Chapter 25 – The Currency of Shadows
The letter still burned in Aden's mind.
Two seals. Two masters. Two traps.
He hadn't expected the third.
It arrived the next morning, carried by a silent boy dressed in the green and gold of the Crown's household. The seal was plain — no sigil, only the faint impression of the royal coin. Inside, a single line written in fine, measured script:
"Attend Lord Rosby in the Council chamber. The matter concerns the Crown's accounts."
No name. No signature.
But Aden didn't need one.
Someone had noticed.
He folded the parchment and tucked it into his sleeve before leaving his rented room in Flea Bottom. The air outside was thick with the stink of the river and the distant hum of trade. Every step toward the Red Keep felt heavier — the kind of heaviness that came from knowing you were walking into someone else's game board.
The Small Council chamber was already alive when he entered.
Baelish stood by the window, hands clasped behind his back, the faintest smile on his lips. Across the table, Varys sat in his usual shadowed seat, fingers steepled, eyes half-lidded — watching everything, saying nothing.
Lord Rosby, red-faced and wheezing, looked up as Aden entered. "Ah, the clerk. Good. We're missing numbers, you see. The Crown's debts don't add up."
Baelish turned, his voice smooth as silk. "Mistakes happen. Perhaps Master Holt can explain them."
Aden inclined his head. "Which accounts, my lord?"
"The Braavosi shipments," Rosby said. "Half the gold vanished on parchment before the ships even docked."
"Curious," Baelish murmured. "Perhaps a clerical oversight?"
"Or," Varys said softly, "a deliberate one."
The chamber stilled. The air seemed to thicken around Aden.
He looked between them — Baelish's amusement, Varys's calm. Both waiting. Both watching. The question wasn't who had done it but what he would say.
Aden chose his moment carefully. "The loss isn't real," he said. "It's manufactured — a rumor designed to delay payments and test which houses panic first. Whoever started it wanted to see who would whisper it forward."
Varys's head tilted. "And what did you find, Master Holt?"
"That even gold fears an idea," Aden said quietly. "The rumor spread faster than any coin could move. The ledgers may lie, but the panic they cause — that's real currency."
Baelish's lips curved slightly. "You've been busy."
Aden allowed himself the faintest smile. "Idle hands breed suspicion, my lord."
Rosby looked between them, lost in the current. "So… there's no missing gold?"
"Only missing certainty," Baelish replied, eyes still on Aden. "A dangerous thing to misplace."
Varys's tone was light. "Yet sometimes uncertainty can be… useful."
Baelish's gaze flicked to him. "When one knows how to profit from it."
Their words danced like blades in candlelight, but Aden heard the truth beneath them — both men recognized what he'd done. He'd created a whisper powerful enough to reach the Council table.
And neither could afford to punish him for it.
By the time the meeting ended, Rosby had signed off on a "temporary delay" of the Braavosi payments, and Baelish had praised Aden's "resourcefulness."
Only Varys lingered as the others filed out.
He waited until the door closed before speaking. "You've learned to move without being seen."
Aden didn't turn. "You taught me to watch."
Varys smiled faintly. "And now you watch the watchers. Be careful, clerk. Spiders are patient, but even patience frays when the web trembles."
Aden met his gaze. "Then I'll make sure it trembles evenly."
Varys's smile deepened — something between approval and warning. "An even web still has a center, my dear Holt. Just pray you never find it."
He drifted out of the chamber, silent as a shadow.
Baelish didn't return, but his absence spoke louder than his presence ever could.
That night, Aden sat in his chamber beneath the Tower of the Hand, quill poised over an empty page. He could still feel the weight of both their gazes on him — the spider's calm and the fox's cunning, pulling him in opposite directions.
He had survived their trap.
But survival was no longer enough.
He began to write — not a ledger, not a confession, but a list.
Names of men who owed favors. Men who feared discovery.
Merchants. Scribes. Messengers.
Every one of them a coin to spend.
If Baelish and Varys wanted to use him, he would use their own currency against them.
A knock came at the door.
Aden froze, then set his quill down carefully. "Enter."
A servant stepped in, carrying a sealed scroll on a silver tray. "From the Crown, my lord clerk."
"My lord clerk."
The words were new. He didn't correct them.
He broke the seal — green wax, the color of the Crown. The handwriting was unfamiliar, elegant but deliberate.
"The Crown thanks you for your discretion, Clerk Holt.
His Grace values loyal men."
No signature.
No explanation.
Only a faint scent of myrrh clinging to the parchment — the perfume favored by the Queen herself.
Aden read the line twice, then again.
The Crown knew.
Which meant they'd been watching all along.
He looked out the window. The city was dark now, the harbor glittering faintly with lanterns — each one a tiny flame over deep, black water.
And somewhere beneath that surface, something had shifted.
He had played with whispers.
Now, the throne was whispering back.
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