Chapter 30: Tyrion Lannister
A dwarf with short, bowed legs walked into the hall flanked by two Lannister guards in crimson cloaks. The rest of their party had been held outside the gates. The hall was quiet in the way that rooms go quiet when everyone in them is paying close attention.
No bread and salt had been set out to receive them.
Henry sat in the high seat with Red Rain laid across his lap. Among Westerosi nobility, the meaning of that posture was clear enough: the man before him had not been granted guest right. The sword was the answer to the question of whether he was welcome.
Maewyn stood to Henry's left with his hand on his hilt. Maester Winston and Joffrey occupied chairs along the side wall. Ten River Guard soldiers stood in two lines down the length of the hall, spears upright. Behind Joffrey's chair, Sandor Clegane stood with his arms crossed and Arys Oakheart stood very slightly apart from him, as was their habit.
The dwarf looked up from the foot of the steps.
He was not quite what Henry had expected from the descriptions he'd heard — shorter, certainly, with legs that had never grown true, a head that sat large on a small frame, and hair that ran toward pale gold. His eyes were mismatched: one dark, one a lighter green, and both of them were moving around the hall with the quick, cataloguing attention of someone who reads rooms for a living. His gaze settled on the sword across Henry's lap, and something that might have been amusement moved briefly across his face.
"Before you stands Henry Reyne," Maewyn said, stepping forward, his voice carrying to the back of the hall, "Lord of the Bay of Crabs, Warden of the Blackwater Rush. My lord, by custom, you will offer your respects."
"I am Tyrion, son of Tywin Lannister." The dwarf's voice was clear and unhurried. "My brother Jaime, as a member of the Kingsguard, forfeited his right to inherit Casterly Rock. That makes me my father's heir. An heir to a great lordship isn't required by custom to kneel before a lesser title."
"To my knowledge," Maewyn said, "Lord Tywin has never formally acknowledged your status as heir in any document or public declaration."
"A fair point." Tyrion spread his hands with a kind of theatrical reasonableness. "Though to my knowledge, Lord Tywin has also never acknowledged the legitimacy of the man sitting in that chair as Lord of the Bay of Crabs, so perhaps we're all on uncertain ground today."
"My title comes from His Majesty the King," Henry said. "I don't need Lannister acknowledgment. State your business and leave. This keep doesn't receive Lannister men."
"Heartbreaking." Tyrion looked around the room with an expression of exaggerated wounded dignity. "I'm told I should like you — you're apparently much more civil than most people who hate me. The ones who truly despise me usually lead with 'Imp.' You went straight to 'Tyrion Lannister' with only moderate contempt. That's practically a compliment." He paused, scanning the faces in the hall, finding no one softening. "At the very least — bread and salt. I am Prince Joffrey's uncle. His mother's brother. Surely that counts for something."
Joffrey, in his chair against the wall, had assumed an expression of profound disdain, but Henry caught him glancing sideways to see what the response would be.
Henry held Tyrion's gaze for a moment, then moved Red Rain from his lap.
"For the Prince's sake. Give him the bread and salt."
Joffrey relaxed immediately, settling back with the quiet satisfaction of someone whose position has just been publicly acknowledged.
Dominic brought a small silver plate — a heel of dark rye bread and a pinch of coarse salt. Tyrion took it without ceremony, ate it in several bites while apparently finding the hall's architecture interesting, and swallowed.
The tension in the room shifted. Hands drifted away from hilts. Guest right had been extended and accepted, and the compact it created was one that even enemies observed. The confrontation had a ceiling now.
"If my father has thrown you out of Casterly Rock," Henry said, "I might consider making an exception. Iron Fist Keep could use a steward with a facility for numbers, and you've clearly got one." He kept his voice flat. "Otherwise I have nothing for you."
He meant none of it, and Tyrion almost certainly knew that, but it was worth establishing that Henry had assessed him and filed the assessment.
"I'm going to King's Landing," Tyrion said, wiping his hands on his coat. "To visit my sister."
"You've taken a long way round," Joffrey said, unable to resist. His proprietary tone when he mentioned the keep had become increasingly pronounced over the past months — he spoke of it the way boys speak of places they've decided belong to them. "The road from Casterly Rock to King's Landing doesn't pass through here."
"No," Tyrion agreed. He turned to look at Joffrey with an expression that had lost its performance. "Because I went to King's Landing first. Your mother is ill, Joffrey."
The satisfaction dropped off Joffrey's face completely.
"She's been unwell since you left." Tyrion's voice came down — quieter, more direct, the wit set aside. "A year is a long time to be separated from her son. She asked me to come. Will you ride back with me?"
Joffrey looked at Henry immediately, the way he'd learned to look at Henry when he wanted permission for something he wasn't sure he'd be given.
"You should go see her," Henry said. "But you'll go with your own escort, not with a Lannister party." He turned to Maewyn. "A hundred men, properly mounted. Command them yourself." To Sandor and Arys: "You go with him."
Joffrey nodded quickly, and the pleasure on his face had less to do with seeing his mother, Henry suspected, and more to do with arriving in King's Landing at the head of a hundred-man escort with a Kingsguard on each side. He was still twelve years old at the end of the day.
Maewyn bowed and left to begin selecting the men.
"Not a Ser," Sandor said, to no one in particular, before descending the steps. It was the correction he always made. He'd never taken knighthood and apparently intended the reminder to be ongoing.
Tyrion looked up at him with something approaching appreciation. "Still here, Hound? I thought you served the Queen's household."
"I'm ordered to keep the Prince in one piece."
"And yet here you are, keeping him in one piece for someone else entirely." Tyrion seemed to find this genuinely interesting. "Curious."
Sandor didn't answer. He rarely did when the observation wasn't worth the effort.
Henry came down the steps and stopped in front of Tyrion. From the floor, the height difference became a different thing — Henry looking down, Tyrion looking up, both of them aware of it and neither making more of it than it was.
"Your message has been delivered," Henry said. "You can go."
"Guest gift?" Tyrion raised an eyebrow. In the customs of Westeros, a host presenting a parting gift to a departing guest formally concluded guest right. It was a small ritual, but Tyrion was clearly not a man who let small rituals pass unacknowledged.
Henry glanced at the table beside him. Dominic had left a deep red weirwood leaf there earlier — picked from the heart tree at the edge of Baywood, one of the few weirwoods that far south, its bark bone-white and its leaves the dark red of old blood.
He picked it up and held it out.
"A speedy recovery," he said.
Tyrion took it and turned it over in his fingers. The color in it was remarkable — it looked like something between a leaf and a hand. "In the North," Dominic said from the side, "we give weirwood leaves to those who are sick or healing. A prayer to the old gods."
"Lord Henry grew up in White Harbor, I'm told." Tyrion looked at the leaf for another moment, then looked up. "If my particular ailment were curable, my father would commission a sept in thanksgiving. I'm touched by the thought." He tucked the leaf into his coat, then untied the coin purse from his belt and tossed it to Dominic, who caught it. "A Lannister always pays his debts. For the bread, the salt, and the hospitality."
He turned, and his guards fell in behind him, and he walked back out of the hall the way he'd come in — unhurried, back straight, with the particular dignity of a man who has spent his entire life refusing to let a room make him feel small.
Henry watched him go.
Whatever else the Lannisters were, they hadn't raised a fool.
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