Chapter 75 — The Hidden Passage
How much of his warning Tyrion truly understood, Podrick could not say.
He waited until the dwarf's figure disappeared from the Hand's Tower, then lingered a little longer—just long enough for night to fully fall. Only then did he return to the private reception room where the city's smiths had gathered earlier that day.
The chamber was silent now.
Podrick's eyes swept the room before settling on the spot where the heavy chain links had been poured onto the Myrish carpet. When the blacksmiths departed, they had repacked the three linked segments—Tyrion's prototype—into their canvas sack to serve as the template for the thousand links to come.
Only the faintest impressions remained: slight dents where metal had struck floor beneath the thick carpet.
Podrick knelt and ran his hand slowly across the woven surface, fingertips brushing from knot to knot.
At first, nothing seemed unusual—no different here than anywhere else in the room.
But when he rapped his knuckles sharply against the floor—
thud… thud… hollow.
A muted, cavernous echo answered from beneath.
There it is.
"There's a passage under here," Podrick murmured to himself,
"not tall, not wide—but large enough for a man to crawl."
He made no move to pull aside the Myrish carpet or pry open any hidden hatch.
He didn't need to.
Before coming here, he had already walked the tower—top to bottom, floor to floor—feeling out dimensions with a soldier's precision. To a casual eye, everything aligned. But Podrick had noticed the discrepancy:
The ceiling of the room below and the floor of this reception chamber did not match in thickness.
Not dramatically—no secret cavern, no yawning space—
just enough depth to hide a narrow channel between rooms, broken up by staggered walls and misaligned beams to disguise its shape.
A space designed to be forgotten.
Podrick stared down at the carpeted floor, thoughtful.
If I'm right… this crawl-space runs beneath the room directly below—and the entrance is supposed to be somewhere in the Hand's bedchamber.
And Podrick Payne was still—technically—Tyrion's squire.
He might not fetch wine or polish armor anymore,
but the badge still gave him free access through the tower.
So it wasn't long before he found himself outside Tyrion's chamber—
the room the Hand had scarcely slept in since coming to King's Landing.
He slipped inside and pulled the door shut behind him.
The furnishings were unchanged:
the canopy bed with its dusty drapes, wall sconces set with guttering candles, straw mats scattered across stone.
Only a few added touches marked Tyrion's occupancy—
discarded garments, belts, books, a stray golden hand or two.
Podrick walked quietly across the room, eyes narrowing,
already searching for what others were never meant to find.
Staring around the chamber, Podrick tried to summon his memory—
he remembered there being a hidden door here somewhere…
and something to do with the wall sconces.
Holding up his torch, he made a slow sweep of the room.
One sconce caught his eye—looser than the others, slightly out of line.
Podrick reached out and tested it: up, down, left, right…
It shifted—vertically.
He twisted.
Stone grated against metal as the sconce rotated, turning upside down.
A half-melted candle slid free—Podrick snatched it from the air before it hit the floor.
The mechanism had triggered—he was sure of it—
but the flagstone floor beneath the straw mats stayed stubbornly still,
and nothing in the room appeared to shift.
But Podrick Payne was not so easily thwarted.
He tucked the candle into his hand and crossed the room toward the fireplace—the only other structure large enough to conceal anything.
The torchlight was dim and wavering, yet more than enough in the dark.
Inside the hearth, tucked behind soot-blackened stones, he found it:
a square opening, just large enough for a grown man to crawl through
—no wider than a baker's oven.
Podrick ducked his head, avoiding the last of the glowing embers,
and without hesitation he slipped inside.
A narrow corridor stretched into the shadows.
It forked left and right, but only the right-hand passage breathed the faintest whisper of wind.
He left the hatch open—he'd need it again soon—and wasn't worried about discovery.
Upon entering Tyrion's chamber he'd driven the iron latch deep into place;
no one would be barging in by accident.
Less than sixty steps later, by the torch's wavering glow, Podrick found a vertical shaft descending into darkness. Iron rings were set into the stone, spaced one beneath another like a ladder.
"If I ripped these out," he muttered,
"it'd keep Tyrion's blacksmiths busy for a whole day.
He did tell me I could seize all the steel I wanted in the city…
Wonder if he'd be delighted or horrified."
Podrick chuckled at his own joke, then gripped the first ring.
He climbed down swiftly, counting the iron loops as he went.
At the two-hundred-and-third ring his boots met solid ground again.
"Ten meters at least beneath the Hand's Tower…
the builders of this place were monsters."
A circular chamber opened before him—
roomy compared to the shaft—and the ceiling overhead was the very floor he'd descended.
Red and black tiles formed a mosaic of the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen beneath his feet.
In one corner stood an ornate brazier shaped like a dragon's head.
Along the curved walls: six tunnels, each sealed by iron-barred gates.
"Who in the seven hells decided to chain up every passage?
Completely inconsiderate."
Podrick scowled at the doors, torchlight dancing off cold metal.
He lingered a moment, gaze drifting back to the dragon-shaped brazier.
Kneeling, he examined it. Charcoal still rested inside, and the airflow was stronger here—breathing life into the ashes.
Podrick lowered his torch.
A hiss of oil—
and fire blossomed, golden and warm, spilling from the dragon's maw.
Heat rolled through the chamber, chasing away the chill that had crept over him in the descent.
For something so small, it warmed the room remarkably well.