The silence stretched for a long moment, brittle. I was careful to be still. Fitz was still half a wild thing, slow to trust. We’d been working together for months, but while he’d been cooperative and earnest, he hadn’t ever really opened up to me. So I was quiet and patient. I let the silence go on.
“I don’t know about that,” he said quietly, at last. “You know where I came from.”
That was important. That he was volunteering something. “You had a tough start,” I said. “Me, too.”
“You turned out okay, though,” he said.
“Don’t know about that.”
“You got a big house. You got money. You take care of people.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so. For now. Money might not last too long.”
“Oh,” he said. He frowned down over the battlements at the town. “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Whole hero thing,” he said. “I mean. Seems like it costs a lot. Not money.”
“I don’t do the ‘hero thing.’ ” I sighed. “Look. I’ve got powers otherpeople don’t. I’m strong in ways they aren’t. When there’s something that needs doing, someone in danger, sometimes I’m the only one who can do anything to help. That’s when I do…what I do.”
“People staying here,” he countered, “there’s other places they could stay. Other people who would feed them.” He looked back at me, his young face uncertain, green eyes searching. “But you’re doing it.”
“They’re from the block,” I said. “Their homes were burned down in the battle.”
“So?”
“So, they stay with me, they have the least disruption.” I shrugged. “Seems to me a good man helps those that pass through his life. We all did that, help the folks that the winds of life blow through our own yard, the whole world would do a little better. I try to do that when I can. Right now, I can do more than usual. So I will.”
Fitz studied me hard. “Even if other people don’t?”
“Other people do,” I said firmly. “There’s a world of damned decent people out there, quietly doing good stuff. You don’t see much of it in the papers, on the news, probably not on the internet. Kindness doesn’t sell. Don’t mean it isn’t there.”
“I dunno, man.” Fitz sighed. “I got a life of experience says otherwise.”
“Streets are a hard place to live,” I said. “People got fewer resources. Fewer opportunities to step in without suffering badly for it. But you’ve seen better the past few years, haven’t you?”
“I guess,” Fitz said thoughtfully. He looked back out at the city, studying it, as if seeing some things about it for the first time. “Maybe so, yeah.”
“It’s hard to unlearn things,” I said gently. “Skills you need to survive one kind of life are not the same as the skills you need to get out of it to something more solid. And those skills aren’t the same as the ones you need to make that life more consistent and better. You’re always learning new things.”
“Always?” Fitz asked.
“Stop learning, start dying,” I said seriously. “Why I’m a big believer in reading. Any kind of reading. Even reading pure wild fiction, youlearn about what someone else feels life is like. Get a different perspective than your own.”
“Stop learning, start dying,” Fitz murmured. He smiled out at the rising mist. It was already making the cars at street level look soft and vague. “I like that.”
“It’s a little metaphorical,” I said. “But largely true. Try to keep growing your whole life, kid. You’re the only person on the planet you can really change.”
Fitz’s mouth took a bitter little twist to one side. “Yeah. Learned that one a few times.” He glanced aside at me. “I’ve been meaning to thank you.”
“For what?”
He waved his hand back at the castle. “This. All this.”
“Sure,” I said.
He nodded awkwardly. “Okay, then.”
