Solomon was the first to admit that his drawing ability was genuinely poor. He set the branch aside and shifted to language.
"It no longer relies on a single large waterwheel."
"Instead, a series of wooden paddles are fitted inside a long, angled wooden trough — forming a continuous looped chain."
"The power to drive it can come from a downstream waterwheel, transmitted up through gears. Or it can be driven by human or animal power — like this—"
He demonstrated the motion with his feet — the stepping action of a treadmill.
"As the chain turns, each paddle acts as a small water scoop, carrying water from the lower end upward, one stage at a time."
"As long as the chain is long enough and the trough is built high enough — in theory, we can send water to any height we choose."
If that was actually achievable, the mountain land was no longer dead land.
One of the old farmers couldn't hold the question in.
"Lord Solomon... then what about the second problem? How do we hold the water and soil in place?"
Solomon smiled at him and went back to drawing in the earth with the branch — a new diagram this time.
"To stop the soil washing away, we cannot farm the mountain slopes the way we farm the plains. We must follow the shape of the mountain and cut the land into layers — horizontal fields, one above the other."
The Moonstone Mountains were steep and severe — but ancient wisdom had never been willing to leave cultivable land unused.
He drew a series of steps onto the steep diagonal line.
"Like a staircase. Layer after layer."
Every pair of eyes widened. The branch moved across the earth.
"Each level of fields must be graded flat — only flat ground holds water."
"Along the outer edge of each cultivated level, we build strong berms from stone and packed earth, to hold the soil and water in place."
"The water from the high-lift noria enters at the highest terrace first. When that level is full, it flows through a controlled opening into the terrace below. Then the one below that — and so on, cascading downward, irrigating every level all the way to the foot of the mountain."
A complete picture unrolled itself slowly in every mind. People swallowed without noticing. There was no longer any doubt: the lord had been blessed by the Smith.
They could almost see it — the sheer face of the Moonstone Mountains carved into level after level of flat fields, clear water running along the berms, the slopes that had always been wasted made productive at last.
While the crowd was still suspended in this vision, a gentle voice cut through.
Evelyn had come to stand beside Solomon without anyone noticing. Her sapphire eyes held a particular brightness.
She smiled — and even with the ugly birthmarks she had drawn across her face, something in the expression was entirely her own.
"My dear young Lord Solomon."
"How much more of this are you keeping inside that head of yours?"
"The noria, the high-lift noria, and now these staircase fields... is this truly technology preserved from lost Valyria? I have never read anything like it in any book."
Solomon stood, brushing the earth from his hands. He did not look at Evelyn. His gaze moved out to the mountains, still caught in the last light of evening, and something in his expression went far away — as though he were looking through the distance at something not quite reachable.
Evelyn's question had found the center of what everyone else was silently wondering. Brin, the farmers, every person present — all eyes moved to Solomon's face and waited.
The old farmers leaned toward the Smith's blessing as their answer. That felt right to them. But they wanted to hear it from him.
He let out a single quiet word.
"No."
His voice was as level as always.
"This is technology from Yi Ti."
The words landed on the riverbank. Silence. Only the waterwheel creaking, only the river moving.
Westerosi nobility might know of Yi Ti. Common smallfolk certainly did not — so the name landed among them with an automatic weight of the exotic and the distant. In the world of ice and fire, Westeros was genuinely a provincial backwater compared to the great eastern civilizations. Smallfolk had all heard stories about the wealth of the Free Cities. In their minds, Westeros was mud and hard seasons, and everything east of the Narrow Sea was gold.
Evelyn studied Solomon's profile in the evening light — the lines of his face softer in the dusk than in daylight.
Really. Just like that. No hesitation.
You are a minor noble from the Riverlands. How exactly did you come into contact with the technical traditions of Yi Ti.
She filed it away without speaking.
The silence was broken by Brin.
He dropped to one knee in the mud in front of Solomon, raised his head, and his eyes held something that hadn't been there before. His voice came out loud with the force of everything he was feeling.
"My Lord!! Give this task to me!!"
"I, Brin, swear before the Seven — I will build Westeros's first terraced field on the Moonstone Mountains, for you!!"
Solomon came back to the present. He bent down and pulled Brin up with both hands — firmly, deliberately.
His palm came down hard on Brin's shoulder.
"Good!! Brin!! Go. Be the first to conquer those peaks for me!!"
Another half-month passed.
Brin walked at the front of the column. His large frame snapped the dead branches underfoot with every step — a sound like clean breaks. Behind him, twenty soldiers carried tools in silence, their expressions carrying something between excitement and the private pleasure of people who know they are about to change someone else's understanding of the world.
At the center of the column, several strong mules wheezed under the weight of heavy carts draped in thick black canvas. The wheels ground over the rough mountain path. With each lurch, the cargo shifted under the cloth — strange angular shapes pressing against it from beneath.
At the cliff settlement — Brin's old camp, the place that was meant to become a military stronghold in the mountains — the mood was entirely different.
More than a hundred young men were scattered across the campsite with the quality of stillness that comes after hope has been slowly ground down.
These were the second sons — the first wave to come up into the mountains after Solomon's land partition decree. They had arrived carrying the dream of owning their own land. What remained now was exhaustion and eyes that had gone flat.
Tam sat poking at a fire with a stick, working it with no real purpose. The coals barely caught. It matched what was left of his hope.
He had come here full of ambition, had said his goodbyes with something like pride. Now the inside of his chest was mostly despair.
He thought about the slope he had cleared — steep, rock-hard beneath a shallow skin of topsoil. Even pushing himself to exhaustion, he had only managed to break through the surface layer. Then a few days of rain had arrived and washed the seeds and the thin soil completely away, down the slope, into nothing.
His voice came out rough and quiet.
"Nothing can grow here."
"Are we... being... deceived..."
An older boy nearby cut him off sharply.
"Don't say that."
"Lord Solomon would not deceive us."
He paused. His own voice softened.
"Lord Solomon gave us the best treatment he could. Perhaps the truth is simply that farming isn't what we're meant for."
Without land, no food. Without food, no wife. Without a wife, no family of your own.
Their living now depended on what the mountain would give them — wild vegetables, foraged fruit, rabbits caught in snares. Hunting. The same life they had always looked down on the wildlings for living.
The only thing left from better days was the loot from fighting under Solomon — after buying back their equipment, each still had a few silver stags remaining.
And now all of the second sons shared the same private thought: let the next war come soon. There was nothing to farm here anyway. Farming didn't pay. A single enemy head in battle brought more than years of scratching at this soil.
When would they fight again.
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