Hanno would have to be very careful, to ensure Christophe de Pavanie was alive by the end of this.

Even as half a dozen shouts erupted in the wake of the Mirror Knight’s challenge, the dark-skinned man wondered if he should first have spoken with the other knight alone. No, he decided. That, too, would have been a mistake. It would have been treating Christophe like a sickness to be quarantined instead of comrade whose doubts needed to be allayed. Hanno was no more lord over heroes than heroes were lords over Creation, and though the demands of experience often saw him walk the fine line between stewardship and government he must never cross it willingly.

...

“Silence,” the White Knight said.

The ripple of power in his voice sucked the cacophony out of the room, as if by magic. The Mirror Knight stood ramrod straight, as if the outpouring of anger had been a matter of indifference to him, but the slight hunch to his shoulders spoke otherwise. Still, for all the red colouring his cheeks Christophe did not desist. Pride was the stone around his neck, and now Hanno would have to find a way do ensure it did not end up drowning him. First, however, the venom must be drawn out. The White Knight did not rise to his feet, or react beyond turning his head to properly address the other Named. Christophe watched him with strained eyes, his light brown hair harried.

The angle of his arms ensured the polished bracers he wore on his wrists reflected only a muddled haze.

“Let us avoid misunderstandings,” Hanno calmly said. “What is it that you mean, Christophe, by ‘I will not allow it’?”

“How many of us need to die before you face the truth of what you made us part of?” the Mirror Knight said. “The Exalted Poet was shot in the back by one of the Woe, and who here has said even a word of it?”

...

“Fear, Christophe,” Hanno said, and his voice cut through the room. “That is what I see now. You spoke words, and now you fear them.”

The green-eyed man turned a burning glare towards him.

“You can retract them,” the Ashuran man continued. “Spoken in heat, they can be set aside as the heat fades. Or you can stand by them, if that is your choice. But this pretence that they were not spoken is beneath everyone in this room. Let it end.”

He simply could not leave the venom to linger in the flesh, much as it would be painful to squeeze it out. Else Christophe would leave this room believing that he could keep challenging the powers of the Grand Alliance without consequence, that a Name and a sword made him invincible. He was failing to see the power of the enemies he was making, how even the popular sentiment attached to his fame could turn with the wind. If the Army of Callow and the Firstborn left the fronts over his affronts and it was made known why, how long would it take for every throat from Rhenia to Tenerife to begin howling for the blood of Christophe de Pavanie? There were some who believed that the Black Queen had gone tame, lost her bite, but the White Knight knew better.

There was a saying, in Ashur, that a lioness in her lair was twice as deadly as one in the field.

“I will not allow anyone to kill the Red Axe,” the Mirror Knight said, “not when-”

“That is treason,” the Kingfisher Prince flatly interrupted. “You would be taking up arms against the First Prince and the Highest Assembly, never mind the rest of the Grand Alliance.”

...

“Taking up arms?” Roland quietly said. “No. Taking up arms is for an army, or at least an armed band. When a single man does it, that’s just called committing a crime.”

He’d meant to impress the pointlessness of such a stand, perhaps, but for once the other hero had misread the room. It’d been taken as a challenge instead and Named were taught to answer challenges only one way. Another chair clattered back.

“He would not be alone,” the Blade of Mercy said.

The young man looked both thrilled and terrified, taking a stand with someone he admired yet uncertain as to the consequences. The heat was rising in the room, and even those not all that inclined to agree with Christophe’s arguments would be feeling a strange leaning towards him right now. Adanna, Sidonia and even the Forlorn Paladin looked troubled by the turn things had taken. We are trained to this, Hanno thought. Conditioned. To side with the underdog, the dark horse. Most of us have been in that place, once in our lives, and it calls to us still. This, though, he could and would nip in the bud.

“How,” the White Knight calmly said, “will you prevent the execution of the Red Axe?”

There was a heartbeat of stillness. Hanno deliberately looked at the pommel of the Severance, leaving his gaze to linger.

“Is that how?” he asked. “Will you cut me down, Christophe?”

“I will not kill you,” the Mirror Knight said, “unless you force me to.”

And like that, he lost the room and the story along with it. He was no longer the rebel fighting tyranny: he was a man threatening to kill a comrade to get his way.

“Do you so badly crave to be part of injustice, Hanno of Arwad?” the Mirror Knight said. “They wouldn’t even let me speak with the Red Axe, did you know? Black Queen’s orders. She’s to be butchered in some dark room-”

“After a trial is held,” the White Knight calmly replied. “After I listen to the evidence, determine guilt, pass my sentence and carry it out. Which will be, almost certainly, death. That she killed the Wicked Enchanter and attempted to kill the Kingfisher Prince is not in doubt, it is established fact.”

...

“She was used by the Wandering Bard,” the Mirror Knight said, “as many of us were. And yet Chosen must die for this offence, while the Black Queen will let off her Damned with a slap on the wrist. And these are the rules you would have us heed?”

Hanno cocked his head to the side. There was no point, he thought, in continuing to argue that Catherine had yet to render any judgement and that she would be holding trials over rather different breaches of the Terms besides. Continuing to drown in details would resolve nothing, for the Mirror Knight was not truly looking to debate anything. His fingers were grasping for a stone to throw, not an answer to consider.

“Yes,” Hanno said.

Christophe visibly stalled at the unexpected reply.

“I will pass judgement over the Red Axe, and carry out the sentence,” the White Knight explicitly stated. “In this matter I cannot be swayed or bargained with. It will be done, that is all. Do you now intend to kill me, Christophe? I will not be fighting you, if that is your choice, so strike at your leisure.”

The eyes of every single person in the room went to the Mirror Knight, whose face had gone red. His hand was on the pommel of the sword, but he’d not unsheathed it. Even the Blade of Mercy took a step back form him. Antoine was not the sort of young man to let even admiration overcome a reluctance to kill in cold blood.

“Let us assume you do kill me,” Hanno gently said. “What happens then, do you think? Will the Grand Alliance let the Red Axe go free?”

“It is the representative for the Chosen that would pass sentence over her,” the Mirror Knight harshly said. “Do not now pretend otherwise.”

“And killing me would make you the representative?” Hanno asked.

The dark-haired knight took a step back, as if struck.

“They would have to,” he said, stumbling over the word. “It would be obvious that…”

“You would need the agreement of every constituent crown of the Grand Alliance,” Hanno said. “Given that you believe the Black Queen to be scheming against us, why would she agree?”

The dark-skinned man leaned forward over the table.

“If she refuses,” Hanno asked, “will you kill her too?”

“She’s Damned,” the Mirror Knight defended.

He took a step back anyway. Giving ground it had become impossible to defend. He would feel it, the way the room was turning against him. Even those he had considered to be his own followers, warped as such a thought was to even entertain.

“And if the First Prince refuses?” Hanno continued. “If the Holy Seljun does, after that? What then, Christophe? How many heads will you have to take before no one is left to argue with you?”

“I haven’t killed anyone,” the Mirror Knight said, voice gone faint. “It doesn’t have to be me, the representative. It could be any of us so long as they see what you won’t. What you can’t, anymore.”

The dark-haired knight’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the sword. Hanno did not tense. Why would he? At the end of the day, he simply did not believe that he was facing someone capable of killing an unarmed man in cold blood.

“You are no longer the Sword of Judgement, White Knight,” Christophe de Pavanie said. “The Seraphim have gone silent, you do not speak with their blessing. What sets you apart from any of us now, Hanno of Arwad?”

And there was his mistake, laid bare. The belief that the justice had ever been in Hanno, when it had always been in the Seraphim. Hanno had not become any blinder, by simple virtue of always having been blind.

“What sets us apart,” Hanno of Arwad replied, “is that you are on your feet, with your hand on your sword.”

The Mirror Knight flinched, fingers leaving the hilt of the Severance as if burned. It would be enough, Hanno prayed. Being shown himself in a mirror, bereft of all the little lies people told themselves to soften the edges of the world, it would be enough. Christophe was not a bad man, even at his worse. His mistakes were sculpted by pride and fear, but they rose from a bedrock of good intentions. And if it ended here, if Hanno had correctly walked the line once more, then this could end without any blood being spilled.

- Book 5, Interlude: Epitomes