Chapter 30: What Remains at the End of the Season

The autumn assembly of King's Landing-upon-Thames opened, as it did every year, with the collective pretence that nothing of particular consequence had occurred since the spring. This pretence required, in the present season, rather more collective effort than usual, and the society of the capital applied itself to the task with the dedicated energy of people who understand that gaiety, properly maintained, constitutes a form of governance.

The ballroom at Whitehall Palace had been dressed in the colours of harvest — gold and amber and the deep russet of oak leaves — and the effect was one of magnificent seasonable abundance, which was either a happy coincidence of the decorator's art or a pointed commentary on the new reign's first months, depending entirely on one's position in the room and one's willingness to draw conclusions from floral arrangements. Lord Tyrion Lannisford, who drew conclusions from everything and was willing to draw them from rather more than most, stood near the east window with a glass of Arbour red and the expression of a man conducting a private census of the room's inhabitants and finding the numbers somewhat below what civic optimism might suggest.

He was, in the technical designation of the evening, the Hand of the Crown. He wore the badge of that office with the slightly startled air of a man who has been handed a loaded firearm at a garden party and is not yet certain whether the correct response is to set it down carefully or simply aim it at something that deserves it.