Gibson had shaken his head. I did not ask which was greatest, Hadrian, but highest. Devotion requires an attachment which tends to vice if you let it. Thus the devoted is made a slave to his devotions. Such love wears chains. Compassion, then? I asked. Compassion. The scholiast agreed. Compassion might have demanded that Valka and I stun these two misguided children, haul them out of that awful place—by the hair if necessary—and deliver them from Vorgossos. We did not have the luxury of compassion, nor the benefit of time.
