Causes Rune to defect

“She's going to say that Stormtiger is a fool, that he's trying to turn a war against one opponent to a war with three fronts. He'll try to rally everybody, trusting that loyalty will overcome fear. Maybe it will for some people, but most people are cowards. They'll follow the strongest and they'll turn against anyone if it means that they'll be safe. How hard would it be for Purity to tell the gang members you're riding with to shoot you in the back of the head when you're distracted.”

She looked shocked at the idea.

“Enemy action, she'll say, and then the ones who do the deed will be rewarded, but they'll start having accidents of their own. Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”

“They wouldn't...”

“Purge their own of the disloyal? You've read about the Night of Long Knives, haven't you?”

She looked troubled.

“The Fuhrer himself turned against people in his own organization, preventing any dissent and consolidating power. Kaiser had the power and charisma to weld different groups together, but Purity? She wouldn't be able to overlook any disloyalty for fear that people who try to overthrow her.”

“It happened when Kaiser took over from Allfather too,” Rune said quietly. “A few people had to... leave the organization.”

They'd been murdered, she meant. I hadn't known it, but I wasn't surprised.

Every ruler depended on the support of others, which meant that he had to curry their favor. For dictators of banana republics, that meant currying favor with dictators and plutocrats with money. In democracies it meant pandering to voting blocks even if the desires of those blocks were repugnant. It also meant that people who didn't vote in democracies weren't pandered too at all.

It was why Social Security was a sacred cow, while things college students wanted weren't given any heed. The Amish didn't get any gravy, but the Southern Evangelicals got whatever they wanted. The only times children got anything was if parents or other adults who did vote demanded it.

It was why the poor got nothing in dictatorships. They weren't the ones who kept the boss in power, and the more he gave to them, the less he had to give his cronies.

Once the leader had gotten power, though, they often discarded some of the people who had gotten them there, the ones who would be somehow inconvenient later.

“It happened under Kaiser,” I said. “And it'll happen again. If this whole thing doesn't end up working, you're going to have two options.”

“What?”

“Kill Purity and hope that the next guy in line likes you, or get out.”

“Get out?”

“The PRT is corrupt as crap,” I said. I leaned toward her. “You know that they'll take any cape that seems useful, and if they're a villain, they'll scrub their record clean.”

“That's... not true, is it?”

It was.

“You think Shadow Stalker was an angel before she joined up? She carried a crossbow... you don't do that unless you mean to hurt people. Yet now she's the edgy bad ass of the team.”

Rune looked down.

***

Panacea threw up; although she regularly flew with her sister, it seemed that she didn't trust Rune or the fact that it would have been easy to fall off the bed when they'd plummeted a short distance.

“I'm defecting!” Rune said. She turned around to Insight. “That's how you say it, right?”

“She's ready to join the Wards,” Insight said, looking back at Armsmaster, as she awkwardly tried to get out of the hospital bed while avoiding Panacea, who looked like her legs were shaking badly enough that she could barely stand.

From what Emily understood, a great deal of what a social thinker did wasn't just in what they said. It was in body language. Their expressions and the way they moved were all designed to get you to listen to them. They made you believe them, not necessarily through what they said, but in how they said it. You'd find yourself subconsciously believing them even if you knew what they were doing; it would have been harder if you didn't.

***

Knowledge-Grudges