Eventually, they ran out of cows. [ Fixed, she goes on. ] The trouble was, of course, it was common for English soldiers to beat their servants half to death if they felt so. Not all of them were Lycan or Vampire, I knew that much. They were just men, who knew that they would face no justice in our land, by our laws. So it was not strange for their servants to just disappear in the middle of the night because they had beaten their dressing boy to death in a drunken stupor. They could, if they just wanted to, just make the body and thus, questions, disappear. Even the lowest soldier had that surety.
But eventually, men and women would disappear off the roads between villages. Bodies... started to be found. [ She swallows, blood, blood still. Her nails flick against each other. A tap, tap, tap. Her leg twitching like now, even now, the stories might be enough to conjure them. More than that, however, some readiness to that truth. She is ready, now, even now, in a comfortable small room, to fight them. ] Clawed.
But Hindustan has lions, tigers, rhinos. Many creatures that could maul a man or woman like that. They had ample ways to hide themselves. But it was one of the Officers, a man who had been good to me, called Ellis, who told me the word. Lycan. Half-breed, when we saw a man only an hour dead whose body had been ripped limb from limb. He said the only time he had seen this was after a Half-Breed attacked. I had never seen one before... but I would.
My people never trusted the English, so they came to me, in the middle of the night. He was an Uncle, and he tore in through the halls of the palace screaming for me. I was still their Rani who swore to protect them. Maybe I should have gone to the English then and there so that it couldn't be denied later. He said, that a monster was in his brother's house, and he feared for their lives. I saw only the blood and his panic. I did not stop to think, I called my close guards, and I went with him immediately.
[ Dull, ugly, and quiet she gives a faint smile, she turns to look at Kitty. ] Have you ever seen a person eat another person, Kitty?
[ Once. Not in full. Just the end of it. It had been an officer of the Night Police, in full feral madness, tearing at what might have been a human arm. Or maybe it wasn't. It was in the dark, it was at night, and she'd run as soon as she'd realized what it was -
But - this isn't her story. So she just quietly nods, and says - ]
[ For the length of the story. Here her words are curt, shaped in a way that is ugly inside her mouth and it comes, stilted, offbeat. ] The daughter, had turned human once more, but her mind hadn't caught up. We found her with her hands inside of her father's chest, pushing flesh into her mouth. Apparently, they like to do this, when they take new cities. They don't turn the soldiers, or courtiers, politicians, officials.
No one would lift a hand to their own child. It is... efficient.
[ And that is where she leaves it. Kitty was a clever girl, smart, sharp, knew enough horrors to figure out the details unspoken. This was the become what I knew, the deep breath, I will never forget such a thing. ]
I... dealt with the problem. The next day, I wrote again, of what I had seen. They wrote back I was mistaken. The Half-Breeds as they are called, could not be in Hindustan, because the Knights of the Realm - men and women who drink the blackwater to devote themselves to fight the Half-Breed scourage, had driven them back in England, so how could they be elsewhere?
Unfortunately, we had already burned the body and given her rights. We - I - had no proof. It was insult enough to be called a fool, and thus a liar, but... I hoped, rightly or wrongly, that it was just one case. It was not.
[ It's a horrid story. Kitty, of course, has heard horrid stories before, and she's not afraid of horrid stories - No. The problem isn't squeamishness, but impatience. So, as Lakshmi reports the dreadful details in excruciating detail, Kitty starts struggling with her impatience: ]
But what brought you to England? Why did you leave your country and go there?
[ Her teeth shut, hard click of molars against molars and the turn up of her jaw that makes a stiff line, her face turning away. Hurt over what, she hardly knew. The dismissal of things she never said to anyone? Days she barely recounted for even herself?
That wasn't Kitty's fault, she was young, with enough miseries of her own. She had no business bleeding crimes into her head. ]
Because it was England doing it. All of it. Not just to me but to other lands, other people, other rulers. English soldiers that turned into English dogs and slipped into villages, and when people wept, they said they were lying and refused to help them.
[ A shake of her head, because she knows that's oversimplistic. It's not England that was doing it; of course it wasn't. It was the government, perhaps, or certain factions, or the merchants of that trading company, or something. But not England. Kitty's fought beside enough English people who were willing to bleed and die for justice and liberty to know that it wasn't England who did it.
But - she's not to interrupt, right? So. She shakes her head, but doesn't elaborate upon her denial. ]
So, what, you were there to assassinate someone or something?
No, you're not. Don't you remember? I told you once, I told you that it wasn't good enough for me. To just strike down a few when I knew there was a greater problem. Do you think assassination is the sort of short term goal I would play when I was opposing an Empire?
In a moment, but you need to understand what it is like, for everyone living in Britain's rule. I don't tell you these things to move your heart with pity, pity is pointless. I need you to understand that - I was not no one, I was a Queen, who was respected for my position, was equal to England's rulers in terms of rank. One who had pride, honour, respect, to consider, for myself and for those around me.
[ She takes in a deep, long breath and fixes it there. ]
And I wrote to anyone, anyone at all, who could help. I wrote the Knights of Her Majesty, I wrote to the British Parliament, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, to all of them. I begged, Kitty, I begged for their help because I never thought it would be their government itself that would be at the heart of it.
[ And the conclusion, the conclusion came to it. ] Nothing, nothing ever came back. Not even when I begged on behalf of innocent people that they could take everything else off me if they would only save them. Instead, the British Government decided that I had to pay a debt owed by the state of Jhansi. They had only given me so much money to live on, and I still had - those great many people, as I said, that depended on me and me alone for their livelihood.
[ That makes her laugh. Picking at it a moment, the little dig of nails against the skin, on an old scab. ] It does, still, for us. England crows mightly that it does not condone such practices. But Officers like to buy and sell local girls for their men and for themselves. It has been abolished in England for years - but they say it is not England, so the laws do not apply to them.
[ It's no matter, or rather, it doesn't matter overall. They are here, now. They have other concerns now. ]
I suppose that is a good place to begin where it... changed, for us. The rebellion had already started far away to the west. Sepoys - that is, Hindustani soldiers who formed separate ranks in the Companies army, had been deceived. The reasons were complicated, but it came down to faith, and the extent of it, being belittled, all told. I'll spare you those details. [ It's hardly something to laugh about, but Kitty had made it very clear that matters of faith were not things she understood as deeply as another might. ] Eventually, they reached me, and even then, I still was loyal. Shunned and desperate as I was, I did not... think to rise against them. When the rebels came to my lands, I only gave them coin to go on their way. But they sieged the fortress, even after the British families were promised safe passage. Everyone, everyone was slaughtered inside the walls. Then the rebels left, leaving all that blood behind them.
[ Her fingers stop their picking. Her hands settle, smoothing over her knees. Bracing, bracing, bracing. Rani, Rani the British will not forgive this.
And she would not forgive them. ] With no one else left in charge, it was up to me to clean it up. So I did, I took the bodies out of the palace, and I began sweeping the rooms, I organised to have personal effects sent back to their families. That was when we - I - found out the truth. As we went from room to room, we eventually ended up in the cells of the lower Fortress. That's when we found it. [ Maybe there is a flair for dramatic, but she swallows, dry and sore. ] It was a cursed butcher's shop, Kitty, but we found them - all - all the men, women, and children, who had gone missing over the last three years.
[ She nods, chin dipping briefly. ] Some. Some were turned.
But what made me understand... were the crates. Company crates. Shipped directly from England. Inside of them were vampires. They had brought them. These families that came to rule. I do not know if on purpose or not, it hardly mattered so. The Officers knew to have placed them here, thrown people to them.
[ The disbelief at least, was easy to remember. ] I realised, I had been a fool, a fool to trust, to believe as I had. So I did the only thing I could do. I gathered my council, I took stock of everything I had, and I began preparing for war.
[ And that disapproval gets one fixed look back that has no pity, or shame, in it. ]
My only regret was that I did not sooner, for the price we, my people, my homeland, paid. That we had not burned their ships years ago before they even landed. Let alone allow their foul cargo reach out shores and pollute the very soil.
[ And if Kitty is looking for remorse, there would be none. ]
And they were more than happy to oblige. An army of 20,000 arrived to my 6,000 men. The siege last for five days, and every day I realised, no wonder my letters, my begging, went nowhere. The damn beasts were in the army. The Company soldiers, the British guards. All of them. Like a plague, it feels like there was no part of the Honourable United India Corporation, that was not infected.
[ Not now, Lakshmi, this isn't the time for that kind of fury. ]
Every day, the canons would beat down on my walls. Then at night, the creatures would come, out of the ranks, and begin crawling up the walls. They could not be too obvious, so we could beat them back. Shoot them down before they got too far. But... it wasn't enough. Despite... everything, one of my own people... betrayed me. My... English-writing scribe, he had been sending my letters all this time, to them, and when the time came...
He let them in. Lycan and Britain both, and my city, my home, my Jhansi, burned for six days and every citizen, every person, was slaughtered. My rich carpets, my husband's books filled with ancient texts that had been preserved for generations, the paintings that adorned our sacred temples. All of it. They spared nothing. Nothing. They turned my Jhansi into a graveyard.
The war did not stop there. By then, I had met up and joined forces with the other members of the Rebellion, and I began to realise, it wasn't just my Jhansi. It was everywhere, everywhere. Calcutta, Delhi, even Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka to the south. There was nowhere not infected. We talked, and I began to realise if they were doing this to us... What was it like, elsewhere, in Britain's great Empire where the United India Company answered to nothing but Britain's pathetic parliament? Which, I might add, the heads of the Company had seats that stood in both Parliament, and amongst those who oversaw the very people responsible for stopping this, the Knights of Her Majesty's Order. There was no system of power they had not worked their way into it.
[ Her hand braces, and the shift there is from - pain, dwelt in, and moved on, like she did everything. Forward without ever looking back into that burning place, but never forgetting it. Elbow against the inside of her leg, body hunched forward. ]
By this time, I had lost... battle after battle. Took a fortress, lost a fortress. I had sent my son away, as I began to realise... where did this end? If I saved Hindustan? This Empire, that was doing this, still stood, would they simply do it to others? If I spared only my own people, who was I? Was I my father's Manikarnika, who was destined to bring great fame, was I the Lakshmi my husband said I was, bringing prosperity to all? The last battle had been going on for five days when they shot me, and I knew it was over one way or another, and I had to choose. [ A sharp little clear of the throat. ] You've seen it, there is no living through that. [ Her hand lifts, taps above her heart, where that ugly, white puckered scar sat raised on her brown skin. ] By that time... my husband was dead, my father was dead, I had lost one child and sent the other away for his safety, so you'll do me the credit of never asking me what I came to England with, Kitty, because everyone I had ever called my own was dead, save for one little girl who I did not even realise followed me until much too late.
[ Oh Devi, never meet Kitty, it will be an unfortunate mirror until they started shouting at each other. ]
But it was not good enough. I made my choice because what I did have left to me was the blackwater. I marked my brow with the blood from the field, and I fled. They all presumed me dead because the English were too drunk on their own power. I spent the next ten years, hiding, running, moving, learning. I learned everything I could, and I decided, that all of this: this system, of Empires, Kings, those who could escape the law simply because of where and what they came from - all of it, it must end.
[ and finally, finally, she comes to the end of this tale. ] Then, yes, with nothing, running for near on fifteen years at that point, I went to England. I hope that answers your question.
It's not the people who make the decisions who die in war. It's people like - It's my people who die. And it's my people who get infected with diseases, who get afflicted with curses like that - It's not England's fault.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-01-12 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-13 01:55 pm (UTC)But eventually, men and women would disappear off the roads between villages. Bodies... started to be found. [ She swallows, blood, blood still. Her nails flick against each other. A tap, tap, tap. Her leg twitching like now, even now, the stories might be enough to conjure them. More than that, however, some readiness to that truth. She is ready, now, even now, in a comfortable small room, to fight them. ] Clawed.
But Hindustan has lions, tigers, rhinos. Many creatures that could maul a man or woman like that. They had ample ways to hide themselves. But it was one of the Officers, a man who had been good to me, called Ellis, who told me the word. Lycan. Half-breed, when we saw a man only an hour dead whose body had been ripped limb from limb. He said the only time he had seen this was after a Half-Breed attacked. I had never seen one before... but I would.
My people never trusted the English, so they came to me, in the middle of the night. He was an Uncle, and he tore in through the halls of the palace screaming for me. I was still their Rani who swore to protect them. Maybe I should have gone to the English then and there so that it couldn't be denied later. He said, that a monster was in his brother's house, and he feared for their lives. I saw only the blood and his panic. I did not stop to think, I called my close guards, and I went with him immediately.
[ Dull, ugly, and quiet she gives a faint smile, she turns to look at Kitty. ] Have you ever seen a person eat another person, Kitty?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-13 02:04 pm (UTC)But - this isn't her story. So she just quietly nods, and says - ]
Yeah. Sort of.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-15 04:00 pm (UTC)[ For the length of the story. Here her words are curt, shaped in a way that is ugly inside her mouth and it comes, stilted, offbeat. ] The daughter, had turned human once more, but her mind hadn't caught up. We found her with her hands inside of her father's chest, pushing flesh into her mouth. Apparently, they like to do this, when they take new cities. They don't turn the soldiers, or courtiers, politicians, officials.
No one would lift a hand to their own child. It is... efficient.
[ And that is where she leaves it. Kitty was a clever girl, smart, sharp, knew enough horrors to figure out the details unspoken. This was the become what I knew, the deep breath, I will never forget such a thing. ]
I... dealt with the problem. The next day, I wrote again, of what I had seen. They wrote back I was mistaken. The Half-Breeds as they are called, could not be in Hindustan, because the Knights of the Realm - men and women who drink the blackwater to devote themselves to fight the Half-Breed scourage, had driven them back in England, so how could they be elsewhere?
Unfortunately, we had already burned the body and given her rights. We - I - had no proof. It was insult enough to be called a fool, and thus a liar, but... I hoped, rightly or wrongly, that it was just one case. It was not.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 01:20 am (UTC)But what brought you to England? Why did you leave your country and go there?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 01:59 pm (UTC)That wasn't Kitty's fault, she was young, with enough miseries of her own. She had no business bleeding crimes into her head. ]
Because it was England doing it. All of it. Not just to me but to other lands, other people, other rulers. English soldiers that turned into English dogs and slipped into villages, and when people wept, they said they were lying and refused to help them.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 02:12 pm (UTC)But - she's not to interrupt, right? So. She shakes her head, but doesn't elaborate upon her denial. ]
So, what, you were there to assassinate someone or something?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 02:21 pm (UTC)Yes, I am.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 02:25 pm (UTC)No, you're not. Don't you remember? I told you once, I told you that it wasn't good enough for me. To just strike down a few when I knew there was a greater problem. Do you think assassination is the sort of short term goal I would play when I was opposing an Empire?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 02:27 pm (UTC)Fine. Then what were you doing.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 02:40 pm (UTC)[ She takes in a deep, long breath and fixes it there. ]
And I wrote to anyone, anyone at all, who could help. I wrote the Knights of Her Majesty, I wrote to the British Parliament, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, to all of them. I begged, Kitty, I begged for their help because I never thought it would be their government itself that would be at the heart of it.
[ And the conclusion, the conclusion came to it. ] Nothing, nothing ever came back. Not even when I begged on behalf of innocent people that they could take everything else off me if they would only save them. Instead, the British Government decided that I had to pay a debt owed by the state of Jhansi. They had only given me so much money to live on, and I still had - those great many people, as I said, that depended on me and me alone for their livelihood.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 04:41 pm (UTC)Economic oppression is a key tool in the subjugation of populations when legal slavery doesn't exist.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-22 03:47 pm (UTC)[ It's no matter, or rather, it doesn't matter overall. They are here, now. They have other concerns now. ]
I suppose that is a good place to begin where it... changed, for us. The rebellion had already started far away to the west. Sepoys - that is, Hindustani soldiers who formed separate ranks in the Companies army, had been deceived. The reasons were complicated, but it came down to faith, and the extent of it, being belittled, all told. I'll spare you those details. [ It's hardly something to laugh about, but Kitty had made it very clear that matters of faith were not things she understood as deeply as another might. ] Eventually, they reached me, and even then, I still was loyal. Shunned and desperate as I was, I did not... think to rise against them. When the rebels came to my lands, I only gave them coin to go on their way. But they sieged the fortress, even after the British families were promised safe passage. Everyone, everyone was slaughtered inside the walls. Then the rebels left, leaving all that blood behind them.
[ Her fingers stop their picking. Her hands settle, smoothing over her knees. Bracing, bracing, bracing. Rani, Rani the British will not forgive this.
And she would not forgive them. ] With no one else left in charge, it was up to me to clean it up. So I did, I took the bodies out of the palace, and I began sweeping the rooms, I organised to have personal effects sent back to their families. That was when we - I - found out the truth. As we went from room to room, we eventually ended up in the cells of the lower Fortress. That's when we found it. [ Maybe there is a flair for dramatic, but she swallows, dry and sore. ] It was a cursed butcher's shop, Kitty, but we found them - all - all the men, women, and children, who had gone missing over the last three years.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-22 11:40 pm (UTC)Were they eaten?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 05:12 pm (UTC)But what made me understand... were the crates. Company crates. Shipped directly from England. Inside of them were vampires. They had brought them. These families that came to rule. I do not know if on purpose or not, it hardly mattered so. The Officers knew to have placed them here, thrown people to them.
[ The disbelief at least, was easy to remember. ] I realised, I had been a fool, a fool to trust, to believe as I had. So I did the only thing I could do. I gathered my council, I took stock of everything I had, and I began preparing for war.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 05:42 pm (UTC)Yes, against England.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 01:42 pm (UTC)My only regret was that I did not sooner, for the price we, my people, my homeland, paid. That we had not burned their ships years ago before they even landed. Let alone allow their foul cargo reach out shores and pollute the very soil.
[ And if Kitty is looking for remorse, there would be none. ]
And they were more than happy to oblige. An army of 20,000 arrived to my 6,000 men. The siege last for five days, and every day I realised, no wonder my letters, my begging, went nowhere. The damn beasts were in the army. The Company soldiers, the British guards. All of them. Like a plague, it feels like there was no part of the Honourable United India Corporation, that was not infected.
[ Not now, Lakshmi, this isn't the time for that kind of fury. ]
Every day, the canons would beat down on my walls. Then at night, the creatures would come, out of the ranks, and begin crawling up the walls. They could not be too obvious, so we could beat them back. Shoot them down before they got too far. But... it wasn't enough. Despite... everything, one of my own people... betrayed me. My... English-writing scribe, he had been sending my letters all this time, to them, and when the time came...
He let them in. Lycan and Britain both, and my city, my home, my Jhansi, burned for six days and every citizen, every person, was slaughtered. My rich carpets, my husband's books filled with ancient texts that had been preserved for generations, the paintings that adorned our sacred temples. All of it. They spared nothing. Nothing. They turned my Jhansi into a graveyard.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 02:00 pm (UTC)So then you brought it to England.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 02:34 pm (UTC)The war did not stop there. By then, I had met up and joined forces with the other members of the Rebellion, and I began to realise, it wasn't just my Jhansi. It was everywhere, everywhere. Calcutta, Delhi, even Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka to the south. There was nowhere not infected. We talked, and I began to realise if they were doing this to us... What was it like, elsewhere, in Britain's great Empire where the United India Company answered to nothing but Britain's pathetic parliament? Which, I might add, the heads of the Company had seats that stood in both Parliament, and amongst those who oversaw the very people responsible for stopping this, the Knights of Her Majesty's Order. There was no system of power they had not worked their way into it.
[ Her hand braces, and the shift there is from - pain, dwelt in, and moved on, like she did everything. Forward without ever looking back into that burning place, but never forgetting it. Elbow against the inside of her leg, body hunched forward. ]
By this time, I had lost... battle after battle. Took a fortress, lost a fortress. I had sent my son away, as I began to realise... where did this end? If I saved Hindustan? This Empire, that was doing this, still stood, would they simply do it to others? If I spared only my own people, who was I? Was I my father's Manikarnika, who was destined to bring great fame, was I the Lakshmi my husband said I was, bringing prosperity to all? The last battle had been going on for five days when they shot me, and I knew it was over one way or another, and I had to choose. [ A sharp little clear of the throat. ] You've seen it, there is no living through that. [ Her hand lifts, taps above her heart, where that ugly, white puckered scar sat raised on her brown skin. ] By that time... my husband was dead, my father was dead, I had lost one child and sent the other away for his safety, so you'll do me the credit of never asking me what I came to England with, Kitty, because everyone I had ever called my own was dead, save for one little girl who I did not even realise followed me until much too late.
[ Oh Devi, never meet Kitty, it will be an unfortunate mirror until they started shouting at each other. ]
But it was not good enough. I made my choice because what I did have left to me was the blackwater. I marked my brow with the blood from the field, and I fled. They all presumed me dead because the English were too drunk on their own power. I spent the next ten years, hiding, running, moving, learning. I learned everything I could, and I decided, that all of this: this system, of Empires, Kings, those who could escape the law simply because of where and what they came from - all of it, it must end.
[ and finally, finally, she comes to the end of this tale. ] Then, yes, with nothing, running for near on fifteen years at that point, I went to England. I hope that answers your question.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 04:55 pm (UTC)You know that you'd just be killing victims, don't you?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 04:59 pm (UTC)Is that so?
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Date: 2019-01-28 05:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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