The Free City of Myr was a jewel of commerce and craftsmanship, resting upon the eastern shores of the Narrow Sea. Its manses were built of pale stone and intricately carved marble, boasting gardens that rivaled the finest courtyards of Highgarden.
For centuries, the Magisters of Myr had grown incomprehensibly wealthy on three things: fine lace, exquisite tapestries, and the absolute, undisputed mastery of glass.
Myrish lenses were prized by every Maester in the Citadel, and Myrish windows graced the keeps of the wealthiest Lords Paramount. It was a closely guarded stranglehold on trade, protected by blood oaths, secretive guilds, and the occasional dagger in the dark.
But on this particular afternoon, the atmosphere inside the luxurious manse of Magister Ferrigo was heavy with a rare and bitter panic.
Four men sat around a low table of polished mahogany, intricate Myrish carpets muffling the sounds of their servants. They drank sweet plum wine from delicate, thin-stemmed goblets—goblets made by their own artisans. But the object sitting in the center of the table was not of their making.
It was a heavy, perfectly square bottle of clear glass, half-filled with the potent Northern spirit known as Winter's Breath.
Magister Vario, a stout man with a meticulously oiled and perfumed beard, pointed a thick finger adorned with sapphire rings at the bottle.
"Look at it," Vario hissed, his voice trembling with genuine outrage. "Look at the clarity. There are no impurities. No green tint of cheap sand. No clouding. It is as clear as frozen water, yet it is thick enough to bash a man's skull in without shattering."
"And they are selling it in Braavos for a fraction of what our masters charge for lesser work," added Magister Moro, a thin, sharp-featured man who controlled the city's largest shipping fleet. "The Keyholders of the Iron Bank are buying it by the crate. Not just the spirits within, but the glass itself. It is making an agonizing hole in our coffers, my friends. Our glassblowers are reporting canceled orders from White Harbor, Gulltown, and even King's Landing."
Ferrigo, the host of the gathering, leaned back in his plush velvet chair and steepled his fingers. "The North of Westeros was a frozen wasteland. They bought our glass because they could not forge their own. Now, this Eddard Stark has somehow conjured a miracle of the forge from the snow. We cannot allow this to continue. A stranglehold is only absolute if it remains unchallenged."
"Then we must be absolute in our response," Vario said, his eyes narrowing into dark, cruel slits. "If the Wolf is biting into our profits, we must cut off the Wolf's head. I say we hire the Sorrowful Men. Or pool our gold and petition the Faceless Men of Braavos. We send an assassin to Winterfell. We kill Lord Stark, and we kill his pups to plunge their region into chaos. Without him, their little revolution collapses."
Moro shook his head, a dry, cynical chuckle escaping his lips.
"You think like a butcher, Vario, not a merchant," Moro chided, tapping his long fingers on the table. "Assassinating Lord Stark would be a king's ransom to afford, and worse, it would be entirely meaningless to our vaults."
Vario bristled, his perfumed beard twitching. "Meaningless? He is the mastermind of this threat!"
"He was the builder," Ferrigo agreed smoothly, seeing Moro's point. "But a keep does not fall down simply because the man who drew the plans dies. Stark did not lock himself in a tower and blow this glass alone. He built massive furnaces. He trained foremen. He taught the methods of making the glass to his smallfolk."
Moro leaned forward, resting his sharp chin on his hands. "Exactly. If we kill Stark, his brother Benjen, or his castellan, or his master smith will simply step into his place. The glass will continue to flow. The damage to our trade will not be halted by a single dagger in the dark. We are facing a grand enterprise, not an individual."
The three other Magisters fell silent, the terrifying truth of the situation settling over them. They were not fighting a rival merchant; they were fighting a newly awakened kingdom.
"Then what is our recourse?" Vario demanded, spreading his hands. "Do we simply lower our prices and bleed our own guilds dry to compete?"
"Never," Ferrigo said, his voice cold. "We do not yield the market. We take it back."
Moro smiled, a thin, reptilian expression. "We must steal the fire from the snow. If the Northmen have discovered a superior, cheaper method of purifying the sand and managing the heat of the kilns, we must possess that knowledge."
"Thievery and whispers," Vario mused, the anger fading into calculation.
"Precisely," Moro nodded. "We cannot send assassins, but we can send thieves. We must discover the exact composition of their sand. We must map the design of their furnaces. We must learn how they achieve such heat without shattering the crucibles."
Ferrigo looked around the table. "Winterfell is heavily guarded. The rumors say Lord Stark has established a fanatic guard of young warriors—shadows in grey cloaks who patrol the city and the castle. Strangers asking questions about the glassworks are likely to find themselves hanging from the walls."
"Then we do not send strangers," Moro said smoothly. "We send men who belong there. The North is rich now. They are buying spices, silks, and dyes from Essos. I will embed my best agents into the merchant caravans traveling up the White Knife. Men who know how to look like common laborers, sweepers, or simple traders. They will slip into Winter City. They will find the workers who tend the furnaces. They will ply them with gold, or wine, or whatever vice loosens a Northman's tongue."
"It will take time," Ferrigo noted.
"True wealth requires patience," Moro countered. "Once we have their secret, we will replicate it here in Myr. With our established trade lanes and superior artisan guilds, we will produce their clear glass at an even lower cost. We will flood the markets of Westeros and Essos with it, and we will drown Lord Stark's new grand enterprise in a sea of our own making."
Vario raised his goblet of plum wine, a greedy light returning to his eyes. "A fine strategy. We steal the Wolf's teeth, and we use them to chew him to the bone."
"I will handle the infiltration," Moro promised, raising his own glass. "My men will sail for White Harbor before the moon turns."
The Magisters touched their delicate goblets together in a ringing toast to theft and profit. They spent the next hour discussing the finer details of the smuggling routes, the bribes required for the harbor masters, and the shifting politics of the Free Cities, before finally rising to depart into the warm Myrish evening, utterly confident in their superiority.
They did not realize they were attempting to steal a secret guarded by men who could hear a lie before it was spoken.
---
Thousands of miles to the west, the stifling heat of King's Landing had given way to a brisk, wet autumn.
Just outside the formidable stone walls of the Red Keep, occupying the large, flat expanse of land near the tourney grounds, a massive expanse of churned earth had been meticulously crafted. King Robert had ordered his master builders to strip away the pristine grass, dig a shallow basin, and flood it with water from the Blackwater Rush until the consistency was an absolute, clinging nightmare of brown sludge.
It was the perfect muddy field.
"ON ME!" roared a voice that drowned out the cheering of the hundreds of spectators lining the wooden fences.
King Robert Baratheon was entirely in his element. He wore no silk or velvet today. He was clad in heavily padded, boiled leather trousers and a thick tunic, both of which were completely indiscernible in color due to the thick layer of wet mud coating him from head to toe.
In his massive hands, he clutched a heavy, oval-shaped leather ball stuffed with sand and raw wool.
Around him, a chaotic, utterly brutal game of The Charge was unfolding. Robert had expressly forbidden steel armor or white cloaks on the field. Fifteen men of the Kingsguard and elite Crownlands knights had been forced to strip down and wear the exact same padded, boiled leather tunics and trousers as the King, rendering them nearly indistinguishable from the heavy infantry attempting to block for him.
"Take his legs! Get the King by the legs!" shouted Ser Boros Blount, his face smeared with muck, slipping frantically in his leather boots as he tried to coordinate the defense.
"I am a knight of the Kingsguard, not a common pig farmer!" Ser Meryn Trant complained bitterly, tugging at the coarse, heavy leather tunic he had been forced to wear in place of his pristine white enamel. He was trying to sidestep a particularly deep puddle of brown sludge like a noblewoman avoiding a rat in an alleyway.
"You are a knight of the Kingsguard, Trant, not a maiden at a feast!" Robert bellowed with a wild, booming sound of pure joy. "Get in the dirt!"
He tucked the leather egg tight against his chest and lowered his shoulder.
A brave, or perhaps foolish, knight from House Rosby dove directly at Robert's waist. The King didn't even attempt to dodge. He met the man head-on, driving his padded shoulder into the knight's chest with the force of a battering ram. The impact echoed across the field with a loud, wet thud. The Rosby knight was launched backward into the mud, gasping for air, sliding another five feet through the slime.
Robert kept his legs driving, his heavy boots churning the earth. He was an unstoppable behemoth.
Three more defenders converged on him, wrapping their arms around his massive torso and attempting to drag him down. Robert grunted, his forward charge finally slowing under the sheer weight of three armored men hanging off him.
"Thoros!" Robert bellowed over his shoulder.
From the absolute chaos of the fray, a figure draped in faded, muddy robes darted forward. Thoros of Myr, the red priest, was not a large man, but he moved with a dizzying, unpredictable agility that was only enhanced by the significant amount of wine he had consumed before the match.
Thoros held a half-empty wineskin in his left hand, taking a casual swig as he sprinted past a stumbling defender.
Robert, feeling his knees beginning to buckle under the weight of the grappling knights, twisted his hips violently. He wrenched his right arm free and executed a powerful, sweeping toss to his side.
The heavy leather ball sailed through the air.
Thoros dropped his wineskin, threw his hands up, and caught the ball perfectly in stride. He didn't try to plow through the remaining defenders as Robert had. Instead, the red priest danced. He spun away from a diving tackle by Ser Meryn Trant—who immediately let out a muffled shriek as he landed face-first in a puddle of freezing mud, completely ruining his already filthy leather padding.
Thoros feinted sharply to the left to avoid a sweeping grab by a Stokeworth man-at-arms, and sprinted down the open sideline.
"Run, you mad priest! Run!" Robert cheered from the bottom of the pile of groaning men.
Thoros laughed a high, cackling sound, his bald head gleaming with rain and sweat. He crossed the final lime line and slammed the leather ball against the white wooden post at the far end of the ground.
"POINT!" shouted the master of the games from the sidelines, waving a red flag. "THE STAGS SCORE!"
The crowd of off-duty soldiers, servants, and minor nobles erupted into deafening cheers.
Thoros turned around, casually retrieving his fallen wineskin from the mud, wiping the spout, and taking another drink before jogging back toward the center of the field.
Robert hauled himself up from the mud, offering a massive hand to pull Ser Boros Blount to his feet. Boros looked miserable, nursing a bruised shoulder and spitting brown water from his mouth.
"A fine attempt, Boros!" Robert roared, slapping the Kingsguard heavily on the back. "But you commit too early! You have to wait until I shift my weight before you dive!"
"Yes, Your Grace," Boros wheezed, looking ready to collapse.
Robert turned to his team, his blue eyes blazing with competitive fire. "Right! Enough running! Line up! We practice the Wall!"
The men groaned internally but scrambled to obey.
Robert marched to the center of the field, the mud sucking loudly at his boots. He gestured for fourteen of the largest, broadest men in his retinue to form up beside him.
"Lock arms!" Robert commanded, demonstrating the technique he had learned at Sea Dragon Point. He threw his thick arms over the shoulders of the men beside him, weaving their lines together into a single, cohesive unit.
The opposing team formed a similar line twenty yards away.
"Remember what I told you!" Robert barked to his men, pacing slightly before returning to the center of the formation. "If we stand tall, we break! Drop your weight low! Bend your knees! Dig your heels into the mud! We are not fifteen men today! We are a stone wall, and a wall does not yield!"
The men grunted, dropping their weight low, their boots sinking deep into the sludge.
"Now," Robert shouted, locking into the center of the line, his face setting into a mask of pure determination. "PUSH!"
The two lines collided. The sound of thirty heavy bodies smashing together was brutal.
Robert gritted his teeth, feeling the immense pressure against his shoulders. He didn't just push with his arms; he drove with his legs, his massive thighs burning as he fought for every inch of ground. He was relentless, bellowing orders, keeping the rhythm of his men synchronized. Slowly, inexorably, the King's line began to drive the opposing team backward, their boots sliding helplessly in the mud until they were shoved unceremoniously across the defeat line.
"HAH!" Robert cheered, breaking the line and raising his muddy fists to the cheering crowd. "That is how it is done! We will break them all!"
High above the grounds, standing on a shaded balcony of the Red Keep, Queen Cersei Lannister watched the display with absolute, unadulterated revulsion.
She wore a gown of pristine crimson and gold, her hands resting tightly on the carved stone balustrade. Her green eyes were fixed on the massive, mud-covered brute bellowing in the center of the field.
He is a pig, she thought, her lip curling in a sneer of pure disgust. The King of the Seven Kingdoms, rolling in the muck with common foot soldiers and drunkards.
She despised the North. She despised the savage games Eddard Stark had infected her husband with. Robert had abandoned the elegant jousts and chivalric pageantry of the South for this... this barbaric brawling. It was a gross insult to the dignity of the Crown, a mockery of the Lannister wealth that funded it, and most of all, a daily reminder that Robert belonged to the wild, not to her.
She turned away, unable to stomach another second of his booming, boorish laughter. She swept back into the cool stone of the keep, calling for her guards to escort her away from the stench of the mud.
---
An hour later, the cheers of the muddy field were replaced by the quiet, scratching sound of a quill on parchment.
The Hand of the King's solar in the Tower of the Hand was a sanctuary of order. Heavy tomes of law lined the shelves, and ledgers of the realm's debt sat neatly stacked on the polished oak desk.
Jon Arryn sat behind the desk, rubbing his tired eyes. He was reviewing a particularly distressing report from the master of coin regarding the vast amounts of gold expended on the sudden construction of the massive mud grounds and the newly commissioned wooden grandstands outside the walls.
The heavy oak doors to the solar burst open with a loud BANG.
King Robert Baratheon strode into the room. He had not bathed. He had not changed his clothes. He was still clad in his heavily padded leather, dripping thick brown mud onto the priceless Myrish carpets that adorned Jon Arryn's floor.
Jon Arryn sighed, laying his quill down and closing his eyes for a brief, suffering moment. "Your Grace. You are... tracking the mud into the tower."
"Mud washes off, Jon!" Robert boomed, entirely ignoring the trail of destruction he was leaving in his wake. He marched directly to the sideboard, grabbed a silver flagon of Arbor Red, and poured himself a brimming goblet. "But glory lasts forever!"
Robert downed half the goblet in a single gulp, wiping his muddy chin with the back of his equally muddy glove.
"The men are ready, Jon," Robert declared, slamming the goblet down on the desk, narrowly missing a stack of ledgers. "Thoros is a madman with the ball, and my heavy infantry can hold a shield wall against a cavalry charge. We are ready."
"Ready for what, Robert?" Jon asked patiently, looking at the mud splattered across his pristine desk.
"For the Grand Games!" Robert shouted, his eyes wide with wild, unchecked enthusiasm. "I have made my decision. The lords are getting restless and fat in their castles. We need a spectacle. We need a contest of strength to remind them who rules this continent."
Robert leaned over the desk, planting his muddy hands firmly on the polished wood.
"I want ravens sent to every corner of the Seven Kingdoms, Jon," Robert commanded. "To Winterfell, to Casterly Rock, to Highgarden, Sunspear, Riverrun, and the Eyrie. Issue a royal decree. In exactly four moons' time, I will host the Grand Royal Games of the Realm here in King's Landing."
Jon Arryn blinked, his statesman's mind immediately running through the nightmare of supplying and housing such a massive gathering. "Four moons, Your Grace? That is barely enough time for the Northern lords to travel, let alone train and prepare a proper retinue."
"They have been training for years!" Robert argued dismissively. "Ned invented the damn games! He'll be ready. And Tywin and Mace should be secretly practicing in their own yards; Varys's little birds will confirm it. They just need the formal invitation to stop hiding it."
Robert began pacing the room, leaving large muddy footprints near the hearth.
"The decree must be absolute, Jon. Every Lord Paramount is required to field a team of their finest fifteen men. They must compete in the Shield Wall and the Charge. No lances, no jousting, no pretty armor. I want them in the mud."
Jon Arryn steepled his fingers, staring at the King. "A grand tournament of this scale across the entire realm... the housing and feeding of the retinues of all seven kingdoms... it will be a ruinous cost, Robert. The treasury is still recovering from the Ironborn rebellion. We cannot afford to host tens of thousands of men for a month-long festival."
Robert stopped pacing and waved his hand in a grand, careless gesture. "Then borrow the gold! Go to the Iron Bank! Better yet, send a letter to Tywin Lannister. Tell my dear father-in-law that the Crown requires a loan to celebrate the peace he so generously helped secure. He'll pay it just to ensure his golden boys get a chance to show off."
"And what is the incentive for the lords to risk their pride in the dirt?" Jon asked, trying to find a reason to delay the madness. "Honor alone will not bring Dorne and the North down the Kingsroad for a game."
"Gold!" Robert roared, his face splitting into a massive, triumphant grin. "We announce a prize. A prize so massive it will make even Tywin Lannister's mouth water. One hundred thousand gold dragons to the team that claims the championship!"
Jon Arryn's jaw actually dropped. He stared at the King in absolute, horrified disbelief. "One hundred thousand dragons? Robert, that is a king's ransom! It is madness!"
"It is motivation!" Robert corrected loudly. "If I offer them a shiny cup, Mace Tyrell will send his third-tier guardsmen. If I offer them enough gold to build a new castle, he will send his finest champions. I want the absolute best the realm has to offer, Jon. I want to see the Mountain's brother, the Hound, try to break Ned's wolves. I want to see the Red Viper's spearmen try to outrun my Stags."
Robert walked back to the desk, his presence overwhelming the small, orderly space.
"Draft the letters, Jon," Robert ordered, his tone shifting from enthusiastic boisterousness to the heavy, unyielding command of the Iron Throne. "Make it formal. Make it mandatory. The Grand Royal Games begin in four moons. Let the realm know that the Stag is calling them to the field."
Jon Arryn looked at the massive, mud-covered King standing before him. He saw the stubborn, unmovable light in Robert's eyes. He knew that arguing further was as useless as trying to command the tide to stop. Robert had found a new war to fight, one without real casualties, but with all the adrenaline and glory he craved. There was absolutely no stopping him.
With a heavy, resigned sigh that seemed to age him another five years, Jon Arryn reached for a fresh piece of heavy parchment and his quill.
"It will be done, Your Grace," Jon said softly, dipping the quill into the black ink. "I will instruct the maesters to prepare the ravens immediately."
"Excellent!" Robert cheered, his booming laugh returning as he turned and marched toward the door, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. "I am going to the baths! Then I am going to drink until I forget how much my shoulders ache! See to the ravens, Jon!"
The heavy oak doors slammed shut behind the King, leaving Jon Arryn alone in the quiet solar.
The Hand of the King looked down at the blank parchment. He shook his head slowly, a profound sense of exhaustion settling deep into his bones.
"One hundred thousand dragons for a game in the mud," Jon muttered to himself, bringing the quill to the paper. "May the Gods protect the treasury, for the King certainly will not."
Jon began to write, sealing the fate of the realm for the coming season. The ravens would fly, and the Seven Kingdoms would soon march to war upon a muddy field.