30
The weeks that followed were spent not in spectacle or expansion, but in the quieter, harder work of assimilation.
The penanced sailors were deliberately kept ashore, housed within the city rather than sent back to sea. Officially, it was to keep an eye on them. In truth, it was just as much to force familiarity and find the troublemakers. They worked the docks, hauled timber, learned new routes through streets that had once felt hostile, and shared meals in common halls instead of eating apart. Day by day, Weirstad stopped feeling like a sentence and began to feel like a place. The defiant stubborn ones were separated and posted in placed where a more careful eye can be kept on them. Not that the Penance seed symbiote needed it but redundancy was always good to have.
Erik made no speeches about redemption. He didn't need to. The hope was simple and practical: that most of them would change their minds. That they would grow used to the rhythm of the city, to steady work and predictable nights, and perhaps even grow to like it. At the subtle hinting of Helga to her more zealous followers many found themselves invited into households, into shared laughter, into the beginnings of something resembling a future. Those unhappy with their profession were quietly encouraged to apprentice under locals and use this chance to find a career they liked. A few began to speak of staying, of taking partners, of putting down roots where none had been intended.
The same care was taken with the down on their luck Braavosi artisans and skilled workers brought from Braavos. They were not isolated or set apart as foreign specialists. Instead, they were woven deliberately into existing workshops, paired with local hands, their methods observed, questioned, and slowly adopted. Some new workshops that had to be built were given many locals as apprentices. Differences in technique became conversations instead of barriers. Accents softened. Habits blended. Pride gave way to mutual respect.
Erik insisted on it being done this way. No enclaves. No divisions. No guilds. If Weirstad was to grow, it would do so as a single body, not a collection of competing parts that impeded progress.
He wanted every newcomer whether they be sailor, smith, scribe, or weaver to feel that this was not a temporary shelter or an imposed exile. He wanted them to look around, after weeks of shared labor and shared nights, and realize they were no longer guests. They were not treated as captured assets or borrowed hands but equal members of a free society that was trying its best to be above discrimination of any sort. Each craft was given space, materials, and apprentices. Everyone had equally great opportunity to grow and fulfill their dreams.
Painters and sculptors were settled near the river light, where stone dust and pigments could be washed away easily. Goldsmiths worked beside pearl traders, refining techniques that blended Braavosi delicacy with Weirstad's heavier northern aesthetics. Woodcarvers shared long halls with architects, their sketches pinned beside beams and scale models as new districts slowly took shape.
Textile sectors also bloomed. Tailors, spinners, weavers, auroch and yak wool workers, and embroiderers working side by side. New improved looms that were copied, improved, and sometimes broken, filled the air with constant motion. Patterns changed. Styles softened. Weirstad began to look like a city.
Metal rang from dawn to dusk. Blacksmiths, metalworkers, armorers, and tin workers expanded Kate and Luca's forges into a complex of heat and sound. Nearby, stonemasons, bricklayers, and carpenters raised permanent structures instead of temporary sheds, buildings meant to last generations, not seasons.
Apothecaries and pigment makers took over a cluster of stone rooms near the groves, cataloguing plants, resins, and powders. Leatherworkers of every specialization found purpose. Cordwainers crafting fine shoes, shoemakers and cobblers dividing labor cleanly, saddlers and glovers shaping luxury and utility alike. Girdlers, botteliers, scabbard-makers, thongers, and bookbinders turned hides into everything a growing city needed. Even earthenware craftsmen were brought in, their kilns glowing at night like low stars.
And then came the moneyers, the coin makers. The mint was established within the giant hybrid Heart Tree itself, built in one of it its vast hollowed interior chambers to keep it close at hand and secure against theft and tampering. Deep root chambers were hollowed and reinforced with stone and iron, their entrances hidden behind living bark and guarded day and night. The tree's sheer mass shielded the mint from fire, frost, and forced entry, while its living presence discouraged carelessness and corruption alike.
Here, metal was weighed, tested, and struck under constant watch. Every die was accounted for. Every blank counted. Nothing entered or left without record
Gold and silver were brought under heavy guard, carried in locked chests and watched by his most loyal men. Each bar was weighed twice, tested for purity, then broken and fed to the crucibles. The metal flowed bright and clean, poured into molds cut to exact measure. When the blanks cooled, new dies were brought out that were simple in design, deliberate in meaning and difficult to counterfeit.
One face bore the mark of the heartwood with a face in the trunk, unmistakable even when worn thin. The other was etched with runes of durability and attraction, worked subtly into the metal itself. They were not merely decorative. The runes strengthened the coin against wear and corrosion and gave it a faint, almost unconscious pull, something that made the hand reluctant to let it go. Coins meant to last. Coins meant to circulate. Coins meant to be chosen, again and again, over any other measure of worth. So that eventually it would become the preferred currency for international trade.
It was the first large-scale deployment of magic runes Weirstad had ever attempted, and it did not come easily. Eldri Runetongue labored for weeks over wax molds and test blanks, arguing late into the night with Runa, while Bloom of the Children of the Forest corrected them both in soft, patient tones older than their language. The challenge was not power, but restraint. The runic lattice had to be compact enough to fit within the thin skin of a coin, subtle enough not to flare or draw attention, and stable enough to feed on nothing more than the faint ambient energies that permeated the air of Planetos itself.
Dozens of designs failed. Some cracked the metal. Others drank too deeply and warped. A few worked too well, clinging to hands so stubbornly they had to be pried loose with a knife. In the end, they found balance: a nested pattern, shallow but precise, that sipped rather than consumed, reinforcing without dominating. When the first successful coins were struck and cooled, the runes went quiet, settling into the metal like something that had always belonged there.
Weirstad's money was not large-scale showy magic like that of the Valyrians.
It was patient magic that was hidden in plain sight.
And it would travel farther than any spell ever cast in a single night.
"These coins are the first step in creating our economy," Erik said as the first blanks were struck, the sharp ring of metal echoing through the mint. He watched closely, not the coin, but the faces around him. "The free folk are used to barter, meat for grain, labor for shelter. Coin will feel like a trick to them at first."
He picked one up, turning it between his fingers so the light caught the runes.
"So it must never be a trick. Anyone who holds one of these should know exactly where it came from, why it's worth something, and that it will still be worth something centuries from now."
One of the moneyers frowned thoughtfully. "Trust won't come quickly."
"No," Erik agreed calmly. "But consistency builds faster than fear. Fixed weights. Fixed purity. No debasement. No sudden changes." His eyes hardened slightly. "And anyone caught shaving, clipping, or falsifying my coin will wish they'd chosen sacrifice instead."
That earned a few thin smiles.
The accountants exchanged glances, already thinking in columns and ledgers, supply and flow. They understood what Erik was building, not just currency, but control without chains. A system that rewarded honesty, punished greed, and made Weirstad the quiet center of trade whether merchants admitted it or not.
The hammers fell again.
Coin by coin, an economy was born.
For now, they struck only three coins, simple in concept and absolute in clarity. Gold, silver, and bronze. No confusing weights, no shifting ratios, no hidden tricks meant to favor the powerful over the poor. Each denomination followed a strict factor of one hundred. One hundred bronze coins equaled a single silver. One hundred silver coins equaled a single gold.
The simplicity was deliberate.
Bronze was meant for daily life. Wages, food, tools, ferry fares, and drink. Heavy enough in the hand to feel real, common enough that no one feared spending it. Silver was the measure of craft and trade, used for finished goods, contracts, and shipments that crossed borders. Gold was rarer, reserved for ships, land, tribute, and long-distance exchange, a store of value that could travel anywhere and be trusted.
Each coin shared the same language of symbols and runes, scaled carefully so that no matter the metal, the promise remained identical. A bronze coin did not pretend to be a silver one, and silver never masqueraded as gold. Weight, size, and color made deception difficult, while the runes made counterfeiting impossible.
Erik insisted the ratios never change.
"People can learn numbers," he told the moneyers. "We will not let them learn mistrust. Once you break the scale, you break belief."
So Weirstad's economy began not with abundance, but with certainty. A child could count it. A sailor could trust it. A foreign merchant could test it and know its worth without ever hearing Weirstad's name spoken aloud. And as the coins passed from hand to hand, from port to port, they carried more than value with them.
They would carried the idea that this city meant what it made. It would become one of the many ways Weirstad would become known of quality and trust.
Every artisan was given a workshop. Every workshop was given apprentices. No skill remained isolated. No knowledge was hoarded. Weirstad did not grow fast, but it grew wide—interlocked, layered, and stubborn in the way only living things could be.
Painters worked beside sculptors, trading pigments for chisels. Goldsmiths shared space with moneyers, learning the precise weights and alloys that would soon circulate through every hand in the city. Woodcarvers and architects argued over grain and load-bearing curves while stonemasons and bricklayers turned those arguments into walls that would outlast them all. Tailors, spinners, and weavers filled long halls with the whisper of thread, while auroch and yak wool workers and embroiderers transformed imported luxuries into something unmistakably Weirstad.
Blacksmiths and armorers labored near the charcoal pits, where steady columns of smoke marked the slow burning of timber into fuel hot enough to bend steel. Apothecaries ground herbs beside pigment makers. Cordwainers, saddlers, glovers, and girdlers worked fine leather into forms both practical and beautiful, while cobblers repaired the old and bookbinders gave permanence to words that might otherwise fade. Even the earthenware craftsmen found their place, turning local clay into vessels that carried everything from coin to grain to ink.
Each newcomer was paired with locals. Each local was expected to learn as much as they taught. Mistakes were corrected publicly. Success was shared deliberately. Accents clashed. Tempers flared. Old guild habits died hard.
But by the end of those weeks, fewer people spoke of leaving.
More spoke of building.
They argued about expansions, about new kilns and deeper forges, about houses instead of barracks, about who might marry whom once the next winter passed. Children of Weirstad began using foreign words without realizing it, and the newcomers started swearing in the old tongue when they were tired or hurt.
And that, Erik knew, was how a city stopped being a refuge—
and became a home.
--------
A few days later Erik was out on an inspection tour of their newly planted fields. In particular he was interested in the fields planted using grain and vegetable seeds imported from Braavos.
The wind worried at the young fields as Erik walked among the plots, Helga and Sigrun at his sides. The ground was marked with neat rows and careful stones, every effort made to coax life from the soil. Too much of it lay bare, the promise of green reduced to scattered, stubborn survivors clinging to life.
"I had expected them to have a hard time growing here" Eik commented "But this is worse that any of my calculations"
Helga stopped first, crouching to touch a wilted shoot, her fingers gentle despite the calluses earned through honest work.
"They tried," she said quietly. "Some even succeeded us for a while. Grew straight and proud. Then the cold came back. They aren't hardy like ours are"
Sigrun folded her arms against the wind, expression sharp and unsympathetic. She nudged a dead stem with her boot.
"Braavosi seeds are soft," she said. "They expect kindness. This land gives none."
Erik knelt, scooping up a handful of earth and letting it sift slowly through his fingers. The soil was dark, rich, alive. Not the problem.
"The ground is fine," he said. "So is the water. It's the air that kills them. The cold nights. The way the frosty winds returns when it shouldn't, even in summer."
Helga looked up at him, searching his face. "Can you fix it?"
Erik hesitated, just long enough to matter.
"Yes," he said. Then he shook his head. "But not by cutting the plants apart and remaking them into something else."
Sigrun studied him closely. "You could change them," she said. "Make them harder."
"I could," Erik agreed. His mind was already accelerating, opening like a many-petaled flower. "Bioengineer thicker cell walls. Alter frost responses. Change how they store sugars. It would work. It would take time and lots of experimental trails"
Thoughts stacked and collapsed in rapid succession in Erik's enhanced mind. Spliced resilience. Engineered strains. Test beds. Generations of trial. And the cost. Taste altered. Nutrition shifted. Familiar foods becoming something else entirely. Years before stability. Years he did not want to spend.
"But I don't want only engineered crops," Erik continued. "I want the originals too. The foods as they were meant to be eaten. I want both. The originals must also grow here"
"But how?" Helga asked
He rose slowly, gaze sweeping the barren plots as his thoughts leapt again. Stone shelters. Sunken beds. Heat-trapping walls. Smoke-warmed pits. Glass greenhouses—
No.
Myr's monopoly flared in his mind like a warning brand, a political dead end he refused to step into. Imported panes would be costly, fragile, and far too visible. Any large purchase would ripple outward through merchants and spies alike, noticed by eyes he had no interest in drawing this early.
I could make my own glass, he admitted to himself, the idea forming cleanly and then being weighed just as quickly. But it would be a massive undertaking. New furnaces. Purified sand. Controlled temperatures. Skilled glassworkers trained from nothing. Months, perhaps years of diverted labor and attention.
He dismissed it with a quiet breath.
I don't have the time, he thought. And I don't have the surplus yet. Resources were better spent building people, systems, and momentum. Glass would come later, when Weirstad could afford the luxury of patience.
For now, he needed something faster. Cheaper. Quieter.
Something that already lay at his feet.
"leaves" Erik muttered "Of course!"
Protection, not alteration. Green houses made not of glass but something else. Something they could make easily without being on Myr's radar
Shelters that breathed. Light that passed through. Warmth that lingered.
Plastic.
The word surfaced with surprising clarity, dragging a memory behind it. A documentary watched once, long ago. Crude oil. Refineries. Polymer chains. Waste and smoke and poisoned rivers. He discarded most of it instantly. No oil. No refineries. No ruined land.
But not all plastic was born that way.
His thoughts sharpened, reorganized. Cellulose. Leaves. Plant fibers. Binding agents. Plasticizers. Heat and pressure. Films and sheets thin enough to pass light, strong enough to break wind. Structures that trapped warmth without sealing life away.
Bioplastic.
He stopped walking.
Leaves. Bark. Sawdust. Organic waste they already had in abundance from the logging effort. Glycerol from rendered fats. Gelatin from bones. Ash and lime. Water. Heat. Every raw material already within Weirstad's grasp.
His pulse quickened.
Cold frames wrapped in translucent sheets. Layered insulation. Removable coverings for summer and winter. Greenhouses without glass. Cheap, light, replaceable. Subtle enough to draw no attention from foreign eyes.
Sigrun watched him smile, slow and certain. "You've found something," she said.
"Yes," Erik replied softly. "I don't need to change the land. I don't need to change the plants."
Helga followed his gaze back over the fields, the failed rows and stubborn survivors alike. "Then what do you change?"
"We change the space around them," Erik said. "We hide the crops from the cold."
Sigrun frowned, practical as ever. "And hide them from the sun as well?" she asked. "You'd kill them just as surely."
Erik turned to her, a spark of quiet excitement in his eyes. "Not if what we hide them with lets the sunlight through."
Understanding flickered across Helga's face first. "Something clear," she murmured. "Something thin."
"Something we can make ourselves," Erik added.
The wind swept across the empty rows again, tugging at cloaks and snapping at exposed skin, but Erik barely felt it now. His mind was already elsewhere, assembling sheds and frames, imagining molds and presses, sheets stretched tight over growing beds. Waste becoming shelter. Refuse turned into protection. Failure reshaped into advantage.
"Yes," he murmured to himself, rare satisfaction bleeding into his voice. "That will do."
------
Erik refused to let waste exist in Weirstad. Not if said waste could be used to make bioplastic.
Where others saw heaps of stripped branches, leaf piles, bark, and sweepings left behind by the great logging effort for Braavos, he saw a resource waiting to be disciplined. The forests fed the city twice over, once in timber and again in what was discarded. He ordered the organic refuse gathered, not burned or dumped, but sorted. Leaves, small branches, bark shavings, even sawdust too fine for carpentry were pulled aside and carried to a new set of low, steaming sheds downwind of the workshops.
The waste material had become a raw material.
The process began simply. Leaves were washed clean of soil and sap, then spread across drying racks under sun and wind until they crumbled easily between the fingers. Once dry, they were ground into a fine green-brown powder using millstones modified for light material rather than grain. The powder was then soaked and treated, first in alkaline solutions derived from ash and lime to break down unwanted compounds, then in carefully prepared green solvents that Erik devised with the apothecaries, mixtures that separated usable cellulose from lignin and resin without poisoning the workers or the land. What emerged was not waste but pulp, thick, fibrous, and pale.
That pulp became the foundation.
It was blended with natural binders and plasticizers. Gelatin rendered from bones, glycerol refined from fats, and plant oils were added in precise ratios, then heated slowly in large copper vessels while apprentices stirred constantly to prevent scorching. The mixture thickened into something strange and new, neither cloth nor wood nor leather. While still hot, it was poured into molds or spread into thin sheets, pressed flat, and left to cool and cure.
The result was a material that bent without tearing, resisted water for a time, and returned harmlessly to the earth when buried or burned. Biodegradable sheets used for packaging, sacks that replaced costly leather for short-term use, protective wrappings for cargo, liners for baskets and crates, and agricultural films for seed beds and soil protection. It was not meant to last forever. That was the point.
Weirstad's artisans learned quickly. What began as refuse became product. What had once clogged yards and fouled air became another export, another advantage. Even the charcoal burners benefitted, as the extracted lignin and bark residues burned hotter and cleaner than raw wood.
Erik watched the first finished sheets laid out to cool and nodded once.
"Nothing we take should die useless," he said. "If the forest feeds us, we return the favor by wasting nothing."
The skepticism in the workshops was as thick as the steam from the copper vats. The elder artisans, men and women whose hands were calloused by decades of honest timber and stone, poked at the cooling sheets with wary fingers.
"It's a trick of the light, Erik," Gonir muttered, flicking a translucent membrane. "It's too thin for a roof, too weak for a boot, and it rots in a few years. What good is a thing that's born to live only a couple of years?"
Erik didn't look up from the ledger where he was noting the curing times. "The forest dies every autumn, Gonir. Does that make the spring useless?"
He stood and beckoned them toward the eastern slope of the valley, a patch of land that the frost claimed weeks before the rest of the town. There, a skeleton of thin, arched saplings had been erected—a ribcage of wood stripped of its bark.
"Help me," Erik commanded.
They unrolled the long, pale rolls of the cured bioplastic. It was slightly cloudy, catching the morning sun but letting the light pass through in a soft, diffused glow. They stretched it over the wooden ribs, pinning it down with weighted stones and wooden stakes. Within an hour, they had created a series of long, shimmering tunnels.
Erik stepped inside the first tunnel and gestured for the others to follow. The air inside was instantly different. It felt heavy, still and significantly warmer than the cool breeze outside.
"You ask what good it is," Erik said, his voice echoing slightly in the confined space. "We live at the mercy of the frost. We eat what the cold allows us to grow and that gets us roots, hardy grains,kale and afew other edible plants. But inside these skins, the sun is trapped. The soil thinks it is summer even when the peaks are white with snow."
"The bioplastic allows for sunlight to enter but prevents long-wave heat from escaping. The physical barrier shields delicate shoots from the "black frost" that usually killed late-season crops. The sheets keep the humidity high, reducing the need for constant watering in the windy area close to the coast." Erik explained
"In these tunnels," Erik continued, pointing to the tilled earth beneath their feet, "we will plant the vegetables Braavos thinks we can only get through trade. Sweet peppers. Vine-ripened tomatoes. Green leafy vegetables Herbs that usually wither the moment the first leaf turns gold."
He looked at Gonir, who was now feeling the warmth of the trapped air with genuine surprise.
"It isn't meant to last forever, Harl. It's meant to last a few seasons. When the harvest is done and the plastic grows brittle, we plow it back into the dirt. It becomes the very soil that feeds the next crop. It's not waste. It's a bridge."
The skepticism began to melt, replaced by the quiet hum of calculation. They weren't just looking at "rotting" sheets anymore; they were looking at the ability to feed Weirstad through the long, lean months