A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Eddard VI

Ned follows the late Hand's footsteps to Tobho Mott's forge and meets Gendry ÔÇö a black-haired apprentice with King Robert's jaw.

The chapter retold

Following Littlefinger's hint, Ned makes his way to Tobho Mott's forge in the city and meets an apprentice there who stops him cold: a black-haired boy with King Robert's unmistakable blue eyes and jaw, plainly one of the king's many bastards, and plainly no accident that Jon Arryn had come looking for him too. The boy, Gendry, has no idea why a lord is so interested in his face, and Ned leaves the forge with more questions answered than he expected and several new ones opened.

The scene is doing careful genetic bookkeeping that pays off many chapters later: every acknowledged Baratheon bastard the book has shown or will show shares that same black hair and blue-eyed look, a family resemblance stamped reliably onto Robert's children regardless of their mothers. Ned's private observation ÔÇö filed away rather than spoken aloud ÔÇö is the first data point in the chain of reasoning that will eventually let him read the truth about the royal children sitting on the throne he's serving.

This movement: The Hand Investigates

• Ned retraces Jon Arryn's last weeks: a book of lineages, an armorer's shop, a black-haired bastard.
• The Hand's tourney: Ser Hugh of the Vale dies on the Mountain's lance; the Hound saves Loras and wins the crowd.
• Bran wakes, broken; the wolf dreams begin.
• Word of Tyrion's arrest reaches the capital, and lions begin to gather in the west.