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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"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.

He frowned at her as though he stared at a puzzle. After thoughtfully scratching his skin, he spoke up. "Your brother Jon can't get married and have kids. I don't think your other brother is like to have the chance. And Arya..." He shook his head. "She claims she ain't got no interest in it. Seems a shame to me, you doing all this for the Stark name, when there ain't like to be anymore once your four have gone old and gray."

"What husband could I ever find who would permit his children to carry the Stark name?"

She wanted those children to hers: to belong to the North. Or, at least, to Riverrun. Her mother's people might be some sympathetic cause. Only Ser Gendry had now put a fear into her head -- the Stark name died with them. The daughters could not mother Starks -- not unless they married so below their station that they found a husband willing to take on another family's name. And that, she realized with a jolt, was not so appealing a prospect.

"And I could not fathom being the mother of children whose father I hated--"

So! No Lannister sons and no Lannister daughters for her. There was, of course, Harry the Heir. But she bit her bottom lip at the prospect of such a conversation.

He shrugged. "Someone who don't care much about his own name. Or only has one to start with. That dwarf Gimli, he only calls himself son of someone or other. If you and he were to marry, he'd just want his sons to be called Son of Gimli. I doubt he would care if there was a Stark muddled up in there."

He'd offered the suggestion with brave seriousness, but it scarcely lasted for the sly grin he had by the end of his suggestion. Clearly the suggestion of Gimli was not meant to be taken seriously or even as a valid option, for what woman would want a dwarf as their husband? Even dwarven women wore beards to avoid having to do so or so Gendry had been led to believe. "But you ought to have a good husband," he decided afterward. "Not some propped up highborn tart looking for power, either. Someone good and decent like."

Even if Gendry was not made for marriage, he believed Sansa was. He knew quite well her experiences had been sad and empty ones, which reinforced the belief all the more that she deserved a good one.

Edited 2014-12-07 14:04 (UTC)

Momentarily, she thought he was mocking her. Teasing her. A dwarf for a husband! Once again! And she'd as yet not told anyone what Sigrid had asked for on her behalf: an annulment with the other dwarf. Even so, Sansa wasn't certain how deeply such a promise could be trusted. If Ser Gendry's comment cut her to the quick, then it was through no fault of his own. And upon finding his sly smile she warmed up to what had clearly been a jape. He had doggedly hunted out her sore spots and turned them into something worth a laugh. And though she did not laugh (when did she ever?) Sansa did, at least, smile.

"How kind." She now leaned forward from her side of the desk, crossing her arms almost casually upon the stone top. "Ser Gendry," Sansa used his title not to distance them but to bring her own ring of mock-gravitas to the moment. "I swear to you, under the auspices of what other services you have already provided me, you are granted final say upon whomsoever I might ever marry." A mild sigh. "After my brothers, of course."

After all, he'd already saved her from one ill-advised match. And with a warm swell of goodwill, she felt she could (even jokingly) leave her fate snugly in the knight's hands. Gruff though he was, he exhibited a rare accurate judge of character. She found it generally sound advice to distrust those whom Ser Gendry could not find it in himself to like.

"More work?" He asked as though he'd been tasked to some great and tiresome chore on top of another mountain of duties. "Gods, you really will have me copying those letters next, won't you?"

Yet, for those apparently grudging accusations, he wasn't troubled by it and it showed in his eyes. He had already taken on that duty once and now perhaps it would be better if he kept it while it was thought welcome. Gendry was a man who was dangerous in his possessions of opinions and a mouth willing to speak them. But as he'd not yet lost his tongue for it, he would inevitably continue to voice them anyway. Gendry had come to terms with the fact he was stuck with the Starks and their lot, for better or worse.

Though it had once appalled her, she now treasured his sharp tongue. Ser Gendry often said what Sansa couldn't: he functioned like an alarm bell she didn't dare ring herself. Perhaps some of the more fine-edged complaints flitted through her head, but they rarely reached her lips. Not until she was behind some closed door and felt safe in the voicing of those opinions. Ser Gendry, because of his strength or his position, seemed able to be as rude as he liked. And none, she thought so naively, had punished him for it yet.

"It would make for excellent practise, wouldn't it?" Sansa smiled. Bright and earnest, for once. It did not slip her attention that under a very different set of circumstances, it was Ser Gendry himself who ought to have been her made match: King Robert's son, gentle and gallant. The sort of man, she thought with a pang, that her Lord Father had promised her. But that was as near as she dared tread to the possibility. Gendry was good and kind but they stood too far apart on a dozen other metrics. And the more she thought about it, the less comfortable she felt. Better not to think of marriage at all.

"Some words in those letters are dreadfully tricky. You would learn a lot."

Perhaps too much! Much of personal private politics was locked up in those sentences: not all of it had yet been revealed to him.

"I learn too much already." Sometimes he thought if his head hurt, it was because he was cramming too much knowledge into it. This business of reading and magic and clockwork was dizzying in its complexity. Sometimes all he wanted was the simplicity of beating a sword into life. That he was at least good at.

He turned his attention back out the window. "Did they have statue gardens like this in the Red Keep? Or any other castles?"

Sansa shook her head.

"They have proper gardens in the Red Keep. With bushes and trees and flowers. And fat buzzing bees flitting from petal to petal. And there was the godswood, of course." She dared to push her chair aside and circumnavigated the desk until she stood just a foot away from the cushioned bench. She, too, looked out onto the strange courtyard filled with figures and sculptures. All that grew underground, she supposed, was stone. "In Winterfell, we had glass houses able to keep the air warm enough for beautiful plants."

He turned back around to look up at her, suddenly interested by this description of something he'd not yet seen before. "An entire house of glass?"

Oh the Station had buildings with so much glass that one felt hardly like they were inside a building at all. But this place was a queer thing already. It interested him more to know that such a place existed in their own land.

She nodded -- emphatic; enthusiastic. And why wouldn't she be? Sansa loved to speak of Winterfell. She sopped up that nostalgia like a thirsty sponge, puffing out her chest with the pride knowledge of having been raised in a vaunted castle. A place, she thought, of prestige. She was happy with her home, though not happy that she'd lost it.

"Otherwise we could grow very little in long winters -- the glass gardens stay so warm. Almost like summer, I'm told."

"Do you think we might have one here? A warm place for plants to grow. It would make for a fine sight, I think." It was clear he did not think much of the statue gardens.

"Is heat alone enough?"

Her question was not rhetorical. It was honest. Earnest. Sansa supposed she knew about as much of gardening as he did, and wasn't certain to whom she'd better direct her questions. Flora, perhaps. But even so it was hard to imagine plants of any kind growing in these underground corners. And for a moment, it made her unbearably sad.

He shrugged, having little idea on the matter. "Wet dirt and heat seems all they should need to live."

"Mayhaps."

Sansa felt her knees knock against the stone bench. She leaned forward -- bracing herself on the window's curved frame. She remained yet a foot from him, but the casual nature of the pose was almost too familiar to bear. And yet she maintained it, watching out her window down to the sightless statues depicting aelfenguard and dwarven heroes alike.

"Have you seen the fresh grounds laid outside the gates? The Lady Flora used her...magics to make the grasses grow again where they were once scorched. It's beautiful."

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