"What exactly are the noble crows stealing for you, Lord Gared?"
Serena's voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the dusty air of The Black Cache like the crack of a whip. She tapped her slender fingernail against the cover of the black ledger, the rhythmic thud, thud, thud echoing the racing pulse of the fat man trapped in the chair before her.
Gared winced, his thick fingers still massaging his deadened, throbbing right knee where Serena had struck the nerve. He was a man beaten, stripped of his bravado, and reduced to his base instincts. And right now, his base instinct was simply to survive the terrifying woman standing over him.
"Steel," Gared grumbled unhesitatingly, his voice a wet, ragged rasp. A spark of his inherent greed briefly overpowered his pain. "Fine, Castle-forged steel. The shipments that come up the Kingsroad from Winterfell, or sometimes straight from the armories of King's Landing."
Serena frowned slightly, keeping the skinning knife loosely but visibly angled in her right hand. "The Night's Watch has its own forge at Castle Black. Lord Stark sends them iron and coal every year."
"Iron and coal, aye," Gared scoffed, a bitter, mocking laugh escaping his lips. "But iron and coal don't make a master smith, woman! The craftsmen up at the Wall? They aren't the proud artisans of the South. They are thieves whose hands were chopped off, or rapists given a hammer instead of a noose. And the cold... you know nothing of the true cold. The winds of the deep North bite so fiercely that if you don't maintain the forge fire at a roaring, perfect heat, the cheap iron cracks the moment it hits the anvil."
He shifted his weight, grimacing as pain shot up his leg.
"The Rangers can't fight wildlings with brittle swords that shatter on bone," Gared continued, his piggy eyes gleaming with the dark pride of his illicit empire. "So, when a shipment of true, folded steel arrives at the Wall, my... associates... make sure a crate or two falls off the back of the wagon. They report it lost in a blizzard, or stolen by a raiding party. And it comes here. To me."
Serena looked at the crude Wildling gold biscuits resting on the velvet lining of the ironwood box. "And you trade this stolen Westerosi steel to the Free Folk."
"I trade it to anyone who can pay," Gared corrected, his greedy eyes darting to the mammoth ivory. "And you would not believe the resources those savages find out there in the Haunted Forest. Things buried deep in the ice. First Men relics, raw gold veins, strange pelts of beasts that haven't been seen south of the Wall in a thousand years."
He shook his head, a mixture of awe and utter contempt on his face. "The Watchmen who bring these things to me... they are fools. They are so desperate for a warm bed, a cup of un-watered wine, and an hour with one of my girls, they hand over fortunes without knowing their true value. They are sending me treasures, ignorant of their worth. I am just... balancing the scales."
Serena remained utterly silent for several long seconds.
The crackling of the hearth seemed exceptionally loud in the quiet shop. Behind Gared, the two thugs, Orik and Pate, stood perfectly still, terrified to even breathe loudly lest they draw the attention of the red-eyed boy standing by the fire.
Yoriichi watched them all, his face an unreadable mask of calm, his Transparent World vision tracking the erratic, fearful heartbeats of the men in the room.
Internally, Serena's mind was moving at a terrifying velocity.
What do I do with this information? she thought.
It was a staggering revelation. This wasn't just a petty smuggling ring. Gared was sitting on a massive, highly lucrative black market. It was beneficial—unbelievably so—but it was also violently unpredictable.
If she handled this poorly, one wrong move would destroy her family. More than a dozen sworn brothers of the Night's Watch were under Gared's thumb. These were hardened men, killers who had taken the black to escape the headsman's axe.
If they found out a lone woman in Mole's Town possessed the ledger that could get them hanged, they wouldn't hesitate. They would slip into her hut in the dead of night, slit her throat, and burn the evidence, along with her children.
She needed a shield. An impenetrable, terrifying shield that not even a corrupt Ranger would dare cross.
"Survival," Serena murmured, her voice soft, philosophical. She walked slowly around the table, her fingers trailing over the edge of the open box. "It makes people do anything. Even selling what is most valuable and rare for a fleeting moment of comfort."
She stopped near the window, looking out into the bleak, snow-swept street of Mole's Town.
Then, she executed her masterstroke.
Serena spoke normally, cunningly, pitching her voice as if she were softly talking to herself, but ensuring the acoustics of the room carried every single syllable to the fat man in the chair.
"Hmm... it makes me wonder," Serena mused aloud, tilting her head. "My children's uncle, Benjen Stark... he will be arriving in a few days. Before we left Winterfell, he promised Lord Eddard he would ride down from Castle Black every week to see his nephews. To ensure they were safe."
She paused, letting the name hang in the air like an executioner's axe.
"What should I do? What should I tell the First Ranger when he asks about our new landlord? Hmmm..."
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.