As if nature itself wanted to compensate for taking the previous king and queen of winter ,winter settled gently upon the Kingdom of Winter.
Unlike the cruel winters sung of by wandering singers, this one became neither bitter nor unending.
Snow lay upon the hills and forests, the lakes wore coats of ice, and cold winds swept across the plains, yet the roads remained open where they could, and life within the Crown’s lands continued much as it always had.
The previous harvest had seen to that.
The farmers who had labored throughout the summer had already received their wages.
They were paid not only in silver, but in grain and potatoes enough to sustain their households through the winter that now lay upon the land.
Brandon had insisted upon it from the very beginning.
A starving farmer could not sow the fields when summer returned, nor could dead men fill the Crown’s granaries.
The remainder of the kingdom was provided for from the royal storehouses.
Smiths, carpenters, charcoal burners, masons, soldiers, merchants, servants, and every other man or woman in the Crown’s service continued to receive their allotted provisions throughout the winter months while they carried on with their labors.
Roads were widened where the ground allowed, bridges repaired, new granaries strengthened against damp and vermin, and storehouses raised in villages that had never before possessed them.
Yet even after every mouth within the Crown’s lands had been accounted for, the granaries remained heavy.
Food sufficient to aid the Crown’s bannermen had already been sold at fair prices, ensuring no loyal lord need watch his people starve before Brandon’s methods reached their own fields.
Wagon trains had likewise crossed the borders of the kingdom, bearing grain and potatoes to neighboring realms that counted themselves friends of House Stark.
The Ryswells, the Umbers, and the mountain kings of the Flint clans all received enough to see their people safely through the season.
The Crown had no wish to make those kingdoms wealthy.
Only strong enough to remember who had aided them when winter came.
Even after all that…
The storehouses remained full.
Brandon had walked through them himself more than once, the smell of fresh grain hanging thick in the cold air while row upon row of potatoes filled bins as far as the eye could see.
To most men, they were simply provisions awaiting another winter.
To Brandon who immersed himself in work to lessen the grief of loosing his grandparents…
They were idle wealth.
It was a thought that lingered with him long after he returned to his chambers.
That evening he sat beside the hearth, a blank sheet of parchment spread before him while Lyarra embroidered quietly across the room.
Neither spoke for a long while.
They had grown comfortable with silence, each content in the other’s company.
At last Brandon’s quill stopped moving.
“I’ve been looking at potatoes the wrong way.”
Lyarra raised her eyes from her needlework.
“I should think you’ve looked at little else these past few years.”
He laughed softly.
“Perhaps.”
She set the cloth upon her lap.
“What have they done now?”
“They’ve fed the kingdom.”
“I thought that was rather the point.”
“It was.”
He leaned back in his chair, staring into the dancing flames.
“But food is only one thing they can become.”
Lyarra studied him for a moment.
“I know that look.” This story is hosted at g.com.
“What look?”
“The one you wear just before you decide the whole kingdom has been doing something incorrectly for the last thousand years.”
Brandon grinned.
“Have I truly done it that often?”
“Often enough that I no longer ask whether your ideas are strange.”
“And instead?”
“I wait to see whether they work.”
He reached across the table and caught her hand.
“I’ll take that as confidence.”
“You should.”
She smiled.
“It is far kinder than calling you stubborn.”
The next morning Brandon disappeared into his study.
For days he scarcely emerged except to eat and sleep.
Every spare moment was spent within the endless library his boon had granted him.
Shelves without number stretched farther than sight could reach, filled with knowledge gathered across ages beyond imagining.
Much of it belonged to a world the Winter Kingdom could not yet hope to match.
He passed over iron engines, strange medicines, and machines whose workings required metals not yet discovered.
Instead, he searched for something his people could build.
Something that required only timber.
Copper.
Fire.
And patience.
When at last he found it, Brandon scarcely slept that night.
He spent the following days committing every detail to parchment.
The shape of the furnace.
The copper kettle.
The long coiled pipe through which vapor would pass before cooling once more into liquid.
Every measurement was drawn carefully, every joint noted, every fitting explained so plainly that even a village smith might understand its purpose.
Only when he had finished did he seek an audience with King Edwyn.
The King was seated before the great table of the council chamber, reading reports from the Crown’s stewards when Brandon entered.
“You carry enough parchment to bury a man,” Edwyn observed without looking up.
“I hope it proves more useful than that.”
The King motioned him closer.
“What occupies your mind this time?”
Brandon spread the drawings across the table.
Edwyn leaned over them, turning one sheet, then another.
His brow furrowed.
“I’ve seen furnaces.”
“I’ve seen copper kettles.”
“But I’ve never seen them arranged like this.”
“You haven’t.” This story is hosted at g.com.
“And what are they?”
“A way to turn a small part of our surplus into gold.”
That caught the King’s attention.
He folded his hands.
“Go on.”
Brandon spoke at length, beginning not with the machine itself, but with the kingdom’s harvest.
He reminded his father that the farmers had already received provisions enough to carry their households through the winter, that every craftsman and laborer continued to draw food from the royal granaries, and that grain had already been sold beyond the Crown’s lands while the storehouses still remained comfortably full.
“We have done everything we ought to do with the harvest,” Brandon finished.
“What remains serves no purpose beyond lying in storage.”
“And you would change that.”
“I would.”
Edwyn nodded slowly.
“You’ve no intention of touching the kingdom’s reserves?”
“None.”
“The food set aside remains untouched?”
“It does.”
“What I ask for is only a small portion of what would otherwise remain unused.”
The King was silent for a time.
He remembered another conversation years before.
A boy had once stood before him insisting that potatoes belonged in every field.
Another had argued that sheep should graze where grain once grew.
Then came charcoal instead of raw timber.
Each notion had sounded stranger than the last.
Each had strengthened the kingdom.
At length Edwyn smiled.
“I have learned that questioning your ideas rarely changes them.”
Brandon smiled back.
“It usually doesn’t.”
“No.”
The King chuckled.
“It merely delays them.”
He gathered the parchments into a neat pile and pushed them back across the table.
“Very well.”
“Build your workshop.”
“Choose the craftsmen you require.”
“And if this curious machine truly turns spare potatoes into gold…”
He leaned back in his chair.
“…I shall gladly admit that my son has once again seen farther than his father.”
Within days, messengers rode for Winter Town.
The finest coppersmiths, coopers, carpenters, and masons the Crown could find were summoned to Brandon’s service.
None of the craftsmen knew precisely why they were being summoned.