Before she could come down off the platform, people began shouting at her. The cooks complained that the hunting parties weren’t bringing back enough fresh meat. The hunters complained that half the barrels of arrows brought from the city were junk, shafts made of green wood and fletched with duck feathers, which was apparently an outrage. The interim guard captain, appointed by Krailash, had some question about guard rotations, which Glory couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The laborers wanted to know if they should go back to the same terazul vines they’d been harvesting yesterday, or move over to a more promising patch on the other side of some particular ruins, with the caveat that if they were supposed to go there, they’d need more guards, not to mention some men to go in and clear out some kind of poisonous bush first. The scouts wanted to know if they should take men to destroy a troop of guardian apes they’d noticed, though they were about half a mile outside the official perimeter, just in case the apes came over to make trouble later. The guard who’d worried she was here to seduce them all wanted to know why he hadn’t seen her around camp before and let her know he had a flask of some fine liquor if she was looking to unwind. And, and, and …
Glory began to rub her temples as a headache started to throb. How did Alaia deal with this? There didn’t seem to be people pounding on her door all the time. Probably Krailash handled a lot of it, and many of these people probably took care of their own damn problems rather than bother the supreme boss, but as far as they were concerned Glory was just a hireling like them, not Family, and thus, not untouchable.
Eventually Glory got them to form an orderly line and ask their questions one at a time, and then she just looked inside their minds to see what they thought the best decision would be, and then simply agreed with those, for the most part-she’d learned long ago that at least half the people who ask questions really just want confirmation that their inclinations are the right way to go.
The guard who wanted to share his liquor was told to come to her wagon after sunset, because even if he was an idiot and a bigot, he had lovely biceps, and she could always make him forget he’d even talked to her afterward. Mind-controlling someone into wanting physical intimacy was a monstrous crime, but wiping the mind of an attractive moron after some consensual fun was just sensible relationship management. Her power had spared her a lot of bad consequences from ill-advised one-night frolics. Shame it wasn’t sparing her from her first horrible foray into leadership.
“It’s hard bossing people around when you don’t want them to know you exist,” Glory complained, dropping into a chair in Alaia’s trailer. The eladrin wizard Quelamia was there, apparently staring at nothing, which probably meant she was doing very important mental work. Glory had never peeked into Quelamia’s mind-wizards were touchy about their secrets, and the fey were hard to read anyway, and okay, Glory had tried once, and Quelamia had some formidable psychic barriers-but she wondered, sometimes, what it was like inside that cool and aloof head. Green and tranquil, quite unlike Glory’s own fiery red and char black thoughts? “Feel free to, you know, jump in and tell people what to do out there in camp any time. I’m not cut out for managing people. At least, not that way. Making people do stuff is one thing. Telling them to do things is a whole different proposition. I don’t like it.”
“Do you believe in evil?” Quelamia said. She didn’t look at Glory, but the psion decided to assume the question was meant for her.
She pointed to her horns. “I’m a tiefling. I’ve got evil in my ancestry. Of course I believe in it. Is this about Zaltys again?”
“But many call their enemies evil,” Quelamia said, “even if they are not so different from themselves. Some would call the Serrats evil. The effects of terazul are often terrible, and without the family’s trade, that poison would be far less widespread. And how many evil creatures consider themselves evil? There are some, certainly-degenerate races and dark gods and undead wizards and ancient dragons that revel in cruelty, but I’m sure many of them don’t actually consider themselves evil so much as superior. More important than anyone else, and willing to do terrible things to further their own interests, no more concerned about the deaths they’d cause than Krailash worries about stepping on ants. Some of those creatures are simply mad. Is madness the same as evil? Are the evil, by definition, also mad? Even when they seem cold, calculating, and sane?”
“Believing you’re more important-more real-than everyone else,” Glory said. “And acting on that belief. That’s a pretty good working definition of evil.”
“Then most thinking creatures are evil, at least sometimes.” Quelamia finally looked at her. “Most beings are selfish. True altruism is the province of rare holy ones.”
“Or the mad,” Glory offered. “There’s a thin line between holy and crazy just like there’s a thin line between evil and crazy.”
“Another question, then. A simpler one: Is it evil to commit evil acts in pursuit of good? Betrayal, murder, lies-are these still crimes if they’re done for a just cause, and if that cause is won?”
“Pretty much every king in the world would say no. Sometimes you have to commit horrors to prevent worse horrors. Every war that’s ever been called a just war operated on those terms.” Glory yawned. Working for a living was exhausting, and she definitely counted managing as working. “Why the philosophical musings?”
“Perhaps the only real evil is that of aberrations,” Quelamia said. “Outsiders from other realms-the Far Realm-creatures that don’t belong here, creatures who poison reality itself by their very nature. Entities which are toxic to nature and rationality and beauty and loyalty and love. Is that possible? That every other thing we call evil is simply a matter of degree, an issue of point of view? But then even aberrations may not be evil inherently-in their own world, they may be perfectly right and proper. It is only the context of their wrongness that makes us call them evil. Can I truly believe that?”
“You lost me,” Glory said. “My moral system is pretty much at the level of: murder, bad. Giving poor people bread, good. And do what you have to do in order to survive, because dead people don’t have the luxury of torturing themselves about whether they’re good or evil.”
“You’re right,” Quelamia said. “There’s something to be said for pragmatism.” She touched Glory’s shoulder, hand as light as a dried leaf. “We do what we must. What more can be expected of us?”
“So, is this about Zaltys? You think we should have gone into the Underdark with Alaia and Krailash? Because I have to admit, I do feel guilty about that, but I think I’d feel even more guilty about letting my brain get eaten by a mind flayer.”
“I made the right choice,” the eladrin said, rising. “I believe that. I must. And you must make peace with yourself about your own choices.” She swept out of the room like a queen taking leave of her court, and Glory had never been more tempted to try to knock down Quelamia’s mental barriers and read her thoughts.
She was a little bit afraid of what she might find out if she dared.
Chapter Nineteen
I can’t believe you convinced me to ride down a waterfall,” Alaia said, wringing icy water from her long hair, drops pattering the corpses of kuo-toa. “And I can’t believe you were right.”
“Going down the waterfall was the obvious path forward,” Krailash said. “There were clear signs that a body had been dragged down the tunnel, and no sign of it being dragged back out again, so where else could it have gone? I can’t be completely certain Zaltys was here.” He rose from his examination of the dead fish creatures. “But these were definitely killed by arrows-not crossbow bolts, but arrows-and the only archer I know of down here is Zaltys. These broken lengths of chain on the ground are from the shackles the derro use on their slaves. I think Zaltys managed to catch up with the derro who took Julen, and saved him. I think these were his chains.”