“I grew up in the Quarter,” Lehav said finally. “Not too far from where I found you. Didn’t know my father, barely knew my mother—the swelling pox killed her when I was six—raised my younger brother myself for three years, until someone put a rusty chisel through his eye and tossed him into the canal. . . .”

Adare opened her mouth to say something, but no words came, and the soldier waved her to silence.

“A kid in the Quarter . . .” he went on, voice flat. “You learn early on to kill, to steal, to fuck, or to hide. Hopefully all four, if you want to stay alive. Even those skills won’t save you if you don’t know when to do what. My brother could steal and hide, he could fuck and kill, but he made a mistake somewhere. I never learned what it was, but he read someone wrong, stole when he should have killed, killed when he should have fucked. The point is, back in the Quarter we didn’t see so much of your father’s fine justice.

“I was lucky. Smarter and stronger than most of the others, but mostly lucky. The day I joined up with the legions, I thought I’d finally made it, got out for good. Three meals a day, free clothes, nice bright spear, and a cause to fight for. I held on to that spear and that cause all the way down to the Waist, where I spent six years killing jungle tribesmen who had even less than the poor bastards back in the Quarter.” He shrugged, the indifference of the gesture belying the words. “I was good at it, kept moving up the ranks until I commanded an entire legion.”

He shook his head. “I never regretted killing the men and women. They’re beasts down there, worse than beasts. A wolf will kill you, gnaw the marrow from your bones, but the jungle tribes? They’ll take the skin off a man one strip at a time. They’ll pull every tooth in your mouth while you choke on your own blood. They need to be put down, and I was good at putting them down. When we started burning villages, though, when we started putting spears in children . . .” He broke off, staring at nothing.

“That’s when you quit.”

“That’s when I found a purer cause,” he said finally, staring at her.

Adare watched him for a long time, trying to find a shape for her thoughts. “Intarra’s light burns bright,” she said finally, “but we live here, on the earth, in the mud.”

“That’s no reason not to reach for her flame.”