From the brothel to Casterly Rock.
A quarter hour on foot.
Ten minutes in a litter.
On a horse his legs would not have found the stirrups.
He walked.
Lannisport was still half-asleep.
A few fishermen worked their nets on the quay.
They flicked a look at him and dropped their eyes.
The body’s memory was clean on this: everyone knew the dwarf lordling.
Everyone made a point of not seeing him.
No greeting.
No bow.
Not even a second glance.
Lyonel rolled the sleeve another turn and lengthened his stride.
Short legs.
Fast steps.
He had learned that in packed morning trains.
The gate of Casterly Rock came up through the fog.
A castle carved out of the mountain.
A golden cliff driven straight into the sea, thirty houses high, and the early sun off the stone made the eyes water.
He stopped at the doors and tipped his head back.
Hell of a house.
Bigger than any palace he had only ever seen in pictures.
Drop a pin on a map in the old world and the tag would have read *home*.
Two Lannister guards stood post in crimson cloaks with the gold lion on them, tall men, tall horses, swords bright.
They looked down.
Their mouths twitched together.
“The young lord is back,” one said.
“His lordship is waiting,” said the other.
He went between them.
Red stone steps to the great hall.
He caught their eyes as he passed.
Not hate.
Not even disgust.
The flat look a man gives a rat in the road after the wheels have already done the work.
A rat.
That was how the first Tyrion had lived.
The sharpest picture in the borrowed head: seven years old, reaching for Tywin’s leg.
A boot.
Ten feet of stone.
His skull against a pillar and blood down half his face.
Cersei had squatted nearby and laughed.
Jaime had climbed to his room later and bound it up in secret.
Lyonel shoved the pile down and breathed in.
He put his hands on the hall doors and pushed.
The room was huge.
A hundred times the wreck he had woken in.
Twenty crystal lamps hung from the vault on chains of solid gold.
Both sides of the long table were packed with western bannermen and knights.
A rough count put them past thirty.
Tywin Lannister sat at the head.
The old lion was still the old lion.
Gold hair combed to a line.
Temples going white.
Those green eyes like knives.
Lyonel cleared the threshold and the look pinned him to the floor.
Two seconds of quiet.
More than thirty faces turned as one to the short, ugly lordling in the wrinkled coat.
Tywin’s brow moved.
Once.
Lyonel saw what lived in it.
The face a man makes when he finds shit on his boot.
“Where have you been?” Tywin said.
Not loud.
Cold as fish on ice.
Lyonel opened his mouth.
A bannerman got there first.
“My lord, this morning I was by the Red Mill… I saw the young lord there.”
He said *Red Mill* softly.
The whole hall heard it.
No one breathed.
Lyonel did not move.
The body shook under him—fear worked into the bone, climbing from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair.
He put a hand on it from the inside and held it down.
He had not come into the world to be frightened of this.
Tywin’s finger hit the table.
Once.
Light.
Every back in the room went straight.
“Tyrion.”
Not *son*.
The name.
The way a man reads a warrant.
“Your mother carried you ten months and died on the day she pushed you out.
House Lannister has been glory for generations.
In you it became the joke of the West.
You will not even keep yourself in hand.
You spend the night in a brothel.
In front of my bannermen.”
Each word dropped the heat in the hall by a degree.
A knight to the side failed.
A snort got out.
He covered his mouth.
Lyonel watched Tywin’s face.
The mouth said *you shame this house*.
The rest said *you should have died*.
The old memories turned over.
Eight years old, locked in the library three days and three nights.
Twelve, cursed for opening books—*a dwarf playing at letters*.
Fourteen, first night in a brothel, and the whole city told.
Fifteen years.
This father had not given the first Tyrion one clean day.
Lyonel closed a fist.
Short.
Fat.
The knuckles packed like dough.
He started to speak.
“Father.”
The voice behind him was lazy.
Gold hair like a struck match.
Jaime Lannister came in by the side door.
White cloak, gold plate, crimson thrown down his back, the sword at his hip throwing light up the hall.
He wore the usual Jaime smile: the world owed him coin and he could not be bothered to collect.
“My brother was with me last night.” Jaime crossed the floor and set a wide palm on Lyonel’s head.
The weight was exact.
Three pats.
Easy, in front of everyone.
“We drank.
I put him to bed.
The Red Mill?
Your man saw someone else.”
Silence again.
The bannerman opened his mouth and shut it.
Jaime was Kingsguard.
He had put a blade through the Mad King.
No one in the room wanted that fight.
Tywin looked at Jaime for three seconds.
“You cover for him.”
“I speak for him.” Jaime smiled and turned his head.
The blue eyes were all light.
“Brother.
Tell them.”
Lyonel looked up.
Jaime winked.
“Yes.” Lyonel’s voice sat level.
“Last night I was at sword work with my brother.”
Tywin made a sound in his nose.
He did not cut the lie open.
His finger hit the table again.
“Good.
Since you have so much spirit, I have work for it.”
He lifted a hand.
A steward came with a sheepskin book and dropped it on the stones in front of Lyonel.
The slap carried.
The thing was thick enough to kill a man.
Gold on the cover: *Annual Accounts of Casterly Rock and the Western Fiefs*.
“Three days.” Tywin held up three fingers.
“Find the holes in that book.
Find them, and you prove you are worth keeping.
Fail—”
He stopped.
The look came down from a height, onto a dwarf who did not reach the tabletop.
“Go to the Wall.
Take the black.”
Bannermen started laughing again.
This time they did not bother to stop.
It ran up and down the table.
Lyonel bent and picked up the book.
Heavy as sin.
Five pounds if it was an ounce.
His face gave them nothing.
He glanced at the cover.
The blue pane cut in.
[System]
Starter task: within three days, win one acknowledgment from your father, Tywin Lannister.
Reward: Purple trait — Fiscal Mastery.
He tucked the accounts under his arm and looked at Tywin.
“Fine.”
One word.
The laughter missed a step.
They all saw it.
No fear on the dwarf.
No anger.
Not even the hurt.
He smiled.
The crooked mouth.
The two different eyes folding.
A walnut that had grown teeth.
Bannermen felt it in their backs.
Tywin watched him two seconds more, then flicked his hand.
“Out.”
Lyonel turned and went.
At Jaime’s shoulder the hand landed on his head again, lighter.
“Come to my rooms tonight,” Jaime said, down low.
“I brought something from King’s Landing.
White wine.
Kingsguard issue.”
Lyonel tipped his face up.
That beautiful face, smiling, fondness running over the brim of it.
“All right.”
He walked out with five pounds of ledger under his arm.
The doors shut.
He put his back to the wall and let the air out of his lungs.
The pane blinked.
[System]
Daily draw cooldown remaining: 12 hours 47 minutes.
Trait panel detail available after host returns to quarters.
He looked down at the book and tested the weight.
Holes.
He licked the corner of his mouth.
“Three days?”
“Tonight will do.”