(sixth lemon cake) video ✧ open to both courts

[steeledskin]

[ before the lockets sits a well-composed and well-turned-out lady: her face is set with discipline -- though below it she wants to crack and cry. but sansa stark has a duty -- some imperative -- to speak calmly of grave matters. nothing about this is comfortable; nothing about this is within her conventional grasp. she could compare it to her makeshift trials before the lords declarant or her audiences with the king, but this stage is far wider. out of frame, her fingers tremble. ]

Dear Shardbearers of either court --

[ if her voice shakes then it is by design. some honest fear is permitted into her tone, for what better to move the hearts of strangers than to express genuine dismay at this great knotted problem? she would not have thought to even sell it as injustice until living here and meeting many a person who appeared outraged over these alliances. these marriages. these common cages. ] One turn of the moon ago, High Queen Morla delivered onto me an ultimatum: to marry some Unseelie lord of her choosing, or else invite war upon the Cothromach. Whatever your loyalties, I beg you all to recognize the attempt for what it was --[ and do please fill that blank with your own outraged conclusions. ] I call for aid and support.

[ some words are permitted more of a quiver than others: morla; marry; aid; war. ] But I fear war has come already -- has long already been present -- and today I will refuse the proposal offered, because I fear it was only ever a blade's poisoned edge. I would prevail upon some soul from that queen's court to speak my refusal to her. [ powerful men have met her vulnerabilities with laughter, only to turn and shake their heads when she took small careful steps towards decision. what else is she to do? if she will not play the game by their rules, she must try to write her own. but even now, she hinges her action upon the passion of someone else's protest. someone else's judgement -- for better or worse. ]

The Lady Keeper of the Cothromach will not swear away her city to another court by marriage vows or by vows of any kind. [ except for other partial vows made in quiet rooms with would-be neutral parties. but those meetings are a secret and her announcement today comes instead to engage the hearts and sympathies of prospective champions who might grow incensed over a bully's tactics. lady sansa is not above playing upon their pity if said pity will protect her, her family, and her new city. anyone's pity will do: seelie or unseelie alike. ]

High Queen Morla's dogs are at the gate; let us be wolves when we meet them.

( ooc; i know some efforts have already been made re: the unseelie camps by lancer and others -- there's also a fresh log for the battle itself. )

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[bullhorned]

It makes no matter. I'll have no time for lessons tonight. The forge needs worked tonight, as long as I can stand to do it.

[Certainly there was little time to find sleep in a city under siege!]

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[steeledskin]

[ soft: ] Your master keeps you uncommonly busy.

[ a daunting thought! because he was already kept busy to begin with. she wonders what presses such work forward in the dwarven city. ]

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[bullhorned]

Not tonight, I keep myself busy. There ain't much way 'round it.

[Not when it came to the matters of a guilty conscience.]

[steeledskin]

-- You?

[ is this some puzzle. some new strangeness. or maybe she is tired -- looking for hidden meanings even where she expect to find none. ] Why, ser?

[bullhorned]

Because it needs to be done. It's what I'm best at.

[He does not confess to what he is doing though, but it might not escape notice that there is other figures beyond him in the distance. Dwarves certainly, but other men as well. Gendry is not so solitary a figure as he is in Troichean Beinn.]

[steeledskin]

[ eventually, she'll see. notice. think. assume. for now, she sets her over-stretched attention on him alone. and on what pinpricks can be made of his eyes within the locket -- ignoring the sweat and the skin. the trappings of hard work. ]

Do not overwork yourself. Please. I... [ oh! but that arch in the middle-distance looked familiar. not because she'd had the time to walk those corridors but because cothromach's architecture was a beast all of its own.

sansa frowns. ]

[bullhorned]

You... what?

[Perhaps he ought not to ask, but it makes him pause to stop and judge her concern. He would work himself hard, but he knew she would do the same if there was some task she could equally set herself to. That was the weight they both wore now.]

[steeledskin]

H-has your Master changed forges?

[ he is not at work on his master's chores -- but she presumes he would use his space. and that space behind him does not match with the spaces she'd seen through the locket in troichean beinn. and there -- over ser gendry's shoulder! some very tall dwarf, she thinks. ]

[bullhorned]

No. I'm at a different one today. I couldn't do what I needed to at Master Gret's forge.

[He straightens and in his hand is an arrow, newly fitted with a fine looking tip. Were the locket larger, she'd be able to see how it looks as though it was touched by frost. He tosses it into a pile and begins on the next.]

[steeledskin]

[ arrows! a bit beneath gret's apprentices, she thinks -- from how they were spoke of back in the dwarven city. something isn't adding up. she is quick, but not so quick as to sniff out the possibility that ser gendry would be doing what he has done. ]

-- And what is it that needs such urgent doing? [ cancelled lesson (though she would have cancelled them regardless). and other forges. ]

[bullhorned]

I've mucked things up and spat too hard. So I need to set things straight as best I can.

[Arrows are perhaps beneath him. But when there is a city at siege, what better weapon can go to its defenders? So he lets the elder masters forge the arrows and, at least while talking to her, he fits them to their shafts to be ready for flight.]

[steeledskin]

[ mucked things up and spat too hard.

spat too hard. he's -- oh, by the seven entire. ] Ser!

[ there are ways out of the city. gods know she's run their lengths and possibilities a hundred times today in her mind -- ever since the first unseelie shock troops set themselves ablaze. she thinks of them now once again, foolishly concerned that he should be behind this perhaps-doomed walls. others have sworn service or thirst for battle or are too honourable to flee.

but ser gendry! he hates complication. she knows this now as instinctively as she knows the names of the stars and the colours of the flowers. ] Do not tell me, ser, that you are in the Cothromach.

[bullhorned]

I didn't mean to tell you at all. You've got more to worry about than me.

[It comes off as a mild admonishment, as though she shouldn't be wasting her time with him. He was doing his part, so she ought to be doing hers in turn.]

[steeledskin]

Each soul in this city is mine to worry about tonight. [ and tomorrow night. and the night after. and the next. as many nights as it takes to see them through to the end. ] Yours included, if you are here.

[ is she upset with him? a little. only a little. and only because he'd not told her -- and yet, what right did she have to that knowledge? certainly no liar could depend upon someone else to tell her any truths. and ser gendry did not lie.

he had merely omitted a truth. ] Who knows you're here?

[bullhorned]

[He looks to the locket and frowns. It made it sound as though he was one of her people. Which, he supposed, might be true while he was in the city. But before she'd never truly had any authority over him, save for those moments when it suited her to pretend she did. But to the question, he offers a mild shrug.]

Anyone 'round the forges. I didn't waste time looking to speak with anyone.

[But it wasn't meant to be some grand secret either. With Bordan Gret's signet still being worn, he wasn't likely to stay anonymous.]

[steeledskin]

Arya? Jon? Stiles? You told none of them?

[ because she can imagine he would not tell her -- she is not in his best books since samhain, she imagines. and yet she manages to find a sting in her heart. some dismay. self-criticism. but to think he would tell no one...

spat too hard. mucked it up. could it be his conscience is as plagued as hers is? ]

[bullhorned]

I wouldn't get a bloody thing done if they knew.

[Not that he would dislike their company, but Jon might invite him to battle and Arya would just bother him as she often did in the forge. And Stiles... gods only knew what mischief Stiles would get up to.

No, it was simpler to just do his work.]

[steeledskin]

[ is that so? well.

in the cothromach's own interests: ] They'll not learn of your presence from me.

[bullhorned]

You tell them if you like. Don't keep secrets for my sake.

[She has plenty already and lies too much as it is. He'll not make her do so even more.]

[steeledskin]

By your own words, it would not be for your sake.

[ but mine. lick a fingertip and trace another mark of debt on the slate. and yet she does not resent him yet. ]

[bullhorned]

Might be I'll tell them anyway.

[Because he'll basically do what he likes in the end, regardless of who it is best for.]

[steeledskin]

[ she feels it is fortunate this city's lady keeper has some corner of her interest invested in him, for he speaks harshly. rudely, really, to the very ruler of these walls. and for how much longer?

she takes a moment, then: ] Not Jon. Not Stiles. They are -- they haven't the time. [ ... ] Tell Arya, if you like. Once she arrives.

[bullhorned]

[In the forge, Gendry exists inside an entirely different kingdom. The freedoms of Troichean Beinn, where a man's skill determined his worth, did not carry over here. But surrounded by heat and sweat, it was easy to forget the city had a different master.]

I will. Better her down here then trying to fight them off.

[steeledskin]

[ at last! something upon which they can agree, today. ]

May I ask when you arrived? [ how long has he been in the hot cellars of her city, sweating over the punctuation of its defences? ]

[bullhorned]

Before that Samhain business was done. There was strange magic about during it. I wouldn't have managed to make it here if not.

[But it also stranded him far away from Troichean Beinn. He knew he would need to earn a new boon to get himself back afterward.]