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Gendry had been promised a hot meal and a roof to sleep under when they reached Acorn Hall, so he could almost ignore the feeling in the pit of his stomach when Anguy rode the whole way beside Arya and spoke of Dorne. I could protect her as well as he could, he thought bitterly, and I’ve been doing it for longer as well. It was true – he’d protected her secret from Hot Pie and all the others, and watched her back on the road to Harrenhal, even if she hadn’t realized it. He knew Anguy was supposed to keep her from running off again. He wasn’t stupid, no matter what Arya said. He also knew that if she ran off, he’d probably help her, and that’s why Anguy was riding next to her instead of him.
Still. Lem and Harwin treated him like a stupid ‘prentice boy, and Anguy treated her like a girl, and he knew it was irritating the both of them.
Lady Smallwood’s maids dragged Arya off the moment she realized Arya was a highborn girl, leaving Gendry with the men of the Brotherhood.
“Lady Smallwood’s a good woman,” Anguy said, misinterpreting the worried look on Gendry’s face. “She’s a friend o’ the Brotherhood, and she won’t hurt a little girl.”
“Aye,” Gendry agreed shortly, though it wasn’t Arya getting hurt he was worried for. He half thought the girl might bite a maidservant when they tried to wash her.
They don’t know her at all, he thought. Not even Harwin. They see a highborn girl, not someone who killed grown men to get us out of Harrenhal. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the outlaws – he did – but at some point on the road he had come to think of Arya as his responsibility, and he was loath to give up the first real responsibility he’d ever had in his life.
The men made small talk as servants scurried around preparing for dinner. Gendry was allowed on the edges of their conversation, a man nearly grown but not quite one of them. He missed Arya whispering filthy jokes he was sure she didn’t entirely understand, and the feeling of being served by men who were probably better born than he was rubbed him wrong.
Then Arya came down the stairs, and he looked up at her and laughed.
They had truly dressed her like a girl, in a dress and everything, and she looked more irritated and uncomfortable than he had ever seen her – and he had watched her put up with Lommy. The collar of the dress was already rumpled, and she was glaring daggers at the maid beside her. She was also glaring daggers at him, but his wine had come out of his nose and he was busy doing his best not to choke on it.
If they think dressing her like a girl will make her act like one, they’ll have a nasty surprise, he thought, and then Harwin smacked him on the head and he finally caught his breath.
Lady Smallwood and the outlaws spoke of Lord Dondarrion and the rest of the Brotherhood. He liked Lady Smallwood. She was funny, and had a sharp wit, and could clearly hold her own against Tom and his japes. She wasn’t much like the highborn lords and ladies that had come to the forge in Flea Bottom – though Arya wasn’t either, and he doubted that Lord Dondarrion or his Red Priest would be. Mayhaps being given to the Watch was the best thing that happened to me, he thought suddenly.
Gendry had missed the rest of the conversation, but he heard Tom snap a string, and forced himself to pay attention again.
“Go on with you. That’s madness,” Tom said, and Arya looked ill.
“I thought the same,” said the lady.
Suddenly Harwin turned in his chair, looking at Arya with shock in his eyes. “Such talk is not for your ears, milady,” he told her, and she bristled at his tone.
“No, I want to hear,” she said stubbornly.
Harwin shook his head, and Greenbeard spoke up from his seat down the table. “Go on with you, skinny squirrel. Be a good little lady and go play in the yard while we talk, now.” The idea of Arya being a good little lady would have been enough to make Gendry start laughing again, but Arya had marched off in anger, and Gendry hurried out of his seat to follow her.
“Arya? Lady Smallwood said there’s a smithy. Want to have a look?”
“If you want,” she said bitterly, and he wondered again what he had missed. He tried to make small talk about Thoros, but she was clearly upset, so he reached for a long set of tongs and tried harder to distract her. Absently, he noted how small and ill-used the smithy was, and for a moment he missed fiercely his place in King’s Landing. Then he remembered all he had done since, and decided again that he was better off.
Speaking of Thoros of Myr was boring. “Master Mott said it was time I made my first longsword. He gave me a sweet piece of steel, and I knew just how I wanted to shape the blade. Only Yoren came, and took me away for the Night’s Watch,” he told Arya. He had wanted to make that sword – it would have been a beauty – but if Yoren hadn’t taken him, he wouldn’t have met Arya at all, and he supposed that was a fair trade.
“You can still make swords if you want. You can make them for my brother Robb when we get to Riverrun.”
Oh. She didn’t mean that, not really – or if she did, she didn’t really understand what she was saying. She was only a little girl, he realized suddenly. A little highborn girl with a king for a brother. He put the hammer down carefully. “Riverrun,” he said slowly, searching desperately for something else to speak of, because when they went to Riverrun, she would be a princess, and he would be…
“You look different now. Like a proper little girl.” That would irritate her enough to change the subject, he knew.
“I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns,” she complained.
“Nice, though. A nice oak tree.” He sniffed her. “You even smell nice for a change,” he japed, though the sickly smell of flowers made him screw his nose up.
“You don’t. You stink.” She shoved him and ran, and before he knew what was happening, they were wrestling on the floor and laughing hysterically.
Riverrun would be a conversation for a different day, he decided. Arya tried to punch him, and he laughed.