The sailors, all streaked with their paint and tar and canvas, aren't long for the Gallows' courtyard. Once they've secured their haul of wine casks and assorted bottles (nevermind whatever else the vanguard had managed to strip or steal from either the tables or those in attendance), off goes the dock cart with its host of howling and snarling men. They disappear into bitter cold night, their captain all in black with them.
For a time anyway. Flint must return to the island fortress almost directly after he's seen his men returned to the Walrus because it's still early in the evening, the festivities in the courtyard yet to reach their fever pitch, as they cross paths on some narrow back stairwell as Kitty's going up and he's coming down them. The death's head mask is gone and he's washed his face, though there are traces of black still about his eyes and some tar streak like a gash on his neck.
He pauses on the the landing when he sees her. The letter he carries in hand is tucked inside his coat as he resumes his descent.
The charms of the Satinalia party had worn thin rather quickly for Kitty. The problem was that it was just so transparent - the whole thing clearly invented to provide an outlet for the frustrations of the oppressed, providing a mockery of social change in order to suppress any possibility of real change. They make the fool into a king, upturn the social order, and in doing so make it into a joke. They give the common folk a sanitized version of power - the power to break the rules, to drink and eat and dance - and pretend that it's a pointless joke so that they never actually crave it. And they provide an outlet for the common folk's frustrations - it's all right if you're feeling powerless now, it's only two months to Satinalia, and then you'll get yours! Social control through playacting at freedom.
She had been down there to see the pirates' raid, though. She'd recognized Captain Vane, and had seen someone who looked like Captain Flint, but surely, she'd thought, it had been her mistake - But there's still greasepaint on his neck and a little smudge clinging to the side of his nose and so in spite of her bad mood she can't help but stop and gape a bit.
"Captain Flint," she greets in return. A moment as she contemplates how to ask this question diplomatically, and then she decides to simply be blunt - "That really was you out there? With the - " Stupidity isn't quite the best word, and so she simply waves a hand in a vague gesture like a cart rolling across a cobbled courtyard.
He continues down the stairs to meet her, the upright nature of his step transformed into some thoughtless swagger by the loosened line of his shoulder. "Was it?"
For a moment, it seems like he might simply brush past her in the narrow stairwell - 'Hello and goodbye, Miss Jones'. Instead, he pauses just there on the stair above her, close to the wall should she have somewhere pressing to be. Even if he'd scrubbed clean every trace of tar and grease, the dark shirt he's wearing with it's macabre embroidery of pale skeletons about the collar is telltale enough.
"Never really liked dancing," she answers, easily enough. Truly enough, too. In school, it'd always been sweet little English country dances, a bunch of ridiculous fluff to make the good little girls and boys proud of their homeland. There'd been dance-halls in London, too, but mostly that was where girls went to find boys, and Stan and Fred and Martin and Nick had been more than boys enough for her purpose. "Or drinking, or - whatever all of that's supposed to be. Aside from anaesthetic for a wound they're pretending not to have."
She looks a little closer at the skeletons dancing their way along his clothing. "I never thought you'd do something so - unserious, Captain Flint."
"If you have some better way of appeasing a restless crew and securing four casks of wine for their entertainment at no cost, I'll hear it for next year."
Or tomorrow. If he could keep the entire company in liquor and whores for the next month, he'd be happier for it. De Groot would complain about being left to oversee the debauchery and the cleanup effort would be its own struggle, but at least the men wouldn't have any thought to simply vacate the harbor. The Inquisition is for Ghislain, meaning he must be for it, and he means to return to Kirkwall to find his ship still here.
Anyway, he'd some quiet business here to attend. Better to be seen loudly carousing in the other direction first.
Kitty thinks, abruptly, about the Resistance. There were times when they'd had to go underground, to be cautious until the government got distracted by something more pressing and started turning their attention away from the problem of the commoners. Those times when they couldn't do jobs were utterly dreadful; everyone was irritable, fractious, ready to fight at the least provocation. How much worse must an entire ship full of pirates be?
"I suppose something else wouldn't work as well," she says a little slowly. Her eyes lift to Flint's face; her head cocks slightly to the side, curiously, implying a question even as her tone is firm and unambiguous. "I'm sure they needed a raid, since they haven't been raiding. That was probably the only way to really appease them."
No, there are a half dozen ways they could be appeased. They could slip from the harbor to harass legitimate shipping out of Orlais - the De Grasse will be making her way East even now and he knows the inlets she prefers. Or they could finally take advantage of the invisibility so long at anchor among the merchants and tradeships has afforded them and, under cover of night, board and capture ships manned by only Satinalia-boozed skeleton crews and make their way from Kirkwall with their own fleet before anyone knew the difference. Or he could take his men, few that they are, and--
He doesn't have enough hands to both hold this thing together and avoid looking foolish.
Kitty nods a little bit. Right. There are doubtless ways of making them happy, but with a huge cost - just like how she could have led the Resistance out on additional raids, but at incalculable risk. How dreadful a thing it must be for Captain Flint. For Vane and the others, too, of course, but Vane has a sort of natural camaraderie with his men that Kitty's seen every time she's been up in the rigging. Flint needs to calm his crew without the advantage of Vane's natural stoic charm, when his crew are accustomed to action and excitement and adrenaline - and when they're surrounded by tempting targets, the sort they'd have claimed in their earlier piratical career.
"Would you have tea with me?" Kitty asks, suddenly. She finds that she's got a sudden hunger to talk with him about this, about all the entanglements and difficulties of being in charge. "Before you go back to them?" And then, with her most charming smile - "I promise I won't make you steal any wine for me."
The look he gives her narrows by a degree, by two. But the suspicion, if that's what it really is, passes away as quickly as it came over him. With a good tempered sniff, something like approval of her joke, Flint tips his head in a gesture leading back up the stairs.
"All right."
A little extra time away won't do him or the Walrus any trouble and the longer he waits, the more likely anyone roving about the Gallows' ferry slip will be too drunk to make any note of him there.
She smiles and turns to lead him in the direction of the little kitchen where there's a kettle with water for the boiling. The smart thing to do, of course, would be to wait until he's got a cup of tea in his hand before asking any sensitive questions, anything that might make him want to slip out of the conversation. But patience has never been her forte. And so, even while they're still walking, she can't quite stop herself from asking him -
"I wondered - d'you like it? Being captain, I mean." Her gaze, curious, swings around to meet his over her shoulder for just a moment. "Is it something you can like?"
He follows, some anonymous joint cracking loudly as he turns back up the stairs.
"There are certainly easier things I could be doing if it didn't suit me."
It's easy enough that it sounds like a joke of an answer, but it may be the most complete one he can think to give. The work sits in a cross place of necessary and what he knows. The men or ones like them are ones he's known all his life, the sea is constant, the account a requirement. Given his choice, would he prefer some other role for himself?
It's not really a question for a night like this one with the moon all full over the courtyard, masked men and women laughing and dancing, and Ghislain just there on the horizon waiting for them.
"Having something suit you isn't quite the same as liking it." Her voice isn't forceful; it's more an idle observation than it is a rebuttal. But it is true, she thinks. She was well-suited to the work of a secretary, but she'd have hated it and hated her life and hated every breath she took. Or - What was that ridiculous offer that John Mandrake made her to try to get information out of her about the Resistance? Making her some great lady of the British Empire - she'd have been very good at that work, quite well-suited, but also she'd have torn off her own skin in sheer self-hatred.
She does turn a smile back at him, lightly and wryly amused, in response to his question. "But I think that Captain Vane would have a word or two to share about my knot-tying skills if I tried to move up to a captaincy myself." She looks ahead and says - "But - no. It's more that...It just seems so dreadfully difficult, and dreadfully exhausting, keeping everyone under control. So I just was wondering whether the rewards of it are so great."
It isn't either of those things on account of the crew. It's true that they wear on him, and the finicky tedium of the politics and the bickering bullshit may be irritating beyond belief, but that's why John Silver is quartermaster. No, there is a familiar domesticity to the lives of men forced to habitat shoulder to shoulder - as natural as hammer and forge must be to a blacksmith. But what she really wants to know is--
"There are easier ways to be a ship's captain as well, if I cared to." He could be anywhere but here for starters, feeding on the war-panic rich trade fleeing Orlais. Or if all he wanted was to secure some place for himself, well then Llomerryn has gone to scrap. It would be easier to step into some meaningful role there than to attempt to conduct any business farther North or here in Kirkwall. "The freedom to act how I please in a role that I've chosen" --matters of being voted to the position not exempt, as if he'd never wanted this it would have been just as simple to avoid as winning it-- "is a rare thing in this world."
(Sometimes the quiet of a room removed entirely from the sea bothers him as he's meant to be sleeping; it didn't use to, but he finds it's true now. When he thinks of rooms with set floors and hearths, crockery in cabinets, and gardens beyond their door, they belong to someone very distant. Far enough removed that he doesn't think on it now when pressed to. It's Satinalia and the question of the men is resolved at present. No need to be so goddamn dire.)
She reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she turns off from the staircase, leading the way to a little sitting room where there's a bit of water warmed over a brazier. Definitely not something lovely and convenient like the kettle back home, though it works well enough, she supposes. Still, it's so odd - of the things she's had to adjust to here, the war hasn't been the hardest, or the fear, or the races of people unknown to her, or the complicated politics, or the complicated tongues. It's the mundane things. It's the way that it takes three times as long to make tea and five times as long to bathe and how she's always hot or cold and never quite manages to feel fully clean. And the fact that she's pretty sure she's gotten bit by a flea or two already, which is horrific. And all that's stuff she doesn't want to complain about, either, because hears the other Rifters carrying on and they all sound ever so obnoxious...
Oh, well.
"I mean - " She gestures him towards a seat. "Freedom and what that means, it's obvious for some people. For slaves, the meaning of freedom is clear. But what's it mean for people like us? What's it mean to go after freedom?"
Strange questions to choose for discussion while water is brought to temperature. It makes Flint smile, mouth going all briefly crooked behind the auburn of his beard and the still kohl smudged creases about his eyes deepening. He takes the chair indicated and thoughtlessly sprawls to fill it.
"Has someone been troubling you over your principles?"
It's such an odd thing to see him smile. Which is funny to think, because he's smiled often enough in her presence, and not an hour prior he was bellowing like the most hammish actor in the world over capturing wine - and pirates are supposed to be jolly, aren't they, that's what all the stage-plays she's seen have shown. But it still strikes her as strange. Because he's so solemn in his thoughts; it takes her by surprise when he's not similarly solemn in his manner.
"Myself," she answers, and then adds, "constantly." She supposes she ought to apologize for bringing a topic this heavy to bear on a night of festivities, but then she searches her feelings and decides she's not sorry, and the reason that she likes Flint and enjoys his company is because he doesn't seem to mind that sort of thing either.
She checks the water - it's nearly ready, good - and then arranges the cups and teapot to prepare the brew. "The spirit of this holiday, it's supposed to be the social order turned upside down, isn't it. But it's nothing of the sort. It's just a temporary removal of consequences for certain deeds - for debauchery and drunkenness and all that. It's about relieving the tension." She nods to Flint, to the remnants of the paint on his face. "But no one's actually free. On this night or any other."
Maybe it's for the best - that she doesn't apologize, that it's her own interrogation and not something passed down to her from one of the half dozen voices trying to talk her down across the sending crystals (he isn't deaf). In any case, it's an answer that suits him enough to take the question more seriously than the evening or her perfectly true but unrelentingly earnest criticism of the festivities might otherwise merit.
He lets her mind the cups, the teapot, the murmuring of the water as it comes into its heat. After a meditative tug on his beard, some habitual smoothing of the whiskers at the corner of his mouth--
"Then let's say that freedom to people like you and I would be the luxury of being held accountable without exemption." There is a heavy ring on his small finger. He sets to turning it. "Nothing done because the life you were given or the requirements of what we call civilization told you to do it. If the world were a free place, we could all come by our consequences honestly as opposed to being handed them by someone else."
This, from by a man who has undoubtedly done any number of less than polite things which he might be held accountable.
She considers that a moment. There's more than just a grain of truth in it, isn't there? A life of perfect freedom is a life completely unbounded. But that wasn't the sort of freedom she had fought for - not the sort she'd even want. She and her compatriots, they'd wanted a voice in government. Not its utter destruction. It's not the freedom he seems to be advocating, either.
"But balance is needed." She leans up against the wall beside the brazier, arms crossed, head tilted thoughtfully. "There are people who get freedom and use it to do wicked things. When people don't face consequences for their actions, sometimes they go mad with it - turn to abuse and cruelty. So freedom isn't always a good thing."
He abandons twisting at the ring with a low, meditative noise. No, that's not--
"Freedom isn't a lack of consequence," he clarifies. "It's the ownership of it, and of the justice a place where people share in that freedom decides on. Balance, such as it is, in a world built by men who have only ever looked after their own security is as much a story as that party happening downstairs right now. But give men and women ownership of themselves, and they'll be as veilfire for each other in the dark."
"Don't try to teach me my business," she replies. Her manner is wryly confident rather than scolding or disapproving, but she means it; she doesn't move to check on it. She's made enough bloody cups of tea, on a stove or over a brazier, to know the sound of water when it's ready. And this pot needs another minute.
She thinks over his story, though, considering his position. It...does sound right. "Where I come from, the people in power - they seized power from a parliament. We got taught the story by rote in school - the old commoners' parliament was corrupt and weak, and so the Founder, William Gladstone, came in and during the Night of Long Counsel convinced them to give power over to him..." She blows out a breath, shaking her head. "Watching you lot, though - the way you vote, and politic - it does make me feel better. No one could accuse your democracy of weakness."
That came out a little incoherent, didn't it? Well, her thoughts are confused and a bit disjointed tonight. She hopes she's not incomprehensible. Regardless, now the water's ready; she goes and fetches it, pours two cups.
His mistake. Won't happen again, says the way he tips his head and the corner of his mouth twitches back.
(Funny too, how the temper of the room isn't half so self-serious as the topic of conversation really implies. It's easy, like they are talking about the weather or a discussing a book they've both been reading.)
"Consider telling that to the people already doing it."
Because, isn't it? Weak. Or only as strong as the men inside it believe it to be. Today it's been proven as tenable for a few more hours, but weeks existing at the fringe of what the world calls proper society was a way of wearing on things. Blunting them. It's easier to say 'Fuck those men who hate you for your liberty, who call this version of democracy nothing more than mercenary criminality,' when you aren't living in their pockets.
Kitty blinks very slightly in surprise. She didn't expect that to be Flint's reaction. After all -
"Hold on. Weren't you just saying it was the only way to be free, all that?"
She places the tea at Flint's elbow, then sits primly in the chair opposite him. The primness is immediately ruined as she kicks off her shoes and pulls her legs up beside her, curling up like a cat in the chair.
"And it's not like it hasn't lasted a while, right? This system. It's been in place for some time, hasn't it?"
What a pair they make: discussing free democratic republics while neither of them even knows how to sit in a chair properly.
"But there isn't any continuity in it, is there?" How old is the oldest man on the Walrus? On Nascere? What has any crew passed down to another? Secret pieces of seamanship, how to raid and survive, how to make a name that will be forgotten when you are gone. What difference is there in the lives of the women and men who did this work twenty years ago and the ones that do it today? Nothing. Yet.
Flint fetches the cup up from where she's set it, wrapping both his hands about it. Holds it just there, letting the warmth leech into his fingers. "The trouble isn't the system, it's that it exists in isolation even from others like it. A ship is an island, surrounded at all times by the world in opposition to it. That world means to break you; it has dashed a hundred other crews and swallowed everything they've done and it will do it to you and it will do it to your men given the barest chance.
"And if it doesn't, what then? One day you will be old and gray and you will be tired of the sea, but there will be no alternative. There is no place waiting for you because a ship's freedom, even in places like Llomerryn, is a story told to contradict something else. It is defined by what it chooses not to be, by people who believe they are right to be different. That may be just, that may be true, it may even be the nearest thing to independence certain men can find in this world as it is presently. But it is a state under perpetual siege. Until freedom is a life lived and not a weapon you have to use against something else, our option - yours and mine and the people in that courtyard tonight - is to take the best version we can get and figure out a way to use it to show the rest of the world that it can be done."
That's a good point. The democracy gets smashed to bits - because of course, it must be easier to smash a democracy to bits, with all the indecision and squabbling - or maybe not, because a democracy must produce more good ideas than a monarchy, so maybe it's stronger...But say, for argument's sake, that a democracy does get destroyed. Like the old Parliament. If it's a small democracy, if it stands alone, it's probably like snuffing out a spark. It probably doesn't even leave behind burn-marks, to let others know it existed.
She lets out a slow breath. "You could write books, I suppose," she says. "Leave behind what you knew. But then whoever comes after, they'll be like the magicians back home - burning the books they don't like, keeping the common folk illiterate." She drops her chin into her hand. "Teach other people, and hope they'll teach the ones who come after. Hope that they'll outlive the folks who want to snuff out freedom, too."
"As you said - balance is required. It can't all be done at the end of a sword," he agrees, though there is tar black on his neck and a knife in his belt. "Show people irrefutable proof that what they know to be true doesn't have to be, whether that's by taking something away or by giving it, and they can be persuaded."
He pauses then, struck all at once by some sharp ache. He's sent messages North. Maker willing they will find their way to Madi at whatever line of defense she has fallen back to.
"Will you be at Ghislain?" Spoken suddenly across the edge of his cup.
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timeasmymeasure
satinalia, because like hell im wasting flint in skeleton makeup;
Date: 2018-11-08 03:34 pm (UTC)For a time anyway. Flint must return to the island fortress almost directly after he's seen his men returned to the Walrus because it's still early in the evening, the festivities in the courtyard yet to reach their fever pitch, as they cross paths on some narrow back stairwell as Kitty's going up and he's coming down them. The death's head mask is gone and he's washed his face, though there are traces of black still about his eyes and some tar streak like a gash on his neck.
He pauses on the the landing when he sees her. The letter he carries in hand is tucked inside his coat as he resumes his descent.
"Miss Jones. Not turning in so early, I hope."
god he's such a loser and I love him so much
Date: 2018-11-08 03:49 pm (UTC)She had been down there to see the pirates' raid, though. She'd recognized Captain Vane, and had seen someone who looked like Captain Flint, but surely, she'd thought, it had been her mistake - But there's still greasepaint on his neck and a little smudge clinging to the side of his nose and so in spite of her bad mood she can't help but stop and gape a bit.
"Captain Flint," she greets in return. A moment as she contemplates how to ask this question diplomatically, and then she decides to simply be blunt - "That really was you out there? With the - " Stupidity isn't quite the best word, and so she simply waves a hand in a vague gesture like a cart rolling across a cobbled courtyard.
wow excuse you he's clearly super cool
Date: 2018-11-08 07:41 pm (UTC)For a moment, it seems like he might simply brush past her in the narrow stairwell - 'Hello and goodbye, Miss Jones'. Instead, he pauses just there on the stair above her, close to the wall should she have somewhere pressing to be. Even if he'd scrubbed clean every trace of tar and grease, the dark shirt he's wearing with it's macabre embroidery of pale skeletons about the collar is telltale enough.
"I take it you've had your fill of dancing."
mmmm
Date: 2018-11-09 05:01 am (UTC)She looks a little closer at the skeletons dancing their way along his clothing. "I never thought you'd do something so - unserious, Captain Flint."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-09 03:13 pm (UTC)"If you have some better way of appeasing a restless crew and securing four casks of wine for their entertainment at no cost, I'll hear it for next year."
Or tomorrow. If he could keep the entire company in liquor and whores for the next month, he'd be happier for it. De Groot would complain about being left to oversee the debauchery and the cleanup effort would be its own struggle, but at least the men wouldn't have any thought to simply vacate the harbor. The Inquisition is for Ghislain, meaning he must be for it, and he means to return to Kirkwall to find his ship still here.
Anyway, he'd some quiet business here to attend. Better to be seen loudly carousing in the other direction first.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-09 03:22 pm (UTC)"I suppose something else wouldn't work as well," she says a little slowly. Her eyes lift to Flint's face; her head cocks slightly to the side, curiously, implying a question even as her tone is firm and unambiguous. "I'm sure they needed a raid, since they haven't been raiding. That was probably the only way to really appease them."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-09 03:57 pm (UTC)No, there are a half dozen ways they could be appeased. They could slip from the harbor to harass legitimate shipping out of Orlais - the De Grasse will be making her way East even now and he knows the inlets she prefers. Or they could finally take advantage of the invisibility so long at anchor among the merchants and tradeships has afforded them and, under cover of night, board and capture ships manned by only Satinalia-boozed skeleton crews and make their way from Kirkwall with their own fleet before anyone knew the difference. Or he could take his men, few that they are, and--
He doesn't have enough hands to both hold this thing together and avoid looking foolish.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-09 04:10 pm (UTC)"Would you have tea with me?" Kitty asks, suddenly. She finds that she's got a sudden hunger to talk with him about this, about all the entanglements and difficulties of being in charge. "Before you go back to them?" And then, with her most charming smile - "I promise I won't make you steal any wine for me."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-10 02:18 am (UTC)"All right."
A little extra time away won't do him or the Walrus any trouble and the longer he waits, the more likely anyone roving about the Gallows' ferry slip will be too drunk to make any note of him there.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-10 03:07 am (UTC)"I wondered - d'you like it? Being captain, I mean." Her gaze, curious, swings around to meet his over her shoulder for just a moment. "Is it something you can like?"
no subject
Date: 2018-11-10 09:46 pm (UTC)"There are certainly easier things I could be doing if it didn't suit me."
It's easy enough that it sounds like a joke of an answer, but it may be the most complete one he can think to give. The work sits in a cross place of necessary and what he knows. The men or ones like them are ones he's known all his life, the sea is constant, the account a requirement. Given his choice, would he prefer some other role for himself?
It's not really a question for a night like this one with the moon all full over the courtyard, masked men and women laughing and dancing, and Ghislain just there on the horizon waiting for them.
"Planning to hire your own ship?"
no subject
Date: 2018-11-11 02:19 am (UTC)She does turn a smile back at him, lightly and wryly amused, in response to his question. "But I think that Captain Vane would have a word or two to share about my knot-tying skills if I tried to move up to a captaincy myself." She looks ahead and says - "But - no. It's more that...It just seems so dreadfully difficult, and dreadfully exhausting, keeping everyone under control. So I just was wondering whether the rewards of it are so great."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-12 11:37 pm (UTC)"There are easier ways to be a ship's captain as well, if I cared to." He could be anywhere but here for starters, feeding on the war-panic rich trade fleeing Orlais. Or if all he wanted was to secure some place for himself, well then Llomerryn has gone to scrap. It would be easier to step into some meaningful role there than to attempt to conduct any business farther North or here in Kirkwall. "The freedom to act how I please in a role that I've chosen" --matters of being voted to the position not exempt, as if he'd never wanted this it would have been just as simple to avoid as winning it-- "is a rare thing in this world."
(Sometimes the quiet of a room removed entirely from the sea bothers him as he's meant to be sleeping; it didn't use to, but he finds it's true now. When he thinks of rooms with set floors and hearths, crockery in cabinets, and gardens beyond their door, they belong to someone very distant. Far enough removed that he doesn't think on it now when pressed to. It's Satinalia and the question of the men is resolved at present. No need to be so goddamn dire.)
no subject
Date: 2018-11-13 02:54 am (UTC)She reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she turns off from the staircase, leading the way to a little sitting room where there's a bit of water warmed over a brazier. Definitely not something lovely and convenient like the kettle back home, though it works well enough, she supposes. Still, it's so odd - of the things she's had to adjust to here, the war hasn't been the hardest, or the fear, or the races of people unknown to her, or the complicated politics, or the complicated tongues. It's the mundane things. It's the way that it takes three times as long to make tea and five times as long to bathe and how she's always hot or cold and never quite manages to feel fully clean. And the fact that she's pretty sure she's gotten bit by a flea or two already, which is horrific. And all that's stuff she doesn't want to complain about, either, because hears the other Rifters carrying on and they all sound ever so obnoxious...
Oh, well.
"I mean - " She gestures him towards a seat. "Freedom and what that means, it's obvious for some people. For slaves, the meaning of freedom is clear. But what's it mean for people like us? What's it mean to go after freedom?"
no subject
Date: 2018-11-14 02:19 am (UTC)"Has someone been troubling you over your principles?"
no subject
Date: 2018-11-14 02:32 am (UTC)"Myself," she answers, and then adds, "constantly." She supposes she ought to apologize for bringing a topic this heavy to bear on a night of festivities, but then she searches her feelings and decides she's not sorry, and the reason that she likes Flint and enjoys his company is because he doesn't seem to mind that sort of thing either.
She checks the water - it's nearly ready, good - and then arranges the cups and teapot to prepare the brew. "The spirit of this holiday, it's supposed to be the social order turned upside down, isn't it. But it's nothing of the sort. It's just a temporary removal of consequences for certain deeds - for debauchery and drunkenness and all that. It's about relieving the tension." She nods to Flint, to the remnants of the paint on his face. "But no one's actually free. On this night or any other."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-14 11:42 pm (UTC)He lets her mind the cups, the teapot, the murmuring of the water as it comes into its heat. After a meditative tug on his beard, some habitual smoothing of the whiskers at the corner of his mouth--
"Then let's say that freedom to people like you and I would be the luxury of being held accountable without exemption." There is a heavy ring on his small finger. He sets to turning it. "Nothing done because the life you were given or the requirements of what we call civilization told you to do it. If the world were a free place, we could all come by our consequences honestly as opposed to being handed them by someone else."
This, from by a man who has undoubtedly done any number of less than polite things which he might be held accountable.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-15 01:12 am (UTC)"But balance is needed." She leans up against the wall beside the brazier, arms crossed, head tilted thoughtfully. "There are people who get freedom and use it to do wicked things. When people don't face consequences for their actions, sometimes they go mad with it - turn to abuse and cruelty. So freedom isn't always a good thing."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-15 10:26 pm (UTC)"Freedom isn't a lack of consequence," he clarifies. "It's the ownership of it, and of the justice a place where people share in that freedom decides on. Balance, such as it is, in a world built by men who have only ever looked after their own security is as much a story as that party happening downstairs right now. But give men and women ownership of themselves, and they'll be as veilfire for each other in the dark."
A pause. "Your water sounds ready."
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Date: 2018-11-15 10:36 pm (UTC)She thinks over his story, though, considering his position. It...does sound right. "Where I come from, the people in power - they seized power from a parliament. We got taught the story by rote in school - the old commoners' parliament was corrupt and weak, and so the Founder, William Gladstone, came in and during the Night of Long Counsel convinced them to give power over to him..." She blows out a breath, shaking her head. "Watching you lot, though - the way you vote, and politic - it does make me feel better. No one could accuse your democracy of weakness."
That came out a little incoherent, didn't it? Well, her thoughts are confused and a bit disjointed tonight. She hopes she's not incomprehensible. Regardless, now the water's ready; she goes and fetches it, pours two cups.
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Date: 2018-11-16 01:50 am (UTC)(Funny too, how the temper of the room isn't half so self-serious as the topic of conversation really implies. It's easy, like they are talking about the weather or a discussing a book they've both been reading.)
"Consider telling that to the people already doing it."
Because, isn't it? Weak. Or only as strong as the men inside it believe it to be. Today it's been proven as tenable for a few more hours, but weeks existing at the fringe of what the world calls proper society was a way of wearing on things. Blunting them. It's easier to say 'Fuck those men who hate you for your liberty, who call this version of democracy nothing more than mercenary criminality,' when you aren't living in their pockets.
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Date: 2018-11-16 02:05 am (UTC)"Hold on. Weren't you just saying it was the only way to be free, all that?"
She places the tea at Flint's elbow, then sits primly in the chair opposite him. The primness is immediately ruined as she kicks off her shoes and pulls her legs up beside her, curling up like a cat in the chair.
"And it's not like it hasn't lasted a while, right? This system. It's been in place for some time, hasn't it?"
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Date: 2018-11-16 03:30 am (UTC)"But there isn't any continuity in it, is there?" How old is the oldest man on the Walrus? On Nascere? What has any crew passed down to another? Secret pieces of seamanship, how to raid and survive, how to make a name that will be forgotten when you are gone. What difference is there in the lives of the women and men who did this work twenty years ago and the ones that do it today? Nothing. Yet.
Flint fetches the cup up from where she's set it, wrapping both his hands about it. Holds it just there, letting the warmth leech into his fingers. "The trouble isn't the system, it's that it exists in isolation even from others like it. A ship is an island, surrounded at all times by the world in opposition to it. That world means to break you; it has dashed a hundred other crews and swallowed everything they've done and it will do it to you and it will do it to your men given the barest chance.
"And if it doesn't, what then? One day you will be old and gray and you will be tired of the sea, but there will be no alternative. There is no place waiting for you because a ship's freedom, even in places like Llomerryn, is a story told to contradict something else. It is defined by what it chooses not to be, by people who believe they are right to be different. That may be just, that may be true, it may even be the nearest thing to independence certain men can find in this world as it is presently. But it is a state under perpetual siege. Until freedom is a life lived and not a weapon you have to use against something else, our option - yours and mine and the people in that courtyard tonight - is to take the best version we can get and figure out a way to use it to show the rest of the world that it can be done."
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Date: 2018-11-16 03:55 pm (UTC)She lets out a slow breath. "You could write books, I suppose," she says. "Leave behind what you knew. But then whoever comes after, they'll be like the magicians back home - burning the books they don't like, keeping the common folk illiterate." She drops her chin into her hand. "Teach other people, and hope they'll teach the ones who come after. Hope that they'll outlive the folks who want to snuff out freedom, too."
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Date: 2018-11-16 06:53 pm (UTC)He pauses then, struck all at once by some sharp ache. He's sent messages North. Maker willing they will find their way to Madi at whatever line of defense she has fallen back to.
"Will you be at Ghislain?" Spoken suddenly across the edge of his cup.
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