The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [30]
“We can,” murmured the redhead, so low that no one seemed to hear it except me, although she was across the room from me. My hearing seemed to be getting better, or perhaps I was more alert. Tamra smoldered, but kept it hidden.
I slipped back down onto the brown leather pillow.
The Magister smiled faintly and turned. “Wrynn,” continued the black man implacably, with his eyes turning toward his next victim, “you feel that strength is the answer to all problems, and that, given enough effort, anyone can be strong. Your philosophy would leave infants and the sick to grow—or die—as they could.”
“That’s not true…” Wrynn straightened on the pillow. Her brown-flecked green eyes turned cold.
“Then,” Magister Cassius smiled, “would you explain it for us? Feel free to stand or walk around.”
I watched Tamra, as graceful as a dancer, yet wound with a steel inside that would have dulled the sharpest blade. Her flame-red hair framed a freckled face that almost—almost—looked friendly when she was not speaking. She turned toward me, caught my eyes. I felt like a cold dash of water had been thrown across the room at me, and I looked toward Wrynn.
“Everyone has an obligation to be as strong as they can be. It isn’t right for the strong to have to take care of those who refuse to be strong.” Wrynn hadn’t stood from her cushion, and her hands were clenched into fists. She looked down at the knife sheath at her belt.
“What do you mean by ‘strong’?” asked Cassius in that low rumbling voice.
Wrynn looked at the polished black-oak floor planks, then at Krystal, and finally in the general direction of Myrten, who seemed to shrink further into the corner. Myrten always seemed to put himself in a corner when he could, a corner from where he could watch everything.
The room grew silent.
“You know what I mean. You just play with words.” Wrynn’s voice was harsh.
I agreed with her assessment of Cassius, of all the magisters and masters. All of them played with words, twisting their meanings, hiding more than they revealed.
“Come, now,” Cassius’s voice soothed. “You feel that strength is important. What kind of strength? Is a bully to be admired? Would you despise a small woman who required aid to stop a thief?”
“I don’t admire bullies. I don’t think much of people who invite theft or attacks. And I don’t like thieves.” Each word came forth filled with grit. Wrynn glared at Myrten, who for some reason looked away.
“So you feel order should rest solely upon strength and self-discipline?”
“I know what I feel.” Wrynn glared this time at the magister.
“Fair enough.” Cassius actually chuckled before wiping the smile from his face and turning toward Krystal. “And you, laughing lady? Why do you fail to pay much attention to order? Or to anything?”
Krystal didn’t even look up at Cassius. She giggled and played with her long black hair.
“Krystal…” The booming voice turned cold.
Even I shivered.
Krystal looked at the floor planks. “It…doesn’t help to pay attention. Things happen anyway. Thinking doesn’t stop them.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Wrynn sniffed loudly.
“Then you agree with Wrynn? That violence is the only way in which evil can be stopped?”
“Sometimes.” She shifted her weight and looked at me.
“What do you think, Lerris?”
I wished she hadn’t made that unspoken request, and especially that Cassius hadn’t caught it. I coughed, trying to figure out what Krystal had really meant. “…ummm…at least sometimes it seems like perfectly good people can’t do anything against evil or against accidents…and sometimes”—I recalled the baker—“people seem to be punished or exiled from Recluce just because they don’t meet some unseen or unspoken standard. I guess I see that as unfair, that because they can’t understand or aren’t strong enough, they get punished.”
“Do you think life is basically fair? Or that the Brotherhood has the obligation to be fair to an individual, when that fairness could threaten the safety