"At home," he observes, "virtue would advance a priest of the god who claims virtue in the eyes of his templemates, and talent and diligence could lead him to a post of influence and honor. But it was courage and love, and them alone, that could make a Knight--which is," he adds, "I think the closest idea we had to what you and Iago-san would call a prophet or a saint--even of the harshest, even cruelest of men or of a scoundrel. And it my order, it was the same; that talent could advance you in the world, and that, well, a carefully balanced exercise of justice with mercy and of pragmatism with morality could keep you out of trouble. But for us, too, the work could be done by those who could do the work; quite a different matter from the glories a person can find in a true vocation."
Xel stares off thoughtfully for a long moment, then meets his eyes squarely. "It's convenient, isn't it? That, if we must be in this place, it gives us its language so that we understand it nearly as natives, with facility. But I think that in Borgia-kun's case, the way we feel we understand the words naturally serves him ill, when the assumptions of the two worlds he's known quietly clash."