Gendry turned off the square where the Street of Steel began, urging Black with a kick of his heels not to fear the slickness of the snow on the cobblestones on its way up along the winding path of the hill. He passed the open forges, like the one he worked in Braavos. Sellswords and freeriders still haggled over mail shirts and the ironmongers still sold rusty old, bent blades and razors from their wagons. Nothing had changed in the blacksmiths' quarter the past five years, except there being snow on the cobblestones – most of it turned into black, wet and muddy puddles - and the roofs. The buildings grew bigger, the farther up he rode. Gendry rode to the top of the hill and halted Black in front of the looming wooden and plaster house. He slid off Black with his package and blinked as he stared at the double doors of weirwood and ebony with the hunting scene.

Of course when he was still an apprentice here, this was not the door he entered, normally. This was the way for the customers, not the boys and journeymen. But he still remembered the first time the hooded man with a purple velvet cloak with silver threads guided him here and told him, "You will be well fed here and learn a useful trade." That man did not know the back entrance, but used the front one, like a customer.

It had not been the beautifully carved door that had caught his interest then, but the two stone soldiers that stood sentry at the doors. Well, not the stone soldiers exactly either, but their fancy red colored steel armor making them griffon and unicorn. "Will I learn to become a knight here, like Dunk?" he had asked with hope to the man who had picked him up from the streets where he lived for a short while after his mother had died.

"No, boy, this is the best forge of the city, and the master will teach you how to use a hammer and make steel like that. Your father used to be great with a hammer, before he started to spend his days whoring and drinking. So, I'm sure you have a talent for it."

"Thank you," he had said, trying to hide his disappointment, before a servant girl ushered him in.

Gendry blinked and stared at those knights. The steel armor of the stone soldiers flanking the wooden doors was still as red as all those years ago. And that was because his master knew how to color steel without using paint or enamel. He had never worked in a forge as big as this after he fled King's Landing. Gendry reflected on the fact that when he worked here as a boy, he dreamed of becoming a knight like Dunk one day. Even if the man in his purple coat had told him he would learn to become a smith, he had regarded it as a chance to learn the skills to make his own armor and sword. His Bull helmet had been his first piece of personal armor that he had made. It was meant for himself, when the time would come he could be the Bull at tourneys, and the reason why he had refused to part with it when Lord Stark visited to ask his question. A sword had been his next plan, and he knew exactly what he would do with the steel that Tobho had given him for it.

Then he was sent off for the Wall. It had been a pity he did not have the chance to make his own sword, but men of the Night's Watch were like knights, warriors. So, that was not so bad. He could become a great warrior at the Wall. But then Dunsen stole his helmet and he was set back at work in Harrenhall's armory as a smith. The Bloody Mummers and the things he had seen from Ser Amory's attack on the village with Yoren and afterwards had finally made him realize that Dunk was nothing more than a hero out of a story. War was horror. War was ugly. And few of the men fighting had any honor and cared nothing for the little folk - not Ser Amory, nor Roose Bolton, certainly not the Bloody Mummers. Maybe that was why he listened to old Ben Blackthumb, who told him that war was nothing for the likes of them, to leave the fighting for the lords and scum, that a master armorer was respected by anyone and could always be secure of being able to provide for his family. It seemed the seven and fate were telling him, you be a good 'pprentice smith. He had been resigned to his fate.

And then Arya gave him no choice at all. She planned to escape Harrenhall with or without him. He was sure she lied about the Goat intending to cut off everybody's left foot, but he had seen that same resignation in her face as the time when she asked for his help to help the prisoners escape. First he did not want to help her at all. Then he told hmiself he had to or she would get herself killed, either by a guard or somewhere on the road. He told himself he had to protect her. The truth was that smithing at Harrenhall without her climbing through the window to see him, even when he was angry with her, just had no appeal at all. And then they ended up with the Brotherhood without Banners, and suddenly there was his chance to be a knight after all, even though it meant giving up on Arya - though most of his knighthood he worked as an armorer smith, anyway. It had been close to a year ago, since he had actually worked at a forge, at Braavos. Next, he had traveled over water, through canyons, across grasslands and marches all the way back to King's Landing, all the way back to Tobho Mott's forge. Strange, now that he had his heart's desire - knighthood and Arya - he missed the forge.

A servant girl wearing a white cap – a different one than then – looked around the door, gaped at him with open mouth, and then ran back in, shouting, "Master, it's the Scaffold King."

"Who?" He recognized his old master's voice.

"You know – the one that was to be beheaded and got married instead with the princess." Gendry lifted his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side. So, that's what they call me in King's Landing – the Scaffold King. It does have a nice ring to it.

"Well, let him in, child. Oh, and fetch me the pitcher and two cups."

The girl raced back to the door a long moment after, lifted her apron and curtsied, "Come in, milord. The master will see you."

He smiled at her, and he saw her blush as she guided him in and looked behind her to see whether he was following. He could not remember whether he had ever made one of Tobho's household servant girls blush before. "It's just Ser, girl. I'm no lord." Although he could not fault her for thinking it, especially as he wore new, shiny black boots, a velvet doublet over his silk shirt, warm black leather gloves with fur inside, and his wolf fur cloak.

The servant looked aghast that he even talked to her, but just as he went into the room where Tobho Mott normally welcomed customers to make his sale pitch and haggle over the prices, she whispered, "How's the princess, Ser? I-I was there that day. I saw it! She looked so beautiful and in love, just like one of 'em stories. Is she happy?"

His smile widened. "Very happy, thank you." And the girl sighed before she ran off.

Gendry entered the parlay room with apprehension, but was shocked when he saw his master. He himself had seen and grown much in five years, but that was to be expected to happen to a boy of five and ten. His master seemed to have aged at least ten years in half as much time. His hair was thin. He could see blue veins on his scalp. His eyes seemed dark and hollow. He still wore his black velvet doublet and coat with silver embroidered hammers, but it all hung loose about his body, as if he had shriveled away. Varys had been correct. Tobho Mott himself could not work steel anymore.

Still, Tobho Mott mustered his sales smile and gestured towards a couch. "Please help yourself to some wine, good Ser, and sit." In the way he moved, Gendry instantly realized aghast that Tobho's eyesight was much impaired. "I am Tobho Mott, my lord, please put yourself at ease. If you are in need of new arms, you have come to the right shop. My work is costly, and I make no apologies for that, but you will find no better craftmanshop than this one in whole of the Seven Kingdoms, I promise you. Do you wish colored armor or sword? I know how to put color in steel and it will stay in there forever. How may I be of service to you, lord, and can you tell me your name?"

Still in shock, Gendry sat down on the couch, with his package on his lap. He's blind or half blind. He doesn't recognize me at all. Finally he gathered the courage and his wits to speak. "I have come for the forging of a Valeryan greatsword, master."

Tobho smiled. "You have heard of my ability then?" But then his smile faded. "Alas, I cannot do it myself anymore. I know the spells, but I am near blind and I've been greatly ill the past year." He coughed. The noise came from deep down his lungs. "While I have the best apprentice boys in the city who can do all that I told you, alas none have the mind and gift to forge Valeryan steel." Tobho cocked his head. "Your voice sounds familiar to me. Pray do I know you, lord? Have I serviced you before? My servant girl only told me some silly story."

"Yes, master Mott, we know each other. I worked here until five years ago as an apprentice, until you sent me to the Wall."

"Gendry," Tobho whispered, and he extended his hands towards the couch from across the table, as if he wanted to touch him.

"Indeed, master." Gendry stood, bowed and brought his face near enough for his old master to feel.

He could see the wonder in the man's face and the touch was a kind, reverent one. He remembered Tobho scolding him and being stern most of the time, even sometimes clouting him. But the man had been like a father to him, the only man he ever had any emotional attachment to in that way. "Oh, my boy, you made it then to the Wall. They didn't manage to kill you."

Gendry swallowed. Tobho had often called him boy, but never my boy. "Yes," he whispered. "I actually did make it to the Wall. It took me several years. They hunted me, but they never found me. I was a prisoner for a while, then I was an armorer in Harrenhall for both Tywin Lannister and Roose Bolton. After that I smithed for Ser Beric Dondarrion in the Riverlands, to then become a recruit for the Night's Watch and was then sent on a mission to Braavos where I worked for another master in an open forge, and came back here."

Tobho Mott's sinewy pale hands with brown colored patches and blue thick veins, squeezed his shoulder. "You were the best apprentice I ever had, boy, and a very good lad – although you had a big mouth. But they would have killed you."

"Could you teach me, master? Could I learn to work Valeryan Steel?"

"You were as stubborn as that bull helmet of yours, but you were never dumb and you had a feel for steel. If there was ever one I thought I could teach it, it was you."

"Name your price, master Tobho."

"None," said Tobho. "But the price that you work with me and listen to me, and tell me every day something of your journeys and adventures." The man smiled. "Had you been able to remain here, I would have groomed you to become the new master here. I would have taught you all my secrets." Gendry's jaw dropped, because the boy he had been then would never have imagined that the master had that much faith in him. And yet, perhaps he was grateful that he had been forced to leave. He would never have known Arya otherwise, never had been thrown in the circumstances where he would choose the warrior's path. "So, what is this thing about the Scaffold King the servant girl mentioned to me?"

Gendry chuckled. "Well, the servant told you the truth," and he told about how he was arrested on the evening of his arrival in the city and put in the black cell and found guilty for outlawing in the Riverlands and was to lose his head over it, until the princess he was sworn to claimed him for a husband, and so he was married on the scaffold. And the reason he supposed they called him the Scaffold King was because the dragon queen had also legitimized him and gave him his father's name.

Tobho Mott laughed. "Well, who'd have believed such a thing five years ago - my boy Gendry married a princess. You've done far better yourself than becoming master of Tobho Mott's shop. And which princess is this? I can hardly keep up with who's who these days. There have been as many kings and queens on the throne as the years that have gone by."

"Princess Arya Stark, master."

The old master gasped. "The Hand's own daughter!" Then he smirked. "He would have killed you yourself I think if anyone would have predicted him such a thing on the day he came to visit and wanted to see you. An honorable, but a harsh man, that… and a traitor." Then the master shrugged his shoulders. "Or perhaps not. He told me that day, that if you ever wanted to wield a sword instead of making one, I should send you to him; said that you had the look of the warrior, more than a smith. And he knew who's bastard son you were. Looks like he was right, and I was wrong."

Gendry took Tobho Motts two hands in his own and clasped them tightly. "I think my wife would appreciate hearing her father's opinion about me."

"Hmmm," said the old man, freeing one hand and patting Gendry's. "So, you want to make a greatsword out of Valeryan steel. I hope you have enough of such precious steel to make one."

"I do," said Gendry and went to the couch to retrieve his package. He laid it out on the table and opened the cloth. He took Tobho's hands and guided them along the blades as well as the pommel and hilt. "These are the two swords you forged out of Ice on Tywin Lannister's request."

Master Mott looked stricken and swallowed. "How did you get your hands on those two swords," he whispered.

"Jaime Lannister, he gave them to Arya Stark in Braavos. He cannot bear the thought of his father stealing an ancestral sword of a house that was brought down not by being traitors, but by his own family having been nothing but liars and thieves. Arya was more horrified by it than anything else she ever saw, and that includes her own father's beheading. She even forced me to rework the pommel of Widow's Wail in Braavos already, or she would have hacked it off."

"You sound angry, Gendry."

He realized he was. "I guess I am." In Braavos those two swords had meant nothing to him, although he could plainly see they meant the world to Arya. He had asked her back then to help him understand one day, and somehow she had. What mattered to her, mattered to him.

Tobho Mott's hands felt the hilt of Widow's Wail. "What is this?"

"A hilt, like a bravos sword, instead of a pommel. It protects the hand. Saves you from wearing a gauntlet."

"I know what a hilt is, Gendry. I'm a master after all. But a hilt on a longsword?"

"I developed a sword that combines the blade of a longsword with the hilt of a rapier in Braavos. I call it a broadsword."

Master Mott frowned as his fingers trailed the hilt he made. "You made it in the shape of a heart."

He blushed and was glad his old master could not see how much he blushed. "Yes," he croaked. She told me to make something beautiful. And he had tried. And yet, despite the love and the work he had poured in that hilt less than a year ago, he now shared Jaime's and Arya's horror about Ice's fate.

"We cannot exactly remake Ice. Valeryan steel has a memory. The separation into two blades and the paths they had is part of that memory, as well as the love you poured into the hilt for one of them."

Gendry closed his eyes and sighed. "It's important, master Mott," he whispered. "And not just for the sake of personal feelings about a sword of a dead father." Gendry stood and walked to the door to close it. He hunched down beside his old master and whispered in his ear. "We have reason to suspect it will be of importance against the coming of the Long Night."

Master Mott nodded. "I see. Well, we can make a greatsword of it and call it Ice."

"How long will it take?"

"A month I'd say," said the old master.

"When can we start?"

"Come round tomorrow again, along the back door."

And so the following morning he came again through the back door. The servant of the day before let him in and his old master was waiting for him in the narrow yard. Before he continued he handed his fur cloak, his gloves, his doublet and his shirt to the girl. It was chill to stand with his naked chest in the winter morn, but he knew what heat he would step into soon enough. Tobho Mott laid his hand on Gendry's arm while Gendry led the master smith to the stone barn where the work was done. An apprentice smith of six and ten opened the doors, and the enormous heat blazing at him threw him instantly back to his youth. This was not some open forge with a hearth, small bellow, an anvil and a bucket of water. It was a giant mouth of hell as hot as the breath of a dragon. Some young apprentice boys were already hard at work at the bellows for the fire. But there was nobody else working - none of the older apprentices and certainly no journeymen armorers.

"Boy," said Master Mott to the apprentice who had opened the doors. "Be gone now. This is not for you." The apprentice glared at Gendry who finally realized that Tobho Mott had emptied the forge of prying eyes on purpose. "And stop scowling!" said Tobho Mott. Gendry grinned. His old master might have nearly lost his eyesight, but he knew his apprentice boys. And indeed Master Mott leaned in and said to Gendry, "He fears that you – a stranger - will get my shop, instead of him. He's stubborn and insolent, like you were." Tobho Mott waved his hand. "Agh, I'll leave him my forge and my shop. You have a princess. So, you'll have to settle for that. He could never in his life work Valeryan steel, though. So, I will pass the knowledge on to you. And him knowing I did so, will keep him on his toes for a while longer, so he doesn't get too cocky. You brought the swords with you?"

"Yes?"

"First let's remove the handles, hilts, rubies, gold, pommels. Melt it all down."

Gendry rolled his eyes, grabbed a leather apron, and instructed the boys at the bellows what he needed, so he could melt it all. He stared for a moment at the hilt of Widow's Wail to have a last reminder of it committed to memory, but it went with the other gold and common metal. She was his wife – her true heart was what mattered, not the golden one. By late morning, the blades were bare.

"Let's go have lunch," said Master Tobho then, "and a story about the Scaffold King."

"It's still early," said Gendry.

Though he was old and nearly blind, Tobho Mott could still make a face that told him not to argue with him. "I told you Valeryan steel has memory. Give them time to adjust of being removed from any sigil, symbolism and meaning. They need time and rest to shed their identity."

So, he joined his old master to the common room and had a lunch of bread and roasted ham with spiced wine. And he decided to just start with the beginning, about a fat boy and a blonde boy pestering a small scruffy boy with a little sword that looked more useful as a skewer for a shish-kebab than an actual sword. That scruffy boy was all too ready to stick anyone with the pointy end of its needle who threatened to take it away though. Although the scruffy boy was the youngest and the tiniest, he beat up those two bullies with a wooden practice sword. And after that, the two bullies were too afraid to go near the scruffy boy again.

By then the servant girl, Annie, had seated herself to listen and the apprentice boys had poured in for lunch as well. Gendry told them of the trek to the Riverlands, of many people riding the other way on wagons with all their animals and vegetables from their gardens, fleeing the wars. Gendry was not talking to Tobho Mott anymore, but to the apprentice boys who had been eating and munching their luncheon and listening with big eyes at him.

When he mentioned how riders came and the scruffy boy hid, but it turned out they were actually looking for him - because evil Queen Cersei wanted him - the littlest of the boys asked, "Why did the evil Queen want you?"

"Because he was the king's bastard son, silly, and none of her own children were the king's," said the elder apprentice who Tobho Mott had shooed away from the forge. He was leaning against the doorpost, looking bored and annoyed.

They all stared at him wide eyed. "Well, yeah, but I did not know that at the time," he explained. Or I did not want to know.

"But you escaped, right?" asked a second boy.

"The first time there weren't enough riders to win any fight against us. But the second time a Lannister army came. And they killed almost everyone, except Lommy, Hot Pie, the scruffy boy, an orphan girl called Weasel and me. We escaped through a tunnel. But there was something funny about the scruffy boy."

"What?"

He told them how he noticed the boy sneaked away from their train of men and boys and he never saw the little boy take a piss, long before the riders ever showed, and the boy would not wash either – smelling hours in the wind. Why would a boy sneak off to take a piss, he had wondered. They all shook their heads – they had no idea why the scruffy little boy would do such a thing.

"Because it wasn't a boy, but a girl," said the elder apprentice sullen.

"Was it like Robby says?" asked the second youngest.

The boys looked to Gendry for confirmation. "Exactly. Arry wasn't a boy, but a girl."

"But why was she dressed as a boy?" asked the youngest.

"Well, Lommy, Hot Pie and me were pretty harmless. But there were older men, even criminals in a cage – murderers, thieves and rapists."

"What's a rapist?" asked another boy while he was chewing on his bread.

While Gendry thought of an answer, Robby said, "It's like when your mum and dad make noise in their cot, but a rapist isn't married and forces a woman or a girl while she doesn't want to."

I guess that answer works, thought Gendry. "Yeah. Arry dressed like a boy, so the mean and dangerous men wouldn't know she was a girl and wouldn't rape her."

"It was the princess, wasn't it?"

"How'd you know that?" asked another boy.

"Well, Arry sounds like Arya."

"But how can a girl look like a boy? They have long hair and boobs," asked a third one.

"She had cut off her hair and she was too young to have boobs," said Gendry. "She was just a little younger than Annie here."

"Oh." The third boy looked at Annie and squinted. It took little imagination to assume the boy was trying to visualize Annie with short hair and boy's clothes. Annie blushed.

"Anyhow, I didn't know Arry was Arya of course. I thought she was just a little girl dressed like a boy. Until one day Arry and I scouted a village after our escape from the murderous army and I told her I knew she was a girl. She denied it, until I asked her to prove to me she was a boy, which she couldn't. And when I asked her real name, she told me she was Arya Stark, who's father had been beheaded by the evil Queen. That's when I learned the scruffy, smelly boy that scared bullies was actually a highborn lady."

The boys and Annie the servant girl were smiling at him. "So, is that when you fell in love with her?" asked Annie with a sigh. Robby rolled his eyes and waved his hand as if to say it was a load of horsedung.

Gendry chuckled. "No, not exactly. It's just the story of how the princess and I met, both on the run from the evil Queen."

"But you wanted to protect her, right?" said the boy he thought was called Tommen.

Gendry got up and ruffled Tommen's blond mop of hair. "Yes, I did." In fact he had felt protective of her from the start, and it never really had gone away. "Come on, let's go, we have work to do."

The boys ran to the forge shouting and crying amongst themselves who was to be Gendry, Lommy, Hot Pie or Arry, and he saw master Mott smiling. He helped the man back to the forge. Tobho Mott instructed the boys to get the fires as hot as possible, and asked Gendry for the bare blades. In High Valeryan he started to say incantations before the the metal was to be melted. He had Gendry repeat them several times until he knew them by heart.

"The previous spells that bonded the steel to its present form must be lifted. Without those incantations Valeryan steel won't melt."

He had to do it for each sword separately, and then another incantation was needed to mix both boiling liquids into one pool. And each step required resting time. It was nightfall already, with the apprentice boys yawning at the bellows, when they finally could pour the liquid steel in the mold of a greatsword. That too required several spells, for the steel to gather in the mold, to rest and to become solid once more. Each day, he returned to start folding and hammering the steel, each time with different spells – for the hardening, for the reheating, for the folding, for the coloring, for the sharpening, for protection against fire, against ice, over and over, again and again. And every day he told a bit of his story, which most often included Arya's story. And as Gendry worked, he needed master Mott less and less to be there to guide him. Though he did not know High Valeryan and could not translate the meaning of the incantations, he knew which one to use more and more, gradually shaping the sword into perfection, after a vision what the sword needed to become. The making of that vision felt like a song, a song about Winter is coming, about the North, and a family torn apart, a boy and a girl arguing on the road, a young King winning every battle but murdered at a wedding table along with his mother and men, two boys escaping a sacked home presumed to be dead but having been seen nonetheless, a girl crying tears in the castle that was her prison and torment but escaping, and a cousin born out of love and war sleeping at a Wall - a song of Ice.