"I don't run a nursery," Silas muttered. "This is a place of business. Sharp edges. Heavy things."
"They are good children," Serena pressed gently. "Quiet. They will not disturb you."
Silas scoffed. "Quiet children. No such thing."
He watched Yoriichi for a second longer. The boy turned his head and met the old man's gaze. There was no fear in the child's eyes, only a strange, unsettling calm. Silas felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the draft.
"Fine," Silas grunted, waving a hand dismissively. "Let them stay. But if they break something, it comes out of your coin. And if they cry, out they go."
"Thank you, sir," Serena said, dipping her head.
Silas leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. "Quiet ones will get in trouble for sure," he hummed to himself, drifting back into a half-sleep. "Always the quiet ones..."
Serena wasted no time.
She walked to the corner, finding a broom that looked like it had lost half its straw. She shook it out, sending a cloud of dust into the shaft of sunlight cutting through the room.
"Stay close to the fire," she whispered to the children. "Yoriichi, watch your sister."
"Yes, Mother," Yoriichi said.
As Serena began to sweep, attacking the grime with a rhythmic, fierce intensity, Yoriichi sat Lyra down on a pile of relatively clean bear furs near the hearth.
"The metal here is sad," Yoriichi whispered to Lyra, picking up a discarded dagger from the floor.
He ran his small thumb over the blade. It was chipped and covered in red rust.
Poor maintenance, Yoriichi analyzed. The steel is Castle-forged, high carbon. But the temper has been ruined by neglect. It cries out.
He found a rag and a pot of grease nearby. While his mother scrubbed the floors, the five-year-old boy sat silently, methodically cleaning the dagger. He didn't play with it like a toy. He handled it with the reverence of a priest handling a relic.
Hours passed.
The shop transformed. It wasn't clean yet—that would take weeks—but the floor was visible for the first time in years. The furs were folded. The smell of dust was replaced by the scent of fresh woodsmoke as Serena stoked the fire.
Silas woke up around noon, grunting as he stretched. He blinked, looking around the shop.
"Hmph," he grunted, seeing the organized shelves. "You work fast. Starks breed 'em industrious, I suppose."
He stood up and shuffled to the front counter, unlocking the main till. "We're open. Get behind the counter. You need to learn the prices."
For the next few hours, Serena stood beside the grumpy old man as a trickle of customers came in. Most were Night's Watch stewards from the Wall, sent down to haggle for replacement parts they couldn't forge themselves, or local farmhands looking to buy a cheap, chipped axe head for chopping wood. It was a shop of scraps, but scraps were a treasure in a land this poor.
Silas handled the sales, but he was slow. He squinted at coins, forgot prices, and often grumbled at the customers until they bought something just to leave.
"Here," Silas shoved a thick, leather-bound notebook into Serena's hands. "The ledger. Write down what we sold. My hands shake too much for the quill today."
Serena opened the book. The pages were filled with scrawled, messy handwriting. Ink blots everywhere. No columns. No sums.
He has no idea how much profit he is making, Serena realized, her merchant's mind whirring. He is guessing.
She took the quill. Her handwriting was neat, precise.
"Two sacks of oats," Silas called out to a steward. "Four stags."
Serena wrote it down. Oats. 4 Silver Stags. She glanced at the sack. It was high-quality grain from the Riverlands. Cost to import is likely 3 stags. Profit: 1 stag. Too low.
"Sir," Serena whispered during a lull. "The oats. If we mix them with the local barley, we could sell the sack for the same price but extend the stock by half."
Silas looked at her, blinking. "Water down the oats?"
"Not water down," Serena corrected smoothly. "Blend. The horses won't know, and the stewards won't care as long as the weight is right. You increase your margin by thirty percent."
Silas stared at her. He rubbed his beard. A slow, toothless grin spread across his face.
"You're a wicked woman," Silas chuckled. "I like it."
By early afternoon, the rush had died down. The shop was quiet again, save for the crackle of the fire and the scratch of Serena's quill.
"Lunch," Silas announced, pulling a loaf of bread and a wedge of hard cheese from under the counter. "Lock the door, girl. I need to rest my leg."
Serena nodded, moving to the door to slide the bolt. She felt a sense of accomplishment. The work was hard, but she understood it. This shop was a puzzle, and she was good at puzzles.
Just as her hand touched the bolt, the heavy oak door slammed open from the outside.
BANG!
It hit the wall with a deafening crash, shaking dust from the rafters.
Serena stumbled back, shielding Lyra instinctively.
A cold wind rushed in, carrying the smell of stale beer and cheap perfume.
Silas groaned from his chair. "We're closed! Can't you read the—"
"Quiet, old fool."
The voice was wet and arrogant, like sludge moving through a pipe.
A man stepped into the shop. He was huge—not tall, but wide. He was a mountain of soft, pale flab wrapped in a cloak of expensive, but stained, shadowcat fur. His face was round and glistening with sweat despite the cold, his eyes piggy and small, buried in the dough of his cheeks. He had a mouth that looked perpetually wet.
He walked with a slow, waddling swagger, flanked by two lean, nasty-looking men who looked like they would slit a throat for a copper.
This was Gared, a landlord of Mole's Town. The master of the "Mole's Hole."
He ignored Silas completely. His piggy eyes scanned the room, landing instantly on Serena.
He licked his lips, a slow, grotesque motion.
"Well now," Gared wheezed, his voice dripping with false charm. "I heard the Stark whore had settled in my backyard. But nobody told me she cleaned up this nice."
He took a heavy, wet step forward, his boots leaving muddy streaks on the floor Serena had just scrubbed.
"I'm Gared," he said, spreading his arms as if welcoming her to his kingdom. "And around here, pretty things need to pay a tax to stay pretty."
In the corner, Yoriichi stopped cleaning the dagger. He didn't stand up. He didn't look angry. He simply rotated his wrist, testing the grip of the blade he had just polished to a mirror shine.
The air in the shop suddenly grew very, very still.