“Why didn’t you come to the castle?” Royce asked.
“I knew you could handle it.” Hadrian continued to stare at the mug, tilting his head slightly as he did.
“Looks like our break will have to be postponed,” Royce told him while pulling over a chair and sitting down. “Alric has another job. He wants us to make contact with Gaunt and the Nationalists. They’re still working out the details. The princess is going to send a messenger here.”
“Her Highness is back?”
“Got in this morning.”
Royce reached into his vest, pulled out a bag, and set it in front of Hadrian. “Here’s your half. Have you ordered dinner yet?”
“I’m not going,” Hadrian said, rocking the fallen mug with his thumb.
“Not going?”
“I can’t keep doing this.”
Royce rolled his eyes. “Now don’t start that again. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a war going on. This is the best time to be in our business. Everyone needs information. Do you know how much money—”
“That’s just it, Royce. There’s a war on and what am I doing? I’m making a profit off it rather than fighting in it.” Hadrian took another swallow of ale and set the mug back on the table a little too heavily, rattling its brothers. “I’m tired of collecting money for being dishonorable. It’s not how I’m built.”
Royce glanced around. Three men eating a meal looked over briefly and then lost interest.
“They haven’t all been just for money,” Royce pointed out. “Thrace, for example.”
Hadrian displayed a bitter smile. “And look how that turned out. She hired us to save her father. Seen him lately, have you?”
“We were hired to obtain a sword to slay a beast. She got the sword. The beast was slain. We did our job.”
“The man is dead.”
“And Thrace, who was nothing but a poor farm girl, is now empress. If only all our jobs ended so well for our clients.”
“You think so, Royce? You really think Thrace is happy? See, I’m thinking she’d rather have her father than the imperial throne, but maybe that’s just me.” Hadrian took another swallow and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
They sat in silence for a moment. Royce watched his friend staring at a distant point beyond focus.
“So you want to fight in this war, is that it?”
“It would be better than sitting on the sidelines like scavengers feeding off the wounded.”
“Okay, so tell me, for which side will you be fighting?”
“Alric’s a good king.”
“Alric? Alric’s a boy still fighting with the ghost of his father. After his defeat at the Galewyr, his nobles look to Count Pickering instead of him. Pickering has his hands full dealing with Alric’s mistakes, like the riots here in Medford. How long before the count tires of Alric’s incompetence and decides Mauvin would be better suited to the throne?”
“Pickering would never turn on Alric,” Hadrian said.
“No? You’ve seen it happen plenty of times before.”
Hadrian remained silent.
“Oh hell, forget about Pickering and Alric. Melengar is already at war with the empire. Have you forgotten who the empress is? If you fought with Alric and he prevailed, how will you feel the day poor Thrace is hanged in the Royal Square in Aquesta? Would that satisfy your need for an honorable cause?”
Hadrian’s face had turned hard, his jaw clenched stiffly.
“There are no honorable causes. There is no good or evil. Evil is only what we call those who oppose us.”
Royce took out his dagger and drove it into the table, where it stood upright. “Look at the blade. Is it bright or dark?”
Hadrian narrowed his eyes suspiciously. The brilliant surface of Alverstone was dazzling as it reflected the candlelight. “Bright.”
Royce nodded.
“Now move your head over here and look from my perspective.”
Hadrian leaned over, putting his head on the opposite side of the blade, where the shadow made it black as chimney soot.
“It’s the same dagger,” Royce explained, “but from where you sat it was light while I saw it as dark. So who is right?”
“Neither of us,” Hadrian said.
“No,” Royce said. “That’s the mistake people always make, and they make it because they can’t grasp the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That we’re both right. One truth doesn’t refute another. Truth doesn’t lie in the object, but in how we see it.”
Hadrian looked at the dagger, then back at Royce.
“There are times when you are brilliant, Royce, and then there are times when I haven’t a clue as to what you’re babbling about.”
Royce’s expression turned to one of frustration as he pulled his dagger from the table and sat back down. “In the twelve years we’ve been together, I’ve never once asked you to do anything I wouldn’t do, or didn’t do with you. I’ve never lied or misled you. I’ve never abandoned or betrayed you. Name a single noble you even suspect you could say the same about twelve years from now.”