Such loyalty. Hearing that number, Lady Roslin trembled slightly, and the tears she had just managed to hold back welled up again.
Her family had shown him favor more than once without giving him anything close to what he deserved, had even conspired against him, and yet this young man still treated it all as kindness. She had nothing to say to that. Only guilt.
She took his hand and cut him off. "Say no more, Solomon. Deddington will remember your loyalty forever. Come, rest inside. Food and drink are ready for your soldiers."
Solomon suppressed a mild frown. I wasn't done making my point. I wanted people to hear all of it and spread the word. Why is she stopping me now?
He waved his hand and the army behind him marched through the gate in clean, steady ranks, silent and sharp, their bearing a stark contrast to the anxious, uncertain looks on the faces of those already in the city. The soldiers did not glance around or wander. They went straight to the barracks assigned to them. For what was largely a force thrown together in a hurry, the discipline looked nothing like it.
Solomon was shown to a fine private bedchamber in the castle. A warm fire burned in the hearth. The rugs were soft. A faint pleasant scent hung in the air. Standing at the foot of the bed was a handmaid with a graceful figure and a pretty face. The moment he walked in she curtsied, eyes dropping with a carefully practiced shyness that carried just enough of an invitation underneath.
Solomon glanced at her for a moment. What is this. His brow made the smallest movement. Then he understood. Someone hoping to climb closer to a noble. He did not bother learning her name or giving her carefully arranged appearance a second look.
He unstrapped the sword at his waist and set it on the table with a clean metallic ring. "Leave."
The handmaid froze. This was not what she had been told to expect. She looked up and found a pair of eyes with nothing in them at all, looking at her the way one looks at a piece of furniture.
A cold feeling moved through her. She dropped her head quickly, fumbled her way out the door, and nearly failed to close it properly behind her.
In the great hall of Deddington Castle, the military council opened under a heavy atmosphere. Lady Roslin sat in the seat of authority, her expression carrying a quiet ache.
"My husband took every last one of Deddington's elite soldiers with him to answer the summons at Riverrun, for the kingdom's war. Now the Ironborn are raiding our lands and he will not spare even a portion of his forces to come home and defend them."
Before the words had fully settled, the attendants and courtiers in the hall erupted.
"My lady, Lord Balon acts for the kingdom, not for private gain!"
"The Tullys at Riverrun, even the king himself, will remember House Deddington's loyalty!"
"Yes, my lady! Loyalty is always rewarded in the end!"
The empty flattery buzzed around the room like flies and did nothing to lift the shadow hanging over everyone present.
Lady Roslin let out a tired sigh and cut through the noise. "The Ironborn raiding parties are everywhere across our lands. What do we actually do about it?"
That question killed the room. Fighting thousands of Ironborn was no simple matter. Even with equal numbers you would think twice. Their forces were smaller than the enemy's, and no one in the hall had a single idea worth offering.
The knights who had just ridden in with Solomon, the unit leaders sent by the various bannerman houses, all of them looked at the table, or their boots, or the grain of the wood, as though it suddenly deserved very careful study.
In the suffocating silence, every eye in the hall drifted, as if pulled by the same invisible hand, to the young man sitting quietly off to one side who had not said a word since the council began.
Lady Roslin noticed the shift and felt a flicker of confusion and something less comfortable beneath it. Why? Why is everyone looking at Solomon? My husband is the lord of Deddington. I am the lady of this castle. This is the Deddington family's great hall.
She was grateful for his relief force, grateful that he had answered the summons with everything he had. But the one who should be making decisions was her, or her husband. Yet the bannermen and family knights who ought to be helping her bear this burden were sitting there like students waiting for a teacher to call on them, all of them watching that young man.
Lady Roslin drew a slow breath and turned to Solomon. There was a softness in her voice she did not quite notice herself. "Little Solomon... what do you think we should do?"
Solomon stood up.
In the moment he rose, something happened that would have astonished Lady Roslin and old Maester Walde for the rest of their lives.
Every knight in the room who had been sitting loosely, every unit leader sent by a bannerman house, including the proud Patrick Morrison, straightened up without thinking, hands on knees, faces suddenly solemn, all at once, as though they had drilled the movement a hundred times.
Old Maester Walde, seated beside Lady Roslin, felt something stir behind his clouded eyes. The movement was so perfectly unified. These men were afraid of this young man, and not in the way they feared Lord Balon or Lady Roslin. The maester caught the detail and felt the ground shift under him.
They nominally owed loyalty to House Deddington, to Lord Balon far away at Seagard, to Lady Roslin sitting right in front of them. But the way they were sitting right now looked like men waiting for Solomon's orders.
Solomon did not answer immediately. His mind was moving fast. The army inside the city was his force carrying the weight. If he led them out to fight the Ironborn, win or lose, the losses would be his. There was nothing obvious to gain. That was a losing trade and he was not going to make it.
He needed something that solved the problem, made these useless companion forces actually worth something, kept his own strength intact, and ideally left him better off than before.
After a moment he spoke, his voice quiet but carrying through the still hall without effort. "My lady, if you are willing to spend what it takes, the Ironborn are nothing to fear."
Lady Roslin tilted her head. "Spend what it takes? What do you mean?"
Solomon let his gaze move across every face in the room before settling on Lady Roslin. He kept it short. "Large rewards bring out brave men. Put a price on every Ironborn head. Ten silver stags, or even a gold dragon. Post the bounty and the lands will clear themselves."
Maester Walde and Lady Roslin both cried out at the same moment.
"What did you say?"
Ten silver stags per head. That was madness. A trained soldier barely earned that in a full year of service.
One of the older knights loyal to Deddington shot to his feet, so agitated he was visibly shaking.
His face was flushed red. He pointed at Solomon and spoke directly to Lady Roslin, his voice urgent. "No, my lady! This absolutely cannot be done! Common people can be lost and replaced as long as there's land to farm! Land can go fallow and be broken open again! But rebuilding costs gold dragons, and if the gold runs out there is nothing left at all! Nothing!"
He was certain that any right-thinking person in the room would back him. This was the bedrock belief of the noble class, the thing none of them questioned. Land and gold were the foundation of a family's survival. With land and gold you could begin again from anywhere.
He looked around the hall for agreement.
What he found sent a chill through him.
Dead silence. Every knight, every unit leader from every house, all the peers who should by every measure have been defending the same interests he was defending, sat without making a sound.
They were not looking at him. They were not looking at Lady Roslin, whose face had gone pale in the seat of authority. They were looking at Solomon, waiting to hear what he would say next.
The old knight's indignation froze on his face and turned into bewilderment, then something close to dread. What is happening here. What is this.
Even Lady Roslin, at last, understood what she was looking at. She looked at the young man standing calmly in the center of the hall, then at the bannermen around her whose eyes had not left him. A thought worked its way into her mind like something cold and unwelcome, absurd and humiliating and undeniable all at once.
Who exactly was the lord in this room?
Why did it feel as though Solomon was the true authority over everyone present?
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