It was as if he had known long ago that Tyrion Lannister would come. After letting Tyrion inside, Varys stretched his head out to check both ends of the street before quietly shutting the door.
"You're still this cautious. Is it because of your 'big treasure'?" Tyrion teased after watching Varys close the door.
"It's merely a habit of our profession," Varys replied with a slight frown. "May I ask what important matter brings my lord to this humble residence?"
"You should know better than I do," Tyrion said, refusing to play along with Varys's act.
Varys's brows furrowed even deeper, as though he were thinking hard.
"Do you remember the testimony you gave during my trial?" Tyrion asked threateningly.
"Would it really have changed anything whether I spoke or not? If I had remained silent, your father and sister certainly wouldn't have spared me easily."
After hearing Oberyn Martell's words earlier, Tyrion no longer hated Varys. The question he just asked was merely lingering resentment from the trial resurfacing.
"Where is Shae?" he asked directly.
"First, congratulations on regaining your freedom, my lord." Instead of answering, Varys cupped his hands respectfully.
"So you already sent Shae away." Tyrion had guessed as much and let out a sigh of relief.
"The devotion between you and your lady is truly enviable."
"I'm going to find her," Tyrion declared decisively.
"Do you truly intend to spend the rest of your life with her?" Varys looked directly into Tyrion's eyes.
"I'll take Shae to serve the Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen. She shouldn't mind, should she?" Tyrion said while gazing eastward.
"I imagine the Dragon Queen wouldn't object to having one more handmaiden," Varys shrugged.
Tyrion immediately objected.
"I'm not going to let her become a servant again!"
"Then you must take good care of her."
Tyrion said nothing and merely nodded softly.
"The one who warned Prince Oberyn was the Mother of Dragons, wasn't it?" Tyrion finally asked the question he truly cared about.
"No." Varys shook his head.
"No?" Tyrion had not expected to be wrong.
Seeing Tyrion's confusion, Varys added:
"Or rather… probably not."
"Probably not?" Tyrion became even more bewildered. It sounded as though even Varys himself did not know who had passed along the warning.
"You may not believe this," Varys said slowly, "but I've never actually met Daenerys Targaryen."
Tyrion absolutely did not believe that.
"Then how are you serving her?" he asked. To him, something this important surely required a formal face-to-face pledge of loyalty.
"One of the queen's… subordinates found me. He told me certain information, then asked me to swear loyalty to Daenerys and send you to Slaver's Bay."
"Who was this subordinate?" Tyrion asked. It seemed absurd that someone as sophisticated and connected as Varys, master of whisperers in King's Landing, would be approached by only a single envoy — unless that envoy held extraordinary status.
"I don't know who he was," Varys admitted helplessly.
"You…" Tyrion no longer knew what to say.
He felt as though Varys had been trafficked away by scammers. You don't even know who asked you to swear loyalty to the Dragon Queen, and yet you're willingly working for her?
Varys understood exactly what Tyrion wanted to say. Recalling the terror he felt when first reading the mysterious man's message, he still found it unbelievable.
"He knew nearly everything connected to me," Varys said quietly. "Including things that hadn't happened yet — and things I might someday do but hadn't even begun to consider."
Listening to Varys describe it, even Tyrion felt a deep chill.
To know even thoughts not yet conceived — what kind of terrifying ability was that?
"Is he a greenseer?" Tyrion asked cautiously. He was well-read and possessed some knowledge of mysticism.
"As far as I know, even greenseers can only glimpse vague possibilities of the future," Varys replied. "They shouldn't be able to foresee something as specific as Oberyn carelessly approaching the Mountain and being killed."
Remembering how Oberyn himself had admitted he still might have unknowingly walked into danger even after receiving the warning, Tyrion found himself speechless.
"He also knew about the Red Wedding involving the Starks and hinted that I should save them. As for the Purple Wedding, he knew the true masterminds behind it as well," Varys continued without hiding anything.
Sooner or later, Tyrion would learn these matters if they were to work together.
"So it was you who warned them," Tyrion muttered. "I wondered how the supposedly foolproof trap designed by Walder Frey and my father failed."
Compared to the Red Wedding, however, Tyrion cared far more about the conspiracy that had nearly killed him.
"Who exactly orchestrated the Purple Wedding?"
"Petyr Baelish and the Queen of Thorns acted together."
"Littlefinger?" Tyrion had suspected Olenna Tyrell before, but he never imagined Petyr Baelish was involved too.
Why would Littlefinger want Joffrey Baratheon dead?
Tyrion could not understand it.
"Littlefinger has done many unbelievable things," Varys said calmly. "You simply never knew about them. Including your arrest by Catelyn Stark and the death of Jon Arryn."
Tyrion was stunned. He had never imagined the true mastermind behind the Eyrie incident — the event that had nearly killed him — was also Littlefinger, the brothel-owning master of coin.
Just as Varys said, Baelish's schemes were always the least expected.
"What exactly is his goal?" Tyrion asked, echoing a question someone else had once asked Varys.
"I cannot see through him either," Varys answered. "Perhaps only the mysterious man knows."
"The mysterious man?" Tyrion asked, before realizing that Varys obviously meant Daenerys's secret subordinate.
"He calls himself the Mysterious One," Varys confirmed.
"Even your little birds in Slaver's Bay couldn't discover who he is?"
"Not a single clue," Varys admitted, sounding somewhat frustrated.
"But I do know that the mysterious man appears capable of commanding dragons. Or perhaps the queen herself ordered the dragons to assist him."
Varys remembered the account given by the strongman from Driftmark.
"Dragons?" Tyrion asked in confusion. He remembered the three dragons having hatched only a little over a year ago.
"Yes. Dragons!" Varys replied. "As large as the mammoths of legend, with wingspans approaching twenty meters. And not only that — one of them can shift freely between adult and juvenile forms."
"What?" Tyrion felt more shocked today than at any other point in his life.
He had never read of dragons capable of changing size.
How could a dragon possibly grow large and small at will?
"I don't understand how it works either," Varys admitted. "But it's true. Only the dragon named Drogon can transform. The other two remain only the size of ponies."
The moment he finished speaking, a sudden realization struck him.
He had long suspected the mysterious man was a skinchanger capable of using clever little birds to deliver messages.
But now that he thought about it…
Could it have actually been the shape-shifting dragon delivering those messages all along?
-----------------------
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