The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,234

to leave if things change.”

“But the same work gets done?”

“I daresay that more work gets done in the good master’s house. Slaves have ways of letting their will be felt.”

“And yet you ask that Orholam be the kind of master who keeps His slaves as slaves forever and calls it love.”

Quentin smiled, and she felt like she’d fallen into the kindliest trap ever. Despite Quentin’s gentle demeanor, Teia felt like she’d been slapped.

“What? No.” Teia shook her head. “Look, I hear you. But that doesn’t close the gap for me. Sure, blame war on men. There’s evil in my own heart. I fight it all the time. But . . . floods and cancer and famines? Why would there have to be those for us to have freedom? Why would that be the consequence of our evil choices? I don’t get it. If Orholam made the whole system, He should have made it . . . I dunno. Better.”

Quentin said, “There are those who claim that as men’s rejection of Orholam’s will for us has corrupted our very nature, so, too, those elohim who rebelled have corrupted the natural world. But I don’t know. Personally, I think the proper response to those who’ve suffered a tragedy is not to teach them but to grieve with them. I’ve asked many times, and angrily, would it have upset some vast eternal plan if my father hadn’t had a seizure and drowned while bathing me in the river when I was four years old? Why did our dog Red pull me out but not go back that time for my father, whom he’d saved from his fits before?”

And suddenly, Quentin was too overcome with emotion to speak.

It seemed to surprise him even more than it did her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “I haven’t told that story.”

Teia got the idea that he meant ever, that he’d never told that story to anyone.

He dashed tears from his eyes and tried to smile to smooth it over. “I guess I can choose to be angry at that dog, or angry at Orholam for that day, or at Orholam for my father having the falling sickness in the first place. Or I can be grateful that He made dogs to love us and that Red saved my father from the fire and the waves four times before that day so that I might even be born, and I can be grateful that that beautiful animal saved me that day.

“In the face of life’s black mysteries, answers feel barren. All I know is that I can only choose my attitude. The mysteries aren’t thereby untangled, but when I choose gratitude, I see life flower. When I paint as if my art has meaning, not just for today but also for eternity, it doesn’t make the aches go away, but I’ve come to trust that my master will use my pain for a purpose.”

She saw the beauty in that way of seeing things. But it looked so far away from her vantage. She said, “You’ve got a lot of faith.” But then, that’s why you’re a luxiat, she thought.

“No. I had a profoundly diseased set of beliefs—so diseased they led me to murdering a girl—and now I have a pretty finely attuned sense for what diseased beliefs look like. And the truth is, you don’t need finely attuned senses to see them. You can judge a faith by the fruit it bears. When you see someone bitter with the world, ask yourself what they believe.”

“And does that apply to me?” she asked. She was going for irony, but she was afraid her own words were pure bitterness.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“Adrasteia, I believe you walk attended by the servants of the Most Holy. This is His work, His war, and He will not abandon you in your need. When you choose to do the task for which the maker made you, when you know yourself free, but you come back to the master’s house to work anyway, you can excel in ways that others could never imagine. And you are excelling, even if you don’t see it.”

“I guess me excelling means nobody sees me, right? Especially the immortals. Well, at least the one.”

She’d told Quentin about her dream about Abaddon. He’d blanched with fear but hadn’t been very helpful in giving her anything solid about the creature. Too many contradictory claims in the texts, he said, many of them probably planted by the evil one