This was what he was. This was what she had always done. This is a single principle, approached from two distinct perspectives, producing wildly disparate results. What he'd sacrificed was almost everything. What she had sacrificed -
"I sever the part of me which must no longer be mine," and it was not the swordswoman who'd whispered those words, but the Lady that
once was. There they sat in a sea of sunlit wildflowers, and amidst all that abundant colour she'd addressed a history half-remembered,
a history that was little but cold. "It is a farewell, " she'd whispered to a Lanessian agent - who for five years had been her dread; who in
recent days had come to slowly fascinate with his steadfast gentleness. "It is also a gift: I sacrifice the unacceptable to buy the impossible.
Amputation," she'd breathed, and gentle was the shadow that word cast across his eyes.
"We shall," the swordswoman answers, of Point the First - and spares the man an education on just how backwards that phrase seems to her ears. "And I'm glad. That - " But there's no future in this statement. Everything she's already said has killed that sentiment well short of ever being spoken. A shake of her head banishes its remnants; a clench of her lips demands a moment's wait.
"Of course it's arrogant. So am I; what of it? 'Arrogant' is the least important thing you've ever said to me," and this time it's her hand which lifts to forestall a protest; this time her mouth's sketched something like a grin, and what moves in her eyes is not quite levity and nothing like tears, but perhaps just an appreciation for the worth of remembering. This - oh, this is the moment she would prolong. Were it possible not to conclude this instant with the shake of her head which heralds disagreement; were it in her power to stretch a moment out into forever -
She does not lower her eyes. Watches his own now, as she shakes her head.
"I'm not certain any of them might be called constructive. Oh, Helstone tried; we'll never know what he might have accomplished, if he hadn't - " The words hesitate; evaporate in a thin shake of her head. " - lost his way. No." A correction, almost immediately; a hardening something at the corners of her mouth. Helstone, who'd been a hazard in every meaning of the word; who'd been her salvation before that, and something like a friend, long after. "Not 'lost'. Dragged. He was dragged from it. But even in his lowest moments, he was no more malicious than Bromn," the other madman at the Governor's seat. A hasty caveat accompanies, for: "Not that - Okulari thing which he became, not that child-murdering merzost' - " Anyone could have anticipated the point at which her words would pause, the moment which she would require before speaking again; even so, her conclusion cannot be much better than dismissive. "Well-intentioned, he might have been. But constructive..."
A moment's quiet is her opinion on that point.
"There's hardly the man born that commits harm without reason. Be it greed, be it - expedience," and this is a word quite newly-acquired. "Fear. If you would see malice amidst a governorship that was nothing like constructive, consider Governor Phuri. Yes? Corrupt - in very nearly every sense of the word. Murderous, if you've some regard for the lives of political prisoners; of any prisoners at all, near the end of that bezumstvo pursuit. And inarguably sane, and Myrken in general did not particular suffer under his hand. Neither did it prosper - but then, no-one expected it ever might. Those prisoners, though..."
That urn, she might as easily have said.
"You reckon not one of your Councilors would have raised a hand against your intentions? At any point, at any extreme? Agnieszka; Berdini, perhaps," and he will understand the fleeting hardness which cooled her gaze. "Calomel, had he come to realise. Even Phuri met his reckoning, in the end. But then, you never practised such excess."