Baltasar answered at last, his tone measured, though fatigue weighed beneath it.
"We have already sent him to prison. To kill him would do us no good. It would make him a martyr—and at a time when revolutionary sentiment spreads through every colony, such an act would only provoke more unrest. We have enough to contend with as it is—with the fanatics, and with this man, Carlos."
The room fell silent.
No one offered a reply. It was not agreement, but paralysis. The same indifference—the same quiet detachment—that had brought many of them across the ocean now held them in place. To these men, New Granada had become a problem they no longer wished to solve. They endured it, nothing more, marking time until the next ship might carry them back to Cádiz.
The silence grew heavy, close and oppressive, carrying the faint odor of old parchment and the sweat of uneasy men.
Then, unexpectedly, it was broken.
"If I may, Your Excellencies…"
