The question is which stand will actually accomplish my goals, and that’s harder.
If we can maintain a dialogue—if I can pit myself not as an enemy, but as a person, and one worthy of respect—maybe someday I can reach her. But that requires them to not believe I can simply be overpowered—but also that I’m not dangerous to them.
It’s risky.
Frankly, Iamdangerous to them.
I don’t even mean my martial prowess—I mean the fact of a sage existing outside of their framework is a challenge to the necessity of the framework itself.
That’swhat I need them to both recognize and not recognize—to give me space to maneuver, without making them feel like they have to destroy me first.
I wonder, if in five hundred years of meditation, I have learned enough.
I take a breath, my heart pounding, and speak.
“Iwantto do something, though,” I tell Eraya. “And moreover, I want to be the one to decide what that is.”
Eraya tries to step toward me, to take my hands in hers.
I ward her off, not backing up.
This statement—so basic, and yet so anathema—must stand undiminished if this is going to work.
Her face tightens.
“I know it will be an adjustment,” Eraya tells me. “It’s hard to explain how free life can be to someone who’s never seen it. But knowing you’re part of something bigger than yourself—choosingto be part of that—makes all the difference.”
“And I don’t know how to explain to you that subsuming your will to another’s isn’t freedom, but its opposite,” I say as gently as I can manage, my whole body tight with tension.Please work.Please. “Thank you for offering me the choice. I decline.”
“You don’t even understand what you’re declining!” she protests. “I’m trying tohelpyou. Help all of us! We can help the Order uniteeveryone,can you imagine? No more senseless fighting—”
Inside, my desperate hope is crumbling.
Five hundred years of meditation wasn’t enough after all, it seems.
You can’t be wise about the world without living in it.
She doesn’t respect that I’m worth listening to yet, that my choice is worth respecting.
There’s a way I can make that happen, but if it backfires...
I’m fucked.
But I’m not giving up yet.
“In my day,” I interrupt Eraya evenly, the illusion of calm, “sage power being used to take over the empire would have been considered heresy, you know.”
She stills. “What?”
My heart beats wildly.
Here goes nothing.
“Our power was never meant to be used for secular gain,” I tell her. “That’s how it all goes wrong. The gods choose to incarnate in us to serve the people who aren’t being served already, not to bolster other authorities. And attempting to influence people’s feelings without their consent?” I look her dead in the eyes. “That would have been considered an act of war.”
“Eraya.” The red priest speaks for the first time, his voice the crack of a whip. “Retreat.”
She does so immediately, no hesitation, yanked on her leash—looking troubled for the first time.
