Chapter Text
Something was wrong. Gendry knew that much without even opening his eyes. When he’d crawled into bed some few hours ago, he’d been drenched in summer sweat, his ears filled with the lively sounds of Visenya City nightlife outside his ship’s window.
Only now he was shivering in his sheets, and heard nothing in the air except perfect silence.
No, not quite perfect. His eyes shot open at the realization. A low, rhythmic hum was coming from the engine room down the hall, a hum that sounded strangely similar to the one his ship made when the engine was on—the engine that he hadn’t turned on in years.
He bolted up at once, the pieces crashing together: the cold, the quiet, the engine. It couldn’t be. But it couldn’t be anything else.
Slowly, with dread high in his throat, he turned to the small window near his bed, feeling the blood drain from his face as his fears were confirmed.
For outside his ship, where there used to be the yellow lamps of Steel Alley Ship Park, there was now only the infinite, unfathomable—and utterly terrifying—deep black expanse of outer space.
Gendry cursed as he tore out of his quarters (doubling back once to put on boxers, a second time for trousers). All his careening about made a terrible racket, but he didn’t care one bit. Let them hear me come, he thought, feet thundering on the metal floor as he barreled up the hall.
“Oi!” He burst into the cockpit with a shout. “This is my ship!”
A short young woman with clipped brown hair was sat at the helm, and despite Gendry’s noisy entrance, she didn’t notice him at all. Or if she did, she ignored him completely. Her focus was entirely on the control panel, her eyes scanning the array of screens and buttons with a frantic, almost desperate, intensity.
For a moment Gendry could only stand there, complete bafflement swallowing his anger. The woman was a thief, was she not? A shipjacker, and he’d caught her in the act.
“The fuck?” he muttered, before drawing in a deep breath. “Oi!”
The woman did hear him then, jolting against her seatbelt with a curse in—well, he didn’t know what language, but it wasn’t the common tongue. Absently he wondered which one it was, before remembering himself. She was stealing his ship, for gods’ sake.
He took the two steps across the cockpit to tower over her from between the pair of co-pilot seats. “You hear me? I said, this is my ship.”
The words had barely left his lips when the woman inhaled sharply, as if gathering her courage, and slowly turned her head, her face meeting his at last.
Gendry’s mouth went dry. He’d never seen eyes quite like hers before. Grey and dark and stormy, mesmerizing, making him thoroughly forget what he was supposed to be doing.
He was just on the cusp of remembering when those eyes of hers swept him top to bottom, then rose again to meet his own. The corner of her mouth tilted up ever so slightly.
“Your flies are undone,” she said.
Gendry glanced down and flushed even as he scowled. “You’re trying to distract me,” he accused, hoping he sounded intimidating while his hands fumbled to do up his trousers. “You’re trying to distract me, but it won’t work. You stole my ship, and I caught you.”
All traces of a smile slipped from her face. She bit her lip, releasing it slowly and giving him a long, level look. “You caught me, yeah?”
“Yeah, I’d say I did.”
“Well then.” In one swift motion she unbuckled her seatbelt and stood on top of the chair, her head held defiantly high, just inches from the cockpit ceiling. She crossed her arms over her jacket and looked down at him as the short, skinny dagger sheathed at her hip swung around and settled along her thigh. “What are you going to do, turn- turn me in?”
Gendry knew his mouth was hanging stupidly open but he couldn’t help it. In the blink of an eye this woman before him had removed his height advantage, if only by a few inches, and in spite of himself he felt a grudging admiration for her boldness. Admiration and something else, something he couldn't explain. He only knew it made his heart beat a little harder in his chest.
Then the stammer at the end of her words finally hit him. So she was nervous after all, he thought with a dark sort of satisfaction. He could do it, he supposed—turn her in—but he hated the gold cloaks almost more than the thought of someone stealing his ship. He got the Bull back in the end; that was all that mattered.
“I won’t turn you in,” Gendry decided.
Her lips parted in surprise. Relief shone clear and bright in her expression before it slid to confusion, and then to something unreadable.
“You really won’t?” she asked, a note of wonder in her tone.
“No.” He dropped into the other co-pilot seat and began looking at the control panel. “What I will do is fly back to King’s Landing—”
“I’m not going back to King’s Landing,” she interrupted.
“Well, I am, and you’re stuck on my ship, so you are too. Where the fuck are we?” He scowled at the electric blue curves of the holoscreen map above the center of the control panel. It was showing that they were halfway to the other side of the Crown system, which made no sense. Gendry had only been asleep for a few hours; they couldn’t have traveled that many millions of miles, unless…
He gaped at her. “Did you…?”
“Yeah, I went to warp speed. Warp factor six—”
“Six?”
“But it cut out on me. I thought maybe six was too fast, but five and four cut out too.” She stepped down from her co-pilot seat and dropped into it with a groan. “Three and slower worked fine, but then there wasn’t any bloody fuel, so I had to turn off the thrusters after only a few minutes.”
“Hells,” Gendry muttered. Warp three, even for a few minutes, would definitely get them halfway across the star system. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, willing himself not to panic. He failed.
When he could breathe again he lowered his hands and looked at her.
“So now…”
“So now we’re not even going at light speed, which means we’re going slower than a bloody glacier.” She fiddled gloomily with the hem of her jacket for a moment before lifting her head to the front shield. “But at least you can see the stars.”
Gendry didn’t want to look. He didn’t.
He couldn’t help it.
If it was anyone else’s first time in space, he supposed they would stare in awe at the terrifying grandeur of the cosmos, at the magnificent, colorful smears of glittering stars against inky black nothingness. But Gendry was a Flea Bottom boy at heart, and all he could think was, I’ll be so late for work. Mott wouldn’t be pleased, even if everything was the shipjacker’s fault in the first place.
Gendry glanced sideways at her. She was watching him carefully, the blue and magenta cockpit lights sharpening the angles of her long face as it tilted towards him in concern—no, more than concern. In understanding.
What would she possibly understand about any of this? he thought indignantly. His life had been completely upturned in a single night, and now he was millions and millions of miles from his home planet with neither a fast nor easy way back.
And it was all her fault.
“I didn’t know you were here,” she said quietly, as if in reply to his silent accusation. “I’m sorry.”
Her apology—her admission of guilt—made something furious erupt in him, scattering his vision with white stars that flashed brighter than the ones on the other side of the front shield.
“You’re sorry?” he echoed, his voice low and dangerous. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”
Unable to sit any longer, he stood and began pacing across the small area of the cockpit, tallying up her crimes.
“You stole my ship in the middle of the night, went to warp six , broke half the warp drive, and after all that, used up all the fuel! ‘Sorry’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“Well, sorry’s all I’ve got, all right!” she snapped, jumping up out of her seat to stand in front of him, blocking his path. “I’m sorry, I am! This wasn’t some joyride, you know. I had to—”
He cut her off. “You could’ve killed us. Warp six is dangerous on a small ship like this.”
“I know that!”
“And it’s even more dangerous to come out of it the wrong way.”
“I know that!”
“Then why’d you do it? Why’d you go to warp six? Why’d you steal my ship in the first place?”
“I…”
They seemed to register at the same time that they were standing very close. Entirely too close—chests nearly heaving up against each other, eyes locked in place as the woman craned her neck up at Gendry and he looked back down. She was as short as he’d first thought, barely reaching his shoulder, and seemed even smaller in her dark canvas jacket that looked two sizes too big. Her lips were chapped.
She took a step back, her gaze dropping to the floor. “I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me why you stole my ship,” he repeated, inwardly cursing himself for getting distracted again.
“I can’t.” She lifted her eyes back to his. “But I… I can promise I won’t do it again.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
She blinked at him, as if she didn’t think his question was serious. “That I won’t steal your ship again?”
He nodded.
“Because your ship’s no bloody use!” she exclaimed. “I needed to get… somewhere, fast, and I could’ve made warp six work, even on a ship like this, only your drive snapped as easily as a twig.” She huffed in frustration and gestured wildly at the control panel. “And you had almost no fuel in the first place. And- and all of your systems are old, so old that they probably haven’t been checked for as long as you and I have been alive!”
He took a menacing step towards her, closing the distance between them again. “What are you trying to say?”
“Your ship is one step above a piece of junk,” she finished, but her tone was more defeated than mocking. With a shake of her head, she stepped away and slumped into her co-pilot seat. “I can’t believe I stole a ship that can barely fly,” she mumbled.
Gendry didn’t appreciate her calling his ship a piece of junk, primarily because it wasn’t. He had some pride, for fuck’s sake. Other than the parts needed for flying in space, every wire and screw and panel was perfectly maintained. He and his mum would’ve had a hard time living here if they couldn’t turn on the lights or keep their food cold or get water from the reclaimer. As for the space parts, they would’ve been a waste of money, so he’d never bothered with them.
But to explain all of this would mean revealing a piece of his life that was simply too private, too tinged with bitterness, to share with a shipjacking stranger, no matter how striking her eyes were.
“The Bull’s flying fine now,” was all he said instead. He returned to sit in the other co-pilot seat. “And you didn’t have to steal it,” he reminded her gruffly.
“I did.” She laid back and closed her eyes. “I did have to.”
For the first time, Gendry noticed that she had street dust on her cheeks and red rims around her eyes, and her jacket was marred with scuff marks. Her dark brown hair, slashed just below her ears, looked rather like it’d been hacked off with a knife, or perhaps the short, skinny dagger at her hip.
Something had obviously happened to her. Reluctantly, a sliver of sympathy wedged its way into Gendry’s chest.
“If not your ship,” the woman continued, still with her eyes closed, “then someone else’s. I had to get off King’s Landing.” When she opened her eyes the grey in them was hard as steel. “And I’m not going back.”
“Why?”
“I’m just not.”
Gendry mulled over his options, reluctantly accepting that there was only one. He’d said he wasn’t going to turn her over to the gold cloaks for stealing his ship, and he’d meant it. So all he could really do was let her go and head back to King’s Landing, hoping he still had a job when he got there and that all of this would soon feel like just a bad dream.
“We’re approaching… Sow’s Horn and the moon Ivy?” he asked, reading the holoscreen map.
“Yeah, and I’d rather go to Ivy. It’s quieter, I think.”
“It’s got fueling stations?”
She nodded.
“I’ll fly back to King’s Landing and you’ll stay on Ivy, then,” he said. “Until you can steal another ride.”
Her eyes widened in understanding, and then they were shining. At him. His stomach swooped.
“Until I can steal another ride,” she agreed. Then, for some reason, her gaze drifted down and lingered on his chest— oh, right. “Now for fuck’s sake, could you put on a shirt?”
(Art by kochia)
Her name was Arry, or so she said before Gendry went back to his quarters. He didn’t care that she was lying. He might be a bit concerned for her, but that didn’t mean he had to get to know her. He didn’t want to, and there was no point, anyway. They’d get to Ivy, he’d refuel and fly back to King’s Landing, she’d steal another ship, and they’d never see each other again.
When he returned to the cockpit, now fully dressed, Arry seemed to be much more at ease. No wonder; she wasn’t being turned in for shipjacking, and she was presumably getting to where she wanted to go, wherever it was.
Gendry suspected that he’d been a touch too cooperative when she was apparently so at ease that she burst out laughing at the sight of him.
“What?” he demanded.
She just kept laughing, almost hysterically, and at one point exclaimed something in another language, the same one from before. (Its lilt was a little more familiar this time, but his mind still couldn’t quite pinpoint where it was from.) Half of him felt like laughing with her, as she laughed like someone who hadn’t done so in a very long time, and her joy was terribly infectious. The other half felt he ought to be bewildered and offended, because she was most definitely laughing at him.
“I said a shirt,” she gasped in the common tongue, “not five.”
“Space is cold,” Gendry grumbled with a scowl. So he may have put on more than one shirt. And two hoodies. With both hoods pulled up. In the heat of their argument, he had forgotten that he’d woken up shivering, but rummaging around in his quarters for a shirt had reminded him. “I need to check the insulation system.”
“You know space is much colder than this, right?”
He scowled again. “‘Course I do.”
“Well, your insulation’s fine,” Arry said, waving her hand dismissively. “The thermostat kicked in when we took off, but I lowered it. Too bloody hot in here to think.”
“You lowered—” This shouldn’t have surprised him. She’d been the cause of every single one of his problems for the last few hours.
“Relax, you, I’ll raise it.” She tapped at the control panel, shaking her head. Then she snorted and muttered something in that same foreign language, one that Gendry, against his best wishes, now vaguely recognized as from somewhere in the Weirwood arm of the galaxy.
That was probably where she was from, and where she wanted to go. It made sense then, why she tried flying at the fastest warp speed. All of the inhabited systems in that arm—Winterfell and Castle Black and White Harbor and Barrow—were clear out on the other side of Westeros.
“Erm, that’s Sow’s Horn and Ivy there,” Arry said loudly, pointing through the front shield at a pair of bright dots in the distance. Her casual tone sounded forced, and Gendry knew she’d revealed more about herself than she’d intended to, especially when she began checking the course on the nav computer with an excessive level of focus. “We’ll be there in a few hours. We should decide where we’re going to land.”
He was grateful for her changing the subject. He’d almost started getting to know her.
Flea Bottom boys didn’t go to space. It simply wasn’t done. You learned to deal with your lot on your rock, and settle with seeing the rest of the twin galaxies only through pictures.
With his own lot Gendry had been lucky, getting an apprenticeship in Visenya City with Tobho Mott, one of the best ship makers on the entire planet. He still lived in his ship, but that was, more or less, good enough for him. As for seeing Westeros and Essos only through pictures—well, that was good enough for him too.
He had thought so, at least, until Sow’s Horn and its moon Ivy sharpened into view. Then he learned just how much he’d been missing.
The Crown sun was behind them as they approached, so the view through the front shield was of the daylit sides of both the moon and the planet, splashes of color and texture against the dark, fathomless backdrop of space. Gendry knew his mouth was gaping open, and his eyes probably had some stupid look of wonder in them, but he couldn’t help it. Ivy swirled with impossible hues of green and blue and white, while Sow’s Horn was grooved with towering grey mountains that cascaded into terraformed plains and rivers. From space everything seemed to be perfectly still and quiet, though Gendry knew the surfaces were clamoring with the bustle of people. They seemed so small now. Did King’s Landing, hot and dirty and crowded as it was, appear this magnificent and peaceful from space too? Pictures didn’t capture it, not really. Words neither.
“It’s your first time in space,” Arry realized in a hushed whisper, as if reluctant to break the silence.
He didn’t know how she could tell, but he grunted in affirmation.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” She smiled softly at him.
“Yeah,” he admitted—grudgingly. He had this chance only because she had stolen his ship. She had a nice smile. “Right. Let’s land.”
Arry nodded and began working the landing protocol with the same ease she had done everything else, from setting the nav computer to changing the temperature to, he presumed, stealing his ship and going to warp speed. It struck Gendry all at once, how unusual this was.
“You’re very familiar with flying my ship.” The statement was both an accusation and a question.
“My brother has the same model,” she replied without looking up.
So she had a brother. Gendry sighed. He didn’t want to get to know her; he swore he didn’t. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
They parked at a fueling station in one of Ivy’s many lumber towns, in a region where, according to the local information system, it was a bright spring afternoon. The town itself was set on the edge of an ivy-thickened forest right where a stream widened into a lazy river. While the engine shut off Gendry peered at the landscape through the front shield. He’d never seen this much green in his life.
Before they disembarked down the ramp of the ship, Arry made Gendry lose all his extra layers except for one shirt and one hoodie. Being bundled up on a sunny day would attract unwanted attention, she explained, ignoring his protests that she was the one who was in trouble, not him. And then—the audacity—she donned one of his hoodies herself, a grey one that matched her eyes, wearing it under her canvas jacket and pulling the hood over her head. As if that wouldn’t attract unwanted attention.
Gendry was still grumbling about it as they connected the fuel lines to the ports on the Bull.
“You better give that back before you steal your next ship.”
“I literally only have the clothes I’m wearing, Gendry. Can’t you give up one bloody hoodie?”
“No.” He pulled his own hood tighter over his head.
“You stubborn…” She trailed off, shaking her head. Her eyes slid to the ship, and she snorted. “Bull.”
They finished connecting the fuel lines in silence.
Once that was done, Gendry fully expected Arry to leave him at last. He could fuel up perfectly fine on his own, and she had her next ship to steal.
But she only stood there, staring at him and biting her lip. He tried not to stare back as she did that. She seemed almost nervous, and he didn’t understand why, until it occurred to him that perhaps, for some strange reason, she wanted to say goodbye, and she was trying to figure out how.
Well, it wasn’t that hard.
“Bye,” he told her.
“We have to pay inside,” she blurted, nodding at a sign posted behind him.
He turned to read it. “Right,” he said, turning back around, only to find that she had already started walking across the large lot towards the service station.
Gendry sighed. So he wasn’t rid of her quite yet. He quickly raised the ship’s ramp before hurrying after her.
“I wonder if they have underwear,” Arry mused as they approached the door, her voice oddly casual. “Can’t get on with just the pair I’m wearing.”
He didn’t want to think about her underwear. “I thought you wanted a hoodie.”
She pulled on the strings of ‘her’ hood, so only her smirk shone through. “Already got one.”
To Gendry’s great displeasure, the service station didn’t sell jackets at all. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be getting his hoodie back.
Absurdly, they actually did sell underwear, but only boxers, and only ones with a tacky green ‘I Heart Ivy’ leaf-and-vine pattern on them. They hung in packages behind the checkout at the front—valuable merchandise, apparently. When Arry requested a few pairs, the bored-looking checkout girl barely glanced away from her tablet.
“That it?”
“And fuel, thanks. We’re on the far side there.” Arry pointed at their ship through the station’s large front window and then rummaged through her pockets, pulling out several wrinkled bills.
Gendry’s brow creased in surprise. “You’ll cover the fuel?” he asked her quietly as the checkout girl took the money and started fueling their ship from her control panel.
Arry shrugged. “Least I could do, since, you know.” I stole your ship, he knew she meant.
He nodded, feeling a bit funny. The gesture was more than he had expected from her, and he was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t really a terrible person, despite stealing his ship. Thinking about it made his head dizzy, so he turned away and looked around the service station instead. Aisles of food, drink, and traveling goods neatly divided up the room, and dusty light bulbs overhead casted everything in a dull white wash. In the middle of the front wall, a holoscreen was playing a news program about the king’s stupid boar hunt. Below the screen laid a counter, and at the far end of the counter sat… a coffee pot.
Just the thought of caffeine made Gendry sag, a sudden wave of exhaustion overtaking him completely.
The events of the night seemed to be finally catching up to him, and rightfully so, he thought. Having one’s ship stolen in the middle of the night and flying across a star system would make a person rather tired. He knew his ship was likely done fueling up by now, and that he ought to head back to King’s Landing immediately, but…
“I’ll take a coffee,” he said aloud, tossing some coins from his pocket onto the counter.
The checkout girl blinked at him.
“A large?” he added when she didn’t say anything.
“Make that two, please,” Arry said, stuffing her new ‘clothes’ somewhere inside her jacket.
“Don’t you have to, you know, get going?” he asked her under his breath. Steal another ship and all that.
“I need to fuel up too.”
As they filled their cups (the brew was proudly made local with grounds from Rosby), he noticed Arry glancing at him once, then twice, smiling to herself. He frowned, but she didn’t say anything, just seemed highly amused as she added milk to her coffee.
Gendry bristled in annoyance. “What are you smiling for?”
“I knew you took your coffee black,” she said triumphantly, tiptoeing slightly to peer into his cup, as if to check a third time.
“You can’t possibly have known that,” he objected while trying not to think about how nice she looked with her satisfied little smile.
“Please, you’re far too grumpy to take your coffee any other—” She saw something over his shoulder and stiffened.
He followed her gaze, to the holoscreen playing the news. Instantly he understood why she’d become tense.
BREAKING NEWS: HAND OF KING DEAD.
He couldn’t believe his eyes, though he could read the scrolling text just fine. Visenya City, King’s Landing: Lord Eddard Stark killed last night in ship accident near Baelor’s Square. 2nd Hand dead in six Crown years.
Ned Stark. Dead.
Normally Gendry wouldn’t give two shits about a dead lord Hand, but this Hand had visited him at Mott’s—as had the last one, Arryn or something, before he’d died in an accident too.
Now… well, Gendry still didn’t give two shits, but the news was bringing up old memories. The Hands had both asked the strangest questions, ones about his mum (dead) and his father (never knew him) and his work (why, you want a new ship?). Gendry didn’t think so much of himself that he thought their random talks with him had anything to do with their deaths—which had been declared accidents, after all—but it was still an uncomfortable coincidence. Especially since Baelor’s Square, where it seemed Lord Stark’s body had been found, was only a short walk from Mott’s and the ship park where Gendry lived in his ship.
More details rolled across the screen, including the estimated hour of the crash.
“Huh,” he grunted. “This must’ve happened around the time you stole my ship. You didn’t see the accident, Arry, did you?”
She muttered something that sounded like, “It wasn’t an accident,” but he couldn't be sure, and he didn’t think she would respond if he asked her to repeat herself. She seemed to be taking the news rather hard. One flash of this headline and suddenly she looked on the verge of tears, while at the same time glaring at the screen as if she wanted to smash it into bits.
Gendry hadn’t a clue of what to do. He didn’t know her well enough to try to comfort her with an arm around the shoulder or anything. He glanced at the checkout girl on the other end of the service station to see if she noticed the crisis unfolding before her, but she was engrossed in her tablet.
He supposed one thing he could do was… leave. He had his coffee, and his ship had its fuel. Arry could keep his hoodie if she wanted it so much. She might not even notice if he slipped out now and set off in the Bull for King’s Landing.
Only… she seemed so upset, and for some reason he almost felt like asking her what was wrong, even if he’d sworn before that he didn’t want to get to know her.
He had barely opened his mouth when the bell above the door jingled and two large men in white and gold uniforms with blasters at their hips entered the service station. One of them leaned against the threshold, blocking it completely, while the other went up to the checkout girl. Bloody gold cloaks. They were called the city watch, but the only watching they ever did was for the queen.
Gendry was fully prepared to shove past them (and maybe get a few shoves in, too), but he was suddenly wrenched back into an aisle by a small yet surprisingly strong arm. Coffee flew out of his cup and landed on the floor as his back hit a shelf.
Arry was still gripping his arm as she stood next to him, furtively peeking out over the end of the aisle, the news program seemingly forgotten. For what felt like the millionth time in only a few hours, Gendry’s head swam with confusion.
“Arry—”
“Be quiet,” she hissed. Then she glanced back at him and, seeing how his head stuck above the top shelf, pulled him down to a crouch, tugging both of their hoods further over their heads. “Don’t let them see you!”
“Why?” he whispered. “They’re pricks. We can just push them out of the way.”
Arry peeked around the end of the aisle again. “They’re after me.”
She said the words so quietly, he almost thought he misheard her. But then she pressed her back against the shelf, and he saw that she was breathing short and fast, her grey eyes wide and darting around with fear.
Just like that, everything clicked together—why she needed a getaway ship, why she slashed off her hair, why she couldn’t go back to King’s Landing.
The gold cloaks were after Arry. Or at least, she thought they were.
“How do you know?” he wondered. This was serious. The gold cloaks worked for the queen of the entire bloody galaxy. “What did you do? Who- who are you?” Perhaps that was the question he should’ve asked from the start, when he woke up and found her at the helm of his ship.
Arry only shook her head.
Then a gold cloak’s voice reached them from the checkout counter.
“...black hair, blue eyes, and a tall, broad build. His ship matches the one fueling up over there. Was he here?”
Arry’s brow furrowed. Her eyes snapped to Gendry. “You?” she breathed in disbelief.
Me? He shook his head. “Can’t be,” he whispered back. He’d always kept his head down, did his work, never harmed no queen. Besides, plenty of people fit that description, and his ship was a common enough model.
“He’s second builder at Mott’s Ship Designs on Upper Steel Street, Visenya City, Planet King’s Landing,” supplied the second gold cloak.
Fuck, Gendry thought. That was him, all right. They were looking for him. Oh, gods, the gold cloaks were looking for him. For him?
A downright stunned expression came over Arry’s face. “They do want you,” she said slowly.
“I’ve never done anything.” He could barely keep his voice down, nor his temper. “If they think they can—”
He broke off as the checkout girl replied.
“I might have seen someone who looks a little like him. But I’ll need something to jog my memory.”
This was followed by the unmistakable sound of coins clinking on the counter.
Gendry looked at Arry in alarm, only to find that her eyes were already on him. Back door, she mouthed, leaving both their coffees on the shelf behind them.
“Right then,” the checkout girl said. “I think he came and went just now with a smaller lad. Both of them had hoods up, mind, but your bloke was unforgettable. Maiden, his eyes were like…”
“Why’d we park so bloody far?” Gendry yelled as they ran across the lot to the Bull. Arry was a good twenty feet ahead of him. When he reached the ship she was already pulling the fuel lines from their ports. He lowered the ramp, and they ran in.
A shout came from the service station.
“That’s why,” Arry said, pointing. The gold cloaks had seen them, and were sprinting out of the building towards the ship. “Go, I’ll raise the ramp. You get us out of here.”
Gendry nodded and ran to the cockpit. As the engine came alive, he realized something.
“Us?” he shouted over his shoulder. Didn’t she have her own ship to steal?
Arry came running in. “Yes, us, stupid! Now go!”
“Where?” They couldn’t go back to King’s Landing.
“We’ll figure it out! Just go!”
She slid into her co-pilot seat and quickly began checking the launch controls. Gendry wanted to scream, but he didn’t know what. It was all too much. The crown was after him, and after Arry, too, and…
And she was here, escaping with him on his half-broken Bull instead of stealing a better ship of her own.
That thought alone jolted him out of his shock. She was here. She didn’t have to be.
Gendry reached for the throttle.