108: Chapter 108 Relics of the Academy City

He stood up, the dust on his robes scattering in the last rays of the setting sun.

His voice remained soft, but his phrasing was uncomfortably precise.

"I will not ask if you intend to save Sansa Stark. That is your decision. My duty is to provide intelligence—the action is yours. But I must remind you of one thing—the ruins of the Great Sept of Baelor will not always be a quiet meeting place. Once Cersei's wedding announcement is released, the entire city of King's Landing will go into festival lockdown. The Gold Cloaks will increase patrols, the city gates will close early, and it will be harder for strangers to slip in. The time you have to lurk in this city may be shorter than expected—so short that you may need to deal with the wildfire, Sansa, and the relic from The Citadel all before the Enforcement Squad arrives."

He paused. His eyes flickered in the twilight—a rare instance of him directly expressing personal emotion, rather than hiding it behind intelligence.

"What is it?"

"A relic of The Old Gods. The dragon relic sealed in the restricted vaults of The Citadel—it not only possesses dragon energy but also contains a small piece of weirwood fossil. The weirwood is the eye of The Old Gods, and its power can interfere with the Chronos Dragon's time-shadow tracking. If you recover that relic before the Enforcement Squad arrives—you will be able to hide under his nose for at least another twelve hours. Those twelve hours might be the window where he misjudges your location and gets hit by the Gold Cloaks' ballistae."

Drogon was silent.

That relic in The Citadel was the only one of the five not yet recovered. If it could also interfere with the Chronos Dragon's tracking—then its priority surpassed all his other to-do items for the night. But The Citadel was in Oldtown, at least a half-day's flight from King's Landing. He needed to squeeze out this half-day after the wildfire was dismantled and before the Enforcement Squad arrived.

Varys turned and walked toward the ruined archway.

His back merged into the shadows in the twilight, but his last sentence came through clearly, as if he had been prepared to say it all along—all his words were prepared well in advance.

"I have not seen you. You have not seen me. But if you want to find someone at The Citadel who will open the vault door for you—look for a man wearing a valyrian steel collar. His name is Marwyn. He has a mutual friend with you—I am referring to the priestess of the Lord of Light. Melisandre studied at The Citadel. That was before she became a red priestess."

Late at night. The Copper and Bed Brothel. The same table by the window. Tyrion was not drinking tonight. Spread out before him was the final draft of Jaime's Cremation Array engineering diagram. The charcoal lines were so precise they did not look hand-drawn—the distance of every circle of secondary jars was marked in steps, and the location of the main jar was marked with a tiny dragon heart drawn in red ink.

Beside it lay a stack of three old books on Old Valyria funeral customs, borrowed from the House Tyrell library, their spines cracked and pages yellowed.

He tapped his short staff on the location of the secret stone door on the diagram, calculating how much manpower would be needed to excavate the rubble without triggering vibrations.

The tip of the staff tapped lightly on the drawing—he would unconsciously tap his staff when calculating numbers, a habit of his own.

But he could not focus on the calculations. Because Drogon had just told him a part of Varys's intelligence—the part concerning Sansa.

Tyrion was silent for a long time. His deep green eyes stared at the candlelight on the table. The flame danced in his pupils, faster than usual—the wick needed trimming.

The emotion in his eyes was extremely complex, not simple anger, nor simple guilt. It was the exhaustion of a person being repeatedly caught up by their own past life. Then he spoke, his voice much lower than usual, low enough to be drowned out by the night wind outside the window.

"She was thirteen then. Her father had just been beheaded, and she was held hostage by Cersei in the Red Keep, beaten by Joffrey every day. My father made me marry her—not because I wanted the North, but because he knew I was not worthy of Casterly Rock, so he tossed me a Stark as charity. I let her sleep in the bed, and I slept on the floor. I never touched her. But I did not save her either. I just—didn't make it worse for her."

Drogon did not interrupt. He leaned back in his chair; his tail did not exist in his fully human form, but his right hand was tracing circles on the rim of his wine glass. His fingertips slid slowly along the edge, making a faint friction sound—he was letting Tyrion finish.

Some things had been bottled up for too long; he couldn't move to the next step without letting them out.

"The day she escaped King's Landing. Everyone thought I did it. She ran away... If I could have saved her sooner—perhaps she wouldn't have had to marry that sadist Littlefinger. Perhaps she wouldn't have had to be locked in the dungeons of Winterfell by Ramsay Bolton. I owe her an explanation."

"Then now you have a chance to repay it. In a few days, she will be married off by Baelish to a cadet branch of the Lannisters. If you want to save her—do it before the wildfire is dismantled. Because after the wildfire is dismantled, Cersei's wedding announcement will be released, and she will announce Sansa's marriage at the wedding feast. Get Sansa out of the Red Keep before then."

Tyrion looked up. The exhaustion in his green eyes was covered by a seasoned calculation.

The transition was extremely fast—from self-loathing to work mode, it didn't even take a second. He quickly drew a few lines on the blank space of the map, his short staff brushing across the parchment. The location of Maegors Holdfast in the Red Keep.

Sansa's possible room—the one facing north on the third floor, with a cliff outside the window and only one corridor for access. The maids' shift change times—four in the morning and four in the afternoon, with about a quarter-hour handover gap between each shift. He had lived in the Red Keep for many years and knew its structure better than his own pockets.

"Cannot use dragons. Cannot use violence. To steal Sansa out from under Cersei's nose, we need an inside man. Margaery's maid, Ayla, can enter the Red Keep kitchens, but she cannot enter Maegors Holdfast—the guards of Maegors Holdfast are Lannister household troops personally arranged by Cersei. We need someone higher up. We need—Jaime."

Drogon took another raven scroll from his robes. A private letter Jaime had sent this afternoon along with the final draft of the Cremation Array. The content was extremely short, only three lines.

The handwriting was messier than the annotations on the engineering diagram, as if the writer had repeatedly weighed his words—a few words had been crossed out and rewritten. He pushed the letter to Tyrion.

Tyrion took it. His emerald eyes scanned the few lines.

"Tyrion—diagram attached. The Casterly Rock treasury was robbed last night, and Father smashed his wine goblet. If you see a merchant with long black hair in King's Landing, tell him that if he steals Father's gold again, Father will come to King's Landing himself to find him. P.S.: I have a way to leave the back door of the Red Keep unattended at a specific time. It is not treason—it is paying off an old debt for my brother. Tell me the time."