[ASOIAF SI] The Gilded Stag: A Ruthless Joffrey Uplift | Chapter 23: MOREDO (Public) (Patreon)

The Lady Larra cut through the choppy, grey-green waters of the Narrow Sea, her twin banks of long sweeping oars rising and falling in perfect, rhythmic unison. She was a sleek, predatory thing, a Lyseni war galley built for terrifying speed and the deft avoidance of the pirate fleets that plagued the Stepstones. Her hull was painted the color of the deep ocean, her sails snapping taut against the stiff autumn wind, and her prow was carved into the likeness of the great matriarch who had once wed a Targaryen prince. For a century and a half, the name Rogare had been a whispered tragedy in the Free Cities, a cautionary tale of a dynasty that had flown too close to the sun and burned in the fires of Westerosi treachery. They had been the greatest bank in the known world, eclipsing even the Iron Bank of Braavos during the golden days of the Lyseni Spring. Kings had danced to their tunes, and the wealth of continents had flowed through their pristine marble vaults. Then the lords of the Sunset Kingdom had turned on them, stripping their wealth, chaining their magisters, and ending their supremacy in blood and ruin.

For a hundred and sixty years, House Rogare had licked its wounds, surviving as a lesser power among the squabbling families of Lys, trading in spices, pillow houses, and modest loans.

Now, the tides were shifting. They were returning.

Beneath the main deck, in the richly appointed quiet of the captain’s cabin, Moredo Rogare sat behind a heavy table of carved black oak. The air in the cabin was thick with the scent of sweet Myrish incense and the sharp, coppery tang of the sea spray. Beneath his soft leather boots, a priceless carpet from Qohor—woven with intricate patterns of silver and midnight blue—muffled the continuous groan of the ship’s heavy timbers. He was a man in his middle years, his silver-gold hair thinning at the crown but still falling past his shoulders in the traditional, flowing Lyseni style. His eyes, a pale, watery violet, were fixed with unwavering intensity on the chaotic sprawl of copied pages before him.

They were the ledgers of Petyr Baelish, the late Master of Coin for the Iron Throne.

When the swift, unmarked cutter had arrived in Lys a moon turn past, bearing the sealed vellum from the Crown Prince, it had included these meticulously scribed copies of the royal accounts. Moredo had shown them to no one outside his own blood. To reveal such an unprecedented opportunity to the Magisters of Lys would have invited poisoned wine and daggers in the dark; the city thrived on its bitter, ancient rivalries, and the other noble families would have gladly burned the Rogare manse to the ground to steal the royal charter for themselves.

"The man was a juggler," Moredo murmured, his voice a soft, heavily accented purr that barely carried over the sound of the sea. He turned a page, the heavy vellum crackling in the quiet. He traced a finger down a column of numbers that made no earthly sense. "A mummer tossing painted silk balls into the air, praying the audience would not notice the sleight of hand before the curtain fell."

Across the cabin, reclining on a velvet divan with the indolent grace of a born aristocrat, his nephew Drazenko scoffed. Drazenko was young, hungry, and wore his ambition like a garish cloak. His tunic was cloth-of-silver slashed with sea-green silk, his fingers heavy with rings of sapphire, jade, and spun gold. In his hand, he swirled a goblet of sweet Lyseni red, the vintage so thick and dark it looked like fresh blood in the lantern light.

"He was a fool who played with the lions and the roses, Uncle," Drazenko said, taking a slow sip. "He borrowed from Lord Tywin Lannister to pay Lord Mace Tyrell, and borrowed from the High Septon to pay the Iron Bank of Braavos. He built a mountain of debt and called it prosperity. He fed the King roasted swan while the foundation of the castle rotted away."

"He built a mountain of debt, yes," Moredo agreed, tracing a line of smeared black ink with a filed fingernail. "But he did not build it for the Crown. He built it for himself. Look here." He tapped the copied ledger. "He bought the silence of the harbormasters, the toll collectors, the wool factors, the wine inspectors. He squeezed the merchants' profits in King's Landing, raising the gate tolls just enough to bleed their ledgers without inciting a riot in the streets, but the gold never reached the King's vaults. It lined the pockets of his own creatures, and he skimmed the cream to buy brothels and shipping fleets. It is a primitive, barbaric way to enrich oneself. To steal from the King's own plate while smiling in his face."

Moredo pushed the ledger aside with a look of mild disgust. Beneath it lay a single sheet of heavy pale vellum, sealed with the crowned stag of House Baratheon pressed into a thick pool of golden wax.

It was the letter that had brought the Lady Larra across the sea. A letter written not by the fat, drunken King, but by his fifteen-year-old heir.

"The Crown Prince demands seventy parts of every hundred for the Iron Throne," Drazenko said, a sour, resentful note in his voice as he took another long draught of the dark wine. "He leaves fifteen for us. And the remaining fifteen? He holds them in reserve for the lords of Casterly Rock, Highgarden, and the Faith! He gives away our profits to appease his grandfather's pride. His Grace demands that the dwarf, Tyrion Lannister, sit as his proxy over our books, watching our every move. He offers us the privilege of building his wealth, while keeping us leashed like hounds. The boy wants to own the very air we breathe."

"We are not leashed, Drazenko, we are anchored," Moredo replied softly, his violet eyes locking onto his nephew with a chilling stillness. "You do not understand the currents of the realm. You see a boy making arrogant demands. I see an architect drawing the plans for an empire that will outlast us all."

Moredo leaned back in his heavy oak chair, picking up a thick gold dragon from the table. It was an old coin, struck during the reign of the Mad King Aerys, its edges worn smooth by a thousand hands and a hundred bloody transactions. In the Sunset Kingdom, wealth was a physical, heavy thing. Lords hoarded chests of gold deep in the bowels of their castles, burying it beneath stone floors, letting it gather dust and cobwebs while they waged their petty, endless wars for pride and muddy land. It was stagnant. It was dead.

The Crown Prince intended to wake it up.

"Tell me, Drazenko," Moredo said, rolling the gold dragon across his knuckles, the metal glinting in the swaying light of the cabin. "How does the Iron Throne gather its tithes?"

"Like all the barbarians in the west," Drazenko answered, waving a dismissive hand, his rings flashing. "The peasants give their grain to the knights, the knights give their silver to the high lords, and once a year, the high lords send wagons of groats, stags, and dragons crawling up the Kingsroad to the Red Keep. And half of it is stolen by outlaws, or lost to corrupt toll-keepers, or sinks in the mud before it ever reaches the King's Master of Coin."

"Exactly," Moredo said, his voice dropping to a low, intense register. "It is slow. It is vulnerable. And it relies on the honesty of men who have none." He tapped the boy's letter with the edge of the golden coin. "His Grace does not offer us a simple vault to guard his coin. He offers us a Royal Charter. We are to be the authorized collectors of the King's taxes."

Drazenko lowered his goblet, the wine suddenly forgotten. He sat up straighter, the indolence vanishing from his posture. "Tax farming?"

"The very same," Moredo smiled, a thin, predatory curving of his lips that did not reach his pale eyes. "We will pay the Crown a guaranteed, stipulated tribute of gold at the dawn of every year. A mountain of coin, delivered directly into the Red Keep's vaults, before a single ship drops anchor. In exchange, the Prince grants the Rogare Bank the absolute, unquestioned right to collect every toll, every port duty, every anchorage fee, and every royal tithe in King's Landing and the Crownlands. The King gets his guaranteed gold, and whatever we collect above the agreed sum... we keep a handsome fraction of the excess."

"The merchants will gnash their teeth," Drazenko whispered, his eyes widening as the sheer, staggering scale of the wealth dawned on his mind. "They will curse the foreign bankers for squeezing their purses. They will call us leeches."

"Let them curse," Moredo said smoothly, turning to look out the stern windows at the churning white wake of the ship. "If Lord Rosby refuses to open his coffers, or the Spicers Guild refuses to pay the harbor tax, it will not be our sellswords who answer them. The Crown Prince has pledged the Gold Cloaks to our service. The King's own justice will enforce our collections. The boy keeps his hands clean, the smallfolk direct their hatred at the Lyseni, and our vaults overflow with the wealth of the greatest port on the eastern shores."

Moredo stood, the motion of the ship swaying his velvet robes, a man entirely comfortable with the chaotic roll of the sea.

"But that is only the beginning," Moredo continued, his voice dropping to a reverent hush, as if speaking of something sacred. "If we are the collectors of the King's taxes, we dictate the terms of payment. When the Tyrells send their annual tribute, we will not accept it in bulky wagons of grain, or wheels of cheese, or clipped foreign coins. We will demand physical gold, which we will lock in our vaults. And in return..."

"We issue ink and vellum," Drazenko finished, a sudden, sharp understanding illuminating his youthful face. "Promissory notes. Letters of credit."

"Yes," Moredo breathed. He turned back to his nephew, his eyes alight with the vision of it. "But we cannot do this from a single counting house in King's Landing. A merchant in Oldtown will not travel a thousand leagues up the Roseroad just to cash a piece of parchment. We must build a web. Branches of the Royal Bank in Lannisport, in Gulltown, in White Harbor, in Oldtown. A network of iron and ink spanning the continent."

Drazenko frowned, the ambition in his eyes warring with a sudden, pragmatic caution. "The high lords will never allow it. Lord Tywin Lannister will not permit a Crown bank to take root in Lannisport, right beneath the shadow of Casterly Rock. Lord Manderly will not let us siphon the wealth of the North from White Harbor. They are proud, jealous men. They will see it as a siege on their ancestral rights."

"They would, if we approached as conquerors," Moredo said, walking back to the table. He picked up a heavy gold bar from the open iron chest beside his desk and set it down firmly on the corner of the Westerosi map to keep the stiff sea breeze from curling the parchment. "But we will approach as partners. His Grace has devised a masterstroke. The Liege's Share."

Moredo leaned forward, planting his palms on the polished oak table, staring down at the map. "When we establish a branch in White Harbor, we will go to Lord Manderly. We will not demand his submission. We will tell him that for the privilege of operating in his city, House Manderly shall receive a twentieth part of all transaction fees and exchange rates generated by that branch. A river of free gold, flowing directly into his coffers, settling the accounts at the turn of the year, without him lifting a single finger."

"And the cost to him?" Drazenko asked, leaning forward, captivated.

"He must provide the guards," Moredo smiled. "He must use his own household knights to protect the physical vault, to ensure no thieves, pirates, or rival lords touch the King's gold. Do you see the beauty of it, Drazenko? Wyman Manderly will no longer be protecting the Crown's wealth. He will be protecting his own investment. We will trick the high lords of the Sunset Kingdom into paying for our security."

"And we bind the lesser men with their ambition," Moredo added, pulling another sheet of vellum from the stack. It was a draft, penned in the Crown Prince's own bold, sweeping hand, outlining the creation of Royal Bonds. "Petyr Baelish left the Crown owing millions to Casterly Rock, Highgarden, the High Septon, and the Iron Bank of Braavos. It is a fatal weakness. If you owe a foreign bank ten thousand dragons, you are their master. If you owe them three million, they are yours. You become their thrall."

"And the lords will not even take the shares," Drazenko argued, waving his goblet. "Lord Tywin wants heavy gold, not unproven parchment. The Prince's grand trap fails before it even opens."

"You lack patience, Nephew," Moredo smiled, a thin, predatory curving of his lips. "His Grace is not forcing them to take the shares today. He is converting their old loans into Royal Bonds. He guarantees their interest. Lord Tywin will feel safe. But..." Moredo tapped the parchment with the back of his hand. "The Prince attached a Writ of Conversion. The lords have the right to trade those bonds for the reserved shares whenever they wish."

Drazenko frowned, the cogs turning in his mind.

"Right now, the shares are unproven, so they will hold the bonds," Moredo explained, his violet eyes gleaming. "But in a year? When we are pulling rivers of gold from the Blackwater tolls? Lord Tywin will see our yields. His greed will gnaw at him. He will voluntarily surrender his bonds—erasing the Crown's debt forever—just to claim those shares. We are not forcing them to forgive the debt, Drazenko. We are baiting them to do it themselves."

"And until they do?"

"We sell standard bonds to the mercers, the shipwrights, the silk weavers, the minor landed knights," Moredo continued. "We employ Crown Factors—agents who will travel the realm, offering a commission for every bond they sell. We take that massive pool of new merchant gold, and we use it to pay off the principal owed to the Iron Bank of Braavos. We sever the foreign chains, and we diversify the Crown's debts until no single lord holds a blade to the King's throat."

"Why would a wealthy spice merchant trade hard gold for ink and vellum? Westerosi trust steel and stone. They trust walls they can see and swords they can hold. They do not trust parchment."

"They trust prestige," Moredo corrected gently, his voice carrying the wisdom of generations of Lyseni bankers. "His Grace understands the vanity of his people better than they understand themselves. We will not merely offer interest. We will offer privilege. A merchant who buys enough Royal Bonds will be granted a Royal Warrant. He becomes the 'Official Purveyor to the Iron Throne,' granting him reduced port tolls and priority at the docks. A minor lord who buys our debt will be granted a direct petition to the Hand of the King, bypassing the endless rabble of the court. And for the wealthiest... the Prince has whispered of creating a new order. Landed knighthoods. The Knights of the Crown's Trust. A title, Drazenko. A chance to elevate their grubby merchant blood into the lower nobility. They will trample each other to give us their gold."

Moredo watched his nephew absorb the sheer magnitude of the scheme. To shift the debt of the realm from three powerful warlords to ten thousand ambitious commoners.

"Do you see it now?" Moredo asked, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "If the Crown owes Stannis Baratheon or Mace Tyrell millions, they can march a host to the gates of King's Landing and demand the throne. But if the Crown owes ten thousand merchants their life savings... they become his shield wall. If a rebel lord tries to usurp the throne, the merchants know the new King might void the Crown's debts. They will fight to the death to keep the Baratheon boy on the Iron Throne, simply to protect their own purses."

Drazenko stopped pacing. He looked at the copied ledgers, then at the Prince's letter, a profound respect dawning in his eyes. "It is a cage," he whispered. "A cage made of ink and vellum."

"It is the foundation of a new world," Moredo corrected.

The heavy cabin door opened, groaning loudly on its iron hinges. Two men entered, carrying a heavy, iron-bound chest between them. They were master assayers from Lys, men with ink-stained fingers and sharp, calculating eyes that missed nothing. Behind them stood three heavily armored Lyseni guards, their halberds gleaming in the warm lantern light, their faces hidden behind polished steel half-helms.

"Set it down," Moredo commanded.

The assayers dropped the chest onto the thick carpet with a heavy, satisfying thud. Moredo unlocked the heavy iron clasps with a key he kept on a thick chain around his neck. Inside, nestled securely in dark velvet, were the tools of their true trade. There were precision scales of polished brass, vials of potent acid to test the purity of gold, thick Myrish lenses to inspect the intricate milling of the coins, and heavy iron stamps bearing the sigil of House Rogare, ready to be pressed into hot wax.

"There are other ways to enrich the realm, of course," Moredo said, watching the assayers begin to carefully calibrate their brass scales. "When a lord from the Reach wishes to deposit his Gardener gold, we will take a fraction of a percentage to convert it into Baratheon stags. When a minor lord needs gold to buy his armor for the tourney, we will lend him the coin, taking his toll-bridges and fertile farmlands as collateral. When he inevitably defaults, the Crown forecloses, and the Prince strips his enemies of their lands without ever unsheathing a sword. Economic conquest."

He poured himself a goblet of wine, the deep red liquid catching the light. "We will hold lotteries on festival days, keeping the lion's share of the coin to fund the Prince's new shipyards. We will underwrite merchant voyages to Yi Ti, taking a fifth part of the silk and saffron they return with. We will weave a web of gold so thick that no lord will be able to draw a breath without paying the Royal Bank a copper for the privilege."

Drazenko took a long drink of his wine, his throat working as the heavy vintage went down. "It is a grand vision, Uncle. But you speak as if there will be peace. The Crown Prince builds a war fleet. He purges the Red Keep of spies. His Grace is preparing for a siege, not a summer festival."

Moredo’s smile faded entirely, replaced by the grim, cold calculation of a man who had studied the histories of fallen empires. He walked back to the heavy oak table and looked down at the map of the continent, unrolled and weighted at the corners.

"There will be no peace," Moredo said softly, his violet eyes tracing the long lines of the Kingsroad. "King Robert is a dying beast. He eats, he drinks, he whores, and he ignores the rot festering beneath his throne. The great alliance that broke the dragons—the stag, the wolf, the falcon, and the trout—is fracturing beneath the weight of old grievances. When the King finally eats his last boar and drinks his last flagon of wine, the succession will be a slaughter. The wolves will march from the cold, the falcons will descend from their mountains, and the stags will tear each other to bloody pieces."

"Then why do we sail into the fire?" Drazenko demanded, a flash of genuine fear breaking through his youthful bravado. "If the continent bleeds, our branches will be burned. Our vaults will be plundered by rebel armies. Our agents will be put to the sword."

"Wars are not won by chivalry, Drazenko," Moredo stated, his voice hard as iron. "They are won by grain. They are won by steel. They are won by ships. And all of those things require gold."

Moredo tapped the center of the map, right on the red dot of King's Landing. "The Crown Prince knows the storm is coming. That is why he called us now, before the King dies. He intends to hoard the liquid capital of the realm. When the rebel lords raise their banners, they will fight with pride and whatever heavy silver they have locked in the bowels of their castles. They will bleed their peasants dry, their supply lines will snap, and their armies will starve in the autumn mud."

He looked up, his violet eyes burning with a dark, terrible vindication. "But the boy? The lions will fight for his throne, and he will have the Royal Bank. He will have the wealth of ten thousand merchants. He will be able to hire every sellsword company from Pentos to Volantis. He will provision his armies indefinitely. He will drown his enemies in gold before he ever has to strike them with a warhammer."

Drazenko stared at the map, the grand, terrible scale of the coming war finally taking shape in his mind. The sheer, ruthless pragmatism of it was breathtaking. "And when he wins?"

"When he wins," Moredo breathed, the true prize finally revealing itself, "we claim the ultimate spoil of war."

Moredo reached into a small leather pouch at his belt and drew out three coins. He dropped them onto the map. One was a Golden Dragon of King Robert, gleaming and heavy. One was an old gold Hand of the Gardener Kings, worn at the edges. The third was a heavy, square iron coin from the free city of Braavos.

"Right now, His Grace cannot command the high lords to abandon their ancestral coins. Lord Tywin would never suffer the indignity of closing the mints of Casterly Rock. It would spark an uprising. But after the war? When the rebel lords are broken, bleeding, and kneeling in the dust before the Iron Throne, begging the boy for pardons and the return of their captive sons?"

Moredo swept the Gardener coin and the Braavosi square off the table, sending them clattering to the floorboards, leaving only the Golden Dragon resting on the map.

"The Crown Prince will demand their surrender," Moredo said, his voice echoing in the quiet cabin with prophetic weight. "Not just of their swords, but of their financial independence. The Royal Bank will issue the final decree: No coin shall be legal tender unless it is struck by the Royal Mint."

Drazenko gasped softly, the implications hitting him like a physical blow. "A monopoly on the metal."

"Total, absolute control," Moredo confirmed, his gaze locked on the solitary gold coin. "All foreign coins, all old regional gold, all hoarded bullion will be declared dead weight. To pay their tithes, to buy their bread, the high lords will be forced to bring their physical wealth to our mints. We will melt down the pride of the great houses and the legacy of the old kings. We will strike it into the King's image. And for every single golden dragon we strike, the Bank will take a seigniorage fee."

Moredo looked down at the map. "One currency. One bank. One King. We will force the entire wealth of a continent through a single bottleneck, and House Rogare will control the gates."

A sudden, sharp cry from the rigging above broke the heavy silence in the cabin. The lookout.

Moredo turned toward the stern windows. The grey-green waters of the Narrow Sea were giving way to the calmer, muddy currents of Blackwater Bay. In the distance, rising like a jagged, rusted blade against the pale autumn sky, was the city of King's Landing.

Drazenko came to stand beside him, staring at the looming metropolis. "It is a savage place, Uncle. The histories say the Westerosi are beasts who cloak themselves in silk."

"They are beasts," Moredo agreed softly, watching the Red Keep grow larger on the horizon. "But beasts can be chained. And we are bringing the iron."

Moredo Rogare smoothed the velvet of his doublet, the weight of his ancestors settling comfortably on his shoulders. The Lyseni Spring had ended in blood and ruin, broken by the swords of men who feared the power of the ledger. But the men of the Sunset Kingdom had grown fat and lazy. They had forgotten the true power of gold.

They were about to be reminded.

"Gather the ledgers, Drazenko," Moredo commanded, turning away from the window. "Tell the captain to raise the banners of House Rogare. The Crown Prince is waiting, and we have an empire to build."

An hour later, the Lady Larra finally slid into the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, the massive wooden docks of the city rising up to meet them. It was only then that the wind shifted, and the true nature of their new home rolled over the decks. Even from the water, the smell of it reached them—a thick, cloying stench of woodsmoke, raw sewage, rotting fish, baking bread, and unwashed bodies. It was the smell of a million desperate souls, crammed onto three massive hills. But rising above the squalor, crowning the highest hill, was the Red Keep. Its massive stone walls were the color of dried blood, its seven drum towers reaching toward the heavens like the fingers of a grasping hand.

It was a brutal, ugly fortress, built by a conqueror who understood only fire and blood. And the Rogares were about to buy it.