Merritt could sit no longer. He went to the table again, where he leaned on his hands as he stared down at the sword lying on red velvet. As Magda watched him, waiting for him to go on, his fingers lightly tracked the length of the blade’s fuller.

“It’s as if they want us to be able to fly,” he finally said, “and so they command people to leap off a cliff, flap their arms, and fly, thinking that because they have commanded it to work, it will.

“But then when those people plummet to their death, I’m the one blamed because I’m the one who told them the truth that it wouldn’t work.”

Chapter 52

“So you refused to lead them and they went ahead with the attempt anyway,” Magda said when he had been silent for a time. “Then what happened?”

“What do you think happened? A lot of good men died for nothing, that’s what happened.”

“I see.”

She remembered all too well the man down in the lower portion of the Keep, lying sprawled on the floor dead, with a large fragment of a blade jutting from his chest.

“Do you?” He shook his head without looking back. “You say that you think Baraccus died for something worthwhile, so you at least have that consolation. These men died for nothing. What consolation is there for those they leave behind?

“Do you know what it’s like to face the widows of such men? Men whose lives were wasted? Can you imagine the grief of those women, knowing that their husbands are dead, hearing that I’m responsible, hearing that I could have prevented it had I not been ‘selfish’ and instead helped them? Can you imagine what it’s like to hear their children, children I’ve given rides on my shoulders, crying for fathers they will never see again?

“Can you imagine what it’s like to have the widows, mothers, sisters, and daughters of men who died lie at your door all night, wailing inconsolably, blaming you for the death of their loved one?”

“No, I can’t imagine it,” Magda said into the stillness.

She felt shame for being one of those who had so easily thought him guilty of the charge merely because she had heard it made. She had formed an opinion of him without ever meeting him. She felt a fool for so willingly embracing lies.