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almost beaten to death right outside. He’d won eight decorations, including the Imperial Star with Swords and Oak Leaves. In one battle he lost half of his left arm and most of that side of his face in a blast from a witch ward. He’s in the Bledsoe now. He probably won’t get out alive. Those butchers won’t pay any attention to him. He doesn’t have any money. Go down there and mutually assist him. His name is Brate Trueblood.”
    “But the Bledsoe is a charity hospital, isn’t it?”
    “You didn’t grow up in TunFaire, did you? In this town charity is available only to those who can pay for it.”
    “No. That’s ugly.” Trace seemed genuinely touched. Carter obviously didn’t care but was cooling down. “That’s exactly why we have to band together.”
    “But there’s a problem, Trace. Brate was a real hero and as good a soldier as ever soldiered. Unfortunately, he made one really huge, stupid mistake.”
    My visitors looked at me expectantly.
    Garrett, please! Stop now. The Dead Man seemed almost to despair.
    “He was so stupid he picked an ogre for one of his grandparents.”
    It took them a while to catch on. I watched their eyes narrow and go shifty as they figured it out. Carter was slowest but he was the first to stand up. He told me, “You have the wrong idea.” And, “Trace, we’re wasting our time here.”
    “You’re not wasting your time, Carter,” I said. “I just want you to understand that nothing is black-and-white.” I tried to hold Trace’s eye. He seemed to be mulling my parable. “What did you guys do down there? You were clerks, right? Your uncle got you some safe assignment, right? Trace? Carter? You had an angel, too? So who do you suppose did more to defend and preserve the Karentine Crown? You guys or my ugly quadroon?”
    Carter said, “You really don’t know what’s happening, do you?” And that actually seemed to please him.
    I left my chair, moved to the office doorway. “You aren’t wasting your time, guys. I’m right behind you. I just need to know how to reconcile the Brate Truebloods.”
    Trace started to say something. Carter squeezed his arm.
    In moments those earnest young men were back in the street. Carter, I was convinced, would ignore my story, which was true only in a moral sense anyway. There really is a Brate Trueblood but he was just a small hero and the thugs who jumped him didn’t put him in the hospital. Ogre blood made him hard to hurt. But these two creeps did want Brate in the Bledsoe. Or worse.
    I might have done the devil’s work with Trace, though. He looked like a young man who might, on occasion, actually have a thought.
    I whistled as I bolted the door, blissful in my ignorance.
     
     

8
    That was not one of your more salubrious performances, Garrett. That flake of moral hubris may come back to haunt you.
    “Come on! They’re jerks. Especially the blond one.”
    Their minds did not reflect the prejudice you expect. But such jerks are quite common today. They are aggrieved. They need targets for their frustration. Those two seemed to be fundamentally good men... Yet  —
    “Yet? What?”
    They had no depth. Even a mind as dim as Saucerhead Thorpe’s has its deeps.
    “No kidding? They’re a couple of pretty boys who never worked a day —”
    Not shallow, Garrett. Not that way. Just all surface. Inside. Humans are filled with turmoil. Continuous dark currents collide and roil down deep where you do not see them and do not know them. Always. Even in Mr. Thorpe or Miss Winger. But those two had nothing beneath the fanatic surface. And that fanaticism was not as narrow and blind as is common. They grasped your Trueblood parable. They seemed unable to deal with it only because doing so would not have been in character.
    Well, he’d lost me. Except for the part about being all surface. “That don’t surprise me. I know those guys. I’ve seen a lot of them. They just give up everything and let somebody else do their thinking.