Chapter Twelve

GENDRY

"The seed is strong," Gendry muttered to himself as he sat in the maester's library. He had been puzzling over that phrase so often of late that the words had ceased making sense to him altogether.

It had been near on a month since they had gotten the blessed news of Bran's awakening, which had made everyone overjoyed, especially Arya. Gendry had not seen her as often as he had hoped these past few weeks. She had been conspicuously absent from his afternoons for nearly a moon.

Instead of pining for her constant company as he wanted to, Gendry had decided to be productive. He had gone on the hunt for that book, the one that Jon Arryn had been reading before he had died.

The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With Descriptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children was indeed as dull a read as Gendry had feared, and Lord Arryn's strange, cryptic message still made little to no sense to him.

Gendry had thumbed through page after page, each one listing nothing but physical descriptions of the members of each noble house. He stopped at his own house, Baratheon, and looked sadly down at the pages. His name would likely never feature there, even though he was claimed; Cersei Lannister would see to that.

Gendry traced his finger over his father's name. "Robert Baratheon," he read. "Black of hair, blue of eye…" He trailed off when he realised that he could feel someone watching him. Glancing up, Gendry found a slender, shrewd-eyed man in expensive garb. The newcomer was watching Gendry read with a look of profound curiosity. Gendry felt a sense of unease bubbling in his gut.

"Lord Baelish," he said. "Can I help you?"

"Oh, not really," Littlefinger replied airily. "I merely came down to the maester's library to find something to preoccupy myself with. The summer days do seem to stretch on for a dreadfully long time after a while, do they not? We need to have hobbies to distract ourselves from the monotony."

"I thought you had quite a few hobbies, my lord," Gendry said. "Many establishments to run."

"Do you have an interest in my establishments?" Littlefinger raised a slim eyebrow. "As I recall, I have never seen or heard of you being in one. I doubt you would even know where to find one of my establishments, should the mood suddenly strike you."

"Everybody knows where to find them."

"And yet I have never seen you eager to sow your seed with any of my girls. Could it be that you share your uncle's… proclivities?"

Gendry narrowed his eyes. Littlefinger was master of snide insinuation, but he rarely made such an obvious allusion to one of the court's many scandals. Gendry felt certain that he was only doing it to provoke a reaction, but his defence of his uncle Renly was out of his mouth before he could stop it. "I'm certain that I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you could enlighten me. What proclivities would those be?"

Littlefinger gave him a pointed smile. "I will leave you to your reading, Gendry. Always a pleasure to speak with you."

He took his leave, disappearing off between two bookshelves and out of sight. Gendry watched him go. It was strange, he thought; even when he won a verbal sparring match with Lord Baelish, he never really won. There was an ineffable cunning about that man that scared Gendry more than any of the Lannisters ever could.

Gendry frowned back down at the book, chewing over what Littlefinger had just insinuated. It wasn't that Gendry found it particularly insulting, it was simply irritating that he was assumed to be a certain way because he had no desire to pay a whore.

"Just because I don't want to sow my…" He stopped mid-sentence, feeling as though he had just been struck by lightning.

The seed is strong. Children, Gendry realised. Arryn was talking about Baratheon children. He glanced back down at the names, reading over them again, and again. There was something about the list that bothered him, something incongruous, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

"Black of hair," he muttered, reading under his breath. "Black of hair, black of hair, black of…"

A startling thought occurred to him then. Gendry scanned the whole list, searching for any differences. It wasn't until he reached the bottom that he sucked in a breath of surprise.

Joffrey Baratheon, golden haired, green of eye.

Gendry re-read the list twice, searching for anyone else who matched that description. There were none. Every Baratheon male for the last five generations had had the same colouring as Gendry himself. Black hair, blue eyes.

Joffrey didn't look like a Baratheon. He looked like a Lannister.

The seed is strong.

Baratheon looks dominated, no matter who they seemed to be married to. That much was obvious from the lists and descriptions, but Joffrey, for some reason, was different. Myrcella was different. Tommen was different.

Maybe, Gendry reasoned, the Lannister looks eclipsed them. But then, when he re-scanned the page, he found that there were two Baratheons who had married Lannisters previously, and every one of their children was born dark rather than fair.

Maybe his half-siblings were the anomaly. Maybe they took after their mother. She was domineering enough in everything else.

Or, maybe, a small voice in the back of Gendry's head said, they weren't his half-siblings at all. Maybe they were pure Lannister.

What if they were?

What if Robert had no trueborn children?

Gendry paled, gripping the edge of the desk to centre himself. His knuckles were white with the effort by the time the world stopped spinning around him. Hastily, he got up from his seat and slammed the heavy book shut. In two strides, he had already crossed to the nearest shelf and slotted the book into place.

If his suspicions were false, he could be killed for voicing them. If they were true… well, he could be killed, regardless.

Gendry felt sick to his stomach, and there was only one place where he felt as though he could go to ruminate. Without another word, he turned on his heel and set off for the dragon chamber.

To his surprise, Arya was already there when he arrived. Gendry halted in the doorway, watching the strange spectacle before him with utter bewilderment. Arya was dressed like a street urchin, in tattered breeches torn off at the knee and a loose shirt full of holes and small scratches. Her hair was a wild, untameable tangle, and she was barefoot. Strangest of all, she appeared to be sneaking up on the fierce one-eared black tomcat that terrorised the rest of the castle. The tom was skulking beside Balerion's snarling jaws, tail twitching in perpetual irritability.

"What are you doing?" Gendry asked, unable to help himself, and Arya gave a little squeak of surprise. The tom, realising that he had nearly been caught, mewled in protest and shot straight for the door like an arrow loosed from a bow. Gendry watched it disappear through his legs with amusement.

"Oh, look, now I've got to go and chase the damn thing again!" Arya complained, propping her hands on her hips and wrinkling her nose at him. "It took me forever to find that cat, and he was the last one…"

Gendry thought that she might have actually lost her mind altogether. "What in the Maiden's name are you talking about?"

"Syrio says that I need to be as quick as a snake, and as swift as a deer. He says catching cats is a good way to practice. If I'm quicker than the cats, I ought to be quicker than my enemies."

"Syrio?" Gendry stepped into the room, intrigued by the reverent gleam in her bright silvery eyes. "Who is Syrio?"

"He's my dancing master," Arya responded immediately. "Except he's not really a dancer. He's a Braavosi water dancer."

"A swordsman?" Gendry checked. She nodded, wild hair shifting with the movement. Gendry noticed then that, not only was she dressed in rags, but Arya was filthy. She looked like the beggars Gendry used to walk past every morning when he lived in Flea Bottom.

Although she was considerably more beautiful than they had been, underneath the grime.

"Yes," Arya continued, balancing on the ball of one foot with precision. "He's teaching me how to fight like a bravo."

"And how to catch cats, apparently," Gendry said, trying to hide his smile. He loved it when Arya got that animated look in her eye.

"What are you doing down here, anyway?" Arya asked, hopping lightly from one foot to the other. Whatever the dancing master was doing must have been working, because she performed the movement with eerie grace. "You only ever come here when you need to think about things."

Gendry's morning discovery flooded back to him, then, and he felt the blood draining from his face. Arya noticed, and was at his side in an instant, her balancing act forgotten. Her hands found his upper arms, and she rose on tiptoe to better look him in the eye. He ducked his head to help her; even on the tips of her toes, she still wasn't tall enough.

"I think I've discovered something horrible," Gendry whispered. "Something that could get me killed if anyone found out that I knew about it."

"What is it?"

"I shouldn't tell you that. It's not safe for you to know."

Arya looked at him like he'd just slapped her in the face. "I don't care if it's safe or not! That doesn't matter! I still want to know what's wrong. Gendry, you can't tell me something like that and then not elaborate. Whether you like it or not, I am already too involved in your life, and if you are in trouble then I am, too."

He watched her carefully for a moment; the fierce light in her eyes, the determined set of her jaw, the wild knots of her hair. It felt as though his heart was expanding in his chest the longer he looked at her. Maybe it was because of the fear crushing down on him, maybe it was because she looked enough like a commoner for him to forget for a moment that she could never be his, but Gendry didn't stop to think. He slid his arms around her waist, and he kissed her.

There was no hesitation on Arya's part, no moment of frozen shock as there had been for him when she had kissed him in her chambers. Arya threw herself into returning his kiss with all the passion and fervour with which she did everything else in her life. Her hands were in his hair, her tongue in his mouth, and Gendry suddenly realised that, even if he lived to be a hundred, he would never feel this way again about another person. As if the two of them together equalled more than the sum of their parts.

As if she was the only real thing in the world.

When they broke away, Arya was trembling in his arms. Her gaze was steady and serious and impossibly bright when she stared at him from an inch away.

"You don't get to tell me what to do," she said sternly. "And if you won't tell me what's wrong, I will figure it out myself. I will. You can't tame me."

"I know," Gendry whispered. "I don't ever want to tame you."

Arya kissed him again, and Gendry felt as though a dam had burst in his chest as every emotion he had been trying desperately to supress flooded through him. He knew, with the unshakable certainty of first love, that he could never plug the dam again. And he knew that, no matter what the consequences were for him, he would never want to.

"Arya," he murmured, breaking away. "I think that you were right about Jon Arryn. I think the Lannisters killed him. And I think I know why."

"Why?" She rested her forehead against his chest, and Gendry wondered if she could hear his heart beating as loudly as he could hear his own pulse in his ears.

"Because I think he figured out that Cersei Lannister's children are not my father's."

Arya pulled back, staring up at Gendry with her mouth hanging open. "They're not?"

"I don't think so."

"Then… whose children are they?"

"I don't know," Gendry whispered. A horrible thought occurred to him then. "But I bet Bran does. I think that the Lannisters pushed him off the tower to cover it up. I think he found out."

Arya closed her eyes, her expression a mask of horror. "They tried to kill him to protect the secret."

"I think so, but I can't prove it."

"And this means that… that you are the only heir to the throne? If Joffrey and the other's aren't King Robert's children…"

"Well," that thought had not sunk in for Gendry yet. "Maybe, but my knowing this puts me in danger. It puts you in danger. If the Lannisters found out we suspected, they would kill us. No questions asked."

"Gendry, if you're the only true heir to the throne, then they might try to…"

The distant sound of voices drifted through the chamber door, and both of them froze. Gendry's arms tightened protectively around Arya's waist for a minute as they listened. The sound of footsteps followed, and Arya suddenly sprang into motion, tugging Gendry behind Balerion's great jaws.

A few moments later, they heard some men draw up in the corridor outside the half-open door.

"…found one bastard," one was saying. "The rest will come soon. A day, two days, a fortnight…"

"And when he learns the truth, what will he do?" A second voice asked, in the lilt of the Free Cities.

"The gods alone know," the first voice said. Arya and Gendry exchanged a curious look from their hiding place, neither daring to breathe. "The fools tried to kill his son, and what's worse, they made a mummer's farce of it. He's not a man to put that aside. I warn you, the wolf and the lion will soon be at each other's throats, whether we will it or no."

Gendry glanced at Arya again. 'Your father?' he mouthed, and she bit her lip.

"Too soon, too soon," the accented voice complained. "What good is war now? We are not ready. Delay."

"As well bid me stop time. Do you take me for a wizard?"

"No less."

"What would you have me do?"

"If one Hand can die, why not a second?" The man with the accent paused. "You have danced the dance before, my friend."

"Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other."

"Perhaps so. Nonetheless, we must have time. The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir himself until his son is born. You know how they are, these savages."

"If he does not bestir himself soon, it may be too late. This is no longer a game for two players, if ever it was. Stannis Baratheon and Lysa Arryn have fled beyond my reach, and whispers say they are gathering swords around them. The Knight of Flowers writes Highgarden, urging his lord father to send his sister to court. The girl is a maid of fourteen, sweet, beautiful and tractable, and Lord Renly and Ser Loras intend that Robert should bed her, wed her, and make a new queen. Littlefinger… the gods only know what game Littlefinger is playing. Yet Lord Stark is the one who troubles my sleep. He has the bastard living under our noses, as off this afternoon he has the book, and soon enough he'll have the truth. And now his wife has abducted Tyrion Lannister, thanks to Littlefinger's meddling. Lord Tywin will take that for an outrage, and Jaime has a queer affection for the Imp. If the Lannisters move north, that will bring the Tullys in as well. Delay, you say. Make haste, I reply. Even the finest jugglers cannot keep a hundred balls in the air forever."

Gendry was reeling from that long speech. Beside him, Arya was squeezing his hand so tightly that he was beginning to lose sensation in his fingertips.

"You are more than a juggler, old friend. You are a true sorcerer. All I ask is that you work your magic a little while longer."

They began to walk again, their footsteps and voices growing more distant. Gendry and Arya had to strain to make them out.

"What I can do, I will. I must have gold, and another fifty birds."

"So many? The ones you need are hard to find…"

Their voices faded into obscurity as they turned at the end of the corridor, and Gendry and Arya were left, stunned. They remained crouched behind the dragon skull for a moment, neither of them speaking. Then, as if moving of their own volition, Gendry's arms reached for Arya to pull her into his chest. She came willingly, something that might've thrilled him were it not for his shocked state.

"What was that?" Arya whispered, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"The gods only know," Gendry replied. "But we know one thing for sure."

"And what's that?"

"I was right. All that stuff the man was saying about bastards and the book and the truth…"

"Were they talking about you?" Arya peeked up at him, her face pale beneath the streaks of dirt. "He said something about a bastard living under my father's nose."

"I think they meant me." Gendry's ears were ringing. "But my immediate concern is for your father. Those men said…"

"That they were planning to kill him, I know." Arya's grip on Gendry tightened, and he reached around her to rub soothing circles against her back. "I need to tell him, warn him what is going on before all hell breaks loose."

"We're going to go to war," Gendry realised. "It's going to be chaos and bloodshed from here on out, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Until then, it's a waiting game."

"Whatever happens, Gendry," Arya sounded fiercer than before. When he turned to look at her, she was so beautiful that she made his breath catch. "Whether there's a war or not, you and I are going to stick together."

"Arya," he responded, cupping her chin in one hand. The threats he had heard had been oddly freeing in a way – he no longer felt bound by the rules of propriety that he had a few hours ago. "I am staying by your side for as long as you'll have me, even if I have to walk through all seven hells."

"Good," she said decisively. "Then we really ought to go and tell my father that someone is plotting to kill him."