A Dance with Dragons — Tyrion XII

Battle gathers around Meereen: the Second Sons weigh their contract against the wind, and a dwarf with a ledger talks treason toward the dragon queen's side of the scale.

The chapter retold

Battle gathers in earnest around Meereen: the Second Sons, Tyrion’s new company, have to weigh their paid contract to Yunkai against which way the fighting actually seems to be blowing, and Tyrion works the calculation from the inside, a dwarf with a ledger and a silver tongue talking treason toward Daenerys’s side of the scale one captain at a time.

The chapter shows exactly what Tyrion is for in this stretch of the book — not a soldier, not a lord with lands to offer, just a man who understands, better than almost anyone alive, that loyalty in a mercenary company is a market and markets can be moved. Every conversation here is a small transaction in a much larger defection being quietly assembled, and it’s the first time since crossing the narrow sea that Tyrion’s cleverness looks like it might actually matter to the outcome of a war rather than just to his own survival.

This movement: For the Watch

• The Pink Letter reaches Jon — Ramsay claims Stannis is dead and demands his bride and his Reek. Jon calls the free folk to march on Winterfell.
• "For the Watch." Bowen Marsh and his officers put their knives in the Lord Commander, weeping as they work.
• Barristan rides out to break the Yunkish siege as the second Battle of Meereen begins; Victarion's Iron Fleet enters the bay.
• Epilogue: Varys kills Kevan Lannister and Pycelle by candlelight — to keep the realm bleeding for Aegon's landing.