eachdraidh | (sixth lemon cake) video ✧ open to both courts

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(sixth lemon cake) video ✧ open to both courts

[ 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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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? ]

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.]

[ is that so? well.

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

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.]

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. ]

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.]

[ 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.

[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.

[ 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? ]

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.]

[ more importantly: ] Did you mean to come to the Cothromach?

[ accident or not, she's pleased he's here. secretly deeply silently pleased in a way she cannot quite share. not in this moment -- because she's stressed.

but the magic in the wake of samhain...! perhaps his chance to undo his hard spitting was only incidental. a detour. ]

It weren't easy to manage.

[He would have settled even for Caer Glaem. But his seventh try put him where he wanted to be. It was a trick of magic, but it worked in his favor.]

And yet manage it you did. [ there is unspoken effort hiding behind his words. effort put into action to be here. to come and help them. ser gendry is an independent young man -- he would not, she thinks, go to such lengths merely for a battle. nor did she think it was for her sake: he'd already sacrificed enough on that account.

he worked hard for himself. the cothromach's safety was incidental to a desire to see his spitting redressed. ] Ser, I...

[ a thought occurs to her. cothromach is her city; she can go where she likes. this isn't troichean beinn, where dignitaries and civilians alike are shut out of some smith's ring. they cannot deny her entry at any forge's gate. ] You are making arrows, are you?

[ she knows the answer. she sees the heads. but a question makes for a more polite segue. ]

And other things. [But he could scarcely carry a conversation while beating on an anvil, so he was taking his version of a break.

But he placed no great value on what he was doing. This did not make him noble or heroic. He was ultimately doing it for himself, because he could not live with himself otherwise.]

But I ought to go back to the anvil now. There's more to be done.

O-of course. Certainly. [ she will not insult him by inviting him up to the keep -- to their lemonsweet and their cakes and their clean cold safety, such as it was. ] Do it. Do all of it. I don't need to tell you to make the edges sharp.

[ she wants her enemies to hurt. ]

As sharp as winter, m'lady.

[He reaches towards the locket and snaps it shut, thrusts it into a pocket, and returns to hammer and anvil. It's time to return to the sword he was making. It was crude and hastily made, but it would serve for a battle and it would freeze like ice.]

It took the Lady Keeper until the next day to buck up enough courage. Enough to visit her own city's forges and craftsmen's buildings. It is not them she feared meeting -- though walking down the street she can certainly imagine the everyday Cothromachan soul spitting after her steps -- but Ser Gendry. She could have travelled in disguise (she still possesses her amulet!) but this foray is not for the knight-smith alone. She comes with guards picked by Jon himself. And she comes with other keep staff, made indolent and without task as fiery war waged outside the city's gates. So she asked purpose of them: she filled their arms with loaves of bred and casks of wine and brings them now to the seemingly tireless smiths working in what was either the late night or the early morning. She cannot tell beneath the ground.

She knew at whose forge Ser Gendry worked: Gret's apprentice, as he was called here, had a kind of storied haze following him. She did not stop at that forge first -- choosing another to first bestow drink and food upon the smiths. They did not need it, but it was a gesture. An understanding (thanks in no small part to Ser Gendry himself) that the wars were not won on battlefields alone -- but in the smoke and heat of creation.

At long last the Lady Keeper approached some final workplace -- the one she'd picked her route around and ignored until now. With bread in her hands and ashes on the hem of her dress, she stood in the doorway. Waiting. Watching, more like. She'd had a fur-trimmed cloak but it had long been abandoned beside so much heat.

Throughout all of this, Gendry worked seemingly tirelessly throughout it all. He ought to have been exhausted, but some madness kept him hard to his task. His shard burned in his chest as he funneled strength from it, providing him with strength and stamina that was otherwise inhuman. Sweat trickled din his brow and he continued even while others rated. Rumors spread that the lady keeper had come to visit, but he had paid it little mind. He was like a man possessed and could not be dissuaded from this vital work.

At least until a fellow apprentice took his arm and urged him into the street. So Gendry went, bare chested and stinking of sweat to see Lady Sansa had truly come to visit. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and stepped forward. "What's all this?"

Somehow, it seemed almost official. Almost important. That a smith so ranked as he -- from Troichean Beinn and some anointed apprentice -- should be the one ushered forward to meet her. Lady Sansa saw him step forward and before he got any nearer she reached for a hard-crusted round roll. But its insides were soft and sweet and she broke it apart. Half was offered to him.

"Food. And drink. For the smiths who work all day and all night to safeguard this city."

It wasn't charity. The smiths made good money. Most cared very well for their apprentices. They did not need her bread or her wine or her anything, at this point. And so if it was not charity then it was instead gratitude. Recognition, perhaps, of their charity. How generous the smiths were with their talent and their time.

How generous he was.

"And bread and salt for you," she said -- softer. Only for him.

It was a strange thing when smiths were honored for their service. It was the men on the walls who earned praise for their stalwart efforts and not those inside who at best mended the soldiers and armed them to go on. But in spite of how they might have parted at Samhain, it did not color his attitude now. Instead he stared at the bread with surprise that was followed by understanding. He accepted it and very nearly started to chew into it, because he hadn't stopped to even think about hunger until now. He stopped because he wanted to answer and because he understood what she meant.

"I've never had that before," he said in his own quiet voice. He stared down at the bread, almost embarrassed that he might be thought as singled out. "Not for a whole city."

"Much as you might have tried to avoid alerting any of us to the fact, you are our guest. Cothromach's guest. Come a long long way to help us."

She tried to impose a distance upon the conversation. Cothromach thanked him; Cothromach offered its bread and its salt. She was merely the vessel for its voice and its remarkably steady hands. The roll's second half was raised in the air almost like a toast. And she waited for him to bite.

He took his bite and chewed it hastily, then a second which was slower and done more thoughtfully. That distinction was noticed, but he did not apply any great suspicion to its purpose. His thoughts were on what was going on above where the war was waged on the surface.

"I hope it's enough," he said in a worried tone. "No one's said much down here yet."

"It must be enough."

The Lady Keeper would not speak in hopes and wants: there was room only for imperatives. For the hard certainty that every hand at heavy work would put them one hand closer to victory. Even now, she felt a spread-out guilt for holding him back from his craft. Yet she fancied he looked...tired. Or perhaps that crease in his expression was merely concentration. Determination.

Sansa took one bite of her roll and did not need to any another. The right was fulfilled. "Those arrows I saw--"

A question hovered upon her lips. She didn't want to see them. And yet...she wanted to lead him into inviting her to see them all the same.

That piece of bread had scarce lasted him long. He had accepted her imperative demand that all would end well and decided that it was sufficient for him. So it was to arrows that his attention went. With a mouth still chewing, he bobbed his head to the forge.

"Not just arrows," he told her as he chewed. And as he chewed, he stepped into his space to pick up one of the shafts. It was done, but not yet feathered. He held it out for her to have a look at. "Feel the flat of the metal, m'lady. But slow."

It was ice cold to the touch, despite the heat all around them.

Sansa did not smile. But she did allow a flicker of pleasure to touch her expression -- if only because she was pleased he'd picked up the slack of her unspoken request and could therefore move freely into the workspace. In this city, her guard was a genuine guard and they made no move to stop her. They knew better, perhaps, than to intervene between one shardholder and another.

Her unfinished roll half had to be balanced in the palm while she crooked her fingers around the arrow's shaft. Sansa did not lift it from his hold but instead anchored its unfeathered end and leaned forward on the tips of her toes (the left still smarted, though she would never tell him so) and took a closer look. Her free thumb ran across the metal -- exploring the flat with the same slow progress he'd cautioned.

The metal was like frost. Like snow. Like winter. Now she did smile (if only for a second) before a thoughtful scowl replaced it. "What tremendous magic," she commented; she did not need to ask. She knew the magicks brewing her her city's bowels in the effort to beat back these tide of flame. "Tremendous and fitting. Perhaps I ought not say it to a smith, ser, but fire is fleeting. But there is something natural and inevitable about the cold. This chill will take the day for us."

She sounded certain because she had to sound certain. Sansa knew little about the hard facts of war. She knew so little she dared to call fire unnatural -- trust a northerner to be so obtuse about the opposing element.

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