Chapter 107: 31
Chapter 31: Part XXXINotes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Disclaimer: I own nothing, just borrowing for a while.
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"Better to be born a bastard than be a self-made man like most of them."
The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister – 325AL
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The Red Keep – King's Landing – 299AC
"Who the hell are you?" the kingsguard at the door asked coldly, eyes narrowing suspiciously as he placed his hand on the pommel of the sword at his hip.
The apprentice blacksmith swallowed nervously. "My name's Gendry, I'm just making a delivery" he replied. "They directed me here from the main gate, a servant showed me most of the way, let me into the tower then pointed me up some steps and down this corridor."
"The Lord Commanders own quarters lie beyond this door. What's in the sack boy?" the knight demanded to know. He was young, perhaps not much more than five years older than Gendry himself, which meant he might have something to prove and was more likely to be dangerously impetuous than an older man.
"Swords, My Lord" Gendry replied, inwardly grimacing. It had been awkward enough talking his way into the Red Keep and then on towards the White Sword Tower where the Kingsguard resided carrying them, and the guards until now had been told he was coming, unlike this knight apparently.
The knight's expression shifted to apparent rage and he half-drew his own blade
"It was Ser Barristan Selmy himself that came to my workshop the day before New Year and ordered them made by the end of the week, paying a premium for the work" Gendry explained quickly. "I'm the apprentice to Tobho Mott, Master Armourer and Blacksmith, we have a shop on the Street of Steel" he gushed, trying to avoid getting run through.
The knight suddenly grinned. "You're expected" he said, sliding his sword back into its scabbard.
Gendry sighed with relief as he fought back the urge to call the man a dick for the practical jape at his expense. Nothing good could come of a smallfolk bastard saying that to any anointed knight, much less an actual Kingsguard. "You should come see us yourself, My Lord" he advised instead. "We can craft you a blade more worthy of your station" Gendry suggested, making sure by his expression that the knight couldn't be sure if he was mocking the quality of his sword or being suitably obsequious. It was very much the former.
The knight frowned then knocked on the sturdy looking door. "Blacksmith is here" he announced loudly before the sound of a bolt being pulled back on the other side.
"Apprentice Blacksmith, My Lord" Gendry corrected him. "Guild rules say I can't call myself a blacksmith until my Master says so" he explained as the door swung open.
"Quite so, it would be like a Squire calling himself a Knight" the older man also dressed as a kingsguard who had opened the door agreed. "That'll be all Ser Arys, you're dismissed" he told the first knight.
"As you wish, Ser Barristan" the knight responded with a deferential bow for respect. "I assume you can think you can handle him if he turns nasty with those swords?" he asked, tongue-in-cheek.
"I think I can manage, Ser Arys" Selmy replied, trying to remember if he had been as much of a cheeky blighter as a young kingsguard that age? He was certainly a much better swordsman at that age and could likely still beat him now. "Come in boy" he told Gendry, ushering him inside the room.
Gendry bowed and stepped inside as Selmy closed the door again. "Good day to you, My Lord" the apprentice blacksmith greeted the old knight formally as he had been taught. "My Master, Tobho Mott, said to make sure to wish you glad tidings for the coming year and he hopes you find the swords satisfactory."
"I'll be the judge of that, they were my sketches he should have followed in their forging" the voice of a younger man interjected. "I was going to come to you directly, but Ser Barristan advised the use of himself as an intermediary."
Gendry looked from Selmy to the younger man, the latter not much more than a youth. He wasn't old enough to be a kingsguard and his clothes, though finely made, weren't as intricately ornate as that of some of the High Lords that frequented the smithy. "I'm sorry, My Lord, but I don't know you" Gendry told him apologetically. "Are you kin to Ser Barristan?"
"No but I possibly do have kin situated rather close at this moment" the young man replied in an amused manner. "He genuinely resembles him?" he queried of Selmy doubtfully.
"He does, Your Grace" the old knight confirmed.
"Gods. Father really let himself go, didn't he?" the youth responded rhetorically, shaking his head sadly. "Please make sure to remind me regularly not to over-indulge in food and wine, Ser Barristan" he requested. "You should probably keep that advice in mind too under the circumstances" he addressed Gendry directly. "Also, I'm being somewhat remiss with the introductions, I'm Joffrey of the House Baratheon. The First of his Name… and I'll spare you the rest of the title."
Gendry blinked. "Is this a joke?" he asked eventually. "My Lords" he remembered to add.
"No, but I do find this all rather amusing" Octavian replied, grinning. "I really am the king but that's not the humorous part."
"He is. The King I mean" Selmy confirmed. "And you should address him as 'Your Grace' not 'My Lord' in future" he added.
"Your Grace" Gendry said immediately, bowing as deeply as he could towards the boy-king as he could manage without falling over because of the weight of the swords in the bag. "Surely it should have been my Master that delivered these blades in person" he said, wondering how long he was supposed to keep bowing for.
"He's not the one I wanted to meet" Octavian replied. "Now do straighten up, you can't be comfortable bending over like that and the floor's not that interesting to look at" he continued. "That's better" he said as Gendry complied. "Do you know who your father is Gendry?" he asked, seemingly at random.
"No" Gendry replied. "I'm a bastard" he added awkwardly.
Octavian nodded. "But you know who your mother was?" he checked.
"She worked in a tavern. Died when I was young, I only remember her a little" Gendry replied, wondering what this was all about.
"Yes, a tavern wench, but not a whore, which is why someone paid your apprentice fee because there wasn't great doubt as to who actually fathered you" Octavian told him. "Given that Ser Barristan confirms that you take after your supposed father in looks I'll take that as confirmation of sorts" he said. "Do you want to know who your father is, Gendry?"
Gendry nodded slowly.
Octavian adopted a serious expression. "Robert of the House Baratheon. The First of his Name… and I'll spare you the rest of the title" he told him. "Which makes you Gendry Waters, my half-brother, well my bastard half-brother at least" Octavian paused. "And perhaps explains why you seem to have a knack for swinging a hammer" he couldn't resist the joke.
"Never knew a man who could handle a warhammer like Robert Baratheon" Selmy remarked wistfully, recalling how Prince Rhaegar's breastplate had been smashed in by the future king at the Battle of the Trident.
Gendry just stood there, eyes wide and with a look of shock frozen on his face.
Octavian sighed. "I realise once it sinks in that you might feel wronged that he didn't do more for you, I probably would in your shoes, but in my father's defence, perhaps I should say in our father's defence, you do realise why it would be so difficult for the King on the Iron Throne to acknowledge, much less think to legitimise, a bastard don't you?" he asked.
"The Blackfyre Rebellions" Gendry said eventually once his mind caught up. Gendry wouldn't claim to be well-educated but he wasn't stupid and everyone knew about those.
"Yes. The Blackfyre Rebellions" Octavian confirmed. "Aegon the Fourth legitimised all his bastards and one of them, Daemon Waters, styled himself Daemon Blackfyre, betrayed his own half-brother the rightful king, and initiated a series of bloody wars that raged for decades costing untold lives" he said looking like he mourned all of them personally. "Honestly I don't know if my father cared much for you or your mother or not, but he might have he just couldn't risk doing anything about it."
Gendry thought about that. "It must have been him that paid my apprentice fee, who else would?" he reasoned.
"He was a good man" Selmy found himself saying, truthfully but wisely not noting the former king's many, many flaws.
"Look at it this way, you could have been the bastard son of some Targaryen pyromaniac instead" Octavian noted brightly.
"Pyro…?" Gendry repeated the unknown word as best he could.
"Pyromaniac" Octavian repeated more slowly. "Someone that likes to set things on fire" he explained.
"Like the Mad King" Gendry now understood what the boy-king, his half-brother, meant.
"Yes. At the very least nobody could say our father wasn't an improvement on that lunatic" Octavian remarked. "So, I wanted to meet you, because we share the same blood if not the same name, and I thought you might want to learn who you were and perhaps meet me as well" he said before pursing his lips in apparent thought. "If you don't want to be a blacksmith I can't offer you lands and title but I can give you a job in the City Watch if you want? It might be taken as favouritism if I ever promoted you though so I don't know if that would be in your best interests."
"I like being a blacksmith, I'm good at it" Gendry replied honestly.
Octavian nodded. "If you want to finish your apprenticeship you could always have a job doing that here in the Red Keep afterwards" he offered instead. "We have our own forge. I don't know how it compares with what you're used to however."
"Castle-forged steel is better than most, but I can craft even finer" Gendry boasted, with good cause. "I don't want charity" he felt the need to say.
"I wouldn't pay you to loaf, a man needs to earn his daily bread, particularly a man who is likely to end up fat like our father did if he doesn't exercise regularly" Octavian responded. "You might want to take up running, that's what I do" he advised.
Gendry grinned, the king was nothing like he might have expected him to be. He was genuinely nice, didn't talk down to you like most every other High Lord he had met, and working for the finest blacksmith on the Street of Steel Gendry had met a lot of them. "You're not bothered that you've got a brother who's a bastard?" he found himself asking. "I mean half-brother" he corrected himself.
"I'm not best-pleased that my father wasn't faithful to my mother but that's not your fault" Octavian replied with a shrug. "As for bastardy generally do you even know our family history?" he asked rhetorically. "You're a Baratheon, even if you don't carry the name."
Gendry shook his head.
"Orys Baratheon founded the House three centuries ago after he defeated the Storm King Argilac Durrandon and took their lands in the name of Aegon the Conqueror" Octavian told him. "Aegon made him Lord Paramount of the Stormlands and the Baratheon's have ruled over them ever since with Renly Baratheon, our uncle, holding them today" he continued. "Now the part the family don't always like to talk about is Orys and Aegon were half-brothers, their father Aerion Targaryen not being entirely faithful to his wife either."
Octavian chuckled at Gendry's expression before continuing. "So, in short, Baratheon's being prissy about bastardy are either woefully ignorant of their bloodline or they're being rank hypocrites and I'm neither" he said. "That doesn't mean I approve of marital infidelity, and I'll certainly speak out against it in the future, but the Baratheon's are dragon-spawn bastards, the whole lot of us."
"I never knew that" Gendry admitted.
Octavian chuckled. "Well, we don't boast about it. For one thing our father fucking hated Targaryens."
"Are there more of us you know about? King Robert's bastards I mean" Gendry found himself asking out of curiosity.
"I know of an infant girl named Barra that also lives in King's Landing and may be his, her mother certainly claims so, but the woman works as a whore at a brothel on the Street of Silk so I have my doubts" Octavian replied evenly. "There is likely many a whore that holds that our father was the one that squirted their child into them but it's not like there's a test to prove that unfortunately" he said. "I might try and find a place in my household for Barra and her mother just in case but I'm not about to take responsibility for every child that might be a half-sibling of mine. Except as their king of course, that actually is my responsibility" he noted. "Can I see the swords now?" he suddenly asked. "You can place them on the table yonder for me to inspect" he said pointing to Selmy's desk.
"Oh, yes, of course, Your Grace" Gendry responded immediately, heading to the table, opening the sack and placing them side by side atop it. "As requested, my Master Mott made one and I the other, I wondered why you wanted one made by an apprentice."
"Curious as to whether my half-brother was any good at his trade, I'd hate to think you were bad at what you did, reflects poorly on me" Octavian replied, picking one up. "I assume the one with the maker's mark is your Masters?"
"Yes. I don't have the right to my own mark yet" Gendry confirmed.
"They're both very well made" Selmy observed. "A little short and stubby for my tastes however."
Octavian swished the sword he was holding through the air. "More useful to the City Watch than an ordinary arming sword, much less a longsword" he explained. "Too many narrow alleyways and cramped buildings to swing anything much longer than this and it's still longer than the dagger most cut-purses carry."
"You can cut and thrust with it readily enough" Gendry noted professionally. "If you want them made in quantity the Castle Forge should be able to copy them, but the steel won't be as good as it is in these" he told them. "My Master trained in Qohor, no blacksmith in Westeros is better, finest steel made since Valyria fell" he said with evident pride.
Octavian inspected it more closely. He had to admit that the steel here was generally better than it was in Rome and this was apparently the highest grade available. He swung it again, feeling the balance and glad it felt and handled like a proper gladius from home, the blade that brought the entire Mediterranean to heel. "If you could take them away and bring them back with the Baratheon Sigil engraved on them I'll decide then which one I'll keep and which one you can" he told Gendry.
"You want me to have one of them?" Gendry responded nonplussed.
Octavian grinned. "It's not like I'm giving you bloody Blackfyre man" he joked. "I might ask you to supervise the copies being made later, perhaps one day a week away from your Master's forge arranged with him in advance" he suggested. "That is assuming you want something to do with your family now you know you have one?"
"I do, I mean I think I do. I need to think about all this" Gendry spluttered.
"It's all been a little overwhelming I'm sure" Octavian sympathised. "I'll send you an invite to meet me more openly next time, no subterfuge in Ser Barristan's quarters, unless you prefer anonymity of course, it's your choice?"
Octavian was pleased it had gone well. Being seen to care for his kin, even a bastard kinsman, should help bolster the impression he wanted to make that his leniency with Stannis was simply down to the man being his uncle and that the family bonds of blood were of high import to him. Moreover, only someone that genuinely believed he was the son of Robert Baratheon would have any consideration for one of his bastards.
It should stand him in good stead with Eddard Stark also. The man had raised his own bastard son with his legitimate children after all, which indicated to Octavian that legitimacy was not a prerequisite for maintaining family ties in Stark's opinion.
Gendry had no idea what that anony-whatever word meant but he nodded nonetheless as he picked up the swords once again and returned them to the bag he brought them in.
"You should meet your cousin Shireen next time you're here, assuming there is a next time" Octavian spoke up again brightly. "Sweet girl, you'll like her. Pity you'll likely never get to meet her father, your uncle Stannis, unless you're silly enough to join the Night's Watch that is."
"No chance of that, although I've never seen snow and might want to go north and do so one day, Your Grace" Gendry replied.
"It's pretty at first lad but believe me it soon loses its appeal once your balls start to freeze off" the well-travelled Barristan Selmy told him sagely.
Notes:
Note from the Author:
The White Sword Tower is where the Kingsguard is based within the Red Keep, the Lord Commander has his quarters there.
Apprentice Blacksmith Gendry has no idea who his father was but is regarded as looking a great deal like him, or rather like he did years earlier before all the eating, drinking and lack of exercise. Another of King Robert's known bastards is Barra but given her mother's occupation some doubt as to her actual parentage is hardly unexpected.
The Blackfyre Rebellions being the consequence of Aegon IV legitimizing all his bastards, and giving Blackfyre, the family sword of the Targaryens to his favourite, is pretty much how people see it. Given that Aegon IV, like Robert, was overweight and fathered many children with many different women parallels might have well been drawn if Robert had legitimised his bastard progeny.
Orys Baratheon being the bastard half-brother of Aegon the Conqueror is well-known in certain circles, but there are likely many Baratheons who would prefer it was not.
The short-swords Octavian had made were examples of the Gladius Hispaniensis, the so-called 'Spanish Sword', he is most familiar with.
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