As the afternoon wore on, I tasked the three guards with us to ride back with my sisters to Casterly Rock while I stayed in Lannisport on my own.
I knew my lord father would moan about his heir being left without any security when I met him later, even if only for appearance's sake. A lot of what nobles did was about status and image, and I got that, of course. But in this case, keeping a low profile was the whole point of it.
Pulling a cloak over my shoulders and fixing the hoodie over my head, I disappeared into the city warrens, walking aimlessly through side streets and winding alleys of Lannisport for almost twenty minutes.
I didn't expect to have anyone following me quite yet—I was no one relevant in the grand scheme of things; but a man could never be too cautious when he stood in the lion's den and planned to pull its tail.
Then again, it was more like a tickle in the tail's hair than a full yank. Today was more a test than anything else, to myself and to my future reliance on my men.
Admittedly, trying my hand at undercover work for the first in Tywin Lannister's backyard might not have been the best call, but this would be our only chance in a while to truly work behind enemy lines, so to say.
We had already tried everything we could in Tarth, and we needed bigger challenges in order to grow. A trial by fire would mold us into what we needed to be.
After shaking off any potential spies, I trekked back to a slightly wealthier neighborhood in Lannisport, the southernmost section of a long boulevard that ran parallel to the ocean a few blocks away from the waterfront, where one could find every kind of tradesman plying their craft.
The traffic from earlier in the day had largely died down, and even then, this wasn't the part of town where the knights, nobles, and rich merchants not invited into the Rock would stay during a visit to Lannisport.
Here lived and worked those who were as close to the middle class as one could find in Westeros, regular traders and tailors, carpenters and crofters, smiths and the occasional aging whore who had been mindful of her finances.
According to Jace, I would hear my destination before I saw it, and he was right.
The ringing of hammer and anvil brought me to the front of a small shop squeezed between two double-storied buildings. A wooden sign carved with three double-sided hammers hanging over the door confirmed I was in the right place.
Looking up at the shirts and dresses draped over clotheslines attached to the windows of the residential buildings around the shop, I winced in sympathy. There were no sleepy mornings when you had a blacksmith for a neighbor.
Perhaps King's Landing had it right when they bunched all their smithies in the aptly named Street of Steel.
A bell tinkled softly when I walked inside. The front end of the shop was cramped by displays of blades, spear-heads, and all sorts of weaponry. A full armor stand stood in a corner while single pieces of armor: vambraces, pauldrons, and chest pieces laid around it. The back end of the room was occupied by mail shirts and some higher-end tools—hunting knives and well-polished axes.
Nothing a peasant could buy, but necessary instruments for the common hedge knight or the occasional hobbyist lord. I imagined this shop didn't serve your run-of-the-mill noble-born clientele, but poorer manor lords and freeriders still needed their arms and armor made and fixed.
A rough voice yelled a greeting from the back in between hammering, but I inspected the weapons and tools for a full minute before I was approached.
The man coming up to meet me was short and balding, a large gut pushing against the leather apron he wore. His eyes narrowed after taking a good look at me, as if he had tried to make sense of my station given my looks and clothes but had come out blank.
Young, handsome, and clean, yet poorly dressed with a workmans' cloak. I was an incongruence, I realized. Not good if you wanted to be unremarkable. Something to work on.
"How can I help you… ser?" he rasped.
"Ah." I coughed into my hand, feigning embarrassment. "You are the master here, aye? Don't want to bother you for this, my good man. I'm a squire, you see, for Ser Belford. Ser Belford of Three Trees."
I forced some importance into the name, but the smith only gave me a blank look.
"Ah. From the Vale, good man. The Vale. Well, you see, his helmet got clipped in training just early today. Could get it fixed if we had more time but with the melee being tomorrow, well, he'll be needing a simple replacement."
"You got gold?" The blacksmith asked.
My awkward expression didn't inspire any confidence.
He shrugged heavy shoulders. "I got my hands full of deliveries to make, ser squire, but I'll get my apprentice to help ya. If ya got the measurements he might find ya a spare somewhere in the shop. Rob!"
The smith called, and something metallic clattered on the back. Soon, a young man almost half a foot taller than myself came scrambling through the shop.
"Help the lad here, will ya?"
With a grunt my way, the blacksmith disappeared into the shop and I was left with a man I could only describe as a westerosi Mr. Olympia.
"Nice to meet ya, ser," Rob said, his soft voice and pleasant demeanor completely incompatible with his minotaur-esque build. "How can I be of service for ya today?"
Smiling, I turned the charm on and spent the next half an hour discussing everything from helmet circumference and the art of blacksmithing, to his opinion on the Ironborn—not good—and his favorite bawdry joke—a knight, a septon, and a whore walk into a bar and so on.
He opened up the most when I brought up the topic of family. Rob was still young, not yet twenty, yet he spoke of his wife—a childhood love between two kids orphaned by war who grew up as neighbors—and young daughter with the love and tenderness you would expect from an aging grandfather who had begun to live more in the fond memories of the past than a man in the flower of his youth.
I left the shop with my purse a few silver coins short and a promise that I would see Rob again one day. He laughed awkwardly at my insistence but I didn't mind. He couldn't possibly know what our meeting today meant for him.