love you, and I think I understand your kind better than almost any of my fellows, but in the deeps of my soul I am not one of you. Regret I grasp, and remorse to a lesser degree, but I do not know guilt as your people describe it. For my kind, once a thing is done, it is done. If it was done badly, we might work to correct it, but that is the next thing, not a part of the thing passed. We do not carry the weight of our mistakes in the same way that you do.”
“I don’t blame you for not understanding, Triss. I have done everything I can to avoid understanding it myself. I have a choice that I cannot avoid short of death, and whichever way I choose it will shatter me.”
“I could decide for you,” the Lady said, very quietly.
“What?” I whipped my head up to look at her.
“You say that the decision will unmake you no matter which way you choose. Namara was my friend. I supported her goals if not always her methods. I have lived as long as our race, and there are many weights on my soul. One more will not break me, even one so great as this. You were dear to Namara and she would not have seen you destroy yourself if it were possible to avoid it. In service to our old friendship, I offer myself as a proxy for your fallen goddess. If you ask it of me, I will decide the thing for you. You have but to say the word and I will bear the weight in your stead. . . .”
19
“No.”
One word, and a tiny one at that, but when I spoke it then, it carried the weight of ten thousand dead souls.
“No,” I repeated myself. “I cannot accept your offer, however much I am tempted by it.”
“Why not?” The Lady of Leivas leaned forward a few barely perceptible fractions of an inch.
“Because the responsibility is mine. It has always been mine. Though I didn’t understand it when I killed Ashvik all those years ago, you cannot transfer the responsibility for your actions to another, no matter how much you might wish to. The goddess sent us here and there, telling us to kill this one and spare that one, but she never refused a Blade who asked to retire, and she never used her power to bend us to her will.”
The Lady nodded. “Go on.”
“I could have refused to kill Ashvik. I could have walked away from the order at any time. Every life that I have ended, I have ended. It doesn’t matter that I was raised for the purpose, the core of the credo of the goddess was ever and always that the great and the powerful must be held to account for their actions. Though I am not great, I am among the powerful, and no one else can answer for what I have done.”
“You have said that the choice will unmake you. . . .” said the Lady.
“It will, but I have been unmade before, when the temple fell. I am a weaker man now than I was before my ruin, but also, I think, a better one. I don’t know what will emerge on the other side of this decision, but it will be mine.”
“And if the goddess were resurrected tomorrow and gave you an order one way or the other?”
“I have longed for that with my whole heart, but it’s not possible. Even if it were . . .” I shrugged. “It would change nothing. I would still have to make the choice and own the responsibility. The choice to accept another’s command, even the command of a goddess, does not come with an exemption from my conscience.”
She nodded now. “Very good, child. Very good indeed. You, too, have learned some little of wisdom in the time you have walked under the sun. I think your goddess would have been very proud of that.”
“I . . . thank you.” It hurt my heart to hear that—in a good way, a healing way. “Was this a test?”
“Every choice is a test, child. But you know that. You said it yourself when you said, ‘you cannot transfer the responsibility for your actions to another, no matter how much you might wish to.’ Yes, this was a test. But I am not the judge, you are and always have been.”
I took a deep breath and felt the weight