The next day, Jaehaerys sent for Rowena, the captain of the Company of the Rose. The woman was now in front of him, staring at the desk that was mostly empty at the moment.
"I have contacts, yes," Rowena nodded when the prince explained why he had summoned her. "But not as many as you might expect. Clients don't tend to respect mercenaries very much, and other mercenaries won't take risks unless the gold is sufficient," she told him.
"I have gold," Jaehaerys replied. "Find men who can keep a secret. I want eyes on that battlefield," the prince looked into the captain's eyes.
"I don't trust other mercenaries," she replied. "Gold breaks their word easily. However, I trust my men," she added after a silence.
"And your men are spies?" The prince crossed his hands in front of his belly.
"They are soldiers," she said. "Talented men who would not hesitate to join the Golden Company. They will let them in, especially if they are at war," Jaehaerys nodded at her words. He had had a similar idea from the beginning, but there was a problem.
"I think being at war would make them wary of letting anyone into their ranks," the prince expressed his concern.
"Against the Dothraki? Horse worshippers aren't exactly spy material," Rowena seemed determined in her idea.
"Robert Baratheon changed them," Jaehaerys continued to press. "He also has Andal followers, probably from other parts of those lands as well." Rowena's face fell.
"Even so, I believe my men can infiltrate them," she did not give up despite the prince's pessimism.
"Then look for men without families, who have no one to mourn their deaths in the worst scenario," the prince was gentle with that request.
"On the contrary, I will look for men with families," Rowena said. Jaehaerys was beginning to believe that she was only looking to contradict him.
But that wasn't the case.
"You are a ruthless woman, Rowena," the prince complimented her. "Do as you wish," he dismissed her.
A man with nothing, no parents, no siblings, no wife, no children, was easy to change loyalty. He could easily decide to betray them. But a man who has a home behind him? How could he risk endangering his own family?
Besides, to convince him, there was always the option of giving gold to his family if he died on the mission. Jaehaerys had tried to send animals to Essos while warging, to the disputed lands, but halfway there, his connection always faded. It was probably the distance, or the fact that in Essos, there was almost no weirwoods trees.
The religion of R'hllor was predominant, if not; Jaehaerys would have gone to burn Robert and this Aegon, who claimed to be his half-brother.
But Jaehaerys needed a platform on which to stand; he did not know what R'hllor could do to him there, far from his home, far from the weirwood trees. Euron showed him that the gods could wield magic, and now Jaehaerys needed to prepare his own.
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Jaehaerys began planning the city around ArgentStone. Thousands of people would be arriving from the Iron Islands. These people would be taken by the Manderlys to Seagard, a fortress in the Riverlands, near the Iron Islands, and would take the King's Road as far as they could before having to detour towards ArgentStone. Another possible route was to go to Bennefort and then take the River Road, but Jaehaerys did not want them to spend too much time in the westernlands.
So Jaehaerys was organizing the city. Even with the new arrivals, he would not be able to fill it completely, but he needed to lay the groundwork so that it would not expand uncontrollably in the future. He needed to create good drainage and delimit the territories for commerce and housing.
In the end, he laid out the city in a crescent shape. He divided it into districts and leased land near the castle to merchants and lords. Lease is the correct term; he would not allow anyone other than the lord of ArgentStone to own land there. The center of the city would be dedicated to commerce, and a large market would be built there, near the castle.
He divided the city into districts. He felt bad about separating people based on their trades, as a form of discrimination, but he did it anyway.
In each district, there were people with professions that had a certain synergy, such as tailors near tanners to facilitate their trade. Within each district, Jaehaerys designed smaller markets; he didn't want citizens to have to go to the city center to buy what they needed. Jaehaerys designed the streets to be wide; he wanted carts to pass through without any problems.
Perhaps in the future, he would create public transportation for his citizens to enjoy. Could he make the medieval equivalent of a bus? The idea amused him. How many horses would he need to pull it?
The prince already had a list of the inhabitants of the village near the lake, so he could settle them in each district over time. At first, it would be a little lonely, but as the city flourished, the gaps would be filled.
Jaehaerys planned to leave the village near the lake untouched. There were still fishermen there, and it would make no sense to move them away from their livelihoods. Besides, it was a reminder of the beginnings of this civilization. Keeping it would not affect him in any way, nor would it interfere with the city's planning for the time being.
The prince had already marked several places in the city to place watchtowers. His men would watch every inch of the city and act quickly. Or at least, those were his initial intentions. Could he go against the inevitability of human corruption? The prince was willing to try.
He also wanted a way to supply water to the city. He didn't want to abuse the Godseye as a water source.
He had ordered several wells to be dug to extract water, and he would use Daenerys's invention to move the water and store it in tanks. He would also install a way to extract water from the lake in cases of drought or emergencies. Jaehaerys had an idea: he could use the towers created for surveillance and add cisterns on top of them. This would allow him to distribute the water through pipes to access points for the population. But problems would arise if a natural disaster caused flooding right in the middle of the city. Jaehaerys would redesign the towers, creating drains around them large enough to withstand and direct water in case of emergencies.
The drains would flow into the river that connected the Godseye to the Blackwater, as far away from Argentstone as possible. That was not ideal. After all, he would be dumping waste and garbage into a navigable river. The men who sailed those waters could fall ill, as could the fishermen along the lake.
That would not be an immediate problem, as the waste would not be immediately visible. But in the future, when the population grows large enough, there could be rivers of sewage like those in Paris.
The ideal solution would be to connect them to the sea. It was not impossible, but Jaehaerys would have to devote a number of resources and men to this task, which would halt other work on his castle. Jaehaerys would create drains with filtration and sedimentation systems to reduce water pollution. They would not make it drinkable, but when it reached the river, they would prevent massive contamination.
In the future, he could create a drain that reached the ocean, or one of his descendants would, if they did not get carried away by the madness typical of their family.
Jaehaerys refined the details in a book, documenting every part of the city's creation. He wanted it to be finished, whether by his own hand, Daenerys's, or that of their descendants. He did not include things he did not want others to know.
After hours of planning, it was time to turn to study magic.
"Ahhh, sometimes I forget the things I can do with this," the prince smiled.
He could incorporate magic into the city's planning. As an accompaniment, something that, if missing, would not paralyze everything. After all, he did not know when there might be another period of time when magic was scarce.
"I could improve water purification with runes," thought the prince.
He buried his nose in the scrolls, so much so that he lost track of time, and Daenerys scolded him for dismissing the maid who called him for dinner.
But Daenerys couldn't help smiling when she saw him so busy.