Here's the Sower.

Jilia is partly subdued, and partly suppressing lingering anger at Bellumar because it isn't helping and arguably did not help at all. But she's here.

The Archduke is here. He's been beaten, and now the next step is to find what victories can be found after that defeat.

Every day, Enric gets closer and closer to actually proposing ‘abolish the cities and let everyone go home’. 

Theo doesn't actually think that highly of people but he's still disappointed in them. And he's here.

This convention is such a dreadful mess. She'd call it a microcosm of the mess that is Cheliax but most of Cheliax is reasonably-sized villages and things cannot get quite this momentous in those.

Honestly, Korva does not feel like she's received any particularly new information about people on the bloodthirstiness front today. 

"Well, I, for one, am disappointed by this morning. It does render a lot of our work yesterday fruitless, seemingly. However, this morning Her Majesty told us she'd reject law proposals we sent her if they commanded her to appoint officials, pertained to foreign policy, or were grossly unwise in some other manner. There's already a significant line of petitioners at her palace asking her to use that power to reject this morning's law, and I'm hopeful she will."

"In the case where that comes up, and I put our proposal to the floor after all, I'd like to add the whole list of punishments from the other law to those we ask Lastwall about. Even the lions. It's wasting some of their time, but I'd rather ask and take the Church's time for the few tricky questions than leave it in doubt. Especially if I'm wrong about which ones are tricky to answer. Any objections to that, or can we move on to other business?"

"I don't expect Lastwall to approve 'lions' as a sentence. Maybe an option people can be offered the way the Final Blade is, I suppose that's not completely out of the question though I'd be a little surprised."

"If we ask Lastwall about everything in that law can we also ask about — there were some men with the sortitions who were saying to make women fight each other naked and then sell the winner to the highest bidder — if we do ask Lastwall about the law, can we also specifically ask about that? Assuming they'd say that's not okay, I mean, if they'd say that's fine then we shouldn't ask."

"They are not going to say that's okay."

"I'd rather not dignify vile boors like that with the convention taking note of them. I'd guess they... thought the convention had just shown it didn't care about Iomedae's opinion and were flaunting it. I'd be shocked if they thought that was right, or Good, or acceptable to good people. It wouldn't teach them a lesson. They just don't care."

"...but if there's a chance Lastwall even might say that lions are okay, even if it's just really unlikely, I wouldn't want a magistrate to sentence people to — that—"

"I don't think it's even illegal to do that to people right now? Even the Lastwall law would only ban it as a criminal punishment; it wouldn't do anything about indenture or employment contracts. I'm fine with asking Lastwall about things, and I appreciate that censorship was urgent, but I don't want to drop our work on general rights in favor of reacting to every specific awful thing that comes to our attention."

Okay but this awful thing is really upsetting!!!!

“Could take some time to work on rights that put limits on what contracts can do to people. That’s important work for every serf or indenture. For city type marriages too.”

Nod. "I think that's a good idea. I liked your speech a couple days ago about how we don't need to make people be serfs to bring in the harvest, maybe we could start with just... getting rid of serfs? And then over on Family we were talking about having a rule that anything that would be a crime to do to anyone else is still a crime to do to your spouse no matter what your marriage contract says, so maybe we could start by doing the same thing with indentures and all the other kinds of contracts?"

For some reason she feels nervous and a little sick about the idea. Why does she feel nervous, it was a good idea — oh, because she was assuming the sortitions were mostly people like Korva or Enric or Lluïsa, reasonable decent people who don't want to just go hurt innocent people for no reason, and not people like those two men. And getting people to vote for rights even if the Evil nobles were opposed seemed like it should be doable, but if there are a lot of sortitions like them, or priests like Chosen Artigas, it might be a lot harder. 

...and also because this morning she voted for a law she thought would probably be good overall and then people immediately started talking about how they wanted to use it to do awful things to people who didn't deserve it. That too.

"The abolition of serfdom will not be an easy fight to win," Xavier says.

"What is it people like about having serfs so much?"

There are more regular people here than nobles but maybe that doesn't help if a lot of the regular people are awful, especially if lots of the awful regular people aren't serfs.

"The more men you can command, the more you can have your will, whatever it may be. A man must be very good indeed to vote for a tax on himself or for the loss of his own laborers, whatever the need. The superiority of Galtan liberty in commerce and in war is clear, but as we have just seen a law does not only need to be just to pass, it must also have more than half the votes."

"Sorry, uh, how does Galt come into all this?"

"One of the first deeds of the Galtan assembly was to abolish serfdom, like that of Andoran after it."

“If Galt has no serfs and does better in commerce and war, that helps our case on the floor. When we were talking slavery, I heard worries about going hungry. Do we know if Galt has more famines than other places, or if they did right after abolishing serfdom?”

"Galt abolished serfdom in the middle of a successful but multisided war of independence from Cheliax," he says, "and famine always comes with war."

"If Galt and Andoran both got rid of serfdom it sounds like it would be — hard but not the impossible kind of hard, to get people to vote for it? And if it'll be hard but not impossible then I think it's worth trying to do it, no one should have to be a serf."

“Agreed. But also agreed that it’d be hard to get it past the floor.” What with how half the elected look like they live in manors and have serfs, and half the sortitions are city types who don’t mind serfdom if it’d make grain cheaper. Enric doesn’t say either of those things, too close to talking about people.

”Might be easier to just put limits on it, see if that passes. Not as good, though.”

"If we were going to keep it around and just put limits on it, what are the limits you'd need to have to make it — I'm not sure I know all the right words — the sort of thing that's okay to do?"

"I'm inclined to leave abolishing serfdom, quickly or slowly or not at all, for the Slavery Committee. Though I'll talk to Count Vivas to be sure it's not forgotten, and ask if he wants our input."

At minimum she'd want to talk to the Reclamation knights and as many Sowers as she can gather to speak for its abolition. But she still wouldn't expect many votes from the nobility; a dozen counts and barons combined supporting it, if it was lucky. Maybe better with the dukes. It seems probably doomed even if everything goes right.

"But putting limits on what you can do to serfs, and what you can do to any servants or staff or apprentices, seems like something we can and should do here."

“I don’t know if there’s an okay to do version. Which things we can fix now and which ones wait for the next convention or the age of glory. But I can think of some.”

This is one of those moments where he’s really feeling the responsibility of being a delegate. Lots of serfs out there.

”First thing is probably making the allowed punishments list apply to landlords. Or, since the order committee already won on that, a shorter version of their list. If any of you know any of them, maybe we all can talk about this, see if they agree that landlords shouldn’t be breaking people on the wheel or feeding people to lions.”

“Second would be letting everyone travel to the village center, at least. For village meetings, for laundry and market, and for holy days and healing. Especially if we get enough clerics to have them in villages. I’ve met people who never left the house where they worked, some serfs and some city types. Breaks something in them, being in one house and grounds away from everyone for so long.” 

”That’s just the first two for now, need a moment to think of the others.”

He nods. "Ban inherited contracts, ban signing children into any contracts of more than ten years, end all existing Asmodean serfdom contracts and abolish peonage," he says. "I do not think any conscionable state of serfdom exists so long as it remains serfdom."

Oh, 'conscionable,' she thinks maybe that was the word she wanted.

"Treat crimes landlords commit against their serfs just as seriously as if anyone else had done it. Or more seriously, like they do in Lastwall." Actually, that one might be easier to get people to vote for once the Queen has dealt with Delegate Ventura? She's not sure.

"And Feliu was telling me that people are supposed to be able to petition if their local lord is doing things he's not supposed to, I don't know how you'd set it up to make absolutely sure everyone can do that but it seems like it's pretty important to find some way, even if he tries to stop everyone from leaving or sending letters."

"The right to petition is sacrosanct," he agrees.

"Right to trade, with any merchant or traveler, passing or nearby. That one's rough on apprentices and indentures, gets them deeper in debt; not sure about out in the country."

In answer to Theopho,“In the country, sometimes the landlord takes a cut at the market. Sometimes serfs can only sell to him and he sells to merchants. Or he owns the only mill, which is almost the same.”

Trade with passing merchants and travelers always happens anyway, but sometimes at night. It’d be nice to have it as a right though.

"Right to monopoly on grain milling in your territory is one of the really old ones, I think, probably before Aspex. Might be better to set a maximum fraction the lord can charge for multure than pick a fight to remove that entirely."

"Something about not being forced to give up minor children? We used to get children from servants who weren't allowed to keep them. And people were talking last night about banning contracts that give someone else the right to have sex with you over your later objections, which seems relevant.

I do worry that some of these are impossible to enforce in any situation where you owe otherwise unrestricted obedience to someone. It's not hard to obliquely punish someone for using a right that they ostensibly have if you control everything else about their life, though I suppose some people may in practice be too lazy to be oblique.

......I am suddenly, though perhaps not seriously, imagining a Hellknight order devoted to worker's protections."

"...don't Hellknights, uh, work for Hell?"

"They do not. They summon devils for training, they're very harsh about it, and most of them read Evil - but they care much more about Law than Good or Evil, and some like the Torrent are almost Good. I trusted the Helknights, the Rack excepted, more than almost anything else from the old order. And then they stood aside in the war, and submitted to reforms - except the Rack, which was abolished. They'll do as the law and Her Majesty command."

...Evil knights who summon devils and care more about being Lawful than anything else still sound pretty bad even if they don't literally work for Hell, but Korva did say it wasn't a serious suggestion.

"I agree that actually enforcing the rights in practice is going to be hard, I don't really know how to fix that. Maybe in addition to any other punishments we come up with there could be a rule that anyone who gets caught violating their serf's rights stops being allowed to have serfs and all their existing serfs go free? That wouldn't really solve the thing you were worried about since it's so hard to prove, but it might be, uh, deterrence."

"I think you maybe want some way of automatically breaking off employment contracts if an employer attempts to abuse them in certain ways, but I don't really see how to do it. They can always technically allow you to do everything on the list, and then make other extremely onerous requirements and punish you for failing to adhere to them, if they don't like what you're doing with your rights. I like the idea of limiting allowed punishments, but I'm not sure that works in this case, either, because - masters don't need to pass sentence to order you to do something. So they can always order you to do something, or violate you in some other way, and say it's not technically -

....hm. We previously discussed a right to integrity of person. It doesn't really make sense as a general right applied to the government, because of criminal punishments, but could we apply something like it to private contracts somehow? It's a radical step, but - something in that vein?"

Nod. "I think — probably we'd want to have that as a general right, and then a bunch of specific examples of things that would violate that right? So that people can't try to argue that whatever they were doing didn't violate it if it's something that obviously would, but we also don't have to think of literally every way to violate it — does that make sense?"

"Potentially. But I'm not actually sure what it would mean. And we'd need to be... fairly clear. We'd have to write something that works when enforced strictly to the letter; even getting that much would rely on enforcers with very strict Law, hence Hellknights. I don't think we can do anything else without relying on paladins we don't and won't have nearly enough of for anything of scale."

When she'd originally suggested the right to your own person she'd mostly just meant it as part of a right to not be raped but that's clearly not broad enough on its own, there's all kinds of ways people shouldn't hurt innocent people that aren't rape. Maybe if she waits for someone else to talk someone will suggest something for it to mean that's less specific?

...Nope, apparently that's not going to work.

"I think it could include things like... rape, which we already voted on, or making people get pregnant, like Korva mentioned before, or — punishments that damage someone permanently rather than just hurting a lot while they happen, if it's not part of punishing you for a crime you actually did. Or some types of mind control, or carving your lord's name into your skin, or making you kill your unborn child. ...I guess it wouldn't do anything to stop someone from making their serfs kill their children who've already been born, which is also really bad. ...It might not end up making sense to count all of that as the same right, it was just an idea. And some of that would already be covered by, uh, actually going after lords for crimes against their serfs."

Probably it won't end up making sense, those don't really have anything to do with each other. Maybe she should've thought more about how to phrase things on the first day.

"I was actually expecting it to encompass any forced and intentional injury. Which is why it doesn't work as a protection from the government, while narrower protections from rape or forced impregnation should apply even to the government. But - you can imagine a system where the government can maim you, but you can't sign away permission for a private citizen to do so over your later objections. And you could imagine a system where whipping someone voids your contract with them, though that - probably isn't worth it? I don't know. Maybe you could say a certain threshold of injury voids it? Only at the victim's request, you obviously want to avoid any situation where you can avoid paying them if you whip them first, or something."

"If I had to take a guess, it sounds even harder to get the floor to vote for whipping automatically cancelling any contract than to get people to vote to get rid of serfdom? But I might be wrong, I'm not great at guessing how votes are going to go." She still doesn't really like having to think in terms of what the floor will pass rather than just what's right, but it does seem like it's important to.

"Probably. Maybe things that would otherwise be crimes void them? Though - again, for some things that doesn't work in any situation where you owe unbounded obedience, unless we make a list of things you never have to do even if someone tells you to?

....we could ban general obedience clauses. I guess. I think a lot of people wouldn't go for that either. We could - have a right to leave to some particular situation? Like, you always have the right to leave to some kind of - government run labor camp, or the army, or something, so wherever you are it can't get worse than that - but you wouldn't know how bad it was, and once you left you would be stuck -"

"Actually, I can't do this blind. Can anyone who's lived in another country give us some idea of either a typical employment relationship, or - the point at which an employment relationship becomes bad enough, in other places, that anyone outside might take action about it? And - limitations on what you can put in contracts, if any? Do other places have those, or is this a novel concept?" The duchess didn't sound like she thought it was a completely novel concept, but she doesn't really know what things other places might take issue with.

"Contracts are less prevalent outside Cheliax, I think. You might want to adapt the concept of illegal orders?"

"In Rahadoum, I had limits on what I could say and foreign travel. I had stricter obedience to Rahadi philosophy than the law needed. I had to obey the academy's policy and that would include following orders from the deans but what orders they could customarily give was far more limited than in Cheliax. I didn't see any feudal contracts or really any serfs, I don't think Rahadoum has ever had many and none since the atheist revolution. I think obedience requirements were pretty common among apprentices but, again, what orders they could customarily give were very narrow by Chelish standards. Would the law enforce obedience if you gave an uncustomary order? Probably not, but I think mostly no one tried."

"What are 'illegal orders'? Or, I mean, I can tell that they're... orders that are illegal... but what sorts of things would that cover? And what's the punishment if someone gives one anyway?"

"A specific punishment isn't baked into the basic concept. The important thing is that they're orders that are not licit to obey despite coming from someone who can normally issue orders. If the Lord Marshal ordered me to break my vows it'd be my duty to refuse him."

"...I might be misunderstanding you, but the way you phrased that makes it sound like — a thing about what sorts of orders people will get in trouble for listening to, rather than about what sorts of orders people will get in trouble for giving? And if we're worried about people ordering other people to do horrible things, I don't think the people giving the orders will care if the people listening might get in trouble for it. And — it's the right thing to do, to refuse if someone orders you to do something horrible—" (her chest feels tight) "—but I don't think — it doesn't make sense to me to... punish the person who got ordered extra because they should have... known it was an illegal order and not listened?"

“I don’t think illegal orders is about punishment, as much as right or wrong. We had some customs back home kind of like that. Some things are wrong to do, and so evil that everyone has a duty to refuse to do it, even on orders. Or, at least, a man who gives in to that kind of order should get some new scars before giving in, or he isn’t much of a man.”

“But we lost a lot of those customs, year by year. When I was young, one rule was to never turn on family, even if the lord or priest says it. But the schools put a stop to that. A boy gets used to hurting his brothers when a teacher orders it, hard to make him stop once he’s grown.”

”So, to get that kind of thing back, seems like we need to get a full list of what orders are normal to give and what orders are wrong to give and follow.”

Victòria still feels kind of confused. Less confused than she felt about the paladin, though, like he's saying things that make sense and she just hasn't thought through what they mean yet.

He's right that there are some things you shouldn't do even if you're ordered to. Chosen Artigas shouldn't have tortured innocent people to death to serve Asmodeus even if he was being ordered, even though he'd have died for refusing. Victòria is not really sure how the idea of illegal orders would help, though, it's not like the Asmodeans were going to make that sort of thing illegal — well, no, that's not exactly right — the paladins are calling them "illegal orders" like it's about Law but Enric is talking more about orders that are Evil, probably the paladins are just doing the annoying thing Lawful people do where they act like everyone should be Lawful, and that's why they're not just called "orders you shouldn't follow because they're super Evil" or something. Except it's not like having a list of orders people should never follow because they're super Evil would have stopped Chosen Artigas, it's not like he could possibly have been confused about whether it was wrong to torture innocent people to death. And also the Asmodeans wouldn't have told people what the list was, but that's not the point, they're not in charge anymore. Sort of. But — Enric is right that he should have refused, and that it's right for people to hold it against him that he didn't.

She's not really sure why the scars are relevant, if someone orders you to torture someone to death you shouldn't do that even if they're going to hurt you. Maybe that's for orders that are... still Evil but not as bad as torturing someone to death? Where — maybe you'd deserve to be hurt if you followed the order, but not to die for it, and so if you make them... hurt you as much as you'd deserve for following the order... before you do it, then it — sort of balances out? Or something? She's not really sure what it means to say that illegal orders aren't about punishment, that part is still confusing.

...whipping your classmates for getting bad grades in school is Evil but not as bad as torturing someone to death. And Victòria did plenty of that, and — she thinks when she was a little kid she was mostly happy about it, because she it meant she was doing well, but even once it was too late to be a wizard — for that matter, even once she'd stopped worshipping Asmodeus in her heart — it never occurred to her that it might be wrong. That it might be the sort of thing she should refuse, if she were brave enough, which — she probably wouldn't have been, but—

Probably she should have realized sooner that she was Chaotic Neutral. That's not really the point.

She's not really sure how she could've figured out that whipping your classmates wasn't just normal before the azata explained it. Or, if she'd thought it might not be she could've just asked people from other countries, but it didn't even occur to her. So probably it's a good idea to tell everyone what the illegal orders are, and then people will know about them, and some of them will be Evil or scared but probably not all of them? Unless their list of illegal orders is stupid the way some of Lastwall's rules are stupid.

...That was an awful lot of thinking to get to "probably telling people what the illegal orders are is a good idea" but at least she got there, she guesses?

"Is there a list or something of illegal orders that we could look at?"

"I don't think you can have a full list of everything it's evil to do if ordered, but examples would help. But - the problem isn't just that people can give orders that would be evil to follow, although of course that's part of it. It's that a man who has otherwise unlimited authority over you can still make your life hell, if you do anything else he disapproves of. We can tell people that they can't be ordered to kill their children or pray to Asmodeus, and fine, that's better than them killing their children and praying to Asmodeus, we've done well. But a person whose master can order them not to speak, not to move, not to walk, not to wear clothes, not to eat, or to hold hot coals or to sign another contract - what they say they do or don't want doesn't mean very much, on any other matter.

...maybe we want to ban the worst categories of things, and then - give tax breaks or something to people whose employees are allowed to quit, or who have certain lists of protections, or can't be hit, or something. That wouldn't be rights, but maybe the floor would go for it over a ban? But we still ought to put some more time into figuring out which things people think are normal and which things people think are infernal, I really couldn't tell you."

"That's part of why I was wondering if there was a list, I thought not letting people eat was just a totally normal punishment until the paladin said that in Lastwall they think that's torture."

"There's a list and I can list it if we want it, though I'm not sure the structural properties of the 'illegal orders' concept are what we want here - maybe some of the specifics will be useful, though. It's illegal to order someone to commit a crime, break an oath or treaty or negotiated lawful agreement, or violate a policy of an authorized and acknowledged order - such as a church - that they belong to. It's illegal to order someone to take an oath. It's illegal to countermand a lawful order if you don't have the authority to do that, and in general to give orders outside the scope of your authority, or that do not serve any lawful purpose, or that are only licit in a specific context like wartime when it's not obviously wartime and you can't sufficiently demonstrate that it's non-obviously wartime. It's illegal to order a punishment that requires a court-martial if there hasn't been such a court-martial, either to order someone to submit to it or to carry it out."

"It being illegal to order someone to take an oath, is that how the not conscripting people whose consciences say no works?"

"- I think that's separately enshrined in the Lastwall code but it's not unrelated, why?"

"Had a fellow ask me if I'd bring up the right to not be conscripted against conscience if there was a moment for it, is all."

She had some things she was going to say about the illegal orders rules, which really seem like they're a lot more about being Lawful than about being Good (why is it illegal to order someone to break an oath, but not illegal to order someone to do something Evil??), but now she's distracted by what Delegate Soler just said, which is also confusing.

"How does that... work? Like — I don't know how to explain this, but — if there's a war that's Evil, then no one should be fighting in it? Or does that just mean 'no conscripting people for Evil wars' or something?"

"Fellow was an Abadaran, I think Abadar doesn't like wars unless they're defensive and it's got nothing to do if they're Evil."

"I think I'm still confused — uh, I learned the words for 'listening to your conscience,' like, two weeks ago from a pamphlet, I might have misunderstood it?"

"People's consciences speak to different aspects of the right thing to do at different volumes. Some people may reasonably fear they'd do themselves dreadful harm if they did any violence at all to anyone ever."

"...so it's like, even if someone's conscience is a little broken, we still shouldn't make people do things it's telling them not to do, because then they might stop listening to it when it's telling them not to do things that are actually Evil?"

Victòria is still pretty sure she's not understanding right but maybe it'll help to try to clarify?

"...is it important to the business of this committee that I explain this to your satisfaction here and now, because I'm not sure how time-consuming it might be."

"...well, I want to be sure I understand the point of the proposal before we vote on it, but if we're not voting on it today I can see about getting someone to explain it to me later. I'm not trying to, like, waste the committee's time or anything."

"Different people come to different conclusions on matters of morality because their consciences tell them different things," he says, "because, just as Paladin Jornet says, there are a thousand aspects of Good and different people feel different ones at different strengths. One aspect of goodness is refraining from hurting others, another is opposing evil, a third is obedience to lawful authority, and so forth and so on through all the many virtues. Lastwall's policy of conscription exemptions sets those who are unwilling to fight evil due to morality or simple cowardice to hard labor in the service of the state instead of to the task of fighting evil, because someone must maintain roads and fortifications and it may as well be those unwilling to defend their homeland from constant orcish invasion."

Hey, if Lastwall lets you get out of the military by doing hard labor then maybe that's a reasonable provision for getting out of contracts, except that in Cheliax hard labor is mining and that seems like not an amazing alternative to almost anything. Oh well. It's an idea.

"What does it mean that an order is illegal if it serves no lawful purpose? What are lawful purposes?" That could just be not committing crimes, but that was listed separately, so -

"It's meant to exclude things that have nothing to do with the licit order-giving context at all - one wouldn't order one's military subordinate to, uh, sing a song, for instance. In principle it could protect against some of the - encroachments - you mentioned, like an order not to eat or not to wear clothes."

"That seems potentially really useful, but only if there are well-understood limits to the context, and I can't think how you'd require that all contracts have a well-understood context that they apply to. Maybe it works for most employment, or apprentices... I'm not sure it works for domestic service, and it definitely doesn't work for marriage. It might work for serfs?"

"—Wait, sorry, uh, this probably isn't relevant to the committee but do people in Lastwall think it was Good to obey the Asmodeans two years ago??? Since they were Lawful and in charge?"

"No."

Well, that's good, at least. From the way Delegate Requena i Cortes was talking about it she wasn't sure. She's still kind of confused about the conscience exception for conscription, though — the part about different people's consciences caring more about different things isn't confusing, but any given war is still going to be Good or Evil, so you're either conscripting people for Evil wars or letting people claim conscience exceptions for Good ones. Maybe the idea is that Lastwall might be wrong about whether a war is Good or Evil, except people keep trying to get her to listen to everything Lastwall says, so that doesn't seem very likely? In any case, she can see about finding someone to explain it to her later. Maybe it'll make more sense if that's the only thing they're talking about, or for that matter if she's had a chance to eat something.

In any case, right now she should probably focus on the illegal orders thing.

"I think the illegal orders rules would help a little but they're probably not enough on their own to help very much, unless the Judiciary Committee does a really good job of setting up the courts so they don't just say 'actually telling some of your servants that they can't wear shoes in the winter is totally a lawful purpose' or whatever. ...Could people just swear oaths not to do whatever it is that someone is trying to order them to do? Like, if I swear an oath not to do anything Evil, would that make it illegal, using these rules, to tell me to do something Evil?"

"...yes, but you'd have a problem if there were any disagreement about what things are and are not Evil, and those may be much more common than you are imagining."

"........well, I swear not to do anything I think is Evil. ...and I swear to wear shoes if it's winter, and not to sleep with someone just because he ordered me to, and not to be a target for archery practice even if someone orders me to, and not to — uh, probably it doesn't make sense to list all the bad things I've ever heard of someone being ordered to do in the middle of the meeting."

"Probably not, no. I am willing to go over some of the details that are bringing you up short later, it's just not a good use of committee time."

Nod.

Enric flinches at Victoria being so loose with the oaths. He understands that she’s reaching for the one thing that sounds like it protects her from the lords, like he did for rights, but oaths are something to think about before saying. Good thing is, no one would really consider her an oathbreaker if she lost her shoes in winter and had to keep walking home, just young and a bit witless.