“If you need hope, maybe that suffices,” Weld said. “But I don’t want to… we absolutely can’t tear ourselves apart to try to find answers or tap into wellsprings of power. I don’t think it would work and it would be… sadder than words can convey, because I know the types who would jump on that opportunity.”

Types?

Egg dismissed the thought.

“Anything works,” Egg said. “You might have to explain how you’re working under Legend, technically.”

“I can do that,” Weld said. “That’s easier than some questions. It’s pretty obvious he isn’t around as much as he was when he was in the PRT. He’s not doing the same jobs.”

“Almost a figurehead?” Slician suggested.

“Almost,” Weld said. “We’ve been on guard for Cauldron-like behavior since the Wardens were founded. It makes us weaker, slower, but… I think I can explain that.”

He probably could.

He wasn’t a traitor, probably, and he was a leader.

Leaving Faultline at her truck, smoking, they started walking back to the building. Egg looked back to the corner of a parking lot, where Sveta Karelia stood with the Harbinger. A portal opened near her.

Which said a lot. That she was with old members of Cauldron, using portals.

How fucked was it that she was the one who had worked with people to make the gesture system they’d all used to gather together? It was the poison of treachery, that it leeched into everything, it made those gestures feel worse to use. It cast a shadow over so many interactions.

He felt brighter and better now.

That things made more sense. That the treachery was smaller than he’d thought, with simpler answers. That it wasn’t as awful and widespread as he’d taken it to be.

He went to familiar faces first. People who’d been peripherally involved. Fishy, Engel, Gregor.

If not to ensure they wouldn’t attack on sight, to ensure they could help handle things if things went sour.

After twenty minutes of talking, people went to the hallway to meet Weld.

The world didn’t feel so lonely, now. They weren’t an isolated, abandoned people, cut off from everything. If Weld was okay, maybe they had options.

“He lied.”

Egg stopped, looking back at Blackforest.

“Weld lied. Sveta told him before. Just now, in the hallway, he said if I played along, we could smooth things over, give people a different kind of hope, that didn’t require… how did he put it? Grisly sacrifice?”

Egg looked over at Weld, who was in the hallway, talking seriously to the other leaders of the individual Case Fifty-Three groups.

“When he touched her shoulder, he passed on a message, or he printed something on the metal there. He wanted me to keep it a secret, for everyone’s benefit, he said.”

Egg nodded.

“I don’t want this existence to be pointless,” he said.

“Me either.”