Eragos wondered if she was being serious, if she really wanted to know what he was planning. It would be out of character for her to concern herself with what he was going to do, and when he was going to do it. Far more likely was that she wanted him to admit that he had no plan. The trouble with that was that Eragos did have a plan. Not just an idea of how to proceed, not just a suggestion for a captain who could not have cared less, but a plan. Eithne did not see it. That did not make it unreal. He was going to ensure that Greenwist paid for every last one of his crimes. But he was not going to do it her way any longer, not when her way meant breaking himself on the organization he loved. There was a way to have both, and he was going to find it if it killed him to do so.
"I don't need a ledger for Greenwist," Eragos told her in the blackest of tones. "All I need is my uniform and the right door to knock on."
"He's a mage," Martine objected. "Maybe you're confident enough to face one of those, but..."
"Was it different when you had your knife on his neck?" Eragos shot back.
They were all approaching the situation with a fundamental lack of belief that law could change things, that order was not just a word that old men used. They all believed that it was decided on streets and by steel, when it was necessary to put faith in the systems of society if they were to work at all. She could mock the courts, she could even mock Agrippa, but in the end they were all instruments of the law's efficacy as much as a judge or Agrippa himself. If they did not believe then they did not pursue it, and if they did not pursue it, then it would never come to be. They would make themselves outlaws because they never gave themselves the chance to be something more than that.
Eragos did not want to be an outlaw.
He did not believe for an instant that he was above the law.
"He has a home in this city, somewhere," Eragos went on when it was clear they were waiting for him. "I'm going to find it, and I'm going to knock in his door with the white on. He'll tell me what I want to know, or I'll remind him that the law affords even someone like myself certain liberties not so easily ignored."
The truth forced Cols to close his eyes, and Geoff to appear as though he were going to be sick.