author's note: the chapters from 169 to 173 were misplaced from a different story, sorry for the confusion, the chapters are updated now.
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Solomon listened in silence, his fingers tapping an unconscious rhythm on the table.
He knew Olivier was right. They had to find ways to cover the outgoings. But the immediate priority was stability — everything else came after. A riot involving three thousand people could paralyze the entire domain in an afternoon.
He let the silence hold for a while, then spoke. His voice was not loud, but the room went quiet for it.
"Gold is not the problem."
"What we need to do now is bring the domain under control."
"Everything else, we can build from nothing."
He stood.
"Tomorrow, I will go to the refugee camps and establish order."
"Naturally," he added, "establishing order will involve a degree of force."
The people around the table — Olivier, Lauslin, Lushen, Brin, Evelyn — watched him, and though none of them knew yet exactly what form that force would take, something in his manner settled a weight they had been carrying since before he arrived. The anxiety in the room was still there, but underneath it, something had steadied.
Early the next morning, Solomon did not linger. He gathered Brin, Lushen, Olivier, and more than forty of the domain's riders, and drove straight for the worst of it — the refugee camps.
The horses' hooves struck the dry dirt road. Dust rose behind them in a choking cloud.
Solomon turned his head and let his voice carry to Brin, Lushen, and Olivier riding alongside.
"Remember. Follow my orders the moment they come."
All three tightened their reins and nodded — one sharp, deliberate motion each.
The words were barely out of his mouth before the noise reached them.
A squad of Solomon's soldiers was blocking the road ahead. Some of them still had dried blood on their chainmail from Willowbrook. Every face carried the same expression — the look of men who have been pushed past a point and are now operating on rage alone.
They had a woman surrounded in a rough circle, voices raised, hands pressing down on weapon grips with a force that made the leather creak.
Solomon pulled his horse up short. The cavalry column behind him stopped in one fluid, coordinated motion.
Lushen spurred forward.
"What is happening here!!"
"Why is there disorder!!"
The soldiers saw the lord's banner. The crowd split open immediately, making a path.
The soldier in command of the group saw Solomon and seemed to find his footing again — the expression of fury shifted into something that was relief and grief tangled together. He strode forward and dropped to one knee with a heavy, deliberate impact, his voice rough and shaking with suppressed anger.
"Lord Solomon!! You must give us justice!!"
Solomon's gaze moved past him.
In the center of the ring of soldiers, a woman had crumpled to the ground. Her hair was loose and wild. Her linen dress had been torn. One side of her face was swollen red from a palm strike. She had her arms around a boy of fourteen or fifteen, who was pressing against her with blood at the corner of his mouth and a stare full of hatred aimed at the direction of the refugee camp.
Solomon swung down from the horse in a single, clean movement.
He walked to the soldier still kneeling before him and pulled him to his feet.
"Stand up and tell me what happened."
His voice was quiet. It carried an absolute authority that had nothing to do with volume.
"Tell me everything."
The soldier straightened, pointed at the woman behind him, and the words came out in a current of outrage and grief.
"My Lord!! That is Margaret!! Her husband Yoni — he is still serving in your army!!"
"We were carrying out our patrol on the main road when we found her and her child — beaten like this — by those refugee scum!!"
He breathed in hard, fighting for control.
"We were on our way to find them and get an accounting!! We didn't expect to meet you here, My Lord Solomon!!"
Solomon looked at the woman. When she saw the lord himself standing in front of her, she tried to get to her feet to greet him properly, but her legs failed her and she went back down.
She wiped at her tears. Her voice came in broken pieces, but she held onto her composure with everything she had.
"My Lord..."
"I am Margaret, from Wedge Fort. My husband Yoni answered your call — he went to fight. My elder son too. And my younger son, the one who had just started his own household, he went as well."
"The only ones left at home are me and my boy Thomas. He's fifteen. No grown men in the house. But the land is our life — I couldn't let it go to waste."
"Our old village houses were assigned to the refugees, so Thomas and I have been getting up before dawn every day to go down and work the fields."
Her voice began to shake badly.
"But just now, a group of them — the new arrivals — they came into our fields."
"They pushed through our crops like rats. Trampled our grain. Our cabbages. They said they were starving."
"My son Thomas went and argued with them. He told them it was our land, that our men had gone to fight for you."
She pointed at the blood at the corner of her son's mouth. The tears came again, beyond holding back.
"They hit him. And they pushed me down."
"And they said—"
She steadied herself.
"They said that Lord Solomon himself had promised them this grain when he brought them here."
Solomon turned. Fast. His gaze went directly to Olivier, who had just dismounted and come up behind him.
The look was not angry. It was the look of a man who has just asked a question and is waiting for the answer. But every person within twenty feet of it felt their skin tighten.
"Olivier."
His voice was, as always, entirely level.
"Did you not say the refugees have food rations?"
Olivier's face drained to white.
He looked at the scene in front of him. His lips moved and produced nothing for a moment.
"My Lord... the camp does have substantial provisions. I give you my word." He stepped forward, his expression caught between confusion and distress. "We have been rationing strictly to conserve, but the black bread and the porridge are more than sufficient — every person gets their minimum. They should not be raiding fields for grain."
He landed on what seemed, to him, to be the only explanation.
"There must be some among them who are purely malicious. Greedy to the bone."
Solomon did not respond to this. He was already considering other possibilities. Someone in the distribution chain was skimming. Or — and this felt more likely — a shadow hierarchy had formed inside the camp, with certain people controlling what others received.
He turned away from Olivier. He looked at Lushen.
"Lushen. Get out a silver stag."
Lushen caught the meaning immediately. He reached into the leather pouch at his hip, produced a coin, and walked to Margaret, holding it out to her.
Solomon helped the woman to her feet.
"My Lady. This is compensation for your requisitioned house. And for what was taken from your field."
Margaret looked at the coin. She shrank back, waving her hands in horror.
"No! My Lord! I cannot take your silver from you!!"
"Take it."
No elaboration. Solomon was already turning back toward his horse, and the two words carried a finality that left no room for argument.
From the saddle, he extended his arm and pointed at Olivier.
His face held no expression at all.
"Every house in the villages below that was requisitioned for refugee accommodation."
"Compensate the owners."
Olivier closed his eyes. A visible tremor passed through his face.
No lord in the Seven Kingdoms has ever paid compensation for smallfolk housing they requisitioned. It is the lord's right. It has always been the lord's right. Solomon genuinely did not treat money as something that needed to be held onto.
Solomon sat straight in the saddle, reined the horse in a slow half-turn, and let his gaze pass over every soldier's face in the crowd around him.
"I will not let those who bled for me bleed and weep."
"That is my promise. To every one of you."
Margaret's fingers closed around the silver stag. She felt the cold weight of it.
Whatever she had been holding together in herself gave way entirely. She went to her knees on the road and wept — not the weeping of terror and despair, but something that had broken open in a completely different direction, something she hadn't known she still had room for.
Her young son stared up at the man on horseback with wide, shining eyes.
The soldiers standing around them watched it happen. The fury in their faces moved through them and was replaced by something that had no clean name — a heat in the chest, a tightening of the jaw, a taller way of standing.
They pulled their fists closed and lifted their heads higher.