard assets alone, Your Grace. As did Rogare. I had assumed that should sustain us for some time. Your uncharacteristic impatience, however, suggests otherwise."

"It should have," Aemond echoed quietly. "Yet nearly half of that gold is already pledged, debts owed to every lord, merchant, and prince from every corner of the known world. Debts we cannot currently afford to pay but must assume, or risk revolt. They all expect payment, or at least the option to borrow again."

Celtigar hesitated, his voice cautious. "We might refuse to recognise certain obligations. Some are to our enemies."

Aemond raised an eyebrow. "And become known as oathbreakers and thieves in addition to ruthless conquerors? No. In the business of banking, trust is more valuable than gold, and harder to regain."

He motioned for ink and parchment. “Send word to Lysandro Rogare in Lys: the merger is to finalise as planned. Rogare is to transfer all remaining holdings to King’s Landing within the month. The same for the Iron Bank. Have the vaults ready for transit. I want every coin, every ingot, every ledger and private note in Westeros before winter comes.”

He dipped his quill and began issuing orders—its sharpened tip scratching softly across parchment as he wrote swiftly, methodically, outlining reforms that would define an age. A temporary moratorium, for the duration of one standard year, on all interest accrual for debts owed to the former Iron Bank of Braavos and Rogare Bank of Lys by Westerosi houses in good standing. It would buy him time. It would buy their loyalty.

Next, the captured assets. He outlined the function of all seized bullion, gems, and treasures destined for the master vault of the Dragon’s Bank in King’s Landing. They were not coin to be spent, but rather a hard reserve. A foundation of absolute value upon which he would build his new currency. He had already begun the slow introduction of printed banknotes through the Merchant’s Guild, and this hoard would be their guarantee, the mountain of gold that made the paper worth more than the rag it was printed on. To release the gold into circulation would be to invite the very inflation he sought to avoid.

His quill hesitated, ink blotting the parchment briefly. Even now, his thoughts drifted back to the matter of the foreign debts. A quiet murmur of protest rose from the back of his mind, the cautious part of him screaming at the sheer scale of the liability he was taking on. Thousands of merchants, guilds, and nobles across two continents who held accounts with the defeated banks. He could always choose not to pay them a dime—

He silenced thought.

Settlement of these obligations, Aemond wrote, shall be deferred for a period of one year, to allow for the orderly consolidation of assets. In the interim, official writs of credit, backed by the full authority of the Iron Throne, shall be issued to all verified claimants. IOUs, they would call them. But they would be IOUs redeemable within his system, forcing his new subjects to trade with his guilds, to use his ships, to become enmeshed in his web.

He laid that decree aside and took up another sheet and began drafting a means to recoup his losses: An Imperial Taxation System shall be established across all territories newly sworn to the Iron Throne. A flat rate, standardised, simple to collect. But he added a concession, a spoonful of honey to help the medicine go down. For a period of five years, the imperial tithe in the cities of Braavos, Pentos, Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh shall be levied at half the standard rate, in recognition of their orderly integration into the Crown’s domain. A lie, but a useful one. He also decreed the creation of a crisis fund, a tenth of all imperial revenues to be held in a separate account, untouchable except by his direct order. Assuming the Iron Bank would be more conservative with their lending was a mistake that was quickly coming back to bite him. He resolved not to be caught unprepared again.

Finally, he came to the last, most vital piece of his plan. The grey-clad Speaker straightened as Aemond retrieved—from one of the lower drawers—the red, unmarked scroll reserved for his most secret orders. The first line of the decree, written in a careful cypher, commanded that all liquid capital of the Iron Bank and Rogare Bank must be held in Westerosi coin, not Essosi. The second line ordered the manufacture of debased forgeries, which will then be released back into circulation.

The goal was not to profit, but to shatter all faith in the local currencies, to turn a merchant’s purse into a bag of worthless metal in a mere fortnight. To create a panic so profound that the people themselves would beg for a stable alternative. Desperation would drive the conquered to cling to the stability he alone could offer. Harsh, perhaps cruel—but necessary. Aemond did not flinch from necessity.

Sanding the last decree, he handed it directly to the Speaker, who received it with a wordless bow. The rest of the scrolls were stamped with his official seal and handed to the auditor, who collected them on a silver platter with a bow of his own. 

The Speaker hesitated as the auditor retreated from the room. 

“You have something for me?” Aemond asked, turning his attention to the ledgers on his table once they were alone.

“A word from Dorne, Your Grace,” the man said softly. “Princess Aliandra sends her regards and asks when you’ll return to Sunspear. She is with child.”

Aemond paused. “Where is the letter?”

“At the Eyrie, Your Grace. With your Lady-wife. She is not pleased.” 

Another long pause, then a sigh. 

“Thank you,” Aemond said eventually, dismissing the Speaker.