Author Note: Sorry for the delay!!
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289 AC - Five years Later
The road from Lannisport to Casterly Rock wound along the coast in a series of gentle curves, the Sunset Sea stretching westward in a sheet of molten copper as the sun descended toward the horizon. The air carried the salt tang of the ocean and the distant sounds of the harbor — the creak of rigging, the cry of gulls, the muffled voices of sailors loading and unloading cargo at the docks. It was a warm evening in the fifth year of Robert's reign, and the peace that had settled over the Seven Kingdoms sat on the westerlands like a comfortable cloak.
Tyrion walked beside his brother, with Jaime having come to Casterly Rock for a short visit. The dwarf had grown in the years since the rebellion, though not in the direction most men grew. At fifteen, he stood four-foot-four inches and had stopped there, his body having reached whatever accommodation it intended to make with the limitations of his stature. What he lacked in height, however, he had compensated for in breadth. His shoulders were wide and thick with muscle beneath a tunic of fine linen, his arms corded with the build of a man who worked metal for hours each day. His beard which he had begun growing at eleven and which had come in with magnificent fullness, was a thick mane of gold that he kept trimmed and oiled with religious fastidious care. He wore it braided in the northern style, the plaits interwoven with threads of mithril and gold.
They had spent the afternoon in Lannisport, Tyrion showing Jaime the changes five years had wrought — new quays, expanded markets, a sept that had been rebuilt with Lannister gold after a fire. The city was thriving, the harbor crowded with ships from across the Narrow Sea.
It had been five years since the sack of King's Landing, since the wildfire and the explosion and the careful web of deception that had allowed Princess Elia and her children to vanish into the anonymity of Dorne. Five years since Tyrion had stood on that hill overlooking a burning city and felt the satisfaction of a plan executed to perfection.
The intervening years had been a whirlwind of activity that had left little time for reflection. Cersei's wedding had been the first great event, the union of lion and stag that had secured House Lannister's position behind the Iron Throne. Tyrion had not attended. His father had made it clear that the dwarf's presence at such a ceremony would be an embarrassment, and Tyrion, who had no particular desire to watch his sister marry, had not argued the point. He had remained at Casterly Rock, working in his forge, playing with the mithril that had been gifted to him.
Cersei had given birth a year after the wedding. The child, a boy with hair the color of beaten gold and eyes of emerald green, had been named Joffrey. The announcement had arrived at the Rock by raven, and Tyrion had read it in his workshop with a cup of ale at his elbow and a half-formed mithril breastplate cooling on the anvil before him. He had set the letter down, taken a long drink, and sighed.
So Jaime and Cersei still fucked.
The knowledge did not surprise him. It had been inevitable, really — the twin bond that had begun in their mother's womb and deepened through years of shared childhood and mutual obsession was not the sort of thing that dissolved beneath the weight of marriage vows or political necessity. Robert Baratheon had given Cersei a crown and a name, but he had never given her his heart, and Cersei Lannister was not a woman who accepted emptiness where she demanded devotion. Jaime had been there. Jaime had always been there. The golden child in the white cloak, the twin who mirrored her beauty and shared her blood, the man who would kill a king for her without hesitation.
Tyrion wondered, sometimes, whether Robert suspected. The king was not a subtle man, but he was not entirely a fool either, and the resemblance between Joffrey and his uncle was striking enough to give pause to anyone who cared to look closely. But Robert did not look closely. Robert drank, and hunted, and whored, and left the business of ruling to Jon Arryn and the business of fathering to the gods, and the golden-haired boy growing up in the Red Keep was, as far as the king was concerned, one more responsibility he had not asked for and did not particularly want.
Joffrey's birth had been followed by another. Myrcella, born two years later, a girl of delicate beauty, who was a carbon copy of her mother. Both children bore the Lannister look — the golden hair, the green eyes, the features that spoke of Tywin's bloodline with unmistakable clarity.
Tyrion had not seen his sister or her children in five years. He had no particular desire to. Cersei had never made any secret of her feelings toward him, and distance suited them both.
His own life at Casterly Rock had developed along lines that he had engineered carefully. His reputation as a goldsmith had spread across the westerlands and beyond, carried by merchants and travelers who had seen his work and spoken of it in tones of disbelief. The jewelry he forged — rings set with stones that seemed to hold inner light, necklaces of gold, brooches shaped with delicate patterns had become objects of near-mythical status among the nobility. Lords and ladies from as far as the Reach and the Riverlands wrote to Casterly Rock requesting commissions, offering exorbitant sums.
His name as blacksmith was steadily growing as well.The weapons and armor he had forged had begun to earn their own reputation, separate from the jewelry. The weapons he produced were superior than any steel in Westeros, and perhaps Planetos as a whole, save Valyrian steel.
He had discovered, through months of experimentation, that even a trace amount of mithril alloyed with ordinary steel produced a metal that was both stronger and lighter than any on the market.
Tyrion had recently spent three months on a full plate of armour for Jaime.
The suit of armour was a masterpiece. The breastplate bore the Lannister lion in raised gold, each whisker individually wrought, the mane flowing across the gorget in a cascade of detail that caught the light from every angle. The pauldrons were shaped like roaring lion heads, the gauntlets etched with patterns of interlocking scales that mimicked the texture of a dragon. The steel itself was a deep, warm gold that seemed to glow from within, the mithril alloy giving it a luster that no amount of polishing could achieve with ordinary metal.
Jaime had worn it at the tourney celebrating Joffrey's fifth nameday, and the aristocracy had salivated at the sight of it.
Tyrion's workshop had received enough orders in the following moons from lords all across Westeros requesting him for a commission.
But Tywin had not been pleased with Tyrion's growing fame.
The Lord of Casterly Rock had tolerated his youngest son's smithing with the same grim forbearance he applied to all of Tyrion's activities, as a necessary evil, a distraction to be managed rather than an asset to be cultivated. The dwarf's growing reputation had forced a recalculation. Tywin could not openly forbid what the entire Westerlands celebrated, and he could not deny the practical benefits of having the realm's finest smith operating from within his own castle. But he had made his displeasure known in the ways that Tywin Lannister always made his displeasure known - through silence, through the withholding of approval, through the careful arrangement of circumstances that reminded Tyrion of his place.
Two years ago, that arrangement had taken the form of an order.
"The drains require cleaning," Tywin had said, standing in Tyrion's workshop with his hands clasped behind his back, his dispassionate pale green eyes moving across the half-finished pieces on the workbenches. "The sewers of Casterly Rock have not been redesigned in three centuries. They flood during the winter rains, and the smell in the lower levels has become untenable. You will address this."
The command had been delivered without preamble, without consultation, without any pretense that the task was anything other than what it was — an assignment beneath a lord's son, a reminder that Tywin Lannister's dwarf would be put to work on whatever the Lord of Casterly Rock deemed appropriate, regardless of talent or reputation.
But Tyrion had taken to it with gusto.
Fuck you old man. I'll build the best fucking drainage system this miserable rock in space has ever seen.
The existing drainage system of Casterly Rock had been nothing more than a network of crude channels cut into the stone, following the natural contours of the mountain with little regard for efficiency or hygiene. Waste collected in pools, overflowed during heavy rain, and created a stench that permeated the lower levels of the castle with a horrible stench, The servants who worked in those areas developed respiratory ailments at rates that would have alarmed a maester with any interest in public health.
Tyrion had spent three months mapping the existing system. With his stone sense he could map the entire system in an instant, but to maintain the pretence of normality he had crawled through tunnels that had not been inspected in generations, measuring gradients and flow rates and the capacity of every channel and cistern. He had drawn plans on vellum sheets that covered an entire wall of his workshop — precise, detailed diagrams that showed the existing infrastructure in red and his proposed improvements in blue. The new system would use gravity and pressure differentials to create a continuous flow, with settling tanks to separate solid waste from liquid, filtration channels lined with charcoal and sand to purify the water before it reached the sea, and a series of overflow chambers designed to handle the worst winter storms without backing up into the castle's living quarters. The channels would be lined with the finest steel and imbued with runes of stability and strength to prevent their degradation.
The construction had taken eighteen months. Tyrion had overseen every aspect personally, directing the stonemasons and laborers with exacting precision. He had carefully used his power to make the excavation through the stone faster and more accurate than any conventional method could have achieved. He had shaped channels with smooth, seamless walls that water could not cling to, had created junctions that eliminated the stagnation points where waste accumulated, had designed a system that was, by his reckoning, the most advanced on the planet.
The results spoke for themselves. The stench that had plagued the lower levels for generations vanished within weeks of the new system's activation. The incidence of respiratory illness among the servants dropped to near zero. The cisterns collected rainwater with such efficiency that Casterly Rock's water supply became the envy of every castle in the westerlands. Even Tywin, who had assigned the task as a humiliation, had been forced to acknowledge the improvement — not with praise, which he did not give, but with a curt nod and the absence of further humiliating assignments.
But Casterly Rock had become boring.
The thought settled over Tyrion as he walked beside Jaime, his small boots kicking at loose stones on the coastal road.
The Rock was magnificent, yes — a fortress carved from a mountain, a monument to Lannister wealth and power that had stood for thousands of years. But it was also a cage. The same corridors, the same faces, the same endless cycle of forging and designing and improving systems that few appreciated, and even fewer could comprehend. Tyrion had explored every passage, mapped every mine shaft, catalogued every storeroom. He knew the Rock the way a man knows his own body — intimately, completely, and with a growing desire for something beyond its boundaries.
The gold helped. Don't get him wrong. Tyrion loved gold, and the veins beneath Casterly Rock were like a warm blanket wrapped around his consciousness whenever he reached out with his stone sense. He could feel the metal down there, vast and ancient and patient, running through the heart of the mountain in threads of yellow and white and copper-red. Some veins were thin as thread, others thick as a man's arm, and deep below, in chambers that no miner had reached in generations, there were pockets of raw gold so pure they glowed in the darkness like captured sunlight. The sensation was almost erotic — a constant, humming presence that he could access at will, a reassurance that no matter how dull the days above became, the earth below held treasures beyond counting.
But gold was not enough. Not anymore.
He had not anchored the Mines of Moria to the castle. The pocket dimension remained his private sanctuary, accessible only through the fracture in reality that responded to his will. He visited it regularly, harvesting the mithril at regular junctions to forge pieces that he stored in hidden chambers. The metal was too valuable, too distinctive, too likely to raise questions. Let the world marvel at his steel and gold. The mithril would remain a secret aside from trace amounts he occasionally included in his public works.
The road curved, and Casterly Rock came into view. The sight was impressive by any standard, a colossal stone hill rising from the coastline, its western face catching the last light of the setting sun so that it glowed like a second sunset. The castle sprawled across the summit and burrowed into the depths, its windows and arrow slits scattered across the stone like stars, and at its base the Lion's Mouth yawned wide, the massive cavern entrance that served as the main gate.
But Tyrion had seen it every day of his life, and the itch for the unknown was grating at him.
"You're brooding," Jaime murmered.
The knight walked with the easy, loose-limbed grace, his white cloak replaced for the visit by a tunic of crimson and gold that marked him as a Lannister rather than a Kingsguard. At twenty-two, Jaime had grown into his full height of six-two. His green eyes were the same, though. Bright, quick, carrying that particular combination of warmth and distance that made people feel seen and dismissed in the same moment.
Jaime's reputation had undergone a transformation in the years since the sack. The revelation of the wildfire caches had rewritten the narrative of that day in the throne room, and Jaime Lannister, who had killed a king to save a city, who had sat on the Iron Throne had become a figure of complex admiration.
The smallfolk of King's Landing called him the Savior of the City. The lords sought his company at feasts and hunts, eager to hear the story from the man who had lived it. Even the last remaining knight of the Kingsguard, Barristan Selmy, who had regarded Jaime with suspicion in the early days of Robert's reign, had come to respect the weight of what he had done.
The nickname Kingslayer had not disappeared. But its meaning had shifted, the derision that would have otherwise tainted the nickname was instead used like a war name earned in battle. A mark of distinction rather than disgrace. Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. The man who had done what needed doing when honor and duty pointed in opposite directions.
"I'm just thinking dear brother," Tyrion corrected. "A dangerous pastime, I know. And a habit you often show a shocking dearth of."
Jaime laughed, the sound bright and easy. He stretched his arms above his head, his fingers interlacing, and the muscles in his shoulders shifted beneath the fine linen of his tunic.
"Thinking," he repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth as though he was tasting it. "Gods preserve us. The realm's finest smith is thinking. Should I send for the maester? Fetch a poultice? Perhaps a tourniquet for the mind before it bleeds out through the ears."
"Your concern is touching. Truly."
"I leave thinking to those with the equipment for it, brother." Jaime dropped his arms and looked down at Tyrion with a cheeky grin."What occupies the mighty mind of the realm's finest smith? You've got that look, where your eyebrows do the thing and your mouth goes all pinched, like you've bitten into a lemon"
"My eyebrows do not do a thing."
"They absolutely do a thing. It's the same face you made when Father assigned you the drains."
Tyrion snorted. The memory was not entirely unpleasant. The drainage system had been a humiliation, yes, but he had turned it into something extraordinary."
"The drains were a masterpiece and you know it."
"I know nothing of the sort. I've never inspected a drain in my life, and I intend to keep it that way." Jaime kicked a stone off the path and watched it bounce down the slope toward the sea. "But the maesters say the castle hasn't smelled this good since before the Conquest, so I'll take your word for it."
They walked in silence for a moment, the crunch of gravel beneath their boots and the distant crash of waves filling the space between them.
Tyrion let out a long sigh.
"I'm bored, Jaime."
Jaime glanced down at him, one golden eyebrow raised. "Bored. In Casterly Rock. With all its treasures and its wine cellars and its endless supply of servants who jump when you snap your fingers."
Tyrion stopped, and paused before speaking, "'Im fifteen years old and I've done more with my hands than most men do in a lifetime. I've forged armor and jewellery for half the nobles in Westeros. I've done everything Father asked and several things he didn't.
Father isn't going to suddenly discover paternal affection Jaime. It's not going to happen. And I refuse to spend the next twenty years proving myself to him."
Jaime opened his mouth — to argue, to deflect— and Tyrion cut him off with a sharp gesture.
"Even the library has grown wanting," Tyrion continued. "Maester Creylen brings me nothing new. I've read the histories, the philosophies, the natural sciences. I've studied the Valyrian texts until I can read them in my sleep. There's nothing left in those shelves for me, Jaime. Nothing."
He turned and started walking again, his short legs eating the distance with a determined stride that made Jaime lengthen his own to keep pace.
"You could come to King's Landing," Jaime offered. "The capital's full of distractions. Tourneys. Brothels. The Hand's tourney alone would keep you entertained for a month. Robert's always throwing money at something. You could set up a workshop, take commissions from the nobility. Cersei would hate it, which is reason enough on its own."
"Cersei would have me poisoned within a fortnight."
"Cersei would try." Jaime's grin turned wolfish. "And fail. You're cleverer than she is, and she knows it, and that's what drives her mad.'"
The joke landed, and Tyrion felt the corner of his mouth twitch despite himself. The image of Cersei hunched over a cup of wine, muttering about dwarves and poison, while he sat across the room forging a necklace that would make her weep with envy. There was certainly something viciously appealing about it.
But the satisfaction was brief, and Tyrion dismissed it with a wave of his hand.
"King's Landing is a cesspool, Jaime. A literal cesspool, filled with literal shit and metaphorical shit in equal measure. The politics alone would suffocate me within a month. Robert drinks himself into a stupor while Jon Arryn holds the realm together with twine and prayer, and the courtiers circle each other like vultures waiting for someone to die so they can pick at the carcass." He shook his head. "No. I have no interest in coming anywhere near that particular nest of vipers. Not for all the gold in Casterly Rock."
Jaime's grin faltered, then returned with a different quality — less teasing, more curious. He studied his brother's face as they walked.
"Then what?" Jaime asked. "If not the capital, then where? The Reach? Dorne? You'd like Dorne. The women are—"
"My dreams are grander than that."
Tyrion stopped walking. The road had brought them to a promontory that jutted out over the sea, a shelf of pale stone where the wind came in off the water with enough force to pull at their hair and clothes. Below, the waves crashed against the base of the cliff in explosions of white foam, and the Sunset Sea stretched westward in an endless expanse of copper and gold, the horizon a molten line where sky met water.
He turned to face his brother, and the wind caught his beard and pulled the braids sideways, the gold threads catching the light like sparks.
"I want to see the Free Cities," Tyrion said. "Braavos. Pentos. Volantis. I want to walk the Titan's steps and hear the hundred thousand voices of the Secret City. I want to see the Long Bridge and the Black Walls and the ruins of the Rhoynar that the Valyrians drowned.
"I want to sail to the Summer Isles," Tyrion continued, his voice gaining momentum. "I want to taste their wines and hear their music and see the birds they keep that speak in complete sentences. I want to stand on the deck of a ship and watch the stars wheel overhead in patterns I've never seen, because the sky is different there, Jaime. The maesters say the constellations shift the farther south you go, and I want to see it with my own eyes."
He took a step toward the edge of the promontory, close enough that the wind pushed at his back and the drop yawned below him, the waves crashing against rock a hundred feet down. He didn't flinch. The stone beneath his feet was warm and alive beneath his awareness. It would not let him fall.
"I want to see the ruins of Valyria. The Doom that shattered the greatest empire the world has ever known. The smoking sea and the shattered peninsula and whatever horrors still live in the ash. I want to stand on ground that no living man has walked in four centuries and feel the weight of what was lost."
Jaime said nothing. His green eyes were fixed on his brother's face.
"And I want to piss over the edge of the Wall."
The silence that followed was broken only by the wind and the distant crash of waves. Jaime stared at his brother for a long moment, his mouth slightly open, and then he threw his head back and laughed.
"You want to piss over the Wall," Jaime repeated, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Of all the grand ambitions — the Free Cities, the Summer Isles, the ruins of fucking Valyria — and you end with pissing over the Wall."
"I said what I said."
"Seven hells, Tyrion." Jaime was still laughing, but the sound had changed, the humor giving way to something warmer. He looked at his brother — really looked at him. The tiny boy had grown into a tiny man. But a man nonetheless.
"You're serious."
"Deathly."
Jaime's laughter faded. He ran a hand through his golden hair, pushing it back from his face, and the wind immediately undid his work, sending the strands flying.
"You know Father will never allow it," Jaime said. "A Lannister does not wander the Free Cities like a common merchant. A Lannister does not sail to the Summer Isles for pleasure. And A Lannister will not not travel to the ruins of Valyria on Tywin Lannister's coin.
"Father," Tyrion said, "does not own me."
The words hung in the air between them, simple and absolute.
Jaime opened his mouth to say something, but the words died before they reached his tongue.
Tyrion's eyes stopped him.
They were green and black, those eyes, the same mismatched combination they had always been, but in that moment they were hard as diamond and cold, and they held no room for deflection, no patience for the easy answers Jaime had always relied on to navigate difficult conversations.
Jaime knew that look. He had seen it on his father's face a thousand times, in the moments before Tywin Lannister did something that could not and would not be undone. The same iron, the same immovability.
He had simply never expected to see it on Tyrion.
Father's truest child really is the one who he despies
"He thinks he does," Tyrion continued. His voice was level, conversational, "He thinks he owns me the way he owns the gold in Casterly Rock's veins. He thinks I am a resource to be managed, a problem to be contained, a shame to be hidden, and I have let him think that, because it's been easier than the alternative.
"And what's the alternative?"
"I leave."
The wind chose that moment to gust, pulling at their clothes and sending a spray of salt water up from the waves below.
"I have gold," Tyrion said. "Not Father's gold. Mine. I have enough to buy a ship. Enough to fund a journey that would last years.
Jaime's face had gone through several expressions in rapid succession, surprise, concern, something that might have been envy, before settling on consideration.
"If you leave," Jaime said slowly, "Father will send men after you. He'll turn over every stone from here to the Rhoyne. A Lannister does not simply walk away."
"I'm not simply walking away. I'm walking toward something." Tyrion turned to face the sea again, his small hands resting on the stone parapet. "And Father's men won't find me. Not if I don't want to be found."
The certainty in his voice gave Jaime pause.
"You've thought about this," Jaime said. It wasn't a question.
"Every day for the past year."
Jaime stared at him, and rubbed a hand through his hair.
"Well," Jaime said. "Do try and leave with as little mess as possible."
Tyrion grinned. "I shall endeavour to do so."
Tyrion reached to his belt and unhooked a small leather flask, uncorked it with his teeth, and took a long pull. The mead hit his tongue like liquid sunlight — rich, honeyed, with undertones of clove and berries, it warmed his chest and spread through his limbs like a slow fire. He hummed with pleasure, the sound rumbling in his throat.
After completing the sewer project, the grimoire had blessed him with a much-needed gift that any true Dwarf would ache for:
[Bugman's Legacy - Warhammer Fantasy]
In the Old World, a Dwarf values three things with absolute, life-or-death seriousness: his beard, his gold, and his ale. Among all the Master Brewers of history, the legendary Josef Bugman stands as the absolute, undisputed paragon of the craft. This blessing imbues your hands and mind with the sacred, closely-guarded secrets of a JOsef Bugman himslef. Legendary Dawi Master Brewer, allowing you to craft beverages that blur the line between mundane chemistry and high magic.
With this gift, your brewing is no longer just a trade, but a legendary art. The ales, stouts, and meads you ferment possess supernatural restorative properties, capable of lifting the deepest despair and washing away the heaviest fatigue. Furthermore, your unique brews can act as potent regenerative agents; a single hearty Restoring Draught allows anyone who drinks it to rapidly knit broken bones, seal deep wounds, and gain the tireless endurance needed to outlast any foe in battle.
Brewing had immediately become a delightful new activity of his, and though not every draught was magical, his mead was extraordinary — far better than the wine he had been satiating his alcohol cravings with. He had begun with a simple honey base, sourced from beekeepers in the hills east of Lannisport, and through a process of trial, error, and the occasional application of supernatural intuition, he had arrived at a recipe that produced a drink capable of making a man forget his own name and thank the gods for the privilege.
He had created multiple new caverns within Casterly Rock into brewries lined with oak casks and copper kettles, the air thick with the sweet, yeasty scent of fermentation.
"Mead. My own creation." Tyrion offered the flask, and Jaime took it, sniffing the contents with cautious suspicion.
"Your own creation. You've taken up brewing now? What's next? Embroidery? Flower arranging?"
"Brewed, fermented, aged, bottled. The whole tedious process. Now drink it, you insufferable golden oaf."
Jaime grinned and he raised the flask to his lips.
The second the liquid touched his tongue, Jaime's eyes widened. He immediately took a second, longer pull before lowering the flask with a look of genuine astonishment.
"That's—" He paused, searching for the word. "That's the best thing I've ever tasted."
"I know."
"How did you—" Jaime turned the flask in his hand, examining it as though the leather might reveal its secrets. "What did you put in this?"
"Trade secret. The Dwarves of the Old World would kill me if I told you." Tyrion grinned and snatched the flask back. "I've been experimenting. It's given me time to think about what really matters in life."
"Gold, women, and wine. The Lannister trifecta." Jaime quipped.
"Close. Gold, women, and this." Tyrion held up the flask. "Though I'm open to negotiating the order."
"You should sell this," Jaime said. "You'd make a fortune. More than you make forging weapons."
"And compete with the Arbor? The Redwynes would send assassins."
"The Redwynes would send marriage proposals. They'd want you in the family."
"I'm already in a family. It hasn't worked out particularly well."
Jaime laughed, the sound carrying across the coastal road and mingling with the crash of waves against the rocks below. The sun had dipped lower, painting the sea in shades of amber and rose, and the road ahead stretched empty save for the occasional cart returning from the city.
"How is the capital?" Tyrion changed the topic.
"Loud. Smelly. Full of people who are solely concerned with self-preservation." Jaime's tone was light, but something flickered behind his eyes, a shadow that passed quickly, the ghost of a thought he did not wish to examine. "Robert drinks. Jon Arryn rules. Varys whispers. The usual."
"And Cersei?"
The question hung between them. Jaime's stride did not falter, but his expression subtly tightened, a withdrawal so slight that only someone who had spent a lifetime studying his brother would have noticed it. Tyrion noticed.
"Cersei is well," Jaime said. "She sends her regards."
"She does no such thing."
"No. She doesn't." Jaime's smile returned, but it was thinner now, edged with something that might have been resignation. "She asked me to remind you that you're still a monster who killed our mother, and that she hopes you choke on your next cup of wine."
"I can see the originality of her insults never changes," Tyrion said wryly.
Then a scream cut through the evening air. It was high, desperate, and unmistakably female, and it was followed by the deeper sound of men's voices, rough and laughing.
Jaime's hand went to his sword hilt before the scream had finished echoing. His body shifted from the loose, easy posture to the coiled readiness of a fighter, his weight moving to the balls of his feet, his green eyes sharpening with focus.
Tyrion's reaction was different. He did not reach for a weapon — the warhammer was back at the Rock, leaning against his forge. Instead, he extended his senses through the ground below reading the vibrations of footsteps, the rhythm of heartbeats, the weight and distribution of bodies on the road ahead.
"Six men," Tyrion said quietly. "One woman. They're just around the bend, in the trees beside the road. The men are armed — swords, one has a cudgel. The woman is on the ground."
Jaime looked at him. The question was in his eyes — how do you know that? — but the scream came again, closer this time, raw with terror, and the question died unasked.
"Stay here," Jaime said.
"Don't be absurd." Tyrion was already moving. "I'm bored, remember? This is the most interesting thing that's happened in moons."
"Tyrion—"
"If you're going to say something about my size, I've heard it before and it wasn't clever the first time." The dwarf's voice was light, almost cheerful, but his eyes had gone hard. "Lest you forget, I am no cripple, dear brother." The words came out hard, and sharp."None can match me in the training yard. I've beaten every man-at-arms in the castle."
Jaime opened his mouth to argue, but closed it. He may have argued before, but he had seen his brother kill before all those years ago. And if Gerion and Tygett's letters were to be believed, Tyrion had only become better since then. A terror with a warhammer, undefeated in the yard.
He sighed. And said, "Stay safe."
"Don't I always?"
Jaime let out a suffering sigh. "Fine," Jaime said, "But if you get yourself killed, I'm telling Father it was your idea."
"Tell him I died heroically saving a maiden. He'll be so surprised he might actually crack a smile."
They moved together around the bend.
The scene that greeted them was exactly what Tyrion had described through the stone — six men gathered in a loose semicircle beneath the branches of an ancient oak that overhung the road. They were rough-looking, dressed in the stained leather and patched wool of men who lived by their wits and their blades rather than their labor. The one with the cudgel was the largest, a thick-necked brute with a scar that split his lip and gave his face a permanent sneer. The others carried swords of varying quality, from a rusted shortsword that looked like it had been pulled from a riverbed to a serviceable longsword that suggested military training.
The woman was on the ground. She was young, perhaps eighteen, perhaps less, with dark hair that had come loose from its braid and a face streaked with tears and dirt. Her dress was torn at the shoulder, the fabric hanging loose to reveal a bruise already darkening on her collarbone. She had pressed herself against the trunk of the oak, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes wide and when they found the newcomers, went wide with a desperate, disbelieving hope.
The men turned at the sound of footsteps. The cudgel-wielder's sneer deepened when he saw Jaime — the golden hair, the fine tunic, the sword that gleamed in the fading light. The sneer became something more predatory, the expression of a man calculating odds and finding them favorable.
"Well," the brute said, his voice thick with ale and malice. "Look what the road brought us. A pretty lordling and his — " His gaze dropped to Tyrion, and the sneer spread across his face, "What's this? The pretty boy brought his pet?"
"I'm a dwarf," Tyrion said brightly in response. "We're quite common in these parts. Haven't you been to Lannisport? We have them in all the best brothels."
The brute blinked. One of his companions, a thin man with a missing front tooth, let out a bark of laughter before catching himself.
"You should leave the girl and run," Jaime said. His voice was calm and conversational as if he was discussing the weather. He held his sword loosely at his side, the point resting against his thigh, his body relaxed in a way that Tyrion knew could immediately explode into action. "All of you. Now. While you still can."
The cudgel-wielder looked at Jaime's sword, at the quality of his boots, at the confidence in his stance, and made the calculation that men like him always made — that gold and fine clothes meant softness, that confidence was arrogance, that one man, no matter how well-armed, could not stand against six.
"You should leave," the brute said, mimicking Jaime's tone with a mocking lilt. "While you still can."
safe."
"Ben, maybe we should go," the thinnest one muttered. He had a pinched, rat-like face, and his eyes darted between the Lannister brothers with a nervous energy. "They're nobles, Ben. Look at the clothes. Look at the sword. That's not some merchant's boy."
The brute, Ben, apparently, turned on the thin man with a snarl that pulled his scarred lip into a grotesque parody of a smile. "Shut up, Tom. We can take them. One of them's a dwarf for Seven's sake, what's he going to do, bite my ankles?"
Tom looked at Tyrion, and the dwarf gave him a cheerful little wave.
Jaime's hand tightened on his sword hilt. He was counting the men, cataloguing their weapons, their positions, the distance between each of them. The brute with the cudgel was the obvious threat, big, confident, the kind of man who relied on his size to intimidate and a heavy clumsy weapon. The one with the longsword was the real danger, though. He stood slightly apart from the others, his weight balanced, his sword held with the loose familiarity of someone who had used it before. The rest were chaff, poorly armed, poorly positioned, the kind of men who would break the moment the fight turned.
Tyrion suddenly stepped forward. He moved with an unhurried pace, his hands open at his sides, his expression one of mild curiosity. The mead flask still hung from his belt, and he made no move to draw a weapon.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I'd like to make a proposal."
Another one of the brigands, possessing truly ungodly levels of acne and missing teeth, snorted. He jabbed a finger toward Tyrion, his lips pulling back to reveal the black gaps where his front teeth should have been. "Oye Ben. Looks like the imp wants to negotiate."
"Negotiate what?" Ben asked, his cudgel tapping against his palm in a slow, rhythmic beat. "We've got the girl. You've got nothing."
"I've got gold," Tyrion said. He reached into the pouch at his belt and withdrew a single coin — a golden dragon, freshly minted, catching the last light of the setting sun. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, turning it slowly so the light played across the stamped stag. "More than you'll make in a year of this. Take it. Apologize to the lady, hand over whatever you've already stolen from her, and walk away."
Ben's eyes locked onto the coin. Tyrion watched the calculation happen behind those small, dark eyes, the greed warring with the violence, the instinct for easy gold battling the instinct for easy cruelty. For a moment, the greed won. The brute's hand twitched toward the coin, his fingers half-extending.
Then his gaze shifted to Jaime. He looked at Jaime's fine tunic, at the gold embroidery at the collar. He looked at the pouch at Tyrion's belt, which hung heavier than any common traveler's purse had a right to.
One dragon. That was what the dwarf offered. But the dwarf's brother was dressed like a lord, and lords carried more than one dragon. Lords carried purses full of them, rings and brooches and signets that could be pried from dead fingers and sold in Lannisport for enough gold to keep a man in wine and women for a year.
Ben's hand dropped. The calculation was finished, and violence had won.
"No deal," he said. His voice took a harsh mocking edge. Tom's rat-like face went white. The acne-scarred brigand grinned, his missing teeth making the expression a skull's leer. The man with the longsword shifted his weight, the blade coming up into a guard position with the smooth, practiced motion.
Tyrion sighed. "I gave you a chance. That was me giving you a chance. You should know that, for future reference."
Th Tyrion's gaze moved to the woman. "My lady, are you injured?"
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her throat worked, and she managed a single word: "Please."
"Please," Tyrion repeated. "You hear that, gentlemen? The lady said please. That's the most civil thing anyone has said in this entire exchange, and she's the one on the ground with a torn dress. I think we can all learn something from her example."
The brute's patience broke. He raised the cudgel and took a step toward Tyrion, his scarred lip pulling back from yellowed teeth. "I'm going to smash your skull, dwarf."
Jaime moved first. He was already in motion before Ben finished speaking, his sword coming up in a smooth arc. The blade took Ben, across the throat before the man could respond. Blood sprayed across the road in a dark fan, and the man dropped, his hands clutching at the ruin of his neck, making choking sounds as he dropped to the ground.
Jaime didn't stop. He pivoted on his back foot, his sword already reversing direction, and drove the point into the chest of the second man — the one who had been standing closest to the girl. The man's leather jerkin offered no resistance. The blade slid between his ribs with a wet, precise sound, and Jaime withdrew it in the same motion, turning to face the longsword man who had finally moved.
The man with the longsword was good. Tyrion could see it in the way he set his feet, the way he held his blade, he had clearly been trained well. He engaged Jaime with a quick thrust that forced the knight to parry, the steel ringing in the evening air. The two men circled each other, their blades flickering in the dying light, and for a moment the fight became something almost beautiful, two skilled swordsmen testing each other's defenses, searching for openings.
But unfortunately, he wasn't fighting just any man. He was fighting Jaime Lannister, one of the greatest swordsmen in Westeros.
The man made a lunging thrust that left him exposed for a fraction of a second. Jaime didn't even bother to parry with his sword; he stepped inside the guard. With a flick of his wrist, Jaime brought the pommel of his sword smashing into the man's jaw with a sickening crack.
As the man stumbled back, blinded by pain and chipped teeth, Jaime stepped into his space. The crimson steel of his blade flashed in the light, a single, flawless arc that sheared through leather, flesh, and bone. The man's throat opened, and he hit the ground with a heavy, wet thud, his blood pooling rapidly around Jaime's boots.
Jaime bent down and casually wiped the flat of his blade on the dead man's tunic,
Tyrion had not moved from his position. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, watching the remaining three men with a languid interest. Two of them had drawn their swords but had not yet committed to the fight, their eyes were following Jaime's fight.
Tom, the thin one, had backed away from the fight entirely. He stood at the edge of the road, his rusted sword shaking in his hand, his rat-like face pale with terror
As Jaime slowly turned to face them, with a menacing grin, the two in front of Tyrion immediately scrambled backwards and made a break for it.
The acne-scarred one went first, his rusted sword clattering to the road as he turned and ran. His companion followed half a heartbeat later, the two of them pelting into the woods ahead.
Tyrion sighed.
As he released his breath, he gently pressed his right foot down against the road in a motion so subtle that no one watching would have registered it as anything other than a shift of weight. A smooth, sudden hump of solid stone no more than three inches high discretely rose beneath the left foot of the pimply one, and the man's ankle turned, his stride broke, and he went down face-first with a cry that was equal parts surprise and pain.
The cudgel was already in Tyrion's hand. He had bent to retrieve it, and in the same continuous motion he swung it forward in a flat, spinning arc, and the weighted head caught the fallen man square in the back of the skull with a crack that echoed off the trees like a branch snapping, and the man went still.
He glanced at the other runner, who was already disappearing into the deepening shadows of the forest, and then at Jaime, who had set off after him with a bright grin. The sound of his laughter floated back through the trees, warm, delighted, entirely unhinged.
Tom was still standing at the edge of the road, his rusted sword trembling in his hand. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, and no sound came out.
Tyrion turned to look at him.
Tom dropped the sword. It hit the road with a dull clang, and the sound seemed to break whatever held him in place. He raised his hands, palms outward, and backed away with the careful, shuffling steps of a man retreating from a sleeping dragon.
"I didn't — I didn't touch her," Tom stammered. His voice cracked on the last word, rising into something close to a whimper. "I told them. I told Ben we should go. I told him you were nobles. He wouldn't listen. He never listens. Please. Please, my lord, I didn't touch her."
Tyrion studied him for a moment — the thin face, the missing tooth, the terror that radiated from him like heat from a coal. He could read the man's heartbeat through the stone, fast and fluttering, a bird trapped in a cage.
Damn my soft heart.
"Surrender," Tyrion said, "and I'll allow you to take the Black."
Tom's knees immediately hit the road. The thin man folded forward, his forehead nearly touching the dirt, his hands still raised in supplication.
"Thank you, milord," Tom gasped. "I'll take the Black. I'll take it. I'll take it gladly. Thank you for your mercy."
"Stand up," Tyrion said. "Go and sit next to that tree ahead. I'll be turning you in once we reach Casterly Rock."
Tom scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward the tree ahead, his legs nearly buckling beneath him, and collapsed against the trunk with his arms wrapped around his knees
Tyrion finally turned to the woman.
She had not moved from her position against the oak. Her arms were still wrapped around her knees, her torn dress pulled tight across her shoulders, and her dark eyes were fixed on Tyrion with an expression that had shifted from terror to a stunned incomprehension.
He approached with careful, unhurried steps as if approaching a wounded animal. He crouched before her, bringing himself to her eye level, and he took off the coat he was wearing and wrapped it around her to preserve her modestly. His voice was soft and warm, ""How are you, my lady?"
She looked at him. On closer inspection, her eyes were brown, dark as wet earth, and they were red-rimmed and swollen from crying. The tears had cut clean tracks through the dirt on her cheeks.
"I'm — I'm well, my lord," she said. Her voice was thin, scraped raw, but it held. "Thank you. Thank you both. I thought they were going to — "
She stopped. Her lower lip trembled, and she pressed her mouth shut against it, biting down hard. Her hands were shaking. Tyrion could see the fine tremor running through her fingers where they gripped the torn fabric of her dress.
"You don't have to say it," Tyrion said. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen, my lord."
"Eighteen," Tyrion repeated. He reached for the flask at his belt, uncorked it, and held it out to her. "Drink. It will help."
She looked at the flask, then at his face, and something in his expression, the steadiness of it, the complete absence of pity, made her reach out and take it. Her fingers brushed against his, and he felt the tremor in them, the aftershock of fear still running through her nervous system. She raised the flask to her lips and drank.
The effect was immediate. Her eyes widened, the same way Jaime's had, and the tension in her shoulders eased by a fraction. The mead worked its subtle magic, not the full restorative power of the draughts he brewed for battle, but enough warmth, enough comfort, enough of the honeyed sweetness to loosen the knot of terror that had seized her chest.
"Could you honor me with your name?"
The girl's lips trembled. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. The words came out in a whisper so faint that Tyrion had to lean forward to catch them.
"I am Tysha, milord."
The name went off like an explosion in Tyrion's head.
...
Well…things have suddenly become interesting.
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Author Note: Hehe Tysha has come. I have plans. Hope you enjoyed the chapter!
Tyrion when he realises that it's Tysha:
Jaime taking way too much enjoyment in killing:
I have posted a picture of Tyrion on my for you guys to view for free if you're interested. (linktr. ee/DarkeBones.)
If you want to read TWO chapters ahead of my public release please see:
linktr. ee/DarkeBones.