Morning at Casterly Rock came in off the water with the iron smell of the mines under it.
Lyonel stood on the gate steps and looked at the riders Tywin had given him.
Twenty light horse.
Western cloaks.
Enough to be seen.
Not enough to take a keep.
Tywin stood two paces behind him.
Hands still.
Eyes moving down the line the way they moved down a column of figures.
“Tax silver out of the Golden Tooth has run short three months running.” The yard went quiet.
Only the banners found anything to say.
“Lyonel Lannister will ride there in my name and look.” Lyonel turned his head.
Tywin did not look back.
The rest came out of the side of his mouth, low enough for one son.
“Do not shame this house.” Lyonel’s mouth ticked.
He put a boot in the stirrup, hauled, and found the saddle with more grace than the body had any right to.
Basic Horsemanship held the rest of him in place.
The panel lit.
[Combo triggered: Diplomacy × Financial Mastery] [Effect: Read on a commercial mark +150% for a short window.
Chance to catch a crooked trade +70%.] He took the reins.
The system, at least, clocked in on time.
They ran south along the coast road.
Blum rode on his left with ledgers and map-rolls hugged to his chest like a second set of ribs.
Bronn took the right.
A longsword off some bandit’s floor hung at his hip.
His eyes worked the scrub and the ridgeline the way a dog works a yard it has just been let into.
“My lord,” Blum said.
“First stop.” “Golden Tooth.” “How many through the gate?” “Two.” Blum stared.
“The two of us.” Lyonel glanced back at the eighteen still in column.
“The rest wait outside.” “And if the lord there decides he does not like the look of you?” Bronn said.
Lyonel tapped the hilt at his belt.
Casterly steel.
Smith-marks still raw.
No blood on it yet.
“Then he decides.” Text ticked in the corner of his sight.
[Inns around the Golden Tooth: trade figures moving wrong.
Inference: a smuggling lane tied to the lord’s household books.] Lyonel’s eyes narrowed.
Clues dropping out of the air.
He could live with that.
They halted at a roadside post in the afternoon.
Blum spread the map and put a finger on a dotted line beyond the Tooth.
“Old track to the water.
Marked abandoned mine.” Lyonel gave the line three seconds.
Photographic Memory took the sheet whole and put it away.
“Not a mine.” Blum looked up.
“Then what?” “A run.” He drank from the skin.
“A dead shaft does not get a quay drawn at the mouth.
Whoever made this map wrote the pier down as a slag heap and hoped no one could read.” Bronn talked around a strip of dried meat.
“Your father sent you for missing silver and you came up with a smuggling road.” “While I was there.” “While you were there.” “I have luck.” Bronn rolled his eyes and finished the meat.
Four hours to the midnight draw.
The panel was already counting.
Lyonel put his back to a post and shut his eyes.
The Tooth’s ground plan ran through him three times without being asked.
Financial Mastery walked the accounts behind it and left question marks on every joint that did not fit.
Blum leaned in, voice down.
“My lord.
Denys Prester holds the Golden Tooth.
Married a baron’s daughter.
Two hundred in the garrison.
If the books touch that marriage—” “If they do.” Blum swallowed.
“Lord Tywin—” “My father’s charge was four words.
Do not shame the house.” Lyonel opened one eye.
“Do I look like I am about to?” Blum looked at the dwarf’s face.
Green eye.
Black eye.
The sum behind them cold enough to keep meat.
Not shame.
Trouble.
Night finished coming down.
Lyonel stood alone under the old oak in the post’s back court.
The daily draw opened.
A faint gold sat on the glass that had not been there on the white days.
His finger hung over the pull.
“No white.” “No green.” “Give me—” He pressed.
Gold tore up through the oak and made a day out of the leaves.
The voice that followed had no interest in his feelings.
[Congratulations.
Gold entry acquired: Trade Acumen] Effect: Error on a deal’s true worth ≤ 3%.
Feel for the room left in a price +40%.
Reads hidden profit and the other man’s floor.
Lyonel turned the card in his head three times.
“…Gold.” The system did not answer.
The face of it went to dust and sank into his chest.
Heat ran his spine out into his hands.
He looked at his fingers.
Open.
Shut.
The smile came without being invited.
“Blum.” A head under the eaves.
“My lord.” “Tomorrow I can buy the Golden Tooth.” Blum looked at him.
“My lord, we brought inn money.” “I do not need the purse.” Lyonel killed the panel and walked for the door.
Boots on flags.
Clean sound.
“I need the mouth.” Bronn was a shape under the same eave.
He rolled, muttered to the man on watch.
“Is he mad?” The rider did not bother with a face.
“Every day.
He has not lost yet.” Bronn gave that three seconds.
“…Right.
I’ll put a better edge on the sword.” Lyonel lay on the common bed and watched the beams.
The gold icon held a low burn in the corner of his sight.
Twenty riders at a gate.
Tywin on the steps.
The Tooth’s books rotten.
A hole under the hill that ran to salt water.
Denys Prester two thousand dragons light, if the new sense in his hands was not lying.
He pulled the blanket to his chin.
Horses shifted in the dark.
The wind off the sea had damp in it.
“Two thousand dragons,” he told the ceiling.
“What is the interest on that.” The system did not care.
Midnight tomorrow would care.
Cloud took half the moon.
Under the oak the gold had already gone out of the leaves.
He looked at the last line on the glass before he let the quilt cover his head.
[Trade Acumen — active.] Tomorrow.
The Golden Tooth.
Let Prester wait.