“Can you love an idea more than you love a man and not become a monster? How many friends will you sacrifice on the altar of Justice, Logan?”

“If you force my hand, at least one.”

They were standing on a precipice. Socially, Logan had always been Kylar’s superior. Morally, Kylar had always felt inferior, too. But they’d never been placed in a direct hierarchical relation. Now Logan was giving an order. He would not be moved.

Kylar could only accept his order and accept all his orders henceforth, or reject it and them forever. There was part of him that yearned to obey. He was convinced that killing Terah was the right thing, but Logan’s moral compass was a more accurate instrument than Kylar’s. What was it about submission that was so hard? Kylar wasn’t being asked for blind servility. He was being asked to obey a man he knew and loved and respected, who in turn respected him.

The wolfhound is pampered by the fire. The wolf is hunted in the cold.

“Do you know how much I love you, Logan?” Kylar asked. Logan opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Kylar said, “This much.” And left.

29

Kylar was back in the city on his way to the one safe house he was confident hadn’t been discovered during the Godking’s reign when the ka’kari spoke.

~Would you be excited about Logan being king if he told you politics is the art of the possible and asked you to murder his rivals?~

I’m already damned. My crimes might as well accomplish something.

~So you’ll serve clean water out of a filthy cup? You must have better tricks than I do.~

The safe house was on the east side, far enough from the fashionable areas that it had been on the city’s outskirts. Now the building was gone. The entrance itself, a flagstone set flush with the ground, was only paces from the Godking’s new wall. The neighborhood, once unfashionable, was buzzing with activity. After the Godking’s death, thousands of people had fled the Warrens, either hoping to reclaim their lives or hoping to claim someone else’s better life. The fires that the displaced had started on their way out of the city had left great swathes of it bare and black. Too few buildings remained to shelter everyone, even without the thousands who had left the city with Terah Graesin. Now they all were back, and there were no building materials to be found. With an army besieging the city and cold rains starting, people were desperate.