Lyonel took the five-pound ledger upstairs.
The stair of Casterly Rock climbed in a spiral, each step cut higher than a decent stair had a right to be.
The body’s legs were short.
He went up blowing like a turtle with too much shell.
He pushed into his own rooms.
Not the servants’ wing.
Tywin had at least left him a single suite.
A bed.
A desk.
A shelf of books.
Last night’s charcoal still dead in the corner hearth.
He dumped the accounts on the desk.
The wood jumped.
Quills hopped.
The blue pane came up on its own.
[System]
Daily draw cooldown remaining: 8 hours 12 minutes.
He looked out.
The sun had just cleared the water.
Casterly Rock’s cliff took the light and went gold.
Eight hours.
He pulled the chair, sat, opened the first leaf.
All of it hand.
Yellow sheepskin.
Ink cramped and crooked.
His temple started to tick.
The first Tyrion could read.
He could not read *this*.
Western office words.
Familiar shapes.
Meanings he had to guess.
He stared at the first line of figures for half a minute.
Nothing.
He shut the book hard.
“Fine.
Tonight.”
Waiting sat badly.
Worse when you knew there was a ticket you had not scratched and eight hours to stare at the wall.
He walked the room three times.
The shelf was *A History of House Lannister*, *A Geography of the West*, that breed of thing.
He pulled *Clever Lanny and Casterly Rock*, gave it two pages, and put it back.
Stories.
No meat.
He lay down.
Stone ceiling.
Dry moss stuffed in the seams.
Damp.
The sea in the smell.
Old pictures leaked.
Cersei’s hands on the back of his neck, his face in the fountain, water down his throat.
The year’s feast, last table, eating with the servants.
Sixteen, wanting a horse.
Tywin: *Your legs will not find the stirrups.
Do not make a show of it.*
Lyonel rolled onto his side.
A line drifted through.
*You forget a thousand things a day.
Why not this?*
Last thing an Arasaka man had said to him, in the life before.
Then three rounds through the chest.
Then this.
Fuck.
He came off the bed and took the copper glass again.
Huge head.
Green and black.
Crooked mouth.
Short legs.
Same badly packed jar.
He nodded at it.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Tomorrow it grows.”
Not the height.
The traits.
The sun climbed off the water, stood over the keep, and slid west.
He sat the chair until his ass went numb.
He could not help the tightness.
First draw purple.
Second draw, the system had said, a thin bump in the odds.
Draw a white and the joke would be on him.
He had seen a white in the examples.
[White — Lannister Blood: blond hair.
Base Charm 1.]
Blond.
He was already blond.
Might as well draw *congratulations, you can breathe*.
The window went black.
He fed the hearth himself.
Orange light filled the room.
The ledger lay open.
He gave those cursed figures one last look.
Then the sound in his head.
[System]
Daily draw refreshed.
Draw now?
His finger had already hit yes.
No purple burst this time.
A soft blue-green ringed the pane, lake water taking a stone, three or four seconds before it tightened into a trait.
He watched the color.
Blue.
A step under purple.
Not nothing.
[System]
Blue trait acquired: Photographic Memory
Reading speed +300%
Accuracy of memory for material read: 100%
Passive.
No activation.
He blinked.
Blinked again.
Three hundred.
Three *hundred*.
In the old life he had been fast with a spec.
*Thinking in Java* had still eaten two months.
Three times the speed, and nothing lost?
He looked at the book.
Same book.
Same crooked hand.
He opened the first page and the room changed.
The scrawl—figures, heads, notes—came apart and put itself back in order and filed into him, line after line, the way a machine takes type.
Western fiefs.
The Golden Tooth.
Silverhill.
Brandhall.
Fair Isle.
Tax.
Spend.
Pay for men.
Pay for roads.
Pay for horses.
Line.
Line.
Line.
He turned faster.
A page a minute.
Then thirty seconds.
Then ten.
Sheepskin rattling.
Fire on that ugly face.
The mismatched eyes running side to side like a scan.
The whole book.
Three hundred and seventeen pages.
Done in under forty minutes.
He closed the last leaf and let his back hit the chair and pushed the air out.
His head felt swollen.
The numbers were still queuing in there, turning.
He shut his eyes and pulled a line at random.
Golden Tooth.
Third quarter, 285 AC.
Gold tax taken in: one thousand two hundred ounces.
Note: mine collapse in the rains.
Yield down.
Next.
Silverhill.
Second quarter, 286 AC.
Silver tax taken in: eight hundred forty ounces.
Note: new vein under survey.
Extra spend: two hundred ounces.
Next.
Each one clean.
Cut into him like a groove on a disk.
He opened his eyes.
The crooked mouth started up.
“Shit.”
He ran the summary the trait had already built.
His finger tapped the desk.
Three times.
Stopped.
Off.
The Golden Tooth had reported mine collapses and short yield every quarter for three years running.
Three years of cave-ins and the pit still open?
Was Tywin a fool?
No.
Tywin was not a fool.
Then only one reading worked.
The book was dirty, and Tywin knew it was dirty.
He had not handed over a test.
He had flicked off a scrap job and set a clock, so that in three days he could send his youngest to the Wall with a straight face.
The first Tyrion could not read money.
Three days would have given him nothing.
Lyonel was not the first Tyrion.
He opened to the Golden Tooth and went line against line.
Digging costs falling year on year.
Cartage rising year on year.
Wrong.
Cartage follows yield.
Yield down, haul cost up?
He pulled three years back for a base and ran his finger along the figures.
The work in his head went faster than he had ever typed.
“Shit.”
He shoved the book away and let the chair take him.
The crooked smile got wider.
He had it.
The lord at the Golden Tooth padded the haul every year and walked the extra off into a dark line Lyonel could not finish tracing from the page.
Not a fortune in any one season.
Two, three hundred ounces of gold a year.
Three years stacked.
Enough to buy a small keep.
Smuggled gold.
The road of it—he ran the specks backward through the book—went overland from the Golden Tooth to Lannisport, then out by sea.
Sold where?
The accounts did not say.
He already had three names in mind.
He stood and went to the window.
Night on Casterly Rock.
Sparks of lamps.
Moon on the water broken into silver scales.
The pane blinked.
[System]
Next draw refreshes in 23 hours 58 minutes.
Current traits: Purple — Lannister Blood Resonance.
Blue — Photographic Memory.
He looked at the two lines.
One for the family.
One for the page.
One to hold people.
One to take information.
The system had come out of a woman, apparently.
Opening kit cut for a man who had to build something in Westeros.
He went back to the desk and opened the book to the Golden Tooth again.
His finger sat on the padded haul.
“Three days?”
He laughed once.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll show you a reversal.”