Chapter 9: Chapter 9
if everything from my lessons in PE back in high school was still solidly sound and hadn't been mixed up and corrupted by my not all that relevant knowledge of the Seven Pointed Star, then I do believe that it was the Book of Genesis that God once said, 'Let there be light.'
There was light and He saw that it was good.
I saw that it was good. Couldn't actually believe this shit worked.
Actually, I couldn't believe that the alchemists had been able to make something workable from my own barely remembered memories.
Prince Duncan hummed as he walked around the large jar that sat on a table, light coming from within. I had probably missed the look of surprise or something on his face when the jar lit up. Then again, Prince Duncan was as cool as a cucumber most of the time, so more than likely he would have seen the look of surprise on my face.
"Is this what you have had the alchemists working on?" He asked as he circled the table, occasionally prodding the light producing jar with a finger somewhat apprehensively with each time before getting bolder and assured that it wasn't going to burn his finger off...or something.
Serret, the head pyromancer, finally got a chance to learn his name from occasionally interacting with him as much as I did, didn't even give me a chance to reply, "No, no, no. The prince has set several projects for us, although he has told us to concentrate on-." A sharp look from me was enough to make the man shut up.
Duncan raised an eyebrow. I smiled as sheepishly as I could, "All in the future uncle." No need for me to spill out all the ideas that I had the pyromancers working on. I would actually like to see the look of surprise on their faces when I unveiled them.
"Aha..." The prince said as he slowly nodded his head. His eyes then trailed the wires that connected the top of the jar towards another little thing of mine that I had been able to get together.
A somewhat primitive working electrical generator being worked at by a rather strong looking acolyte who seemed rather out of place among the typically scrawny looking pyromancers. It was basically a lodestone wrapped within a copper coil with more copper wire that ran to the top of the jar.
I have no fucking idea how they were able to do it beside half assed explanations about graphite, a glass jar that was vacuumed or had an inert gas and a drawing based from an image I saw from the internet, but they had somehow been able to turn my half-assed idea into reality. I really should have paid more attention when it came to that YouTube video and or the internet.
And I was beginning to wonder if I really needed the maesters. The pyromancers seemed to be a force all of their own, even if I had needed to outsource for the lodestone and copper wiring. Yes, lodestones and magnets were a thing. With all the iron mining that happened, someone was eventually going to wonder what the hell the strange looking metal that attracted shit was.
Surprisingly, the Iron Islands and the stormlands happened to have the most deposits for lodestones. They just never knew what to do with them.
"So how does this work exactly?" Duncan asked as he turned his attention back to the jar.
Serret looked at me and I rolled my eyes before giving him the go ahead. He jumped into the explanation rather eagerly, and by now having seen that I cared nothing for the technicalities, had been able to dumb it down enough for others not versed in the sciences to understand.
"The electrical generator," Serret began by indicating towards the acolyte and the generator he was busy cranking at, "produces an electric current that travels through the wiring and into the graphite filament that heats up then produces light. Quite amazing I have to say." He looked at me with wide eyes, "Pardon me saying so my prince, but your ideas are nothing more than revolutionary."
I scratched underneath my eye and tried not to blush from the praise. Got to take whatever you got, "Eh, it's nothing to praise me about." He could start praising me when I figured out how to exactly work electricity to make radio then they could praise me.
Unfortunately, all I could recall from that part of the poster was that all I had to do to invent radio was run a strong enough current along a wire back and forth...it did nothing to tell me about how to build a fucking receiving antenna. But I've seen my fair share of antennas, so it couldn't be that hard to actually, you know, build one...right?
I try not to think about it.
Still though, the light bulb was a good step in the right direction. And the generator as well. Hell, who knows, maybe some couple of years later, the streets of King's Landing might be illuminated by light nights?
Just needed to figure out a way to produce a large amount of electricity for the entire city. A hydropower plant didn't seem all that far fetched. The Blackwater Rush was basically just within spitting distance of the city and it was pretty fast flowing, but that was probably something for later.
Still though, it always brought a nice smirk to my face as I thought myself a one man bringing technology for the better of the masses to the world. And if shit was actually going the way it was going, soon death and destruction.
...Well, at least when I feel guilty enough about the second part, I can always pony up the necessary cash to come up with my own version of the Nobel Peace Prize.
"At the rate you are going, people are going to start whispering that you are touched by the Seven. The Smith primarily." Prince Duncan remarked as we rode back to the Red Keep after leaving the Alchemists' Guildhall.
"Is that so bad?" I asked. Really, I was genuinely curious. The amount of influence the Faith had on the masses was not to be underestimated. Not even one bit. If I could influence them to making me something like a more reasonable and sane second coming of Baelor the Blessed, I'd be more than willing to be more a dick than I already was.
"There's some good and there's some bad involved like all things." My uncle admitted, "But you are certainly making a good going off it. That printing press of yours..."
I really couldn't stop the grin that came on my face. That basic device that had driven the Renaissance had immediately got the Faith on my side. After all, that ingenious little thing as far as they were concerned would finally allow them to print out thousands of pages of the Seven Pointed Star in a day when they mastered the technique and when the means of production where there and allow them to publish more of the holy book in a year than they could previous through the method of writing everything by hand.
It was going to take some time, but it was going to eventually happen, but the hundreds of pages that happened now where far better than the couple, several, dozen or whatever pages a day that had been produced by the Faith.
It also didn't hurt that me championing hemp paper instead of the more prestigious parchment paper reduced their costs even more than they would have set to reduce with the printing press itself. Yes, that's right, hemp paper was a thing.
And guess who had come up with the process of creating the cheap paper? None other than your average day Imperial China expy, the Golden Empire of Yi Ti. So this world's version of Arabic numerals had come from Yi Ti, along with paper.
I was starting to think that gunpowder was probably a thing there as well.
"We've always had something of an uneasy relationship with the Faith, uncle. Something that smoothens some roughed feathers is surely a good thing, right?"
The Faith itself had a very strange dynamic. From what I could understand and learn, the Faith that was centred in King's Landing had influence in the north of Westeros, crownlands, the Vale of Arryn and the riverlands etc, but when it came to the south, it was the Starry Sept in Oldtown that dominated.
So...that certainly made for some interesting internal politics that had never been touched upon in the books. Especially when it came to the more pious members of the Faith that turned towards the Starry Sept for guidance instead of the decadent and corrupt Great Sept of Baelor.
Well, that was the word on the street anyway.
"I suppose, but it's best you manage yourself carefully when dealing with these things. Thankfully, it seems you have been slowly learning the finger intricacies of governing and politicking underneath my tutelage." He looked at me with an amused glint in his eyes, "That little debacle of yours with Ser Gwayne sometime back was rather amusing to watch. At how much of a failure it was."
I grumbled underneath my breath as I was forced to remember that little humiliation from some months ago. Ser Gwayne had actually never gone and did my little intelligence gathering task that I had set him, the far more politically astute Ser Duncan the Tall had seen what a folly that was and simply told him to lie low for a bit whilst he talked to his superiors.
Apparently, it seemed that some people in the government did not like being undermined by an upstart fourteen year old prince that had spent most of his timing drinking, whoring and chasing skirts.
King Aegon had given me the telling off of my life. Prince Duncan and Ser Joffrey Massey had been in attendance, standing at the side. Duncan trying his best to not look amused but not doing such a good job hiding it and Ser Joffrey expressionless apart from a glint in his eye.
Oh yeah, fun fact, Ser Joffrey Massey, master of whisperers had worked underneath Bloodraven. As in he had been one of his spies before he found himself elevated to the seat of head spymaster after Bloodraven became the Hand of the King.
In other words, the man was ancient. He was like seventy something, but he certainly didn't look like it. When it came to how old he was, he was like Chuck Norris. The man looks like in his forties or fifties or something, but take a look at his wiki and you walloped in the face with his age of seventy-six.
The telling off had involved generally the same subject of how stupid I was and how stupid my little plan had been and for so how stupid it was, it wouldn't work. It had then ended that since I had found myself suddenly becoming more interested in the running of the realm, I had been apprenticed to Prince Duncan as something more than his squire but as also his assistant in his duties as Chancellor of King's Landing.
In other words, I was a glorified assistant.
Thankfully, working closely with my uncle had allowed me to sound-board some ideas of mine to him and see how they would fair. One of them was tax reform. In other words, bringing tax collection in house instead of outsourcing it.
I was still trying to convince him to switch to this other revolutionary idea of tax collection, but I wasn't having much luck. After all, I was championing something that had never been done before and would lower taxes in his perspective and as much as he was willing to amuse me, this was something he didn't seem keen on budging on.
"Is it true that the Band of Nine have captured the Disputed Lands and Tyrosh?" I asked as the Red Keep came closer in sight as we rode up Aegon's Hill.
Prince Duncan turned his head slightly to glance at me atop his destrier, "Why ask me?"
"Because you obviously know more than me." I said with a roll of the eyes, "You have a seat within the small council."
"Not a seat. Merely an adviser." He corrected.
"Still a seat." I returned, "More than me." You would think much more care would have been taken to try and teach me or Aerys how to run a kingdom from a far younger age than fourteen going on fifteen.
"Your time will come. Believe me, small council meetings are something you would be better without." Duncan said with a laugh before pulling on a cool mask on his face that showed no emotion, not even in his eyes, "But yes, it's true. The nine have captured the Disputed Lands and Tyrosh."
I grimaced, "Fuck." I had heard the rumours and the gossip, but to hear it from someone who wasn't spreading round the talk of the court and was actively involved in the issue? Fuck, "That's not good."
I tried my best to remember what I could about the Ninepenny War...which was not much. Not going to lie, my favourite part of the books had been about the Lannisters. Those had been my favourite chapters because they were amusing as all hell, and even then, I skimmed some when I didn't think they were interesting.
For all I knew, Jaime, Tyrion or Cersei might have commented about the War and I would have skimmed it because dialogue or narration from before had turned me off.
I was really regretting that reading policy right now.
Even then, when I scoured the wiki, it was rather difficult trying to think of something related to the war, considering some of the depth of the articles and the lack of depth in others. I think that particular page had a lack of depth? Probably. I wasn't sure.
All I knew about the war was that it started in 260AC, not long after Jaehaerys took the throne after that whole Summerhall debacle.
Thankfully, it didn't seem as if things were going to end up with the whole Summerhall debacle and the death of a multitude of Targaryens. I think I was making progress with Aegon, but we shall have to see. The family was soon to be heading to Summerhall in a few weeks time and I intended to make sure that Egg didn't do anything stupid, like you know, set fire to the fucking palace.
"No. I suppose not." Duncan said with a sigh, "War shall soon be upon us. Thankfully, we have armourers and weapon smiths and fletchers at work to produce the necessary armaments for whatever hosts that shall be called upon."
All good, still though, I didn't like our chances despite knowing that we won, "I'm going to be looking forward to see how our levies go against sellswords that know nothing but how to fight and kill." I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but I'm sure some got out.
Duncan nodded, "Aye, our levies might seem outmatched, but we have more than levies on our side. We have our own knights and whatever sellswords that we can hire to our own cause. I'm sure we would be able to offer more than whatever the nine are offering for their services."
That seemed like a fun idea, but there was something about it that I had to point out, "I think the Nine would be well aware of that themselves. I'm sure at least some of them are sellswords or something. They would know the nature of their own people."
So it would make sense for them to only have people that they could trust, wouldn't it? What's the point of going on a campaign with people of questionable loyalty? You would have to worry that one way or another, they could eventually change their flags for your enemies if offered a large enough sum of gold.
"That is a risk that we will have to take." Duncan replied, which didn't at all quash whatever worries that I had. As we got nearer the gates of the Red Keep, he spoke up again, "At least look at it this way, we would outnumber whatever their numbers and can at the very least, drown them in bodies."
Of course. Why not?
Wasn't it Stalin who said quantity was a quality all on it's own?
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