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"He was that good, and that is not even the interesting part." Auren turned his cup without drinking from it. "The settlements loved him. That's the interesting part. Not respected, but loved. He spent his rotations inside the settlement walls instead of walking the perimeter and calling it leadership. He wrote reports that said what was actually happening, which is a thing that does not happen. You have read Colony field reports. Everything is always fine in every report ever filed."

"Everything is always fine," Athena agreed.

"Everything is always fine. Varek's reports said, people are hungry, here is how hungry, here is the number, here is the direction it is moving." He set the cup down. "Three years ago, it got bad. Worse than the histories admit to. Third winter of the shortfall, the settlements running on half rations, the capital's core reserve sitting full, and the policy was capital first. Hold the center, keep the military fed, hand out whatever is left."

"And whatever was left wasn't enough."

"It was never going to be enough. Varek did the math. Three months building a plan to move the surplus without dropping the capital under its own line, and he took it to Boradrith privately, and Boradrith heard him out for an hour and said no."

"Why?"

"Because Boradrith is not a cruel man. He is a frightened one, and he has been frightened for thirty years, and frightened men protect the center." Auren shrugged, and there was no lightness anywhere in it. "He told Varek the capital's stability could not be risked for the periphery. He used that word. Periphery. Varek has apparently never gotten over that word"

"I wouldn't either."

"No, you wouldn't. That is rather the thing about you." He looked at her. "Two months later, at the quarterly review, with three settlement delegates in the room, Varek stood up and called the food policy a monument to cowardice that would be remembered only by the children who starved while the court ate."

Athena let out a breath. "Out loud."

"Out loud. In front of twelve councillors, three delegates, and the D'Karr himself." Auren spread his hands. "Boradrith banished him inside the hour. Rank stripped, quarters cleared, right of entry revoked, permanent, no path to appeal."

"Did anyone speak for him?"

"Gorvath stood up and argued that the challenge was legitimate even if the delivery was inexcusable, and Boradrith overruled him in four words. Two councillors looked uncomfortable about it. Nobody else opened their mouth." He picked the cup back up. "I wasn't there. I was on a trade circuit at the northern settlements. By the time I got back, it was sealed."

"Would you have spoken?"

"I would like to tell you yes."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the honest version of one." His mouth twisted. "I went out to the surface about six weeks after and found him. I told him I would bring him supplies on a rotation. He told me not to come back, because a courtier seen carrying food to an exile stops being useful to anyone, the exile included, and he was right, and I have hated that he was right for two years."

"So you left him out there."

"So I left him out there." He met her eyes without flinching, which she respected more than an apology. "You can put that in whatever column you keep. I have had it in mine for a while."

* * *

They sat with it for a minute. The bioluminescent panels did their slow pulse against the stone.

"Here's what I actually need," Athena said. "The food crisis is fixed. The grain shipments are doing exactly what his plan would have done. He was right, it's proven, it's policy now. So why is he still out there?"

"Because the banishment was never about the food."

"Say the rest of it."

"He humiliated the D'Karr in front of the settlements." Auren said it flat. "Boradrith can survive being wrong about grain. Kings survive being wrong about grain all the time. They call it a revised approach and everyone nods along. What he cannot survive is a room full of delegates watching a commander call him a coward and then watching that commander turn out to be right. Bringing Varek back is not admitting a policy mistake. It's confirming the coward."

"So he stays out there forever because a man's pride can't take the correction."

"Yes."

"That's not justice. That's not even policy. That's a grudge with paperwork."

"Yes," Auren said again. "Welcome to court."

Athena got up, because sitting had stopped working for her, and went to the wall and looked at the photograph of her and Marina without really seeing it.