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CaveLeather The walls of the Golden Tooth came up half as high as the Rock.
The golden gear over the gate had been polished until it looked paid to shine.
Lyonel sat on a flatbed stacked with spice sacks.
Faded merchant leather.
Plaster dulling the face.
Short legs stretched across the bags like a man who had given up on dignity for the afternoon.
Blum drove.
Bronn came behind on a horse, the longsword gone, a butcher’s cleaver in its place.
“My lord,” Bronn said, low.
“The paint job.” “What about it.” “You look like you crawled out of a ditch.” “That is the point.” The gate man gave the sacks a look and waved them through with a hand that had already decided not to work today.
Blum’s mouth barely moved.
“Ten times softer than the Rock.” Lyonel tipped his head against the bags.
“Soft on purpose.
Taxmen asleep.
Gate only counts cargo.
Never faces.” The panel opened.
[Trade Acumen — Gold] [Gate guard: ink on the cuff.
Thin pen-callus on right thumb and first finger.
Deduction: he writes the tax roll as well as he waves carts.] Lyonel’s eyes narrowed.
A door ward doubling as the clerk who marked the take.
That alone was crooked.
“What are you looking at?” Blum said.
“How much they failed to see.” The cart turned onto the main street.
Fresh paint on the fronts.
A hammer working in the smithy.
Dyed wool stacked high enough at the draper’s door to mean coin moving now, not last year.
He let his eyes do a slow circuit.
The glass wrote while he watched.
[Trade Acumen — Gold] [Main-street rents 23% over towns of this weight.
Declared tax silver down three months running.] [Contradiction: fat shops, thin books.
Volume is walking around the lord’s ledger.] Lyonel found a better angle on the sacks.
The hook was in.
That night Denys Prester fed “spice men come a long way.” Forty, give or take.
Face softer than Tywin’s.
Dark blue silk.
Three rings.
“Friends from the road,” Denys said, glass up, smile wide enough to crease him.
“The Golden Tooth has gold if it has nothing else.” Lyonel lifted his cup and let his eyes walk the room.
[Financial Mastery — Purple.
Auto-scan] [This table outspends the quarterly household line.
By Western custom the food alone is a month of what Denys writes down.] Wine touched his mouth.
He did not swallow it.
Six girls along the left wall.
Three stewards on the right.
The money man nearest the high seat: forty, beard cut to a line, two stains of blue-black on the linen at his cuff.
Estate ink.
The panel put a mark on that cuff and held it.
[Match: same ink as the Golden Tooth books already read.
Those originals live in the study safe.
They do not live on a steward’s sleeve.] Lyonel set the cup down.
The line was already drawn.
Denys leaned in.
“Our spice road is clean work.
I can name you men, if you want the introductions.” “Do.” Lyonel smiled like a buyer.
“A friend of mine works the Narrow Sea.
He wants a lane that does not sink.” The smile on Denys froze.
Less than a breath.
Enough.
“The Narrow Sea.” Denys used the cup to hide his mouth.
“Ugly water.” “Ugly water pays.” “Hah.” Dry.
“You joke, friend.
The Tooth does honest trade.” Lyonel drank and gave him nothing.
Honest trade.
The ink on that cuff was two thousand dragons talking.
When the hall emptied they put him in an east-wing room.
Blum and Bronn took the door beside it.
Late, past sense.
Lyonel opened the window, got a short leg over the sill, and dropped to the flags.
The boots did not argue.
[Energetic — White] [Four hours down.
Body calling it six.] Enough.
Garden dark.
Two patrols walked around.
Sense of Direction and Photographic Memory laid the house plan under his feet and he followed it to the accounts door.
Copper lock.
Old spring.
No picker’s entry in the panel.
He drew a thin wire from his cuff.
Taken off a bench in the Rock’s smithy on the way out.
Three tries.
A click.
Parchment and ink.
The room smelled like both.
He found the desk by hand.
Official book in the left-hand drawer.
Clean script.
Every stag explained.
Numbers so tidy they had been dressed for company.
Too tidy.
Three pages.
Back in the drawer.
Fingers under the desk.
[Trade Acumen — Gold] [Right-hand drawer.
Bottom too thick.] He crouched and worked the board.
A skin.
Black leather.
Corners chewed.
Hand like a man in a hurry.
The page packed until the ink had nowhere left to sit.
First leaf.
[Golden Tooth under-road — monthly: cartage, quay berth, guard cut] [In: three silk runs over the Narrow Sea.
Two spice.
In dragons—] The figure hit him.
His pupils went small.
Over two thousand.
“Denys Prester,” he said into the dark, not quite a sound.
“You ate two thousand of Lannister gold.” The black book went inside his coat.
Board back.
Lock turned.
Same path to the east wing.
When he opened his own door Bronn was on the bed with the cleaver across his knees.
“Where.” “A walk.” “At the third hour.” “Food sitting wrong.” Bronn looked at the lump under the coat.
Two seconds.
“You stole.” “Borrowed.” “Borrowed what.” “A book.” The cleaver hit the table.
“What do you need a book for at this hour?” Lyonel pulled the black ledger and let it land.
“A smuggling lane.
Two thousand dragons.” “…How many.” “Two thousand.
Last year.
That is the year I have on paper.” Bronn stared at the leather a long time and then found a sentence.
“My lord.
If they take you, I am not coming through the wall.” “You will not have to.” Lyonel put the book away, lay back, and smiled at the beams.
“Tomorrow they will ask me to walk out.” The panel chimed.
[Quest: Golden Tooth Liquidation] [Progress: Evidence — 1 / 3] [Still required: testimony from a man on the lane.
Full trace on the stolen coin.] He shut his eyes.
A watch-stick sounded beyond the window.
Third watch gone.
Fourth coming.
The corner of the black book pressed his chest like a brand that had not cooled.
Tomorrow.
Two thousand dragons.
And the interest.
Denys could decide if he was ready.
CaveLeather