“You have to understand with all this, I never considered myself a bad person. I didn’t like the Death Games. I never watched, never went in the holds of the slave galleys where men lived and died chained to their oars, never visited the baby farms that sometimes became child brothels, never visited the scenes of Blint’s work. I just said words, and money poured in like rain. The funny thing was, I wasn’t even ambitious. I was richer than anyone in the kingdom with the exception of some upper nobility, the Shinga, and the king, and I was comfortable with that. I just couldn’t stand incompetence. Otherwise, I’m sure the Shinga would have killed me. But she didn’t have to, because I wasn’t a threat, and Durzo told her that.” The count shook his head. “I’m rambling, sorry, but I don’t get to tell these stories anymore.” He sighed.

“My mistake came when I fell in love with the wrong woman. For some reason, I was attracted to Ulana. Not just attracted, obsessed, and it took me a long time to figure out why. I even avoided her, it was so painful to be in her presence. But I finally figured out that it was because she was so unlike me. You see, Kylar, she was pure. And strangely, she seemed to love me, too. Of course she had no idea what I really was. I did none of my business under my own name, and few of the nobles had any idea of the kind of wealth that was becoming mine. The deeper I sank into the darkness, the more I loved her, and the more my shame grew. How can one love the light and live in darkness?”

The question lanced through Kylar. He felt ashamed.

“She started working on the slavery issue, Kylar, and she decided that she was going to visit the baby farms and the slave galleys and the fighting pits. I couldn’t very well let her go alone, so for the first time, I saw my handiwork.” The count’s eyes grew distant. “Oh Kylar, how she moved among those wretches. In all the stench of human waste and despair and evil, she was a fresh cool breeze, a breath of hope. She was light in the dark places I’d made. I saw a champion pit fighter, a man who’d killed fifty men, weep at her touch.