Solomon listened in silence until Lauslin finished.
Evelyn had made the right call. The mobilization had to be maintained — without armed presence, disorder would have crossed into open violence long before now.
He had allowed himself to get caught up in the satisfaction of external victories, the pleasure of things going according to plan, and had convinced himself that every refugee he brought back was a future asset — labor, soldiers, growth. He had missed the most fundamental question: what the domain could actually carry.
He drew a long breath and let the cold mountain air fill his lungs, pushing clarity back into a mind that had been running on momentum.
The military victories were only the beginning. The harder war is what comes after — absorbing what you've won, turning it into actual strength, governing these people and this land.
The confusion cleared from his eyes. What replaced it was sharp and settled.
"I understand. I have the full picture now."
He turned to Brin.
"Ride ahead to the Lion's Den."
"Pass my orders: convene all core staff — Evelyn, Olivier, and you three. Emergency meeting tonight, inside the Den."
He said nothing further. He swung up into the saddle with a single clean movement, and the horse was already moving as his voice came back over his shoulder.
"Tell Evelyn—"
The horse cried out and drove forward.
"I'm home."
The council chamber of the Lion's Den.
The air was still. Every face was turned toward Solomon.
He sat with his hand braced against his forehead, the accumulated fatigue of the road compounding with the weight of everything he had just been told, dissolving what little remained of the relief he'd felt only hours ago.
Olivier's thin fingers moved across the dense columns of numbers in his small notebook. His voice had gone rough.
"Lord Solomon — even if we reclaimed the surplus land from existing smallfolk, had it resurveyed and redistributed in full, we would still be left with one thousand one hundred and thirty-seven families who cannot receive even a small plot."
"We could begin by recovering some of the land and—"
Solomon cut him off.
"I will not reclaim land from the people who fought for me."
"Every one of them earned what they hold, even those who never took an enemy's head."
Olivier exhaled slowly. He had known that would be the answer. He closed the notebook. It made a muffled sound.
"The refugee camp is already beyond capacity. People are packed together like ants in a hill, eating and sleeping and relieving themselves in the same space. This is not only a land problem."
Evelyn took it up. Her blue eyes rested on Solomon, full of concern.
"It is a food problem."
"And a security problem."
"The grain stores can sustain the current population for at most half a month to one month. The daily consumption is a staggering number — pure expenditure, no return, and the number keeps climbing."
"Theft happens every day. Last night, two refugees came to blows over half a piece of black bread. One used a stone on the other's skull."
Lauslin, who had spent the entire period in the domain holding things together, nodded with the expression of a man who had personally watched the situation deteriorate.
"The old residents are full of hostility toward the newcomers. They complain that their living conditions have been ruined, that the new arrivals are dead weight — that they bring nothing but chaos and blood, and that they've taken over the villages below the mountain that the original smallfolk considered their own."
"The newcomers, for their part — when you look at their faces, there's nothing there but blankness and despair."
Lushen sat to one side and said nothing, as was his habit, finally producing a low, heavy sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. His mind wasn't built for this kind of problem.
Solomon raised his head. He looked around the table at each of them in turn. He could see the anxiety sitting behind their eyes, and he could feel the invisible pressure the room was full of.
He stood.
He walked to the far wall, where Evelyn's large hand-drawn map of the domain hung, and stood in front of it.
His voice was not loud, but it had an unusual clarity.
"We cannot keep the refugees concentrated in one place."
"Keep the soldiers on wartime footing."
His finger moved on the map — from the Lion's Den at the center, tracing west to the King's Road.
"Six hundred people. Build a town here."
The finger moved again, westward, to the bank of the Green Fork.
"Another town here. Another six hundred."
Olivier's eyes brightened briefly — trade towns, commerce — then dimmed again.
"My Lord, this would certainly reduce the population pressure."
"But—"
"Building two new towns, beyond the construction materials and the ongoing cost of maintaining and feeding the residents, produces nothing else. The townspeople have no land to farm—"
Solomon cut across him again. The corner of his mouth curved in a way that no one else in the room quite understood.
"They will produce. Just not in a way anyone can see yet."
"And—"
He turned back to the map.
"The remaining six hundred. Split them into two groups of three hundred. Put them to work raising rabbits."
Evelyn finally spoke. Her expression was purely confused.
"Raising... rabbits?"
Solomon turned to face the table.
"On the road here, Brin and his brothers caught seventeen wild rabbits."
"Divide them into two lots. Six hundred people, two large rabbit farms."
"Rabbits breed fast and grow fast. The meat can be eaten, the pelts and fur can be sold."
He knew rabbit meat couldn't become anyone's primary diet — the protein poisoning problem was real. But in a world like this one, where meat was scarce even for many nobility, it was hard currency. He could sell salted and cured rabbit to passing merchant caravans, and at low enough prices into King's Landing's smallfolk markets, there would always be buyers.
And more urgently — he needed to separate the refugees. Give each group a distinct occupation and purpose. Break up the conditions that were producing violence.
The rabbit pelts and fur could be passed to the town populations for processing — making gloves, caps, winter garments — providing paid work for people who had no land. An export product in its own right.
He pressed his fingers against his temple.
It still won't balance the books on its own. We need more sources of self-sufficiency. More ways to generate output.
"We cannot only consume. We have to produce."
"Use every possible means."
His gaze settled on Olivier.
"I need someone to go out and buy grain."
"Not a small amount. As much as can be found. Grain, poultry, livestock, seeds — everything we can purchase with gold."
Olivier did not hesitate for a fraction of a second. He rose from his seat and straightened his lean spine.
"Leave it to me, Lord Solomon. I know where the sellers are."
Solomon turned to the golden-haired woman who spent so much effort making herself look plain.
"Evelyn — whatever it costs, you manage the funds and support him."
He did not want to send anyone on a long journey. Westeros was a dangerous place for travelers and he had already proved that to himself. He had sent out two people. Bronn had simply vanished. Barna — loyal, dependable Barna, the former beggar — had left on his assignment and gone silent. No word at all. He didn't know if the man was alive.
Olivier paused, then decided he had to finish what he'd been cut off from saying.
"Lord Solomon — the town residents still have no land to farm. They have no output of any kind. They are entirely dependent on your support."
"And the rabbit farms cannot produce returns in the short term either. Right now, every single day in the domain is pure consumption."