“How could I convince people in such pain that I tried to prevent such needless deaths? They wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t hear it. They believed the council’s word that had I helped it wouldn’t have happened. It’s easier for the families to blame me than to try to grasp the complexities of the issue. They can’t understand that even if I had stayed and led the effort their men would be just as dead and me along with them. Easier for them to embrace lies than the truth.”

Magda could hear children running up the street, playing a game as their barking dog bounded after them. She could only imagine the anguish of children very much like them losing a father. When they finally receded into the distance, the pall of silence again settled over the small, cluttered home.

“That’s why you moved away from the Keep,” Magda said aloud as the realization came to her.

His back still to her, he nodded. “That’s why.”

She could see how much it hurt him to be put in such an impossible situation and so unfairly blamed. She understood why Baraccus had said that he wished he could have helped Merritt.

Magda rose and crossed the room to lay a comforting hand on the back of his broad shoulder. She finally understood the depth of the compassion Isidore saw in him.

“Thank you, Merritt, for explaining it to me. I understand, now. I’m greatly relieved that what people say isn’t true, but at the same time I’m ashamed that I blindly believed that you were to blame for those deaths.”

He nodded his appreciation as he lightly touched the blade of the sword. “A lot of good people have died for nothing. I’m afraid that a lot more good men are going to die before they finally give up the attempt as impossible.”

Standing beside him as he turned toward her, she saw then for the first time a full view of the magnificent sword lying on the red velvet. The fuller ran the length of a gleaming blade that flared beneath side notches near the top. An aggressive, down-swept cross guard tapered to sharp points. The hilt was covered in tightly wound, perfectly twisted, fine silver wire.

Gold wire woven through the silver spelled out the word Truth.

The beauty of the sword nearly took her breath.

Almost involuntarily, she reached out and touched the hilt, her fingers trailing over the word Truth standing out in gold. She’d never seen such a thing done before.

Merritt watched her for a moment; then, as he lifted the sword, her fingers finally, reluctantly, came off the word Truth. He laid the blade over his forearm and offered her the hilt.