He leaned back as if exasperated that I didn't get it. "As palingenesists, we are burdened by the knowledge that we, and only we, are responsible for our actions. We know there is no divinity on whose shoulders we can lay the blame for any errs in our lives. Normal humans embrace the divine precisely because they can burden other shoulders with their sins, thereby absolving them. We know differently. But it's important for you to realize that we live in their world, not the other way around. So when you speak of absolution, you will eventually find that your desire for the quarter it can provide, and your knowledge of the truth, are incompatible. The only vehicle within which you can find solace is responsibility.”

"Unrighted wrongs can haunt you like a spectre. I believe they haunt Poppy to this day, which in some way explains her actions. You may be haunted as well, only you know for sure. Ultimately, there is only one way to exorcise such a fiend; you must accept him." He leaned forward in his chair and stared at a painted face on the wall. "You must look him square in the eyes without turning away, taking in every unsightly nuance of his repellant face and say: 'Yea I know thee brother, and love thee as I love myself, for we are one and the same.' That fiend will have an unspoken, yet unassailable mastery over you until it is assimilated. It is only when you embrace that dark brother, that you can know true freedom."

I absorbed the import of his words in a long silence.

He continued. "So when you ask me if we are evil, I have no choice but to answer in the affirmative. I must answer so, for we are evil, even if we only have the capacity for it. The evil is latent within us. It lives and breathes in that twin fiend. Does that answer your question?"

I nodded. "I think so. There is something I'm curious about."

"What's that?"

"Why did you take the pieces off the dead bodies at Latsei?"

"Oh, dear Evan," he said with a sigh. "The answer is within your own question. They were dead, so what did it harm? Besides they had no idea of the jewelry’s value."

"That doesn't make it right."

He shook his head, disappointed. "Right or wrong is not the issue. I can live with it. That's my point." He finished the last of his wine in one long drink. "Let me ask you something. What would you do if a similar opportunity at fortune presented itself?"

He asked the question, knowing I couldn't answer. "I can't say. I'd have to be in the situation."

"That's right, and that's the decision I made when I was in that situation."

"Fair enough," I said, refilling both glasses.