Book Gendrya Month 2023 - Day One - Trust
Arya has shown several times that she trusts Gendry, but I think one of the biggest examples comes when she divulges her plan of escaping Harrenhal to Gendry, even though he is angry with her at the time and could have very well told someone if he was a less loyal and trustworthy person.
At the forge she found the fires extinguished and the doors closed and barred. She crept in a window, as she had once before. Gendry shared a mattress with two other apprentice smiths. She crouched in the loft for a long time before her eyes adjusted enough for her to be sure that he was the one on the end. Then she put a hand over his mouth and pinched him. His eyes opened. He could not have been very deeply asleep. “Please,” she whispered. She took her hand off his mouth and pointed.
For a moment she did not think he understood, but then he slid out from under the blankets. Naked, he padded across the room, shrugged into a loose roughspun tunic, and climbed down from the loft after her. The other sleepers did not stir. “What do you want now?” Gendry said in a low angry voice.
“Blackthumb keeps all the blades locked up, I told you that a hundred times. Is this for Lord Leech?”
“For me. Break the lock with your hammer.”
“They’ll break my hand,” he grumbled. “Or worse.”
“Not if you run off with me.”
“Run, and they’ll catch you and kill you.”
“They’ll do you worse. Lord Bolton is giving Harrenhal to the Bloody Mummers, he told me so.”
Gendry pushed black hair out of his eyes. “So?”
She looked right at him, fearless. “So when Vargo Hoat’s the lord, he’s going to cut off the feet of all the servants to keep them from running away. The smiths too.”
“That’s only a story,” he said scornfully.
“No, it’s true, I heard Lord Vargo say so,” she lied. “He’s going to cut one foot off everyone. The left one. Go to the kitchens and wake Hot Pie, he’ll do what you say. We’ll need bread or oakcakes or something. You get the swords and I’ll do the horses. We’ll meet near the postern in the east wall, behind the Tower of Ghosts. No one ever comes there.”
“I know that gate. It’s guarded, same as the rest.”
“So? You won’t forget the swords?”
“No. But if you do, you won’t forget the swords?”
He frowned. “No,” he said at last. “I guess I won’t.” (Arya X ACOK)
Some may argue that Arya only risked telling Gendry, and by extension Hot Pie, because she needed them, that she needed Gendry’s swords and Hot Pie’s food, but this isn’t the case at all. Arya is the one to plan the entire escape. She is the one to dress accordingly for travel, as well as steal a map and a dagger from Roose Bolton. She is the one who manages to get the stableboy to saddle three horses for her to take, and she is the one who kills the guard when she realizes she isn’t going to be able to trick the guard in order to escape. She didn’t technically need Gendry or Hot Pie. Arya already had the dagger, which is what she used on the guard, and she already knew how to scavenge for food and to hunt small animals.
Arya even acknowledges later that Gendry and Hot Pie were slowing her down, but because Arya cares about them, especially Gendry, she couldn’t just leave them behind in Harrenhal, no matter how much she insists Gendry and Hot Pie would have been safe in Harrenhal when she’s faced with the reality of what may happen to them all if they are caught, even though we know first hand Gendry and Hot Pie likely would have been killed with most of the people in Harrenhal, like we saw when Jaime came and took the castle once again.
She would make much better time on her own, Arya knew, but she could not leave them. They were her pack, her friends, the only living friends that remained to her, and if not for her they would still be safe at Harrenhal, Gendry sweating at his forge and Hot Pie in the kitchens. If the Mummers catch us, I’ll tell them that I’m Ned Stark’s daughter and sister to the King in the North. I’ll command them to take me to my brother, and to do no harm to Hot Pie and Gendry. They might not believe her, though, and even if they did … Lord Bolton was her brother’s bannerman, but he frightened her all the same. I won’t let them take us, she vowed silently, reaching back over her shoulder to touch the hilt of the sword that Gendry had stolen for her. I won’t. (Arya I ASOS)
And we see that Arya was willing to risk revealing her identity to the Northmen at Harrenhal, who she didn’t even trust, if they were caught, all in the attempt to spare Gendry and Hot Pie. And considering she didn’t trust them she couldn’t even be certain her revealing her identity would have kept her safe or her friends.
In the end, Arya may have exaggerated what the Bloody Mummers were going to do once they took control of the castle in order to get Gendry to leave with her, but Arya’s heart was in the right place. She knew nothing good would come from leaving Gendry and Hot Pie behind, however, she also couldn’t bear to go on by herself, as she needed her pack beside her on her journey forth to find her mother and brother, hoping that when they did, her pack would be able to stay by her side.
