It was all too much. For a moment Eddard Stark wanted nothing so much as to return to Winterfell, to the clean simplicity of the north, where the enemies were winter and the wildlings beyond the Wall....
The title was but a courtesy due him as a council member; Varys was lord of nothing but the spiderweb, the master of none but his whisperers.
Tyrion let the eunuch help him mount. Lord Varys, he said from the saddle, sometimes I feel as though you are the best friend I have in King's Landing and sometimes I feel you are my worst enemy. How...