Chapter 63 — The Clever Little Dragon
Varys looked as though he'd been expecting Tyrion all along. After letting him inside, he craned his neck out the door again, scanning both ends of the street before quietly shutting it.
"You're still as cautious as ever," Tyrion said with a faint smirk once the door was bolted. "Is that because of your precious little treasure?"
"That is merely the habit of my profession," Varys replied, brow slightly furrowed. "May I ask what brings my lord to this humble residence?"
"You should know better than I do," Tyrion said, not bothering with Varys's polite performance.
Varys's frown deepened, as if he were genuinely thinking.
"Do you remember the testimony you gave during my trial?" Tyrion asked, his voice edged with threat.
"Whether I spoke those words or not, the result wouldn't have changed," Varys said calmly. "If I had said nothing, your father and sister would not have spared me."
After hearing Oberyn's account, Tyrion no longer truly blamed Varys. That earlier question had only been the leftover sting of resentment from the trial.
He cut straight to what mattered.
"Where is Shae?"
Instead of answering, Varys clasped his hands and bowed slightly. "Before anything else—congratulations, my lord, on regaining your freedom."
Tyrion exhaled softly. "So you did send her away."
"A devotion like yours is truly enviable," Varys said smoothly.
"I'm going to find her," Tyrion declared without hesitation.
Varys studied him closely. "Do you truly intend to live out your life with her?"
"I'll take Shae with me when I go serve Daenerys Targaryen," Tyrion said, eyes turning toward the east. "Surely the Mother of Dragons won't object."
"I imagine she wouldn't mind having one more handmaid," Varys shrugged.
Tyrion's expression darkened instantly. "She will not be anyone's handmaid again."
"Then you must take good care of her," Varys said simply.
Tyrion didn't answer—only nodded once.
Then he asked the question that had been weighing on him since the duel.
"The one who warned Prince Oberyn… that was Daenerys, wasn't it?"
"No," Varys said, shaking his head.
"No?" Tyrion blinked. He hadn't expected to be wrong.
Seeing Tyrion's confusion, Varys added, "Or rather… it shouldn't have been."
That only made Tyrion more bewildered. "Shouldn't have been?"
Varys sighed faintly, as though even he found the situation absurd.
"To be honest, my lord, you may not believe me—but I have never actually met Daenerys Targaryen."
Tyrion definitely didn't believe that. "Then how exactly are you sworn to her?"
Something as significant as pledging allegiance ought to require a personal audience—at least in Tyrion's mind.
"A certain… subordinate of the Queen found me," Varys said carefully. "He gave me information. Then he instructed me to pledge myself to Daenerys… and to deliver you to Slaver's Bay."
"And who was this subordinate?" Tyrion pressed.
To send only a single agent to approach someone like Varys—the spymaster of King's Landing—felt woefully informal… unless the agent in question carried extraordinary weight.
"I don't know," Varys said, sounding genuinely resigned. "I truly don't."
"You—" Tyrion stopped, at a loss for words.
For a moment, Tyrion had the surreal sensation that Varys had been conned and sold off.
How could he pledge himself to the Dragon Queen without even knowing who recruited him?
Varys, of course, understood exactly what Tyrion wanted to say.
He remembered the fear from the first time he'd read the mysterious parchment—fear that still hadn't faded.
"He knew almost everything about me," Varys said softly. "Things that have already happened… things that have not yet happened… even things I might do—things I hadn't even thought of yet."
Listening to Varys, Tyrion wasn't the only one who felt chilled to the bone. Even Tyrion—an outsider to all of this—felt a deep, creeping dread.
To know even things someone hadn't thought of yet… what kind of terrifying power was that?
"He… he's a greenseer?" Tyrion asked carefully. Tyrion was widely read, and he had dabbled in the study of mysticism.
"As far as I know," Varys said, "even greenseers can only glimpse vague fragments of what may come. They shouldn't be able to see something as specific as Prince Oberyn carelessly overextending himself and getting killed."
Tyrion fell silent.
He remembered how Oberyn had said himself—even after receiving the warning, he hadn't believed he might inadvertently get too close to the Mountain and die for it.
That made it all even harder to explain.
Varys continued without hiding anything.
"He also knew about the Red Wedding of the Stark mother and son, and he hinted that I should intervene and save them. As for the Purple Wedding… he knew the mastermind behind it as well."
Since the two of them would be working together from now on, Varys saw no reason to conceal these truths. Tyrion would learn them sooner or later.
"So that's how they escaped…" Tyrion muttered, his expression dark. "I always wondered how Walder Frey and my father's airtight death trap could possibly fail. It was you—you sent them the warning."
Then Tyrion's gaze sharpened.
"But compared to the Red Wedding… I care far more about the Purple Wedding. Who was truly behind it?"
"It was Littlefinger," Varys said. "And the Queen of Thorns. The two conspired together."
"Littlefinger?" Tyrion echoed, stunned.
He had suspected Olenna Tyrell once… but he never imagined Littlefinger's shadow was in that plot as well.
But why would Petyr Baelish want Joffrey dead?
The question twisted in Tyrion's mind, refusing to unravel.
Varys went on, voice calm—far too calm for the bomb he'd just dropped.
"Littlefinger has done many things that seem impossible… things you simply never knew about. Your arrest by Catelyn Stark, for example. The death of Lord Arryn of the Vale—both were connected to him."
Tyrion's eyes widened.
He had nearly died at the Eyrie.
And now Varys was telling him that the mastermind behind that entire disaster had been Littlefinger—the brothel-owning Master of Coin.
It was absurd.
And yet…
It was exactly the sort of absurdity that made it believable.
As Varys said—Littlefinger always did things no one would ever expect him to do.
"What does he want?" Tyrion asked, voicing the very same question others had once asked Varys.
"I don't know," Varys admitted. "I can't see through him. Perhaps only the mysterious one can."
"The mysterious one?" Tyrion repeated—and only then did he fully grasp it.
The "mysterious one" Varys kept referring to… was Daenerys's unseen subordinate.
"He calls himself the Mysterious One," Varys said, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Your little birds in Slaver's Bay haven't discovered who he really is?" Tyrion asked.
"Not even a trace," Varys said, and for the first time his expression showed a faint note of frustration. "Nothing at all."
Then Varys added, slowly, as if stepping into deeper waters.
"But I do know this—he seems capable of commanding dragons. Unless, of course… it's Her Grace directing the dragon to assist him."
"Dragons?" Tyrion frowned. "But those hatchlings… they're barely a year old."
"Yes," Varys said firmly. "Dragons. A great dragon. As large as the mammoths of legend—wingspan close to twenty meters."
Tyrion stared at him like he'd lost his mind.
"And that's not the strangest part. It can shift between adult and hatchling form… freely. It can become large, and small again, at will."
"What?" Tyrion said hoarsely.
He felt as if every ounce of wonder he'd stored up over a lifetime had been spent just today.
A dragon that could change size?
He had never seen such a thing in any book, in any legend.
How could a creature even do that—grow small, grow large, back and forth like clothing?
"I don't know how it's possible either," Varys said. "But it is true. Only the black dragon—Drogon—can do it. The other two cannot, and they remain only the size of small ponies."
Varys paused.
And then his face changed slightly—as though a new thought had quietly clicked into place.
He had long suspected the mysterious one was a skinchanger, someone who could control a clever little bird to deliver messages and communicate with uncanny flexibility.
But now…
Could it be that the messenger wasn't a bird at all?
Could it be—
Was the one delivering those letters… that dragon?
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