AN :
This extra chapter as thanks for the power stones ;)
I still need more ...
In the Game of Stones, you either win or you wait. The more Power Stones you offer, the faster the chapters come.
...
( Tywin Lannister POV )
"I believe that if she reminds Elia of her duties, and on her death bed as well, that Elia will likely feel those words most heavily. Likewise, I believe that if she tells Callum stories of that friendship she had with Lady Joanna, that may make him more inclined towards Elia." Doran sighed.
"I do not know the latter for certain, but I am most sure of the impact it will have on Elia."
...
Tywin nodded, holding his tongue still. There was little to say on the matter. Tywin hated his father, loathed him deeply, but even with that hate he still had enough love for the man that if Tytos had given an order on his deathbed Tywin would have tried to see it through. Princess Elia seemed to love her mother well enough, he couldn't imagine that she would break such a promise. Though, as before, it relied on Princess Ennella living long enough to speak to them. "And your third solution?"
"Ah, a bit more crude," Doran said, smirking now. "If all else fails I'll just make them share quarters together."
Tywin blinked, honestly taken by surprise, it was an entirely inappropriate suggestion, not that he cared as long as it was kept quiet. Still, he felt a bit of doubt about it. "Callum is a bit young for such a thing to work." If he were older, even Jaime's age, there might be some chance that they would lay together, and thereby accelerate the marriage, but as things stood Callum was too young to father children.
"For carnal things certainly, but for bonding between them?" Doran asked though Tywin couldn't see it. Perhaps it was a quirk of Dornish thought that such a thing would work. Seeing his doubt, Doran continued. "When a man and a woman share a room, nothing is hidden between them, not really, and regardless of carnality." Doran paused for a moment.
"It will form a strong bond like two men fighting side by side on a battlefield and sharing a tent at camp. Their proximity will breed familiarity, which will breed true to affection if they have no reason to hate each other." Doran chuckled.
"If anything, I suspect I would be the object of any hate, for forcing the arrangement." The Prince of Dorne smiled. "That is why it is my third solution and not my first."
Tywin considered him for a moment. He wasn't entirely sure that the third solution was as robust as the other two. Not for someone Callum's age at least, but he didn't have a reason to oppose it, and the Dornishman likely knew his sister well enough to tell if it would be reasonable.
At the very least the first solution was sound enough. Princess Elia did not seem like an especially manipulative woman, and according to Ser Clegane's account, Callum seemed able to handle her when his sister wasn't leaping into their conversation full of sound and fury.
He was just about to agree to the deal when he stopped himself, recalling a promise he'd made some years ago now. His thoughts stopped, and he shook his head. It would be foolish to betray his son's trust. A Lannister's word was his debt.
"This all sounds reasonable enough to me Prince Doran," Tywin answered, steepling his fingers. "Though I will need to speak with Callum before I agree."
...
( Ilyn Payne POV )
Ilyn's fingers were numb, his palms sweaty. His eyes sagged as he worked, pressing the hand-press together for what must have been the ten-thousandth time that day. The molten metal inside of it hissed and bubbled. A mixture of lead and tin, it cooled within the press into a type block, a single letter for use in the press that Callum had designed.
Or rather, roughly one in three letters made this way did. In practice, the lead inside tended to shrink as it cooled, and if it shrunk in the wrong way then the type would be ruined, and the metal would have to be reheated and poured again, as many times as was needed before the material would be useable and shaped correctly. It was a miserable affair, especially given the sheer, mind-boggling number of letters required to print even a single page of the Seven-Pointed Star.
It was a miserable chore, and Ser Ilyn would have preferred not to do it. He would have preferred to pass it off to someone else.
He glanced to his right, where ten men stood around the same vat of molten lead and tin that he was drawing from, then to his left where ten more vats had been prepared, fueled underneath by makeshift furnaces raised by the Blacksmiths of Lannisport.
Yes, Ser Ilyn would have preferred to pass this task off to some other man, but he simply didn't have many men not already committed to some part of the process or other.
The Gold Sept of Lannisport had come through at Septa Margot's urging, though perhaps it was more accurate to say that she had browbeaten Goodfather Boros into committing and that once the old man had worked his influence to see the whole organization come about. The church had committed a sum of 30,000 Gold Dragons to start, which was to cover the initial creation of 200 presses, which would then be used to create copies of the Seven-Pointed Star.
This had put Ilyn in a rather awkward position, as everything was moving quite fast and Callum was still away at the tournament, so he had needed to, rather nervously, request the right to manage the sums for the boy from Lord Kevan at the Rock. Mercifully, Lord Kevan had agreed after a few hours of planning and discussion, and let Ilyn drag the apprentices that Callum had put to work in making the first 20 copies, Jorie, Brennan, and Stev, down from the Rock's smithies.
Thus had begun Ilyn's rather arduous education in the exact mechanics of his blessed young master's metal miracle.
The wooden construction of the presses themselves, complex though they may be, was not a major hassle once he understood the means of their construction, which Callum had thankfully left detailed notes on. Essentially an oddly shaped table with a large stamp set on a circular screw, they were a relatively simple concept, but one that needed to be very precisely measured, like everything else in the press.
It was most important that the stamping area be a certain number of inches across, and that each and every part be the same between different presses. Thankfully, that business could be left mostly to carpenters. Dozens had been hired from Lannisport, and more provided by the church, even men from related professions, coopers, and other woodworkers had been brought in to fashion the stamps themselves out of wood cut in Crakehall lands, shipped up the coast to Lannisport.
Blacksmiths too were needed for some metal fastenings, though they were mostly occupied with the other steps in the process. At any rate, Ilyn had heard the price of furniture in Lannisport had skyrocketed as a result, and he knew through his own business that some of the merchants were grumbling. Still, none were angry enough to pick a fight with the church of the Seven, not when it was whipped up into a holy mission.
Ilyn wasn't entirely sure what the status of the presses was at the moment, because the other parts of the process were proving far more difficult. The paper-makers in Lannisport were utterly swamped. They were hiring apprentices as fast as they could, Ilyn had even ordered several early payments to let them open new workhouses, but even so, the sheer scale of the order he had placed, to be fulfilled over the next three years, was daunting for them.
A huge dry chamber in the lower levels of Casterly Rock had been set aside by Lord Kevan after Ilyn requested it, and tens of thousands of sheets of paper, more than the city of Lannisport used in a month, had already been stored away there in the three weeks since Callum had left for the tournament.
The merchants had taken to using Vellum for their contracts instead, simply because it was cheaper and more available now with this single process dominating the paper market.
That aspect should ease up in a little while though, as more apprentices joined the paper-makers in Lannisport and the Church reached out to the rest of their producers in the Westerlands. They had many connections from having already been the greatest paper user in the Westerlands, something Ilyn had not previously known.
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