Bronn shook him out of the chair.
“My lord.
Trouble.”
Lyonel opened one eye.
“Five men tried to run in the night.”
“Gone?”
“Held.
Warehouse.” Bronn’s face was wrong.
“Not ours.
Slave miners off the Golden Tooth.
Mixed into the crew two days.
Dark came and they tried to walk out with stone.”
Lyonel sat up and put a hand over his face.
“Bring them.”
They came in shaking.
The one in front was thirty or near it.
Thin as a pole.
A scar from brow to jaw.
Dust to the hair.
The eyes still had a light in them.
“Kneel.” Bronn’s boot found the back of the knee.
“Don’t.”
Bronn took the foot back.
The five stood there not knowing which way the floor wanted them.
“Golden Tooth.”
The thin one nodded.
“Yes.”
“Why run.”
“Hungry.”
One word.
“The Tooth doesn’t feed you.”
He looked up once and down again.
“One meal a day.
Thin.”
The man beside him found a voice.
“Five years I never left a plate empty because there was nothing on it to leave.
Sentries at night.
No way out.
Word came this hill puts meals down.
The five of us went through the drain on a change of watch—”
“And stole my ore.”
“Not stole.” The thin one’s head came up hard.
“We wanted a full belly.
The good stone is yours.
We were going for the leavings—”
“The leavings are mine too.”
Five mouths shut.
Three seconds in the tent.
Lyonel looked at the scar.
The pane put up a line.
[System]
Golden Tooth runaways.
Slave labor.
Potential crew.
Starting loyalty: 0%.
Zero.
None of them had ever put a master’s name on anyone.
“How many on the Tooth now.”
The thin one stalled.
“Six hundred.
More.”
“The ration.”
“Thin porridge.
Once.”
“The take.”
“Ten carts a day, near enough.
Purity under thirty.”
Lyonel took his boots off the table.
“From today the Golden Tooth’s miners sit under me.”
The thin one’s eyes went wide.
“Lord Dennis will not—”
“He will.”
Lyonel turned his head.
“Bronn.
Raven.
Dennis comes to Silverhill.
One line.
Come for the men, or come for the books.”
Bronn grinned and ran.
Dennis Prester hit camp at noon the next day.
Ten guards at his back.
The horses were white at the neck.
His face was dark when he cleared the guy-ropes.
“My lord!
Lyonel sat a stool outside the tent.
A table in front of him.
Two stacks.
Left: the Silverhill roll.
Right: a thick run of ledgers.
“Sit.”
“I will not sit.
My men—”
“Sit.”
Dennis sat.
There was no other move in it.
Bronn stood behind his chair with a hand on the hilt.
“Those five stole your ore—”
“They took scrap.” Lyonel did not raise it.
“Two copper pennies of chips.
You rode this far for two pennies.”
Dennis caught on the words.
“I rode to keep a lord’s standing.”
“What’s the standing worth.” Lyonel pushed the right-hand books across.
“Read.”
First leaf.
Second.
Third.
Red to white.
White to green.
“These figures are wrong—”
“You know if they’re wrong.” Lyonel let the chair take his back.
Hands folded.
“The Tooth cuts four thousand carts a year.
Your page shows three.
Where did the thousand go.”
Sweat.
“Your pit steward ate eight hundred carts a year.
Who took the sale after that, you look yourself.
I won’t say it for you.”
“And.
One thin meal.
The backs can’t hold.
Output sits forty parts under what the ground should give.
Change the ration—three meals—you pull two hundred extra carts in a month.
Does that cover the pot.
Run it.”
Dennis could not run it.
The hands on the page were not steady.
Lyonel turned the book to the last leaf.
A red circle.
The number clean inside it.
“From today my people run the Tooth’s crew.
Meals match Silverhill.
Cut the steward.
That coin feeds the men.
Enough.”
Dennis’s mouth moved three times.
The fourth found air.
“Enough.”
“Anything else.”
“No.”
“The five.”
Dennis stood.
The guards behind him had found the dirt interesting.
“Keep them.
I don’t want them.”
“It isn’t whether you want them.” Lyonel looked at him.
“I already took them.”
Dennis turned and went.
His legs had a shake in them at the stirrup.
The ten behind him rode faster than he did.
Bronn watched the dust.
Clicked his tongue.
“My lord.
That talk just now.
I’m copying it when we get back.”
“For what.”
“To look large.”
Lyonel let it lie.
He turned his head to the five at the tent wall.
The thin one and the other four.
“You heard.”
A nod.
Four more with it.
“Six hundred miners on the Tooth.
They sit under me now.
Your name.”
“Roger.”
You go back.”
The head came up.
“To the Tooth.”
“Yes.
Tell the six hundred: three meals on this hill.
A surgeon’s tent.
A tenth of every cart.”
“They believe that?”
“You take a stone with you.” Lyonel picked a fist of gold-green off the table and threw it.
“Tell them that’s two days’ wage.
Take three more if the first one isn’t enough.”
Roger caught it.
The knuckles went white on the grain.
“My lord.
The five of us—”
“You stay.
Tomorrow you carry the word.
After that you come back and you dig.”
Roger said nothing.
The four behind him said nothing.
All five found an inch in the spine they had not been using.
The pane jumped.
[System]
Potential miner: Roger.
Loyalty: 0% → 55%.
Lyonel gave it a look and took his eyes off it.
Another line.
[System]
Task: Miner Loyalty
Progress: 47% → 100%.
Complete.
[System]
Settlement.
Miner loyalty: locked.
Golden Tooth miner management: active.
He killed the pane.
The flap tore.
Merrell came through it blowing.
“My lord.”
“Say it.”
“The dry bed.
Past the fall.
I put men fifty yards in—”
“And.”
Merrell swallowed.
Color up in his face.
“East wall is hollow.
The hill is vein all the way through.
Connected.
Those two hundred yards you read—that was the mouth.”
Lyonel looked at him.
“The result.”
“The result is—” Merrell got the air back.
“Three years.
At the least.”
The tent went quiet.
Bronn’s mouth was open.
The stone in Roger’s hand nearly left it.
Lyonel sat the stool with his boots still on the table edge.
The mouth bent, slow.
“Three years.”
“At the least, my lord.”
Lyonel put his feet down, stood, and walked to the flap.
Picks from the cut.
Tight.
Even.
Six hundred men still hungry on the Tooth.
From tomorrow those backs sat on his book too.
He turned his head.
“Bronn.”
“Here.”
“Morning.
You fetch them.
Six hundred.
Not one short.”
Bronn came off his heel.
“Aye.”
The pane put a last thin line in the low right.
[System]
Opening the West — Stage One
Progress: 42%.
Lyonel shut it and went back in.
The iron kept on outside.
Roger stood at the wall of the tent with the stone in his fist and did not open the hand all afternoon.