Chapter 44: Daemon's Move - Part 2
ULF
The traitor was hiding well.
Three weeks of it. Every contact in my network woken, every debt called in. Bribes pressed into palms down in Flea Bottom. Threats delivered in doorways where nobody would repeat them. And still nothing I could put a name to.
Someone in the Keep fed maps to Daemon's assassin. Updated maps. Recent information.
I spread my notes across the desk and weighted the corners with the candle stubs I'd burned through since midnight. Names circled in ink. Lines drawn between them wherever two men shared a corridor, a cousin, a debt. Most of the lines died halfway across the page.
The assassin I'd killed had carried more than passage maps. Patrol schedules. Guard rotations. The precise hours when the nursery stood thinnest, set down in a careful hand by someone who knew what those hours were worth.
Someone was watching. Reporting. Waiting.
"You're not sleeping again."
Helaena's voice, from the doorway. I hadn't heard her cross the outer room. Hadn't heard the door either, and that failure sat in me worse than the lost sleep.
"I'll sleep when the traitor is found."
She crossed to my desk and looked down at the mess of it. She didn't say a word about the circled names, or how many of them there were, or the fact that I'd written the same three twice. That was its own kindness.
"The children asked about you today." She straightened one page with two fingers. "Jaehaerys wanted to know if you'd teach him the heavy trick again."
A smile tugged at my mouth despite everything. I'd put a river stone in the boy's hands and let it grow, slow and gentle, until his arms shook and his eyes went round as coins. A strongman's trick, I'd told him. Balance and breath. Nothing about the weight I'd poured into it out of nothing.
"Tomorrow. I'll visit tomorrow."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"He told his sister you'd sworn it three days ago." She said it without accusation, which was worse. "Do you know what I'm afraid of? Not the knife. Someone always has a knife. I'm afraid you'll find this man and it won't stop there."
I didn't have an answer she'd like, so I gave her none.
She touched my shoulder. Left without pressing further.
Back to work.
THE NEXT DAY
My network had identified seventeen people with access to both the Red Keep's passages and the nursery's patrol schedules.
Guards. Servants. Maesters. Minor functionaries.
I'd cleared nine of them through careful surveillance. Their routines matched their claimed duties. Their finances showed no suspicious inflows. Their movements never once coincided with a leak. One wept when my man leaned on him in a wine sink off the Hook, which told me he was frightened rather than guilty.
Eight remained.
Today, I focused on a kitchen steward named Garrett. Forty years old. Served the Keep for two decades. Responsible for coordinating meal deliveries to the royal family.
On paper, unremarkable.
But my contact in Flea Bottom had reported seeing him at the Broken Chalice tavern three times in the past fortnight. A place where Black sympathizers gathered. A place where coins changed hands for information.
I followed him through the morning. Watched him carry breakfast trays up the servants' stair, count the covers twice at the nursery door, hand them off to the girl who took them the last twenty paces. He argued with a scullion about spoiled butter. Ordinary. All of it ordinary.
Then, at midday, he slipped into a service corridor and didn't come out.
The passages.
I gave him a thirty-second head start. Then I followed.
The service corridor ended at a hidden door, one I'd mapped weeks ago. Garrett found the catch in the dark without groping for it. Lifted, pushed, caught the panel before it could knock.
Too smoothly. He's done this before.
I dropped my weight to ten kilos. The passage swallowed sound, and with that little mass under me my boots made less noise than the dust falling off the beams.
Garrett walked quickly. Confidently. He passed three junctions without hesitation, taking the route that ran toward the Keep's outer wall.
Meeting someone? Delivering something?
A door ahead, and torchlight bleeding under it. Garrett knocked. Three quick raps, two slow.
It opened from the other side.
I knew the face from my network's reports. A dockworker, seen with Black agents three months ago and left alive because a watched man is worth more than a dead one.
"You're late," the dockworker said.
"The new guard rotations changed everything. That bastard, Ulf, he's reorganized the patterns. Made them unpredictable."
"Can you still access the information?"
"Takes longer now. He's careful. Paranoid."
Good. I should be.
"When's the next window?"
"Three nights from now. The guard captain drinks on seventh-days. His replacement is slower. Less observant."
Ser Willem. I knew he was weak.
"The prince wants confirmation before he acts again."
Prince. Daemon.
Garrett pulled a folded paper from his sleeve and held it a moment longer than a brave man would have.
"Patrol schedules. Guard names. The layout of the new security measures."
The dockworker took the paper. Turned it to the torch, read two lines, tucked it away inside his shirt.
"The promised coin will be at the usual place."
"Tell the prince, the next attempt won't fail. That bastard guard can't watch everything."
Watch me.
I let them finish. Let the door close. Let Garrett walk back forty paces through the passages, comfortable in his treachery, humming under his breath.
Then I stepped out of the dark ahead of him.
"Garrett."
He spun. His face drained of color so fast I saw it happen by torchlight.
"I, I was just..."
"You were selling information to Daemon's agents. Information that nearly got the queen's children killed."
"You don't understand, I didn't have a choice—"
"Everyone has a choice."
Soru. Point-blank.
My hand closed around his throat before he could scream. Lifted him off the ground until his heels swung clear of the stone. He clawed at my wrist. His nails found nothing to open.
"Who else? How many others like you?"
"No one, just me, I swear—"
I increased the pressure. His face purpled. The paper-dry sound coming out of him stopped being words.
"Truth. Now. Or I make this last for hours."
"There's... another... kitchen girl... Marta... she carries messages..."
"Where?"
"Dead drop... near the sept... behind the—"
His voice cut off. I'd squeezed too hard. Windpipe crushed under my thumb like a reed stem.
Damn.
I lowered the body and crouched over it and made myself breathe until my hand unclenched. Then I searched his pockets. Purse, keys, a rind of hard cheese wrapped in cloth. Nothing else. Smart enough not to carry evidence, stupid enough to sell his queen's children for whatever that purse held.
Marta. Kitchen girl. The sept.
I had my next target.
THAT NIGHT
Silverwing waited on the Dragonpit's upper ledge.
I'd taken to coming to her at night, when fewer eyes watched the hill. She heard me on the stair before she saw me and rumbled her greeting, low in the chest, the sound going up through the stone into my boots.
Recognition wasn't obedience. She kept her own will and her own opinions, and she let me feel both.
Tonight, aerial work.
We went off the peak into cold air and spiraled out over King's Landing. The city lay below in torchlight and shadow, the river a black cut through it, the sept's roof pale on its hill.
"Bank left," I said, pressing with my knees.
Silverwing considered. Then banked right.
Stubborn.
"Left, Silverwing. Left."
She banked left. Slowly, so I'd understand which of us had decided it.
We flew for an hour. Turns, dives, the long slide down the river wind and the climb back up it. By the end my legs ached from gripping and my voice had gone hoarse from commands.
But we were better. Smoother. Closer to one thing than two.
Not enough for Caraxes yet. Not enough for Daemon on his back. Closer than a month ago, and still closing.
We came down on the ledge and I sat a while with my hand flat on her neck, looking at that pale roof on its hill.
Three nights until the seventh-day. Marta at first light.