Chapter 35 – The Taste of Iron
The first thing I tasted that morning was iron.
Not the faint ghost of blood on my tongue — the taste of it in the air. It clung to the room, to my hands, to the back of my throat. Pain came next, dull and steady, like the heartbeat of something that refused to die.
The Ledger's faint hum lingered somewhere behind my eyes, calculating, whispering probabilities I didn't ask for.
> "Recovery stable. External risk factors: moderate."
I forced myself upright. The stitches along my ribs tugged. Every breath hurt — which meant I was still alive.
The door creaked. Maren slipped inside — one of the few clerks who hadn't yet learned to fear me. His eyes darted to the half-emptied bottle on the table, then to the bloodstained bandages.
"You shouldn't be sitting," he said.
"I shouldn't be dead either," I muttered. "Yet here we are."
He hesitated before stepping closer, handing me a folded note. "The men you asked for. They're… not the usual sort."
I took the parchment and scanned the names — sellswords, former guards, debtors desperate enough to swear silence. Men with nothing to lose and everything to kill for. Exactly what I needed.
"Good," I said quietly. "Pay them double. In silence."
Maren frowned. "From which purse?"
"Mine."
He blinked. "You don't—"
"I do now."
Gold was just a number, and numbers bent easily to those who knew where the ledgers bled. Baelish had taught me that much.
When Maren left, I sat alone again, the city breathing faintly through the shutters. Somewhere out there, someone had tried to end me. Someone thought I was still a pawn.
They were wrong.
---
By the time night fell, I'd met the first of them — Rourke, a former City Watch sergeant with a limp and eyes like broken glass. He smelled of ale and regret, but his knife hand was steady.
"You don't look like a man who needs protection," he said, studying me as if testing the truth of the rumor.
"I do now," I replied. "And I don't want loyalty. I want reliability."
His lip twitched. "Same thing, in my line."
"Then you'll do."
He left with a purse of gold heavier than his conscience. I watched him go, then reached for my cloak. My side burned as I stood, but the pain felt useful — like a reminder of what happens when you forget the board you're playing on.
---
Two days later, I stood in the shadow of the throne room.
The King sat slouched on his seat — Robert Baratheon, bloated by wine and victory long forgotten. His laughter filled the hall, crude and careless, echoing off gold and stone. But my eyes were not on him. They were on the man standing just below the dais.
Lord Tywin Lannister.
He did not laugh. He never did.
Baelish had once warned me not to get too close to lions. "They don't eat out of hands," he'd said. "They bite them." But I'd learned something he hadn't: even lions need their kills counted, weighed, and measured.
If I couldn't be the king, I could be the man who knew the worth of his crown.
A small conversation with a gold clerk here, a revised expense report there — little things that would eventually lead to Tywin's attention. The kind of attention that could make or end lives.
> "Probability of recognition: 12%," the Ledger whispered.
Twelve percent was enough.
I stepped forward to deliver the latest fiscal summaries. My voice was steady, polite, forgettable. The best kind of voice in a room like this. Tywin's gaze flicked toward me once — sharp, assessing — then moved on. But he heard my name. That was enough for today.
As I turned to leave, Baelish's voice drifted from behind. "Recovering well, I see."
I didn't turn. "You taught me to keep moving, my lord."
"Ah," he murmured, "but I didn't teach you how to stop."
He smiled as I walked away, and I knew that smile was a warning wrapped in admiration.
---
That night, I stood by my window again, the city glowing faintly beneath the moon. My bandages were stained but dry. My pulse steady.
> "External threat reduced. Emotional variance detected."
I ignored the whisper. The pain, the paranoia, the fear — they were tools now.
I had men watching my door. I had eyes in the corridors. I had begun to build walls of flesh and silence around myself.
But I also had ambition — a wound that would never close.
The Game had noticed me.
Now I intended to make it remember my name.