"I'm not asking you to agree. I'm asking for your help."
Hasna's face, streaked with blood - not hers - and ash as it was could not conceal the depth of her feeling on this subject. In a way Eragos sympathized, but only so far. He felt worst of all when he realized she'd been weeping. Not for Eithne, or for the Grey Rider, but for those people. All of them. What did it say about him that he'd not yet shed a single tear for their mass grave? The fire no longer burned that he could see, but all that remained was a smoldering ruin still issuing forth smoke into the sky. Eragos wanted to know why it was still persisting in that. Chances were, he would never know. Chances were, he would never want to know. Chances were, the knowing of it would break him, and his face would be just as tear-streaked as Hasna's face was in that very moment.
He couldn't afford to weep.
"You want me to cover up a crime, and for the sake of a girl that we can't rely on in any case, since she can't be bothered to arrest people instead of butchering them."
The heat in her eyes was not just meant for Eithne. Eragos wished, not for the first time, that he'd sent someone else to confront Sarta. It was never in his mind to kill the man. It was never in his mind to kill the man and all of his guards in the street. It was ... there were a great many things that were never in his mind, but what was done, was done. Hasna could at least see a difference between armed confrontation and cold-blooded slaughter. Even if Eithne did not see the difference, or did not care to. Eragos didn't know what other choices they had. Admitting what she'd done when there was no one to demand justice but the lone prisoner they'd caught in the act of destroying a people, he did not think of it so poorly as she did. What was right. Eragos wanted to do what was right. He did.
It was just hard to know what that was.
"I'm not asking you to lie. I'm asking you to be silent until she makes up her own mind."
"We let people decide their own punishment now?"
"If I had listened to the Captain, there's a good chance that you'd be dead."
"If you want credit for saving my life, boy, you're going to have to earn it."
"Please."
"Fine."
"Thank you."
There was nothing else to say, and ordinarily he would have been glad of the happy accident another person's approach provided. Except the person was Eithne. Hasna stiffened, only noticeable to someone as close as Eragos. For his part the former Dragon Knight eyed the woman warily. She seemed different somehow. Lighter in a way that he couldn't describe. Eragos did not want to know what she'd done to feel that lightness of step in her bones. He also didn't want to know what would become of them both when Agrippa was done. Most importantly, he wanted no more sugared words from her. That choice had been made a long time ago, for both of them, and in the orange-cut square of cottages at Oisea their decision had been blessed by the gods. There was no going back now.
Not now.
"That," Eragos replied instead of answering. "Belongs to Vargis."