A hand touched her shoulder, and the words froze in her throat. “Kero—” he said, humbly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I worry about you. You do work too hard. ”

“I don’t have much of a choice, ” she reminded him tartly, without turning around. She was afraid if she did, she’d never be able to stay under control. “There are people depending on me—and you know what’s really bothering you. It’s that I do this for money. ”

Eldan stepped slowly and soundlessly around her, so that he was looking into her eyes. She averted hers, looking down at her feet. This is only a dream, she kept telling herself. It doesn’t mean anything.

“That does bother me, ” he said earnestly. “I think it’s wrong. There are other things you could be fighting for. You could be killed, and is money worth dying for? Honor—”

That word again. That stupid, suicidal word. It made her cheeks flame, this time with unmingled anger. “Honor won’t put food on my troopers’ table, or pay in their pockets, ” she snapped. “Honor won’t pay for much of anything. It’s all very well to prate about honor, when you’re on a first-name basis with a Queen, but my people rely on me to see that they get the means to live!”

“But—” he began.

“More stupid wars have been fought over honor than I care to think about, ” she continued inexorably, raising her eyes just enough to stare angrily at the middle of his chest. “Seems to me that honor is a word that gets used to cover a lot of other things. Things like greed and ambition, hatred, and bigotry. It’s honorable to attack someone who doesn’t believe in the same things you do. It’s honorable to fight someone over a strip of land you covet. It’s honorable—”

She looked up at his uncomprehending face, and threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know why I bother! At least I’m honest about my killing. I do it for money. I try to pick the side that was attacked, not the attackers. Most of the rest of the world wages war to support one lie or another—”

“Not here, ” he said, softly. “Not us. ”

She would have rather he argued with her. She would much rather he ’d shouted. Instead, this hurt expression—the look in his eyes, pleading with her to believe him.

“I only know what I’ve seen, ” she said gruffly. “And what I’ve seen says that most of what people call ‘honor’ is no more than self-deception. Maybe you people in Valdemar are different. ”

“We are, ” he said. “Please, Kero, you know me—you know what I’m like. You’ve been inside my mind—”