Chapter XI: Tyrion I – Sewers
“You asked to see me, Lord Hand?”
Tyrion looked up from the letter on his desk, then looked at the stack of letters he still had to go through. With a sigh, he cracked his neck once, twice, and then looked towards the man at the door. He looked to be in his forties, had already lost half of the light brown hair on his head and carried a couple of scrolls under one arm.
“That is entirely possible. If you wouldn’t mind telling me who you are, exactly?”
The man blushed and wiped his free hand on his tunic. “Helbard Torpe, of the Guild of Masons.”
At that, Tyrion perked up. “Ah! The master builder, I take it?”
Torpe nodded.
“And you brought the plans?”
“What we have in the way of plans, my lord.”
“Yes, that might be a problem. I’ve got some we salvaged from the ruins of the Red Keep’s archives around here somewhere …” With a grunt, Tyrion got up from his too-high chair and waddled over to one of his cabinets. It took him three tries to find the right drawer; then he produced the slightly singed plans and spread them on the side table. The light was shit there, so he fetched a candle, inviting Torpe to look over the plans.
“Do you know why I asked for you?” Tyrion asked him.
Torpe shook his head. “I assumed it was about a more organized approach to rebuilding the city and the Keep.”
“You’re not wrong there,” Tyrion told the man. “But it’s not the whole truth either. You see, I have permission from His Grace to rebuild King’s Landing from the bottom up, so to speak. And what lies at the bottom of King’s Landing?”
“Its foundations?” Torpe asked, uncertain. Tyrion saw that he was beginning to sweat. Hopefully he’d get over that soon.
“Its sewers. A city runs on its sewers. Or not, as the case may be. King’s Landing certainly never had much of a sewer system, or it wouldn’t have stunk like a whore’s armpit on a sunny day.”
The master builder nodded slowly, clearly already making some calculations.
“And you may not know this, but sewers are something of a specialty of mine. Let me tell you what I learned managing the best-run sewer system in the Seven Kingdoms, and then we can get down to planning.”
Fin