‘I can’t answer you, Tirilen,’ he said almost angrily, looking at her. This time it was she who turned from his pain. ‘When all talk with a foe has failed, you find yourself trapped on the finest edge.’ His voice rose as if he were justifying some old mistake. ‘If you wait until you’re attacked, how do you answer to your own people, dead and maimed through your inaction? Yet how can you justify attacking first? That’s why violence is a bad thing, Tirilen. It has no point of true balance. It’s a demented flux in the order of things, the antithesis of harmony. It destroys in moments things that have taken years to build. People, buildings, things... trust, faith... everything.’
As suddenly as it had come, his brief passion waned, but a remnant of it swirled around inside him irritably as if
