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Margaery's heart skipped a beat.
Canned food?
She remembered that agreement , the one that could change all of Westeros.
She had assumed that after last night's humiliating "negotiation," this man would tear up every promise he'd made. After all, she had already become Lynn's plaything.
She never expected him to still honor the agreement.
And worse , after conquering her so thoroughly, he was casually placing before her a gift that would drive any king mad. Presenting it like it was nothing.
Carrot and stick.
No. This wasn't a carrot anymore.
This was a mountain of gold. A mountain that she, and all of House Tyrell, could not refuse.
Heart unsettled, Margaery followed behind Lynn. Miranda trailed after them like a loyal shadow, close but not too close.
They moved through the castle to an enclosed area at the rear, ringed by tall wooden walls.
It was nothing like the rest of the castle. The place hummed with a strange, restless energy.
Thousands of Wildlings worked across the grounds, divided into groups, each with their own task. Some mixed a special clay, working it with their feet. Others tended fires. Still others processed fruits that gave off a sweet, heavy fragrance.
The whole scene was crude, primitive , and yet strangely ordered.
"This is my workshop."
Lynn gestured at the busy yard before them.
Margaery's gaze settled on the center of the grounds. Over a dozen enormous pits had been dug into the earth, their openings covered with thick wooden planks that left only narrow gaps between them. A faint, strange smell seeped out from those gaps , fermentation and soil, mixed into something she had no name for.
"My lord, this is..."
She let the sentence trail off, uncertain.
In her imagination, a workshop capable of producing those miraculous preserved goods should have been, if not grand, then at least precise and intricate. Something befitting the knowledge it housed.
Not this. Not a camp that looked like a Wildling tribe had packed up and left.
"Correct."
Lynn led her first to a group of Wildlings mixing clay. They combined a grayish-white earth with water, stomping through it with bare feet, then pressing and shaping the mass into large, heavy jars. The jars were ugly — lumpy, uneven , but the walls were thick as a man's fist.
"This is the container."
Lynn rapped his knuckles against one. It gave a dull, solid knock.
"It must be strong enough to hold against temperature change, and seal out everything from the outside."
Margaery nodded, filing the detail away.
Lynn moved her on.
Nearby, several large barrels sat filled with mashed blueberries and other wild fruits she didn't recognize. Rough cloth covered the tops. Tiny bubbles rose constantly through the surface, swelling and bursting.
"What is this?"
The sweet-sour smell was coming from here.
"Think of it as seeds," Lynn said simply. "I call it yeast. Mash the fruit, leave it somewhere warm, and it appears on its own." He pointed to a second row of barrels, larger, their contents churning so violently they looked like they were boiling. "Then you feed it to sweetened water. It eats the sugar — and breathes out a heavy gas. No color. No smell. But it sinks, all the way to the bottom."
He paused.
"It slows food from rotting. It can't stop the food itself from changing over time, but it's enough."
Margaery's eyes went wide.
She didn't understand the principles behind what he was describing. But she understood what she was seeing. This was knowledge she had never encountered , knowledge more remarkable than anything the maesters at the Citadel had spent their lives puzzling over.
"My lord," she said, and meant it fully, "your wisdom would shame every maester in the Citadel."
"It's not wisdom," Lynn said. "It's just how nature works."
He led her to the pits at the center of the yard. Two Wildlings heaved one of the thick planks aside together. That strange sour smell rolled up out of the darkness below.
Margaery peered in.
At the bottom, several large fired jars sat in neat rows. Another team of Wildlings was carefully loading grain into them , grain that had come down from the Riverlands.
"And then?" Her heart was hammering.
She knew. The most important step was coming.
Lynn didn't answer. He simply gestured.
Several Wildlings wheeled the violently fermenting barrels to the edge of the pit. They angled the barrel mouths over the opening and tilted them slowly.
Nothing visible poured out.
But Margaery could feel it , something unseen, flowing continuously from the barrels down into the dark.
The torches at the bottom of the pit began to flicker. They swayed once, twice, hard , and then, with a soft puff, went dark.
"Air makes food rot," Lynn said, his voice calm beside her ear. "This heavy gas pushes all the air out. What's left inside the jars is only the gas."
Margaery stepped back half a pace without thinking.
The air near the pit's edge had grown thick and stifling. Each breath felt slightly wrong.
This was impossible. He could control the invisible air itself.
When the last ember died at the bottom of the pit, Lynn gave the next order.
"Wait one hour. Let the gas fully displace the air."
The hour passed.
"Seal the jars!"
A dozen broad-shouldered Wildlings who had been waiting nearby moved at once. Each of them drew a deep breath and held it, filling their chests to the limit. Then, clutching heavy clay lids, they jumped without hesitation into the pit full of heavy gas.
Margaery pressed her hand over her mouth.
Without air down there, they would suffocate.
The Wildlings moved with agonizing slowness , deliberate, careful, afraid to stir any air down with them. One by one they pressed the lids onto the jars, then clawed their way back up the pit walls on hands and feet.
Two minutes. The whole thing took two minutes.
When they pulled themselves out, every face was deep red, every mouth gasping for breath. A few collapsed onto the ground entirely, coughing hard.
Not one of them complained.
Instead, their faces carried something , satisfaction, pride. The look of men who had done what was asked of them.
"For food, they'll take any risk," Lynn said. "Having a full belly through one winter means more to them than their own lives."
Margaery said nothing.
The sealing was done. A final group of Wildlings came forward, carrying buckets filled with a milky-white, viscous liquid. Tormund had sourced it , a sap the Wildlings called tree milk, common enough beyond the Wall. They used wooden spoons to work it into the seams around each lid, then brushed a coat across the jars themselves.
"The last step," Lynn said. "Sealing. When this sap dries, it becomes elastic. Neither moisture nor air can pass through."
He looked down into the pit.
"Finally, you store them somewhere cold enough." A pause. "Here, they'll keep for two years. Three years. Longer, perhaps, than the Long Night itself. Until the day we decide to open them."
He had someone pull a jar from a different pit , one that had been sealed for some time already. The surface was coated in frost. The tree milk around the lid had dried to a deep amber, hard as stone.
"This is what they'll look like."
Lynn turned to her.
"Before long, all of Dragonstone and the entire North will be tightening their belts — and storing every last scrap of food this way."
➤ Next: Half the Food
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