Chapter 30: Winter Arrives in King's Crossing

It is a truth universally acknowledged by anyone who has spent a full season at King's Crossing that the city does not conclude its dramas so much as it redistributes them — filing the more inconvenient ones under headings that will not be located until they are needed, and presenting the remainder with the composed efficiency of a hostess who has replaced the broken china before any of her guests could note the original pattern.

Winter arrived on a Thursday.

It arrived not with the dramatic suddenness that the season's more literary participants had privately anticipated, but with the quiet insistence of a creditor who has been to the door before and knows that the household is at home: a frost on the eastern towers at first light, a particular quality to the wind that made the gate guards pull their collars higher without discussing why, and a sky the colour of old pewter that sat above King's Crossing with the expression of a thing that had made up its mind some time ago and was only now getting round to the announcement.