CHAPTER 77: TYRION

In his black cell awaiting execution, Tyrion hears keys and prepares to die, but Jaime appears instead, gaunt and one-handed. Jaime reveals a plan arranged with Varys to spirit Tyrion through the sewers to a ship. Before they part, Jaime confesses that Tysha had been Tyrion’s true wife, not a hired whore, and that Tywin forced the lie as a “lesson.”

The revelation devastates Tyrion. He strikes Jaime and, when asked if he killed Joffrey, spits a vicious lie that he did and calls Cersei faithless, severing their brotherhood. Refusing Jaime’s escort, Tyrion takes the gaoler’s keys and leaves to find Varys.

Varys, disguised as a septon, leads Tyrion deep into Maegor’s dungeons, explaining the four levels and their torments. At a junction beneath the Tower of the Hand, Tyrion insists on climbing a secret shaft to the bedchambers despite Varys’s pleas.

Emerging through the hearth into his former chambers—now Tywin’s—Tyrion discovers Shae in Tywin’s bed, wearing a necklace of golden hands. When she calls him “my giant of Lannister,” he garrotes her with the chain, then arms himself with Tywin’s dagger and a crossbow.

Tyrion finds Tywin on the privy and confronts him about Tysha. When Tywin dismisses her as a whore and says she went “wherever whores go,” Tyrion shoots him with the crossbow. After a final exchange in which Tywin disowns him and Tyrion claims the likeness between them, Tywin dies, proving the old jape false: Tywin Lannister did not, in the end, shit gold.