"So, we have provisions to last for three months, and water for five. The crew is happy and all is good. We will approach the Arbor's coast tomorrow if the wind holds, but we won't stop until we reach Lys."

Gerion folded his map and drank a cup of wine.

"That's a month, at least, with the good wind."

"Well, a month may seem a long time but the Lion is a good ship, she'll take us there. So don't worry, Emmon."

"I don't. We all know it's a one-way trip so at least let us postpone our deaths for as long as we can."

"Emm, you and your optimism. Where is your sense of adventure? At least you have adapted at sea, you haven't puked in days."

Tyrion's jape amused Gerion but Emmon Frey was implacable:

"Well, at least we'll die far from Westeros and all that nonsense in it."

The three noblemen left the captain's quarters, walking towards the main deck. There, the captain of the ship, One-Eyed Garon, awaited them.

"My lords, the day is as beautiful as it can be and the wind favors us. The Lord of Light is on our side!"

Garon Flowers was a bastard son of Lord Garth Sloane of Petal's Dusk and a Braavosi singer which toured the world during the reign of King Aegon the Fifth. The singer abandoned him after birth and his father raised him alongside his trueborn children who hated their half-brother. When Garon turned 14, he ran from his father's castle to Oldtown where he would become a seaman on the Burning Tower, one of the merchant ships of House Hightower, hoping that one day, he would serve on the Honor of Oldtown, the flagship galley of the Hightowers. However, during one of the Burning Tower's voyages to the Free Cities, the ship was attacked by Lysene pirates. Garon killed several of them with only a piece of wood before being blinded in his left eye by a sword wielded by an enemy. The Oldtown ship managed to fend the attack and Garon was declared a hero, earning him the reputation as One-Eyed Garon. However, his wounds were severe and they had to dock in Myr where his wounds were tended by a priestess of R'hllor named Usaya, who eventually converted him to her religion. Gerion Lannister heard about One-Eyed Garon and his willingness to take on hard missions and made him the captain of the Laughing Lion for this mission. While initially hating the ship, believing it to be just a tinderbox, he warmed up to her.

Tyrion frowned:

"Well, I hope the Lord of Light won't decide to incinerate us out of the blue. That would make my father a prophet."

"Imagine that, my brother a prophet. Repent, you sinners, or you will be purified by fire and blood!"

"No, that's something a Targaryen would say. Repent, you sinners, or you will be purified by my roar!"

"I think they will obey him. Nobody would like to hear him roar, as they would immediately smell his breath."

Emmon approached the two of them:

"I'm sorry to interrupt your discussion, but what is happening with that man?"

One of the sailors, an old man, started to vomit blood. Garon Flowers and the others approached him:

"What's wrong? Do you need help?"

"Ugh… I… feel bad. Dizzy."

"That is not seasickness. Especially in case of a sailor as experimented as Timm. Hugh, Norry, take him below deck to the maester!"

"Aye, aye, captain!"

The two sailors took their mate to the maester, an Ambrose by birth, by the name of Garth. Tyrion wandered what happened:

"I'm not a seaman but I can say to you, that is not something normal!"

"I wouldn't read much into this. The man is old. Just old age catching up to him. Haven't you noticed? He looked exactly like Emmon here."

"Laugh all you want, Gerion. What if it's plague? Or the bloody flux?"

Garon spoke:

"Bloody flux appears in pestilent places, like battlefields or slums, my lord, not on ships. As for the plague, well, it usually starts with a bout of fever. I didn't notice Timm to be feverish. We just need to let the maester do his thing and if it's something bad, we will quarantine Timm. Simple as that!"

"I hope you are right."

"I lived almost my entire life at sea, my lord, I know my trade."

All the people on the deck were preoccupied, except for the captain. Tyrion went to his quarters to read a book about various diseases, one wrote by a maester of the Citadel. Gerion Lannister sparred with one of his squires while Emmon Frey nervously walked around the upper deck, avoiding the spot where Timm had his issue a while back. After an hour, maester Garth summoned the nobles to his quarters:

"My lords, I'm afraid I've got some bad news."

"I knew it."

"It's quite serious, Ser Emmon. It appears Timm was poisoned. Nothing I could possibly do. The poison is from the Free Cities, highly lethal and quite undetectable, giving symptoms similar to various diseases. It's called the Last Sunrise. Before I could figure out a cure, he died."

Gerion was livid. Of course, it happens during a travel to lose one or two of your men, but to poison? This was preposterous.

"How did it happen?"

"Well, the Last Sunrise must be ingested in order to do its work so it must have been something he ate or drank."

Tyrion spoke to his uncles:

"You do realize that Timm ate from the provisions we brought from Casterly Rock. So, all of us have this poison in our systems."

"Shit!"

"Ugh… I knew we would die on this journey."

"Calm down, my lords. The poison acts within an hour since entering the body, so you don't have any poison in your system. When did you last eat?"

"Three hours ago."

"Well… at dawn."

"I didn't eat anything today, just wine!"

"So you are safe."

"We are not safe; we must find the source of poison before it gets the entire ship. So we can't eat anything anymore, until we figure this out."

Emmon Frey disagreed with Gerion:

"Well… we all ate from that barrel we have in storage in our cabin. Bread and fish. So that one is safe, because we didn't puke blood and, you know, died."

"Emm is right. For now, we must eat just from that barrel. But what about the crew?"

"Tyrion is right; this thing will escalate quickly unless we find out the poisoned provisions. Maester, is there a way to detect this poison?"

"Ser Gerion, there is a way, but if we use it, we can't consume the food we test even if it's clean."

"Well, we can take samples from each barrel and, you know… Test them?"

"It could work."

"Gerion, me and the maester will sort this out, you and Tyrion go and tell the crew that their mate died because of a ruptured bowel or something… I don't know, just… tell them, you know?"

"Good thinking. Come, nephew."

On the main deck, after the Lannisters informed the captain about Timm, he held a small funeral service for their fallen comrade:

"Our brother Timm served on countless ships in his lifetime. He was born a sailor, he died a sailor. And may the Lord of Light guard his soul."

One-Eyed Garon approached the corpse of Timm and kissed his lips. Tyrion was dumbfounded:

"Oh… I didn't know the captain liked boys."

Garon Flowers laughed:

"No, no… This is part of our faith in the Lord of Light."

"I heard about it, it's called the last kiss, no?"

"Yes, Ser Gerion, but I don't have the same powers as the priests of R'hllor. It's just symbolic."

"I see."

Tyrion was awed. He just learned something new about other cultures. When he lived in King's Landing, the only red priest of R'hllor he met was Thoros of Myr but the fat cleric was more interested in women and drink than religion, so he didn't speak much about his faith. A very interesting custom, even if it's a bit strange. However, Tyrion wondered how the kiss of a proper Red Priestess would be like.

An hour later, Tyrion and Gerion were in their cabin.

"Uncle, do you think that this kiss of the Lord of Light can bring people back to life?"

"The Red God's religion is a queer one but sometimes I'm inclined to believe that he is the one true god, as his priests say."

"I didn't take you for a believer."

"I'm not, but I have eyes. When I was sixteen, I travelled throughout the Free Cities and I even saw a religious service in the Red Temple in Volantis."

"How was it?"

"The temple or the service?"

"Both."

"Well, the temple is three times the size of the Sept of Baelor in King's Landing. In my entire life, I never saw so many columns and bridges and towers. It's truly a masterpiece. As for the service, well… It's unusual, to say the least."

"How so?"

"Well, every religion in the known world has a temple or a place of worship in Volantis. I saw a sept there and even an altar dedicated to the Old Gods of the forest. However, the faith of the Red God was the only one which embraced the slaves and tried to give them hope. The Temple even purchases slaves and train them to be priests."

"The priests are slaves?"

"The majority of them, yes. This is why slaves worship R'hllor. They believe that one day, they will be freed. Slavery is a huge problem in Volantis, and in most of the eastern Essos. The Triarchs of the city hate the red priests and many times in the past they tried to hire mercenary companies to kill them and destroy the Temple, however none managed to do this so far. Some companies simply refused because they were believers too, others were killed by the Fiery Hand, a company made of one thousand warriors dedicated to the Lord of Light, whose responsibility is to guard the Temple day and night. That's life in Volantis. Pray you will never taste the life as a slave. I saw many of them just… devoid of life, of anything resembling humanity. Their bodies moved but their minds, their hearts… Just stood there."

"And you think religion is the answer for their needs?"

"No, but people will cling to anything if that will give them succor."

Tyrion processed everything he had learned from Gerion. This is why this journey is so important for him, to learn more, to find out the truth about the world he was thrown in. This is why on the ship, he speaks little. There is a time for talking and also a time for listening, he said.

Soon after, Emmon entered the cabin:

"So?"

"We found out the poison's source. It is a cask of wine. All the other barrels are clean."

"Shit… Tywin. I bet my sword hand it is him. Nobody else had access to the ship. He probably put it there while we were hunting and you were hiding."

"I… I don't know, Gerion."

"Who else?"

Tyrion wasn't surprised. Tywin probably wanted to bring their deaths quicker with poison rather than wait for them to die in Valyria. This way, he could say that they just disappeared in the cursed Smoking Sea.

"It doesn't matter. Mark that cask of poisoned wine and put it in my quarters. Maybe it will come in handy one day."

"Yes, to kill us."

"To kill, yes. Not necessarily us."

Emmon sensed a coldness inside Tyrion. He was probably angry that his father might have tried to poison them. However, what does he plan to do with that poisoned wine?

A few days passed without any more incidents. While the crew's fear that ironborn raiders would come for their ship was great, none approached the Laughing Lion. No one, even the most daring ironborn warrior won't dare to attack a Lannister sail. The Lion passed the Arbor and now was travelling alongside the southern Dornish peninsula. Tyrion was on his bed, in his cabin, reading a book about the Free City of Lys, their first stop on the road to Valyria. Lys the Lovely, as it is known, it is said to house every pleasure known to man and many of its inhabitants share the blood of Old Valyria, thus giving them the white-blond hair and the purple eyes. A city full of Targaryens. That would be a sight to see. Tyrion wondered if the Lysene practiced incest like the former Great House of Westeros. Of course, in history, the legendary Lysene family of Rogare actually intermingled with the Targaryen kings. Viserys the Second of his name married a Rogare and fathered three children with her, one of them being arguably the worst king in the history of the Seven Kingdoms, Aegon the Fourth. He fathered countless baseborn sons and daughters and spurned his own trueborn son. On his deathbed, he legitimized all of his bastards and plunged Westeros into another dark age. Was Aegon a worse father than Tywin Lannister? Tyrion couldn't help but wonder. He was always fascinated, even almost obsessed with House Targaryen. How did they control their dragons? Maybe in Valyria, they will find the answer.