— Tyrion —

The summons reached him at Casterly Rock in the eighth moon of the year, and Tyrion Lannister read it twice in his solar with a cup of Arbor red in one hand and the parchment in the other, and then he laughed — a short bitter laugh, the kind he had perfected over a lifetime of not being entirely loved by his own family — and went to pack.

The summons was not from his sister. His sister had sent for him three moons earlier and he had ignored her, on the grounds that a man who was being deliberately exiled by his own family had no obligation to come running the moment the family panicked. The summons in his hand was from his father, and his father did not summon men twice.

It said, in its entirety:

Casterly Rock to Tyrion: Come to Harrenhal. Bring no one. Tell no one. Now.

Tyrion looked at it. He thought about Harrenhal, which he had never seen and did not particularly want to see, having read about it in books and concluded that it was the sort of place that had probably gotten worse since the books were written. He thought about his father, whom he had not laid eyes on in more than a year and whom he disliked with a deep, careful, fully-itemized dislike. He thought about his sister, in King's Landing, who would by now have heard from Varys that Tywin had summoned him.

He thought about the silver queens in Dorne, whom he had never met but whom every man in the Seven Kingdoms with two functioning ears was now talking about, and whom his sister, the regent of the boy-king, was apparently — by all the rumors out of Highgarden — losing the entire western half of the realm to without so much as drawing a sword.

He drained his cup.

"Well, Father," he said aloud, to the empty solar, "if you are going to summon me at last, it had better be worth the ride."

He went to pack.

He arrived at Harrenhal sixteen days later, in a thin cold rain, on a brown gelding that was almost the size of an ordinary man's pony and which had carried him with the dignified resignation of a horse that knew its job. The castle rose out of the mist looking exactly as ruined and enormous and wrong as the books had suggested — five great melted towers like candles dripped by a giant, walls thick enough to ride a wagon along, a courtyard that could have held a small market town and largely did. Lannister banners hung wet and heavy from every tower. The garrison was perhaps four thousand strong. His father, if Tyrion's count was right, had perhaps another fifteen thousand spread between Harrenhal, the riverlands strongpoints, and the fast-moving columns under Ser Gregor and Ser Amory that were, on his father's instruction, currently engaged in the very specific work of breaking the Tully levies through hunger.

The riverlands stank of the work.

Tyrion had ridden through three burned villages to get to Harrenhal. He had not stopped at any of them. He was not sure he had it in him to stop at any more.

His father received him in the Tower of Dread, which was the most habitable of Harrenhal's five and which Lord Tywin Lannister had, with characteristic efficiency, made into a passable command headquarters in the moons since taking the castle. There was a great campaign map on the wall, beautifully maintained. There was a fire in the hearth. There was, on a side table, a flagon of Lannister red and two cups, one of which had not yet been used.

Tywin Lannister did not rise as Tyrion entered.

Tywin Lannister rarely rose for anyone, but he had risen for the Hand's chair and the king's hand and once, that Tyrion could remember, for his late wife. He did not rise for his second son. He looked up from the parchment he had been reading, set it aside, and said:

"Tyrion. Sit."

"Father."

Tyrion climbed into the chair across the desk, which was sized for full-grown men and which left his feet several inches off the floor. He did not let this bother him. He had been sitting in chairs that were too large for him for forty years.

His father poured wine into the second cup and pushed it across the desk.

"You have heard," Tywin said, "of the Targaryens."

It was not a question.

"I have heard, Father. Everyone south of the Neck has heard."

"What have you heard?"

"That there are two of them. That they are sisters. That one of them is sitting on Dragonstone with an old knight and an Unsullied legion, and that the other has just walked through the Reach without lifting a sword and made our cousins of Highgarden so confused that Mace Tyrell is, by all reports, drinking heavily in King's Landing and writing his bannermen letters they are not bothering to answer. I have heard there are dragons. The number varies depending on who is telling the story. Six, by some accounts. Three, by others. I have not seen a dragon myself, so I cannot tell you which is correct."

"Six," Tywin said. "Six is correct. My informants in Pentos and Meereen have confirmed it. Six dragons."

Tyrion blinked.

"Six," he said.

"Six. Of which one is the size of a draft horse and apparently very lazy. The others are smaller but flying. They have been flying since the older sister, the one called Aelya, hatched them on a beach in Dragonstone three years past, by means of a fire in which she walked with her sister and was not consumed."

"Father —"

"Do not interrupt me, Tyrion. The information is verified. I am not given to repeating gossip. The reason I have summoned you is that I am about to lose this war, and I require your assistance in making certain that when I lose it, the House of Lannister survives the loss."

Tyrion stared at him.

For perhaps the first time in his life he could not find a single thing to say.

His father reached for his wine, took a measured sip, and set it back down.

"I have spent forty years," Tywin said, in his even cold voice, "rebuilding the position of our house from the ruin your grandfather made of it. I do not intend to see that work undone in a single year by your sister's failure to manage a thirteen-year-old king. The realm is going to fall to Aelya Targaryen and her sister within the next twelvemonth. I have been examining the maps and the dispatches for a moon, and I have run the numbers under every assumption I can construct, and the conclusion is the same on every running. The Crownlands will declare for them within a moon of any landing in force. The Stormlands will declare within a moon of Storm's End falling, which it will, because it is held by a child castellan with no ships. The Reach is already declaring. The riverlands are dying. The North is consumed and will turn whichever way is offered terms. Dorne is committed. The Vale is paralyzed under the Lady Lysa, who is, to put it carefully, not in command of her faculties. The Iron Islands are doing their usual unhelpful piracy."

"That leaves the West," Tyrion said.

"That leaves the West."

"Which we hold."

"Which we hold today. Which we will not hold a year from today against six dragons and a Dornish-Reach-Stormlands-Crownlands-North coalition with a Targaryen on the throne. The math does not survive contact with reality, Tyrion. I am not in the habit of insisting on outcomes the math does not support."

Tyrion took a long swallow of his wine.

"Father. You have been at this war for two years."

"I have."

"You have burned riverlands villages by the hundred."

"I have."

"You have employed Gregor Clegane."

"I have."

"You have made it your strategy to break the riverlands through hunger so that Robb Stark would have to come south to feed his people."

"I have."

"And you are telling me, now, that you intend to lose."

"I am telling you, now, that I have intended to lose since the day I read the third report on the dragons. I confirmed the count six weeks ago. I have been, for those six weeks, prosecuting a war I no longer expect to win for a single reason, which is that a man who stops fighting visibly is a man whose terms of surrender will be much worse than a man who is still credibly making his enemy bleed when he asks for terms. I have been banking position, Tyrion. I have been making the cost of taking the West high enough that the new queen will pay something for not having to take it."

Tyrion set his cup down.

"You are going to surrender."

"I am going to negotiate. You are going to do the negotiating."

"Me."

"You. You are going to leave Harrenhal in three days under safe conduct that I will arrange through a courier in Dorne. You are going to ride to Daenerys Targaryen, who is the more reasonable of the two and who is also the more politically valuable to be seen treating with, since she is the one her sister has chosen to crown. You are going to present yourself as my plenipotentiary. You are going to offer, on my behalf, the following: the surrender of Casterly Rock and the Westerlands; the renunciation of any claim by your sister to the regency; my own retirement to a small holding of the Crown's choosing, where I will spend the remainder of my days writing my memoirs and not interfering in the realm; and the heads, if they are required, of any bannermen who have committed atrocities in the riverlands. Gregor Clegane in particular. I will give her Gregor Clegane personally, with a bow."

"And in exchange?"

"In exchange. Your sister Cersei lives. Your nephew Joffrey is removed from the throne and sent into exile, alive — alive, Tyrion, that is non-negotiable, the boy lives — to a sept on a small island where he will be a septon for the rest of his life and nobody's problem. Your nephew Tommen and your niece Myrcella are spared and given small honourable holdings somewhere remote. Jaime — Jaime is more difficult, but I believe a path exists, and you will negotiate it. The House of Lannister continues, in some reduced form, with a holding and a name. Your line and mine survive. That is what I am asking you to buy from her, Tyrion. With my blood, if she requires my blood, which I expect she may."

Tyrion was silent for a long moment.

"Father," he said, finally. "You are willing to give her your head to save the family."

Tywin Lannister looked at his second son across the desk.

"Yes," he said. Quietly. "I am. I have done what I have done in this realm, Tyrion, with my eyes open. I have killed where killing served the house. I have burned where burning served the house. The Targaryen queen is going to ask for a price for the West, and the price is going to include me. I have known this for six weeks. I am at peace with it. What I will not give her is your sister, or your brother, or any of your sister's children. I have given enough. The line continues. That is what I require of you."

Tyrion did not, for once, have a clever thing to say.

He sat in the too-large chair across the desk from his terrible father, and he looked at the man — really looked, perhaps for the first time in his adult life — and he saw, with a small awful clarity, that Tywin Lannister was not going to outlive this year. And not because Tyrion was going to fail to negotiate. Because Tywin had already decided, with the same cold arithmetic he had brought to every other decision of his life, that his death was the cheapest currency available, and he was going to spend it.

"Father."

"Yes."

"Why me. Why not Kevan. Why not Cersei."

"Kevan is loyal but unimaginative. Cersei is loyal but hates the woman she will be negotiating with on principle. You are not loyal — do not pretend, Tyrion, we have neither of us the time — but you are clever, and you do not, so far as I can determine, hate the Targaryens, and you are the only Lannister that the silver queen will receive without immediately ordering you killed for the things our family has done. She will hate me. She will hate your sister. She will hate Jaime for the obvious reason. You — you she will be willing to hear. That is why."

Tyrion rubbed his face with both small hands.

"Father. You are asking me to ride to a Targaryen queen with three dragons in her camp and offer her your neck in exchange for the rest of us."

"I am."

"Has it occurred to you, Father, that I might find this funny."

Tywin Lannister, for the first time in Tyrion's living memory, almost smiled.

It was not a smile of warmth. It was the small grim recognition of one practical man by another, across a desk, in a war they were both losing.

"It has occurred to me, Tyrion. I would expect nothing else of you. Drink your wine. We have three days to plan your route."

Tyrion drank his wine.

Outside, the rain hammered down on the melted towers of Harrenhal, and a war that had killed thousands and was about to end without one more battle in it ground, very quietly, toward its conclusion in a small warm room at the top of a tower.