Ten steps past the gate of Casterly Rock.
A servant came after him, blowing, red, bent, nearly into his back.
“Young—young lord.
His lordship wants you.
The solar.
Now.”
Lyonel stopped.
He looked up at the stone lion.
One step out of the mouth and they dragged him back.
“What for.”
“I don’t know.” The boy wiped his face.
“Ser Bloom is with him.”
Bloom.
The name pulled its file.
A mid-weight bannerman in the south.
Land against the Reach.
Grapes.
Wine.
Tax not heavy.
Face known at every gathering.
What now.
He turned back.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Short legs making up the count.
Tywin’s solar sat on the third floor.
Half the hall.
Ten times the care.
Dark oak on all four walls.
Two maps in gilt.
A wide desk drowned in sheepskin and books.
Three candles on the stand, burned to stubs.
Lyonel knocked.
“Enter.”
He went in.
Tywin behind the desk.
Back straight.
Hands folded on the wood.
Across from him a man in dark green, middle years, round face, a little fat, nose gone red, a crushed roll in his fist.
Bloom.
Bloom saw him and stalled.
He had not expected the dwarf.
Tywin lifted a hand at the side chair.
High.
Lyonel climbed.
Bloom’s mouth jumped.
He held the laugh.
“Ser Bloom.” Tywin, same ice.
“Say it again.”
Bloom spread the roll.
“My lord.
Two villages on my north, against the Reach.
Wheat this harvest down near a third.
I looked.
The taxman took a fifth more than last year, and the yield was worse.
Folk could not pay.
A good number ran.
I think someone below padded the base.”
Tywin said nothing.
The look came to Lyonel.
“Speak.”
Lyonel swung a short leg and took the paper.
One pass.
Photographic Memory.
Last year’s base.
This year’s.
Souls.
Tillage.
Yield to a household.
Seven seconds for the whole writ.
He looked up.
“Your taxman.
Alvin.”
Bloom blinked.
“…Yes.”
“Your wife’s cousin.”
Color changed.
“How do you—how do you know that?”
Lyonel set the roll on his knee and flicked the page.
“Books say the base went up twenty-two percent.
Registered tillage in the same ground fell nine.
Land down, base up.
That does not hold.”
A beat.
“Unless a man moved acres onto names that do not pay.
Fallow.
Waste.
The lord’s own.
Then you can lift the base by hand.
The extra sits in the taxman’s purse.”
“Your cousin Alvin is running two books.
To you: bad harvest, folk gone.
On your own ledger: base up, more due.
The gap—”
A second of count.
“Seven, eight hundred silver stags a year.”
“Enough for a small house in Lannisport.”
Bloom’s round face went red, then white, then green.
His mouth worked.
He swallowed it and looked at Tywin.
Tywin’s face gave nothing.
The eyes had something.
Lyonel knew it.
Old life.
A product man in a room watching the grunt who fixed bugs all night recrunch the set and find the hole the product man had missed.
Lyonel kept on.
“The fix is simple.
Survey those two villages again.
Register what is there.
Put the base in the open.
You—the lord—read the raw levy once a quarter.
One pass and the holes close.
Next good year the ones who ran will see the tax drop and come home.”
Bloom swallowed.
“…You can promise that works.”
“Yes.”
“On what.”
The crooked mouth.
“On your grapes.
Last year you booked three thousand barrels.
You shipped at least three thousand six hundred to King’s Landing.
Six hundred barrels on no book and no tax.
Alvin takes one look at Lannisport freight and the coin for your new stables will pour you a cup.”
Bloom came up out of the chair.
Legs screamed on the stone.
“You—”
“Easy.” Lyonel looked up at the round face.
The mismatched eyes were too bright.
“It’s true.
I am not here to hang it on you.
I am telling you I can read your books. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
I can read your taxman’s trick too.”
“Then why—”
“I came to help.” Lyonel shut the roll and held it out.
“Three years of being milked and you did not see it.
Do what I said.
Next year the tax comes back.
You keep more.
Folk stay.
You can speak in front of my father without folding.
Do you lose?”
Bloom stood.
The muscles in the round face jumped for a few seconds.
He sat.
A heavy breath.
“…I’ll try it.”
Lyonel turned to Tywin.
Hands still folded.
The gold brow moved half a millimeter.
On that face, that was a look.
“Where did you see it?” Tywin said.
Lyonel opened his hands.
“Enough ledgers.
It comes.”
Tywin was quiet.
“…You will read the West’s levy summaries.
Once a quarter.”
Said like weather.
Lyonel heard it.
Quarterly levies.
Every bannerman’s tax.
The core Tywin marked himself.
Handing that to a fifteen-year-old son was half a key to the West’s blood.
He put the jump down.
Nodded as if the air had not changed.
“Yes.”
He dropped off the chair and went.
At the door he looked back.
Bloom still melted, wiping.
Tywin had the next writ.
The nib took ink and ran.
Lyonel shut them in.
Empty passage.
He put his back to the wall and watched the stone overhead and let the long breath go.
The pane blinked.
[System]
Task: Son of the West.
Progress: 1/3.
The crooked mouth kept rising.
He touched the roll inside his coat.
Lann the Clever.
Valyria.
A Narrow Sea he would cross on some later day.
Later.
Now.
He took the stairs.
Second bannerman.
North and east.
Ser Garrick.
“Three days.”
“First half-day.
One in three.”
“That’s a cheat for you.”
He said it to himself and laughed under it.