Chapter 7

  As the afternoon wore on, I tasked the three guards with us to ride back with my sisters to Casterly Rock while I stayed in Lannisport on my own. I knew Father would moan about his heir being left without security when I met him later, even if only for appearance’s sake. A lot of what nobles did was about status and image, and I got that, of course. But in this case, keeping a low profile was the whole point of it.

  Pulling a cloak over my shoulders and fixing the hoodie over my head, I disappeared into the city warrens, walking aimlessly through side streets and winding alleys for almost twenty minutes. I didn’t expect to have anyone following me quite yet—I was no one relevant in the grand scheme of things; but a man could never be too cautious when he stood in the lion’s den and planned to pull its tail.

  Then again, it was more like a tickle in the tail’s hair than a full yank. Today was more a test than anything else, to myself and to my future reliance on my men. Admittedly, trying my hand at undercover work for the first in Tywin Lannister’s backyard might not have been the best call, but this would be our only chance in a while to truly work behind enemy lines, so to say. We had already tried everything we could in Tarth, and we needed bigger challenges in order to grow. A trial by fire would mold us into what we needed to be.

  After shaking off any potential spies, I trekked back to a slightly wealthier neighborhood in Lannisport, the southernmost section of a long boulevard that ran parallel to the ocean a few blocks away from the waterfront, where one could find every kind of tradesman plying their craft.

  The traffic from earlier in the day had largely died down, and even then, this wasn’t the part of town where the knights, nobles, and rich merchants not invited into the Rock would stay during a visit to Lannisport. Here lived and worked those who were as close to the middle class as one could find in Westeros, regular traders and tailors, carpenters and crofters, smiths and the occasional aging whore who had been mindful of her finances.

  According to Jace, I would hear my destination before I saw it, and he was right. The ringing of hammer and anvil brought me to the front of a small shop squeezed between two double-storied buildings. A wooden sign carved with three double-sided hammers hanging over the door confirmed I was in the right place.

  Looking up at the shirts and dresses draped over clotheslines attached to the windows of the residential buildings around the shop, I winced in sympathy. There were no sleepy mornings when you had a blacksmith for a neighbor. Perhaps King’s Landing had it right when they bunched all their smithies in the aptly named Street of Steel.

  A bell tinkled softly when I walked inside. The front end of the shop was cramped by displays of blades, spear-heads, and all sorts of weaponry. A full armor stand stood in a corner while single pieces of armor: vambraces, pauldrons, and chest pieces laid around it. The back end of the room was occupied by mail shirts and some higher-end tools—hunting knives and well-polished axes.

  Nothing a peasant could buy, but necessary instruments for the common hedge knight or the occasional hobbyist lord. I imagined this shop didn’t serve your run-of-the-mill noble-born clientele, but poorer manor lords and freeriders still needed their arms and armor made and fixed.

  A rough voice yelled a greeting from the back in between hammering, but I inspected the weapons and tools for a full minute before I was approached. The man coming up to meet me was short and balding, a large gut pushing against the leather apron he wore. His eyes narrowed after taking a good look at me, as if he had tried to make sense of my station given my looks and clothes but had come out blank.

  Young, handsome, and clean, yet poorly dressed with a workmans’ cloak. I was an incongruence, I realized. Not good if you wanted to be unremarkable. Something to work on.

  “How can I help you… ser?” he rasped.

  “Ah.” I coughed into my hand, feigning embarrassment. “You are the master here, aye? Don’t want to bother you for this, my good man. I’m a squire, you see, for Ser Belford. Ser Belford of Three Trees.” I forced some importance into the name, but the smith only gave me a blank look. “Ah. From the Vale, good man. The Vale. Well, you see, his helmet got clipped in training just early today. Could get it fixed if we had more time but with the melee being tomorrow, well, he’ll be needing a simple replacement.”

  “You got gold?” The blacksmith asked. My awkward expression didn’t inspire any confidence. He shrugged heavy shoulders. “I got my hands full of deliveries to make, ser squire, but I’ll get my apprentice to help ya. If ya got the measurements he might find ya a spare somewhere in the shop. Rob!” The smith called, and something metallic clattered on the back. Soon, a young man almost half a foot taller than myself came scrambling through the shop. “Help the lad here, will ya?”

  With a grunt my way, the blacksmith disappeared into the shop and I was left with a man I could only describe as a westerosi Mr. Olympia. “Nice to meet ya, ser,” Rob said, his soft voice and pleasant demeanor completely incompatible with his minotaur-esque build. “How can I be of service for ya today?”

  Smiling, I turned the charm on and spent the next half an hour discussing everything from helmet circumference and the art of blacksmithing, to his opinion on the Ironborn—not good—and his favorite bawdry joke—a knight, a septon, and a whore walk into a bar and so on. He opened up the most when I brought up the topic of family. Rob was still young, not yet twenty, yet he spoke of his wife—a childhood love between two kids orphaned by war who grew up as neighbors—and young daughter with the love and tenderness you would expect from an aging grandfather who had begun to live more in the fond memories of the past than a man in the flower of his youth.

  I left the shop with my purse a few silver coins short and a promise that I would see Rob again one day. He laughed awkwardly at my insistence but I didn’t mind. He couldn’t possibly know what our meeting today meant for him.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  xxx

  Soon, I found myself on the third-floor of the Roaring Bear Inn, knocking in a particular three-one-two pattern on the door to the easternmost room. Nightfall had already come and the inn had started to get loud. I could hear music and laughter spilling from the common room beneath.

  Yet another different pattern rapped on the wood, and Jack peeked out from the shadows. “M’lord.” He nodded once he closed the door behind me. “We weren’t expecting you until later.”

  I stepped further into the room and looked around the place. “Not bad lodgings, is it?”

  “I’ve slept in worse,” Jack said. I could almost hear the grin in his voice.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it.”

  Jack and his brother Jace had been gutter rats in Dawnrest, Tarth’s largest town sitting under the shadow of Evenfall Hall, before I got my hands on them. A night in a spacious room in Lannisport’s fishing district was a big improvement.

  The Tarth household had their own campsite on the tourney grounds where most of our guardsmen were staying, but the whole point of what we were doing here was to act outside of noble politics. It wouldn’t do to show any connection to House Tarth.

  His twin, Jace, lounged on the corner bed, running a whetstone over his well-worn shortsword. He bowed his head when we met eyes. The last of the group, Grey, sat looming over a leather-covered book on the tiny desk by the shuttered windows. He only turned to look at me when Jack cleared his throat.

  “Ah.” He closed the book with a thud, rose, and bowed. “Lord Galladon. My apologies. I was…”

  “Entranced in…” I squinted at the cover. “The Nine Voyages? I didn’t know that’s the book you wanted to bring. Why the sudden interest in Essos?”

  Grey shook his head. “Not Essos, m’lord, I only thought some naval history seemed appropriate considering what we’re doing here.”

  I nodded. “Well thought, Grey. Before we get to that, though, I spoke with the man you all mentioned. He showed me some of his pieces too. Rob does good work. How was it that you found him?”

  “Going around the taverns in the trades’ district, mostly,” Jace spoke up. He had put down the whetstone and sheathed his sword to focus on me. “Said we were freeriders and asked around for a good smith for a small job. Nothing fancy or expensive. Got pointed toward the Three Hammers’ apprentice soon enough. After that, we started bringing Rob’s name up on the bars around the shop, all casual like, like you taught us. He’s got a good reputation, as a smith and as a man. Treats his woman decent, we were told. Always a good sign.”

  “Not well acquainted with the bottle either,” Jack put in. “And when we heard his master wasn’t the generous type, had made it known once when he was drunk that he wasn’t going to pass on the shop to his apprentices even when he died… Well, we knew he was the perfect mark. Went by the other day, just to check. Seemed like the friendly type, and not the pretend kind either. Just a good man doing good work.”

  I hummed, quite impressed. It seemed our practice runs doing similar work back at Tarth hadn’t been for naught. By now, I would bet we had more connections in Dawnrest than even my father, courtesy of the twins’ knowledge of the town’s underbelly and my own weight as the lord’s son being occasionally thrown about.

  Even in a well-run settlement like Dawnrest, smuggling and other such activities were unavoidable. You might as well get your share of the pie than try to stifle humanity’s ever-hungry greed. Some of my coin, a small part, granted, came from that endeavour.

  “Good job, then. I’m giving you all the go ahead on this.” Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed the coin purse and threw it onto the empty bed. “There. Enough silver to convince a young apprentice blacksmith to take his family and try his fortunes on the other side of the continent. You can promise him enough coin to build a house and start his own shop when we get home, but don’t mention the Tarth name quite yet. I’ll let you figure out the broad strokes of this, but he should know to leave quietly with the household when the time comes.”

  “It shall be done, m’lord,” Jace simply said. His twin went over and pocketed the silver purse with a deep nod.

  Poaching a skilled craftsman from another lord—and from the mighty Lord of Lannister himself—wasn’t the brightest of ideas, I knew, but it wasn’t about the act of getting a blacksmith that really mattered. I could find a decent one anywhere in Westeros that would serve my purpose.

  I simply wanted these questions answered: could we run an operation outside our home island? Could we do everything right, from discovery, to surveillance, to arranging the logistics of getting the mark back to Tarth? So far, my lads were doing tremendously with very little input on my part.

  Jack had a propensity for sweet talking and tavern-going, but I knew it was Jace that really shone in this sort of work. Jack was the better hand at the yard, no doubt about it. I’d take him to have my back in a fight any day of the week; but his twin was built for subtlety.

  Despite his ferocity and Grey’s smarts, it was Jace who had really taken to the lessons on manners and how the nobility operated. He could switch between the coarseness required in a run-down tavern by the docks and the elegance necessary during a lord’s feast in a heartbeat. In another life he might have been an actor.

  I clapped my hands. “Now, about that naval history, Grey.” I turned back to him. “What do you have for me?”

  “Right.” He nodded earnestly. Opening up a drawer on the desk, he pulled up a small stack of parchment that was tightly wrapped with a length of twine, untied the cord, and passed the stack to me. “These are my observations so far, m’lord. I divided the total fleet—counting only ships flying the Lannister flag—between merchant and warship, then further still by class. There’s their names there and their state of repair. I took special notice of the older ones still in good sailing condition, like you asked. Jace spoke with a few crewmen from the Long Sunfish and the Brown Bowen on shore leave, and even to the captain of a cog. You’ll find his notes on the last two pieces.”

  I flicked through the bundle of parchment, my eyebrows rising as I registered the amount of details the report contained. “Bloody hell, Grey,” I said, impressed. “This is great stuff. I didn’t know you were some kind of maritime scholar.”

  Grey flushed. “Ah, I’m really not, m’lord, just did some reading before we left Tarth. You said we were going to have a look at their fleet in dock so I wanted to be ready for that. Maester Rowen has a good collection on ships with drawings and sketches and the like.”

  Jack snorted on the side, and Grey shot him a glare. The seventeen-year-old held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, no disrespect on my part, Grey,” he said, smile turning apologetic. “I’m just glad I’m not the one that has to do all the reading between us.”

  “My lord,” Jace interrupted. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the purpose of checking out the Lannister’s navy to such a degree? I’m sure your lord father wouldn’t have minded had you asked him to inspect one of House Tarth’s own vessels.”

  “The purpose?” I asked, then shrugged. “I’m hoping to get away with some of his ships, what else?”