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CaveLeather The next seven days ran the same way.
Lyonel opened his eyes and drew.
Day one.
White.
[Slight Cold Resistance] Stamina loss in the cold −5%.
Day two.
White.
[Sense of Direction] Chance of losing his way −20%.
Day three.
Green.
[Basic Horsemanship] Balance in the saddle +30%.
Day four.
White.
[Sharp Hearing] Range on faint sound +15%.
Day five.
Green.
[Quick Recovery] Minor wounds close +40% faster.
Day six.
White.
[Steady Nerve] Heart-rate spike under strain −10%.
Day seven.
Blue.
[Language Talent] New tongues learned +50% faster.
Seven draws.
Four white.
Two green.
One blue.
He ran the list top to bottom and felt his mouth twitch.
Cold.
Roads.
A horse.
Ears.
Skin.
Pulse.
Words.
Taken one at a time, they were junk.
Five percent off a winter walk.
A fifth less chance of getting lost.
In a game, men would leave stats like that on the ground.
Stacked?
He counted on his fingers.
Seven days.
Body, senses, temper, craft.
A thin coat on every part of him.
None of it thick.
All of it there.
He heard the guard change at the far end of the corridor while he washed his face — three yards farther than last week.
The ache in his knees when he took the yard wall was lighter.
He had run figures to midnight and the new calm had kept his hands from wanting to throw the quill.
He shut the panel and stretched until his shoulders cracked.
Stacking entries was saving coin.
Fifty coppers a day looked like nothing.
Ten years of it bought a house.
The glass in front of his eyes jerked twice.
Not the clean chime he knew.
This was a machine coughing before it came back up.
[Host entry count: ten or more.] [Entry Superposition System expanding…] [Progress 10%… 50%… 100%.] [Expansion complete.] [New module unlocked: Quest System.] [The system will now issue timed work from the host’s path and aims.
Completing a quest grants entries, bonuses, or permissions.
Failure carries penalty.
Watch the clock.] Lyonel read it twice.
A quest board.
The first jobs had been gifts.
Tywin’s ledger.
The name.
They had closed and gone quiet.
This would not go quiet.
Daily work.
Weekly work.
Take it and finish it, or bleed for the miss.
The next line was already moving.
[New quest issued.] [Quest: Son of the Westerlands.] [Objective: Win the public support or allegiance of at least three Westerlands bannermen within three days.] [Reward: Blue entry — Diplomacy.] [Failure: Favorability of all Westerlands bannermen −10.] He squinted at the last clause.
Minus ten.
All of them.
House favor sat on Blood Resonance, and Blood Resonance only covered lions.
Bannermen were not lions.
They ate off Tywin’s face.
They did not owe the Imp a cup of water.
Drive that number into the dirt and the hall would fill with men like the yellow-toothed knight from the feast.
The West had no shortage of those.
He stood and paced the room twice.
Three days.
Three names.
Said in public.
Tight.
Not impossible.
The work was the choosing.
Dozens of houses, large and small.
The ones welded to Tywin would not stand up for a dwarf.
That left the edges.
Men squeezed off the main table.
Men who still wanted a seat.
Photographic Memory laid the roster out clean.
Names.
Holds.
Marriages.
Who paid and who crawled to make the count.
South, a modest holdfast: Lord Hurst.
Small lands.
Three years back a marriage quarrel with his neighbor.
Tywin had taken the other man’s side and left Hurst with the bruise.
Northeast, on the thin edge of the Silverhill veins: Ser Corben.
Forty years under the lion.
A poor fief and a tax roll that fought him every autumn.
And one more.
A merchant who had bought his seat with Lannisport coin.
Thin blood.
New stone.
At every gathering he sat at the last bench, spoke to no one who answered, and voted the way the room voted.
Lyonel cut the list to three.
Hurst.
Corben.
The man who had paid for his name.
He pulled on his coat.
A bar lit in the corner of the panel.
[Quest: Son of the Westerlands.
Progress: 0 / 3.] He opened the door.
A servant mopping the flags saw him, dropped his eyes, and stepped into the wet.
Lyonel took the dry edge and let three different talks assemble themselves while he walked.
Three days.
Three banners.
Near first.
Far later.
The merchant was closest.
His house sat in Lannisport proper.
Twenty minutes in a carriage.
His wound was simple.
The old blood would not look at him.
A Lannister son doing it in public was the one thing his silver had never been able to buy.
Lyonel’s mouth crooked.
On this trade, the other man walked away richer.
Light came down the corridor and caught that smile.
On the panel, Quest System shed its gray and went live blue, a gear that had finally found its teeth.
At the gate of the Rock he looked back.
The stone lion over the arch stood with its mouth open.
Lyonel gave it a thumb.
“Wait.” “Three days.
I’ll show you how a hall gets turned.”
CaveLeather