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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"It's a mess." She spoke as though she was surprised he did not already know. "Are your mirrors tarnished? Draped? How is it you never saw before you came?"

Because, of course, she assumed he'd arrived straight from his rooms like any civilized creature.

"I haven't seen them since the morning," he answered abashed. He suddenly felt like a child being admonished, though he scarcely understood why. "I spent the day at the forge."

If he did not smell of sweat and grime, it was only because he had mercifully jumped into the river beforehand. That was becoming a favorite aspect of the Cothromach to Gendry. While he would never have any great love of bathing, there was nothing so satisfying as a cool and cold dive after the sweltering heat of the forge furnace. Troichean Beinn had many things, but it did not have this small network of subterranean streams to enjoy.

"Oh."

One small syllable could be so heavy. So laden with a thin and stingy understanding. Sansa, by contrast, preened for every appointment. What else did she have to arm herself with but precision and poise? Even that girl -- Kelsi, was it? -- praised her for such a careful presentation.

"Well," she began again. One hand gestured vaguely in the empty air. "It is all of it pointing every which way. As though you dumped water over your head and then let it dry however it wanted."

"Aye," he answered quite solidly and humorlessly. "I did that."

He resisted the urge to touch the hair and rearrange it.

"Oh," she said again. And for once she felt the absurdity of her repetition. Sansa wanted to leap up and leave her chair, but she forced herself to stay immaculately still. Her fingers curled 'round the chair's arms. She would not embarrass the both of them by making such a massive matter of it all. "Then I imagine it looks appropriate to how it was...handled, then. Apologies. I meant no offence. Honest."

Feeling as thought he'd still managed to disappoint her in some absurd way, he sought to somehow mollify her concern. So he scratched at his ear and the hair that was thick over it, before relenting that there was perhaps something wrong.

"I've been meaning to cut it," he admitted as though it might justify his apparently unsatisfactory level of grooming.. "But I ain't had the time."

"Does it take so long? So much time?"

Her question was earnest. After all, when it wasn't pinned or braided, her own hair fell quite long. Like as not, it hadn't been cut in years. A healthful trim now and then, perhaps! But she was not daft (she thought) and men who wore their hair short had to cut it more often, but she never imagined it being a consuming task.

"Can't you get someone to do it for you?" A servant, she meant. The keep was full of them.

Gendry balked at the thought of getting someone else to do it for him. At best, when he apprenticed for Tobho Mott, there was one of the girls there that would sometimes shear him and the others if their hair was so long it interfered with work. Likewise Willow had once taken a knife to his hair back at the Crossroads, though he'd been terribly grumpy about the entire experience. Other times he'd just cut the bangs so he could see and enough to keep his sides and back from becoming a pain.

"I might... ask someone," he allowed warily. He might have asked Sigrid, but he'd not seen her the past few days. Arya would be likely, but he wasn't sure he'd trust her not to pull some mischief on him. There was of course Stiles, but he imagined Stiles had never cut any hair - not even his own! "Or do for myself."

Her nose crinkled. Oh, the thought of him doing it himself! Distasteful. She could already note, from day to day, how poor a hand he was at shaving. But until tonight she'd not transgressed so far as to comment upon his appearance. Not least of all because she didn't truly resent it. Gendry was Gendry, taken as he was. But the busier he got, the more it seemed things got out of hand.

The utter oddness of the conversation turned her tongue to mindless babble -- a mechanism that pretty much only existed between herself and her kin, or else with a friend dear enough to not be feared. Sansa spoke what had been on her mind mere moments ago: "Mya Stone cut her own. I'm certain of it."

She'd not mentioned his half-sister in a long long while. The last time it had not made for a profitable topic. But now! Ah, well. Anything was better than her amateurish attempts to comment on Ser Gendry's appearance.

"Who?" He asked at first, scarcely remembering the name. It was only the belated logical leap of bastard to Vale that he recalled that scarce spoken of half-sister he'd been told about. That was kin he had no true feelings for one way or another, though she was still an object of (mild!) curiosity.

"Oh, that bastard girl." He shrugged. "Seems she had the right of it, eh? She must have managed it."

"It was just as messy. Though...I think she must have used a knife."

Messy in much the same fashion. But she did not dare angle the conversation back in his direction. She needed this -- some third person to speak about, distantly, and so manage to recapture some of her chill. Some of her ambivalence. "But she would have been prettier had she let it grow. Hair like a raven's wing and eyes so blue...beautiful, really."

She wondered (with a wry twist in her gut) whether Ser Lothor liked Mya with her short hair. Would he have liked it longer? Would it ever have mattered to him -- or did he merely adore her for all else that she was?

Edited 2014-12-04 02:49 (UTC)

Gendry was only too aware of how that description of hair and eyes must match his own. He had known his uncle long enough to see those qualities and had now seen them so keenly reflected in that crystal clear mirror. He shifted uncomfortably.

"... you have blue eyes," he said mildly. "Likely not so different than your Mya."

She's not my Mya, Sansa nearly retorted. But in a way, perhaps, she was. None else in these walls knew her -- they merely knew of her. And once they'd gathered at the Gates, Mya's friendship with Lady Myranda had brought her into more frequent contact with Sansa. Those two were good friends. Thick, like thieves, and Sansa had been an awkward addition to their friendship.

"No. Hers are different. Darker. Fuller, somehow." It wasn't that she did not like her own eyes. She shared them with her lady mother; for that, she would be forever grateful. But she was not about to conjure that woman's presence in this conversation. For now, it was easier to pretend like she'd not broken down and sobbed in his sight. "Like Lord Renly's and--"

A wan look. She did not need to say it. "One of Lord Baelish's knights was fond of her. Is. Is fond, I suppose. They live still -- somewhen."

Deeper blue eyes, like his own. It seemed strange that Sansa would find them in any way appealing, but he chalked it down to a merely unfortunate coincidence. It made for a dismaying similarity to his uncle, he supposed.

"That's well for her," he answered dully. "I hope that knight is the decent sort."

He might barely know his half-sister, but he'd rather wish her well than know her fate stuck in Westeros was to be an unpleasant one.

"He's not a bad one," she rushed to clarify. Still, Sansa was prone to clumsy forgetfulness. She'd gone so long telling no one about the Kingsguard that it was difficult, now, to remember how Ser Gendry knew. To remember that the word knight had a new coded existence when it fell from her lips. "He was only knighted at the Blackwater and he smiles every time he speaks of her! He has an honest face."

But Sansa knew Mya Stone would have nothing to do with him. Not in that fashion. She'd loved someone else, and denied him she took to her own company. A sad tale, really. But Sansa found herself incapable of faulting the bastard girl for her decision.

However, she could see the topic tiring him. And so it was her turn to fall into a sullen softness. It wasn't as though she could explain to him how Ser Lothor had protected her from one of those visions they'd seen down in the armoury.

Gendry nodded, seemingly satisfied that if this knight was good enough for her, then he was good enough for this never known half sister from the Vale. Even if he himself knew better than to trust the valor of knights.

"Who knighted him?" He asked, after a quiet and uncomfortable silence.

"Joffrey," she said. Knowing the answer would be poor indeed, she rushed to explain the gritty details. "But he was ever in Lord Baelish's employ. First as a freerider, and now he...in the Vale, I fancy him my shield. He keeps me safe."

And it was true enough. He'd cracked down on Marillion, hadn't he? And yet Sansa knew that he would not protect her from anyone. Certainly, not his employer. That thought had crossed her mind more than once when hauled onto the Lord's lap. So she (fatiguing of the topic so quickly now) wrinkled her nose and moved on--

"It doesn't matter much. She'll not return his affections, I think. She loves another."

Gendry wondered if it truly counted if one was knighted by a bastard king who had no more right to sit the Iron Throne than Gendry did, which was not at all. He had little opinion on Lord Baelish, for as much as he might get mentioned, Sansa never had anything ill t say of him. But the thought of knighting was fixed in his mind so that he scarcely heard about Mya loving another.

"I was knighted by an outlaw. I didn't even ask for it." He frowned. "I don't think anyone truly believed me when I told them I was a knight, back at the Crossroads." Certainly that bear of a woman hadn't. If he had ever had the idea to play at tourneys, Gendry rather suspected he'd have never been permitted.

"You were knighted by a knight--" Sansa's words moved quickly. They placated, she thought, and aimed to smooth away both his frown and that doubtful self-deprecating tone. It was far too humble -- and she'd made vows to her Lord Father that she would help Ser Gendry with that shortcoming. "Hedge or landed, I do not suppose it matters. You said the words."

"You..." He frowned and stopped. He scratched at his beard, before deciding to stand. He walked across the room so that his back was to her. He felt this was the sort of thing he should know, but the truth of it was, he scarcely recalled it all now. He turned. "You wouldn't happen to know all the words, would you?"

Sansa knew the oaths by rote. Not, as one might expect, because of her childhood admiration for knights. Nor even because of a schooled familiarity with Southron traditions. Instead, she knew the words so intimately because she'd heard them spoken near six-hundred times in one single day. After the Blackwater, just so many sers had been given. She'd watched them all walk into the throne room wearing undyed wool and with bare bloodied feet: tired and humbled by their pilgrimage through the city. But tall! And so proud. A pity, she'd thought, that the men knighting them had not been better knights themselves. Only three Kingsguard had remained to dispatch the vows.

"The vow to be brave; the vow to be just; the vow to defend the young and the innocent. Beg pardon, Gendry," she worried her lower lip and knew she treaded personal ground. "If you think so little of the Seven, to whom did you swear your oaths?"

This Red God? Did he, she wondered, even accept knights into his number? Because (certainly) the Old Gods did not.

"Were you annointed with the oils? Did you walk without your shoes from some rural sept to where Ser Beric knighted you?"

Gendry was glad he was back against her, because he cringed as she spoke of the sort of things he was supposed to do. He was not brave, for he'd proven himself a coward against those nightmarish dogs. Nor was he just, for he knew he'd committed injustices in Lady Stoneheart's service. And more than that, he'd failed to protect the young and innocent. Arya had slipped away from him after he had been knighted and now, here in this land, he could do nothing to protect those orphans in the Crossroads Inn. Gendry was no true knight.

"He put a sword on my shoulder, told me to do those things you said. I agreed. That was the end of it. I swore to him and in front of all those there I'd take the oaths. If there was any gods watching, I suppose I swore to them as well."

And then the Hound had shown up, immediately mocking his knighthood. His fist tightened at the memory.

Edited 2014-12-07 02:11 (UTC)

"I imagine it suffices," she reasoned -- small-voiced and uncertain as to whether she could claim any true authority on the matter. "Songs and tales say Ser Duncan the Tall was knighted on the roadside -- starlight and sentinel trees standing witness to his vows. The Sept! The Oils! These must only be formalities."

Sansa did this less and less these days, but tonight she fell back upon the vague assurances of myth. Legend. Every small child, she thought, learned about Ser Duncan: the common hedge knight who rose so high. She twisted in her chair and leaned -- as though she might catch sight of his reaction.

Gendry turned now, his expression screwed up in thought. "Ain't that just some tale?"

So many tales were treated list histories and so many histories treated like tales that Gendry could scarce be expected to know the difference without a Maester's teachings. The only things that he knew to be real were what were in the here and now, but that hadn't stopped him from once believing the rumors that Shireen was the bastard daughter of a mummer.

-- For a moment, she disbelieved his doubt. How could he not know? Naively, she assumed Ser Duncan must be a champion of the children in Flea Bottom. A hero to aspire to, much like the Dragonknight might be to any high-born boy. But it had never occurred to her the children of Flea Bottom might not know the real from the recited.

"He lived, certainly. And his squire was to be Aegon the Fifth -- Ser Duncan became the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard and the king honoured him greatly when he named his heir after the knight. Some heroes are only pretty fables and stories," and that I know too well, "but he lived. He truly did."

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