Lyonel had taken ten steps past the gates when a servant caught him.
The boy came in a rush, red-faced, bent double, and nearly ran into his back.
“L-little lord.
Lord Tywin wants you.
The study.
Now.” Lyonel stopped.
He looked back at the stone lion over the arch.
He had just walked out of its mouth.
Now the mouth wanted him again.
“For what?” “I don’t know.” The servant wiped his face.
“Lord Blum is with him.” Blum.
The name laid itself out.
A middling hold in the south, tight to the Reach.
Vines and wine.
Taxes that never made anyone sit up.
A man the other bannermen knew by sight and did not fear.
Lyonel turned around.
Short legs.
Quick steps.
He made up the distance with frequency.
Tywin’s study sat on the third floor.
Half the Great Hall in size and ten times the care.
Dark oak cases on every wall.
Gold-rimmed maps.
A desk drowned in parchment and ledgers.
Three candles burned down to nubs.
He knocked.
“Enter.” Tywin behind the desk.
Back straight.
Hands folded.
Across from him, a man in a dark green robe, round face, nose gone red from drink or weather.
A crumpled roll in his fists.
Lord Blum.
He stared when Lyonel came in.
Whatever he had asked Tywin for, it had not included the dwarf.
Tywin pointed to the chair at his side.
The seat was high.
Lyonel climbed.
Blum’s mouth twitched.
He swallowed the laugh.
“Lord Blum,” Tywin said.
Cold as the rest of him.
“Again.
From the start.” Blum shook the roll open.
“My lord.
Two villages on my northern line, against the Reach.
Wheat down near a third this autumn.
I looked for the cause.
The collector took a fifth more than last year while the harvest shrank.
Folk could not pay.
A good number ran.
I think the base has been cooked.” Tywin said nothing.
His eyes went to Lyonel.
“Speak.” Lyonel’s boots swung short of the floor.
He took the roll and looked.
Photographic Memory did the ugly work.
Last year’s base.
This year’s.
Mouths on the land.
Acres under plow.
Yield per house.
Seven seconds.
He lifted his head.
“Your collector.
Alvin.” Blum blinked.
“…Yes.” “Your wife’s cousin.” Color shifted in the round face.
“You—how do you know that?” Lyonel set the parchment on his knees and flicked it once.
“The base is up twenty-two percent.
Registered plowland is down nine from last year.
Less dirt.
More tax.
That is not how numbers live.” He let the next line sit.
“Unless someone moved acres into a box that does not pay.
Fallow.
Waste.
The lord’s own ground.
Then you can lift the base on paper and pocket the extra.” “Alvin is running two books.
One for you: poor harvest, empty cottages.
One in the real count: a higher base and a thicker debt.
The gap—” A second of arithmetic.
“Seven, eight hundred silver stags a year.” “Enough for a little house in Lannisport.” Blum went from red to white to something worse.
His mouth opened.
Nothing useful came out.
He looked at Tywin.
Tywin’s face did not change.
The eyes did.
A thin extra thing.
Lyonel knew it.
Old life.
A product meeting.
The man who owned the spec watching the night-shift coder put a hole in the logic the room had missed.
He did not stop.
“The fix is simple.
Survey those two villages again.
Count what is actually there.
Put the base in the open and make yourself read the raw take every quarter.
Once will close the hole.
Next good year, the ones who ran will smell a lighter tax and come home.” Blum swallowed.
“…You can swear that holds?” “Yes.” “On what?” Lyonel’s mouth crooked.
“On last year’s vintage.
Your house booked three thousand barrels.
At least thirty-six hundred left for King’s Landing.
Six hundred never sat in your accounts and never paid.
If Alvin ever reads a Lannisport freight roll, the coin you spent on that new stable two years back will be enough to drown you.” Blum came out of the chair.
Wood screamed on stone.
“You—” “Sit.” Lyonel looked up at him.
Green eye.
Black eye.
Too bright.
“It is true.
I am not here to pin it to the door.
I am telling you I can read your books.
I can read his too.” “Then why—” “I am here to help you.” He closed the roll and held it out.
“Three years of being milked and you never saw the hand.
Do what I said.
Next year the take climbs, the smallfolk stay, and you speak in this room with a straight back.
What did you lose?” Blum stood there while his face worked.
Then he sat.
A long breath.
“…I will try it.” Lyonel turned his head.
Tywin’s hands were still folded.
One gold brow moved half a hair.
On that face, it counted as weather.
“Where did you take that from?” Lyonel opened his palms.
“Read enough ledgers.
It starts talking.” Silence.
A few seconds of it.
“…From now on you will see the quarterly collection summaries.
All of them.
The West.” Said like an errand.
It was not an errand.
Those rolls were Tywin’s.
Every bannerman’s take, once a season, under the old lion’s own eye.
Handing them to a fifteen-year-old son was half a key to the purse that kept the Rock fed.
Lyonel kept the jump out of his face and nodded.
“Good.” He dropped off the chair and went to the door.
At the threshold he looked back.
Blum still wilted in his seat, wiping his neck.
Tywin had already taken the next sheet.
The pen moved like it had never stopped.
Lyonel shut them in.
The corridor was empty.
He put his back to the stone, looked at the ceiling, and let the air go.
The panel flicked.
[Quest: Son of the Westerlands.
Progress: 1 / 3.] The smile got away from him.
His hand found the roll inside his coat.
Lann the Clever.
Valyria.
A sea he would have to cross when the time came.
Later.
Now he took the stairs.
Second name.
Ser Corben.
Northeast.
Silverhill’s poor edge.
“Three days.” “A morning for a third.” He huffed a laugh under his breath and kept going down.