Chapter 4

He drank his way across the narrow sea.

The ship was small, his cabin smaller, but the captain would not allow him abovedecks. The

rocking of the deck beneath his feet made his stomach heave, and the wretched food tasted even worse

when retched back up. But why did he need salt beef, hard cheese, and bread crawling with worms

when he had wine to nourish him? It was red and sour, very strong. Sometimes he heaved the wine up

too, but there was always more.

"The world is full of wine," he muttered in the dankness of his cabin. His father never had any

use for drunkards, but what did that matter? His father was dead. He'd killed him. A bolt in the belly, my

lord, and all for you. If only I was better with a crossbow, I would have put it through that cock you made

me with, you bloody bastard.

Belowdecks, there was neither night nor day. Tyrion marked time by the comings and goings of

the cabin boy who brought the meals he did not eat. The boy always brought a brush and bucket too, to

clean up. "Is this Dornish wine?" Tyrion asked him once, as he pulled a stopper from a skin. "It reminds

me of a certain snake I knew. A droll fellow, till a mountain fell on him."

The cabin boy did not answer. He was an ugly boy, though admittedly more comely than a

certain dwarf with half a nose and a scar from eye to chin. "Have I offended you?" Tyrion asked, as the

boy was scrubbing. "Were you commanded not to talk to me? Or did some dwarf diddle your mother?"

That went unanswered too. "Where are we sailing? Tell me that." Jaime had made mention of the Free

Cities, but had never said which one. "Is it Braavos? Tyrosh? Myr?" Tyrion would sooner have gone to

Dorne. Myrcella is older than Tommen, by Dornish law the Iron Throne is hers. I will help her claim her

rights, as Prince Oberyn suggested.

Oberyn was dead, though, his head smashed to bloody ruin by the armored fist of Ser Gregor

Clegane. And without the Red Viper to urge him on, would Doran Martell even consider such a chancy

scheme? He might clap me in chains instead and hand me back to my sweet sister. The Wall might be

safer. Old Bear Mormont said the Night's Watch had need of men like Tyrion. Mormont might be dead,

though. By now Slynt may be the lord commander. That butcher's son was not like to have forgotten who sent him to the Wall. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life eating salt beef and porridge with

murderers and thieves? Not that the rest of his life would last very long. Janos Slynt would see to that.

The cabin boy wet his brush and scrubbed on manfully. "Have you ever visited the pleasure

houses of Lys?" the dwarf inquired. "Might that be where whores go?" Tyrion could not seem to recall

the Valyrian word for whore, and in any case it was too late. The boy tossed his brush back in his bucket

and took his leave.

The wine has blurred my wits. He had learned to read High Valyrian at his maester's knee,

though what they spoke in the Nine Free Cities … well, it was not so much a dialect as nine dialects on

the way to becoming separate tongues. Tyrion had some Braavosi and a smattering of Myrish. In Tyrosh

he should be able to curse the gods, call a man a cheat, and order up an ale, thanks to a sellsword he

had once known at the Rock. At least in Dorne they speak the Common Tongue. Like Dornish food and

Dornish law, Dornish speech was spiced with the flavors of the Rhoyne, but a man could comprehend it. Dorne, yes, Dorne for me. He crawled into his bunk, clutching that thought like a child with a doll.

Sleep had never come easily to Tyrion Lannister. Aboard that ship it seldom came at all, though

from time to time he managed to drink sufficient wine to pass out for a while. At least he did not dream. He had dreamed enough for one small life. And of such follies: love, justice, friendship, glory. As well

dream of being tall. It was all beyond his reach, Tyrion knew now. But he did not know where whores

go.

"Wherever whores go," his father had said. His last words, and what words they were. The

crossbow thrummed, Lord Tywin sat back down, and Tyrion Lannister found himself waddling through

the darkness with Varys at his side. He must have clambered back down the shaft, two hundred and

thirty rungs to where orange embers glowed in the mouth of an iron dragon. He remembered none of it.

Only the sound the crossbow made, and the stink of his father's bowels opening. Even in his dying, he

found a way to shit on me.

Varys had escorted him through the tunnels, but they never spoke until they emerged beside

the Blackwater, where Tyrion had won a famous victory and lost a nose. That was when the dwarf

turned to the eunuch and said, "I've killed my father," in the same tone a man might use to say, "I've

stubbed my toe."

The master of whisperers had been dressed as a begging brother, in a moth-eaten robe of

brown roughspun with a cowl that shadowed his smooth fat cheeks and bald round head. "You should

not have climbed that ladder," he said reproachfully.

"Wherever whores go." Tyrion had warned his father not to say that word. If I had not loosed, he

would have seen my threats were empty. He would have taken the crossbow from my hands, as once he

took Tysha from my arms. He was rising when I killed him.

"I killed Shae too," he confessed to Varys.

"You knew what she was."

"I did. But I never knew what he was."

Varys tittered. "And now you do."

I should have killed the eunuch as well. A little more blood on his hands, what would it matter?

He could not say what had stayed his dagger. Not gratitude. Varys had saved him from a headsman's

sword, but only because Jaime had compelled him. Jaime … no, better not to think of Jaime.

He found a fresh skin of wine instead and sucked at it as if it were a woman's breast. The sour

red ran down his chin and soaked through his soiled tunic, the same one he had been wearing in his cell.

The deck was swaying beneath his feet, and when he tried to rise it lifted sideways and smashed him

hard against a bulkhead. A storm, he realized, or else I am even drunker than I knew. He retched the

wine up and lay in it a while, wondering if the ship would sink. Is this your vengeance, Father? Has the

Father Above made you his Hand? "Such are the wages of the kinslayer," he said as the wind howled

outside. It did not seem fair to drown the cabin boy and the captain and all the rest for something he

had done, but when had the gods ever been fair? And around about then, the darkness gulped him

down.

When he stirred again, his head felt like to burst and the ship was spinning round in dizzy circles,

though the captain was insisting that they'd come to port. Tyrion told him to be quiet and kicked feebly as a huge bald sailor tucked him under one arm and carried him squirming to the hold, where an empty

wine cask awaited him. It was a squat little cask, and a tight fit even for a dwarf. Tyrion pissed himself in

his struggles, for all the good it did. He was crammed face-first into the cask with his knees pushed up

against his ears. The stub of his nose itched horribly, but his arms were pinned so tightly that he could

not reach to scratch it. A palanquin fit for a man of my stature, he thought as they hammered shut the

lid. He could hear voices shouting as he was hoisted up. Every bounce cracked his head against the

bottom of the cask. The world went round and round as the cask rolled downward, then stopped with a

crash that made him want to scream. Another cask slammed into his, and Tyrion bit his tongue.

That was the longest journey he had ever taken, though it could not have lasted more than half

an hour. He was lifted and lowered, rolled and stacked, upended and righted and rolled again. Through

the wooden staves he heard men shouting, and once a horse whickered nearby. His stunted legs began

to cramp, and soon hurt so badly that he forgot the hammering in his head.

It ended as it had begun, with another roll that left him dizzy and more jouncing. Outside,

strange voices were speaking in a tongue he did not know. Someone started pounding on the top of the

cask and the lid cracked open suddenly. Light came flooding in, and cool air as well. Tyrion gasped

greedily and tried to stand, but only managed to knock the cask over sideways and spill himself out onto

a hard-packed earthen floor.

Above him loomed a grotesque fat man with a forked yellow beard, holding a wooden mallet

and an iron chisel. His bedrobe was large enough to serve as a tourney pavilion, but its loosely knotted

belt had come undone, exposing a huge white belly and a pair of heavy breasts that sagged like sacks of suet covered with coarse yellow hair. He reminded Tyrion of a dead sea cow that had once washed up in

the caverns under Casterly Rock.

The fat man looked down and smiled. "A drunken dwarf," he said, in the Common Tongue of

Westeros.

"A rotting sea cow." Tyrion's mouth was full of blood. He spat it at the fat man's feet. They were

in a long, dim cellar with barrel-vaulted ceilings, its stone walls spotted with nitre. Casks of wine and ale

surrounded them, more than enough drink to see a thirsty dwarf safely through the night. Or through a

life.

"You are insolent. I like that in a dwarf." When the fat man laughed, his flesh bounced so

vigorously that Tyrion was afraid he might fall and crush him. "Are you hungry, my little friend? Weary?"

"Thirsty." Tyrion struggled to his knees. "And filthy."

The fat man sniffed. "A bath first, just so. Then food and a soft bed, yes? My servants shall see

to it." His host put the mallet and chisel aside. "My house is yours. Any friend of my friend across the

water is a friend to Illyrio Mopatis, yes."

And any friend of Varys the Spider is someone I will trust just as far as I can throw him.

The fat man made good on the promised bath, though. No sooner did Tyrion lower himself into

the hot water and close his eyes than he was fast asleep. He woke naked on a goose-down feather bed

so soft it felt as if he had been swallowed by a cloud. His tongue was growing hair and his throat was

raw, but his cock was as hard as an iron bar. He rolled from the bed, found a chamber pot, and

commenced to filling it, with a groan of pleasure.

The room was dim, but there were bars of yellow sunlight showing between the slats of the shutters. Tyrion shook the last drops off and waddled over patterned Myrish carpets as soft as new

spring grass. Awkwardly he climbed the window seat and flung the shutters open to see where Varys

and the gods had sent him.

Beneath his window six cherry trees stood sentinel around a marble pool, their slender branches

bare and brown. A naked boy stood on the water, poised to duel with a bravo's blade in hand. He was

lithe and handsome, no older than sixteen, with straight blond hair that brushed his shoulders. So

lifelike did he seem that it took the dwarf a long moment to realize he was made of painted marble,

though his sword shimmered like true steel.

Across the pool stood a brick wall twelve feet high, with iron spikes along its top. Beyond that

was the city. A sea of tiled rooftops crowded close around a bay. He saw square brick towers, a great red

temple, a distant manse upon a hill. In the far distance, sunlight shimmered off deep water. Fishing

boats were moving across the bay, their sails rippling in the wind, and he could see the masts of larger

ships poking up along the shore. Surely one is bound for Dorne, or for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. He had no means to pay for passage, though, nor was he made to pull an oar. I suppose I could sign on as a cabin

boy and earn my way by letting the crew bugger me up and down the narrow sea.

He wondered where he was. Even the air smells different here. Strange spices scented the chilly

autumn wind, and he could hear faint cries drifting over the wall from the streets beyond. It sounded

something like Valyrian, but he did not recognize more than one word in five. Not Braavos, he

concluded, nor Tyrosh. Those bare branches and the chill in the air argued against Lys and Myr and

Volantis as well.

When he heard the door opening behind him, Tyrion turned to confront his fat host. "This is

Pentos, yes?"

"Just so. Where else?"

Pentos. Well, it was not King's Landing, that much could be said for it. "Where do whores go?"

he heard himself ask.

"Whores are found in brothels here, as in Westeros. You will have no need of such, my little

friend. Choose from amongst my servingwomen. None will dare refuse you."

"Slaves?" the dwarf asked pointedly.

The fat man stroked one of the prongs of his oiled yellow beard, a gesture Tyrion found

remarkably obscene. "Slavery is forbidden in Pentos, by the terms of the treaty the Braavosi imposed on

us a hundred years ago. Still, they will not refuse you." Illyrio gave a ponderous half bow. "But now my

little friend must excuse me. I have the honor to be a magister of this great city, and the prince has

summoned us to session." He smiled, showing a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth. "Explore the manse

and grounds as you like, but on no account stray beyond the walls. It is best that no man knows that you

were here."

"Were? Have I gone somewhere?"

"Time enough to speak of that this evening. My little friend and I shall eat and drink and make

great plans, yes?"

"Yes, my fat friend," Tyrion replied. He thinks to use me for his profit. It was all profit with the

merchant princes of the Free Cities. "Spice soldiers and cheese lords," his lord father called them, with

contempt. Should a day ever dawn when Illyrio Mopatis saw more profit in a dead dwarf than a live one,

Tyrion would find himself packed into another wine cask by dusk. It would be well if I was gone before

that day arrives. That it would arrive he did not doubt; Cersei was not like to forget him, and even Jaime

might be vexed to find a quarrel in Father's belly.