"And now you state your place, before I need ask you as to which side you fight upon," Tavar said. "I will not join a band of traitors. I will not yield before my word. On my honour, I will see the opposition to the crown crushed, and peace restored."
"We both know well what such a peace looked like," Hod said. "It was the peace of a crippled dog, still clinging to life, unable to eat, unable to walk. It was nothing but a grotesquery. Such a peace is better shattered, so that its meat and its bones might become the nutrients for something grander. The old, beyond their time, should not cling to life. Nor should the corrupt, who know themselves to be poisoned."
"If you need say so much in declaring your intentions, you are on the wrong side," Tavar said, batting all of Hod's words aside, with a skilfulness that some, who did not know him as well as Hod, might have found surprising. "I need only state one word as to my loyalty, Minister of Logic, and that is honour."
