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Pietro spread his hands. Not much to say to that. It was obviously true.
Finally, Harlo went on. “If not to see me again, why did you return to Corcannon?”
Pietro certainly wasn’t going to give the answer he’d given Stollo. He certainly wasn’t going to talk about tremors in the ground and what might happen if the continent tried to shake itself apart. “I’m still trying to work that out for myself.”
“I looked for you, you know. It was months before I was convinced that you had deserted the city altogether.”
“I left the next day.”
Harlo went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Of course, I feared the worst. I thought—I had the men check—any corpse that showed up in an alley or a morgue, I made sure it wasn’t you. For a whole year, Pietro.”
Pietro wondered if he was supposed to feel sorry for Harlo and his deep grief or if he was supposed to be moved by the level of devotion that implied. “Doesn’t Cordelan teach us that we should be at peace in our souls before we embark on the journey toward death?” he asked. “I am so far from being at peace that I will doubtless live forever.”
Harlo’s sorrowful expression looked entirely genuine. “I could not believe you would hurt me that way,” he said softly. “I thought you loved me.”
“And I thought you wouldn’t murder children,” Pietro snapped. “I suppose we were both wrong.”
Harlo gripped the table. “I did not murder that boy.”
“I saw you do it.”
“I employed him as a tool to save us all. How can you not understand that?”
“I cannot understand that even a god could require such a sacrifice.”
Harlo gazed at him a moment in silence, his face slowly losing the softness of grief and taking on the hardness of conviction. “You say you have been in Corcannon for a couple of months,” he said. “You must have felt them. The quakes. Have they woken you up at night? Shaken you off your feet as you were walking down the road? Have you thought, ‘How strong was that one? Has it knocked over a few buildings? Compromised the gridway?’ Have you wondered, ‘When will the next one come? Will it be even more powerful?’ Have you asked yourself, ‘How can I make the tremors stop before the whole city tumbles to the ground—before the continent itself is ripped into pieces?’ Have you once asked those questions of yourself?”
Pietro didn’t respond. But he had, of course, and Harlo could see the answer in his eyes. The high divine leaned closer.
“I ask myself those questions every day. I am the voice of the god, the human incarnation of his will. And I do not believe he wants to destroy the very land that he so painstakingly put together. Which means he wants me to save it in any way possible.”
Pietro’s breath was coming shallowly, but he was trying to maintain a relaxed pose, a slightly bored attitude. “And have any ways presented themselves to you?”
Harlo shook his head, and now his face showed real distress. “There is only the one girl, and we cannot forfeit her. We would mortgage the future to pay for the present.”
“What a reversal of policy! You allow someone to live!”
“I would sacrifice the one life to save millions of others, except we eventually would be worse off than before.”
“Then abandon your policy of secrecy,” Pietro suggested. “Announce to the whole city the danger that lies ahead, and urge everyone to flee now and rebuild their lives elsewhere.”
Harlo leaned forward again and spoke with bitter intensity. “Move where? Rebuild what? Don’t you understand, Pietro, it is not just the city that will be destroyed? The entire continent was knit together by the god’s hands. If one part of it unravels, the whole place falls to pieces. Chibain separates from Marata, the islands detach and float away. The world is remade.”
“The world was remade once when the god stitched it together,” Pietro said stubbornly. “Why not let it return to its former state?” He flung a hand out as if pointing. “There are lands far beyond our western border where people appear to live happily and well. The Zessin people trade with them all the time.”
Harlo nodded, but he wore a sardonic expression. “Oh yes. Thousands of people living on hundreds of islands, none of them bigger than thirty square miles. Not one of them with a society as rich and sophisticated as ours. Not one of them with our industry or our culture. Their small size constrains their progress, Pietro. But the godenabledus. He left us with technological gifts that we still don’t entirely understand. If this land falls apart, you will see our civilization fade in a generation.”
“You don’t know that.”
Harlo cut him off. “But before that,” he said, “you will see destruction on a scale you have not imagined. Have you ever sailed the eastern seas? Visited the ruined lands?”
“No.”
“Well, I have. Years ago, when I was a young priest with grand ambitions. I had some of these very same conversations with the high divine of the time. He thought that I might someday rise in the ranks and take up his own office, and he believed it was essential that I understand how very serious his responsibilities were. He hired a ship and sent me out to tour those broken islands. Dozens of them. Some of them no bigger than the Quatrefoil itself. All of them—” He waved a hand. “Lifeless. Black. Beaches like melted stone.”
“What does that have to do with—”
Harlo’s frame was practically vibrating with intensity. “That was thefirstcontinent that Cordelan attempted to sew together from many small pieces. Did you know that? No? Very few people do. But something went wrong—we can only guess what—and the land tore itself apart. Leaving absolute destruction in its wake.”
