“You know how it is,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. We talked that night. At first, we feinted and dodged, but slowly our two stories were spilled to one another. They were in some ways similar and in others wildly different. I told him how my father had given me to Dewara, and how the Plainsman had sent me up against the Tree Woman. I spoke of my other self, the one who lived and learned in a dream world. There were two places where I faltered and nearly lied to him. I didn’t want to admit that I had loved the Tree Woman. That I still did love her. And I didn’t want to confess that I was the one who had given the signal to the dancers she had sent to Old Thares. With a motion of my hand, I had bid them do their Dust Dance, and in that motion, I had betrayed all of Old Thares.

Hundreds of people had died because of me. I confessed that guilt to Lieutenant Hitch. He shrugged his shoulders to it. “It wasn’t you, Never.

It was the magic. You can’t hold yourself responsible for what it makes you do.”

I winced. He had confided much to me. He had done things that shamed him, though nothing so foul as what I had done. Nevertheless, although I did not utter the thought aloud, I thought his sentiment a cowardly one. “I think I have a duty to my own people to resist it,” was all I said.

“Do you?” he asked me quietly. “Do you believe that Gernians are the most important people in the world? Or do you think so only because you were born one? If you’d been born anywhere else, would you still think that you had a duty to protect the interest of Gernia, no matter what it cost other people?”

“I don’t see anything wrong with being a patriot. I love my country and I respect my king. As soldiers, should we do less?” I felt pushed by his words.

“As soldiers, that is very admirable. It’s only when we are being more than soldiers that it comes into question.”

I let a silence fall. I considered all he had said. Realization dawned on me.

“You pretend to be common-bred. But you’re not.”

“I never said I was.”

“But you talk like it. Sometimes you sound like an ill-bred, ignorant man, but I think you do that on purpose. There are moments when your thoughts are too exact, too concisely phrased. I believe you were nobly born.”

“And?”

“So why do you deceive people?”

He lifted one shoulder. He didn’t look at me. “Isn’t that what we scouts are supposed to do? We blend. We cross borders. We live in the space between peoples.”

“Did you want to be a scout? It doesn’t sound as if you admire what you do.”

“Did you want to be a soldier? Pass me more meat, please.”