He did hate to be the only one who thought there could be truth in what the men of power were telling him. Pathacles, as Ithacles had pointed out, was not in the business of creating plans that failed. Or he hadn't been, before one of his plans had failed and he'd been killed. But Alvon was not describing a failure. Nothing said that the dead officers were not meant to die, and that the impersonations were not meant to fail. When you were dealing with someone who planned on killing a king you couldn't afford to believe they were as pedestrian as you hoped they were. None of which was helping to clear Pathacles' name - but Ithacles wasn't willing to consider the possibility that his dear brother had finally lost all of his marbles. That was an important realization to come to. And not only because Pathacles would never be able to defend himself.
"I told the Prince before," Alvon rounded on Vedette with angry eyes, flashing his rage convincingly. "We do not know that it is true, or that it is not true! We wanted to be sure, damn it!"
The temper that he'd whipped up for Vedette - a temper that he could never display to Ithacles, no matter how close they were - expressed his heart as truly as soft words could have. Alvon did not believe it, either, or at least did not want to believe it. He was in the same boat as them. He'd just moved past the point of blindly protesting that Pathacles would never do such a thing. It must have been a hard road. Skandra wouldn't want to travel it, himself.
Alvon cleared his throat.
"I'm sorry, Captain," he told Vedette with a bow.
"There aren't any answers in that journal," Skandra finally said. "Or you'd have found them by now. What you need is someone alive to tell his story."
The fellow from the tavern. They'd started out that way - so it made sense they should go looking for him now. If only Skandra's head would stop fucking hurting.