Knowledge of Good and Evil

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I can't stand the sight of bleeding, I can't stand the sound of screaming
and I didn't do the things they say I done
but there's a monster in my head and it thinks it's lots of fun.
- Michael Longcor, "Monster in My Head"

Capricia was born in a body that was only sometimes hers, no matter what anyone else said. She might have been six, but she knew her own thoughts and her own mind, and she knew almost as well her other's.

"I don't want to hear you talking about that in front of anyone," her mother hissed, one day.

Her mother found her over her brother Clef's body the next, around the same time Capricia found herself there. Harmony didn't understand. She didn't even try to. But soon after some men from the Capital came, and their eyes said they understood too well.

I clawed my way to the living room window, stood there in the cold
the last bits of my dream, like figures in the distance, hard to hold.
- The Mountain Goats, "Maybe Sprout Wings"

The men took her only to toss her in a cell, and they didn't like it when she left, so Capricia made a game of seizing small freedoms. She didn't understand the rules yet, but the guards were winning. She'd escaped one night and met a boy and it had been the happiest she'd ever been, the only time she hadn't been ashamed of her tears. When she thought about how many miles from home she was, every inch of her ached. The voice wrapped a soothing warmth around her, but they both knew the distance was still as great.

Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils
see, they don't give a fuck about you like I do.
- A Perfect Circle, "Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums"

They called the voice Seven, and the name suited her purposes. She made the adults wary and scared and her siblings stand up straighter with a weighty respect, and that gladdened her heart. She claimed to be much older than Capricia, but every bit her sister, and she managed to curl a protective hand around her despite lacking a body of her own.

"I will protect you with a strength you can't yet grasp," Seven whispered sweetly, in Capricia's voice. Capricia raised a hand to her throat to see if it was hers. "And I will never leave."

Capricia smiled, not understanding.

Vocalise
- Esperanza Spalding, "Knowledge of Good and Evil"

The men - a division of the king's guard - were lead by a grizzled veteran, Sir Apollo Merces, who was kind and good. He was good, he claimed, because he wanted to protect the kingdom from its king, who was evil because lied baldly about inheriting his throne with blood. He was evil because he sired heirs he would never acknowledge and spoke of divine mandate where he had none.

"But I'm not like him," Apollo said. "I can give you the chance to champion a true king."

And Capricia, not yet ten, took his large hand in hers and shook.

I'm gonna treat you like the mouse that you are
Creeping in and eating up my house, you are.
- My Brightest Diamond, "There's a Rat"

Seven didn't understand what was so difficult to conceive of that this particular grease-borne parasite was bad news.

"How strange we'd meet in a place like this," he'd say. Often enough that strange wasn't the exact word Seven would use.

"You seem like a sweet girl," he said, leaning in too close.

"I'd like to show you my miniscule, disease-ridden penis," he said with his eyes, every time.

Capricia seemed to forget sometimes that it was her body, too.

Seven spared him only because Capricia would fuss if there was a bigger mess than he already was, but he'd have trouble sleeping for a while.

I like the things that you hate
and you hate the things that I like
but it hurts, honesty's your church
but sometimes it's better to lie.
- Hooverphonic, "Vinegar and Salt"

When news reached Capricia of Harmony Viordi's mysterious disappearance, the jig was up.

"Why did you kill our mother?" Capricia said, aloud in her distress. The messenger blinked and politely excused himself.

"She hurts you every day without knowing," Seven said. "She dismissed me to the end as an illness. Isn't it better for that door to be closed?"

"For whom?" Capricia said. "You?"

"There's that, but don't pretend we both can't feel your relief," Seven said. "You can feign purity, but our sins will never lessen."

"I," Capricia said, and if she ever had an end to her sentence it never found her tongue.

I never felt so wicked as when I willed our love to die
and I was your silver lining as the story goes ... but now I'm gold.
- Rilo Kiley, "Silver Lining"

It was done. Apollo Merces was king, the old king dead, and Capricia had paved the way for him with a bloody carpet.

Valentio was livid at her, of course, promising their friendship was dead, but he'd always been dramatic. And Lysandro had a price on his head for treason, but this was how things had worked out. Faure had been a wicked tyrant, and the princes had been too blinded by familial love to see it.

She absolutely refused to be sad about it.

(But where nobody could see she missed her boys so much it stole the breath from her lungs.)

So sorry lady, so sorry now
I killed your baby, I don't know how.
- Veruca Salt, "All Hail Me"

When people went to her and raged at her for their executed loved ones, Capricia listened. Some tried to make her feel guilty, recalling the lives of their loved ones and asking if their crime was worth the punishment, as if love made them blameless. Some called her a faithless bitch to a false king. She listened and she accepted the blame, because rightly it didn't all belong to Seven. Gods help her, but they'd both probably enjoyed it.

She listened and accepted, but, as a faithless bitch is wont to do, she always cuffed them for treason in the end.


Now come let our lady possess you in her breath-taking, hair-raising bed
she will tingle your spine as she captures your heart and your head.
- The Scarlet Pimpernel Cast, "Madame Guillotine"

It went like this, without fail.

She would enter, and all would bow before her like she herself was Death, and then the mockery of a trial would begin. No one was ever innocent; Capricia was convinced it was because she was a last resort, but the bodies piled up beyond the city walls in disheartening myriads. For next, she would gather up her cold, shining claymore and cleave the scheming heads from the guilty. In the eyes of the court, she was Justice Herself become earthbound. More beggared for her mercy than prayed in the temples.

It was a glorious thing.

So every nation be warned:
as soon as the last one is mourned
another tyrant is born.
- Sarah Slean, "Napoleon"

Capricia's nerves were frazzled and twisted up in each other more with every day.

She'd look out at the Capital from her windows and Seven would have to do the breathing for her. Something wasn't right, and she was afraid she knew exactly what. She had to face up to it soon, or what time she didn't spend in the gallows she'd be spending begging after the alchemists, and Seven was entirely without mercy on the matter.

The truth of it was Apollo made the entire kingdom an open wound the moment of his ascension, and she'd been his keenest razor.

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
so here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my rope
and I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope.
- Florence + the Machine, "Shake It Out"

She'd been running for days.

No one was chasing her, not yet, but they would come, and every last person who would once have cared she'd wronged so bad it left her feeling dizzy to think of it. But she'd thrown her blades in the river where last she'd bathed, and thus far she regretted nothing. Her sins would never lessen, but she vowed she'd do two goods for every evil she'd committed. Blood and misery wouldn't be her lasting legacy.

She'd been running for days, but for once in her life it felt like she was running in the right direction.

While you were setting your woods afire I was still dreaming
now I will unsettle the ground beneath you, send my waters ashore.
- Vienna Teng, "Watershed"

She ran, and then she turned right around and ran back home.

Volacoeur had been home, after all, and the one important truth Apollo had taught her was you never abandoned your home. The resistance found itself the recipient of several odd, vital boons, and Lysandro gained a funny sort of omniscience. Valentio and Cygnelius found their science laboratories just operational enough to work, and the muffled terror that had grown full those past years ebbed some. There were still dark, dark shadows cast across the nation, but from inside began to well hope, and in the shadows Capricia thrived best.


I can't sing one thing and then live another
be a saint by day and a devil undercover.
- Nina Hagen, "I'm Gonna Live the Life"

It was an alien thing, peacetime, and Seven didn't like it.

"Is this the life you want? Fishing on weekends, tangling yourself in red tape all your days?" There was a distinct singular in your. Capricia noted it for later, when she wasn't in talks with councilors.

"You told me a long time ago that I shouldn't feign purity," Capricia thought. "So here I sit, feigning nothing. I'm not killing, I'm saving. This is all I've ever wanted."

There came no comfort, no reassurances or cold truths, no words at all, but Seven seemed almost proud of her.

You always cared for me
that was easy enough to see
but I pushed you in the dark.
And I wanted to tell you, but I lied.
- Dark Dark Dark, "Bright Bright Bright"

"You ask me how I can be here," Capricia said. The room was still as the eye of a hurricane. "but I ask myself that, too. I killed your father, a man you respected and adored, and I expected gratitude. I can hardly understand myself when I look back. I don't ask your forgiveness, merely the hope of it. Because I've been running from you and this castle since I abandoned my post as chief slaughterer. I just want to come home. I just want my boys back. A chance. Please."

Lysandro opened his mouth to speak, and Capricia woke up.