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]

[ 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?

[bullhorned]

[A better person than most! Perhaps, when he was surrounded by other men. But not here. Gendry knew there were better men than he.]

He died. [... again. But to explain the details would require going into something he scarcely understood himself.] And another lived because of it. She was a highborn lady and her son had been a king. But her son had been betrayed and butchered. So, she led us from justice to revenge. The folk I brought to her likely deserved to hang. But there was no justice with her. There weren't no trials. Only the noose.

[He exhales.] Before I came here... there was a lady knight who came to the inn. She had with her some hedge knight and her squire, who was but a boy. Our inn was attacked by bandits. We would have been done for, as I was the only man there at the time. But she and her companions fought to protect the inn. She fought off the worst of them and when she was near dead, I did for her enemy to spare her life. It ought to have been a heroic thing, that. But it weren't. I only saved her for the noose. She and her squire and that hedge knight were all led to be hung because she had papers from my lady's foes. I did that. I led her there. Even the lad, who weren't all that much older than the orphans at the inn.

That's what I did. I killed them for helping us.

[survivra]

[ katsa's silent for a long time because there's an extremely profound, an extremely uncomfortable feeling she has of empathy for gendry. empathy is not a familiar emotion to katsa, especially regarding something like this, and in her confusion, she's shocked to discover her eyes are burning and the unusual feeling tightening in her chest and lumping in her throat. ]


Maybe you knew she'd hang. Maybe you didn't. But you fought for her, anyway.

[ what is there to say? what would she want someone to say to her? ]

I don't think we're too different, Gendry. What you do, though—in the moments you have to fight—I think it says better about you than you say.

[bullhorned]

[I fought when it suited me. But he notes there's something different in how she speaks now. Something strained. Gendry had managed to keep his emotions in check, all but for anger in himself. But now, having said it all, he's left feeling raw.]

Might be it does. But it don't say enough. It's things I mean to make up for. If I can.

[survivra]

You shouldn't forget the good things. We've the rest of our lives to tip the balance. That I have to believe.

[bullhorned]

As you say. [There are... things to think about, at least.] I hope you do well with your training.