Chapter 15: The Sack of a City, The Birth of a Bank

Chapter 15: The Sack of a City, The Birth of a Bank

283 AC, Month of the Ice Dragon

The Trident was broken, the Dragon Prince was dead, and the Targaryen host was a scattered, fleeing remnant. A stunned silence fell over the Seven Kingdoms, the brief, terrifying calm after a lightning strike. The path to King's Landing was open, and every lord, merchant, and peasant held their breath, waiting to see from which direction the final blow would fall.

Damon did not wait. He acted. While the victorious rebels licked their wounds and planned their final march, a new army appeared on the kingsroad, an army of ten thousand men marching under the crimson and gold banner of the Lion of Lannister. Lord Tywin, after months of patient silence, had finally chosen his side. He was marching on the capital.

The city descended into a maelstrom of panic. Grand Maester Pycelle, his loyalties to his true master showing, urged the increasingly deranged King Aerys to open the gates, to welcome Lord Tywin as a savior. Varys, the Spider, whispered warnings of treachery. And Aerys, his mind a shattered mirror reflecting only paranoia, paced the throne room, muttering of the wildfire caches beneath the streets, of burning them all.

Damon's network fed him a real-time stream of the city's death spiral. He knew Tywin Lannister was not coming to save Aerys, but to deliver the capital as a bloody, gift-wrapped prize to Robert Baratheon. A city-wide sack was imminent. His city. His assets. His base of operations.

He issued a single, coded command: "Activate the Hearthstone Protocol."

Throughout the city, Damon's empire shifted from commerce to crisis management. The Atelier, his temple of luxury, was quietly and efficiently stripped of its most valuable contents. Bolts of priceless silk, caches of rare oils, and pots of pearl-dust cream vanished into a hidden, sub-level cellar whose existence was known only to him. The ledgers, the coded books containing the secrets of the realm, were sealed in iron-strongboxes and lowered into a dry well beneath one of his warehouses. His most trusted agents began moving through the streets, not with weapons, but with heavy purses and simple armbands of grey cloth—the sigil of his anonymous relief organization. The game board was about to be violently overturned, and Damon was ensuring his own pieces were nailed down.

With his assets secured, he turned to the most critical, unstable variable in the city: Ser Jaime Lannister. The fate of a million lives rested on the shoulders of one disillusioned, heartbroken young man. Damon knew he had to intervene. He had to give the Kingslayer a reason.

He found Jaime not in the White Sword Tower, but in the quiet solitude of the Red Keep's godswood, standing before the ancient heart tree. The knight's golden armor seemed a mockery in the somber twilight, his handsome face etched with a torment that was painful to behold.

"A beautiful tree," Damon said softly, his approach silent. "It has seen kings born and dynasties fall. It does not judge."

Jaime started, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword before he recognized the speaker. "Master Damon. I should have known you would be the only person in this city enjoying the peace."

"There is no peace here, Ser Jaime," Damon replied, his voice a low murmur. He stepped closer, not invading the knight's space, but creating a small, confidential world around them. He opened his senses, his telepathy a delicate probe into the maelstrom of Jaime's mind. He felt the warring impulses with agonizing clarity: the sacred vow sworn before that very tree, and the gut-wrenching horror of the King's orders. He felt Jaime's love for his sister, a desperate, burning need to get back to her, and his love for the innocent people of the city he had, until now, held in contempt.

"He means to do it," Jaime whispered, his voice cracking. "Rossart, the pyromancer… he's with him now. The King speaks of a worthy coronation. To be reborn in fire and rule over the ashes."

Damon did not offer sympathy. He offered logic, a cold, hard anchor in the storm of Jaime's emotions. "And what will you do, Ser?"

"I am a knight of the Kingsguard," Jaime said, the words sounding hollow, a mantra he no longer believed. "I am sworn to protect him."

"You are," Damon agreed. "But what is a king? Is he the man, or is he the realm? The office, or the people? You swore an oath to defend the Crown. But what happens when the man wearing it seeks to melt it down into slag?"

He could feel Jaime's internal conflict intensify. This was the very argument the young knight was having with himself.

"History is a cruel arbiter, Ser," Damon continued, his voice hypnotic. "If you stand by and watch this city burn, you will be remembered as 'Jaime the Loyal', the man who upheld his oath while a million people screamed. Your name will be a curse, a synonym for dereliction of duty on a scale the world has never seen. Your father will despise you. Your sister…" he let the name hang in the air, "will be just another corpse among the ashes."

He felt a tremor go through Jaime at the mention of Cersei. It was the key.

"But consider the alternative," Damon whispered, leaning in closer. "One man. One life. A life already forfeit to madness and cruelty. Weighed against the lives of every man, woman, and child within these walls. Weighed against the future of the realm itself. What is the value of an oath made to a monster, when keeping it makes you a monster yourself?"

He wasn't telling Jaime to kill the king. He was giving him permission. He was reframing the act.

"They will call you Kingslayer. An Oathbreaker," Damon said, his eyes locking with Jaime's. "And you will be the man who saved them all. The greatest, truest knight this city has ever known. A man who sacrificed his own honor to preserve the soul of the kingdom. Who will history truly remember, Ser Jaime? The man who kept his word, or the man who saved the world?"

He had given Jaime the narrative he so desperately needed. He had turned an act of treason into the ultimate act of sacrifice. Damon turned and walked away, leaving the young lion alone with his choice, a choice that had now been irrevocably clarified.

The gates of King's Landing were opened by the Grand Maester's treachery. The Lannister army poured into the city not as saviors, but as wolves loosed upon a sheepfold. The Sack of King's Landing began.

Damon watched the chaos from a high window in a secure townhouse, a glass of wine in his hand, a map of the city on the table before him. He was a general observing a battle he had already won. While Lannister soldiers raped and looted, his own agents, marked by their grey armbands, moved through the mayhem with disciplined purpose.

They were not looting. They were acquiring. As terrified merchants fled their burning shops, Damon's men were there, offering a pouch of gold for the deed. As minor lords barricaded themselves in their manses, his agents were there, negotiating the purchase of their properties in exchange for safe passage out of the city. He was buying King's Landing at fire-sale prices, his agents the only buyers in a market of absolute desperation. His relief camps, already established outside the city walls, swelled with refugees, a grateful, captive workforce for the future.

In the Red Keep, the final act played out. Jaime Lannister, his choice made, cut down the pyromancer Rossart and then plunged his golden sword into the back of King Aerys II Targaryen, the last dragon king, who died babbling of fire and treason.

When Eddard Stark and the rebel vanguard finally arrived, they found a city in ruins and Jaime Lannister sitting on the Iron Throne, the dead king at his feet. They found Tywin Lannister presenting the bodies of Rhaegar's children, Aegon and Rhaenys, wrapped in Lannister cloaks, as a gruesome token of his new allegiance. The war was over.

In the weeks that followed, a new order was established. Robert Baratheon, the triumphant rebel, was declared King. Jon Arryn, the wise mentor, was named his Hand. The great houses that had supported the rebellion were rewarded. But the new kingdom was built on a foundation of debt and ashes. The royal treasury was empty. The city was a wreck.

This was the moment Damon had been waiting for. He shed the persona of the reclusive artisan. He approached Jon Arryn not as Master Damon, but as the public face he had built for this very purpose: Lord Elyas, the obscenely wealthy, philanthropic, and politically neutral chairman of the True Tide Development Group.

They met in the Tower of the Hand, the room still bearing the faint imprint of Tywin Lannister's austere presence. Lord Arryn was a man of great dignity and honor, but he was also a pragmatist, and he was overwhelmed by the scale of the problems facing the new regime.

"Lord Elyas," Jon Arryn began, his voice weary. "Your charitable works during the siege and the sack have not gone unnoticed. You have the gratitude of the new Crown."

"Gratitude does not rebuild a city or pay the Crown's debts, Lord Arryn," Damon replied, his tone respectful but direct. He wasn't here for thanks. He was here to close the biggest deal of his life.

"The Seven Kingdoms are shattered," Damon continued. "The Crown is deeply in debt to my own financial backers, among others, for the cost of the war. You are dependent on the Lannisters for gold and the Tyrells for food. You need to borrow from the Iron Bank of Braavos, ceding influence to a foreign power. This is not a foundation for a stable, lasting peace."

He could feel Arryn's frustration, his agreement with the bleak assessment.

"I am here to offer a solution," Damon said. "A Westerosi solution for a Westerosi problem. I propose the establishment of a new institution, chartered by the Crown, but privately managed. A central bank, to stabilize the currency, manage the Crown's treasury, and provide the capital needed to rebuild this kingdom. Let us call it the Bank of Westeros."

Jon Arryn stared at him, stunned into silence by the sheer audacity of the proposal.

"My investors and I," Damon went on, "are prepared to make a single, colossal loan to the Crown, enough to clear all its wartime debts and fund the complete restoration of King's Landing. In exchange, the Bank of Westeros, under my management, would become the sole master of the royal treasury. We will provide financial stability, predictable lines of credit, and expert management. We will free the Iron Throne from the grip of foreign lenders and the whims of powerful, self-interested lords."

He was offering them a golden leash, salvation at the price of control. He played on Jon Arryn's sense of duty, his desire to build a strong and independent kingdom. He used Ned Stark's famed honor in a later meeting, speaking of the Bank's role in providing for the smallfolk, in building orphanages and funding a just peace.

The negotiations were intense, lasting for over a week. But in the end, the new regime had no choice. They were bankrupt, and Damon was offering them the world.

The charter was signed. The Bank of Westeros was born. Its vaults were filled with the profits from Damon's betting operations and his wartime monopolies. Its charter was a royal decree. And its master was a man no one knew, a former soap merchant who had played the game of thrones and won.

Damon stood on the balcony of his newly acquired manse overlooking the city. The fires were out, and the slow, arduous process of rebuilding had begun, funded entirely by his gold. Robert Baratheon was on the Iron Throne, but his crown was, in effect, mortgaged to the Bank of Westeros. The great houses, victors and vanquished alike, were entangled in his web of credit and debt.

He had started with nothing but knowledge and a secret power. He had built an empire of scent and shadow, then leveraged it into a kingdom of coin and contract. The rebellion was over. A new king reigned. But the true power, the silent, absolute power that underpinned the throne itself, now resided with him. The old game was finished. A new, grander game was about to begin, one of crises yet to come—of dragons in the east and ancient evils in the north. And he, the banker of the realm, was ready to finance it all.