[ 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.
I'm defending the poor and the exploited. The common folk - the regular people of England - they're victims of their government's tyranny, just like your people are. So how is the solution - What sort of an answer is it, to have victims killing victims? Better to be an assassin. Nobler to be an assassin than to continue these cycles of slaughter.
[ And that - that makes her lose her temper. Gone, truly, like a tinder case. Gunpowder lit up, the cannons roar loud in her ears. Thick as smoke, hot as tar, burning, burning, burning down her spine. War cries that taint blood where she screamed so long and so hard, she chokes on them.
She wants to strike her, she realises, wants to lash and bite and roar with that scream so deep in her belly, how dare she.
But she doesn't. Hadn't she wasted enough breath explaining something Kitty was resolute to not understand? That was that then, and where she has no viable target, and too furious to explain. She takes the only option left. She takes up the leather armour, the short blades, and slams it down hard with a splayed hand on the bed beside Kitty. ] It was Myira's. I hope you get better use out of it, you'll need it for all that running away you plan to do, Englishman.
[ and with that, she takes the rest of her gear - and goes to leave. ]
I'm not an Englishman. I'm a person. We're all people. Don't you realize that when you think that someone is a product of the evils of their country - You're just falling into the trap they want you to fall into. You know who profits from war?
Do not lecture me, Kitty Jones, about who profits from war. [ As if there could be words to make her stop and whirl faster. ]
It was you who told me I should respect the lives of others, what they have been through - so perhaps you can do it yourself for once! You are telling a nation that was invaded by an army, that it does not have the right to fight for its freedom when it was beaten and ripped apart! Or perhaps, what you really misunderstand, Kitty, what you really cannot stand, is that in some places - for even when I was begging for the lives of children as a Queen, your word as an Englishman would have meant a thousand of mine - that you might be no better than the magicians you despise.
I'm not saying you haven't got the right to resist or fight. I'm saying that just - What on earth is the point of fighting like that? Why would you sneer at assassination when - when war just kills the most vulnerable?
If you truly had bothered to fight, you might damn well know that there never was a difference. [ And it's boomed out in a rage, vicious twisting in her gut. Rightly or wrongly, she is well and truly furious now, even if the question is in earnest. ]
What happens, what happens when you assassinate someone? Do you know? Have you snuck into a Lord's house and poisoned his supper? I do, he goes down to Whitechapel, he gathers up his staff, everyone they know, they torture them for days on end, and then they execute whoever seems guilty. The blood is still on your hands. The blood will always be on your hands. Or worse, perhaps, like when I helped take down that Tevinter prat, perhaps you kill a man, and a day later, the enemy takes over the city anyway and means exactly nothing. I was stupid enough to think I could kill one English Politician and that would stop the trade laws that starved thousands of people in my home land. The law was passed anyway. Nothing changes, not if you're not willing to fight for it. Not unless you're prepared to give it all to your struggle.
[ Means, how many people Kitty, do you think I've killed? ]
My people were. The Whitechapel rebels were. They were prepared to die for their freedom. So far Kitty, all you do, is preach and give nothing of yourself. Silly girls with pretty faces belong on shelves, not lecturing about morals when they cannot even be ready to give their own life for the things they believe in.
[ And that - her throat tightens. Her jaw clenches. And she bites out, unwary - ]
I have, actually. [ She realizes what she said - looks down and away, cursing her temper. But - But - she can't stand - ] Not by poison. But I have. And I've been the one on the block to be tortured. Got handed over for it by my own mum and dad. Watched all my comrades die. Watched it. So don't talk to me about being a silly girl unwilling to die. Or to kill.
[ That's not what she'd expected. She'd expected a...a litany of ways in which that didn't count. Or at best, a gruff acknowledgment that very well, Kitty might have some experience. Not this. Not this offer that makes her feel simultaneously horrified and somehow lighter. Not those words that make her feel dizzy and shake her head - ]
No. I mean - I - They're...They're not wicked people. They were just...afraid.
[ She shakes her head - she could argue it. She has argued it deeply more than once with more than one person. Because it all came down to one simple point.
Those who could not stand by those that loved them did not deserve their protection. ]
Your word, Kitty, that is all I need. [ And while she is here - in that same flat, even delivery that promises and never, never takes back. ] I will never see that happen to you, not ever. No matter what passes, I would cut my own hands off before I let another take you to such a fate.
[ She finds a flush creeping over her face, deep enough that she can feel it in her ears. It's not embarrassment, it's - it's something far more complicated than that. She doesn't know what to do with the feeling. ]
I just - I didn't mention it because I wanted you to...My point is that I've faced it before, and I'm willing to face it again. I don't dislike war 'cause I'm some coward.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
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.
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Date: 2019-01-22 11:40 pm (UTC)Were they eaten?
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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.
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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.
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Date: 2019-01-28 02:00 pm (UTC)So then you brought it to England.
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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.
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Date: 2019-01-28 04:55 pm (UTC)You know that you'd just be killing victims, don't you?
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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
Date: 2019-01-28 05:28 pm (UTC)But she could not show Kitty that, she could not make her see that for herself. ]
Are you defending the notion of your land? Is that what upsets you when I speak like that?
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Date: 2019-01-28 05:45 pm (UTC)[ Fierce as anything - ]
I'm defending the poor and the exploited. The common folk - the regular people of England - they're victims of their government's tyranny, just like your people are. So how is the solution - What sort of an answer is it, to have victims killing victims? Better to be an assassin. Nobler to be an assassin than to continue these cycles of slaughter.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 06:44 pm (UTC)She wants to strike her, she realises, wants to lash and bite and roar with that scream so deep in her belly, how dare she.
But she doesn't. Hadn't she wasted enough breath explaining something Kitty was resolute to not understand? That was that then, and where she has no viable target, and too furious to explain. She takes the only option left. She takes up the leather armour, the short blades, and slams it down hard with a splayed hand on the bed beside Kitty. ] It was Myira's. I hope you get better use out of it, you'll need it for all that running away you plan to do, Englishman.
[ and with that, she takes the rest of her gear - and goes to leave. ]
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 08:42 pm (UTC)I'm not an Englishman. I'm a person. We're all people. Don't you realize that when you think that someone is a product of the evils of their country - You're just falling into the trap they want you to fall into. You know who profits from war?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 07:06 pm (UTC)It was you who told me I should respect the lives of others, what they have been through - so perhaps you can do it yourself for once! You are telling a nation that was invaded by an army, that it does not have the right to fight for its freedom when it was beaten and ripped apart! Or perhaps, what you really misunderstand, Kitty, what you really cannot stand, is that in some places - for even when I was begging for the lives of children as a Queen, your word as an Englishman would have meant a thousand of mine - that you might be no better than the magicians you despise.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 11:30 pm (UTC)You've clearly never met a magician.
[ What a trenchant observation, Kitty. But - ]
I'm not saying you haven't got the right to resist or fight. I'm saying that just - What on earth is the point of fighting like that? Why would you sneer at assassination when - when war just kills the most vulnerable?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 02:02 pm (UTC)What happens, what happens when you assassinate someone? Do you know? Have you snuck into a Lord's house and poisoned his supper? I do, he goes down to Whitechapel, he gathers up his staff, everyone they know, they torture them for days on end, and then they execute whoever seems guilty. The blood is still on your hands. The blood will always be on your hands. Or worse, perhaps, like when I helped take down that Tevinter prat, perhaps you kill a man, and a day later, the enemy takes over the city anyway and means exactly nothing. I was stupid enough to think I could kill one English Politician and that would stop the trade laws that starved thousands of people in my home land. The law was passed anyway. Nothing changes, not if you're not willing to fight for it. Not unless you're prepared to give it all to your struggle.
[ Means, how many people Kitty, do you think I've killed? ]
My people were. The Whitechapel rebels were. They were prepared to die for their freedom. So far Kitty, all you do, is preach and give nothing of yourself. Silly girls with pretty faces belong on shelves, not lecturing about morals when they cannot even be ready to give their own life for the things they believe in.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 02:11 pm (UTC)I have, actually. [ She realizes what she said - looks down and away, cursing her temper. But - But - she can't stand - ] Not by poison. But I have. And I've been the one on the block to be tortured. Got handed over for it by my own mum and dad. Watched all my comrades die. Watched it. So don't talk to me about being a silly girl unwilling to die. Or to kill.
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Date: 2019-02-01 02:15 pm (UTC)If your parents arrive, I will kill them on your word.
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Date: 2019-02-01 02:21 pm (UTC)[ That's not what she'd expected. She'd expected a...a litany of ways in which that didn't count. Or at best, a gruff acknowledgment that very well, Kitty might have some experience. Not this. Not this offer that makes her feel simultaneously horrified and somehow lighter. Not those words that make her feel dizzy and shake her head - ]
No. I mean - I - They're...They're not wicked people. They were just...afraid.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 02:27 pm (UTC)Those who could not stand by those that loved them did not deserve their protection. ]
Your word, Kitty, that is all I need. [ And while she is here - in that same flat, even delivery that promises and never, never takes back. ] I will never see that happen to you, not ever. No matter what passes, I would cut my own hands off before I let another take you to such a fate.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-02 03:11 am (UTC)[ She finds a flush creeping over her face, deep enough that she can feel it in her ears. It's not embarrassment, it's - it's something far more complicated than that. She doesn't know what to do with the feeling. ]
I just - I didn't mention it because I wanted you to...My point is that I've faced it before, and I'm willing to face it again. I don't dislike war 'cause I'm some coward.
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