I grimace, looking to the side. I don’t mean to judge him, but I also can’t stop myself.
“Awful, isn’t it?” he says. “I was following orders—even received a medal of valor for it. But the funny thing is, the acts that haunt me aren’t even what I did, but what I permitted. What I didn’t stop.”
He leans his head against the wall. He coughs again, but quietly.
The truth of his statement shocks me. Isn’t that the feeling I have about my father? I didn’t stop him from putting a sword to the throat of Sora’s father. Yes, I was a child, but so was she. And she was hiding Daysum behind her to do what was right. I didn’t stop him from poisoning her or nineteen other girls. I didn’t stop him from selling their siblings. I didn’t stop my uncle from running the worst pleasure houses in Gain, invested in by my father and therefore by me. I didn’t refuse to have anything to do with my family once I knew what they did, where the money came from. I let him do it all to expand my inheritance. I thought it was because I loved him, because I was loyal to my family. But now, I don’t know. General cowardice and complacency seem to be the more accurate reasons. I permitted it all.
“You’d be surprised at how much I can relate to that,” I say.
He eyes me.
“You know, kid, I believe you.”
We’re silent for a minute. It’s the comfortable quiet of two men who are different but have come to understand each other.
“Do you believe in redemption?” I ask.
He strokes his beard. “In the eyes of the gods, or in your own reflection?”
I swallow hard. What a question. “Both, I suppose.”
He smiles. “I hope the gods who made us judge our faults and our kindnesses as products of themselves. Do I believe in redemption for myself, though? No. There is nothing I can do in the future that can atone for my past actions or inactions.”
Ailor states it so plainly—not sugar-coated or couched. I’m having trouble believing someone with a silver tongue like Mikail came from Ailor. He must be like his mother.
“How do you live with that?” I ask.
“Well, son, I’m in a prison cell right now, and I’m not too upset about it.” He looks around and shrugs. “I figure I deserve what’s coming to me. I work hard to not deserve more.”
I shift against the wall, my shoulders feeling tight. “I haven’t made the same kind of peace with it.”
I haven’t at all. There are far worse men—my father being one, Bay Chin being another, King Joon being chief among the kind who have done terrible things en masse and who are not facing death and torture. Who are free to commit more atrocities.
“But you have the rest of your life to atone,” Ailor says. “I don’t have much time.” He gestures to the spit on the floor.
I shake my head. “My death is ordered. I have less time than you.”
“We’ll see,” he says. “The important thing is that you want redemption. That alone makes you better than most.”
He folds his arms the way he does when he’s about to rest, so I turn out the lantern and also lean my head against the wall. There was something oddly comforting about how he saidwe’ll see. I suppose he is right—with war coming, anything can happen. And it does matter that I want to do better, be better.
The thought allows me to rest well for the first time in a while.
But sleeping soundly in prison is always a mistake. It takes me entirely too long to wake up. And that could cost me my life.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Royo
The Northern Pass, Khitan
We ride hard until we gotta stop and make camp. I find a spot that’ll work for the night, and I make a fire while Aeri…digs a hole in the snow. I stare at her because if she’s digging a toilet hole, it’s way too close to where we’re going to eat and sleep. But she just keeps digging with the stirring spoon.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Burying the egg.” She says it likeof course I am.
I can feel my forehead wrinkle. “Why?”
