The queue at the gate moved slowly.
They’d been waiting for nearly half an hour, the line stretching back along the road behind them, a mix of knights, merchants, servants, and smallfolk all shuffling forward a few steps at a time.
The sun was still low but the day was already warm and the smell coming from inside the city walls was something Alex hadn’t been prepared for.
Sea salt.
Fish.
Smoke.
And underneath all of it something considerably less pleasant that he decided not to think about too hard.
“Is it always like this?” he asked.
“The smell?” Edwyn said from behind him.
“You get used to it.
Mostly.” “I meant the queue.” “Oh that’s just the tourney.
Triple the usual people trying to get in.” He leaned forward on his saddle.
“Normal days you’d walk straight through.” The line shuffled forward.
A man two groups ahead was arguing with a guard about something, his voice rising, the guard’s voice staying flat and unimpressed.
Eventually the man paid something and was waved through and the argument ended the way most arguments with guards ended.
When they reached the gate the guard looked at Mikal with the efficient disinterest of someone who had done this five hundred times today and intended to do it five hundred more.
“Name.
Purpose.
Weapons.” “Mikal.
Tourney competitor.
Sword and lance.” The guard’s eyes moved to Edwyn.
“Edwyn.
Watching mostly.
Sword.” Then to Alex.
“My son,” Mikal said.
“No weapons.” The guard waved them through without another word.
Already looking at the next group before they’d fully cleared the gate.
Alex moved through and immediately looked to the side.
There was a second man standing slightly back from the gate, half in shadow, with a ledger open across his forearm.
He wasn’t talking to anyone.
Nobody was talking to him.
He was just writing, quick, methodical, glancing up and back down, up and back down.
Alex watched him for a few seconds as they moved into the city.
‘One man asks the questions,’ he thought.
‘One man writes the answers.
Everyone looks at the one asking.’ He filed it away without knowing exactly what use it was yet and turned to look at Lannisport properly for the first time.
The inn was two streets back from the main road, slightly awkward to find if you didn’t know to look for the sign with the faded anchor on it.
Borys had described it well enough.
The innkeeper was a short woman with grey hair pulled back tight and the expression of someone who had seen every kind of traveller and had opinions about most of them.
“Two rooms,” Mikal said.
“How long you have them available?” “Six days if you’re paying now.
After tomorrow I can’t promise anything.” She named a price that made Mikal’s jaw tighten slightly.
“That’s with the tourney on.
It’s what it is.” Mikal paid without arguing.
She handed over the keys with the brisk efficiency of a woman with twelve other things to do.
Edwyn had his key in hand and his saddlebag over his shoulder before Alex had finished looking around the common room.
“I’m going to find Ser Clement,” he announced.
“He said he’d be staying near the harbour somewhere.
Anyone need anything while I’m out?” “To know when you’re coming back,” Mikal said.
“Later,” Edwyn said, already at the door.
“Probably.” The door closed behind him.
Alex looked at Mikal.
“Does he do this everywhere?” “Everywhere,” Mikal said, and picked up his own bag.
They went out the next morning after a breakfast that cost twice what it should have and tasted about half as good.
The main street hit Alex like a wall.
Not one thing, everything at once.
The noise first, dozens of conversations layered over each other, vendors shouting prices, a cart horse making its feelings known about the crowd, somewhere ahead a group of men laughing at something loud enough to carry over all of it.
Then the smell again, worse than yesterday because the morning sun was already warming the streets and warming everything in them.
Then the sheer number of people, more than he’d ever seen in one place, moving in every direction with the particular urgency of a city that didn’t stop for anyone.
He stayed close to Mikal and kept his eyes moving.
The streets near their inn gave way to wider roads as they moved toward the city’s centre.
The buildings got taller and better maintained.
The people changed too, more lords, more household knights in livery, more servants moving quickly with purpose.
Street vendors were everywhere but a different kind here, selling things beyond food.
Cloth, weapons, trinkets, small items with Lannister lions stamped on them that visitors were apparently buying in quantity.
And above everything, “Casterly Rock.” Alex had seen it from the road the evening before and thought he’d understood it.
He hadn’t.
From inside the city it was different.
It wasn’t just large, it was ‘present’ in a way that buildings weren’t, a mass of stone so enormous it changed how the sky looked around it, catching the morning light and throwing it back in a colour that was almost gold.
He kept looking up at it without meaning to.
“Stop staring,” Mikal said, not unkindly.
“You look like a village boy.” “I am a village boy.” “You don’t have to advertise it.” Alex looked back at the street.
Fair point.
He noticed how Mikal moved through the city about an hour in.
On the road his father was completely at ease, reading terrain, tracking other travellers, making decisions about pace and direction without any visible effort.
Here he was different.
Not nervous exactly, more like a man wearing slightly the wrong clothes for an occasion and aware of it.
His eyes tracked the Lannister household knights they passed in a particular way, not with fear but with a kind of careful awareness.
They passed a group of four knights in crimson livery outside a merchant’s premises, well-equipped, at ease, talking about nothing much.
One of them glanced at Mikal and looked away again immediately.
The look said everything it needed to without any words.
Mikal’s expression didn’t change.
His jaw did the thing it did.
Alex said nothing.
Walked beside him and thought about how much of a man’s life was spent knowing exactly where he stood and having to be all right with it.
They found a tavern near the harbour for midday food.
Busy and loud, mixed crowd, the smell of the sea coming through the open windows strong enough to almost cover everything else.
They got a table near the wall and ordered whatever was hot.
It was fish.
Naturally.
“Not bad,” Edwyn said, appearing from nowhere and dropping into the chair beside Alex with the ease of a man who had been there all along.
He had the cheerful look of someone who’d had a productive morning by his own definition.
“Where did you come from?” Alex said.
“Found Ser Clement.
He knows half the competitors already.
Good man to know this week.” He helped himself to bread from the middle of the table.
“The mood’s interesting.
Everyone’s very polite and very tense at the same time.” “The king’s coming,” Mikal said.
“Day after tomorrow, apparently.” Edwyn lowered his voice slightly, not dramatically, just the natural adjustment of a man in a crowded room.
“Makes everyone nervous.
Hosting the king is different from hosting a tourney.
Ask Tywin Lannister.” Alex ate his fish and listened to the room.
The table to their left had two merchants deep in conversation about shipping costs out of Lannisport’s harbour.
Behind them a pair of older knights were arguing about who among the Westerlands competitors had a genuine chance at the joust.
Across the room someone mentioned Steffon Baratheon was in the city with his household, arrived yesterday.
And from near the bar, one voice clearly over the rest: “Martell delegation got in last night.
All of them.
Oberyn Martell’s already been in two arguments and it’s only been a morning.” A few people laughed.
A few didn’t.
Alex stored all of it and finished his food.
They walked to the tourney grounds in the afternoon.
The lists were enormous.
Still being finished in a few sections, workers hammering at the upper tiers of seating, but the shape of the whole thing was clear and it was bigger than anything Alex had seen built for this purpose.
The ground had been levelled and packed, the barriers down the centre newly painted, the spectator areas tiered high enough that the back rows would be looking down at everything from a considerable height.
He understood suddenly what “the cheers echo off Casterly Rock” meant.
Standing here you could see how it would work.
The lists were angled so that the Rock was directly behind the southern end.
Sound would go up and out and come straight back.
The flags were what stopped him.
They lined the grounds on both sides, house banners hanging from poles along the outer fence, each one marking a competing knight or a noble house in attendance.
He walked along them slowly, reading what he knew.
Lannister gold and crimson every few poles, more than anyone else, this was their house and they intended it to be known.
Tyrell rose in green and gold.
Martell sun and spear in orange and red.
Tully’s leaping trout.
Baratheon’s crowned stag.
Marbrand.
Prester.
Clegane.
Westerling.
A dozen Westerlands houses he half-recognised and a dozen more he didn’t.
No direwolf.
No grey and white.
He’d known the Starks wouldn’t be here, too far, too northern, no reason to ride this far south for a Lannister celebration, but seeing their absence in the flags made it concrete in a different way.
He stopped at the Targaryen banner.
Three-headed dragon, black on red, larger than the banners around it.
It moved slightly in the afternoon wind off the harbour.
Mikal stopped beside him.
They stood there for a moment without saying anything, the sounds of the city behind them and the empty lists in front, workers still hammering somewhere above, three days before it all began.
“Big,” Alex said finally.
It was the only word that felt honest.
“Yes,” Mikal said.
They stood there a little longer.
Then they walked back to the inn.