(The District of Ash - Runestone, Autumn 126 AC)
The Citadel in Oldtown was a place of silence. It was a place where knowledge was chained in iron, locked in dark cells, and jealously guarded by grey men who believed that the world was finished and all that remained was to catalog it.
The Institute of Public Improvements in Runestone was the opposite. It was a place of noise.
It occupied a converted fortress on the edge of the city, now surrounded by kilns, workshops, and glass foundries. The air smelled of sulfur, sawdust, and hot metal.
Aeryn Royce-Targaryen walked through the main hall. He was thirteen years old, clad in a tunic of severe black with silver thread. He walked with a rhythm that had become the heartbeat of the city: step, clank, step, clank.
Around him, the mind of the Vale was at work.
He had sent messengers to the Free Cities, to the Alchemists' Guild in King's Landing, and even to the back alleys of Oldtown. His offer was simple: If you have an idea that the Maesters call heresy or the Guilds call impossible, come to Runestone. I will not give you a chain. I will give you gold and a laboratory.
And they had come.
Disgraced engineers from Myrish workshops. Alchemists who wanted to do more than make wildfire. Maesters who had been expelled for asking "why" too many times.
Aeryn stopped at a large wooden table where a group of men were arguing over a trough of grey sludge.
"Report," Aeryn commanded.
A man with singed eyebrows and hands stained with soot looked up. He was Galen, a former mason from Braavos.
"It works, Prince Aeryn," Galen said, breathless with excitement. "The mixture. We used the volcanic ash you imported from Dragonstone, mixed with the lime and the crushed pottery shards."
Galen pointed to a block of grey stone sitting in a tank of water.
"We poured it yesterday. Underwater. It didn't dissolve. It hardened."
Aeryn reached into the tank. He touched the block. It was cool, smooth, and harder than sandstone.
Hydraulic Cement.
"This changes the harbor expansion," Aeryn said aloud. "We don't need to drive wooden piles that rot in ten years. We can pour the foundations of the new pier directly into the sea. We can build sea walls that storm waves will break against."
He looked at Galen.
"Scale it up. I want ten tons of this 'Liquid Stone' ready by the end of the month. We are going to pave the road to the Gates of the Moon. No more mud."
"Yes, My Lord!"
...
(The Tower of Mirrors - The Roof of the Institute)
Aeryn climbed the stairs to the highest point of the complex. The wind was brisk, whipping his silver hair across his face.
Maester Helaebar was waiting for him, clutching his robes against the chill. Next to the Maester stood a strange contraption: a tall wooden mast with three articulated arms, each holding a polished bronze mirror and painted wooden shutters.
"The test is scheduled for noon," Helaebar said, checking the sun. "The Gulltown station is ready."
"Proceed," Aeryn ordered.
Helaebar pulled a lever. The wooden arms of the machine snapped into a specific configuration. The mirrors caught the sun, flashing a blinding beam of light toward a distant hill, miles away.
Flash. Pause. Flash-Flash. Pause.
Aeryn watched the horizon.
Two minutes passed.
Then, a glint of light appeared on the distant hill. A reply.
"Signal received," Helaebar confirmed, marking a slate. "They repeat the code: 'Cargo Safe'."
Aeryn nodded, satisfied.
The Optical Telegraph.
"It took two minutes," Aeryn noted. "A raven takes four hours. A rider takes a day."
"It is... unnatural," Helaebar murmured, though his eyes were wide with wonder. "To speak with light."
"It is just optics, Maester," Aeryn said, leaning on the parapet. "We will build a chain of these towers. From Gulltown to Runestone. From Runestone to the Bloody Gate. If an enemy fleet is spotted on the horizon, I will know about it before their anchor hits the water."
Aeryn looked out over his city.
Smoke rose from the foundries. The streets were straight, clean lines of grey stone. The water in the aqueducts sparkled. It was a machine. A perfect, humming engine of civilization.
"Information is speed," Aeryn said. "While the rest of Westeros relies on birds that can be shot down with an arrow, we will move at the speed of reflection."
He turned to the Maester.
"What of the third project? The one in the basement?"
Helaebar hesitated. "The scribe's nightmare? It is ready for demonstration. But the scribes are... unhappy. They say it is an insult to the art of writing."
"Art is for museums," Aeryn said, heading for the stairs. "I need volume."
...
(The Basement - The Press Room)
The noise here was rhythmic. Clunk-squeak. Clunk-squeak.
In the center of the room stood a heavy wooden frame, adapted from a wine press. But instead of grapes, it pressed down on a bed of lead letters, arranged in a grid and inked with a thick, oil-based black paste.
Aeryn approached the machine.
Thoros, a Myrish inventor with spectacles as thick as bottle bottoms, was wiping ink from his hands.
"My Prince," Thoros bowed. "The alignment is tricky. The lead letters are soft; they deform after a thousand impressions. We are experimenting with an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony."
"Show me," Aeryn said.
Thoros placed a sheet of clean, white paper—produced in the new paper mill down the river—onto the frame. He pulled the lever. The heavy plate descended. Clunk. He released it.
He peeled the paper off.
Aeryn took it.
It was a page of text. The ink was crisp, black, and uniform.
The Bronze Code - Article 1.
"How many can you make in an hour?" Aeryn asked.
"One hundred, if the operator is strong," Thoros said. "A scribe can write maybe... two pages an hour? If his hand doesn't cramp."
Aeryn ran his thumb over the letters.
"Fifty times the efficiency," Aeryn calculated. "This is dangerous, Thoros."
"Dangerous?"
"Ideas are like viruses," Aeryn said. "When you write a book by hand, it is rare. It is expensive. Only the rich can own it. But this..."
He held up the printed page.
"This makes knowledge cheap. If I can print the law, every village elder can have a copy. They cannot claim ignorance. And the lords cannot lie about what the law says."
Aeryn looked at the machine. It was ugly, stained with ink and grease. But it was more powerful than Vermithor.
"Print the Code," Aeryn ordered. "Five hundred copies. Send one to every Lord, every Knight, and every landed merchant in the Vale. Then print the Basics of Agriculture manual I wrote last winter. I want every farmer to know about crop rotation."
"The Citadel will hate this," Helaebar warned from the doorway. "They believe knowledge should be earned, not distributed like flyers."
"The Citadel believes the world is flat because a book from a thousand years ago says so," Aeryn retorted. "I am not building a library, Maester. I am building a standard."
...
(The Solar - That Evening)
Aeryn sat alone. On his desk was a small cake with thirteen candles. Yorbert had left it there. Aeryn hadn't touched it.
Thirteen.
In the eyes of the law, he was nearly a man. In the eyes of his body, he was a survivor.
He walked to the window. The semaphore tower on the Institute was dark now, but the city lights—oil lamps with reflectors—glowed in a grid.
He had hydraulic cement to build walls that would last a thousand years.
He had telegraphs to see the enemy before they arrived.
He had a printing press to standardize the mind of his people.
He had a Vault to remember the truth.
He had the Unsullied to guard it all.
"The Architect has finished the foundation," Aeryn whispered to the reflection in the glass.
But the reflection looked back with tired eyes.
He had built all of this—this miracle in the mountains—for one reason: to be safe. To create a space where chaos couldn't touch him.
And yet, the letter from Aegon's wedding burned in his memory. The image of the spies he had butchered played in his mind not with horror, but with a cold familiarity.
He realized then that he hadn't just built a city. He had built a weapon. And a weapon that sits on a shelf is useless.
"It is time to leave," Aeryn decided.
Runestone didn't need him anymore. It was a clockwork mechanism. It would wind itself. The Council would collect the taxes. The Institute would invent. The Guard would patrol.
The rot wasn't here. The rot was in King's Landing.
He blew out the candles on the cake. One by one. He didn't make a wish. He made a schedule.
Tomorrow: The Regency Plan.
Next week: The Departure.
Aeryn Royce-Targaryen turned his back on the city of the future. He had to go back to the city of the past, and he had to bring the fire with him.