Chapter 18: The Education of Princes 294 AC

Chapter 18: The Education of Princes

294 AC

Five years of peace. Five years of King Robert Baratheon's court slowly pickling itself in Arbor Gold and resentment. The realm was fat and sluggish, the memory of war receding into the haze of tavern songs. The fearsome stag that had won the throne had become a bloated, drunken boar, his rages now directed at servants and his own Kingsguard more often than at his enemies. Lord Jon Arryn, old and weary, worked tirelessly to patch the holes in the kingdom's hull, but for every leak he sealed, Robert's appetites blasted two more open.

This gilded decay was the perfect environment for Damon's empire to mature. The Bank of Westeros was now an unshakeable institution, its white marble façade a testament to the new god that truly ruled the realm: Debt. The Iron Throne owed the Bank a sum so vast that the ledgers had to be stored in their own dedicated, fire-proof vault. The great lords, emulating their king's extravagance, followed suit, mortgaging their ancestral lands for a new suit of armor or a daughter's lavish wedding. Damon's web of gold and obligation now covered the continent.

He sat with Silas in the governor's chamber, the silence of the room a stark contrast to the boisterous noise of the city outside. Silas, now so plump he seemed sewn into his velvet doublet, presented the quinquennial report.

"The returns are… robust, Lord Elyas," Silas said, his voice trembling with the sheer scale of the numbers. "Our control of the Duskendale trade route has yielded profits beyond our most optimistic projections. The 'Golden Lion' mines in the Westerlands continue their miraculous production." He paused, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. "And the Crown's interest payments alone now exceed the entire tax revenue of the Reach."

"And the principal on the Crown's loan?" Damon asked, his voice flat.

"His Grace, King Robert, took out another substantial loan last month to fund a tourney in honor of his own nameday," Silas admitted sheepishly. "The principal has… increased."

"Excellent," Damon said, a word that made Silas flinch. "A complacent debtor is a reliable debtor. Ensure Lord Arryn receives whatever he needs to maintain the illusion of solvency. We are not yet ready to foreclose on the Seven Kingdoms."

With the present so firmly under his control, Damon's strategic focus had shifted. The current generation of leaders were predictable, their flaws and strengths already mapped and exploited. Robert would drink himself to death, Jon Arryn would work himself to death, and Tywin Lannister would brood himself to death. The future of Westeros, and thus the future of his enterprise, lay with their children. It was time to stop merely managing the players and to start educating the pieces.

His new project was the royal heirs, Joffrey and Tommen Baratheon. He knew from his foreknowledge that Joffrey was a monster, a lost cause whose cruelty was as ingrained as the color of his eyes. But Tommen was different. The histories painted him as a gentle, pliable boy. A king who was pliable was a king who could be controlled.

He used his most powerful vector of influence: the Queen. During one of his consultations with Cersei at The Atelier, amidst discussions of a new perfume derived from the rare black lotus, he turned the conversation to her children.

"Your Grace," he said, his voice imbued with sincere admiration. "Your beauty is the envy of the world, but your true legacy will be in your sons. They are the future of the realm."

He could feel Cersei's narcissistic pride swell at his words. Her children, her beautiful, golden-haired children, were the only things she loved as much as herself and her twin.

"Joffrey has the spirit of a lion," Damon continued, flattering her. "He requires a strong, martial education. But a king must be more than a warrior. He must understand the world he rules."

He presented her with a gift for the crown prince. It was a crossbow, but a crossbow unlike any seen in Westeros. It was a marvel of engineering, crafted from weirwood and gilded steel, with a complex system of gears and pulleys that allowed for immense power with minimal effort.

"A study in physics and mechanics, Your Grace," Damon explained. "To teach him that power comes not just from brute strength, but from superior design and intelligence." He was giving a cruel boy a more efficient way to kill, but he was framing it as an educational tool. Cersei was delighted.

"And for Prince Tommen," Damon said, his tone softening. "His Grace has a gentler heart. A scholar's heart. A king must also understand history, so as not to be doomed to repeat it."

He presented a set of books, magnificently bound in leather and illustrated by the finest artists in his employ. They were histories of the great houses, but written from a very specific perspective. The histories emphasized the importance of trade, the cost of wars, the benefits of a stable currency, and the wisdom of lords who invested in infrastructure over glory. It was propaganda of the highest order, designed to shape a future king's worldview.

"These are magnificent," Cersei breathed, captivated by the opulent gifts.

"They require a magnificent teacher," Damon said, laying his trap. "The Grand Maester is old, and the castle tutors are… uninspired. A boy of Tommen's potential requires a tutor of singular brilliance, to unlock his full capacity. I know of such a man."

He recommended Maester Lorent, a man he had discovered years ago. Lorent was a genius who had been dismissed from the Citadel for his radical theories on economics—theories that just so happened to align perfectly with Damon's own. Damon had been funding the man's research for years, grooming him for this very purpose. He presented Lorent as a reclusive scholar who owed him a favor.

Cersei, eager to give her sons any advantage, agreed without hesitation. Damon had just successfully placed his own agent as the personal tutor to the heir to the Iron Throne, a man who would mold the boy-prince into a king sympathetic to the Bank of Westeros.

With the future of the Iron Throne being quietly guided, Damon turned his gaze across the Narrow Sea. Through his double agent in Varys's network, he had a clear picture of the situation in Essos. Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen, the last of the dragons, were living under the patronage of Magister Illyrio Mopatis of Pentos. Varys was secretly orchestrating their survival, a long-term gambit to restore a Targaryen to the throne, one he believed he could control.

Damon decided it was time to invest in this particular startup. He instructed his agents in Braavos to open a new line of credit for a certain Pentoshi Magister. The transaction was buried under three layers of shell corporations. The offer, delivered by a trusted proxy, was framed as a simple business expansion.

To the esteemed Magister Illyrio, the letter read, The principals of the Seven Streams Trading Concern have noted your success in the trade of spices and slaves. We believe a partnership would be mutually beneficial. We propose to fund the expansion of your caravan routes into the Dothraki Sea, a venture of high risk, but higher reward. In exchange, we require only a modest share of the profits…

Illyrio, a man whose loyalty was first and foremost to gold, would not refuse such an offer. Damon was now a silent partner in the Targaryen restoration project. He was funding the dragon's keepers. Whether Viserys or Daenerys ever reached Westeros, he would control their finances, and by extension, their destiny. He was hedging his bets on a continental scale.

His tour of his empire eventually took him back to the Westerlands, back to the lion's den. He arrived at Casterly Rock for the biannual board meeting of the Golden Lion Mining Corporation. The meeting with Lord Tywin was a brief, tense affair. Damon presented reports of record profits from the new mines—profits he was secretly subsidizing—and Tywin accepted them with the grim silence of a man forced to eat from another's hand.

It was after the meeting that the truly interesting encounter occurred. He was in the castle's vast library, examining a rare atlas of the Summer Isles, when a voice spoke from the shadows.

"They say you are the only man my father listens to. I confess, I find that more fascinating than any map."

Damon turned. Leaning against a bookshelf was Tyrion Lannister. He was no longer a boy, but a young man of twenty-one. His mismatched eyes held a sharp, penetrating intelligence that was startling in its intensity. Damon had been observing him from afar for years. He knew Tyrion spent his days drinking, whoring, and reading every book in this library. He knew his father despised him. And he knew the mind behind those sardonic eyes was perhaps the keenest in all of Westeros.

"Lord Tyrion," Damon said, his voice holding none of the condescension the dwarf was used to. "Your father does not listen to me. He listens to the sound of his own house not collapsing."

Tyrion let out a short, barking laugh. "A fine distinction. You are Lord Elyas, the moneyman. The man who built a marble palace in King's Landing and owns my father's mines."

"I am a merchant," Damon corrected him gently. "I invest in ventures I believe will be profitable."

He used his telepathy, not to probe, but to feel. He felt the deep well of pain and resentment in Tyrion, the burning frustration of a brilliant mind trapped in a body the world, and his own family, scorned. But beneath that, he felt a powerful, pragmatic, and deeply cynical intellect that was remarkably similar to his own.

"Tell me, Lord Elyas," Tyrion said, his eyes gleaming with curiosity. "What is your assessment of the King's Peace? Is it a stable investment?"

Damon decided to speak to Tyrion not as a lord's son, but as an equal. "Peace is a temporary suspension of hostilities for the purpose of economic realignment," he said. "The King's Peace is built on my bank's gold and your father's fear. It is stable only so long as the interest is paid and the fear is maintained."

Tyrion's eyes widened. This was not the talk of merchants. This was the cold language of power. They spoke for over an hour, debating history, philosophy, and economics. Damon was genuinely impressed. Tyrion's mind was a razor, and Damon gave him the intellectual respect he had craved his entire life. He was cultivating a new asset, perhaps his most valuable one yet.

As they spoke, the heavy doors to the library swung open and Lord Tywin entered, his face a mask of thunder. He had clearly been looking for his son. The atmosphere turned instantly to ice.

"Whoremongering in the library now, are you?" Tywin sneered at his son, ignoring Damon completely.

As Tyrion flinched from the verbal blow, Damon acted. He needed to end the conversation on his own terms, to leave Tyrion with a final impression of his mystique. He focused his will across the vast room, on a magnificent, complex astrolabe that had sat dormant for a century.

Silently, with a grace that defied mechanics, the great bronze rings of the astrolabe began to turn. Planets of carved jade and ivory shifted, moons of pearl began to orbit, all moving in a silent, perfect, celestial dance.

Tywin stopped, his tirade forgotten. He stared at the ancient device, his mind unable to process what he was seeing. Tyrion's jaw hung open in stunned disbelief.

"A fascinating mechanism," Damon said into the silence, as if noticing it for the first time. "It seems the old Valyrian clockwork still has a bit of life in it. A pleasure speaking with you, Lord Tyrion."

He gave a slight nod and walked out of the library, leaving the two Lannisters standing in the shadow of an impossible, beautiful mystery.

He returned to King's Landing, his work complete. The pieces for the next generation were in place. A pliable king was being educated by his agent. The last dragons were being funded by his gold. And the most brilliant mind of the next generation now viewed him as a fascinating, powerful enigma.

He stood on his balcony, looking out at the city he owned. The current peace was a fiction he had written and financed. The next war would be a conflict he had engineered and would manage from every side. He was no longer just influencing the game. He was designing the players, building the board, and writing the rules for the century to come. The education of princes was well underway, and the curriculum was his and his alone.