ASOIAF: The Rise of House Ashenblade.

Rodrick Blackblade looked less like a man who had crossed half a kingdom to offer service than a scholar who had misplaced a library and continued walking out of spite. His grey robe had been washed until its first color was a matter for conjecture, crystal spectacles rested on a face made pale by study, and the chain at his throat ended in cut links.

He bowed in FireStorm’s hall. ”Arlan Ashenblade. Rodrick Blackblade, formerly of the Citadel.”

”Formerly?”

”Exile is the shorter word.”

Morton stood beside the ledger table with one hand resting protectively upon the books. Brienne had allowed her wounds to be cleaned only after Wayne threatened to assign two guards to follow her until she slept, and Arlan had not yet decided which of them had won. ”You told my steward you wanted service,” he said.

Rodrick’s gaze touched the maps, the locked chest, the guard at the door, and the four ledgers piled where one would have been sufficient. ”Accounts, correspondence, law, medicine, codes, and intelligence. I am also tolerably good at finding lies in ink.”

”Every hungry clerk says that.”

”Then give me a hungry clerk’s test.”

Morton produced the broadside Wayne had brought from the Rainwood road that morning. It accused FireStorm of withholding marcher dues, raising men without leave, concealing stores stolen from Nightsong, and murdering peaceable travelers. Beneath the charges a copyist had cited a judgment supposedly entered during the fourth year of King Robert’s reign.

Rodrick read it once, then turned it sideways toward the window. ”The seal may be sound. The citation is not. That judgment concerns tolls collected at a bridge washed away before King Robert took the throne. The clerk also counts forty-three wagons of grain delivered here in twelve days, although the eastern ford has been impassable for nine of them.”

Morton leaned over his shoulder. ”Then it is false.”

”It is wrong,” Rodrick said. ”A hurried clerk might choose the wrong judgment. A lying carter might enlarge a count. If I call forgery before I know how the errors were made, Lord Elton need only produce one frightened witness and let my certainty condemn us.”

Arlan watched him more closely. ”What would tell you?”

”The original ink, the copyist’s source, and the audience for whom each lie was built. This one is meant for lords. It speaks of unlawful levies and precedent. A merchant would be warned about stolen goods; a smallholder, about murder and burned grain. Find the other versions and we find the hands carrying them.”

That answer earned him the chair, not yet the office. Arlan asked why respectable castles had refused him, and Rodrick told the story without trying to make himself innocent by sounding wounded. His father had belonged to a minor knightly line with more tales than acres. Orphaned young, Rodrick entered the Citadel at sixteen and forged links in medicine, law, history, mathematics, and secret writing quickly enough to attract men who liked talent only while it obeyed.

He opened books he had been told did not exist. A journal from the reign of Jaehaerys the Conciliator described maesters who sought to weaken dragonkind and suppress magic. Other fragments spoke of poisons, failed hatchings, and correspondence hidden beneath harmless catalog numbers. Rodrick did not claim every maester shared the purpose or that every dragon death had one cause. He had copied what he could, asked for sealed records, and allowed a teacher to learn how much he had connected.

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His hearing lasted one night. Links were cut from his chain, records changed, and gates closed. Later, men followed him from Oldtown. He survived them because medicine taught him the smell of one poison and codes taught him when directions had been altered by another hand.

”You believe the Citadel destroyed the Targaryen dragons,” Arlan said.

”I believe men within it tried. I cannot prove how far they succeeded.”

”Keep belief separate from proof. I have no use for an adviser who turns a suspicion into a war.”

Rodrick’s mouth moved toward a smile. ”That is why I came.”

He had heard of clear glass, distilled liquor, refugees given roofs, and a small holding that grew each time a greater house attempted to starve it. He described no miracles. Production had risen; population had followed; Elton’s pressure had changed with both. ”The Citadel preserves knowledge by keeping it still,” he said. ”I would rather see whether it survives use.”

Arlan let him examine FireStorm’s own books. Rodrick found the kiln’s fuel shortage, the western watch’s blind rise, and the danger in Morton’s habit of recording household coin, trade, stores, and military expense in one running account. Morton received each observation as a personal insult.

Morton answered by setting three entries beneath Rodrick’s nose without saying why. Two concerned sacks of charcoal delivered to the kiln; the third recorded charcoal issued from a household shed after rain spoiled part of the first load. The quantities appeared to disagree until Rodrick checked the cartman’s marks in the margin and found that one clerk counted sacks while another counted weight. He asked for the shed key, inspected the damp black dust still caught between the floorboards, and returned without accusing either man of theft.

”A dishonest steward could hide six dragons in those measures before winter,” Rodrick said. ”An honest one could lose the same amount while believing every page balanced.”

Morton disliked the distinction but disliked the loose measures more. He drew four fresh headings on separate sheets: household, stores, works, and soldiery. Transfers between them would require a date and a second mark. Rodrick added a fifth sheet for correspondence received and sent, including the road by which each message arrived. A false account could be compared against grain; a false message needed a path that could be questioned.

Arlan watched the two men divide responsibility without either admitting agreement. Rodrick supplied a method; Morton supplied forty years of memory about which miller used short sacks and which carter always arrived one wheel lighter than he left. Neither could replace the other, which made the arrangement more useful than appointing a clever stranger over everyone who already knew the holding.

”The old account worked when there were forty-seven people and scarcely enough silver to steal,” Rodrick said. ”It will teach the first dishonest clerk you hire exactly where to hide theft.”

”You walked the holding without permission and asked questions,” Arlan said.

”Yes to both.”

”Do it again after I employ you and tell Morton first.”

The old steward gave no sign that this improved matters. Arlan offered Rodrick temporary charge of correspondence, analysis, and records beneath Morton’s authority over stores, households, and land. Before Rodrick could bow, Arlan added one condition. ”Name your guesses when you make them.”

Rodrick considered that longer than the appointment. ”Inference, probability, proof. I will keep them apart.”

The hall door struck the wall. Wayne entered with road dust to his knees and blood dried along one sleeve. He carried six folded sheets, none sealed alike. ”Elton has moved. Six lords with him, fifteen hundred men and eighty knights. They stopped ten miles out.”

Morton stared at the papers. ”Six demands?”

”Six stories,” Wayne said. ”The road villages are hearing one. Rainwood heard another. Men in the camp say FireStorm plans to rise when the King reaches Storm’s End.”

Rodrick did not touch the sheets at once. He looked through the western window, where the first distant cook fires marked an army that had chosen to be seen. ”Then the broadside was not the test,” he said. ”It was one piece of it.”

Arlan pushed the chair toward him. ”Now earn the rest.”