Tyrion's dining room was rich with the scent of food. When it came to eating, Tyrion liked to think of himself as a true connoisseur, and he had laid out quite a feast for himself.
"My little friend, you really do know how to enjoy life," Bronn said, eyeing Tyrion's lavish breakfast: honey cakes baked with blackberries and nuts, cured ham, bacon, breaded fried starfish, autumn pears, and a Dornish-style dish of onions, cheese, and eggs loaded with pepper. Tyrion had also ordered up a large jug of dark ale and a light golden sweet wine.
"A proper welcome for everyone. We've been through quite a bit together, after all," Tyrion said with a grin, glancing at his little retinue: two squires and two sellswords.
Of them all, Tyrion admired Bronn most. The man was cunning, quick, and strong. He served for Lannister gold and Lannister interests, true enough, but he was still useful talent.
"A toast to our Lannister giant," Bronn said, raising his cup first.
"Cheers!"
The dark ale was wonderfully rich. You would never find such a good drink in the North. Tyrion laughed with the rest. Giant. How dearly he loved the thought of truly being one. If he could be that, then perhaps his life would no longer feel like one long humiliation for a dwarf.
"Still, one person is missing. Shame I can't invite him here."
"A whore?" Bronn asked.
"No. Someone rather special." Tyrion shook his head. He meant Jon. With King's Landing in such a tangled and shifting state, meeting now would be far too awkward.
Tyrion felt the state of King's Landing was terrible now, as if the whole city were suffocating by slow degrees.
He could not quite say what was wrong. Perhaps it was simply that too many people had changed. Lord Arryn was dead. Lord Stannis had run back to Dragonstone. Now the Starks had entered the game as well. The people at the table kept coming and going.
"Where do you think that foolish woman will go after we leave?" Tyrion asked Bronn.
"Anywhere, my lord. She has no shortage of places to go. The Eyrie, Riverrun, Winterfell. But she's too stupid, and she'll bring serious trouble down on the Riverlands," Bronn said, picking up Tyrion's line of thought as he sampled the Dornish eggs. The pepper really was overpowering.
"That's true enough. I care a good deal about pride myself, but I'm still nowhere near my old man." Tyrion thought for a moment. The Great Lord Tywin's obsession with family honor had hardened into something almost rigid. Perhaps the past had cut him too deeply.
"Perhaps I should write him a letter too, though it likely won't change anything."
After thinking it over, Tyrion did send a letter to the Great Lord Tywin at Casterly Rock. Half-man or dwarf, he was still a Lannister.
Even though Tyrion doubted his letter would affect the course of events, writing it was still a statement. The Great Lord Tywin had been waiting for an opening to put his hands into the Riverlands, and now the chance had come. Ravage the Riverlands, lure Lord Eddard into sending troops, and use the opportunity to weaken the already fragile authority of House Tully. Several birds with one stone.
"Write it, then. What happened that day has probably spread everywhere already, especially with that slippery old Frey around. They had more than twenty men there, and not one of them was willing to help Lady Catelyn. I've heard old Frey's a depraved bastard who likes to toy with young women. An old swine like that values his own life most of all. He's probably already sent a letter to your father," Bronn said with a snort. "And those hedge knights in the inns will smell gold soon enough and make for Casterly Rock."
"Even so, it should still be written. Once it's done, I'll leave the rest to you, Jack."
"At once, my lord!" Jack replied.
"Lord Eddard probably has no idea what his wife has been doing. He always looks sour, as if the world owes him coin," Bronn said mockingly.
"Lord Eddard may already know. Don't forget that man in black who was following us."
"You really ought to find yourself a strong bodyguard," Chiggen, Bronn's companion, said with a grin. "Someone like the Mountain. Who would dare kidnap you with an eight-foot giant at your side?"
"Oh, spare me. Even mad dogs have masters. The Mountain only wags his tail for my father." Tyrion understood that well enough. And given his own position, he could hardly recruit many first-rate men, especially those who cared about knightly lineage and household honor. Money alone could not solve that.
"But honestly, how much of a chance do you think you'd have against the Mountain?" Tyrion asked Bronn curiously. He had seen it in the tourney yard himself: the Mountain cutting down a horse and nearly striking down the Knight of Flowers with a single blow.
"Are you fucking joking, you little monkey?" Bronn said. "You only get one life, and that thing's a monster. The Mountain isn't known for speed, true, but he's absurdly huge and strong as an ox. And let me tell you, for a man that size, he's already fast enough to be terrifying. Add in his long arms, his reach, the sheer range of his attacks, and the fact that he doesn't seem to fear pain the way normal men do..."
"And you've seen Bronn's build, my lord," Chiggen added. "Bronn's best chance would be to keep circling him, draw out his strength, wear him down until he's spent, then find a way to trip him. Once the Mountain's on the ground, his height stops helping him. But it's far too risky, my lord. You've seen Ser Gregor's strength. One mistake, and the challenger is dead."
"That's true enough," Tyrion said with a sigh. The Lannisters certainly had no shortage of capable fighters, but how many of them would ever fight for him? His father had his mad dogs. His brother had his companions. As for Tyrion, all he had were his oversized head, his thick skin, and his gold, and the men he managed to gather were the likes of Bronn: arrogant, rude, ruthless sellswords.
"But it's not entirely hopeless," Bronn said, draining a cup of wine before continuing. "Ser Gregor is a brute, no doubt, but if there were a knight with both incredible speed and strength, he might stand a chance against him."
"Oh, such men do exist, but they're exceedingly rare." Tyrion stroked his chin. Perhaps there was one across the Narrow Sea, and perhaps one in Dorne. The King's bastard was said to be even fiercer than the King in his youth, hardly someone to contend with lightly.
"I wish I had a force of my own," Tyrion sighed.
"Forget it, old friend. What, you plan to dig up a band of wildlings to come fight for you?" Bronn burst out laughing. "And it wasn't wildlings who saved you that day. They were impostors."
"Wildlings?" A thought suddenly sparked in Tyrion's mind.
...
At the top of the Tower of the Hand, in Eddard's chambers, Eddard paced back and forth without pause.
Only in the early morning did the air feel somewhat cool. Standing by the window and looking across the wide courtyard, he could even see Littlefinger's chamber.
His daughters still clung to their dreams. Sansa dreamed of being a lady, Arya of becoming a warrior. Arya was bruised and battered from her Water Dance training, yet she reveled in it. They were still young, too young to understand the cruelty of the adult world.
After the tournament, Varys had come to see him. Eddard had to admit that the Eunuch's skill with disguises was unmatched. He had come in another guise, and what he revealed filled Eddard with dread.
The Eunuch told him several secrets, yet Eddard could not discern Varys's true intentions.
First, the Lannisters had once planned to assassinate the king during the tournament. Their influence ran deep throughout King's Landing.
The king's two brothers disliked the Lannisters, but they also disliked the king himself. As for the Kingsguard, Ser Barristan was old and fading, while Ser Boros and Ser Meryn were little more than the queen's hounds.
Second, the death of the former Hand, Jon. Varys claimed he had been poisoned by a knight of the Vale, the poison being Tears of Lys.
"Damn it." Eddard drew his dagger. The blade was sharp enough. He wished his thoughts could be just as sharp, cutting cleanly through to the truth.
One matter after another crowded into his mind until it felt ready to burst. Worse still, everything he knew came from the same sources, shaped almost entirely by Littlefinger and Varys.
Lord Arryn's death. Bran's attempted murder. It was not that he lacked clues, but that there were too many, tangled together, truth and lies indistinguishable.
Two key figures stood at the center of it all. One remained in the Eyrie, Lady Lysa showing not the slightest grief for her husband's death. The other was Great Lord Stannis, who had fled to Dragonstone and refused all correspondence.
"I still don't have enough to go on," Eddard murmured.
All he had were a few books, the appearance of the King's bastard, and a certain mysterious brothel whose location he had yet to uncover.
Eddard recalled the features of the bastards: the shape of their chins, their eyes, black hair, blue eyes. He knew the king had fathered more than one bastard, and they all seemed to share those same traits. There was the daughter born at the Eyrie, another bastard in the Stormlands, and the more famous one across the Narrow Sea, known to all.
But why had Lord Jon and Stannis been so intent on tracking them down, so determined to find every one of these bastards?
"Could it be…" Eddard drew in a sharp breath. He remembered the fragments Stannis had once told him, though Stannis had refused to say more. What he had now was only a guess.
"And that smirking dwarf…" Eddard thought. The man in black had already told him everything.
The dwarf had returned safely to King's Landing, and Eddard now knew how it had all unfolded. Catelyn's rashness had once again worsened the situation. He could not help but worry about what the Great Lord Tywin might do next. The man was ruthless and cold.
"Perhaps the dwarf was right. Littlefinger cannot be trusted? But then who tried to kill Bran, and why frame the Imp?" Eddard thought it over, recalling what Jon had said. The Imp had even asked Jon to pass along a message: Littlefinger was… strange.
Another possibility forced its way into his mind. If Lysa, Littlefinger, and Varys were all untrustworthy, then perhaps the entire conspiracy had been arranged by them together. It was a dark thought, but he could not ignore it.
"If no one can be trusted, then who do I rely on?" For the first time in a long while, Eddard felt truly alone.
"Cat… if Catelyn hadn't seized the Imp, where would she be now?"
His thoughts did not last long. Word soon came that the king himself would attend the Small Council. Such a thing was rare.
Eddard found it unusual. The king seldom came in person.
"Robert, I beg you," Eddard said. "Think this through. This is the murder of a child, and worse, it is kinslaying."
"That whore is pregnant!" the king roared, slamming his fist onto the council table with a thunderous crack. "Ned, I warned you about this long ago. Do you remember? Back in the Barrowlands, I told you, but you wouldn't listen. Fine, then listen now. I want them dead. The mother and the child, both. And that fool Viserys as well. Is that clear enough? I want them dead."
The other councilors did their best to act as if they were not even present. In that, they were wiser than him. Eddard had rarely felt so alone.
"If you do this, your name will be cursed for all time."
"Lord Eddard," Varys said softly, "we have devised a solution. If the Hand gives the order, the king need not bear the stain of kinslaying. My lord, this is a duty owed to millions."
All eyes turned to Eddard.
Anger flared in his chest.
If this was what politics demanded, then he deeply regretted ever coming to King's Landing.