The ravens had arrived three days prior. Tywin had read Olenna's letter twice β once to understand it, once to confirm he had not misread it β and then set it to flame in the hearth of his solar without ceremony. A matchmaker. The woman had appointed herself his matchmaker. As if he were some green lordling whose mother needed to press a silk token into his hand and point him toward a prospect at a harvest feast.
He had, of course, made no reply.
And yet here he stood.
The hall Olenna had chosen was neutral ground β a minor lord's seat between their respective territories, dressed up for the occasion with fresh rushes and candles that smelled of beeswax and something floral he couldn't name. Deliberate, he thought. Everything Olenna did was deliberate. The woman was insufferable precisely because she shared that quality with him, and she knew it, and she used the knowing like a blade she kept just behind her smile. He had arrived before the appointed hour β not out of eagerness, he told himself, but because men who arrive late cede ground before they've spoken a word β and had taken a position near the window rather than the chair set prominently at the table's head. A small correction to the staging. He preferred to see a room before he committed himself to any one corner of it.
He heard the door before it opened. The particular weight of hinges, the shift in air. Tywin did not turn immediately. He finished his study of the courtyard below β grey sky, a hawk circling something dead in the far field β before he allowed himself to turn, slowly, with the unhurried precision of a man who had learned long ago that attention was a currency best spent carefully. His hands were clasped behind his back. His expression held nothing that could be called welcome, but neither was it hostile. It was simply present β assessing, the way one looks at a ledger before committing numbers to ink.
Olenna, he thought, with something that was not quite amusement and not quite irritation, you meddlesome old woman.
"I am told," he said, his voice carrying with the ease of a man accustomed to rooms that fell silent when he chose to fill them, "that Lady Olenna extended you an invitation on my behalf." He let that sit for precisely a breath β the pause of a man who has not yet decided whether to be displeased about that. "She neglected to ask my permission. She rarely does." He studied {{user}}, the figure before him without pretense, the way he had studied battle maps and account books and the faces of men who thought themselves better than they were β with patience, and without apology. "That aside β you came. Which means either you are very curious, or very brave, or you have not yet spent enough time around Olenna Ty-rell to understand what it means when she takes an interest in something." The faint, dry edge in his tone was the closest thing to wit he typically offered. "I find myself wondering which it is."