AN :
Next goal for another extra chapter is 500 power stones.
In the Game of Stones, you either win or you wait. The more Power Stones you offer, the faster the chapters come.
...
( Pella Biccade POV )
"Wouldn't that be more of a staff then? Hmm… Maybe if she leaned on it with both hands like…" he drew out a stick figure.
"No, no, that would miss that she's bringing light to the World." Pella shook her head, drawing out her own design.
...
It went on like that for most of the morning, the two of them simply bouncing ideas back and forth off of each other. None of her fellow artisans intervened, as they were all tasked elsewhere. Artists all of them, just like her.
That dark-skinned Molo was at the dockyard in the base of the castle as usual, learning the Westerosi methods of building ships to complement his own knowledge. Burrick was still copying down his star charts for Maester Eomund, and Hashal had taken to Lord Callum's 'electrical' sorceries.
She supposed that made sense since the man was Qarthene. He was making glazed clay casings for the Boy's strange batteries. Nolo was busy… doing whatever it was Callum had him doing, she really didn't know, and the less she knew about what Qyburn was doing the better.
The old man was supposedly one of the most learned healers in the world (which was saying something, Westerosi Maesters were famously good healers) but whenever he spoke she got the impression that he was an artist like her, only the human body was his art. That always got her guts turning. Supposedly Callum had him writing a book of medicine, but Pella wanted absolutely nothing to do with something that old freak created.
Malek and Loam contributed to the statue project in their own ways. Malek was overseeing the ironworks nearly two thousand feet below them. The men of New Ghis were not so good at Blacksmithing as the Qohori, but their Iron Legions all wore the same armor and held the same weapons made by rote in the same manner over and over again. For Callum who wanted cast-iron pillars made to precise specifications as the statue's skeleton, there was no better man to oversee their creation.
Loam meanwhile was charged with making the great glass panels that would surround the Arc Lights in the statue's torch. She didn't fully understand the process, but supposedly the glass was being cast in flat iron tables much as the cast iron was being made next door. And indeed, as the very statue she was going to sculpt would be cast in Bronze.
Maela was also contributing to the statue as well she supposed, making a pair of identical dresses. One would be worn by Callum himself, and the other by his Lady Genna Lannister when the time came for her to sculpt the first model of the statue.
Since Callum would be providing the face of the statue, as well as the neck, shoulders, and upper back, while his Aunt would be providing the rest of the body. It was the first time that Pella had heard of such a thing, but she supposed most statues were built to represent still-living people. It was rather hard to represent a dead woman correctly, especially with Westerosi standards of portrait painting, Eugh.
The plan, such as it stood, was to carve out a life-sized clay sculpture first, then cut it into pieces, recreate those pieces on a larger scale, about twenty feet high, and cast that into a bronze statue.
Once that was cast, they could then go on to start casting the skin of the final statue. Of course, the Iron 'Skeleton' of the former Lady of Casterly Rock would go into place long before her 'skin' was completed. In fact that part might actually be complete before the year was out. The skin meanwhile would be cast from bronze in sections, then covered on the outside with gold leaf.
As the skin was affixed to the skeleton by copper bolts, shielded from the iron by a mixture of various powders she didn't know the name for, a thick but transparent lacquer would be applied over the top of the gold leaf (very carefully, Pella hoped) which would then harden into a coating over the entire statue, protecting the thin gold wrapping from the elements and keeping the rain and wind out of its guts.
There were other parts, beyond the actual structure and manner in which the thing was going to hold a spear and torch, that Pella didn't quite understand.
Something about the way the frame was built letting the statue move and shift in the wind slightly while still being rigid? Callum had told her how it worked, but it wasn't really her focus.
She glanced down at the boy next to her, continuing to rattle off ideas of how exactly they could get it to look good while preserving all the desired functionality.
The sunlight cutting in through the windows of the workshop, which looked out over Lannisport like most of the ones in the Rock, glinted off and shimmered in his blond hair.
Well, that was something she'd need to paint later.
...
( Cersei Lannister POV )
She had left for Casterly Rock ahead of Prince Rhaegar's wedding. The streets had already been filled with colorful banners, and packed with mummers and courtiers and visiting nobles and prostitutes. The whole length of the avenue between the Great Sept of Baelor and Aegon's High Hill had been repainted and cleaned of trash and sewage, and the whole city was primed for celebration.
When the cog that was to take her back to Lannisport, the Blue Emerald left port at midday, there were many ships arriving, but only one leaving, with her aboard it.
It felt strange, hollow. She did want to leave King's Landing, that was for certain, but she also didn't want to leave things half-done. The sorcerous witch was still going to marry Prince Rhaegar, to be queen of the Seven Kingdoms someday. Fleeing her wedding tasted like defeat, and it was not a taste Cersei liked much at all.
As when she had lost access to the tunnels though, there was not much Cersei could do about it, so, deciding that moping about in her cabin was not satisfying, she spent much of her time up on the deck of the Emerald, taking in the south coast of the Blackwater Bay as it passed by. Most of it, truth be told, was a small beach leading up to the Kingswood, the great forest of the Crownlands.
Here and there the woods would give way to small fishing villages and lumber camps that clung to the forest's edge, shipping their goods by small boats across the bay to King's Landing, which had a fierce desire for fish and firewood both.
Cersei did not speak much to anyone else on the ship during the first leg of the voyage, which took them past Tarth and around the edge of Shipbreaker Bay. She took her breakfast alone in her cabin, guarded by the knight her father had sent with her, and she sat on the deck and watched the coastline.
Cersei grew bored. She grew bored very quickly. By the third day, she was on the verge of pulling her hair out. She began to pester Ser Oswald about the sights on the coast, about the means of sailing, about the winds, the clouds, anything, but the man was a dullard. She was practically alone, without any intelligent company, trapped here until the ship made port at Oldtown to resupply.
'didn't Callum make this trip?' Cersei wondered on the fifth day tugging at her hair as they passed Tarth and began to sail towards Cape Wrath. 'How did he avoid this hideous boredom?'
She frowned, then sighed. 'He probably just wrote books, ugh.' scratching her cheek Cersei glanced around and grimaced. The sailors all gave her a wide berth, as they should, but that meant basically the only person to talk to was Ser Oswald, who was no fun at all. There was absolutely nothing to do on a boat, aside from watching the coast or sitting in your cabin doing nothing. It was an endless drudgery that was driving her slowly insane. Not as bad as embroidering groups, but terrible nonetheless.
It was another two days to cross the Sea of Dorne and the Stepstones, by which point Cersei was nearly pulling her hair out in raw boredom.
She'd even thought to try writing, as she was sure Callum must have done, but she soon realized that she'd only brought enough paper and ink with her to write a couple of letters. It would at best, entertain her for a few hours, so she set it aside and laid on her bed like a sponge hoping that maybe if she slept through the whole trip it would be over faster.
She barely lasted an hour before she was up on deck again. She simply couldn't get to sleep at mid-day, tossing and turning on her bed and stewing in her dissatisfaction with this trip, with Jaime being sent away to the Reach where she'd never see him, with the fact that the Volantine witch was still going to marry Rhaegar. Were all the good men around her going to be stolen away and she left to marry some knight's son like a lesser woman? To Cersei's mind, it seemed all too plausible.
First, the Dorneish princess had bullied poor Callum, belittling and insulting the soft boy. Then Jaime was sent off to marry a Tyrell girl from the reach and now even Rhaegar, who Cersei was supposed to marry, was stolen away by some snake from Essos.
It made her want to cry but she would not because she was too strong, so instead she prowled up onto the deck and watched the land pass by because it was all she could do.
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