280 AC, spring, Casterly Rock.
When Leon Lannister raised his head from the ancient text, the Sunset Sea outside the window was burning into a sheet of flowing gold leaf.
At seven years old, he sat by the window on the top floor of the maester's tower, with a volume of A Study of High Valyrian spread before him.
The parchment had yellowed at the edges. The ink followed a formula from two hundred years ago, and some letters were already indistinct.
His right hand held a sharpened charcoal pencil. Three sheets of rough paper covered in annotations lay piled to his left.
The sounds of rummaging through chests and cupboards came from downstairs.
"Found it!" Tyrion's voice burst from the foot of the spiral staircase, brimming with irrepressible excitement. "Compendium of Mineral Vein Distribution in the Westerlands. The complete edition, not the abridged one in the maester's tower!"
A jumble of footsteps drew closer.
Tyrion Lannister, also seven, rushed upstairs carrying a thick parchment book taller than himself. Fine beads of sweat dotted his forehead, and his mismatched eyes shone extraordinarily bright.
"Guess what's in here?" Panting, he spread the book on the desk, nearly knocking over Leon's inkpot. "That abandoned mine in the Pendric Hills. The plans sealed three years ago marked it 'gold vein exhausted, abandoned.' But look here."
His grubby fingertip touched a line of tiny notes in the corner:
"Associated minerals: iron, copper, ... suspected red gold. Pending survey."
"Red gold?" Tyrion's voice cracked with excitement. "The maesters say there are no red gold mines in the Westerlands! If they missed an entire vein..."
"Then someone failed in their duties." Leon took the thick book, his gaze passing over the faded writing. "Someone would cover it up. Someone... could be held accountable."
He raised his head, his pale purple eyes briefly meeting Tyrion's mismatched ones.
"These plans were tucked between layers. Where did you find them?"
"The maester's tower cellar." Tyrion grinned, showing a missing front tooth. "The lock was old. I picked it with an old maid's hairpin."
Leon did not ask, "When did you learn to pick locks?"
Over four years, he had grown used to Tyrion unlocking a new skill every month-
Lockpicking, alchemy, cheating at dice, wheedling information out of Uncle Kevan.
The little boy who had once hidden behind the door waiting for food seemed to have died in the pig cage in 276.
"This is leverage," Leon said, folding the plans and placing them in his desk's hidden compartment. "But not to use now. We still need more."
"I know." Tyrion swiped a honey cake from Leon's plate of refreshments. "Patience."
He spoke the word flatly, as though saying, "It's raining today," or, "The ink's run out."
Four years earlier, he had repeated that word in a trembling voice inside the pig cage.
Now it had become his second skin.
Four years earlier...
The clamor of the Tourney at Lannisport had faded. The nobles had returned to their own roosts, and the king's carriage headed east along the Goldroad, taking with it the dragon prince's silver hair and their father's silent humiliation.
Cersei shut herself in her room and smashed her third silver mirror.
Jaime began practicing swordsmanship like a madman, training every day until bloody blisters formed on his hands.
Released after a month of confinement, Gerion frequented taverns more than ever, but his smile never reached his eyes again.
Tygett refused every invitation to a tourney and buried himself in Casterly Rock's military archives, studying the siege tactics of the Tarbeck Rebellion ten years before.
As for Leon and Tyrion, on the fifth day after their release from the pig cage, they received a summons from Lord Tywin.
It was the first time they had been permitted to enter the Lord of Casterly Rock's reception hall.
The sunlit hall.
At birth, they had been placed at opposite ends of this long table, like two defective goods awaiting appraisal.
Now they stood in those same places. The long table remained, its crimson velvet cloth had been replaced, but the duke's gaze had not changed.
Tywin sat in a high-backed chair, the leaden winter sea beyond the window behind him.
Two parchment scrolls lay open before him, their ink still wet: instructions for the maester's tower.
"Starting today," he said, his voice as level as a verdict, "you will go to the maester's tower every morning to receive a basic education from Maester Creylen and Maester Loomis."
He paused. "In the afternoons, Kevan will teach you the foundations of swordsmanship...
"Tyrion may learn shortsword and shield, Leon twin shortswords. Archery, riding, and physical training will be arranged within the limits of what you can endure."
Tyrion jerked his head up.
For three years, his father had never spoken to him in sentences longer than three words: "Get out," "Shut up," "Out of my sight"...
These were the Lannister words he knew best.
Tywin did not look at him.
His eyes rested on the two parchment scrolls, as though examining an ordinary set of accounts.
"Your brains," he said, "are the only parts of those malformed bodies that aren't malformed. Since the Seven gave you worthless shells, at least learn not to make your brains worthless too."
Silence.
Tyrion clenched his fists. He felt a thousand words crashing, churning, and tearing at one another in his throat!
Years of hurt, fear, anger, and bewilderment all surged to his tongue, ready to become the sharpest of questions:
If you think we're worthless, why let us study?
If you hate us, why didn't you simply strangle us?
Have you ever, even for a moment, thought of us as your sons?
But he did not speak.
Because Leon's fingers gently came to rest on the back of his hand. That hand was cold and steady, its touch very light.
Tyrion turned and saw his younger brother's pale purple eyes looking calmly toward their father.
There was no questioning in that gaze, no pleading, no attempt to please.
Only listening. Only remembering.
Tyrion swallowed every word, chewed the words in his throat to powder, and swallowed them into his stomach, letting them solidify there into a piece of ice that would never thaw.
"Yes, Father," he said.
Late that night, Leon lay on his little bed atop the west tower, staring at the ceiling with open eyes. He, too, was turning over the day's conversation.
Their father had not explained his sudden change of mind. He had not mentioned the night in the pig cage or the tavern, nor had he mentioned Rhaegar Targaryen.
He had simply issued instructions, as though assigning military supplies or allocating accounts.
But Leon's Pupil of Insight had caught something else.
When their father said, "Your brains are the parts that aren't malformed," his gaze had lingered on Leon's face for 0.3 seconds.
Beyond the disgust and scrutiny.
There had been an additional, fleeting, exceedingly faint cluster of green light... hope born of relief.
Leon rolled over and buried his face in his pillow.
Casterly Rock slumbered in the darkness, while two lion cubs had just received the first key to their cage.
Four years, more than a thousand days and nights. Leon carved every day into his memory.
In the first year, Maester Creylen taught them their letters. The old maester's hands trembled, but his voice remained steady.
He taught them to read and write the Common Tongue, the basics of High Valyrian, and how to determine in the shortest possible time whether a book had value.
"Not all words are worth reading," he said, "just as not all knights are worth serving."
Tyrion learned. He began spending nights in the library of the maester's tower.
Not with permission, but in secret.
He discovered that the cellar lock could be picked, that someone had forgotten to close the archives' rear window, and that Maester Creylen's eyesight had grown poor in his old age, so he would not immediately notice a few missing volumes.
The more he discovered, the quieter he became...
Could it really be such a coincidence...?
"Do you know why Father's only letting us study now?" Tyrion asked Leon one winter night.
They sat side by side on the windowsill of the maester's tower, with a ninety-foot drop beneath their feet.
Leon remained silent.
"Just as you said before, we used to be too young. Not many people would have noticed if we'd died."
Tyrion's voice was flat, as though reciting an entry from some geographical chronicle. "But now all of Westeros knows that the Lannisters have two dwarf sons."
He gazed into the pitch-black night outside the window, scattered lights reflected in his mismatched eyes.
"So we're more useful to Father alive. Or perhaps we have to be useful."
Leon reached out and rested a hand on Tyrion's shoulder.
That night, they sat on the windowsill until well after midnight. Neither spoke again.
In the second year, Maester Loomis taught them logic and rhetoric. The young maester was stricter than Creylen.
He required his students to debate, not quarrel: they were to persuade their opponent through evidence and reasoning.
He had the two analyze lords' letters, diplomatic notes, and marriage contracts, finding loopholes and traps within them.
"Language is a sword," he said. "Use it poorly, and you'll cut yourself."
Tyrion's talent soon became the sharpest sword.
Within thirty seconds, he could expose three layers of traps in a commercial contract. He could improvise a barb cutting enough to make Earl Crakehall blush to the tips of his ears, and insult an opponent in such courteous terms that they wanted to draw their sword but could not.
"You're too caustic," Loomis said once.
"No, Maester," Tyrion replied. "I simply refuse to dress stupidity up as courtesy."
Beside them, Leon copied out Valyrian verb conjugations, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
The smile was confirmation...
Confirmation that the child who had hidden behind the door crying three years ago truly was dead.
In the third year, Kevan began teaching them basic swordsmanship. Not killing techniques, but a firm foundation.
Tyrion never managed to handle his shortsword well. His arms were too short, his strength insufficient, his balance unsteady.
Kevan spent three months correcting his grip on his shield, then another three teaching him how to deliver a fatal thrust as he fell.
"You will never be a great knight," Kevan said bluntly. "But you can become the hardest dwarf to kill."
Tyrion carved those words into the inside of his sword hilt.
Leon's twin shortswords, however, were another matter entirely.
The first time Kevan demonstrated the technique of redirecting force and locking blades, Leon watched only once.
Then he picked up his training sword and met Kevan's thrust by turning sideways, pressing down, and twisting-
Kevan's sword flew from his hand.
The training yard was so quiet that the sea breeze could be heard.
"...How did you do that?" Kevan asked.
Leon lowered his head to look at the sword in his hand. "I saw its center of gravity," he finally said. "I saw it 1.5 seconds before you thrust."
Kevan sheathed his sword and patted Leon's shoulder. "We'll continue tomorrow," he said.
Back in 280 AC, the present...
After three years of quiet accumulation, Leon's Eye of Insight finally showed a hint of change.
It was an ordinary afternoon.
Maester Loomis was absent through illness, and Tyrion had gone to the craftsmen's guild to "exchange knowledge of alchemy." Leon remained alone on the top floor of the maester's tower, translating A Study of High Valyrian.
He had stared too long at a patch of blurred letters on one page. It was a fragment recording events, revised repeatedly by its author, until only one line remained:
"The flame must be pure, the bloodline ancient. The sacrificer..."
The writing that followed had been swallowed by a large inkblot.
Leon pressed his fingertips to the blot and closed his eyes. At some point, he fell asleep.
Images appeared in his dream.
Two women knelt at the edge of a volcanic crater, their hands cut open, blood dripping into eggshells on a platform beside the lava.
Their lips moved, chanting in some language, but he could not hear clearly, and the eggshells were trembling.
A fissure in the volcano.
The first cry that did not belong to a human...
Leon snapped his eyes open, cold sweat soaking his back. The inkblot was still an inkblot, the ancient book still an ancient book.
Sunlight still slanted through the eastern window of the maester's tower just as steadily as before.
But something he had never seen before had entered his vision. He looked down at his hand pressed against the page.
In his eyes shimmered an exceedingly faint, almost transparent, milky-white halo.
Had it evolved?
I can see more than surface emotions. It's... deeper images...
But it still feels as though there's another barrier.
At dusk, Tyrion returned from the craftsmen's guild carrying a pile of scrap iron and a battered notebook on alchemy. When he hurriedly pushed open the door, Leon was standing at the window, gazing out at the Sunset Sea.
"Guess what I heard today?" Tyrion tossed the scrap iron onto the desk, his voice full of irrepressible excitement. "Father's preparing to take our whole family to King's Landing-! Right after Lord Tyrell's visit!"
He stopped.
Because Leon had turned around and was looking at him in a way he had never seen before.
Staring. Staring at his chest.
"Leon?"
Leon said nothing. He was looking at the cluster of light inside Tyrion's chest.
No, it was more than light. Countless tiny fragments of text slowly revolved, collided, separated, and reassembled.
The light's dominant color was deep green, a very deep, heavy green, like a sunless pool at the bottom of the deepest mine in Casterly Rock.
It was hope and longing, longing for even one proper look from their father, one word of approval, one trace of warmth.
A longing long dead, yet unwilling to die completely.
And in the deepest part of all those colors lay an exceedingly small, almost transparent point of light.
It trembled like a candle flame in the wind.
This is...
"Leon." Tyrion's voice pulled him back to reality. "You look awful. Your nose is bleeding again!"
Leon came to his senses and raised a hand to wipe it. Sure enough, his fingertips were stained crimson. "It's nothing," he said. "Overworked my brain."
He went to the basin, washed away the blood, and dried himself with his cuff.
Tyrion did not press him.
Four years had passed, and he had learned not to question Leon about those inexplicable moments.
But he did not know that Leon had seen.
In that tiny, trembling, transparent speck of light, he had seen Tyrion's deepest secret, one he had never spoken aloud...
I don't just want to survive. I want them to know that bringing me into this world wasn't a mistake.
Leon returned to the window and gazed at the lights going out one by one around the harbor.
"After the tourney, that mad king ignored Father's advice and ended up imprisoned in Duskendale for half a year. Father has broken with him completely..."
Tyrion stood beside Leon.
"That's why he wants to try again." Leon wiped the droplets from his clothes. "If Rhaegar won't do, there's still Viserys..."
Tyrion shook his oversized head and said mockingly, "Our sister will become a wet nurse." His hand traced circles.
Listening to those deeply sarcastic words, Leon shook his head and looked at a stack of parchment on the table.
The fruits of Tyrion's four years of "research":
A list of debts owed by the nobles of the Westerlands, a catalog of forbidden books in the maester's tower, and a complete map of Casterly Rock's underground drainage system.
There was also a sketch, a rough outline of the Seven Kingdoms, with King's Landing circled three times in red ink.
"King's Landing, the center of power in the Seven Kingdoms," Tyrion wrote along the edge of the map. "This time, they'll decide whom Rhaegar Targaryen will marry. Nobles from across the continent will go, and Father will take us."
He underlined "will" twice.
"We have to be ready." Leon reached out, his fingertips brushing the map, shook his head, which felt slightly swollen, and closed his eyes.
That night four years ago surfaced in his mind: two pig cages, moonlight, Tyrion gripping his hand and saying, "I'm going to survive on my own."
And Jaime, the white robe he had commissioned, and those words, so quiet they were almost inaudible: "Someday, I will."
Leon did not know whether he had a "someday," but he knew Tyrion did.
And he would stand beside Tyrion, using these eyes that should not exist to see clearly every shadow that sought to devour them.
The lion cubs on the top floor of the western tower sank into sleep.
In the distance, the lighthouse at Lannisport flickered in the wind.
But the sleeping Leon did not notice that, for several days in a row, several shadows had been moving along the covered bridge's wall.