Cersei raised a hand to her mouth and stifled a yawn, Ned had been talking for about two hours now, about crops, ploughs, iron, beets, how to build roads that would not break up in the first northern winter, and how the amount of wool the North could export should be restricted and instead turned into cloth in the North, using water powered mills of all things! And how they could compete with the dye makers of Myr and Tyrosh by roasting coal and collecting its tar and then distilling it. And this thing he was talking about now, this pourstone? Madness, why she had never heard of such a thing in her life!

Cersei's head was spinning at all this; here she thought that Ned was just a handsome, if slightly savage northerner, yet he was talking more akin to a Maester than a Lord. She still did not understand even a fifth of what he was saying, and she noticed that she was not alone in this; many of the northern Lords were looking at Ned as if he had suddenly grown three heads and started speaking Valyrian.

Where had Ned come up with all these ideas, this knowledge? The Maester of Winterfell, Maester Walys had no answers when she had asked him that same question a few days ago. He had only been able to say that maybe there were books in the Eyrie that Ned had read during his fostering there that might have spurred these sudden ideas. He seemed to be a man who was constantly frazzled and living on his nerves, always rushing about doing something on behalf of her husband, yet not quite knowing exactly what is was he was doing. A most distressing state of affairs for a Maester she mused, they were supposed to know everything, where they not?

Her father was sitting rather smugly beside her, he and Lord Stark had talked long on the journey North on these matters she remembered. If she knew her father she knew he would be thinking on how to take Ned's idea's and apply them in the Westerland's.

"Just think Cersei" her father whispered as Ned started talking about fishing and using fish to fertilize fields, that sounded horrid! "Just think I once thought Ned Stark was just a northern savage with the name of a great House, the lad should be an Archmaester!"

"Then you would still be looking for a suitable husband for me" she responded, also whispering, her voice deadpan.

"Ha! Very droll Cersei, very droll..."

"But Lord Stark seems quite versed in all matters agricultural father, did you realise you were marrying me to a farmer?" she responded, a smirk on her face.

"The North knows famines during winter Cersei, and for all our wealth we cannot eat gold, if you have a gold dragon but no food to buy, all you have a coin and an empty belly. Ned Stark knows that, hence why he knows so much about farming, as you so charmingly point out."

But did not the mad king say that you could shit gold father? She quipped in her head, while out loud she said "and yet did he just insult House Lannister with that quip about gold?" she asked him.

"Ha, maybe, but he has a point, the Iron Islands are justly famed for their iron mines, do you know who is the second biggest producer of iron in Westeros?"

Cersei shook her head in reply, having guessed the answer but not caring.

"The Westerland's and Ned thinks he has a way to make iron in quantities never before seen, think of the possibilities...!"

Frankly Cersei could not, more swords maybe? She did not care and it bored her all this talk, and she had to sit through it all. And look like the wife of a Great Lord as her father had reminded her on their walk over from the First Keep, whatever that meant, but her father had not elaborated. She had in truth paid little attention to what Ned had been saying; instead concentrating on seeing who looked like they were supporting him and who were against Ned. That was a subject that she knew much more about than canals and sail plans and whatever else nonsense was spilling from Ned's head.

She already had a rough idea of how the Great Hall was split, from what she knew the majority of Lords seemed broadly supportive of Ned, but this was not Braavos, there will be no election to choose a Sealord here! Ned was their Lord, and while she knew he would not compel them to follow him in this course of action, she knew he was hoping that his example would be followed by the rest. Ned was betting on that oldest motivator of all, greed, to cajole his Banner men into adopting and changing as per the idea's he was proposing.

Ned's hope was that those who followed him would be enriched and their neighbours who did not follow would be stung to follow after seeing how much extra coin could be made.

But to make coin he needed coin first, lots of coin, roads, canals, new towns and cities, a Stark fleet on the west coast of the North, all these would cost coin. Which was where her father came in, and her she sourly mused. She had been the means to secure that coin, a guarantee as it where, what did she once hear uncle Kevan say? A, a 'financial instrument', yes that was what she was. Only a tool to enable money to flow from one realm to another...And a womb with legs she mused sourly, to bear children that her father wanted to use to control the North and which her husband needed to continue on his line.

And her wishes, her desires, what she wanted to do with her life, who she wanted to marry? Never taken into consideration, not by her father, not by her brother, the only man she had given herself to. And Ned Stark, what of her husband, man she had been forced to marry, what of him? What did he know, or care of her wishes?