ADWD Tyrion II, The Merchant's Man

Tyrion II
Tyrion is journeying to meet up with Illyrio's friend Griff. Illyrio is going along for the ride primarily to give Tyrion someone to talk to and be infodumped on.  Important things to note here:

• Viserys tried to rape Daenerys on the night of her wedding.  I take back what I said in the prologue about Varamyr Sixskins being less sympathetic than Viserys.
• The Golden Company used to fight against the Targaryens. Not during Robert's Rebellion but back in the good old days when some bastard son of one of the Aegons claimed the throne. And then someone else in his family did the same thing.  Oh hell, the wiki of ice and fire has an entire page on it, just go there. Anyway so Griff's team fought against the Targs way back when, so Tyrion is naturally suspicious of their motives in wanting to help Daenerys. Then again, Jorah was pretty suspicious of Illyrio's motives in wanting to help Daenerys too, and anybody who wants to question Ser Jorah's suspicions... well, two words. "Wine merchant."  Point is, this entire thing is sketchy as hell and Tyrion's smart to not trust Griff as readily as Illyrio would like him to.
• Barristan Selmy is about as useful politically to Dany as Ned Stark was to Robert. Though it's Illyrio who says this, it's probably still true.
• Speaking of Ser Barristan, he's the guy who extinguished the Blackfyre line (the rebels that the Golden Company fought for). (I don't think that's actually in the chapter but it is on the wiki page I linked to. Oops.) Can't wait to see what he thinks of the Golden Company.
• The Golden Company always pay their debts. No wait that's not it. The Golden Company always keep their word. Only now they've broken it. For some reason. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn...

Then they talk about gods for a moment, and Tyrion remembers Shae and Tysha, and that's about it for Tyrion's chapter. Oh, and there's food. Whenever GRRM starts listing foods, I skip ahead a paragraph because, well, it gets kind of ludicrous.  (Drinking game rule #5: drink whenever GRRM starts listing food.)

I'm giving it the short shrift, I know, but what I do here is gripe and there's not much to gripe about. I would offer praise - in the form of saying "I'm hearing all of Tyrion's dialogue in Peter Dinklage's voice" - but that's probably praise more of the casting department or Dinklage himself than of Martin's writing.

The Merchant's Man
Quentyn gets off to a great start by complaining about how the ship he's thinking of buying passage on stinks. Now it turns out that he actually has a point, in that the ship is actually a slave ship, but yeah, the guy starts off by complaining. There's some funny stuff about how he sucks at acting, hence why he's playing the role of "The Merchant's Man," because his friend makes a more convincing merchant than he does.  His companion is the sort of comic relief character you know is going to die, probably very suddenly and horribly, just because it's GRRM writing it.  So they wander around a bit and get mocked by some sellswords they'll have to end up fighting eventually because said sellswords are going to war against Meereen, and then Archibald Yronwood, probably the smartest guy left alive on Team Quentyn (they were ambushed by pirates earlier on), tells them some sort of secret path that they'll be taking to get to Meereen faster than the road and safer than the slave ship. We don't get to figure out what it is because the chapter ends.