Disciple of War Disciple of War (Art of the Adept #4) - Michael G. Manning Page 0,51

choices?”

Selene grabbed an extra pillow and pounded his face with it. “You know better than that! Besides, my father wouldn’t have chosen that. If he had heard of it, he would have eradicated the entire family. Then he would have located the grandparents and any other close family members and executed them as well. He’s very big on setting examples.”

“So when you ask if we did the right thing, you’re really asking me whether we should have had them executed?” clarified Will.

“Yes and no,” said Selene. “They did commit a crime, but at the same time I couldn’t help but feel like I understood their motivation.”

Will could still remember the chill that had gripped his heart when he had emerged from the ground and had found Selene collapsed before him with crossbow bolts standing out from her torso. If you had died, I might have made the same choice as your father, whether I felt responsible for their son’s death or not.

She continued, “I didn’t feel like it was right to punish them, but I also wonder if failing to make an example of them might bring us more trouble in the future.”

He shrugged. “Your father is a madman. He can make the choices he does because he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘regret.’ If you need a model, my mom is better for this situation.”

“What would she say?”

“You can’t make your decisions based on what someone else might do. We let them live because it was the right thing to do. If they do something terrible in the future, that’s on them, not us. In other words, base your regrets on your own actions, not what someone else might do. You acted according to your conscience. Everything else is a problem for the future.”

“I still can’t believe you gave them the money, though.”

It was his turn to sigh. After they had finished interrogating Benjamin and Sandra Doster, he had chosen to return the assassin’s fee to them, on the condition that they split it with the family of Lyndsey Travoy. “I didn’t mean to kill those two students, but I still felt bad for them.”

“That was over five and a half thousand gold crowns. We could have used it to help a lot of people.” As usual, her charity came first in her own mind.

“Call it my selfishness,” said Will. “No amount of money is worth their children, but it made me feel better.”

“I still think he was lying,” stated Selene.

“About which part?”

“The sum. He said he received exactly five thousand six hundred and thirty-five gold crowns and that he paid that amount to Arberry to kill you. No one pays such a strange number for an assassination. It was probably an even number, and he kept some of it before paying the remainder to Arberry.”

Will frowned. “Does it matter? I chose to give it back to them.”

“I don’t like liars.”

“But you were fine with me letting them go after they paid to have me killed?”

She exhaled loudly. “I didn’t say it made sense. It’s just how I feel. You let them live and even gave them the money back. If he lied about the exact amount, it annoys me.”

“The real question is who gave them a sack of gold and told them who they should hire. Common folk like the Dosters wouldn’t even know where to go to hire an assassin, much less have such a fortune to spend on it,” said Will.

“That was the only part that made sense to me,” she returned. “Your true enemy saw an opportunity, and he used them to cover his trail. Even though we were able to trace it back to them, they couldn’t tell us who he was.”

“Or she,” added Will.

“I stand corrected; it could have been a he or a she. But whoever it was must have deep pockets if they’re willing to risk five or six thousand gold crowns by leaving them in a package with a note. What if the Dosters had chosen to simply keep the money? Then your enemy would have spent a fortune for nothing.”

“Well, that’s sort of what happened in the end anyway,” said Will with a smirk.

“You know what I mean. They did follow through and pay Arberry to kill you, even if he failed.”

Their conversation trailed off after that, and Will spent an unknown period circling the facts over and over in his mind while he tried to go to sleep. No new ideas came to him. Blake hadn’t