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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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.

Gendry by contrast was fire and was perhaps more fire than any Targaryen had been since the last of the dragon riders. But it offended him little, because he knew better. In the South, it mattered little if the Starks said winter was coming, because that implied that the cold itself was just as fleeting as warmth. But in this battle, they needed only turn one against another. And besides that, he was proud of this trick of magic and his part of it. He was proud too that it had made her smile, even as he placed the arrows with the rest.

"There's swords too. But that's slower work. And besides, these arrows are better for our needs now." It was perhaps information she knew already. But he explained it anyway, because to not explain it meant to talk about that multitude of other worries and fears that might plague them. He grinned slyly as a thought occurred to him belatedly. "I figure this is what they meant by fighting fire with fire, eh?"

"You mean -- the fire of the forges, don't you?"

She glanced around the space. There was heat and spark and ember here. Perhaps she might have been more awed of it had the disturbance at her gates not made her...already well tired of flame. Part of her feared even this incursion of heat and flicker. Instead, she would have happily encased her whole city in cold wet snow.

"They burn so hot. Too hot--"

"Not hot enough," he answered. "There's no lake of lava beneath our feet. We have to make do with these furnaces instead."

It served, but Gendry already missed the forges of Troichean Beinn that were brutally efficient as compared to this lesser version here in Cothromach. The fires served, but Gendry felt keenly aware that they were not working as hard and as fast as they could be. Now that they forged to save this city, it felt insufficient. He felt dull and slow and it gave him an increasing anxiety on how this would all end.

"Make do!"

She repeated his judgement with an almost indignant surprise. Certainly, she understood that Troichean Beinn boasted better forges. But she had not considered that her city's would be so deficient in comparison. Perhaps not as busy or quick, but certainly not worth disparagement.

It drove her to ask: "How would you improve them? Assuming, as ever, that the sudden inclusion of a lake of any sort is wholly impossible."

The question was serious. Levelled, suddenly, to him. And she wanted an answer.

He shrugged away his lack of knowledge. He knew his work, but what was done in that deep and ancient city often defied his understanding. What he did know was simply that it worked where this place managed only nearly as well.

"Still better than anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms." He at least could claim that with certainty, because he had worked in the best forge in the land.

Her voice dropped. Her eyes were veiled -- low-lidded. She stepped one step closer and (were she anyone else) might have reached for his warm sweat-skimmed arm. But she wasn't anyone else, and so she only inclined her head and kept a kind of safe bubble between their bodies.

"But it doesn't have to be better than anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms," Sansa countered -- her voice young and uncertain. She was not practised at voicing dissent, but if she was going to practice with anyone than it might as well be with him. Him, who had quickly come to see the worst and best of her position in this city. "It needs must be better than what our enemies can bring to our gates. Never will it surpass Troichean Beinn -- but I would see it surpass what the Unseelie strongholds can muster."

It was a lofty goal, maybe. But not an impossible one. Not with a city filled to a portion with dwarves. And not if she played her games properly.

Gendry seemed embarrassed by her suggestion, as he'd not meant to sound critical of these forges, but merely express his own frustration at how little he felt he'd manged to do. This tali of improvement left him feeling out of his depth.

"I don't," he began to say but then paused. He grimaced and tried again. "I don't think we'll have time for that, m'lady. Best we focus on what can be managed now, eh?"

"Time?"

For a moment, her look was glassy. Distant. She shook her head. "N-no, ser. No time at all. Not tonight and not tomorrow and not the day after. But beyond. Should Cothromach survive this," and this was truly said in a soft and private tone, "it must grow into something better. Something...prepared."

If she could turn herself into a hard-walled fortress, so too could a city. If she could forge herself into steel, then why couldn't it? Already it was stone and metal. It could be made better. It could be made safer.

Beyond. That word hit him like a hard note and suddenly his eyes seemed to widen as though she might know what treasonous work he was up to in the depths of Troichean Beinn. But he soon grasped her true meaning and he averted his eyes.

"Aye... I'm sure you'll do just that, m'lady. You've got good smiths here. Lots of them could be in the Smith's Ring if they fancied it, I think."

"That is...good to hear," she breathed. Exhaled. Tore at a corner of her discarded half-roll before shaking her head and lifting it up. Offering it to him in much the same way as she'd offered the other half. He needed the energy more than she did, she thought.

"Have you ever been in sieged city before, ser?"

He shook his head. "I've been in a sieged barn," he said lightly as though that might ease the tension of this present situation. "Didn't last too long, that."

He'd fled and so had others. Arya had cried out out for Winterfell, whereas Hot Pie had simply called out his own name, while Yoren died. He also recalled that Biter and Rorge should have died there, but were spared because of Arya. Bitter memories, but hardly a siege at all. "Have you?"

"Twice, of sorts. Or perhaps it's merely one and one half."

Neither time saw her so personally involved in the very mechanics of the conflict, though she felt today that same aching worry she'd felt locked in Maegoor's Holdfast. "First as Lord Stannis attempted to choke King's Landing. And second the Lords of the Vale upon the Eyrie. But it was only being locked up in King's Landing that was truly terrifying--"

She frowned. And she wondered what Morla's forces would do to the defenders if the gates fell.

"Seems that would be the safest place." Gendry knew what sieges were like from having heard stories from old soldiers. But he also knew what an invasion was like, because King's Landing had been filled with those poor souls that had survived Tywin's unleashing his soldiers into the city. There had been terrible stories spread of that day, not so long before Gendry was even born. It had been a horror his mother was mercifully spared from.

"Safe?"

She teetered upon the very cusp of indignation. Safe. King's Landing was an adders' pit. A lions' den. A dark abyss gilded with glittering metals but all of it hollow and hurting. And yet that did not exactly counter his assertion -- that in a siege, the city ought to be somewhat secure. But then again it had not been Stannis's forces, exactly, that she had feared the most. Instead, locked with Cersei with the other women and the children, she'd come to fear a very different kind of onslaught. The humiliation promised and the death assured. Just remembering it made her whole expression weaken like wax melting before the forge's heat. Old wounds stung.

"Yes. Of course. You're right to say so." Now was the wrong time to indulge in those wounds, old or new. He did not want to hear about how the king's headsman had waited with them -- promising death before dishonour. "The Red Keep is a strong and magnificent building. It would have resisted. Certainly. As we will resist."

After Samhain, it was regrettably too easy to lie to him once again. To squash down her own true feelings and fears and instead serve him only the chilliest and superficial comments. So so far away from the most honest tones her voice could take.

It might have been easier for her to lie to him, but it had become that much harder for him to believe her. He saw through her expression and the familiar and shallow appraisal of both the current situation and the one long past. His displeasure at the deception was obvious by his growing frown and the way he raised his arms up to cross them. He did not care what she chose not to tell him, but he cared a great deal for what she tried to make him believe. He wasn't a bloody fool.

"Thank you for the bread, m'lady." For a baseborn bastard, it was as tactful as he could manage. But with it came that stubbornness that now canvased any sincerity or openness that had existed only moments ago. Though he was the smith and she the Lady Keeper, he was using his need to work and labor as a means to simply excuse her from his company.

(sixth lemon cake) video ✧ open to both courts

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