The next page held what some would have called damning. He tugged the metal divider out of the way so they could read it clearly.
Since that brutal march in the snow my thoughts come back to only one thing. I killed rebels who fought like beggars. Women watched with fear in their eyes as I took their men from them. And I could not help but ask myself if this was the work of a knight. Traitors or no, rebels or no, they were men who were starving and robbed of their pensions by allegations and rumor instead of truth and law. My king gave justice to men who rioted today, by my hand, yet it was I who wept hardest when we returned to headquarters.
While I wept, someone thought to slice a ham for my dinner. Half a loaf of bread - crusty mountain bread, the sort that always makes my mouth water though I have no use for bread. Turnips and potatoes piled as high as a man could want them. I could have ended this skirmish without bloodshed if my cooks had prepared a meal for the rebels. We could have talked as men.
Instead, I slaughtered them as handily as the butcher took the pig.
I have no justice left in my heart. The duty that I perform now is only one of servitude. I am as much a slave to my king as a boy to his love.
This, I despise most of all.
"Five men have been arrested for impersonating soldiers," Alvon said in a soft voice. "Two others for killing officers - we assume with the intent to impersonate, though we have no proof. This latest tactic of turning the guard away from their faith is new. The men who came before all wore his colors, and his name was the one on their lips."
Skandra didn't point out that it could be a smear attempt. Partially because he didn't believe it. Flattery would get you nowhere, and neither would framing a dead prince for a plot he could not have taken part in. If you wanted to gain political ground, you framed the living prince for such a thing. His eyes shot back to Alvon without thinking about what he was doing, or what it meant. Alvon had told a half-truth then. They wanted to try and clear Pathacles before they told Ithacles anything, of course. But they also wanted to make sure that Ithacles was not somehow involved. Not somehow cultivating the seed that his brother had planted.
Reading these pages, sick as it was, Skandra thought he could understand.
"You have colors and a dead man's diary," Skandra finally spoke into the silence. "If he lost the faith, I don't see how anyone could blame him."
"Do not speak," said Alvon, with anger tightly reined. "Of what you do not know. Master Tyullis."
Was it possible? Was it possible that he'd organized something like this before his death and it was only just now being carried out? That had happened long enough ago that Skandra had never met the fellow. And if Alvon believed... if Lethe believed... it would be hard to say or do anything that would convince them. But it made as much sense as it did not.