I look away and get back to work.
After a moment, Seamus stomps away.
Not only do I not have mages, I can’t count on Seamus to help me again, and the only other person maybe on my side is a demon prince.
I can’t rely on them. But I also may not be able to win without them, andthatis a huge problem.
Nariel steps up next to me. “Will you still give him the wand?”
“Of course I will,” I snap.
“Even though he’d as soon as spit on you right now?”
I flick an irritated glance his way. “I keep my promises, even if no one else does. He’s done his part. He didmorethan his part, and you know it. I don’t need him to be grateful.”
“I do,” Nariel says softly. “And he is grateful, or he will be. He’s had a shock and needs time to process. Don’t give up on him.”
“I told you I’m still giving him the fucking wand.”
Nariel still doesn’t go away. “And I’m delighted you’re not going to hoard your power at the first sign of adversity. But I also just listened to you try very hard to push him away. Please accept a little advice from someone who has been, if not where you are, then as close as anyone. You need allies, Sierra, which means you need to give them a chance tobeallies.”
The centuries-old fallen angel sounds casual, so, so casual, that I’m absolutely sure he does not mean this casually.
I take a breath, thinking that through.
I need allies. I can’t actually do this on my own. I desperately don’t want to accept that.
Goddammit.
I breathe deeply a few more times before I nod tightly.
My issues are not Seamus’ problem. They’re mine.
“If I may ask,” Nariel says casually, “why didn’t you kill them when you had the chance?”
This demon is also my problem.
Maybe my ally, too.
“Because I couldn’t count on catching Evram off-guard a second time.”
“You could have killed him after you broke his wand.”
That’s true.
Probably I should have. It would save me a lot of trouble.
I can make an argument that the next person to come after me won’t be someone I know as well, won’t be someone I can predict.
But that’s an excuse and I know it.
Squeamishness about killing people who were absolutely prepared to kill me isn’t likely to impress Nariel either, even if it were true, and honestly it isn’t.
I killed people in High Earth, working for the grand magus. I’m sure Letty would suggest therapy if she knew, but the prospect of having to explain, or not, and deal with all the fallout of that just seems like a lot. A battle mage counselor in High Earth did talk to me about it the first time, but it’s hard to be precisely open about your feelings when you know the slightest sign of weakness could be the justification to deny you everything you always wanted, you know? And while I wouldn’t say I’munbotheredby having killed people, it’s not something that keeps me up at night.
Doing it at the behest of a man I now consider detestable, that would hypothetically be a bigger problem for me, except that Istill agree with how I handled all the situations where I ended up needing to kill someone. Even if, as a child, I absolutely shouldn’t have been the one Evram sent. Like, when you’re faced with a psychotic murderer on a killing spree who’s too powerful for even a cohort to contain safely, you only have so many options to prevent more people from dying.
All of which is to say, I may not have a precisely bog-standard moral compass for a Low Earther. My background and the choices I had to make—that were available to me—at a young age preclude that.
