“No,” Kip said. “Teia …Of course they have a point.”

“What are you saying?” Cruxer asked, speaking up for the first time. He’d been content to let his squad work through things themselves, but Teia could tell he didn’t want the conversation to veer into heresy.

“No one’s saying the Chromeria is perfect, Teia. There’s a price for law, and we see that all around us. The Chromeria has power, and in places, it abuses its power. Welcome to the human race. Lawlessness has a price, too. I grew up in Tyrea, the closest thing to the kind of lawless paradise that the Blood Robes hold forth. Tyrea is a lot of things, but paradise?” Kip gave a derisive snort.

“Think about the Blackguard. Think about its leadership. Commander Ironfist may be the best man any of us know. Watch Captain Blademan, a good, good man. Not very imaginative—”

“Breaker, you can’t—” Cruxer began, but Kip ran right over him.

“Of course I can!” Kip said. “We’re Blackguards! We’re not afraid of the truth! Remember? Not very imaginative, but dutiful, hardworking, loyal to a fault. An excellent second-tier leader. We lost Watch Captain White Oak, obviously, but she was totally capable, too. Watch Captain Tempus? Bookish but clever, better in charge than in a charge, but competent. Watch Captain Beryl? She’s a little too friendly for an officer, but good. Blunt? Not quite friendly enough, but again, good. Then I look at the squads above us, and for the most part, I admire them. I look at us, and we’re the best I can think of. Am I right, Captain?”

“It’s why I gave up my promotion,” Cruxer said quietly. “Half of it, anyway.” Teia and the squad knew the other half. It was the same as theirs. Lightbringer.

“What’s your point?” Teia asked Kip.

Kip said, “If Cruxer hadn’t been willing to risk throwing away his own career, Aram would be in this squad right now. He was a rat, and despite all our good leaders, he was this close to getting in. Maybe he would have been discovered before he made full Blackguard, but with how undermanned we are, I doubt it. He probably would have taken final vows within a year’s time. And that’s with the Blackguards doing almost everything right. Even with us, let’s be honest. Some of those who have made it in aren’t squeaky clean. Some of us—even us inductees—have had blackmail or bribes tried on us. Why? Because we’re powerful and we’re going to be more powerful soon; because we have what others want. Some of us stumble, and some of us are downright rotten—despite every advantage, right? I mean, we’re respected, we’re paid well, we have all we need, we have extra attention paid to us, we have the best the Chromeria can give us—and we still have weakness and venality and betrayers among us.”

“It’s not that bad,” Ferkudi said.

“Yes it is,” Kip said. “You just don’t want to face it yet.”

“No one’s tried to bribe or blackmail me,” Ferkudi said.

“Ferk,” Kip said, exasperated. “It’s because they think you’re too dumb to bribe and too unpredictable to blackmail and too apt to talk to be charmed. They’re wrong on the first count.”

Ferkudi blinked like a dog whose nose had been swatted.

But Kip went right on. “But that’s not the point. If a group with the small size, the wealth, the good leadership, and all the advantages of the Blackguard can have its members go bad, how could we possibly expect a group that’s so much larger, and more powerful, and spread out over all the satrapies—with poor leadership in some areas—to be more virtuous than we are?”

“You mean the Chromeria,” Teia said.

“I do.”

“I expect it because they made vows before Orholam,” Big Leo said, speaking up for the first time. “Because they are Orholam’s hands on earth. They shouldn’t fail that kind of a holy trust.”

“No,” Kip said. “They shouldn’t. Men and women should never violate their oaths.”

“But they do,” Ferkudi said. Bless him, always stating the obvious. But then, sometimes the obvious benefited from being dragged out into the full glare of the light.

“The Blood Robes are liars leading naïfs,” Kip said. “They don’t want to live up to the oaths they took that when they became a danger, they’d end themselves. They’re afraid and unfaithful, so they say their vows don’t count. They want to lord their power over others, so they say the Chromeria unfairly lords its power over them. The Chromeria says that every man is equal in Orholam’s sight, that our powers and privileges make us the greater slaves of our communities. I don’t admire Magister Kadah, but she’s right about that much. On the other hand, the Color Prince says drafters are above other men by nature—and at the same time talks about abolishing slavery. Tell me, if drafters are above other men by nature, why would you abolish slavery?”

Silence reigned for a few long moments.

“Because he needed an army,” Cruxer said. “And coming from Tyrea, he had to pass the mines at Laurion and the tens of thousands of slaves there.”

“To divide your enemy,” Daelos said. “Armies afraid of what their own slaves will do when they’re gone won’t go far from home.”

“Understand that everything the Color Prince does, he does for power, and you’ll understand everything he does,” Kip said.

“It can’t be that simple, can it?” Teia said. “If so, how come you see it, and no one else does?”

“Because I’m a bad person, so I understand how bad people think.”

What the hell did he mean by that? Was he fishing for compliments?

But Kip was still speaking. “Don’t judge a man by what he says his ideals are, judge him by what he does. Look at what the Color Prince has done. They’re wrong, Teia. They’re liars and murderers. It doesn’t mean everything we do is right. It doesn’t mean our house doesn’t need a thorough cleaning. I just don’t think we need to burn it to the ground to do it.”

Ferkudi nodded his head. “My folks had a saying: the fact your dog has fleas is no reason to open your home to a wolf.”

“My dad used that one, too. But he said, wife, rash, bed, and whore,” Winsen said.

Goss said, “A lesson he had to learn the hard way, no doubt.”

Ferkudi laughed with them. Then he said, “I don’t get it.”

“It’s one of those things, Ferk,” Goss said.

“Where if you explain it, it doesn’t work?” Ferkudi asked. He was familiar with those. “Flesh protuberance!”

Worst swear ever. Second worst, maybe. For a while he’d used ‘proboscis.’

“You think it’s that simple, Breaker?” Teia asked, ignoring the boys.

“In the False Prism’s War, Gavin’s generals ordered the burning of Garriston. It was stupid. It was wrong. Horrific. The fires spread, and they killed scores of thousands. It wasn’t strategy; it was vengeance for what happened in Ru, but far worse. But Gavin had to win the war. And after he won, he couldn’t punish those who did it, though I’m sure he wanted to. They said—and maybe they even believed—that what they had done was necessary to win. So he gave them medals and showed them the door. Not one of those involved in burning Garriston is here on the Jaspers anymore. You think that’s a coincidence? Those men are no longer in any position where they could do something like that again. Was what Gavin did once the deed had been done good? No. But it was the best thing possible.”