Chapter 27: Lord Tyrion Becomes Hand of the Crown

The elder Lord Lannisford arrived at King's Landing-upon-Thames on a Tuesday, which was a council day, and the city had the good sense to rearrange itself accordingly.

He came without announcement, which was its own announcement. His travelling carriage — black, unornamented, drawn by horses selected for efficiency rather than impressiveness — rolled through the Lion Gate at half past ten in the morning with an escort of forty men in Lannisford livery, and the palace, which had been conducting itself with the confident disorder of a household whose senior management has recently changed, made certain immediate adjustments to its bearing. Footmen who had been lounging against the corridor walls of the east wing found themselves upright. A steward who had been composing a letter of complaint about the kitchen accounts thought better of it and filed the document somewhere he could not easily retrieve it. The Small Council meeting, which had been scheduled for nine o'clock and had not yet convened by half past, was in session by eleven, which was the precise moment Lord Tywin Lannisford was observed crossing the palace forecourt at a pace that suggested the forecourt was taking rather longer to cross than it should.

He was, by every observable measure, the most competent man in Verentshire, and he wore this distinction the way other men wore their most severe coat: without apparent effort, without apparent pleasure, and with the absolute conviction that it had been cut for him specifically and that any other man attempting the same garment would look ridiculous.