The Lion's Den council hall had been moved to the third level of the mountain interior, where it opened onto a wide unglassed platform looking out over the heights.
The lower chambers were too oppressive — dark all day, dependent on torches and candles. The new hall at least had the wind.
The mountain itself now housed more than three hundred people and sixty-odd families. Small, but complete in its essentials, and still being developed.
At this moment, only Solomon and Evelyn remained in the hall. Olivier had already departed with a group to purchase seeds, grain, and breeding animals — chickens, ducks, and livestock — from the towns and holdings of neighboring lords.
The full count of Solomon's court was three people: Evelyn, Brin, and Lushen.
Mountain wind moved through the open platform and lifted the edges of the large parchment spread across the table.
Evelyn leaned over it. Her gold hair fell forward. Her pale fingers rested on a new diagram.
She had drawn it herself, following instructions, though she didn't fully understand what she'd made. The structure was several times more complex than the noria — a massive waterwheel connected to a wooden shaft covered in raised protrusions, and at the other end of the shaft, a colossal hammer, its shape almost theatrical in its exaggeration.
Pure curiosity filled her voice.
"Lord Solomon — what is this one?"
She lifted her eyes, sapphire gaze fixed on him.
"It looks like some kind of variation on the noria — like the high-lift noria, using waterwheel power. But this enormous hammer... what is it for?"
Solomon traced the power transmission line on the diagram with his finger.
"A water-powered trip hammer."
"A tool that lets our blacksmiths stop using their own bodies."
Evelyn repeated the phrase slowly.
"Water-powered... forging?"
His voice was calm and clear, carrying the particular steadiness that made difficult things sound manageable.
"The principle is close to the noria — water current strikes the wheel and turns it."
His finger stopped on the shaft covered in raised lobes.
"The key is this camshaft. Each time the waterwheel completes a rotation, these lobes catch the hammer head and lift it to its highest point — then release it."
He made the gesture: something lifting, then dropping sharply.
"The hammer falls under its own weight. Hard. Once, then again, then again — endlessly repeating."
Evelyn's breath paused for a moment. The core of the design reached her instantly.
She looked at Solomon, and something bright opened in her eyes.
"A hammer that needs no human power. Never tires. And hits harder than any blacksmith alive."
Solomon nodded, a small smile at the corner of his mouth.
"Exactly."
A general education from another world, and here in Westeros it makes me look like a genius. Remarkable.
Evelyn's gaze returned to the diagram. She let herself imagine it — water thundering, the great wheel turning, the heavy hammer rising and falling with that sound of rushing air, iron sparks scattering with each blow against red-hot metal.
She had never seen anything like this design. She had loved books since childhood. Her father had refused to send her to the Citadel — she was a daughter, and that was that — but he had searched for books on her behalf, spending considerable sums, and because of that she had grown into something uncommon for a Westerosi woman: an educated mind that could hold its own against any male noble's.
And yet everything she had been proud of was being quietly ground to dust by the young man in front of her.
She raised her head and looked at Solomon. She genuinely wondered what else he was holding back that he hadn't shown yet.
From the day she had come to him, she had witnessed miracle after miracle. There was a smile in her voice that she herself hadn't noticed.
"Which means—"
"We can use it to forge armor. And weapons."
Solomon confirmed it.
"Yes."
"Our blacksmiths will be freed from heavy physical labor. They can focus on the finer work — grinding, fitting, assembly."
Evelyn went completely quiet. She stared at him. This young man was too strange. He always produced something world-altering from an angle no one else could see — from the noria to the high-lift noria, to terraced fields that had never existed in the mountains, and now this colossal thing called a water-powered trip hammer.
He was hiding something deeper than any secret she carried.
Solomon didn't linger on the topic. He rolled up the diagram and moved to the regional map of the Moonstone Mountains beneath it.
His finger found a steep peak on the map.
Cliffside.
"The new smallfolk scattered across the individual villages in the mountains — our new people — need a permanent home. A real one."
"Cliffside."
It was a formidable position: a sheer cliff with rapids running beneath it, accessible by only one narrow mountain path. Extraordinarily defensible. If he hadn't broken the defenders psychologically during the initial campaign, it would have been nearly impossible to take.
"They cannot continue living scattered the way they are — it's unsafe, and it can't be governed effectively."
"On Cliffside, we will build the fifth military town."
Solomon picked up the quill, loaded it with ink, and began sketching in the map's empty margins.
"This is the most important stake we drive into the mountains. The first line of defense against the wildlings. A mountain city built into the rock itself — tier after tier, hard to reach and harder to take."
The quill moved across the parchment — crude shapes, but legible: a winding road cut into the mountainside, layered defensive terraces stacked one above the other, and at the very summit of the cliff, a square representing the main keep.
"The road spirals around the mountain — narrow and full of tight turns, so any attacking force cannot form a proper line."
"We build flat terraces at different heights for housing and defensive positions. Each terrace is a shield for the one below it."
Evelyn looked at the rough sketch. It was not beautiful — it was barely recognizable as a drawing — but a three-dimensional fortress seemed to press itself up off the paper anyway, severe and purposeful.
Solomon set down the quill and pressed his hand flat on the page.
"This mountain city will be a nail. A deep, hard nail driven into the bone of the Moonstone Mountains."
To control the range, you needed people in it. The mountains had previously offered no farmable land, no stable living conditions. Now that both existed, the time to move was now.
"Then we build the second. The third. The fourth."
"Each will be a watchtower, keeping watch over every movement inside and outside the range. Each will be a secure rear base for storing grain and weapons. And each will be a bridgehead for pushing deeper into the mountains."
Evelyn looked at the nail on the map, then thought about the Three-Elder System running in the four existing military towns.
"How do we govern the people in this new town?"
Veteran soldiers were in short supply. The four existing towns had absorbed their allocation. There were none left to spare for two new full towns and the scattered refugee villages — not enough to establish the Three-Elder System everywhere at once.
Solomon's answer came without hesitation.
"Them, of course."
"The second sons who followed Brin and carved those terraces out of the rock. The ones who fought under me and bought their standing in blood and sweat."
He looked at Evelyn. Something in his eyes had the quality of someone studying a board several moves ahead.
Evelyn went quiet. These were children. The oldest of them were barely twenty. But she didn't speak against it. When Solomon had made up his mind, she had learned there was no easy changing it.
"This new military town will operate under the Three-Elder System. The second sons who demonstrated the most ability and leadership — ranked according to the military merit they earned in battle — will serve in order as family heads, village elders, and district heads."
"They will have standing. They will have authority over the smallfolk under their care."
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