ASOIAF: The Rise of House Ashenblade.

Rodrick entered Rainwood as a man purchasing herbs and writing supplies, an explanation that had the useful quality of being true. FireStorm needed both, and the infirmary consumed more dried plants every month while Morton treated parchment as though sheep produced it only after prolonged prayer.

Nothing in Rodrick’s saddlebags announced his real purpose. He had come to build an intelligence network beneath Elton Caron’s blockade, beginning in the market town where southern roads, routes toward Storm’s End, traffic from the Narrow Sea, and tracks into the Red Mountains all crossed.

News entered Rainwood with every wagon, ship’s factor, courier, mercenary, septon, tax clerk, and household servant. Nightsong could frighten merchants into closing their doors to Arlan, but even Elton could not make all those people stop noticing what moved through the market around them.

Rodrick began at the Drunken Stag. He wore ordinary wool, kept his spectacles in their case until he needed to read, and bought one mug of ale that earned him several hours among men discussing grain prices, delayed ships, visiting banners, and Elton’s sour return from Storm’s End. None of those facts mattered alone. Together they identified pressure points.

A merchant ship carrying spices and silks from Essos had been delayed by Caron officials. Grain dealers were raising prices against the prospect of Robert Baratheon’s rescheduled visit. Men associated with Nightsong had begun appearing around warehouses that normally drew little attention outside the harvest season; Rodrick recorded patterns rather than gossip.

In the tavern kitchen, he met Lena, a young woman whose husband had been killed by Elton’s men and whose daughter remained seriously ill. Rodrick had helped arrange medicine before asking for anything more than ordinary news, making the relationship useful without pretending desperation was loyalty.

Lena passed him a small oilcloth packet. Inside were copied notes on the Rainwood garrison, movements around Elton’s local residence, and the arrival and departure of several messengers connected to Nightsong.

Rodrick paid her, left medicine with written doses, and spent the next three days widening the net. He avoided castellans, captains, and wealthy men whose sudden cooperation would attract notice; instead, he chose people already standing at useful junctions and normally invisible to the nobility above them.

A clerk near the port could record ships, unusual cargo, and vessels delayed by Caron officials. A contact near the tax office could note exemptions and seizures, because a lord preparing for trouble often revealed himself through what he stopped taxing as clearly as through what he purchased.

A courier could identify which houses exchanged urgent messages. A mercenary who drank with caravan guards often heard about troop movements before formal reports reached a lord’s hall, while a minor septon sometimes learned what frightened men admitted when they believed confession made secrets harmless.

Rodrick paid for information, but coin was not the only bond. Some sources had lost family to Caron abuses, some needed medicine or protection, and others simply wanted a second patron strong enough that Elton was no longer the only man who could ruin their livelihood.

By the fourth day, he had twelve permanent informants distributed across six useful nodes in Rainwood: the post station, port, tavern, garrison, sept, and tax office. He did not call the network complete, only sufficient to begin producing regular reports.

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The method mattered as much as the names. Rainwood intelligence would travel inside ordinary merchant manifests using a Citadel cipher Rodrick modified for FireStorm, so a list apparently recording rye, lamp oil, salt, and wagon axles could instead mark troop movement, visiting banners, or unusual messenger traffic.

No single courier knew the entire network. The port clerk knew ships, Lena knew what servants said near a kitchen door, the mercenary knew captains, and the post contact knew letters; overlapping fragments were slower than an omniscient spy, but much harder for one arrest to destroy.

Rodrick also established temporary contacts in Nightsong and six neighboring lordships. Those lines were thinner and less reliable, so he marked them differently on the map and warned that a report from farther south might arrive late or prove to be nothing more than tavern talk.

Storm’s End remained the most valuable and difficult target. Rodrick secured one useful line through a man connected to Renly’s household, which could provide travel, meetings, and some court movement without pretending to hear every word spoken behind a closed council door. The source would be most useful for dates, arrivals, and changes in routine: when Renly summoned marcher lords, when royal riders reached the castle, or when a large household suddenly prepared rooms for guests. Those details often mattered more than overheard boasting.

King’s Landing was thinner still. An Oldtown acquaintance might establish a stable channel there within a month, but Rodrick refused to count a promise as an active source merely because it looked impressive on parchment.

Before leaving Rainwood, Rodrick tested the network once. He sent the same harmless piece of information through two different routes and compared when each copy returned to him, checking which couriers were fast, which were careless, and whether anyone added details that had never been supplied. One contact failed the test and was quietly dropped before receiving anything important.

He returned to FireStorm carrying a wooden case of reports and a map more densely marked than Morton’s tax ledgers. Arlan, Morton, Wayne, and Brienne met him in the locked room behind the hall, though Rodrick visibly disapproved of Brienne attending while still recovering.

”Twelve permanent sources in Rainwood,” Rodrick said, setting one finger on the map. ”Not twelve men who can steal Elton’s private letters on command. They watch ordinary movement before we do, which is less dramatic and more useful.”

Wayne leaned closer. ”How quickly?”

”Daily from Rainwood while merchant traffic continues. Less reliably elsewhere. If Elton orders a thousand men to muster, we should hear about the grain, horses, smithing, or messengers. If he whispers one sentence to a son in a locked room, assume we do not.”

”Good,” Arlan said.

Rodrick almost looked disappointed that the answer required no argument.

”Run it. Informant costs go through Morton’s accounts as sealed intelligence expenditure, but individual names stay out of ordinary ledgers. I want a core report whenever something changes the military or political picture, not a sack of tavern gossip every morning.”

Morton folded his arms. ”And I want to know how much silver disappears into this shadow business.”

”Your romantic instinct for accounting survives,” Rodrick said.

”It survived feeding forty-seven people with almost no coin. It will survive you.”

The map remained on the table after the meeting. For the first time, FireStorm had regular eyes beyond its own walls, not enough to make Arlan all-seeing but enough to make the next surprise harder to arrange. Morton also ordered a separate locked chest for intelligence accounts and coded reports, keeping the network physically apart from ordinary household records in case a visiting clerk ever gained access to the main ledgers.

The network proved its value far sooner than anyone in FireStorm expected, on the following morning, when Rodrick entered Arlan’s study before breakfast with a sealed report from Nightsong and no trace of amusement on his face.

”Elton is preparing for war.”