There was silence between them for a long moment, while he thought on what she said. To him it was more than just words in a prophecy. He remembered, quite clearly, the artists who had crafted this tattoo while the temple dedicates prayed. While the ink dried the acolytes had come and flogged his legs, or his face. Anything the artists did not need to inscribe with that vicious ink of theirs. This was not shame he'd endured for some imaginary misdeed. This was torture and shame he'd endured for a crime he truly had committed. Every jab of a needle had been the most painful reminder of that. And when he checked his arms - which were now wrapped in bandages, as the torso had been - the tattoos had not faded. His oaths left no room for compromise on this score. He was cursed, and she did not understand, or she would not... compare.
It should have been Talon. Talon should have ... Eragos visibly shook his head, and blinked.
"What we were, are and will be is a result of what we do," Eragos finally answered her. "He did what he thought was right, and now the rest of us must feel as we feel on the matter."
It was not comforting. It was a stolid disagreement with her assessment of how people were made and what became of them. He should have tried to comfort her. And yet he could not help feeling that... the memories of everything that led to this point were difficult to ignore. Calling for more more public information, more disclosure, so that it was not two secret sides waging a war for the souls of citizens who did not know what was happening. Eragos could not imagine things becoming as they were if this had not been shrouded so deeply in secrecy. She argued against honesty, against truth, and now... she told him that he was a fool to believe what he believed. Or so it felt.
That was not what she meant.
And yet he could not help the feeling that was there; it never reached his eyes, nor his face, but it was there all the same. That Arand would still be alive if not for the games he'd played with the future, and with all of their lives. He'd sent Grees to his death without a word. The fact that Arand had accepted his own death without so much as a murmur of protest did not absolve him. Death did not excuse death. Eragos would never have wanted blood from the High Lord. Just an acknowledgment that his powers had been misused and abused, his decisions had been foolhardy, and ultimately... they might have doomed the Free Cities to civil war or worse.
Lady Vera was in mourning. He could say none of these things to her, and yet they were things he felt deeply. Trusting High Lord Arand to resolve this was a mistake from the beginning. And Eragos resented the man for what he'd done. Eragos withdrew his hand, and used the tips of his fingers to angrily massage his shoulder - just below the stitches. Cruelty was not something that he wanted to possess any longer, and there was no kind way to tell her that her beloved mentor had been as much of a scheming lord as Gavrie was and remained. The work would go on. Only this time, Eragos was not going to wait for someone to come to him looking for a fight. He was going to go and find it, no matter where it took him.
"Nevertheless," Eragos spoke after a moment. "I am sorry, Lady Vera."
A good man did not make Eragos feel so conflicted, did he? A good man's death should be mourned and mourned alone.