Chapter 39.2- The Seadragon's Roar

“And if they decide they don’t like that? Stop working? It doesn’t matter how much we want to be good or that we want the world to be better, we have to live in the world that exists. And in this world, worse things have happened without consequence. If he was a Lord and the girl had been his smallfolk, it would have been distasteful, but not even the King could call it a crime, and the Captains, for good or ill, have begun to see themselves as Lords.”

“Good thing you are the Lord here and not them” Laena said stubbornly clinging to it. And the thing was that I agreed with her. No matter how I gamed it out in my mind, there was no version of this that did not lead to Allan being castrated and/or sent to the wall. I just needed a way to do it without causing a certain catastrophe. And I also needed to make a decision on how the Stepstones worked.

“A very good thing, but at present, there is very little difference in how the Captains have been treated, and how minor Lords are treated back in Westeros. A few of them have even been placed in charge of whole islands.” I said. It wasn’t an accident by any means. Directly controlling so much and being in charge of every single thing was a daunting enough task for a place with existing systems. Here that there wasn’t anything to work off of, it was much better to have them serving that role than it was for me to have to travel across the islands multiple times a day to see to every little thing.

“He raped the girl Laenor. He forced himself on her”

“I did not forget” I said.

“It sounds like you have. Because I can’t see what you are still thinking about. Crime is crime. Doesn’t matter who does it.” She said. And that was a naive way of seeing things. But then again, it could be a useful one.

“Fine then. Want me to do something? I’ll go do something”

I stood up and marched to he door before swinging it open. “Have the prisoners brought before me in the throne room” Ben just nodded. He hadn’t said anything about it, but there was probably no doubt as to just who I was talking about.

“What are you—“

“You’ll find out when I do it, sister.” I said, turning around and heading to the throne room. She was right to some extent. Crime is crime. But it wasn’t enough for me to think so— for justice to be done, it has to be seen as having been done.