Barna seemed to remember something. He pointed toward the door.
"My Lord — the salvaged equipment you asked me to bring back from Seagard. I have it all. Every piece made it."
He hesitated.
"But... we've already captured superior equipment from the Lege armory. These are worn-out scraps. Do you still... need them?"
There was a note of worry in his voice — the worry of a man who had risked his life to bring something back and was now afraid it had become worthless.
Solomon's face shifted. A small smile.
"No, Barna — you brought them back at exactly the right time."
He turned to Lushen.
"Have someone do basic repairs on the salvaged equipment. No matter how worn, there will be smallfolk who want to buy it."
The armor buyback policy had generated enthusiasm far beyond what he had anticipated. Nearly every old smallfolk had dipped into their battle spoils to purchase equipment. If he had offered warhorses and plate armor for sale, some of the wealthier ones would have bought those too.
Barna stood very still. He hadn't expected this — hadn't expected that a task which had gone wrong, producing results that seemed outdated, still had a place in the lord's calculations.
A surge of satisfaction and purpose cleared away the last of his unease.
"Barna."
"My Lord!" He straightened immediately.
Solomon walked over and placed a hand on Barna's thin shoulder.
"You've had a hard time of it. Take a few days first. Bathe. Get into clean clothes."
"After that, I have a more important task for you."
He paused, watching the expectation kindle in Barna's eyes, and delivered the appointment.
"I am naming you mayor of Riverbend Town."
He tilted his head.
"Barna — you are a clever man. Tell me: what ways are there to make money on the Green Fork?"
Barna's mind was still slightly foggy. He had learned about recent events on the road — the two new towns, the campaigns — and he thought for a long moment before answering, with some uncertainty.
"...Fish?"
"Fish?" Solomon shook his head, the faint smile still in place. "How much money does fish actually make?"
He turned and walked to the large map on the wall. His finger found the position of Riverbend Town — an unremarkable dot beside a branch of the Trident. Then he moved it slowly upward, to the vast deep-green region rising behind the Vikane Valley.
Barna recognized it immediately. The Moonstone Mountains.
Solomon looked back at him. His voice was quiet, but it filled the hall.
"Barna, I am giving you full authority over Riverbend Town."
"Personnel, funding — you can request whatever you need from Evelyn. I have one requirement."
He turned fully and fixed Barna with a gaze that burned.
"In the shortest possible time — turn a loss into a profit. And then increase revenue."
The pressure hit Barna like a physical weight. A newly built village with no money and no people — how was he supposed to increase revenue?
"But, Lord Solomon..."
He tried anyway.
"The ways to generate income in a situation like this... we could build a simple dock, like the other small towns along the Trident. Let passing ship convoys moor there, collect berthing fees and resupply charges..."
Solomon cut him off cleanly.
"No."
He looked at Barna's confused eyes and spoke each word with deliberate weight.
"We are not building a dock."
"We are building — a fleet."
Barna, Evelyn, and Lushen all had the same reaction simultaneously. They were certain they had misheard.
Solomon's finger came down hard on the Moonstone Mountains.
"Do you see this? Hundreds — thousands — of ancient trees, a century old, some a thousand years. The finest shipbuilding timber in the world."
Something like barely-contained excitement entered his voice.
The Riverlands is covered in trees and has no great fleet. The Iron Islands are a barren pile of rocks with barely a tree to speak of, and somehow the Ironborn have the most powerful naval tradition in Westeros. Something is deeply wrong with this picture.
"I want you to establish a shipyard in Riverbend Town."
"We start small — river barges and fishing boats. Sell them to the fishermen and merchants along the Trident."
"Then we build larger, sturdier river merchant vessels. Eventually—"
He paused.
"River warships. Ocean warships."
Barna's mouth had opened slightly. He was staring at Solomon with the expression of a man watching a mountain grow out of flat ground.
This is what the lord has been carrying in his head this whole time.
"You can make your own decisions about how to proceed — send men to negotiate with the great lords. Tell them we offer custom shipbuilding. We can sell ships. We can lease escort vessels. We can eventually form our own merchant fleet, carry our goods along the Trident to every corner of the Riverlands."
Solomon's pace quickened as the vision expanded.
"We can even sail out to the Free Cities."
He stopped, looked at the thoroughly stunned Barna, and let the silence carry the rest.
"In short — I will not interfere with anything you do. Every decision is yours. You will build something out of nothing, on your own."
The hall was absolutely silent.
Barna's heart was hammering.
The failure, the confusion, the guilt — everything that had weighed on him since the dungeon in the Crossing — collapsed in this moment under something he had never felt quite so strongly: the staggering force of being trusted completely, by someone who had every reason not to trust him, with the most ambitious thing they had ever described.
This is no longer just a job.
How could I possibly fail him after this.
He drew a deep breath, dropped to one knee, and bowed his head.
"By your command, Lord Solomon."
His voice had nothing of the roughness left in it.
"I will not disappoint you."
The conversation with Barna had taken more out of Solomon than he'd expected — and the Bronn situation was sitting in the back of his mind like a stone. There was a real possibility that idiot had dragged him into trouble with House Lannister.
He called for Brin and decided to ride out and inspect the domain.
The wartime mobilization had ended. Only the forty riders who held enough good land to support themselves without farming — those whose rented acreage generated sufficient income — remained as full-time cavalry. Everyone else had gone back to their fields.
Reconstruction and agricultural recovery were in full motion.
He had barely ridden out of the Lion's Den, moving along the edge of the cultivated land, when he spotted something strange.
A long line of people stretched across the plain outside the valley, following the banks of the river Solomon had named the Little Trident — the stream that came down from the mountains — all the way up the terraced fields that climbed the lower slopes.
Every person in the line was carrying something. Wooden buckets. Clay jars. The weight bent their steps, made every footfall heavy and slow.
The path was uneven. The water sloshed and rocked with each step. By the time they reached the fields, at least a fifth of what they were carrying had already spilled onto the path. What actually reached the crops was barely enough to make a difference.
Solomon counted quietly. A strong laborer, working from sunrise to sunset without stopping, could manage to water a very small patch of ground at this pace. Nothing more.
His gaze moved past the cultivated lower fields to the higher slopes. The newer cleared land up there was too far from the river to reach with buckets. The crops on those terraces were visibly shorter, paler, yellowing at the edges — the unmistakable look of plants that are not getting enough water.
He stopped his horse and watched the procession.
From the river, fill a bucket, carry it uphill to the field. Even walking quickly, a grown man needed a significant stretch of time for each trip.
Three rivers ran through his domain. Three. And his people were hand-carrying water in clay jars.
Solomon stared at the fields and felt something that was genuinely close to disbelief.
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