A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

against … nothing. Tyrion snatched his hand back as fast as if it had been scalded, and tried his best to stop breathing. He had fallen right on the edge, inches from the blue.
    â€œMore to say?” Mord held the strap between his fistsand gave it a sharp pull. The
snap
made Tyrion jump. The turnkey laughed.
    He won’t push me over
, Tyrion told himself desperately as he crawled away from the edge.
Catelyn Stark wants me alive, he doesn’t dare kill me
. He wiped the blood off his lips with the back of his hand, grinned, and said, “That was a stiff one, Mord.” The gaoler squinted at him, trying to decide if he was being mocked. “I could make good use of a strong man like you.” The strap flew at him, but this time Tyrion was able to cringe away from it. He took a glancing blow to the shoulder, nothing more. “Gold,” he repeated, scrambling backward like a crab, “more gold than you’ll see here in a lifetime. Enough to buy land, women, horses … you could be a lord. Lord Mord.” Tyrion hawked up a glob of blood and phlegm and spat it out into the sky.
    â€œIs no gold,” Mord said.
    He’s listening!
Tyrion thought. “They relieved me of my purse when they captured me, but the gold is still mine. Catelyn Stark might take a man prisoner, but she’d never stoop to rob him. That wouldn’t be honorable. Help me, and all the gold is yours.” Mord’s strap licked out, but it was a halfhearted, desultory swing, slow and contemptuous. Tyrion caught the leather in his hand and held it prisoned. “There will be no risk to you. All you need do is deliver a message.”
    The gaoler yanked his leather strap free of Tyrion’s grasp. “Message,” he said, as if he had never heard the word before. His frown made deep creases in his brow.
    â€œYou heard me, my lord. Only carry my word to your lady. Tell her …”
What? What would possibly make Lysa Arryn relent?
The inspiration came to Tyrion Lannister suddenly. “… tell her that I wish to confess my crimes.”
    Mord raised his arm and Tyrion braced himself for another blow, but the turnkey hesitated. Suspicion and greed warred in his eyes. He wanted that gold, yet he feared a trick; he had the look of a man who had often been tricked. “Is lie,” he muttered darkly. “Dwarf man cheat me.”
    â€œI will put my promise in writing,” Tyrion vowed.
    Some illiterates held writing in disdain; others seemed to have a superstitious reverence for the written word, asif it were some sort of magic. Fortunately, Mord was one of the latter. The turnkey lowered the strap. “Writing down gold. Much gold.”
    â€œOh,
much
gold,” Tyrion assured him. “The purse is just a taste, my friend. My brother wears armor of solid gold plate.” In truth, Jaime’s armor was gilded steel, but this oaf would never know the difference.
    Mord fingered his strap thoughtfully, but in the end, he relented and went to fetch paper and ink. When the letter was written, the gaoler frowned at it suspiciously. “Now deliver my message,” Tyrion urged.
    He was shivering in his sleep when they came for him, late that night. Mord opened the door but kept his silence. Ser Vardis Egen woke Tyrion with the point of his boot. “On your feet, Imp. My lady wants to see you.”
    Tyrion rubbed the sleep from his eyes and put on a grimace he scarcely felt. “No doubt she does, but what makes you think I wish to see her?”
    Ser Vardis frowned. Tyrion remembered him well from the years he had spent at King’s Landing as the captain of the Hand’s household guard. A square, plain face, silver hair, a heavy build, and no humor whatsoever. “Your wishes are not my concern. On your feet, or I’ll have you carried.”
    Tyrion clambered awkwardly to his feet. “A cold night,” he said casually, “and the High Hall is so drafty. I don’t wish to catch a chill. Mord, if you would be so good, fetch my cloak.”
    The gaoler squinted at him, face dull with suspicion.
    â€œMy
cloak,”
Tyrion repeated. “The shadowskin you took from me for safekeeping. You recall.”
    â€œGet him the damnable cloak,” Ser Vardis said.
    Mord did not dare grumble. He gave Tyrion a glare that promised future retribution, yet he went for the cloak. When he draped it around his prisoner’s neck,