A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Tyrion II

Illyrio hands Tyrion to a rivergalley and a sellsword called Griff; the Rhoyne unrolls southward, and the cheese-monger's kindness starts to smell like policy.

The chapter retold

Illyrio hands Tyrion off down the Rhoyne aboard the river galley Shy Maid, into the care of a scarred sellsword called Griff and his close-mouthed company ÔÇö a transaction dressed up as rescue. The cheesemongerÔÇÖs parting kindnesses, once so lavish, start to look like inventory being moved to where it will earn the most, and Tyrion, no fool about patronage even drunk, clocks the change in temperature the moment heÔÇÖs out of IllyrioÔÇÖs sight. The river itself unrolls southward past ruined river-lordsÔÇÖ towers and drowned orchards, gorgeous and slightly wrong, like everything else in this bookÔÇÖs Essos.

The chapter turns Tyrion from guest into cargo, and he knows it, which is worse than not knowing ÔÇö his cleverness, so reliable a shield in KingÔÇÖs Landing, buys him nothing out here but permission to keep talking while other people decide his itinerary. GriffÔÇÖs iron discipline and the crewÔÇÖs careful silences are the first hints that this voyage carries a bigger secret than one fugitive dwarf, though neither the reader nor Tyrion is let in on it yet. WhatÔÇÖs set in motion is a captivity so genteel it barely registers as one.

This movement: The Lost Lords

• Tyrion drinks his way across the narrow sea in a wine cask, bound for a queen with dragons ÔÇö 'wherever whores go' ringing in his ears.
• Jon Snow rules the Wall: he sends Mance's son away in secret, gives Slynt one last order, and takes his head personally.
• Dany rules Meereen in a tokar while the Sons of the Harpy paint the bricks red by night.
• Bran travels north beyond the Wall with cold hands guiding ÔÇö toward a cave, a weirwood throne, and a thousand eyes.