(The Castellan's Office - Runestone, Late Autumn, 125 AC)
The sound of celebration filtered through the thick glass of the tower windows, muffled but undeniable. Down below, in the newly paved central plaza of the city, the smallfolk were marking the end of the harvest. There were bonfires burning, bards playing out-of-tune lutes, and the unmistakable scent of roasted pork and cheap ale permeating the crisp, cold evening air.
To Ser Yorbert Royce, that noise was music. It was the sound of prosperity. He leaned back in his heavy oak chair, a goblet of Arbor gold in his hand, his cheeks flushed with the warmth of the hearth and the satisfaction of a job well done.
"An excellent yield, Aeryn," Yorbert said, sighing contentedly. "The gods have truly smiled upon us this year. The granaries are filled to the rafters. We have enough grain to see us through the winter, even if it snows until the Moon turns blue. You should go down there, you know. The people want to see their 'Bronze Prince.' They want to raise a toast to you."
Aeryn Royce-Targaryen did not move from his position by the window. He was twelve years old, but the dying light of the sunset cast his shadow long and sharp across the maps spread out on the table, making him appear much older. He wore no festive finery; instead, he was clad in his usual doublet of reinforced grey wool, his mechanical leg brace of copper and steel gleaming faintly in the firelight.
Aeryn was staring North, toward the jagged peaks of the Giant's Lance. The summit was no longer grey stone; it was a blinding, pristine white.
"The gods did not smile, Uncle," Aeryn said, his voice devoid of the warmth that filled the room. "The gods were simply late."
Yorbert frowned, setting his goblet down on the table with a soft clink. "Late? What are you talking about? The wheat yields in the lower valleys are the highest they've been in a decade."
"The frost front," Aeryn replied, finally turning around. His violet eyes held no joy, only a cold, calculating assessment. "I checked the climate logs in the Vault. The temperature in the high passes dropped below freezing three nights ago. If that northern wind had blown just seventy-two hours earlier, the frost would have killed forty percent of the wheat before the scythes could touch it."
Aeryn walked over to the large slate blackboard that dominated one wall of the office. He picked up a piece of chalk.
"We were three days away from a moderate famine. One week away from a total crisis."
"But it didn't happen," Yorbert insisted, slightly annoyed by the boy's relentless pessimism. "We were lucky. Sometimes, Aeryn, you have to accept luck and enjoy it."
The sound of the chalk hitting the slate was sharp and violent. CRACK.
"Luck is a variable I cannot control," Aeryn snapped, with an intensity that made the old knight straighten in his chair. "And I refuse to build a kingdom on the hope that the wind blows in the right direction."
Aeryn began to write numbers. His hand moved with a frenetic speed, filling the slate with columns and figures.
"I have been running the consumption numbers," he said, not looking back. "The population of Runestone has doubled in three years. Thanks to the sewage systems, the infant mortality rate has dropped by sixty percent. Thanks to the port, we have immigration of craftsmen from Braavos and Gulltown."
He wrote a large figure in the center: 22,400.
"This is the current estimate of mouths under our direct protection, including the city, the castle, and the surrounding hamlets," Aeryn explained, his tone clinical. "An adult male performing heavy labor in the mines or on the docks requires approximately two thousand four hundred calories a day to maintain efficiency. A soldier of the Bronze Guard, training in full armor, requires three thousand."
He drew a multiplication line.
"Total daily consumption is not a suggestion, Uncle. It is a physical law. If it is not met, the body burns muscle. Then it burns fat. Then the immune system fails, and the fever comes. And finally, they die."
Aeryn pointed toward the window, toward the party.
"Those people singing down there do not know that they are alive by a statistical margin of error of five percent. They think summer lasts forever. They are cicadas. I need us to be ants."
"We have full granaries," Yorbert repeated, though with less confidence this time. "I inspected them myself. Mountains of grain."
"Mountains of rat food," Aeryn corrected with disdain. "I have calculated the spoilage rates. In standard wooden barns, rats consume or contaminate ten percent of the stock in the first three months. Moisture and mold take another fifteen percent if the winter is wet. Weevils take another five."
Aeryn violently crossed out the figure of the current harvest on the board.
"By spring, we will have lost a third of our food not to consumption, but to physics. Entropy. Inefficiency."
Yorbert looked at the board covered in white dust. He rubbed his temples. "So what do you propose? We cannot stop rats, Aeryn. They are part of nature."
"We can if we change the architecture," Aeryn said.
He went to his desk and unrolled a large blueprint of blue vellum. It wasn't a drawing of a castle or a war machine. It was a design for a tall, strange, cylindrical structure.
"Strategic Silos," Aeryn announced.
Yorbert got up and came over to look. "Towers? For storing grain?"
"Not simple towers. Vessels," Aeryn explained, pointing to the layers in the drawing. "Double-walled granite construction. The interior is not bare stone; it is lined with the same vitrified ceramic we use in the aqueducts. Waterproof. Smooth. Rats cannot climb it. Moisture cannot penetrate it."
Aeryn traced the lid of the silo with his finger.
"We fill the silo to the brim. Just before sealing it, we introduce three lit tallow candles at the top and close the lid hermetically with beeswax and clay."
"Candles?" Yorbert asked, confused. "What for? So the grain can read in the dark?"
"To kill the air," Aeryn said, with the patience of a master explaining to a slow student. "The fire consumes the remaining oxygen inside the sealed silo. When the oxygen is gone, the candles go out. And without oxygen, the weevils die. The mold does not grow. The grain enters stasis."
Aeryn looked his uncle in the eye.
"We can open that silo in three years, and the grain will be as fresh as the day it was reaped."
Yorbert looked at the blueprint, then at Aeryn. The idea was... alien. Unnatural. But, like everything the boy did, it possessed a terrifying logic.
"It will cost a fortune to build these," Yorbert muttered. "And you will need thousands of bushels of extra grain to fill them if you don't want to touch the daily supply."
"The treasury will pay for it," Aeryn sentenced.
...
(The Construction Site - Sector Three, One Month Later)
The north wind had begun to show its teeth, stripping the last brown leaves from the trees. But in Sector Three of Runestone, the work did not stop.
A hundred masons worked at a feverish pace under the supervision of the Institute's foremen. Scaffolding surrounded three massive stone cylinders that rose thirty feet into the air, dominating the skyline of the warehouse district.
Aeryn was there, wrapped in a wolf-skin cloak, inspecting the mortar mix.
Maester Helaebar stood beside him, shivering from both the cold and financial anxiety, clutching a ledger that flapped in the wind.
"My Lord, I must protest again," the Maester said, his voice shrill with nervousness. "We have spent nearly forty thousand dragons importing grain from the Riverlands to fill these... silos. We are buying at the peak of harvest prices. If we waited for summer..."
"If we wait for summer, we might be dead," Aeryn said, watching a crane—designed by himself—lift a block of stone. "Maester, tell me, what is the price of a loaf of bread during a siege?"
Helaebar blinked. "Well... it depends. Ten silvers. Perhaps a gold dragon if desperation is high."
"Exactly," Aeryn nodded. "The value of food is not fixed. It fluctuates with scarcity. It is the most volatile and dangerous market that exists."
Aeryn turned to the Maester, his breath forming clouds of steam in the freezing air.
"By building this reserve, I am not just storing food. I am stabilizing the currency of survival. I am buying insurance against chaos. If a blight hits the Vale, or if dragons burn the fields of the Reach, or if winter lasts five years... I will open a silo."
He pointed to the massive structures.
"And the price of bread in Runestone will remain flat. There will be no riots. There will be no starvation. And most importantly: my workers will keep working, and my soldiers will keep marching."
"It is a very long-term investment," Helaebar admitted, rubbing his gloved hands together.
"Starving peasants do not pay taxes, Maester," Aeryn said coldly. "They die. And a dead peasant is a lost asset that takes sixteen years to replace. That is administrative inefficiency."
A foreman approached, bowing low.
"Prince Aeryn, Silo One is ready for sealing. The candles are prepared."
Aeryn nodded. "Proceed. Use the superior quality wax. I want that seal airtight."
He watched as the men climbed to the top of the tower. He saw the momentary flicker of the candles before the heavy stone lid, lined with clay and wax, descended with a dull, definitive sound. THUD.
Inside there, time had stopped.
"One down," Aeryn murmured. "Four to go."
...
(The Vault - Deep Winter, 125 AC)
The snow had finally come, and this time it was not a warning. It was a shroud.
Runestone was buried under three feet of white. The port was quiet, the ships moored and secured. The streets were empty, save for the patrols of the Blue Cloaks walking with steady steps, their torches cutting through the darkness of the afternoon.
But underground, in the Vault, there was no winter.
The heat from the geothermal vents kept the temperature at a constant, dry sixty degrees. The air smelled of old paper and hot wax.
Aeryn sat alone at the large central table. The only light came from an oil lamp with polished bronze reflectors that illuminated the open logbook before him.
His quill scratched the parchment with rhythmic precision.
Logistics File: Project Cornucopia
* Status: Operational.
* Current Reserve Capacity: 3 Complete Silos.
* Volume: 120,000 bushels of hard wheat and barley.
* Estimated Sustainability: 18 months of total caloric sustainment for current population without rationing.
* Spoilage Rate: Reduced to <2% (Projection).
Aeryn laid down the quill. He rubbed his right wrist. His left hand, hidden under a black leather glove, rested inert on the table.
He thought of King's Landing.
His spies, through Casper's reports filed in Section 3, told him stories of endless feasts. Viserys celebrated every day as if it were the last, ignoring that winter was scratching at the gates. Rhaenyra and Alicent spent fortunes on silks and jewels, competing for prestige while the capital's granaries slowly emptied, trusting that the Reach would always provide.
They were children playing in the grass while the sun shone.
Aeryn touched the cold stone of the table. He did not play. He calculated.
He had turned the survival of his people into a mathematical equation, and he had solved it. He didn't need to pray to the Mother for an early spring. He didn't need to sacrifice bulls to the Old Gods.
He had his silos. He had his Vault. He had his machine.
"Let the frost come," Aeryn whispered to the darkness of the cave, his voice echoing among the infinite rows of shelves. "Let the snow cover the world."
He closed the logbook with a soft thud.
"I have done the math. And my numbers do not freeze."
He stood up, gathered his cane, and walked toward the solid bronze door. He turned the keys of the binary security system, and the gears spun with the sound of a perfect clock.
As the door sealed behind him, Aeryn Royce-Targaryen smiled. It was a small, almost imperceptible smile, but it was the smile of a man who had looked Death in the eye and said: "Not today. Today is not in the budget."