The walls at the Golden Tooth sat half as high as Casterly Rock.
The golden gear over the gate had been rubbed bright.
Someone put a cloth to it every day.
Lyonel sat on a cart stacked with spice sacks.
Faded merchant leather.
Clay smeared across the face.
Bloom had the reins.
Bronn rode behind with a butcher’s knife where the longsword had been.
“My lord.” Bronn kept it down.
“That paint job—”
“What.”
“Looks like you ran from something.”
“That’s the point.”
The gate men flicked the sacks and waved them through.
“In.”
Bloom took them under the arch without moving his mouth.
“Ten times slacker than the Rock.”
Lyonel leaned on the sacks, boots up.
“Slack on purpose.
Tax men half asleep.
Gate only looks at the load—”
[System]
Trade Sense (Gold) active.
Gate guard: ink on the cuff.
Thin callus on right thumb and first finger — a pen hand.
Inference: this man also keeps the tax register.
Lyonel narrowed.
A gate soldier on the tax book.
That was already wrong.
“My lord.” Bloom.
“What are you looking at.”
“How much they let walk.”
The cart turned onto the main street.
Fresh paint on every shopfront.
Hammering from the smithy.
Bright-dyed wool piled at the clothier’s door.
Lyonel let his eyes run the street once.
The pane scrolled.
[System]
Trade Sense (Gold)
Average shop rent on the Golden Tooth high street: 23% above towns of the same rank.
Declared tax silver from the lord’s hall: down three months running.
Contradiction: tax falling, shops fat.
Volume is moving off the books.
He shifted on the sacks until his back found a better spot.
The fish was already on the hook.
That night Dennis Prester put on a feast for a spice merchant come a long way.
Dennis was a little past forty.
His face had more care in it than Tywin’s.
Dark blue silk.
Three gold rings.
“Guests from the road.” He lifted his cup.
Wrinkles all the way up.
“Golden Tooth hasn’t much else.
Gold, we have.”
Lyonel lifted his own and let his eyes take the hall.
[System]
Fiscal Mastery (Purple) — auto-scan
Banquet outlay exceeds the lord’s declared quarterly spend.
By western bannerman measure, this one table equals a month of what Dennis wrote in his books.
Lyonel set the cup to his mouth and did not drink.
Left side: six serving girls.
Right: three stewards.
The man nearest Dennis’s chair was the one who kept the coin. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Forty or so.
Beard cut to a line.
White linen at the cuff, two stains of house ink.
The pane put a ring on the cuff.
[System]
Ink matches the Golden Tooth ledgers already read.
Lord’s house ink.
The true books belong in the study safe.
Not on a steward’s sleeve.
Lyonel set the cup down.
The line was already drawn.
Dennis came in close.
“Our spice roads are the best in the West.
I can name you a few men, if you like.”
“Do.” Lyonel smiled.
“A friend of mine works the far side of the Narrow Sea.
He wants a channel that holds.”
Dennis’s smile stopped for a breath.
A breath was enough.
“The Narrow Sea.” Dennis raised the cup and hid the lower half of his face with it.
“That line is a hard risk.”
“Hard risk.
Hard coin.”
“Hah.” Dry.
“You’re joking, guest.
We don’t touch the Narrow Sea.
Honest trade.
That’s us.”
Lyonel drank and gave him nothing back.
Honest trade.
The ink on that cuff was two thousand gold dragons.
After the plates they put him in an east-wing room of the hall.
Bloom and Bronn next door.
Late.
Lyonel opened the window and went out over the sill.
Boots on the flags.
No sound.
[System]
Boundless Energy (White)
Sleep efficiency +10%.
Rested: 4 hours.
Felt: 6.
Enough.
He crossed the garden in the dark, slipped two patrols, and walked a map he already had in his head — Sense of Direction and Photographic Memory doing the work.
The accounts room sat where he had put it.
Copper lock.
Old spring.
The system had no key for that.
He drew a thin wire from his cuff.
Lifted it from the Rock’s smithy before they rode.
Three tries.
Click.
The room smelled of sheepskin and ink.
He found the desk by hand and ran the stacks.
Official book: left drawer, first slot.
Clean hand.
Every tax line sourced.
Numbers pretty enough to frame.
Too pretty.
Pretty to the lie.
Three leaves and he put it back.
Then the underside of the desk.
[System]
Trade Sense (Gold)
Second drawer, right side.
He crouched and picked the edge of the board.
False floor.
A black-leather book.
Corners curled.
Hand ten times worse than the clean one.
Figures packed tight.
First leaf.
[Golden Tooth — under-road]
Month out: haul, dock berth, escort pay
In: three silk runs across the Narrow Sea, two spice.
In gold dragons—
The number hit.
Over two thousand.
“Dennis Prester.” He said it to the dark.
“You ate two thousand Lannister dragons.”
The book went inside his coat.
False floor set.
Copper locked.
Same path back to the east wing.
Bronn was on the bed with the butcher’s knife when the door opened.
“Where.”
“Walk.”
“What walk at three in the morning.”
“Dinner.”
Bronn looked at the bulge under the coat.
Two seconds.
“Fuck.
You stole.”
“Borrowed.”
“Borrowed what.”
“A book.”
The knife hit the table.
“What do you want a book for.”
Lyonel pulled the black ledger and dropped it.
“Two thousand dragons.
Smuggle line.”
“…How much.”
“Two thousand.
Last year only.”
Bronn stared at the leather.
Worked his mouth.
“My lord.
You get taken, I am not breaking you out.”
“Don’t need you to.”
The book went away.
Lyonel lay back and looked at the boards and showed the teeth.
“Tomorrow they kneel and ask me to walk out.”
[System]
Task: Golden Tooth Reckoning
Progress: evidence (1/3)
Remaining:
1.
Testimony from men on the smuggle road
2.
Trace the stolen coin
He shut his eyes.
The watch called the next hour outside.
The sheepskin corner sat against his ribs in the dark, hot as a brand.
Tomorrow.
Cards on the table.
Two thousand dragons.
Principal and the rest.
Dennis could get ready.