Chapter 42 – The Price of a Whisper [REWRITE]
The pieces were in motion.
The problem with pieces was that they rarely stayed where you put them.
Three days after my meeting with Cersei, one moved without my permission.
Orlen's desk was three paces from mine. His quill was still wet. His ledger was open to the Oldtown grain levies — the page he had been copying since yesterday — except the page itself was gone. Cut clean at the spine.
No blood. No screaming. No body in the Blackwater.
Just a missing page and an empty chair.
I closed the book.
"Where's Orlen?"
The boy next to me flinched. Seventeen, pimpled, desperate to be liked.
"Master Holt?"
"Orlen."
"He — he wasn't here this morning, master. Said his daughter was ill, he said —"
"Who said?"
"He sent word yesterday, I think —"
"You think."
The boy's eyes dropped to his own ledger.
"Who delivered the message?"
"I didn't — I didn't see, master."
There it was. The loose thread.
I kept my voice even.
"Don't touch his desk. Don't tell anyone I asked. And if anyone asks if I asked?"
He swallowed. "You didn't, master."
"Good."
My hands wanted to move. I forced them to finish copying a column of tariffs.
That was the first rule of surviving among predators. When something frightens you, you do not chase it. You watch it and see what else it scares.