"Expanding and renovating King's Landing is a difficult problem. We do not have that much money, nor do we have that much labor."
"And the various construction plans from the city's early days have long since been fixed. Even if we truly wanted to rebuild it, it would not be such a simple matter."
"Whether through forced land seizure or by establishing a compensation system, neither is something we can bear right now."
At the Small Council meeting, the ministers were discussing the feasibility of the decision His Majesty had proposed regarding the reconstruction of King's Landing. Hand of the King Tyrion Lannister wore a troubled expression as he spoke first, laying out his view and explaining why this plan was impossible.
As his words fell, Master of Whisperers Varys nodded as well and said, "Indeed. If it were only a matter of building a castle or even a city out of nothing, there would still be room to work with. It would merely be a matter of manpower, material resources, and time."
"But as things stand, King's Landing already bears such a large population, not to mention that its commerce, trade, and even industry have already taken shape or are fully established. With all these problems piled together, changing even one part becomes a difficulty that affects the whole."
"And when Aegon the Conqueror first built King's Landing, it was not raised to this scale in a single stroke either. Over three hundred years, the Targaryen kings gradually expanded the city."
"In the tenth year of the Aegon calendar, Aegon I ordered the building of King's Landing's walls to protect the city, yet the Red Keep was not completed until the cruel reign of Maegor."
Having likewise finished stating his view, Varys turned his gaze toward Tyrion, seated in the Hand's place. "So even if it were only expanded outward, it would not be a thing accomplished overnight."
"So... Lord Tyrion, do you think perhaps it would still be better if you went and spoke to His Majesty? Perhaps we should advise a longer course on this matter?"
When Varys finished speaking, silence fell over the council chamber reserved for meetings of the Small Council. All eyes turned, one after another, toward the exhausted dwarf.
After a long while, Lord Randyll Tarly, Master of Laws, raised a hand in support. "I agree!"
Grand Maester Peyton looked left and right, then raised his hand as well. "I agree as well!"
As for the seats of Master of Coin and Master of Ships, they had remained vacant since Tyrion stepped down from those posts, so no one occupied them to join the decision.
"..."
Seeing the lot of them shove the burden onto him, Tyrion rubbed at his brow in exhaustion and let out a long sigh.
The king's seat at this Small Council meeting was empty. That great sovereign had not attended. They were only here to go through the usual formalities, discussing recent affairs of state and exchanging information with one another.
"Very well, I understand. I will speak to His Majesty myself. If there is nothing else, then we will end here for now."
With that, Tyrion rose from his chair, gave a slight bow to the ministers present, then turned and walked out of the council chamber.
Since Kal had been crowned and ascended the throne, a full year had now passed.
Or more precisely, it was now the first year of the Kal calendar. The Aegon calendar, once named for Aegon the Conqueror, had been abolished by Kal and replaced with his own name as the reckoning of years.
There had not been much opposition when the matter was raised.
After all, everyone understood clearly that since Aegon first conquered the Seven Kingdoms, now that Kal-El had been crowned and enthroned, history would turn at this point, and the Seven Kingdoms would enter a different age.
A deed much like Aegon the Conqueror's unification of the Seven Kingdoms.
The Red Keep was neither especially large nor especially small.
After ordering someone to find the Red Keep's steward and asking where the king was, Tyrion set off with his short, hurried steps toward Kal's present location.
The pale red stone of the Red Keep remained as it always had, its color undimmed by three hundred years.
Seven enormous drum towers with iron roofs rose high into the air. Thick walls ringed the castle, with stout stone parapets set between them to protect the edges of the ramparts.
Huge bronze gates and iron portcullises divided the castle into separate sections, while narrower side doors could still be found in tighter places.
Walking along a passage atop one of the walls, Tyrion cast his gaze outside, where a cobbled yard lay before the great outer ward.
Then he passed through several small inner courtyards and vaulted halls, crossed a covered bridge, and came to a place called Maegor's Holdfast.
Maegor's Holdfast stood at the very center of the Red Keep. It was shaped like a great square fortress, protected by walls twelve feet thick and a dry moat lined with iron spikes.
It was a castle within a castle, for the royal bedchambers lay within Maegor's Holdfast.
The king's bedchamber. The queen mother's ballroom.
In that vast castle, this was the most private royal garden of all.
"Halt, my lord Hand."
As Tyrion approached, he had only just crossed the bridge over the moat when he was stopped by a Kingsguard knight more than 1.8 meters tall and heavily built, clad in armor that concealed the face entirely.
Hearing the muffled voice that came from inside the helm, Tyrion recognized who was standing watch today.
"Ser Brienne of Tarth, I learned from the steward that the king is with the queen. Pray inform him that I have matters of state on which I wish to seek His Majesty's instruction."
Brienne lowered her head and looked at the dwarf before her through the slit of her helm, then silently nodded.
"My lord Hand, please wait here a moment while I inform His Majesty."
With that, Brienne of Tarth—discovered by Kal by chance after the war at Storm's End had ended, then invited to become one of the Kingsguard—signaled to the two Royal Guards at her side, then turned and walked into Maegor's Holdfast.
Not long after, this Kingsguard knight—the second woman in the history of the Kingsguard—came back out.
"His Majesty asks that you come to the queen mother's ballroom."
She led Tyrion into Maegor's Holdfast. After passing through several doorways and turning several corners, the two entered a hall of fair size.
Tyrion looked up. The ballroom here was not even half the size of the smaller hall in his Tower of the Hand. It could likely hold only around a hundred people at most, and the whole place had the look of a split-level chamber.
The empty hall opened upward beneath a high arched ceiling. Above the stairs ran a gallery and a small projecting balcony.
As for the hall itself, huge arched windows lined the south wall, the walls were adorned with fine wood carvings, and behind the candle stands were polished silver mirrors fixed upon the wall.
The light of torches and candles shone upon the silver mirrors, doubling their brightness.
Even though it was broad daylight, the place was still brilliantly lit.
Having brought the Hand in, Brienne bowed to the king and queen, then turned and departed.
Watching that white cloak embroidered with House El's sigil recede, Kal turned his gaze toward Tyrion.
"If I remember right, you ought to be in council. What made you come looking for me?"
As he spoke, Kal gestured toward the seat beside him, then reached out, took up a glass, and poured over half a cup of Dornish summer red before handing it across.
In private, Kal was not so bound by rules and ceremony. There was more ease and indolent looseness about him.
At Kal's question, Tyrion could not help sighing. Clambering onto the stool and turning to sit down, he looked toward Sansa Stark, who sat in the center of the ballroom beneath the sunlight streaming in through the windows, embroidering while now and then teasing the direwolf Lady, who lay beside her and already stood half a man's height at the shoulder, making her laugh softly.
Her handmaids surrounded her, going about their tasks with light steps. Now and then one would cover her mouth and whisper some little jest.
When her interest was stirred, Sansa would widen her eyes and join in. Once her curiosity had been satisfied, she would take up her embroidery again and continue passing the time.
Now queen, Sansa's face unconsciously shone with a motherly radiance, and most striking of all was her slightly rounded belly, like the most precious treasure in the world.
Kal had wed Sansa in the second month after his coronation ceremony. Eddard, who had stepped down from the office of Hand of the King, had personally presided over the wedding, which was held within the Red Keep.
This too had been a wedding with no involvement from the Faith. Simple. Efficient.
The most elaborate part of the ceremony had been that, after the vows were completed, they rode through King's Landing in an open carriage to receive the people's blessings.
Lifting his wine cup, Tyrion looked at Sansa and took a small sip, then could not help sighing once more.
"I am now seriously beginning to suspect you made me Hand only so you could shove everything onto me while you sit back and enjoy the fruits of it."
Tyrion's voice was thick with resentment and gritted frustration as he turned and glared fiercely at Kal, who was also looking at Sansa, head bowed over her embroidery in the window light, like a figure in an oil painting.
Faced with that dissatisfied complaint, Kal turned to look at him with a strange expression.
"Well, what else?" Kal said, one brow lifting. "Isn't that what the Hand does? Isn't there a saying for it? The king shits, the Hand eats shit?"
"That saying is, 'The king dreams, the Hand builds the dream.'"
"Even the version common among the lowborn is 'The king feasts, the Hand shits.'"
"Seven hells, what kind of cursed saying has the Hand eating shit?!"
Kal's line about the Hand eating shit angered Tyrion so badly he began slapping the table with loud thuds. If Kal had not been stronger than him, he looked ready to climb over it and start a fight.
Seeing him like this, Kal could not help bursting into laughter.
Sansa, seated in the middle of the ballroom, heard the commotion and glanced over in curiosity.
Her husband and the Hand were discussing matters of state, so she had deliberately kept her distance.
Before leaving, her father had specifically instructed her on how to be a proper queen. She had done as told. So after giving a slight nod to Tyrion Lannister, the Hand, who had realized his conduct was improper, she paid that side no more attention.
Tyrion gave Queen Sansa a slight bow of apology, then at last managed to suppress the anger in his heart.
Drawing a deep breath and forcing down the urge to hit someone, Tyrion finally looked back at Kal.
"That matter you raised before, about rebuilding King's Landing—none of the lords on the Small Council think well of it, so they sent me over. What do you think? From the start, I thought the idea was nothing but trouble."
After saying this, Tyrion tilted back his head and drained the red wine in his cup in one swallow, then simply climbed up onto the table himself, took hold of the bottle, and poured more.
Setting aside his joking mood, Kal tapped a finger against the tabletop and fell silent for two seconds.
Then he turned and looked at Tyrion with dark, thoughtful eyes. "What if I said I want to move the capital? What do you think of that?"
Tyrion had been reaching for the bottle and was wholly unprepared for those words. With a clatter, he knocked over the cup. Fortunately he reacted in time and, before it could fall onto the carpet below, he caught it with one hand.
He looked up at Kal, and after seeing from that absurdly handsome face that this was not a jest, Tyrion took the bottle and silently sat back down in his seat.
"Why are you always thinking of stirring something up?"
"If it's not rebuilding the city, then it's moving the capital?!"
Faced with the question, Kal raised both hands and shrugged, speaking as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Because I do not like this place, so I want to live somewhere with a better setting. I hate the fish-stink of the sea wind, the chaotic layout of the city, the filth and disorder, and this damp air."
"Though, in truth, none of those things really affect me."
At that shameless answer, the corner of Tyrion's mouth twitched.
"If you want my advice and support, then what I have to say is simple: put this thought out of your head. There is no need for it at all."
"Neither our manpower nor our coin, nor the threat we now face from the Others, is enough to justify doing this kind of needless side business at such a time."
Tyrion also put away all superfluous expression. Staring hard at Kal with grave eyes, he urged the young king not to do something irrelevant at such a time merely to satisfy his own preferences.
Kal stroked the stubble on his chin, then looked toward Sansa again.
"Mmm, what you say is reasonable. So what do you think of moving north? I rather like the scenery around the Gods Eye."
"A city could be planned anew along the southern shore of the Gods Eye, toward the Blackwater. As for the royal palace, we could build a stone bridge straight out to the Isle of Faces in the middle of the lake. I like it there—quiet and pleasant."
At Kal's willfulness, Tyrion truly grew a little angry this time.
"Kal, listen to me. I am not joking."
What more could Kal say to that?
He could only "yield" and say, "Very well, my lord Hand, my vice-king. We will leave this matter until after the war is ended and everlasting summer returns."
"So then, what do you make of this? We have stationed troops in the North for a full year, and even a third of the free folk beyond the Wall have gradually been moved south, yet why is it that the Others still have not made a move?"
Following Tyrion's lead, Kal temporarily set aside his wish to move the capital and turned instead to discuss the movements beyond the Wall in the far North.
From then until now, a year had passed in a blur. Even a third of the free folk from beyond the Wall had been resettled upon lands in the North.
And yet the enemy they had imagined showed no movement at all.
It was as though they had not noticed them in the slightest, merely watching every move mankind made in silence.
Had the weather not been growing colder and the breath of winter drawing nearer with each passing day—cold enough now that even the Vale could feel it—Kal might have thought the Others had seen his strength and simply withdrawn once more into hiding.
But the truth was that they had not.
The signs of winter were growing heavier, yet the enemy seemed to have vanished, and all they did felt as though it were meant to wear them down.
The meaning hidden behind that was enough to chill the spine.
Their plan to mass troops for a decisive battle had, under this passive, evasive strategy, turned instead into a strange contest of standoff and attrition.
For now, no one knew how it would end, nor what the Others were doing or thinking.
If they were truly determined to wait like this, and keep waiting—
Then things instead became rather awkward.
It was not that Kal had no way to break the deadlock, but anyone with even a little sense would never choose, under such circumstances, to abandon the Wall's natural advantage and take the offensive by launching an expedition against the Others.
If they were to do that, then what meaning had there been in Kal going to such lengths to move the free folk south?
Would matters not simply return to the point where both sides lined up openly for a head-on war?
And when that time came, even if mankind had two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand troops, how much meaning would that have, and what chance of victory would it truly offer against the Others and their army of wights?
A strategy of crouching in silence and hiding its strength had instead placed the Seven Kingdoms in an awkward position.
And as winter drew ever nearer, it seemed the situation was already beginning to reverse at the extremes.
What was to be done?