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“You are not helpless, Seraphina. You are . . . why is helpful not the antonym of helpless?” He seemed so genuinely befuddled by this question that I laughed in spite of myself.
“It’s tolerably short. The twin gods, Necessity and Chance, walked among the stars. What needed to be, was; what might be, sometimes was.”
“Dame Okra said you’re a musician, a performer. Well, we heralds are performers, too. We speak with the voices of counts, queens, sometimes even Saints. Fine clothing may earn you the benefit of the doubt, but authority still has to come from here.” He jabbed a finger below his rib cage. “Stand up straight. Speak like you have every right, and they’ll believe you. I’ll be there with you, translating. All will be well.”
It was the kind of question Lucian Kiggs would have asked. I paced in front of the window, thinking. Was there a difference between doing evil and being evil? I still pitied Jannoula’s imprisonment, her pain and torment, and felt guilt for having sent her back to it. If the misery she experienced every day had been warping her sense of right and wrong, even during the time I knew her, how much further had it bent her by now?
I spoke to the young boatswain standing near us. “Have you the knowing for where we are able to find this desired thing, the Goreddi pigeon coop?” The lad goggled at me. What are you doing? asked Abdo, elbowing me with unnecessary severity. I’m asking him where the Goreddi embassy is located, I said. No, you’re not, said Abdo.
A single action could derive from many motivations. I should never assume.
“Logic can lead to many ends, citizen. No one likes to admit that—not even your philosophers. Dragons revere its incorruptible purity, but logic will coldly lead you over a cliff. It all depends on where you begin, on first principles.
O saar, beware! Beware the horde, The ones you never see. We build your lairth, Repair, invent, We do all this for free. You torch our hideth You crunch our boneth Kill with impunity, But we are not Tho helpless now. Our day cometh. We are free.
If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitably end up at a point of illogic, an article of faith? Even an indisputable fact must be chosen as the place to start reasoning, given weight by a mind that believed in its worth.
Humans, dragons, Saints. Geologic eras. They come and go. I am done with killing. Time does the job for me.
I could have wept with relief, I was so glad to see him. But how could I hear him? I let you go, I said. His entire being smiled fire. You did. But I did not let go of you.
Nothing was just one thing; there were worlds within worlds.
