video; both courts

[survivra]

Are the women in this world and your own given as much opportunity to defend themselves as the men?

[ she doesn't wait for any answers, giving a humorless snort of laughter at the locket before continuing. it's not a directly related addition to her question, but it's certainly on the same train of thought: ]

Ridiculous that those already holding power are given the privilege of training to the highest levels of their skills, but those most in need of it are left to rely on the protection of others.

Comments

[survivra]

Unlike most women I got the training, but not because I had the right. There was necessity, and what could come of it.

[ not really clearing much up. ]

[bullhorned]

Because of that bit about grace? [She was owned by a king, as he recalled from their last conversation.]

[survivra]

Yes. My uncle was smart. He knew how he could use me.

[bullhorned]

So, you know how to fight. [More than he has, actually. But he's not about to speak to that.] What's it matter to you if other girls do?

[survivra]

[ katsa struggles for a moment with how to answer gendry's own question, and whether she should answer it at all. but she speaks. ]

My Grace didn't announce itself until I was eight years old. It was at one of my uncle's dinners; he'd seated me with some Middluns lord, a distant cousin of mine. His breath was foul and he sat too close. [ she was grimacing at her locket, angry as she remembered it ] He began talking about my eyes, wondering what my Grace was: singing, dancing. Pretty performances for him to look at. Then he put his hand on my thigh, and I didn't like it. I felt threatened. So I shoved the bones of his face back into his brain.

[ she hadn't meant to kill him—she'd only meant to stop him, to protect herself. but that didn't matter, for it had happened. ]

Most women in my world don't get to protect themselves when they feel that fear, when they feel unsafe. They have to rely on their fathers, brothers, but their fathers and brothers aren't always there to look after them. They've as much right as I do to protect their own lives no matter what happens, Grace or no. So why shouldn't it matter?

[bullhorned]

[Gendry for a moment was left to gape at a eight year old child murdering a cousin. Yet, it wasn't utterly astonishing. Arya had killed and she wasn't that much older than that. And Gendry... well, he'd made his first kill when he was older. But there were those he felt guilty for, even if he hadn't done the deed himself.]

It's a nasty business what happened to you. But the world I know, it don't much matter if you can fight or not. When I was going north to the Riverlands, all I saw were bodies. It didn't matter if they were men or women, or if they could fight or not fight. They were killed all the same. I felt bad for most of them. There was even some we found still living, though I buried them after. But I couldn't feel bad for all of them. Not when there was so many.

[survivra]

Isn't that all the more reason to care? [ not accusatory; she's honestly asking. ] Maybe not one by one. But to change the balance of power that's making death the case, if it is who holds the power who's at fault. What could be so brutal to wipe all of them out?

[bullhorned]

War. Kings what don't care who gets trodden under their armies. I spent more than a year fighting the men who did all that. I killed knights and broken men or led highborns to be strung up for their crimes. What did it ever get? That's why it makes no matter. Five kings died in all that time and it never got better for the loss of any of them.

[survivra]

Maybe it is kings. Maybe they're the wrong thing to be fighting.

[ she's quiet, not really talking to him directly. katsa's aware, suddenly, that for all she's done she has little experience with war and the mess of violence beyond that in which she took place. all her missions were covert, singular, directed—not even the fight against leck and his reign over monsea really went beyond herself.

there's a sudden flush of heat in her face, a feeling she can't really identify: shame, maybe, of the realization that there's a lot more she has yet to learn. she shifts, uncomfortable. ]

It's something I'm still trying to figure out.

[bullhorned]

I've already figured it out. I look after who I can, but I can't worry myself about everyone. If there's folk out there what can't defend themselves, it's a shame to be sure. But it's not for me to worry about them.

[It was hard and perhaps cruel. But it's what he'd learned.]

[survivra]

[ katsa takes a deep breath. ]

I suppose the more people I teach, the more they can teach others, maybe. I know I can't do it all, but I can try. [ a stubborn set of her mouth. ] I've a lot of time to make up for.

[bullhorned]

What's it you're making up for? [He has his own things to make up for, after all. Everyone has sins in their past to account for.]

[survivra]

I hurt a lot of people with my Grace, during a time my uncle had power over me.

[bullhorned]

What sort of things did you do? [He knew it wasn't the sort of thing he was supposed to ask, but that never stopped him before.]

[survivra]

[ It's fine enough that he's asking; it's not exactly a secret, what Katsa's done. If anyone she knows Gendry probably wouldn't be too shocked hearing it, it's just something she's never had to talk about before, because everyone knew, and it's weird. ]

If a man withheld his taxes too late or underreported his lands, he'd send me to break a finger, to take a limb. Torture a lord until he gave Randa what he demanded, be it money or crop or a daughter's hand in marriage to an alliance. If it were a more serious offense like treason, I would kill him in ways that Randa specified: break his neck, bleed him slowly, skin him, do it in front of whole towns and villages until everyone knew of his lady Graceling killer. I was ten when he sent me on my first assignment.

[ Katsa clenches her jaw. She's angry just thinking about it, and her anger still overwhelms her sometimes. Gendry's gotten a lot of backstory out of Katsa today. ]

We've both led people to death for their crimes, and you've wars of your own, but maybe you're able to say you did it it to try to end it. To survive.

[bullhorned]

[It doesn't shock him. This brutality was light for what lords were known to do to the smallfolk. Knights made a game out of slaughter. What was a broken finger or a lost limb to being cut open and exposed for the vultures? Yet, the thought of sending a girl to do it all struck him as absurdly craven. if she had meant for him to dislike her uncle, she'd succeeded at that.]

I did it for justice at first. Or at least, it was justice. But you might serve one good man, only for him to be replaced for a monster instead. What I was doing, before I came here, it weren't justice. It was bloody vengeance and I've led folk to die what didn't deserve it.

[Yet. He'd never been made to kill anyone. He had killed in battle, to be certain. But like that? As a spectacle?]

It's a cruel thing what your uncle did, making you do all that.

[survivra]

I had the power to keep him from controlling me, but it took me eight years to use it.

[ katsa wants to be honest. she was a child, and randa was cruel, but she might have kept listening to him forever had po not helped her realize the potential of her own strength. ]

That's why I don't serve any man now, none but myself. I won't give myself away again and kill without reason. We've both things to make up for doing, but at least we've years ahead to do it—maybe some of it we can do together, whatever it might be.

[bullhorned]

It would be hard that. We're meant to be killing one another.

[So even here, when they have no motivation to be enemies, they'd still be expected to be foes.]

[survivra]

[ she scoffs. ]

And I've said it before: doesn't matter what we're meant to be doing. I'll not do anything that's not my own choice alone. That includes killing, and that above all else.

[bullhorned]

That's fine talk. But I ain't known any soldiers what ever had a choice in the matter. [But. Gendry has no desire to fight. Much less against her.] But I ain't keen on fighting this war. Or you.

[survivra]

I'm not a soldier. No more a dog to bark and bite for a king. [ she says it hotly. ] Maybe I'll fight one day, but that'll not be to do with anyone but myself. They may have stolen me to come here, but they can't make me do any more than that.

Unless you decide to hurl an axe at my head, I'd say you'll not have to worry about it.

[bullhorned]

You'd have done well with the Brotherhood. At least, back how it was, before Lord Dondarrion died his last. You seem the proper sort for it.

[survivra]

I don't think I'm much of a brother. [ she almost smiles. ] What do you mean by that?

[bullhorned]

No, you might not. But it wasn't all just men. We were the Brotherhood Without Banners. We fought for the smallfolk, as there was no one else who cared to. Lord Dondarrion made it so those that burned the land were punished for what they did. We did what we could to feed the hungry as well or to protect the poor. We didn't steal like lords and knights did, but paid for what we took. [... after a fashion, at least. Promises of payments written in paper was not a currency that many people respected.] And we kept justice as well, where no one else did. We were the Knights of the Hollow Hill.

I never meant to be a knight. But I joined because it was good work they were doing. And because they had a leader those chose not because he was some lord, but because he was a good man worth following. It was a place I thought I could do some good. So, when I offered to lend them my skill as an armorer, he knighted me right then where all could see. [And the Hound spat on my knighting, he remembered bitterly.]

At least. That's how it was, while he was still 'round.

[survivra]

[ She hasn't had the sense that Gendry is the most open of people, and she listens with some fascination to know a little more about him. ]

Gendry. You're a better person than most. [ a better person than herself. ] At first when I wanted to help the common folk it was to feel as though I had some manner of defiance against my uncle. That'd be the sort of thing now...

[ that her council would do. that she'd want to do because it was right. but gendry had done it from the beginning. ]

What happened to Dondarrion?