“Is it so difficult?” She turned to face him. “You see children at play, being supervised by a parent. One child is being picked on by the others and has started to cry. What do you do?”

Brother Qown blinked. “I tell the other children to stop picking on them.”

“And what are you saying?”

He frowned. “I don’t … what do you mean? I’m saying children shouldn’t be allowed to bully each other.”

“No, you’re saying the child needs someone to protect them, and you’re also saying the parent isn’t doing their job.”

Brother Qown swallowed his exasperation. “Count, that comparison falls apart when the parent clearly isn’t doing their job.”

“Are they not? How do you know? Maybe your hypothetical child is the bully and the parent has encouraged a role reversal as a lesson on empathy. Maybe the child is prone to crying because they like the sweets their parents give them to make them stop. Maybe the child needs to learn to push back against bullying, because it’s not like bullying stops once we reach adulthood. You’ve come into the middle of a situation and made a snap decision and, further, made a snap judgment on how to fix matters. All you’ve done is prove your arrogance.”

“Arrogance? Me?”

She didn’t back down. “Is there not an arrogance in humility? An arrogance in healing and good deeds? Don’t you know—know in your heart—your pacifism and good works make you a better person than someone like Dedreugh, someone like me?”

“Dedreugh was a demon!”

“I’m a demon. What’s in a name? Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to presume the automatic evil of monsters.”

Brother Qown choked on the heresy. “Count—”

“I agree a terrible event happened on the bridge. But if I had interfered, I would have proclaimed I knew better than the person in charge—Duke Xun.”

Brother Qown sighed and shook his head. “That analogy only works when you’re talking about Joratese. The duke isn’t affording the Marakori the same rights your people take for granted.”

Janel sighed and sat down on a box. Her gaze turned distant.

He paused his search to look at her. “Am I wrong, my count?”

“No, but—”

A noise from upstairs interrupted her. A noise which sounded like someone putting a key into a lock.

And there had been no knock, patterned or otherwise.

Janel stood, grabbed Brother Qown by the arm, and, before he could say anything in protest, pulled them both inside a closet. They crouched down behind the stacked boxes.

As the front door opened, Qown remembered they had left the lanterns lit, the containers open with their contents strewn. Anyone would notice someone had been searching for something. They would be discovered right away, betrayed by the priest’s heartbeat if nothing else.

“What—? By Khored, who’s been here?”