Solomon gave him no time to sit with his grief.
He gestured toward the door. Olivier walked in a moment later, leading a dozen or so captured knights of House Lege behind him.
These men had lost all their fire. They shuffled in like roosters stripped of every feather — heads down, eyes sliding away from Solomon's gaze, finding anything in the room to look at other than the man at the table.
Solomon pointed at the long benches along the walls of the command hall.
"Sit down. All of you."
The knights lowered themselves onto the benches with all the ease of men sitting on beds of nails.
Solomon's voice was entirely calm, as though he were discussing the weather.
"The broader terms will be negotiated with House Deddings directly."
"But the question of ransoms — that we settle now."
He held up three fingers.
"Three hundred gold dragons per knight."
The words had barely landed before one of the knights — a man with a temper to match his bulk — shot up from his bench as if launched from a catapult.
His voice went shrill with outrage.
"Three hundred gold dragons?!"
"That is robbery!! Solomon, you stripped our castles bare — the gold, the silver, the grain, the livestock, everything!! I was told your men took my wife's bed linen!! Where in the Seven Hells do you expect us to find gold dragons?!"
A second knight was already on his feet, face dark red.
"He's right!! You took everything that could be carried, and now you want us to pay gold to buy ourselves back?! In the name of the Seven — what kind of justice is this?!"
The temperature in the command hall dropped sharply.
Solomon's expression shifted into something odd — a quiet, tilted smile. He leaned forward slightly, both hands folded on the table, and looked at the men who were shouting at him with an expression of mild, unhurried interest.
"Interesting."
"Your manners during your time as my guests were rather different from what I'm hearing right now."
His gaze moved from face to face, unhurried.
"I remember quite clearly, Ser Harsting. It was you who told me your wife's family holds broad lands in the Reach — five or six thousand smallfolk under their banner."
He turned to another man.
"And you, Ser William. You told me your wife is a distant relation to House Lannister. You said a single letter to Casterly Rock and a few thousand gold dragons would be nothing — a small inconvenience at most."
Solomon's voice did not rise. It landed on each man like a quiet, precise stroke.
"At the time, every one of you gave me your personal assurance that your houses were wealthy. You promised that as long as your life and dignity were respected, you would pay whatever ransom was asked, without hesitation."
He let that sit for a moment.
"And now the war is over. And all of a sudden every last one of you is a pauper with nothing but the clothes on your back."
The knights' faces cycled through several shades — red, then grey, then red again. Every one of them looked as though an invisible hand had closed around their throat. Not a word came out.
You couldn't tell that was just boasting?!
Ser Harsting opened his mouth. Closed it. Sagged back onto the bench and buried his face in his hands. The humiliation moved through each of them in a slow, unstoppable wave.
Into the suffocating silence, Gaels Lege finally spoke.
He rose, took a step forward, and when he spoke his voice was rough, but he had already found his footing as a lord.
"Solomon. Three hundred dragons is genuinely too much for them at this moment."
"They have lost everything. You have already taken everything that could be taken. Please, in consideration of—"
Solomon cut him off. His eyes went cold.
"In consideration of what?"
"In consideration of the fact that they demolished my family's castle? Or that they desecrated my family's tomb?"
One of the knights muttered under his breath. "The man who did those things was Jero Lege, and you've already kill—"
Solomon's gaze moved to him. The knight straightened and closed his mouth.
Gaels sat back down, silenced.
Solomon left him there and returned his attention to the defeated knights.
He appeared to think for a brief moment. Then he spoke, without heat.
"Very well. I am a reasonable man."
He folded two fingers down and left one raised.
"By whatever means you choose — borrow it, pawn something — one hundred and fifty gold dragons per knight. Family members, fifty gold dragons each."
He paused, and added a sentence that drained every remaining color from the room.
"Children too young to reach a cartwheel hub — ten gold dragons apiece."
The words were without temperature. He might have been assigning a value to livestock. Not a trace of anything human.
The knights' hearts hit the floor. They understood, without needing to be told, that this was the final number. There was no room left below it.
One hundred and fifty dragons — for men who at this moment owned nothing — was still an insurmountable mountain. But they had no weight left to put on the other side of the scale. Their freedom. Their families. That was all that remained.
They swallowed it.
"Agreed. We accept." Ser Harsting's voice came out barely above a murmur, hollowed of everything.
The others nodded in sequence, as if the bones had gone soft inside them.
Solomon set down the wine cup he had been turning in his hands — he hadn't drunk from it once — and nodded as though entirely satisfied.
The room assumed that the matter of ransoms had been resolved.
Then he spoke again.
"One more thing."
Every stomach in the room lurched upward.
Solomon's tone remained completely level.
"Regarding the Reekfort."
"That was my family's ancestral seat. You demolished it. That account also needs to be settled."
He raised one finger.
"One thousand gold dragons. As reparation."
Gaels Lege was out of his chair before the sentence was finished, his voice breaking from him in disbelief.
"One thousand gold dragons?!!"
"You took everything from Willowbrook!! You even pried the good bricks out of the walls and hauled them off!! Where are we supposed to find a thousand dragons?! The entire combined wealth of House Lege at this moment could not produce that number!!"
Solomon set the wine cup down on the table with a dull, deliberate thud.
"That is your problem. Not mine."
"When you tore down my castle, did any of you stop to consider what it was worth?"
"When you dug up my ancestors' bones, did any of you stop to consider whether the dead deserved their rest?"
This time Gaels did not back down. The anger that broke through was genuine and raw.
"The man who committed those crimes was Jero Lege, and you killed him!!"
"The debt died with him!!"
Solomon settled back in his chair and regarded the room with relaxed patience.
"You are welcome not to pay."
"In that case, I will simply send all of you to the Reekfort to assist in its reconstruction, and you will remain until the work reaches the value of one thousand gold dragons."
The knights went the colour of ash.
Not one of them doubted it. He would do exactly that. Forced labour — for a knight — was a humiliation that surpassed death.
Gaels Lege steadied himself, visibly. He was out of road. But he had to win back at least something — something for the house, something for the men sitting behind him.
He drew a long breath and made his voice as steady as he could manage.
"Three thousand gold dragons. One payment, combined — ransoms, reparations, everything. That is the final figure. Nothing more after this."
Solomon raised an eyebrow.
"Agreed."
He turned to Olivier.
"Bring parchment and ink."
In short order, a document was unrolled across the table, its terms written out in clean, legible script:
House Lege and all its vassal knights shall pay Solomon a total of three thousand gold dragons in ransom and reparation, delivered in a single payment. Upon receipt, Solomon will release all prisoners and withdraw completely from Willowbrook. Both parties bind themselves to this treaty with their names and house seals.
Gaels Lege picked up the quill with a trembling hand. He looked at the parchment that would determine the fate of his house for a generation.
He signed his name. Each stroke felt as though it were being cut into his bones.
The other knights followed in turn, each stepping forward and pressing their seals into the document with the air of men walking to their own sentencing.
Three thousand dragons — not an impossible sum, on paper. It could be borrowed. But for a house stripped to its foundations, it was a mountain that might take a lifetime to move. Gaels understood that his entire future as lord might be consumed by nothing but this debt.
Solomon folded the treaty, rose from his chair, and spoke with the tone of a man whose business was finished.
"Good. The agreement is binding."
"You may begin making arrangements for the gold."
He looked at the hollow-eyed knights.
"When I see the dragons, I release the prisoners. You will be free to take your families and go."
A thread of relief appeared in the knights' faces. They began to rise.
Solomon's voice came again.
"Wait."
He walked to the doorway of the command hall and pointed out toward the courtyard.
"Before any of you leaves, each one of you will go to the courtyard — in full view of every person in Willowbrook — and swear an oath to House Deddings."
"The oath is simple. You will swear never to set foot on the lands of House Deddings seeking quarrel."
Ser Harsting's jaw worked. The words came out through gritted teeth.
"Is this the final humiliation?"
Solomon turned away, presenting them only with his back.
"Olivier. Take them. Give them time to compose their oaths."
"Voices loud enough that I can hear them from here."
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