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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"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."

Ser Duncan had been a champion and one Gendry had heard about as a child. Indeed, as a child he'd had the same naive fantasies of knightdom that most boys grow out of. But where Duncan found honor, Gendry had done nothing of the sort. He put the thought aside.

"I figure I ought to know the words," he said with a dismissive shrug. "Might be I'll take on some squire some day. If I have to knight him, I ought to do it the proper way."

Not that he had any notion of taking on any squires. He was more likely to take on an apprentice instead, as he now knew enough about smithing to be a journeyman in his own right and not so far off from a master.

And what could Sansa Stark hope for? Sons, she supposed. Except she could not say whether sons would benefit her better here or home. Or whether she wanted sons at all -- nor daughters, neither. Not when she couldn't come to proper terms with the very notion of marriage. So while Ser Gendry talked around the topic of being someone's predecessor, Sansa merely wondered whether she could pass all she had to some other blood relative. They deserve it more.

Sullen again, she turned once more to sit properly in her chair. They did not need to look at one another to speak. He did not need to see the brief rattled expression on her face.

"You would need a sword. I don't think you can knight anyone with an axe."

Likely as not, it didn't matter. But in some ways Sansa could be such a traditionalist.

Edited 2014-12-07 03:07 (UTC)

He grinned sardonically. "As it turns out, I know someone who can make one for me."

"It's a little unorthodox, isn't it? To make yourself a sword only for the ceremony. It isn't setting a fine example."

Perhaps she merely wanted to smear away that sardonic tone. Or else she felt free enough to counter his retort. Or otherwise (somewhere in the dark twisting pit of her heart) she still felt a great divide between her friendship and her comfort-level. For all that had been hashed out between them in the library's study, Lady Stoneheart still athwart that great divide. Driving Sansa to an uncharacteristic impatience.

"I might make it a gift as well," he answered with a shrug. He did not know what the word unorthodox meant, but he could guess at its meaning. In any case, Gendry was not so wasteful a man to ever make a sword that would never be put to real use.

"For your one-day squire?"

She knew only a little of his commissions and plans. Perhaps because he was not a man given to chatter and she was not someone prone to prying. Not about smithing matters, at least -- aside from what would profit her city, now. But she'd never heard him talk of the future before, and so she found herself eager to query at least a point or three.

"Or my one-day squire. Or both." He scratched at his chin thoughtfully as he walked across the room. "Might be I'll have one squire and one apprentice at the same time. Better still if they were twins, so they could switch about."

Arriving at the window, he stared out at the view of the garden of stone figures and at the lights of the city just beyond that. But his gaze did not linger there long before he'd sat down on the cushioned seat carved into the stone beneath the window.

"How precise. Specific."

Twins. Sansa did not understand how a knight (or a smith) found their students. Would it be at all simple to find twins? Again, she worried her lower lip and felt almost like a trespasser in her own room when Ser Gendry crossed to the cushioned bench. Here she sat still, sinking sullenly into a chair set upon the audience side of her desk. And there he sat in (what she thought was) comfort.

"How and where will you find your twins?"

The question was not a trick. But it was not an honest one, either. She probed to see where he placed his future: in Westeros, or in the Drabwurld.

"I'll write a notice for it," he said with particular satisfaction now that he could indeed write such things. "They would come to me instead. They would need to prove themselves worthy first. There would be a fee."

He seemed quite content as he continued to spin the farcical future. It was one that he knew would not come to pass, because it was not the sort of life meant for him. Neither was this one either. He didn't expect it to last.

"A fee!" She repeated, but at least this time she made some shallow attempt to shadow her incredulity. Sansa marvelled that a young apprentice or squire might be expected to pay to make his way in the world -- but she did perhaps still cling to some remembrances of chivalry. "Why not have sons instead? Do Master Smiths not rear their own children in the trade?"

Knights, she knew, were far less likely to squire their sons. But some friendly exchange of sons might be made. In all of this (and despite her own reticence) she didn't for a moment think he might not be planning for a family. Some day.

He recalled his talk with Arya about how no one would want a bastard for a father. Suddenly he was a bit more solemn and instead staring out the window rather than at her. "For that, I'd need a wife."

There might have been a time where he's entertained that notion with Lucrezia. But she had her own son now and her own love. And beyond that, all that time in Troichean Beinn made him wonder if it had ever been more than infatuation he felt for the first girl who'd ever convinced him to rise and dance. Yet still he would need a wife, when he had no notion of where he might ever find one. But that was only the smallest reason for why he'd never be a father. He had two great examples of master smiths to model himself after. But he had not the slightest notion what a father and husband should be like.

"A wife? Certainly. One made proud through your work and action."

Again (or still), her tone was careful. Distant. So long as she spoke about him, she needn't entertain how little her own life would follow these predictable arcs. All good souls, she once believed, settled into marriages. Families were started and legacies carried. Shouldn't a smith or a knight hope for the same, provided he took no other vows which might impede such a life?

"Sons. And daughters, if you like," though she doubted any man ever craved daughters now. "Smiths do have families, don't they?"

"Some," he said warily. "Master Mott didn't. Master Gret ain't got any either. And I've known others besides with no family."

And he supposed they had the right of it. They beat their legacies in steel and passed their skills to those that could handle the craft. Perhaps if they had sons of their own, they wouldn't be suited to the work! It was better to find a skilled successor than to simply hope for a wife that could birth one.

"-- And I do not believe Mikken had children." She answered, confirming Gendry's generalizations with a sour note. It would not be the first time Sansa had invoked the name of Winterfell's smith, and though she'd once paid little attention to him...she now painted him with the sweetest of reminiscences: a strong northern man who worked with strong northern metal. It was inevitable -- somehow, the more casual she grew with Ser Gendry, the more preference she revealed for that strange wild land.

"Even so, I can think of no reason not to." He'd be a smith, he would -- not some grand politician. His children would not be subject to the whims of the games and the scheming like she'd been. Some small blessing to live within the talented milieu, she decided.

Gendry uncomfortably shifted, still keeping his face from her. There were only too many reasons not to have a family that were perhaps only too specifically related to Gendry. As a lowborn peasant, there had been perhaps even more reason. Highborns may have lost family to scheming or misfortune in battle, but lowborn families were slaughtered like cattle. Even if he did live half like nobility now, his opinion had changed little. So he answered with a mild: "As you say."

Only then did he turn back to her. "And what of you? You'll want your own little ones. Girls always like having little ones all about."

Before she could wrap up her own curt and perfect answer, Sansa was already shaking her head. No. Just as she would never marry for love, she could not imagine herself mothering children without some semblance -- some skeleton -- of a happy family. It wasn't necessarily a promise she could keep to herself, but it was one she'd kept so far.

"Not any longer. Once, maybe. My sons and daughters would have been princes and princesses. But that was a long time ago." She pulled at a loose thread on the chair's arm. "Perhaps it would be better not to raise any at all."

The Starks were already too cursed. And (bewilderingly) she thought of any hypothetical children as part of that storied line -- she'd had so many betrothals now, it had become impossible to think of children as her uncertain husband's issue. Instead, all she could think about were little Starks named Bran and Robb and Rickon. Eddard. Perhaps a little Arya, too.

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