Tyrion Lannister adjusted the wide felt hat that partly hid his hair, clumsily dyed a dull brown the night before. His clothes — a dark wool tunic and sturdy, unadorned breeches — were those of a moderately well-off petty merchant: an outfit he had assembled with care so as to look neither too rich nor too poor. He limped slightly as he crossed the makeshift bridge spanning a foul gutter at the unofficial entrance to Fleabottom, near the docks. He had chosen that entrance because it was less guarded than the main gates, hoping to melt into the tide of dockworkers and common folk looking for work or delivering goods. He needed to see for himself.
The tidbits gathered from hearsay were incomplete. A genius blessed by the Seven? An incarnation of the invisible smith pulling the strings of a nascent industrial empire? It sounded too good, too… theatrical to be entirely true. But the products were there — tangible, effective. The luxury bordello he had frequented during his stay stank now of that soft, heady scent. The "Vision" lamp lit his reading table better than a fine candle. Something extraordinary was happening in that sinkhole, and his avaricious mind could not resist the urge to unravel the mystery.
He plunged into the maze of alleys, pretending to look for a cordage supplier. The quarter's transformation, even if it did not reach the standards of Castral Roc, was astonishing compared to his memory of previous visits. Some lanes had been roughly paved; gutters ran along the walls, carrying away part of the filth. The smell remained, but different — less stagnant rot, more industrial smoke, warm tallow, and that strange, clean, sharp scent of pine that seemed to emanate from certain buildings.
More surprising still was the relative order. Fewer aggressive beggars, fewer threatening gangs. He passed several patrols of armed men in plain boiled-leather garb, each wearing a red armband. They moved with silent discipline, their eyes scanning the crowd not with hostility but with deterrent vigilance. That must be Jem's militia, thought Tyrion. A private force keeping the peace and protecting the secrets.
He found the washing-machine workshops without difficulty. The building was huge for the neighborhood, humming with activity. Through an open door he glimpsed rows of workers assembling wooden frames, attaching drums and fine-tuning mechanisms with surprising speed and coordination. He noted the use of jigs for cutting, standardized tools. This was not mere craftsmanship; it was something far more complex. The division of labor was obvious: one team for frames, another for drums, another for mechanisms, another for final assembly. Efficient. "Terribly efficient," he thought.
Further on, he spotted the Soapworks. The smell was stronger there, but not unbearable. Through a half-open door he saw enormous cauldrons where men stirred a thick paste with long paddles. In another section, women and children cut and stamped bars of soap with mechanical precision, using frames strung with wires. The bars were then stacked on immense shelves that reached up to the ceiling of an adjacent drying shed. Production was clearly massive.
He tried to strike up a conversation with a worker leaving the building, wiping sweat from his brow. "Impressive work!" Tyrion called in a merchant's upbeat tone. "I'm looking to buy soap wholesale for my shop in Sombreval. Who should I talk to?" The man eyed him with suspicion. "You ought to see Mistress Elara, the central office. Over there." He vaguely pointed to a sturdier building a little way off, then shrugged and hurried away as if afraid of having said too much.
Tyrion noted the name. Elara. The sales manager, probably. He continued his exploration, passing the ropewalk where a strange machine operated by two men was turning raw fibers into thick rope at a startling pace. He watched carpenters mass-produce the small boxes for "Blossom" soap, others assembling the bases for "Vision" lamps. Everywhere the same organization, the same silent discipline, the same efficiency.
He tried again to glean information from a foreman supervising the unloading of a timber cart. "Fine oak! Where do you get such wood near King's Landing? I'm having trouble sourcing—" The foreman, a stocky man with a weathered face, gave him a cold look. "We manage. None of your business. Move along, merchant. You're blocking the way."
Suspicion was a wall. These people were either loyal or terrified; he leaned toward the former. They protected their secret. Tyrion understood he would get nothing more by direct questioning today. But he had seen. He had seen the scale, the organization, the efficiency. It was a deliberate, planned system executed with fearsome precision. And behind that system stood a will. That of this so-called "Tony." He doubted the boy was really called that.
As he retraced his steps, feigning to look for the exit, his gaze caught a man in his forties supervising the assembly of barrels in a small yard. The man looked competent, but a flash of frustration crossed his face as he scolded two clumsy apprentices. He wore slightly better clothes than the ordinary laborers, and a small purse at his belt seemed well filled. Tyrion noted the face, the workshop's location. A foreman in a less strategic section, perhaps more susceptible to the lure of gain than to blind loyalty? A lead for the future. A small crack in the wall of secrecy.
He left Fleabottom with his head buzzing with hypotheses. The genius was real. His work was impressive. And it was dangerous. Dangerous for whom? For the merchants, certainly. For the nobles whose traditional incomes were threatened, without doubt. But perhaps, in the long run, for the balance of power itself. A thought that, strangely, did not entirely displease the despised dwarf of House Lannister.
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Far from the bustle of King's Landing, Tony Stark trod the rich, dark soil of the Hollard valley, inhaling the pure air. Three days of intensive prospecting with Theron, guided by an old toothless hunter who knew the region like the back of his hand, had confirmed his wildest hopes. This forgotten valley was a mine.
They had followed the tumultuous river and identified several sites perfect for primitive hydroelectric dams and watermills. They had found outcrops of deep red rock — an unmistakable sign of abundant iron ore, and not only near the surface. Theron, scraping the stone with his improvised geologist's hammer, nodded with satisfaction. "Good ore, lad. Rich. We can make steel here — real steel, not just re-melted scrap."
They had also located substantial deposits of quality clay, perfect for bricks and crucibles, and potential quarries of limestone and sandstone — the ingredients for cement. And all around them, forest: thousands of acres of oak, pine and beech — an almost infinite resource of timber and fuel.
But the valley was empty. Desperately empty. Apart from Dontos's crumbling keep and a handful of miserable hamlets sheltering a few resigned peasant families, there was nothing. Miles of untamed, unexploited wilderness.
"It's cursed land, my lord," their old guide had told them in a rasping cough. "Since the rebellion, the Hollards have gone from bad to worse. King Robert let the last scion return, but no one wants to live here. Folks say the dead haunt the woods." He lowered his voice. "And then there are the others. Bandits. They hide in the hills. Men from neighboring lords come to hunt and fell timber as if it were their own. Ser Dontos says nothing. He's either too frightened… or drunk."
Tony listened. Ghosts did not frighten him. Bandits and encroaching neighbors were predictable security problems Jem and his men could handle. What mattered was present: resources, space, isolation, and a local authority that was nonexistent or corruptible. A blank canvas.
That evening, in the cold, drafty great hall of Hollard keep — which they had hastily cleaned and secured — Tony unrolled his plans before Lira and Theron. These were not hastily scribbled sketches but detailed diagrams, the fruit of months of thought. They were not going to build a few workshops; they were planning an actual, planned industrial town.
"Here," he said, pointing to a wide meander of the river, "the industrial heart. A dam for hydraulic power. Next to it, the new forge, far larger than yours, Theron, with blast furnaces to produce pig iron, then converters for steel." Theron's eyes widened at the scale envisaged. "Then rolling mills, presses, machine shops with new tools."
He moved his finger to the hills. "Here, the iron mines. Straight roads, maybe even wooden rails and wagons to carry raw materials. There, the cement works near the limestone and clay quarries." Lira frowned. "Cement works?"
"The binder," Tony explained with a flash of excitement in his eyes. "The key to building fast and solid. Lorcas is working out the exact formula from my notes. Heat limestone and clay to high temperatures, grind the resulting powder… Mixed with sand and water, it becomes an artificial rock that hardens even underwater. No more flimsy timber-and-wattle constructions. We'll pour foundations, raise solid walls, build durable roads." He showed another section of the plan depicting rows of identical buildings. "And to go even faster: standardized blocks. We'll mass-produce uniformly sized fired-clay bricks or, with our cement, primitive concrete blocks. Assembled with mortar, we can raise walls ten times faster than with irregular stone. Decent housing for thousands of workers, vast, solid workshops…"
He looked up, his gaze bright with impatience. "We're not going to be content with a few shacks. We will build a planned, efficient, productive town. Val-Engrenage. And we'll do it quickly." Theron shook his head, stunned by the project's scope. "Boy… it's… it's the work of a generation. Building all that… it will take years. Ten, maybe twenty."
"Six months," Tony shot back, his voice sharp and uncompromising.
Lira and Theron stared at him, incredulous. "Six months?" Lira echoed. "Impossible, Tony. Logistics, manpower, weather…" "Nothing is impossible with the right method," Tony asserted. "Standardization. Division of labor. Rigorous planning. Cement and blocks will save us enormous time on construction. The hydraulic sawmill will supply timber at record speed. The forge will make tools and metal parts. We'll bring men from Fleabottom in successive waves as housing becomes available. This will be a colossal chantier, the biggest these lands have ever seen. But it's necessary."
He leaned over the map, finger tracing future roads, locations of factories, housing districts. "We must establish ourselves here firmly and fast, before our enemies in King's Landing realize what we are doing. Before neighboring lords understand this valley is no longer their playground. We must create a fait accompli. In six months, Val-Engrenage will not be a project. It will be an industrial and demographic reality they cannot ignore."
Lira and Theron fell silent, crushed by the plan's madness yet, despite themselves, electrified by the absolute certainty radiating from Tony. He did not doubt. He did not see obstacles, only solutions. Six months to build an industrial town from nothing. It was madness.