396 The Cost of War

RETH

"You're telling me," Reth said carefully, "that you would bet the lives of others—that you would bet your own life on the honor of this Lupine who has brought the Tree City to its knees?"

"Yes," Suhle said, hushed, but emphatic. "He is a male, and stubborn in his pride as you are. But his good will continue to outweigh that. He has been slow to see the truth, but he found it on his own. He knows he cannot root out the cancer within his own ranks, and fight yours. He knows he is wrong. He has brought you his own people—he begs you not to kill them, but to deflect them, or take them. But he acknowledged that their deaths—and his own if it were to come—would be on his own hands, because he led them to this point. He called himself blind."