“And once the sages have been part of the Order long enough to draw their power out, the only place they could live is here, because the Quiet suppressed their power,” Zan concludes quietly. “But...”
“But they’re comfortable,” I say, and abruptly I’m tired.
It’s not their fault. They’ve been deliberately indoctrinated. Without any education, without knowledge, without options... of course they can’t risk leaving. The priests made sure of it.
I beat some more cushions.
“Have I found your calling?” Zan asks with what I’m now sure is a hint of amusement. “You could offer this as a service. No cushions will ever be dusty around you again.”
“Oh no, I’d do this forfree.Imagine what a symbiotic relationship I could have had with temple communities.”
Imagine if the priests had ever been interested in fostering a symbiotic relationship between people and sages.
They were, once, and some priests still strove for that, even within the machinery of the Order bureaucracy.
But that reality was long gone before even my time.
“The Order—this consul—is going to come for me,” I say.
Zan comes to stand next to me. “Almost certainly. The Order’s official line is that you’re dead, punished by the godsfor apostasy, and that you “cursed” this region. Your continued existence alone threatens a counternarrative.”
Even if I don’t do anything.
Even if I just want to live quietly away from it all.
Even though Ididn’tkill any priests when I woke up, I’m still going to be punished for it.
They can’t allow a power to exist that they can’t control.
And no matter what else I am, even if I am more—a person, and not just a weapon—I will always, always be a power.
“That’s why you were mad about me revealing myself,” I realize.
Zan sighs, gently pulling the blanket beater from my death grip. “Partly. I’m also mad at myself for apparently learning nothing in five hundred years so you had to put yourself at risk again. But I’ll stay nearby to defend you, as a sage once did for me.”
I face him.
Our faces are so close, we’re breathing the same air.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I tell him.
Zan cocks his head to one side. “That’s true. But you didn’t owe me anything either, did you?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” He shrugs that speaking shrug again. “As you like.”
Argh. “Then why?”
I expect him to reply with something like “why not?” as my mentors would have, and I already have an answer ready.
But instead Zan says, “Because I should have done it before, and I want to believe it’s not too late.”
There.
That’swhat his hungry look was about.
He looked at me and saw a chance.
