White Harbor, The North, second week, third moon of 294 AC
"...more protests from Myrish merchants, my lord," the usual drone of the blond Maester shifted into slight worry. "They claim our new business is cutting into their profits and they have lodged official complaints with the Iron Throne."
"Probably because we are, Theomore," Wyman Manderly mused as he finished a dish of buttered lamprey, wiped his lips with a piece of sweetbread then ate it. "What are your balance predictions for the year given the past three months?"
"To the best of my reckoning and barring unforeseen... complications from various interested parties, we stand to reduce expenditures by a hundred thousand gold dragons now that domestic glass production has largely replaced imports," the Maester announced with no small amount of satisfaction. "With lime, river sand and transportation easily available, our operations are only limited by finding beech trees growing on the right type of soil. Seventeen glassworks have already started production, while another nine will do so within another three months. Once we start proper exports to the South, we can expect to see another fifty to seventy thousand gold dragons per year, sire."
"And allay the Throne's annoyance at the lost import tariffs through taxation, I imagine," the solidly built lord added. He sat back into his throne-like armchair and theatrically patted a belly that no longer was quite as large as it had once been as he groaned in contentment. "What of those troubles you mentioned last week?"
"You were, as always, right my lord," Theomore preened. "The riot by the waterfront had just been a diversion. Saboteurs attempted to set fire to two warehouses while the city watchmen were otherwise occupied but were caught by the men we had lying in wait."
"I suppose a loaded table and a fat purse will always draw vultures... did Ser Bartimus manage to get them to talk?" Wyman idly sloshed an excellent sample of White Harbor's famous beer in his new two-pint carafe of green glass, the silver decorations of mermen and dolphins gleaming under the light of two candles that were not really candles. He more than suspected the answer but it was good to confirm.
"No, sire. The saboteurs were Sistermen that had been exiled from their homes due to Lord Baratheon's crackdown on their coastal piracy a few months back. Hired hands with no ties to any House that did not need to know where their silver came from to cause trouble." The plumpy blond Maester huffed. "What evidence exists points towards Sisterton... but evidence can be manufactured."
"Hmm... as much as getting a few Myrish captains to the Wolf's Den and sweating them would be briefly satisfying and potentially revealing, it would show our hand too early..." Lord Manderly sipped at his beer as he thought through the options before smiling genially. Those who knew him more deeply than his public mask of affability knew to worry when that smile came up... but so few did these days. "Theomore, I want you to send our less experienced harbor crews to all Myrish ships and quietly arrange them to get the oldest, lower-quality supplies. Planking, nails, canvas, rope, even food; if it's old enough to last less and need more repairs in the long run but not so old they can officially blame us for damages I want it to go to their ships first."
"They might sail for other ports when they notice what is happening, sire," the Maester cautioned but Lord Manderly snorted.
"Which ports would those be?" the portly lord asked rhetorically. "Tyrosh, Lys and Myr are at war right now. Volantis has been chomping at the bit to conquer all three for centuries. Braavos hates the guts of all slaver lords and Pentos is a Braavosi puppet these days. The Dornish have been their rivals since the days of the Triarchy and lack shipbuilding supplies anyway, and Stannis Baratheon will ram the rule of law down their dishonest slaving throats and let them choke on it. Gulltown and the Crownlands are too busy building up the royal fleet and anywhere else is both too far and requires sailing through contested waters." He chortled. "No, the only available neutral port both Myr and Tyrosh have is us and the longer their war lasts the more they will have to depend on us. This is an opportunity to profit and I plan to seize it with both hands."
"As you command, sire," the blond man acknowledged his new orders and went about making his lord's command into reality.
xxxx
"The more I see and hear the more I understand your troubles, Lord Manderly," I said as my image appeared on the chair the blond Maester had vacated only a minute earlier. The two guards flanking the chamber's entrance immediately froze in shock, gaping at my appearance as I rolled my eyes. Lord Manderly did no such thing - the freezing, not the eyeroll - and just kept on lightly nibbling at his dinner. A good ten-count later, the guards fumbled for their weapons.
"Hold!" the no longer morbidly obese noble commanded, raising his arm. The guards did and I rolled my eyes again.
"Were I a shade sent by a hostile mage you would have been dead before they drew steel," I told the physically older man conversationally.
"Oh?" he raised an eyebrow a hair darker than it had once been in polite surprise. "Would their drawing steel with alacrity have averted my death in that situation?"
"Not particularly. I once saw a shadowbinder's minion slide through an army camp of a hundred thousand men entirely unseen, appear in the warlord's tent, and slay him by cutting through a quarter inch of steel plate with no apparent effort." I shrugged. "It is why the keeps of Old Valyria, the First Men and the early Andal lords had spells built into them to bar hostile magic to prevent foes from assassinating them from a hundred miles away - or worse."
"Newcastle lacks such protections, I take it?" he asked with a calculating gleam in his eye. "How about the Wolf's Den?"
"That old thing still has some protections but they are damaged. I suspect it happened when the castle was burned by Oswin the Talon during the Worthless War two millennia ago." That was my best guess, anyway. Shifting through thousands of years of history was still far beyond my Divination skills. "It took me a few hours to get through but I did manage it." Mostly by stumbling into the gaps through trial and error - unlike the much more powerful and recently made defenses on Dragonstone, the Wolf's Den didn't bounce me half across the continent or tried to fry my brain.
"Would repairing the keep restore the defenses?" he asked and I shrugged.
"I have no idea. Maybe in a few years I will be able to lay spells on entire buildings but I have not managed it yet." I raised my hands in a 'what can you do?' gesture. "If you do decide to repair it I could check to see if the protections work once more. That was not why I am sending you a message though, Lord Manderly."
"A message?" He looked at me in question and I obliged by making my image waver. "Ah, I see. I was wondering why my people did not notify me of your arrival in the city. You are not really here."
"No, I am still in Lys, among other places." We both smiled at the obvious joke - it was so easy to smile with the genial lord even knowing he was ruthlessly exploiting both monopolies and war for a trade advantage. "If we could have some privacy?"
Wyman Manderly readily agreed to have his guards sent away. If the two had any doubts about their lord's orders they did not show anything other than relief for no longer sharing a room with the obvious sorceress. That done, quite a bit of both of our good cheer went away - or was at least muted by circumstances.
"First things first," I said in a more serious tone, "the amulet of healing I made for you. How long have you worn it?"
"Only a few hours every other day," the older man said. "I stopped wearing it all the time when I noticed my need for sleep slowly lessening as well as a few other changes." He frowned. "Can magic halt ageing?"
"Yes, though ageing is far from a single change. Some is inherent to the body, some is injury that didn't quite heal, some is the body reacting to wear and tear in ways that could have been averted." Reaching out with my magical perception, so much weaker when I was not present in the flesh, I tried to sense what changes had occured beyond the obvious. Wyman Manderly appeared to have lost nearly twenty pounds since my previous visit, with at least as much fat again turned to muscle. His skin was no longer a ruddy red at places, his hair, nails and eyes looked healthier and I would bet his bones and joints felt quite a bit lighter and springier than before. "The amulet can't make you younger, lord Manderly, but by letting you heal as well as a young man it makes you age as gracefully as possible." And maybe a few steps more than that.
"Then I should hand it over to my heir sooner rather than later," he decided as if giving up decades of life were ease.
"Really? You would hand it over just like that?"
"No offense meant, young sorceress," he told me in a grandfatherly tone, "but wars have been fought over far lesser gifts. We have riots over simple trade deals. Can you imagine what would happen if it became known that health and longevity could be stolen and worn like a piece of jewelry?"
"After the initial wailing and gnashing of teeth people would shrug, find new reasons for killing each others and themselves and the world would move on," I shot back. "There was once a study made by learned men showing that even if old age, famine, banditry, and most diseases were cured, people would still die at seven hundred due to accidents or wars." I shook my head. "Speaking of, a bit of war and potential accidents was my other reason for contacting you."
"Do tell, lady Belaerys."
"Lord Stark is moving to remove Lord Bolton," I infomed him and saw the barest hint of triumph going through his face before it smoothed into expressionlessness. "Some minor snag about his raping and murdering the smallfolk sworn to him for failing to offer the so-called right of the first night."
"Yes, such things do tend to happen in Bolton lands. You are here as the fastest secure messenger, then?" He nodded, not waiting for an answer. "What would Lord Stark have of me?"
"Your support in apprehending the oathbreaking rapist. He and a band of his best armsmen are already moving up the White Knife and your hidden shipyard closer to Bolton lands. Once they gain enough support, they plan to cut across towards the Dreadfort below the Lonely Hills."
"To avoid being seen, I take it? A bold plan with a good chance of working, but also significant risk." He only took a minute to chew on the new information before making a suggestion of his own. "There is another, potentially better way. The Hornwoods and the Boltons have been bitter rivals for the past three generations ever since the Boltons took a holdfast from them. Lord Hornwood's wife Donella is my cousin and my sending a message to her would not be suspicious. With the Hornwoods offering passage to more men into Bolton lands from the South, we could catch Lord Bolton entirely unprepared."
"Possibly... but the only preparation he would need would be to shut the Dreadfort's gate with him inside and he and his men could weather a siege for years." I waved my arm at the table, stretching the illusion to form a map of the area as seen from a bird's eye view. "My plan was to guide Lord Stark and his men-" an illusory figurine of a direwolf appeared "-through the region on unused paths through the hills-" the paths glowed red in the illusion "-while seeing patrols coming and avoiding them." Smaller figurines of flayed bloody skulls appeared on the map, the Direwolf getting out of the road before each patrol could come in sight. "That way we could get to the Dreadfort before Lord Bolton was aware of an intrusion and avoid a protracted conflict entirely. Lord Stark knows that with the North's support the Boltons would fall; he just wants to avoid unnecessary deaths if they chose to resist." And everyone who was anyone knew Lord Bolton would not go quietly in the night.
"Interesting... I had not considered the strategic applications of invisible scouts and rapid communication through magic." He prodded the illusion of the map on the table, his fingers going through the image to touch the silken tabletop beneath. "Or making maps at will for that matter."
He looked like a little kid with a new toy he had never seen before. I wondered what he would do when I told him there were mages today that could put an entire manor under illusion instead of a mere table, and that before the Doom cloaking an entire city had been possible...