High in the Red Keep, the wind blew in from Blackwater Bay, carrying the tang of salt and the peculiar stench of King's Landing.
Tyrion Lannister stood at the window, his small frame almost lost within its enormous casing.
He did not look out over the sprawling red roofs and streets of King's Landing. His heavy gaze rested on the Royal Training Yard below.
The sun scorched the flagstones, and footsteps stirred up dust.
In the yard, a hulking human figure was "sparring" with a young squire.
Sparring was hardly the word. It was a crushing.
Gregor Clegane, known as the Mountain, swung his wooden practice sword with wind-splitting brute force, each blow as heavy as falling stone.
The squire was barely fifteen or sixteen, his armor new and his face still boyish. He could only dodge desperately and barely block with an oak shield, retreating step by step. Each blow he caught left his arm numb and his face deathly pale.
The most terrifying monster in the castle, the Lannisters' most vicious mad dog, had been recalled from the Riverlands front by a written order. Like a raging bull chained in iron, he was trapped in a courtyard in King's Landing, reduced to a... stranded piece, waiting to be traded, yet liable to run wild at any moment.
Tyrion watched, his mismatched eyes still and empty of everything but cold calculation.
Footsteps approached as softly as a ghost, almost merging with the wind in the corridor.
Petyr Baelish stood silently half a pace behind him, like an elegant shadow.
He wore a well-cut velvet coat of purple so dark it was nearly black. A silver Mockingbird pin gleamed faintly at his collar, and his customary, unfathomable smile rested on his face. His gaze likewise settled on the grossly uneven