"Well, if it's just soldiers, then that's fine," I tell Papa. I'm relieved. "Dying is what soldiers are for." Underneath me, the carpet of ants shifts slightly, but Mama soothes them with a change in her tone. She starts singing of the new territories they'll open up with their deaths.

I began to feel that I had not paid enough attention to romances and mummers’ tales, for my companion did not act in ways of ordinary men.  I thought perhaps I remembered hearing it was unwise to question mages and the creatures that lived by the rules of magic.  Surely there were stories enough of the lives of the early Saints that told of strange rewards for stranger customs, though I was not about to compare myself to those great heroes of the war-torn days.