The air in Lannisport's finest brothel was a mixture of wine and the heavy sweetness of women's powder.
Tyrion Lannister lay propped against the velvet headboard, bare-chested, his small frame settled into the cushions with the ease of a man very much at home. Between his fingers, he held an empty silver cup, a few drops of red still clinging to the inside. The wine had put a flush in his mismatched cheeks.
Beside him, a red-haired woman draped herself across the sheets with the lazy contentment of a well-fed cat, her long fingers tracing slow, shapeless circles on his chest.
Tyrion's voice carried the particular roughness of a night well spent.
"Well then, my dear."
"Tell me — aside from myself, is there anything in this city that's been holding the attention of lovely women like yourself lately?"
"And please don't say the harbor guards and their terrible feet."
The woman stopped her fingers. She lifted her head. Green eyes caught the candlelight and held it.
Her name was Daisy. She was one of the most expensive women in Lannisport, and she understood, as all truly expensive women do, that her value lay as much in knowing things as in anything else.
She laughed softly, her warmth pressing against Tyrion's short arm.
"Naturally, my lord."
"Every one of my friends has been talking about your... generosity."
"But!!"
"They have found a new topic entirely."
Tyrion swirled his empty cup and summoned a fraction of alertness.
"Oh?"
Daisy's voice dropped into the register of someone sharing a magnificent secret.
"A lion, My Lord Tyrion. A black lion."
"They all call him the Black Lion Solomon."
Tyrion raised an eyebrow.
"Another lion. My father won't like that name on anyone who doesn't carry the Lannister name."
Daisy pushed herself up with visible excitement, the silk sheet sliding from one smooth shoulder.
"He certainly doesn't carry the Lannister name!! And everyone says he's more impressive than any Lannister lion by far!!!"
"Haven't you heard, My Lord Tyrion?! The dockworkers!! The tavern girls!! Even the merchants and lords who come to see me!! Everyone is talking about him!!"
She dropped her voice and let her breath brush the edge of his ear.
"The bards say that he stood alone and held back an entire wildling army!! In the Riverlands!! Like a god descended to earth, taking the shape of a black lion!! Every one of those blood-drinking monsters — killed!! Every last one!!"
Tyrion gave a sound that could have meant anything — admiration or contempt — and then smiled. A noble's self-promotional legend, assembled for exactly this purpose. You could hear a hundred versions of that story in any tavern, with any sword-carrying lord as the hero.
He rested a hand on the woman's back.
"My dear, I would strongly advise against praising any lion in Lannisport who doesn't carry the Lannister name. It will bring you nothing but trouble."
Daisy's eyes were bright with the particular worship of someone who is not currently talking to the interesting person.
"Of course, My Lord Tyrion!! But the story doesn't stop there!! He drove off the wildlings — then turned around and took Willowbrook!! The Leges, you know!! A great Riverlands house!! In a single night!! One night and the castle was his!!"
She waved her arms with the enthusiasm of an eyewitness.
"And then he killed the Lord of House Lege himself!! In trial by combat!!"
"And the most important part — he took everything from the Lege treasury and gave it all away!! To his soldiers!! To the poor refugees!! Now the whole Riverlands says that fighting under the Black Lion is the most profitable thing a man can do!!"
Tyrion set the cup down. He set it down quite deliberately.
He gave the money to the soldiers? That was not a noble's instinct. That was genuinely interesting.
Daisy read his expression and sat straighter, the excitement putting color in her face.
"But that's not even the best part!!"
"For a group of escaped serfs — he challenged a Muir knight to trial by combat!!"
She grabbed Tyrion's arm with a grip that was considerably stronger than one expected.
"My Lord!! Can you imagine?! A man of noble blood!! Risking his own life in a duel — for a group of farm serfs whose status is lower than the dirt!! He announced it himself — he said he would represent them!!! As their champion!!!"
Tyrion's eyes sharpened.
He had watched noblemen duel for family honor, for land, for glory, for women. He had never once, in his entire life, heard of a lord drawing his sword for the lives of serfs.
Daisy's voice was trembling now.
"He won!! Put his sword through Ser Corben's chest!!"
"And then — he went straight to the Muir family's castle!! Another trial by combat!!"
"He won that too!!!"
"And then the Wayne family's castle!!!"
"Three duels!! Three!! He killed three established knights with names and reputations!! And recovered every piece of land that had ever been taken from his family!! All of it!!"
The room went quiet.
Only the steady, small sound of the candle burning.
Tyrion's voice came out soft.
"And every family agreed?"
Daisy pursed her lips with obvious relish.
"All but one."
"A family called Onferd. They hid in their castle like turtles pulling their heads in — refused to accept the trial, refused to hand over the land. Dead cowards."
"The Onferd family..." Tyrion repeated the name, and then produced his signature laugh — a distinctive, ratcheting sound that came from somewhere deep and genuine.
Frey vassals. Exactly like their liege lord.
Daisy blinked, then dissolved into laughter herself, bright and helpless, tumbling back into his arms.
"My Lord, isn't it all remarkable?!"
"I would genuinely love to meet him!!"
She laughed herself out, then lifted her head and fixed him with a look that managed to be simultaneously teasing and entirely deliberate.
"And, my lord," she said.
She leaned close to his ear. The warmth of her breath raised goosebumps across the back of his neck.
"The bards say that Solomon... the Black Lion whose name has traveled to all Seven Kingdoms..."
Her voice became a whisper.
"...is the same age as you, my lord. Sixteen."
The air in the room seemed to stop moving.
The smile on Tyrion's face went still.
He looked at his own legs — short, twisted, uneven — and then at the beautiful, complete woman lying beside him.
Sixteen. What a magnificent age that was.
At sixteen, his brother Jaime had already been sworn into the Kingsguard. And he himself...
Tyrion spread his hands in a gesture of elaborate self-deprecation, his expression carrying the particular smile of a man who has made his peace with a joke that will never stop being told.
"Oh? So he's a hero whose name rings across all Seven Kingdoms, is he."
He looked around the lavish bedchamber — a room that owed its current opulence, he suspected, in no small part to his own patronage.
"Then what does that make me? Lannisport's most celebrated drunk and dwarf?"
Daisy laughed — a bright, liquid sound — and drew one finger lightly across his chest, the touch as soft as a feather passing over skin.
"You are most certainly a lion, my lord."
Her voice deepened, becoming something lower and more deliberate.
"At least..."
"...in bed."
Tyrion stared at her for one full moment.
Then he erupted.
The laugh was louder than before, more real, more completely his — the kind of laugh that feels like it is clearing something out of a chest that needed clearing, a laugh that shook the headboard.
He reached into the coin purse on the nightstand, felt around until his fingers found something heavy, and tossed it onto the silk sheet between them. A gold dragon caught the candlelight as it bounced.
"Well said!! Magnificently said!!"
"That line has earned you this."
He pushed himself up from the bed, shrugged on a long robe that pooled on the floor around his feet, and crossed the room barefoot to the table on the far side, where he poured himself a full cup of red wine, the dark liquid rocking inside the crystal.
He carried the cup to the window, as he always did. Habit. He reached up and pulled the heavy brocade curtain aside.
The cup hit the floor.
Wine spread across his bare feet in a dark tide.
The warning bells were ringing.
He could not hear them.
From the direction of the harbor, a tower of fire rose into the sky.