Chapter 98 — The One Pulling the Strings
Podrick—still unaware that he'd already been elevated into a landed knight—was currently holding court.
After an entire morning of work, they'd finally found the "gold cloaks" who had mixed in with the mob and roasted a baker alive like a pig.
There were three of them.
"Talk," Podrick said coldly. "Who put you up to this?"
Inside the City Watch barracks, Pod sat high on a heavy chair, his sword drawn and laid across his knees. His gaze was sharp as steel as he watched the three men below—faces swollen and bruised—kneeling in the mud, groaning and wheezing like half-dead dogs.
To call them gold cloaks was both accurate and inaccurate.
Because out of the three, one truly was still an active City Watch soldier.
The other two, however, were scum—parasites who'd only recently been purged from the Watch during Podrick's cleanup.
Somehow, these three had gotten tangled together, stolen City Watch gear, and used it to stir chaos in the streets.
That made them easy enough to locate.
In King's Landing, no one hides well under a thousand eyes—especially not when silver starts talking. Someone always recognizes someone.
But finding them didn't mean Podrick understood the why.
A riot by hungry smallfolk was one thing.
But rioters armed with City Watch equipment, exploiting the Watch's name to muddy the waters?
That was different.
And it was especially suspicious given that ever since Podrick took command, he'd enforced curfews and pushed through brutal reforms.
Which meant one thing:
This wasn't just three idiots acting out.
There was almost certainly someone behind them.
And Podrick couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't merely sabotage—
It was a warning.
"Lord Payne… no one ordered us," the man kneeling on the far left blurted out, smashing his forehead into the dirt. "We… we were just… we couldn't survive anymore…"
He begged as he spoke, voice slurred and leaking air through missing teeth—several had been knocked out during the beating.
The sword across Podrick's knees gleamed with icy light.
And surrounding them stood other gold cloaks—men who had just beaten these three half to death—now watching with ugly, eager grins, as if savoring what came next.
It was enough to make the scalp crawl with dread.
Podrick didn't even blink.
"I'm not interested in excuses, Josh," he said flatly. "I know exactly whether the Watch can survive or not."
The one Podrick addressed—the only true active soldier among them—stiffened at the sound of his name.
Podrick did know him.
After all, when Janos Slynt was still in power, the Watch had been bloated to six thousand men.
Podrick had carved it back down with his own hands—
Until less than two thousand remained.
The men who'd managed to stay in the City Watch were, by and large, the best of the best—handpicked by Podrick himself.
With over four thousand mouths removed from the payroll, what used to feed three men now landed in one bowl. And Podrick, as commander, wasn't skimming their pay.
So starving?
That was a joke.
Even if King's Landing was already half-roasting over a flame, the gold cloaks weren't the ones burning.
Because everyone understood one thing clearly:
At a time like this, no one dared to drink a soldier's blood.
So after taking over, Podrick had only done three things.
Fairness.
Fairness.
And damn well fairness.
The stick-and-carrot method worked far better than any so-called "personal charisma."
Pay them enough, and the crown's business becomes their business.
Which raised the real question:
Under these conditions, what could possibly drive Josh to do something like this?
Podrick didn't want to waste any more time.
He quietly raised a fist.
"I'll give you one more chance," he said coldly. "Don't test my patience. I'll count to three."
His voice drifted across the barracks like frost.
Invisible killing intent spread through the room—a pressure so heavy the three men kneeling in the mud began trembling violently, sweat running down their faces.
Even so, no one spoke.
The two men who'd been expelled from the Watch both stared at Josh.
Because it was Josh who'd bought them drinks, then persuaded them to take part in the riot—to kill the baker.
They didn't even know why Josh had done it. Why he'd shoved the man into an oven and roasted him alive.
They only knew this:
As long as they followed along, each of them would get two silver stags.
And with prices in King's Landing soaring, two silver stags wasn't a small sum.
Still—they were too terrified to speak.
One wrong word could get them butchered.
Josh knelt there, lips twitching as if he wanted to talk.
But in the end…
He still said nothing.
"One."
Podrick didn't pause for breath.
A finger rose—clean, deliberate—one second after his warning.
The moment he realized they still wouldn't speak…
The three raised fingers flicked casually through the air.
"One ear. One hand. And one eye."
His voice remained calm.
"You three decide among yourselves. Do it yourselves. I only care about the result."
"This time, you have ten seconds."
As he spoke, Podrick drew the dagger at his waist and tossed it forward.
The blade clattered and skidded neatly to a stop in front of Josh.
Podrick continued counting with his fingers.
The numbers fell like a hammer.
The pressure crushed the heart.
Josh didn't hesitate for even a breath.
He snatched the dagger up—then whipped around and slashed at the other two.
The other men weren't idiots. The instant Josh took the weapon, they sprang up to resist.
But bare hands against steel was a gap as wide as a mountain—
And Josh was no weakling.
He was one of the men who'd survived Podrick's purge.
A "filtered" soldier.
So before Podrick could even get what he'd asked for—while he deliberately slowed his count—
Two bodies hit the mud.
One clutching his throat.
The other clutching his chest.
Both kicking, twitching, rattling out their last breaths through gurgling blood.
Podrick stared at the corpses.
Then sighed softly, as if mildly inconvenienced.
"Oh… I only asked for one thing from each of you."
"But you gave me two lives."
He looked back down at Josh, eyes turning colder.
"Now you've put me in an awkward position, Josh."
Josh stood shaking, having lost two fingers in the struggle—chewed clean off.
Blood dripped down his hand.
Pod lifted his chin slightly.
"You know I hate it when people make things difficult for me."
Josh's legs finally gave out. He collapsed forward with a heavy thud and dropped to his knees.
"Lord Payne… p-please… spare me…!"
He sobbed, tossing away the dagger, not even feeling the agony in his mangled hand.
His forehead slammed into the ground again and again.
He was begging properly now.
"I—I had no choice!"
This time…
He finally talked.
"I… I owed a massive debt at the gambling den. I pawned everything—my house, my armor, my weapons…"
"Even my woman…"
Podrick didn't need to hear the rest to guess what came next.
Still—he waited patiently.
Josh swallowed hard and continued, voice collapsing into desperation.
"Then someone found me. Said if I did this… I could repay slowly. That they wouldn't cut off my hand."
"And then… they let me go."
Podrick lowered his gaze, thinking.
His fingers slowly stroked the edge of the sword across his knees—so sharp it only left a shallow dent on his fingertip before the skin sprang back.
Then he asked, voice perfectly even:
"Who contacted you?"
Josh knelt in the dirt, babbling frantically.
"I—I don't know! I've never seen him before…!"
"But he was a septon—yes, a septon! A holy man!"
"That's all I know!"
From the wildness in his voice, Podrick heard the flaw immediately.
He tilted his head.
"So… a septon, appearing in a gambling den, tells you to stir up this riot…"
"And in exchange, your debt gets deferred and you're sent home intact."
"Yes! Yes—Lord Payne, yes!"
Josh nodded so hard he nearly broke his neck.
Podrick nodded too.
"Mm."
"I understand."
Then Podrick pushed a hand against the sword hilt and rose to his feet.
Josh heard movement and looked up instinctively—
And in the next instant, his world spun violently.
The ceiling flipped.
The ground rose.
His vision dropped lower… lower… lower…
Until he saw it.
In front of him—
A body kneeling in the mud.
A body dressed like his.
A body without a head.
His own.