A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Catelyn IV

Catelyn reaches King's Landing in secret and is fetched to Littlefinger, who names the dagger's owner: Tyrion Lannister ÔÇö a lie with a long tail.

The chapter retold

Catelyn arrives in King's Landing in secret, trusting no one, and is intercepted by Petyr Baelish ÔÇö Littlefinger, an old friend from her Riverrun girlhood who once loved her enough to duel her betrothed for the privilege and lost. He offers her what she came south for: the name of the dagger's owner, the one used against Bran. He tells her it belongs to Tyrion Lannister, won, he says, in a wager at the tourney celebrating Prince Joffrey's nameday. Catelyn, already primed to believe the worst of the Lannisters, takes the information as confirmation rather than as the claim of one man with his own tangled history and motives.

It's a masterstroke of dramatic irony: the reader has already watched Jaime, not Tyrion, push Bran from the tower, so Littlefinger's information ÔÇö whether he believes it himself or is lying outright ÔÇö sends Catelyn's investigation down entirely the wrong branch of the family tree. Her trust in an old friend's word, offered so smoothly and so conveniently, becomes the single decision that turns a private assassination attempt into a public war between two great houses.

This movement: The Road South

• A catspaw with a Valyrian dagger comes for the sleeping Bran; Catelyn's hands and Summer's teeth stop him.
• On the kingsroad, Joffrey's cruelty costs Mycah his life, Sansa her wolf, and Arya her innocence.
• Jon takes the black and finds the Watch is boys and broken men; Tyrion goes along to piss off the edge of the world.
• Catelyn rides south in secret with the dagger ÔÇö and in a crossroads inn, arrests Tyrion Lannister.