Chapter 20 : LIONS IN THE STREET
The Level processed like a key turning in a lock he hadn't known was there.
Edric sat cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed, the chair still wedged under the door handle. Dawn's first gray light seeped through the window shutters. He'd been sitting for an hour — the System's recommended processing time — and the changes arrived not as sudden transformation but as gradual sharpening, like a lens clicking into focus one degree at a time.
[LEVEL UP: 2 → 3] [TITLE: APPRENTICE OF SHADOWS → PROMISING PLAYER] [ATTRIBUTE POINTS: +3]
The allocation was obvious. After the tail incident, after the little bird's renewed attention, after the mounting evidence that his intelligence operations were generating a detectable signature — Perception was survival.
[ALLOCATION: PERCEPTION +3] [PER: 9 → 12] [THRESHOLD UNLOCKED: TRAINED OBSERVER TIER (PER 11-25)]
The effect was immediate and disorienting. The room — his familiar chamber, unchanged since transmigration — suddenly contained information he hadn't processed before. The crack in the ceiling plaster that mapped the support beam's stress pattern. The faint discoloration on the floor near the door where someone had cleaned a stain months or years ago. The way the shutters vibrated at a frequency that indicated the wind was coming from the southeast — harbor direction, salt air.
Everything spoke. He'd been hearing whispers before. Now the volume had increased.
[SKILL POINT: +1] [ALLOCATED: GHOST PROTOCOL — LEVEL 1] [EFFECT: BASIC SURVEILLANCE DETECTION — PASSIVE AWARENESS OF BEING OBSERVED. REDUCES EFFECTIVE STEALTH OF ENEMIES BY TIER 1.]
Ghost Protocol settled into the back of his awareness like a new sense — not sight or hearing but something adjacent, a spatial consciousness of attention directed at him. It was faint, imprecise, more intuition than certainty. But the tail at the tournament would have triggered it. The little bird's focused listening would have triggered it.
[FUNCTION POINT: +1] [ALLOCATED: OPPORTUNITY DETECTION — BASIC] [EFFECT: SYSTEM WILL ALERT HOST TO OBVIOUS EXPLOITABLE SITUATIONS WITHIN 1-DAY WINDOW. REQUIRES PER 12 — THRESHOLD MET.]
[LEVEL UP COMPLETE.]
[CURRENT STATUS:] [LEVEL 3 — PROMISING PLAYER] [CUN: 12 | PER: 12 | INF: 5 | COM: 7 | NET: 3 | CON: 6] [EXP: 0/2000 TO LEVEL 4] [SCHEME CAPACITY: 2 (INCREASES AT LEVEL 4)] [SHADOW STEP: TIER 0 (UNCHANGED)] [NEW: GHOST PROTOCOL LV1, OPPORTUNITY DETECTION (BASIC)]
Edric opened his eyes. The room was sharper. The world was sharper. The difference between Level 2 and Level 3 was the difference between reading a room and seeing it — the latter being a function of processing speed, pattern recognition, and the System's quiet amplification of cognitive faculties that his transmigrated brain hadn't previously accessed.
He stood. Stretched. His body felt the same — nineteen years old, adequate fitness, zero combat utility. The System improved the mind, not the muscle. A useful reminder: no amount of Perception would stop a sword.
---
The news found him before he found the news.
Marcus's boy — a runner the tavern keeper used for urgent messages — was pounding on the manse's servant entrance before Edric had finished dressing. Bessa brought the message up with the particular expression of a woman who'd decided long ago that the third son's business was incomprehensible and preferred it that way.
The note was in Marcus's cramped hand: Lord Stark attacked last night. Kingslayer's men. Jory Cassel dead. Others dead. Stark alive — leg broken. Kingslayer fled the city.
Edric read it twice. Set it down. Picked it up and read it again, not because the words had changed but because the reality they described needed repetition to feel real.
"Jory Cassel."
He remembered the name from the show — one of Ned's loyal men, killed in the street fight. A face he'd probably never seen in person, attached to a name that would appear in no history book, commemorated by no monument. Just a man who served his lord and died for it in a side street next to a brothel.
[CANON EVENT CONFIRMED: JAIME LANNISTER'S ATTACK ON NED STARK] [LOCATION: OUTSIDE LITTLEFINGER'S BROTHEL] [CASUALTIES: JORY CASSEL, MULTIPLE STARK GUARDS] [NED STARK: ALIVE — LEG CRUSHED UNDER FALLEN HORSE] [JAIME LANNISTER: FLED KING'S LANDING]
[+75 EXP — CRISIS INTELLIGENCE RECEIVED AND PROCESSED]
Edric dressed quickly. Quality merchant clothes, Vance Trading pin, knife under the cloak. The Northern fur — still absurd in the spring warmth — stayed in the chest. He needed to look Southern, professional, unremarkable.
The streets confirmed Marcus's report. The attack site was near the Street of Silk — Edric walked past, maintaining the pace and expression of a merchant with commercial business, not morbid curiosity. Blood on the cobblestones, already darkening to brown in the morning sun. A broken sword in the gutter — Northern steel, by the pattern on the blade. Stark banners hung at half-attention from a nearby building, whether in mourning or defiance.
Three Gold Cloaks stood guard over the scene. Their posture said official business. Their faces said this is above our pay and we'd rather be somewhere else.
The bootmaker's shop across from the attack site was closed. The shutters drawn. But through the gap, Edric could see movement — a man sitting in the dimness, alone.
He entered.
The bootmaker was a thin man in his fifties with the callused hands and permanent stoop of a craftsman. His eyes were red. A leather apron hung from a hook, and beside it, on a workbench, lay a pair of half-finished boots that would never be completed.
"The shop's closed, ser."
"I know. I'm sorry to intrude." Edric looked at the boots on the workbench. "Who were they for?"
"My boy. Wyl. He was — he served Lord Stark. As a guard." The bootmaker's voice cracked on the last word. "Eighteen years old. I made his first pair of boots when he was three."
Edric reached into his money belt. Pulled out a silver stag. Set it on the workbench next to the unfinished boots.
"For the funeral. I'm sorry."
"Did you know him?"
"No. But he died for a good lord, which is more than most men can say."
The bootmaker looked at the silver. Then at Edric. Then back at the boots. "He wanted to be a knight. Stupid dream for a bootmaker's son. But he could fight — gods, the boy could fight. He just—" The man stopped. Pressed his hands flat on the workbench. "He just couldn't fight enough of them."
Edric left the shop. The silver was nothing — less than nothing, a fraction of a fraction of what the war would cost in blood and boots and boys who wanted to be knights. But the bootmaker's face would join the collection of faces Edric carried — Mycah, Lady, Bran before the fall, the farming family on the Kingsroad — the human price of a game played by people who never looked down.
"That's the callback, isn't it," he thought. "The farming family on the Kingsroad. A silver stag and a thank-you. Same amount. Same gesture. Same futility."
---
War preparations consumed the rest of the day.
The first priority was gold conversion. Edric visited three different jewelers — spacing the visits across hours and districts, never spending more than five dragons at any single shop. The gemstones he purchased were small, high-quality, and easily concealed: two rubies, a sapphire, and a handful of garnets. Total value: approximately twelve gold dragons, compressed into a leather pouch small enough to fit inside a boot.
[ASSET CONVERSION: 12 GOLD DRAGONS → PORTABLE GEMSTONES] [REMAINING LIQUID GOLD: 16 DRAGONS]
Three emergency caches, established over the afternoon:
Cache One: Inside the city. A loose stone in the Sept of Baelor's crypt — his existing dead drop location, repurposed for emergency supplies. Three gold dragons, a change of clothes, and a sealed letter identifying him as a merchant in case he needed to pass checkpoints.
Cache Two: Outside the walls. A hollow tree near the Dragon Gate, half a mile from the Kingsroad junction. Two gold dragons and a small knife.
Cache Three: The harbor. Edric paid a Braavosi ship captain named Symon three gold dragons for passage on the next departure — a standing arrangement, redeemable at any point within thirty days. Symon's ship, the Black Wind, made regular runs to Pentos.
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS ESTABLISHED:] [CITY CACHE — SEPT OF BAELOR | EXTERNAL CACHE — DRAGON GATE | HARBOR EXTRACTION — BLACK WIND, BRAAVOS-BOUND] [+50 EXP]
The network briefings took longer. Edric met Marcus, Mira, and Denna individually — staggered meetings at different locations, never more than ten minutes each. The message was the same: war protocols. Reduce face-to-face contact. Use dead drops exclusively. Report anything involving troop movements, arrests, or changes in court power structure. If the city becomes dangerous, go to ground and stop reporting — no intelligence was worth a life.
Marcus took it with the weathered calm of a man who'd survived Robert's Rebellion as a King's Landing civilian. "Seen this before. The lords fight, the smallfolk bleed, and the tavernkeepers serve whoever walks through the door."
Mira took it with a nod and no wasted words. "How long?"
"Months. Maybe longer."
"I have children."
"If it gets bad, stop reporting. I mean it."
She looked at him with an expression he'd first seen in the Broken Anchor, three months and a lifetime ago — the assessment of a woman who'd learned to read men the way scholars read books. "You're not just a merchant, are you."
It wasn't a question. Edric didn't answer it.
[MIRA — RELATIONSHIP: +20 → +20 (UNCHANGED, BUT QUALITY OF TRUST DEEPENING)] [NOTE: SHE HAS NOT ASKED FOR SPECIFICS. SHE DOES NOT WANT SPECIFICS. SHE WANTS PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. THIS IS INTELLIGENT.]
Night fell on a divided city. Stark patrols in the north districts, Lannister sympathizers in the south, Gold Cloaks everywhere maintaining a peace that existed only because neither side had received orders to break it yet.
Robert had reinstated Ned as Hand — the news filtered through by evening. The attack had apparently clarified the king's loyalties, at least temporarily. Ned was bedridden, leg shattered, but still Hand. Still investigating. Still walking toward the truth that would kill him.
And somewhere beyond the city walls, messengers were riding hard for Casterly Rock, carrying word that Catelyn Stark had taken Tywin Lannister's son. The Old Lion's response would be measured in armies.
Edric sat at his window. Watched the torches flicker in the streets below. The Ghost Protocol hummed at the edge of awareness — no one watching, no focused attention. Just the ordinary darkness of a city holding its breath.
[OPPORTUNITY DETECTION — FIRST ALERT:] [!! MEDIUM — WAR ECONOMY: GRAIN PRICES WILL SPIKE WITHIN DAYS AS RIVERLANDS SUPPLY LINES ARE THREATENED. ADVANCE PURCHASE THROUGH VANCE TRADING CONNECTIONS COULD YIELD SIGNIFICANT PROFIT.]
The new function worked. Crude — the alert was obvious, something he might have identified without system assistance — but functional. As his Perception grew and the function leveled, the opportunities would become subtler, the alerts faster.
For now, it was enough to know the tool existed.
The storm was breaking. Edric had gold, gems, three escape routes, a sharpened mind, and a network that understood the rules of survival. Whatever came next, he'd face it with more than he'd had yesterday.
He just wished that were enough.
Reviews and Power Stones keep the heat on!
Want to see what happens before the "heroes" do?
Secure your spot in the inner circle on Patreon. Skip the weekly wait and read ahead:
💵 Hustler [$7]: 15 Chapters ahead.
⚖️ Enforcer [$11]: 20 Chapters ahead.
👑 Kingpin [$16]: 25 Chapters ahead.
Periodic drops. Check on Patreon for the full release list.
👉 Join the Syndicate: patreon.com/Anti_hero_fanfic