“A line oft abused, big brother. As you yourself pointed out in Soliloquies on the First Ten Years.” I’m a coward. This is wrong. Death, for a child? Barely an initiate. Besides, I know how Brother Tawleb is going to answer, now that I think about it.

Brother Tawleb smiles. I’ve heard that when he was a young luxiat, he was renowned for his looks and his wealth. He’d had a luxurious Atashian beard bedecked with gold beads and anointed with myrrh. After her first husband had been killed in the Blood Wars, his mother had been forced to put him in the Magisterium when she remarried, so as not to muddy her new husband’s lines of succession. But Tawleb had still been her favorite, and she showered him with gifts.

He says, “‘Quentin Naheed, first of his cohort, a pupil of the top rank, a disciplined, thoughtful young man. Highly intelligent, probably brilliant, possibly a genius, though he guards his tongue so as not to shame his lesser brothers.’ It’s no mistake I’ve asked you to do this task for me, Quentin. You know how that quote from my treatise ends, don’t you?”

“‘Some men’s abuse of a truth is no excuse for all men to abandon the use of that truth,’” I answer. There is a time for darkness, for secrecy, and for deceit. But most scholars agree that such times lie at the margins: in righteous warfare, for example, where one cannot announce one’s intentions or they will be thwarted; or in the case of protecting the innocent from a sinful authority.

And of course, knowing such scriptural exceptions, every tyrant and liar argues that his case fits those exceptions.

But this is murder.

“All are brothers under the light, big brother,” I say. “Is this boy not to be offered a chance to repent for his misdeeds? Surely he is not lost to the night at so young an age?” He is only six years younger than I. If I were to have gone to face judgment at that age … I can’t bear to think of it. No innocent, I. But I am more of a sinner than many of my brothers.

“Your instincts are good, Quentin, and your heart is full of mercy. The brothers were right about you. Not just intelligence, but a heart after Orholam’s own,” Brother Tawleb says.

My heart pounds. The brothers have been talking about me? Complimenting me in such high terms? The reference is to one of the greatest saints in all scripture. My heart swells, followed by a horrible thought: am I taking a compliment and turning it to arrogance? Arrogance is a blindness we choose.

“It isn’t arrogance to recognize the truth, Quentin.” That Big Brother Tawleb is calling me by my name is itself a compliment I’m not worthy of.

“All are equal under the light,” I manage.

“A foundational truth indeed,” he says. “And one that must be handled carefully. When Orholam looks down on us as from the height of the sun itself, the difference between a dwarf and a giant is insignificant. The difference between your intellect and an idiot’s is puny when compared to the infinite intelligence which is Orholam’s. But though we walk daily with Orholam and for him, we walk among men, and the difference between giants and dwarfs matters greatly to us indeed, though it doesn’t matter to Orholam—and oughtn’t matter to us—in terms of justice and mercy and righteousness. This is another truth easily abused. Just as all sins are one before Orholam, but we differentiate between a whitewashed lie and a murder because here one undeniably has worse effects. It is not sin to recognize what is true, little brother. Indeed, it is a sin to choose not to see it. So that you are gratified by a truth being recognized by others that you have long known yourself, but have not wanted to say aloud, is no sin.”

“But I will be proud. I know my heart, and it is deceptive,” I say. I’m not comfortable speaking of these things. I will hoard these compliments like a miser and revel in them in the dark hours of the night. I will sneer at my brothers who flub their memorization, hold my sisters in contempt for saying a quote is from Strong’s Commentary when it was from Strang’s.

“That you have been given a great intellect is not something to be proud of; it is a burden to bear. It is muscle to be used in lifting greater weights than others can lift. That, little brother, that is why I’m trusting you with this. It is a heavy burden, I know. And this is why I don’t give it to some sycophant who would obey simply because of who I am. Your heart is true, your mind is good, and now we will see about your will. We are grooming you to lead, Quentin; I need not keep that fact in darkness. But you must show yourself worthy of it, in will and action.”

I’ve always known that I’m smarter than my brothers, but I’ve always called that knowledge sin. Always focused on the similarities, and the triviality of the differences, even when I would choose not to volunteer the answer to a difficult question simply so my brothers could have a chance to have their own moment in the light of a tutor’s approval.

My humility was false. It is a lie, isn’t it?

This much is true. I hear the ring of truth in those words, but many shadows hide behind light, and the best lies are those seasoned liberally with truth: salt covering the flavor of rotten meat.

These are not things a luxiat should do.

I realize suddenly that this conversation isn’t merely difficult; it’s dangerous. One does not blithely carry secret death sentences for others. If I say no to this assignment, or threaten to tell others in the Magisterium about it …

Dear Orholam, what would Brother Tawleb do?

More specifically, what would he do to me?

And there a light dawns. I’m not only the first of my peers; I’m also an orphan, and so studious that I have few friends. If I were to disappear, who would avenge me? The brothers and sisters of the High Magisterium have total control over the just-sworn luxiats like me. He could announce that he had sent me to the reaches of Tyrea on a secret mission, and no one would ever ask about me again.

I’m not a fearful creature. Those who live seeking the light will spend eternity in the light. There is little that can be taken from me that I don’t already despise.

“You have had a thought,” Brother Tawleb says. He is still a handsome man, though too lean of face, with a few pockmarks that a beard would have covered. A year into his full vows, he’d fasted for forty days, sprinkling ashes in his hair, and had shorn his beard, had given away all his belongings to the poor, and renounced the privileges of his birth and wealth. Paradoxically, that had only cemented in everyone’s mind his birth and wealth, and wedded to it an air of deep righteousness. His rise in the Magisterium after that had been swift.

Had that been on purpose?

No, no, please no. Such a scheme was worthy of one of the kings of old. A brilliant maneuver by one angling for power. Such should not be the way of the Magisterium. Surely, so close to the light, there should be no darkness.

And yet the heaviness in my heart, my inner light itself, tells me the truth of this. I have mentally elevated my brothers, have honored them as more than men, better than men. That fawning adoration is blindness, too. But my heart despairs to see the truth.

I say, “Many thoughts, and some contradictory. I can see what you meant by a heavy weight, big brother.” It is true, but not the truth he thinks it is.

He chuckles mirthlessly.

“I will trust you,” I say, lying to a brother for the first time in six years. “But I ask that you trust me, too.”