The general public surrounding her ignored this sally, however one responded wryly, “We do know you’re Serenthuar-trained.”

Acquired one. That was a begin.

“Sure,” Liris agreed simply, “which is how you already know I’ve by no means been anyplace, since you’d have identified about it. I do after all know that your authorities is filled with extra corrupt shitheads than is even commonplace for a authorities—“ Snorts from two of her captors. ”—however I believed you had been freedom fighters.”

“We’re,” the identical individual replied mildly.

“Working for demons?” Liris continued calmly, like this was an amusing mental train and never of profound significance. “Taking orders from a international caster? How do you work that ends with you having extra freedom and never much less?”

They stated, “Once we attain the tip of journeys and are known as to witness, the stability of our souls could also be decided. However not earlier than.”

The cadence was practiced. This was memorized—and, in truth, a passage Liris thought she acknowledged. The dialect was completely different, however that appeared like an previous holy ebook.

“Are you a priest?” she requested in some shock.

They smiled. “You don’t assume an individual of religion is usually a insurgent?”

“You might be solely the second priest of my acquaintance,” Liris stated, “but when the present pattern continues, I should start assuming that every one monks should be within the enterprise of undermining the highly effective for the sake of their fees.”

She’d been aiming for fun there, however the priest nodded thoughtfully. “There may be some reality to that, I believe. At the very least amongst these of us dedicated to serving faithfully, be that our gods or our callings or our flocks. In Theiraos, the federal government is unwilling to bear any checks or challenges in any respect. You aren’t more likely to meet many monks right here, however these of us who stay are all rebels of necessity.”

Far simpler for an individual beneath duress to betray their religion than to maintain it.

The priest was ready expectantly for a response, and eventually Liris stated, “I perceive each side of that dilemma higher than I’d like. But it surely appears to me that very dedication ought to make you extra proof against demons, not much less, so clearly I don’t perceive one thing.”

“Ah.” The priest nodded. “Serenthuar should do most of its coaching with books. I think about what you’re lacking is the consideration of individuals’s lives. Not in a distant, top-down view of numbers, however what it means to dwell.”

Liris hadn’t actually anticipated them to have a solution to that.

She closed her eyes; breathed. Opened them: listened.

“Earlier than the Sundering,” they stated, “Theiraos was, geographically, a lot bigger. As had been most realms. We had miles of coast alongside an ocean. The work that survive from these days will break your coronary heart with the clear fantastic thing about them, notably contrasted with the viscous residue that coats anybody who passes by means of our cities now. And people cities are the one method most individuals can dwell all of it.”

“I’m from Serenthuar,” Liris stated impatiently. “You don’t must persuade me that the Sundering had penalties. However Theiraos, like each different realm that has ever existed, had unhealthy governments earlier than that, too.”

“So it did,” the priest stated. “So it could once more. However on this age, we’re unprecedentedly constrained by our borders. When guarding a single portal is all it takes to entice your residents, we too simply turn out to be hostages. The very land that sustained us has been sundered from us. In any age, as you say, there has all the time been issue, injustice. However as soon as, we weren’t constrained in these methods. Folks had extra choices. They may go away. They may attempt their hand at different methods of residing and doing and being.”

“Might they really? What was as soon as an accident of geographical constraint is now an accident of magical constraint,” Liris identified. “Redistributed otherwise, I grant you, however it was by no means truthful to start with.”

“However what if it might be?”

That wasn’t the priest. Liris glanced within the different path, the place Chaeheen had shouldered in amongst her guard-circle.

“What if,” the priest stated softly, “we might save all our individuals on this lifetime from the cages they’re confined in? What if we might give them not all the alternatives on the earth, however extra of them, freer of constraints? Is that an concept you’ll be able to perceive?”

Liris’ mouth opened; shut.

“Your drawback,” the chief stated fervently, snapping Liris’ spell pad closed, “is that you simply dream too small. On our present path, the rebels will fail, and Theiraos will stamp out its personal individuals’s spirits for generations. We have now to be keen to take daring motion, or we’ll fail our individuals. We have now to be keen to dream of a brand new and higher world with a purpose to create it.”

Liris understood that Jadrhun hadn’t needed to work to persuade these individuals in any respect. They’d finished the work for him.

“Some dangers,” she stated, “are value taking. And a few prices are too excessive.”

Chaeheen’s passionate expression closed. “And also you don’t get to resolve that for us.” She jerked her head on the priest. “Cease speaking to her now. She received’t see.”

The terrible half was, she did. They believed they had been as proper as Liris did, that they had been combating to avoid wasting lives. Liris understood now how they remained on completely different sides, and he or she didn’t know bridge that.

Or moderately, she would possibly, and Chaeheen did too, which was why she’d simply shut the priest down.

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