Robin felt his will soften. He did not know what compelled the earl to speak his mind, but he guessed it was alcoholic. Still, he could tell the man was in need of human connection, and Robin knew the feeling. “Regrets are hard. Avoiding them takes a lot of work. Have you ever killed anyone?”

The earl gave a small nod.

“Most men,” Robin explained, “will tell you stories about the first man they ever killed, and how it sticks with them the rest of their life. They think that taking a life is a hard thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Ferrers kicked back, seemingly happy for the change of conversation. “I certainly remember the first man I killed. Some poor farmer defending his lands. He was there, and I was the closest one to him, and I swung my sword down and it just took his face off. Right off.”

“That’s the point, that it’s not hard.” Robin replayed some of the last few days over in his mind. Bodies under rubble. His sword, red down to the hilt. Men, crippled, begging for mercy. “Dying is much easier than living. Prick a man in most places and he just bleeds out. Pick the right place and he’s dead on the spot. Everything he ever lived for, gone. This thing, this you, that you say your life is building to … it’s the easiest thing for someone to steal that from you. Gone. Your story ends with a quick slash of someone else’s sword. Thirty years of a complete waste of everybody’s time.”

“Or sixty.” Ferrers spread his fingers wide.

“Or sixty. What’s more important,” Robin raised his finger, thinking of his curious little Stabhappy, “is when you save a life. When you restrain yourself.”

“And do you remember the first person you saved?” Ferrers asked.

“No.” But he remembered the first person he didn’t save.

That heavy silence seeped into the air a bit, threatening to end the conversation, until an errant breeze flapped the silks against each other and broke the moment. “Some people would argue,” the earl stood to search for his wineskin, “that if you commit yourself to noble acts in this life, you’ll be rewarded in the next.”

“Some people will believe anything,” Robin laughed. “They only say that so we, the living, don’t feel so bad when they, the dead, get all dead.”

Ferrers smiled, but it was a courtesy. “You don’t have any children.”

Robin shook his head.

“Not married?”

“There was never anyone worth it,” he lied. He was neglecting exactly one person from that assessment.