Caldris looked at him.
At the settlement behind him.
At the wall and the memorial field's edge and the morning smoke.
He thought about the notation in his third journal. The demon lord who walks to five hundred sixty markers every morning before the settlement wakes. It's private. A weight.
"If I turn back," Caldris said, "the Church's credibility in this region is significantly damaged."
"Yes," Satou said. "That's the cost."
"What's the cost of advancing."
Satou looked at him.
"Different kind of damage," he said. "The kind that's harder to write up as anything but what it is."
Caldris heard this.
'He means they'll lose,' he thought. 'He's telling me directly. Not threateningly. As information.'
'The most methodical man Cael ever knew,' he thought. 'That's what the report said. Cael Ashvale. Seven years. Seven intelligence files. The year seven mission that took him to Aldenmere.'
