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But here’s the sorry truth—if you really don’t want a thing, you don’t have to keep telling yourself so.
And none are more fanatical in their faith than the convert.
There was only one real conspiracy here. To find people to blame, and they were all complicit.
“Future generations might never believe that it happened.” She blew some yellow hair out of her face with a smoky breath and went back to sketching, charcoal hissing on paper. “Then it might happen again.”
“As a man who’s been cast as both hero and villain, you should know better’n anyone, Jonas Steepfield—the hero’s whoever wins.”
“But… all this really changes is the timing,” Pike was saying. “How is your conspiracy coming along, by the way?” For a giddy moment, it didn’t quite register. Vick stood there with the puzzled frown of someone who sees blood squirting but hasn’t yet realised it’s their own throat that’s slit.
Downside’s eyes went very wide. He tottered forwards as Clover pulled his sword back, his ruined ankle gave under him and he slumped onto one knee. He took a gasping breath. “I think—” “No one cares.” Clover took his head off with one whipping swing. It bounced once, then rolled down the slope, towards where Calder’s last guards were tossing away their weapons. The body dropped sideways, blood spilling out in a great wash that Jonas Steepfield would no doubt have taken great pleasure in.
It was one of those moments—like the uprising in Valbeck, like the battle at Stoffenbeck—when Savine was forced to realise the world was not quite what she had thought it was. When the solid foundations were revealed to be shifting sands, and all her certainties no more than guesses.
