A Dance With Dragons

gentle swaying of the litter was enough to make his gorge rise in his throat. Though he said no word of complaint, his distress must have been plain to Illyrio Mopatis. “Come, drink with me,” the fat man said. “A scale from the dragon that burned you, as they say.” He poured for them from a flagon of blackberry wine so sweet that it drew more flies than honey. Tyrion shooed them off with the back of his hand and drank deep. The taste was so cloying that it was all he could do to keep it down. The second cup went down easier, however. Even so, he had no appetite, and when Illyrio offered him a bowl of blackberries in cream he waved it off. “I dreamed about the queen,” he said. “I was on my knees before her, swearing my allegiance, but she mistook me for my brother, Jaime, and fed me to her dragons.”
    “Let us hope this dream was not prophetic. You are a clever imp, just as Varys said, and Daenerys will have need of clever men about her. Ser Barristan is a valiant knight and true; but none, I think, has ever called him cunning.”
    “Knights know only one way to solve a problem. They couch their lances and charge. A dwarf has a different way of looking at the world. What of you, though? You are a clever man yourself.”
    “You flatter me.” Illyrio waggled his hand. “Alas, I am not made for travel, so I will send you to Daenerys in my stead. You did Her Grace a great service when you slew your father, and it is my hope that you will do her many more. Daenerys is not the fool her brother was. She will make good use of you.”
    As kindling? Tyrion thought, smiling pleasantly.
    They changed out teams only thrice that day but seemed to halt twice an hour at the least so Illyrio could climb down from the litter and have himself a piss. Our lord of cheese is the size of an elephant, but he has a bladder like a peanut, the dwarf mused. During one stop, he used the time to have a closer look at the road. Tyrion knew what he would find: not packed earth, nor bricks, nor cobbles, but a ribbon of fused stone raised a half foot above the ground to allow rainfall and snowmelt to run off its shoulders. Unlike the muddy tracks that passed for roads in the Seven Kingdoms, the Valyrian roads were wide enough for three wagons to pass abreast, and neither time nor traffic marred them. They still endured, unchanging, four centuries after Valyria itself had met its Doom. He looked for ruts and cracks but found only a pile of warm dung deposited by one of the horses.
    The dung made him think of his lord father. Are you down in some hell, Father? A nice cold hell where you can look up and see me help restore Mad Aerys’s daughter to the Iron Throne?
    As they resumed their journey, Illyrio produced a bag of roasted chestnuts and began to speak once more of the dragon queen. “Our last news of Queen Daenerys is old and stale, I fear. By now she will have left Meereen, we must assume. She has her host at last, a ragged host of sellswords, Dothraki horselords, and Unsullied infantry, and she will no doubt lead them west, to take back her father’s throne.” Magister Illyrio twisted open a pot of garlic snails, sniffed at them, and smiled. “At Volantis, you will have fresh tidings of Daenerys, we must hope,” he said, as he sucked one from its shell. “Dragons and young girls are both capricious, and it may be that you will need to adjust your plans. Griff will know what to do. Will you have a snail? The garlic is from my own gardens.”
    I could ride a snail and make a better pace than this litter of yours. Tyrion waved the dish away. “You place a deal of trust in this man Griff. Another friend of your childhood?”
    “No. A sellsword, you would call him, but Westerosi born. Daenerys needs men worthy of her cause.” Illyrio raised a hand. “I know! ‘ Sellswords put gold before honor, ’ you are thinking. ‘ This man Griff will sell me to my sister. ’ Not so. I trust Griff as I would trust a brother.”
    Another mortal error. “Then I shall do likewise.”
    “The Golden Company marches toward Volantis as we speak, there to await the coming of our queen out of the east.”
    Beneath the gold, the bitter steel. “I had heard the Golden Company was under contract with one of the Free Cities.”
    “Myr.” Illyrio smirked. “Contracts can be broken.”
    “There is more coin in cheese than I knew,” said Tyrion. “How did you accomplish that?”
    The magister waggled his fat fingers. “Some contracts