I look around the room, at the stony faces of people who have taken it upon themselves to decide who deserves to live and die. Rock’s voice echoes in my head: I feel like a Stormscourge. I can’t shake the suspicion that he’s right. We’re coercing food out of farmers with the same threats of dragonfire. We’re about to endure another famine in which most of the people who die will be very poor. We’ll lie about it, just as the dragonlords did. After that, are there differences? Do the justifications for our choices matter to those who starve? For years I’ve told myself, if not always that the old
...more
