TYRION — Chapter 2

At sea in hiding, Tyrion drinks constantly while confined belowdecks, vomiting and brooding on killing Tywin and Shae. He recalls Varys spiriting him through the tunnels of King’s Landing after Tywin’s death. During a storm he passes out, then is carried to a hold and sealed into a wine cask for clandestine disembarkation.

Uncrated in a Pentoshi cellar by Magister Illyrio Mopatis, Tyrion is offered a bath, bed, and secrecy. Awakening in Illyrio’s manse, he surveys Pentos and wanders the grounds guarded by eunuchs, weighing flight to Dorne to crown Myrcella or to the Wall to vanish. He muses on Tysha and his father’s cruelty, pockets a clutch of poisonous mushrooms, and toys with suicidal thoughts.

A Lys-trained bedwarmer tends him, but Tyrion spurns intimacy, lashing out with bitter talk of strangling his last whore. Readied for supper, he joins Illyrio at a lavish feast. Illyrio speaks of upheaval: Slaver’s Bay cities have fallen, and Tyrion learns Stannis is at the Wall. Illyrio also confirms Cersei’s bounty for Tyrion’s head and mocks heraldic pretensions while probing Tyrion’s ambitions.

When Illyrio pointedly offers buttered mushrooms, Tyrion suspects poison and refuses; Illyrio eats them to demonstrate trust and to confront Tyrion’s flirtation with death. Pressed about goals, Tyrion admits little. Illyrio argues the paths to power do not run through Dorne or the Wall and hints at a grander design: Westeros needs a savior with a stronger claim than Tommen or Myrcella—a “dragon with three heads.”