A week had passed since Rhaenys had taken control of the city. The week had been spent asserting her authority and establishing full control over Qohor.
The first and most important step she took was gaining control of the city's army. She had taken the scourge from the magisters bringing the force of six thousand unsullied under her command. Apart from a few dozen men, with her sanction, to protect their businesses, no one was allowed to maintain additional force. As Queen of Qohor, she was the sole authority to control an army.
As a result, she now had an additional six thousand men under her command. Since her own forces were composed of the Unsullied, integrating the two armies was not expected to be difficult. In a couple more days, she also planned to grant these soldiers their freedom and give them the option to leave if they wished. However, it was almost certain that most would choose to continue serving, albeit under far better conditions than before.
Another major step she took was disbanding the previous ruling council of the city. She declared herself the sole decision maker of Qohor, and the council of magisters no longer held any authority or value. The magisters had been stripped of their powers.
A few former council members suggested replacing it with a Small Council, hoping they would secure positions within it according to Targaryen customs. However, she rejected the idea outright. She had no intention of forming a Small Council.
For now, there was no formal governing body to advise her. Informally, she remained open to suggestions from anyone, though the former council members still had easier access to her. At the same time, she was actively establishing communication channels with other influential merchants and nobles of the city. She needed the most competent individuals for administration. For now, she had only ordered for recruitment of a thousand people to maintain cleanliness and beauty in the city. But very soon, she would need administrative workers and other competent people. Currently the people who had served under the magisters were working for her.
If anything, she intended to model her administration on the system used by Lord Aeos, specific departments assigned to specific duties, with strict accountability.
In Lord Aeos' view and one she had begun to share, the Small Council itself was a structurally flawed institution. Its members had no clearly defined roles or responsibilities, and there was virtually no accountability. Perhaps only the Master of Ships and the Master of Whispers had well defined duties.
Take the Hand of the King, for example. What exactly was his role? To rule in the king's absence? To serve as chief advisor? To oversee the entire realm? There was no clarity and no accountability. Even a supposedly competent Hand like Jon Arryn failed to notice the Master of Coin siphoning funds for such a long time.
And what of the Master of Coin? Was his job merely to calculate how much gold was spent on alcohol and prostitution and then secure loans to fund those excesses? There was no responsibility for tax collection, tax reform, or financial planning.
Beyond that, who was responsible for social welfare? Who ensured that the smallfolk were fed, educated, and given a chance at a decent life? No one. No one addressed the needs of the smallfolk in a systematic way. Everything depended on the whims of nobles. If a lord felt generous, he might distribute bread, blankets, or coins in the name of charity but there was no real sense of duty or long term development.
The capital of the Seven Kingdoms, supposedly the largest city in all of Westeros, had stunk for years, yet not a single person had found a solution. No drainage system. No sanitation planning. Nothing.
It would take a couple of months before she could fully transform the city along the lines she envisioned. And for that, she needed a great deal of wealth.
She had not plundered the wealth of the magisters or the great merchants and traders. She did not want to instill terror in their minds. Even so, their finances had now been regularized, and the taxes they would pay would bring a substantial amount of wealth into the kingdom's treasury.
But that alone would not be enough. She needed another source of wealth and that source had just been summoned. Right on cue, there was a knock on the door of her solar.
"Your Grace," one of the maids who had accompanied her from Meereen peeked inside. "Lord Tahot is here to see you."
"Send him in," she replied.
A moment later, the burly head of the Blacksmiths' Association, Rick Tahot, stepped inside the solar.
"Your Grace," he bowed deeply.
"Have a seat, Lord Tahot," she said.
Rick nodded and took the seat opposite her. A few moments of silence followed, and Rick began to feel slightly uneasy.
"Lord Tahot," Rhaenys finally spoke, breaking the silence, "I have summoned you for a very important matter. A responsibility I wish to entrust to you."
"Your Grace," he leaned forward attentively.
Rhaenys did not respond immediately. Instead, she opened a drawer beside her desk, took something out, and placed it on the table. It was a metallic ingot, not very large in size.
Rick's eyes widened as he picked it up and began examining it closely.
"Valyrian…" he murmured. "This is not Valyrian steel, but it is very close to it. It is better than any other steel I have seen in my life."
"This is dragon steel," Rhaenys said.
"Dragon steel," he repeated, as if committing the name to memory.
Though curiosity burned within him about the origin of the metal, he did not voice it. He expected her grace would explain in time. And there was still the question of the one tonne of steel he had supplied the previous day, why had she needed it?
"Yes," she continued. "Can you reforge it?"
"I can," he answered confidently. He was a man capable of reforging Valyrian steel, reforging dragon steel would be no different.
"What do you wish me to make from this?" he asked.
"A sword, perhaps," Rhaenys replied, amusement flickering in her eyes.
"A sword?" Rick frowned. "This amount of metal is not sufficient to forge even a short sword. At best, a dagger."
"I want you to forge hundreds of swords, Lord Tahot," Rhaenys said with a chuckle. "I have more than eight hundred kilograms of this metal."
After heating the one tonne of steel with dragonfire, nearly two hundred kilograms had been burned away as impurities. What remained was dragon steel.
"Hundreds?" Rick repeated, his eyes widening in shock.
He did not need to be told where the eight hundred kilograms of metal had come from.
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