112: Chapter 112 Cold Cellar

That night. The Red Keep. The kitchen cold cell.

The cold cell was a storeroom beneath the Red Keep's kitchen that had been forgotten for years. It was used to store salted meat and frozen fish for the winter.

The air was filled with the scent of salted meat and frost—salty, cold, and mixed with the smell of aged lard.

Icicles clung to the ceiling, glimmering with a pale blue light when struck by the torchlight—it was the reflection of tiny air bubbles trapped within the ancient frost.

Tyrion Lannister, under the guise of "repaving the kitchen drainage pipes"—as the former Hand of the King, this identity still held some residual authority, especially before the kitchen servants—brought three miners from House Tyrell into the cold cell.

The miners wore grease-stained artisan tunics, carrying silent tools on their backs: crowbars wrapped in leather padding, chisels with cork handles, and shovels wrapped in cloth.

Drogon blended in among them as a "pipeline engineer's assistant," his face smeared with soot, wearing the same grease-stained artisan tunic. The soot obscured the overly sharp lines of his cheekbones.

Old Tomard was already waiting in the cold cell.

He was a thin, small old man, his back severely hunched, with shoulder blades protruding from beneath his clothes like two blades thinned by time. But his eyes were exceptionally bright in the darkness—those eyes held all the secrets of the final years of The Mad King's era.

With his calloused hands, he pushed open a stone wall covered in frost at the end of the cold cell; the wall slid open silently—the tracks had been oiled recently, and the oil stains were still fresh.

It revealed a narrow crevice behind the wall, sealed off by rubble. The edges of the crevice were coated in ancient frost, and beneath the frost, one could see the color of the rubble—blackened basalt, not the granite commonly used in the Red Keep. It was volcanic rock that The Mad King had transported from Dragonstone.

Old Tomard's voice was hoarse, but possessed the characteristic, rambling precision of an old man.

"Behind this crevice is the secret passage of The Mad King. The rubble is about two men deep. You cannot knock—if you knock, the entire cold cell will hear it, and the sound will travel along the frost up to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the Gold Cloaks' guard room."

"You must move it by hand. Move a piece, rest a while. When we were building this secret passage back then, The Mad King was still alive. He stood behind me personally, watching me lay the bricks. I had mud in one hand, and he had fire in the other."

"He said to me—'Tomard, if one day wildfire flows out from these secret passages, do not try to run. By the time it flows out, you are already dead.' I didn't dare ask what he meant at the time. I only found out later—what he buried was not pipes. It was a Cremation Array."

Tyrion lowered his voice.

"We will come to move the rubble tomorrow night. You wait for us here. Bring the two most reliable workers from your kitchen—not the young ones, the old ones. The old ones don't talk too much."

Old Tomard nodded. He drew an X on the rubble with his finger. His knuckles were rough, and the dirt permanently embedded in his nail beds—the dirt accumulated from decades of washing dishes, prepping vegetables, and building secret passages.

Then he turned and walked back to the kitchen, dragging his lame leg. His retreating figure gradually blurred in the icy mist of the cold cell, like a piece of frozen old memory.

Deep night. Dragonstone castle. White Mane's room. The Dragonglass Lamp had been extinguished, leaving only the faint blue-green light of the night brazier flickering on the low table—the flames were twisted by the sea breeze blowing in from outside the window.

White Mane sat cross-legged on the cot. The dragon-kiss sword lay horizontally across her lap.

She placed the old scabbard beside the blade—that old scabbard she had mended herself, with cracked leather and rough stitching, appeared extremely dilapidated under the holy firelight.

The leather thread was crooked, and one stitch was noticeably off-center; the crooked stitch was located three fingers down from the mouth of the scabbard.

She ran her fingers over every stitch of the scabbard, her fingertips feeling the undulations of the thread—nine stitches on the left, eight on the right, the third stitch crooked. She silently recited the information she intended to transmit to him during the Brand calibration.

"Scabbard. The pause between the chain strikes and the backhand thrust—less than half a beat, but he failed three times before catching it. The first time, I struck his left shoulder,"

"The second time, he dodged but didn't counterattack; the third time, he used his tail to knock me down. Mounting me and stabbing at my throat with a dagger—you don't have a dagger, I do. You are taller than me, and when I am on top of you, my center of gravity is skewed to the left."

"If you use your tail to wrap around my waist and pull to the right, I lose my balance—you countered this yourself in the training ground, but you didn't tell me you remembered it."

"The Storm Ancestor Dragon won't know this. It will only read my moves, it cannot read how you counter me."

She raised her hand and pressed it against the Brand on the back of her neck. The Brand was still fluctuating between hot and cold tonight, but it was better than last night—when it was hot, it no longer felt like a branding iron, just like boiling water.

When it was cold, it no longer felt like a storm, just like winter rain. Melisandre's night brazier was still burning on the low table, the holy fire temporarily suppressing some of the Storm Ancestor Dragon's interference. The temperature fluctuation of the Brand slowly stabilized beneath her palm—like a half-tamed beast.

She closed her eyes. The Brand transmitted back—extremely vague emotional fluctuations from the distant Drogon. He was in King's Landing, having just learned of Sansa's situation. He was very angry, but he suppressed it.

His heartbeat was slightly faster than usual, but the rhythm was steady—there was no fear, only restraint compressed to the limit. He was calculating the plan for dismantling the wildfire tomorrow night.

He was thinking—after dismantling the wildfire tomorrow night, he would rescue the person the night after, and then fly back to Dragonstone that same night. He could reach the training ground before dawn.

A nearly invisible curve appeared at the corner of White Mane's mouth. She placed the scabbard back by her pillow, with the mouth of the scabbard facing up, and the side with the crooked stitch facing the door—so that he would see it the moment he walked in. She lay down. She closed her amber eyes.

"Fine. I'll wait for you."