A Dance with Dragons — Tyrion XI
Free in the chaos of the plague camps, Tyrion, Penny and Jorah sign with the Second Sons; the dwarf writes his promises in a ledger — Casterly Rock, payable on victory.
The chapter retold
Free at last in the chaos left by Yezzan’s death and the plague tearing through the siege camps, Tyrion, Penny and Ser Jorah sign on with the Second Sons, a sellsword company already contracted to Yunkai but not, in the way that matters most to a dwarf with nothing left to sell but cleverness, contracted for loyalty. Tyrion writes his own value down in the company’s ledger in the oldest currency he owns: promises, backed by Casterly Rock, payable in full the day his queen wins.
The chapter marks the moment Tyrion stops drifting east as cargo and starts working the angle he’s actually good at — not swordsmanship, not brute survival, but the patient, deniable business of buying loyalty with future gold he may never be able to deliver. It’s a bet dressed up as a contract, and the reader who has watched him lose every material thing he owns over the course of this book understands exactly how much is actually riding on a name and a promise.
This movement: The Harpy's Bargain
- Dany weds Hizdahr zo Loraq to still the knives; the fighting pits reopen with a queen presiding.
- In Daznak's Pit the locusts are poisoned and the crowd screams — for Drogon, descended on the sand. Dany mounts him and is gone.
- Quentyn Martell tries to steal a dragon with a whip and burns for the family words.
- Barristan Selmy takes the city in hand, arrests Hizdahr, and readies Meereen for the Yunkish war outside the walls.