eachdraidh | Forge Three - (Audio/Action)

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Forge Three - (Audio/Action)

Bloody fairies never manage to get things right, do they?

[Like many, Gendry received his boon two days ago, but he hasn't gotten any closer to making proper use of it. Oh sure, walking back and forth through a set of mirrors is a jolly experience, but it's a pain in the ass if they're both in the same room. Though he won't deny he did have a bit of fun setting them across each other and walking through the portal over and over. But! That's not what he'd wanted!]

Seems if you want something decent, you've got to be specific. Seven hells... [He has no choice! He must do the unthinkable:] Stiles, you still about?

[Yes. He must ask STILES for help. That most dreaded of occurrences! Sure, there might be other people who could teleport him from Cothromach to Troichean Beinn in a blink of the eye. But those are other people and Gendry's faith in other people is roughly equivalent to his faith in this war ending amicably. If he's called a suspicious bastard, then it is a one hundred perfect accurate description of him.

But the locket is still in his hand and he realizes he's addressing both courts at large. Damn.]

... just, be careful about your boons, eh? The fairies like to be stingy, if you let them. [There. He's done the community at large a favor.]

[At the Cothromach]

backdated to 26th
When Gendry wasn't in his room messing about with a set of magic mirrors, he was hard at work at one of the forges. Though he wasn't officially apprenticing at any of the shops, one of the master smiths had agreed to hire Gendry on while he was in the city. So that meant keeping busy as he hammered tirelessly at some new sword. His Shard ached as he drew on its power to give superhuman blows. It was hard work and the sword wouldn't even be his, but he now knew enough about dwarven magic that he could finally give his uncle a good and strong sword. This is what he'd been doing ever since the battle had ended and he'd at last turned his work to other projects. This item was now nearly done and by evening, after he'd honed it to a razor's edge, he would find his uncle's home in the Cothromach to come knocking.

27th
After his message on the lockets, Gendry left to be at his normal routine. He was living in the Keeper's tower now and so he would eat his first and last meals of the day there. Other hours would see him in the market, working at one of the forges earning his wages by small commissions of tools or shoeing horses. Hardly work for an apprentice of Bordan Gret, but he did not seem to mind this simpler work. For those looking to find him or simply anyone in the city looking for goods, he was an easy man to find. His grumbling about boons aside, he was in as good a mood as he could be expected to be in.

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"Seven is a sacred number," she answered. Smooth and certain. As hollow as her faith felt, she knew the doctrines by rote. She knew them by heart. Sansa settled back in her chair and dovetailed into spiritual chatter with a practised ease. Alayne had been bound for the sept; such bleating was pivotal to the old lie.

"Sacred even here, mayhaps."

"What makes it so sacred? Because of the Seven? I ain't ever seen those gods to anything." So they were scarcely worthy of his belief. "I think it's because seven is all most folk can be bothered to count up to. It's why weeks are only that long."

Gendry had a much easier time believing in the deficiencies of people than in the sacredness of numbers.

"--Most people can count beyond seven," she countered. Her voice grew rich an incredulity often reserved for Arya Stark. It did not quite brush with the edge of calling him stupid, but it came perilously close. In either case, there was a spark of defiance in her face so often absent in any other conversation. But tonight she was the teacher! And him her pupil. Incredulity was her right.

"It's an attractive number. That's all there is to it."

Even Sansa wasn't really certain what she was arguing any longer. But it sounded witty. She thought.

"Eight is more attractive. It's got symmetry. See there?" He pointed to the eight on the bottom of the page. It was two elegant loops, unlike the seven on the opposite page. "That's elegant-like. Not like seven."

This, he knew, was not what she had meant when she called seven attractive. But he had taken refuge in being intentionally daft as though he could disguise his ignorance with even more ignorance.

"But it never ends!"

She complained. As though the sharp-cornered finality of a seven brought her more joy and settlement than the ever-looping eight ever could. And to demonstrate this fact, she leaned the slate against the open book and looped first and eight and then, next to it, a precisely cornered seven. She knew where the seven began and where the seven ended. But the eight! Its tail and head were lost in the connecting curve of chalk.

"So? Why ought anything need to have an end? There's too many things that have endings. Seems there ought to be more that don't."

He picked up his own chalk and took her eight and looped around it again and again and again until its edges were so thick that it looked more like a half formed snowman than it did a number.

"All things need endings. Stories need endings." She rattled the slate and the book together. Not hard, but just enough to prove to him that all the things they made up -- all the tales and arching descriptions of everything in this life and the lives hereafter -- needed shape. Structure. Beginnings, middles, and ends. Sansa was tired of living the middle of her tale. She wanted the final paragraph: where the characters retired into safety and happiness.

"Endings are awful things," he insisted. "It's all death and misery after that. Not like in these stories or in songs. I'd rather the story didn't end."

It was a cynical way of thinking to be certain, but it held its own optimistic slant of an unending story where the struggle was real, but the conclusion uncertain. It was like a summer that didn't end, but he didn't need the Starks to remind him that winter was coming.

She felt the fissure -- the canyon -- that stood between his belief and hers. Sansa sought out security and certainty. What, she, wondered, did Ser Gendry want? She watched him for a heartbeat or two. He was a puzzle, certainly, but it was no longer a simple question of who shared his blood and whose face his face brought to mind. Now there was the distinct impression that she puzzled over him. But only momentarily, and always before a curt shake of her head once she decided to give in, submit, and let the moment pass.

"Well," she began, and smudged her fingers across the too-thick eight. It was so drawn on again and again that it did not come free of the slate. The seven, however, was easily erased. And once it was gone she put the slate aside. "Our stories will have endings. Our seven rats. We'll have to reach them eventually."

And she now so fervently hoped the ending would be a happy one. Indeed, she lifted a few pages aside and seemed to be peeking ahead to read the last few lines.

"I'm in no hurry," he said mildly. But he returned to reading out loud again. He was not a quick reader, but his current pace promised he might finish this story all in one night. It was only a short story, scarcely a few pages long, and the words were big and bold for children to enjoy. But the story went on about the captain who kept the food locked away and how he ate a feast every night, but his crew and passengers suffered on rations. So the rat had a plan to not just feed his family, but everyone on the ship as well. It was a boldly defiant story, for the captain very much was set up to be a king-like figure.

By story's end, the captain's eyes had been poked out and he'd been tossed over the ship to be eaten by sea gulls. Whatever fairy tales might be when it came to happy endings, they were often barbaric in their lessons. Cruel captains were done in by the end of the story. Robert the Rat paradoxically even was elected as captain at the end, but turned the position down! But he and his family stayed on the ship afterward, closing out on a mostly happy ending. Gendry was not impressed.

"No one would let rats stay on a ship," he complained after the story was over and the candle's wax diminished by over an hour's worth of time. "Someone would swat them all with a stick and toss them over the side."

She kept her patient poise through the whole tale. It did not matter that often she'd read in her own head the paragraphs that would take Gendry some time to struggle through. Better, even, that such speed gave her the time to judge which obstacles would be forthcoming. She'd become capable of predicting where his problems would lie. At times, she'd pull the slate back into place and request that he write out a word that had bothered him. Commit it to heart. Never mistake it again.

By the end, the candle was guttering and her elbow was snug against his -- inched there with every subsequent jostling of the text or need to lean in close to point out the individual syllables of a word. They say in separate chairs, but they sat on the cusps of each others' personal space. The lesson had eroded some of that careful distance she'd insisted upon at the outset. Lingering hurt or none, she sank into tentative camaraderie for the lesson itself. "Hush," she implored. "Don't speak so cruelly! These rats have names! I don't want to think about them drowning."

Names, it seemed, made all the difference.

Edited 2014-12-02 13:45 (UTC)

Gendry didn't think names would matter, but then perhaps Sansa was a kinder soul than he was. She was certainly gentler, so he supposed that had to be true. In any case, the story was done and the effort had exhausted him. He sank into his chair, bringing him closer to her side so that elbow rested on top of elbow. A quick huff signaled he had little desire to argue the point.

"I ought to have you read next time," he mused. "It would go swifter."

"But what would you learn?" She asked with a light incredulity wending through her words. Sansa made no effort to free her elbow, though she now had ample opportunity to divide their chairs. "It would do you no good at all to sit and listen to my reading."

Sansa, curious on occasion, flipped a page or three ahead and considered the next few tales. Not for tonight, of course! It was clear that Ser Gendry had called an end to the lesson. But she wondered what would be in store for them upon following nights.

"I'd learn just to let you do all my reading for me," he answered even as he tried to tilt his head to see the pages that awaited them. "And my writing as well. It would save time, I think."

Only, it was perhaps too late for that. Even if he read poorly, he could in fact read. It was no longer a skill he was acquiring, but one he was honing into something practical. That was perhaps the most tiresome aspect of it, because it was not simply enough to know how to do something, but he had to work at it. It felt so much slower and clumsier than learning something by hand.

"I am the Lady Keeper of the Cothromach," she announced. And for a moment, it seemed likely she would refute his claims by title alone. But soon she dipped into a softer, more rueful explanation: "I have more than my fair share of writing and reading to complete every day."

Her head tilted in a minor gesture towards the ledgers and papers that lived on her solar's shelves. "Mayhaps it's you who ought to be saving my time! Next lesson I'll have you copy out letters. It will be terribly dull and you'll hate it."

He cringed as he stared at the stack of documents that seemed more fearsome than anything he could ever craft with steel. Whether he wanted to read or not, he had no desire to ever touch anything like that.

"There's so much of it. What's the use of it all?"

"Those red ones -- there," she lifted her hand and pointed with two fingers. It was rude, after all, to point with one. Even if she was merely pointing at a row of red-backed ledgers. "Those are the sums and numbers of the Cothromach's accounts for each week since I have taken its seat. Minister Tzilan handles them, but I suppose I ought to look them over each time a book is delivered."

A great deal of the city operated without her direct attention, in fact. But she could remember Petyr Baelish pouring over books and parchments, and she tried to emulate him. Even if all she truly did was read the hard work of others.

He knew Tobho Mott would often spend evenings collecting the accounts of the day's sale, whether those done personally by himself or his apprentices and journeyman, and so record it all against the cost of material and labor. It was a process Gendry was privy to if only because an apprenticeship meant that he did not just know how to make armor, but also how to do so successfully. He would often hear of a foolish armorer who tried to outsell all his rivals, but drove himself into poverty and ruin because he never made a penny on his hard work. This was how Gendry had learned his numbers and sums, even if he had never needed to learn letters to go with it.

"Why not let Minister Tzilan do it?" He asked, but suspected he knew the answer regardless.

"Because Minister Tzilan, though an extraordinary servant of his city, has loyalties that cannot be adequately traced."

Her voice dropped to a whisper. It was a concern unshared with any other Westerosi or ally in the city. To Jon, even, she maintained a chilly façade of trusting the strange man implicitly. But Ser Gendry had been there. Ser Gendry had known, and had voiced his own concern so very early on when Sansa was herself still taken with the minister's prowess. But since then...!

"He and Saralegui. I--" Her gaze narrowed a moment. Sansa had knit a thought together in her own head but she hadn't dared speak it aloud. She wasn't certain if now was the time. "Saralegui, at least, is tremendously fond of him..."

And that gave her pause. Saralegui was half-ally and half-enemy, and she did not like the implications of friendship between her city's servant and the sharp-tongued Lord of Redgate.

Fond she said. He wondered if Tzilan must be terribly disappointed to have lost Saralegui to Redgate, when perhaps he would have been far gladder to have that young lord leading this city instead with Sansa as a wife. He found himself scowling at the thought.

"Aye. It's good you look," he agreed at last. "Do they add up? The sums?"

"Impeccably. But that does not mean the sums are faultless. It's--"

Her fingers fluttered. Baelish had been Master of Coin for the whole kingdom and had committed such tricks in his time! And then there had been her Lord Husband, pouring over the books in the wee hours of the morning instead of sleeping in their marriage bed. Oh, she could have kissed those weighty volumes.

"It's likely work I needn't watch so carefully. If a mistake is made, I won't be the one to recognize it."

She needed a Steward. A proper one. Someone who could stamp her influence upon the city in defiance of traditions already existent.

Even if she didn't need to, it seemed she did anyway. But even as he stared at the books, he knew that was one dilemma he was ill equipped to offer any sort of help with. In any case, he did not mind it greatly. He believed firmly that a person ought to work for their food and he deemed this reading business an exhausting labor of its own, so it satisfied him to know Sansa was applying herself towards something. It raised his estimation of her in his mind. The cost of her time meant more when he knew it was being spent on work than on frivolous feasts and highborn excesses.

"And copying letters? Why do that?"

"I've no Maester to do it for me."

But that, she supposed, was not really the heart of his question. She bit her bottom lip and (with only one hand) tipped the book of tales and slate both up onto the desk. This kept her somewhat stationary, and so she didn't need to rattle the comfortable overlap of elbows. Sansa's chin tipped by a few degrees. "I want to remember what I've written to others. I want to be certain of what they've written to me."

In other words, she did not want her careful diplomatic words to become so tangled a web of poorly-remembered implications and half-lies that she lost herself in them -- strung herself up by an inability to remember which words were promised to which person. It wasn't a terribly clever practise, and all it truly did was underline how little trust she had in herself.

He did not truly understand the purpose that served and it showed in his uncertain frown. But there were many things he could scarcely claim to understand, so he simply nodded. He fell silent as he stared at the slate and the book and then back to all those ledgers. It was nothing he could help with, not did he truly think he needed to. So instead he tilted the slate back to him and took a piece of chalk. In that space not covered in a thick 8, he wrote two simple but sloppy words.

THANK YOU

It was clear now that it was not just him sacrificing time for these lessons, but that she too was giving up duties to continue them. For that, he owed her a gratitude he was never so good at putting into words, but which were mercifully easier to put into writing.

Her lower lip quivered. Not with the same slushy sorrow she'd wept out when they'd encountered the dogs! No. Tonight, she felt little fear beyond the pedal note of dread that was a constant in the back of her mind. If her emotions threatened to spill out now, it was because his gratitude was moving. She'd thought, perhaps, that it was as difficult for him to give thanks as it was for her to smile honestly. So now, though her mouth trembled, she made certain she smiled.

"Well done." Sansa (only briefly!) curved her fingers over Ser Gendry's forearm. The letters were not tidy and some looked to be in the wrong case, but they were chalky proof of his own initiative. And proof, as well, that she'd managed to teach him at all. "Very well done, Gendry. You remembered they're two different words!"

Bustling with pride, she tapped the space between the THANK and the YOU. People so often smushed them together when they talked, she would not have blamed him for thinking it all one construction. And so she laid praise at his feet for small victories, letting honestly replace the empty courtesy she would otherwise have mumbled: you're welcome, Ser.

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