The heavy door of the Counting House closed with a near-religious silence, leaving the three Keyholders alone with the weight of their decision. The flames of the torches danced, casting shifting shadows on the marble walls stripped of any superfluous ornamentation. The spectacle they had just witnessed – these instruments unveiling the Moon's craters and the invisible universes within a mere drop of water – had reduced them to an unusual, almost sacred, silence.
Tycho, the elder with a face weathered by years of calculation, was the first to break the calm. His voice, usually firm and authoritative, betrayed a new gravity. "We have just looked the future in the face. And it's rather frightening."
Lyrio, the master of trade networks, spun the Myrish glass crystal he always carried as a talisman between his agile fingers.
"Myr will bleed dry. Their tinted glass, their lenses with romantic imperfections... all of it will become mere common rock crystal." He delicately placed the object back on the table, as if burying an era. "Their economic tripod – slaves, glass, lenses – has just lost two legs. Collapse is inevitable."
Ferrego, the youngest, whose pragmatism sometimes bordered on cynicism, leaned forward, his fingers steepled.
"And if we refuse? He will knock on Pentos's door. Or, worse, he will offer this power to Volantis. He has produced more innovations in 4 years than the Citadel has in 1000. Our financial supremacy, the foundation of our power, would become a memory if that were to happen."
"That isn't even the worst-case scenario," corrected Tycho, rising to pace the room. "The worst would be if he turned to the cities of the Far East. Qarth, Yi Ti... In a year, all trade in spices, silk, and knowledge would pass through his hands. We would become a regional branch, relegated to managing Westerosi debts."
Lyrio slowly nodded, his eyes lost in the crystal's reflections. "To accept is to trigger a quake whose aftershocks will shake all of Essos. Myr will cling to its allies. Pentos might support them out of pure fear of what follows. A league of threatened cities is not out of the question."
"To refuse is to condemn ourselves to obsolescence," Ferrego countered with implacable coldness. "We would lose not only this advancement, but we would create a rival armed with intellectual weapons whose language we don't even understand. Besides, he seems more of a banker than we are in his speech. At least with this partnership, we can attempt to build dikes to channel the torrent."
Tycho stopped before the large nautical map hanging on the wall, his fingers brushing the trade routes he knew by heart. "You are both right. We have no choice. But make no mistake, this is not a surrender; we are the Iron Bank, after all. This is... a strategic realignment."
He turned, his gaze sweeping over his two colleagues. "For centuries, we have been the architects of credit, the bankers of the world as it is. This boy offers us a perilous chance to be the bankers of the world as it will be. The risk is abyssal, but the reward..."
"...could be the monopoly on the next revolution," Lyrio finished, an almost youthful gleam in his tired eyes. "We will no longer be just the guardians of gold. We will be the guardians of wealth, the means of production, and knowledge."
Ferrego let out a short, humorless laugh. "The height of irony. We have spent our lives counting the wealth of others, and now a teenager reveals to us the existence of riches we hadn't even known how to name."
"Prepare the contract," Tycho decreed, returning to his seat. "But let it be different from anything we have ever drafted. We are not dealing with a borrower, but with a partner. This boy is particular enough; let's channel him in the right direction."
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One week later
The office had been rearranged, transforming the audience chamber into a negotiation arena. On one side, Tony, flanked by Lady Ermesande, and Lira, silent and observant. Facing them, the three Keyholders, surrounded by a cloud of scribes and lawyers with grave faces.
"Let us address the structure," began Tycho, his hands flat on the table. "A new entity, 'Cristalline'. The Iron Bank will hold forty percent of the shares."
Tony didn't even blink. "Thirty percent. And you fully finance the construction of the Glassworks at Val-Engrenage, as well as the first two specialized ships for distribution."
Lyrio sketched a smile. Finally, a language he understood perfectly. "Thirty-five percent, and we cover seventy-five percent of the infrastructure costs and one ship."
"Thirty percent, and you cover ninety percent of the costs for the two ships," Tony retorted without hesitation. "In return, you get exclusive distribution rights for all the Free Cities, the East, and the Summer Islands. And a non-competition clause for the next five years on all glass-derived products."
The negotiations dragged on, sweat beading on the scribes' foreheads as they tried to keep pace. Tony never yielded on substance, but knew, with disconcerting intuition, when to give ground on form to preserve the essentials. He spoke of "return on investment," "market share," and "penetration strategy" with an ease that bewildered the most seasoned bankers.
The confidentiality clause became a battlefield. Ferrego insisted, arguing his case, for the Bank to have complete access to the manufacturing processes, invoking the necessary "due diligence."
Tony simply shook his head, his gaze becoming as cold as Valyrian steel. "You are not buying secrets; you are buying results. I guarantee you the quality, the quantity, and the exclusivity. The 'how' remains the property of my mind. It is non-negotiable."
After an hour of tense discussion, they agreed on a hybrid verification system: Bank inspectors, pre-approved, could access the production workshops to verify volumes and quality, but would never be allowed to observe the fusion furnaces or the mechanical polishing workshops.
When it came to the penalties for contract breach, Tony deployed a legal brutality that left the Bank's lawyers dumbfounded. "Any attempt at reverse engineering, industrial espionage, or disclosure to a third party, even by negligence, will result in the immediate dissolution of the partnership, the full repayment of all your investments increased by one hundred percent, and the seizure of all Bank assets located within the Company's holdings."
A deathly silence fell upon the room. Tycho stared at him, a mixture of astonishment and respect in his gaze. "You leave no room for doubt."
"In business, doubt is a luxury no one can afford," Tony replied simply.
When the final seal was affixed – the Titan of Braavos interlaced with the stylized gear of Val-Engrenage – night had long since enveloped the lagoon.
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On the deck of the barge returning them to their heavy merchant ship, the Chantier de Fer, the air was thick with the scents of the sea and the city's effluvia. The lights of Braavos were now just a twinkling constellation on the horizon when Ermesande finally broke the silence, her voice carried by the saline breeze.
"That was masterfully played, Tony. But part of me doesn't understand. We could have financed this glassworks ourselves. The coffers of Val-Engrenage are overflowing with gold. Why give them thirty percent of the venture?"
Lira, leaning against the gunwale, arms crossed, approved with a look. It was the question she had been burning to ask.
Tony leaned against the bulwark, contemplating the moon's reflection on the black water. "First rule: never use your own money when you can use someone else's."
Ermesande smiled, somewhat skeptically. "That sounds like the wisdom of a miserly merchant, not the vision of an empire builder."
"Yet it is the foundation of any lasting empire," Tony corrected, turning towards them. He pulled out his notebook, a worn object that never left him, and turned the pages to a complex cash flow diagram. "To put it simply, if we had committed our own funds, we would have immobilized our capital. All our gold would have become stone and glass. An exceptional winter, a fire, a war... one unforeseen event and we would be on our knees. The Bank's money is leverage. It allows us to act without jeopardizing our existence. We preserve our war chest."
Lira studied the diagram, tracing the lines representing the flows with her finger. "Alright. I understand financial prudence. But the shares? Thirty percent is a high price for leverage."
"Those shares, I didn't give them away; I invested them," Tony insisted, closing his notebook with a sharp gesture. "I invested in a name. The name of the Iron Bank."
Ermesande, whose mind was forged in court intrigues, began to perceive the strategy. "Their reputation... you're buying it like armor."
"Exactly," Tony approved, his gaze lingering on the distant lights.
"Without them, we are just upstarts, minor lords. Talented commoners, certainly, but without the blue blood that commands respect in this world. Any merchant prince of Pentos, any great house of Westeros, could decide to plunder us, to steal from us, estimating there would be no serious consequences. But now..." His voice became lower, more dangerous. "Now, if they attack us, they attack the interests of the Iron Bank. And nobody, nobody, wants to declare war on the Titan. Their wrath is certain bankruptcy. Their network is a vise that can crush any trade. Their name is our shield. Their influence, our sword."
Lira nodded slowly, a gleam of understanding in her usually impassive eyes.
"So, in exchange for thirty percent, we are buying a legitimacy and protection that neither an army of ten thousand men nor an impregnable castle could offer us."
"Much more than that," Tony added, turning towards them, his face grave. "We are buying a pass for the real game. Their name opens diplomatic doors for us, gives us access to information networks, places us immediately on the level of the great merchant houses. But that's just a facade."
He paused, letting the night wind carry his words. "The money we didn't spend, the one we are preserving... it's for something else. For the projects that no one must see. Not even them."
Ermesande stiffened, intrigued, the memory of the explosions returning to her. "What kind of projects?"
Tony gave an enigmatic, almost unsettling smile. "The alliance with the Iron Bank is a chess move I am playing several years in advance. They see a glass company. I see the foundations of a global logistics network, a communication system that will reduce distances to nothing, and a power source that will make lamps as obsolete as candles. Optics are just the tip of the iceberg. The money we are keeping will serve to build what lies beneath the surface: the foundries for a new metal, the laboratories to master lightning, the shipyards for vessels that will defy winds and tides."
He looked at them each in turn, Lira the ruthless and Ermesande the ambitious. "The Bank covers us with its shadow, which leaves our hands free to work in an even deeper shadow. One day, when they turn around, they will realize they are no longer our partners, but our clients, a part of a greater whole. And on that day, it will be too late for them to contest anything."
Lira stared at him, and for the first time, she saw beyond the inventive genius, beyond the gang leader turned industrialist. She saw the cold strategist, the architect of an empire that would rely neither on lineage nor on conquest, but on the control of the flows of information, energy, and production. A power so fundamental that kings would only understand it when it was already at their throats.
"We have just bought our entry ticket into the court of the great," murmured Ermesande, a thrill of excitement in her voice.
"No," Tony corrected, his gaze lost towards the west, towards Westeros. "We have just bought the first grain of sand that, accumulated, will become the mountain on which they will all stumble. Now, let's go home. We have a world to build."
The barge slid into the night, carrying westward the architects of a future that no one, not even the most perceptive of the Keyholders, could yet entirely conceive.