He could better understand her desire to test herself and discover what she wanted from life than he did her insistence on being a spy when Sunjata already had agents and Loren was already in place, higher up and closer to the seat of power than Maea was likely to come anytime soon. It was that focus on her desires and her personal questions that had softened him, rather than the doubling down on doing something that felt redundant.
It hadn't really occurred to him at first that she might have been thinking that the Loreseekers wouldn't allow people back. She'd already been allowed back once before, after all, after her most recent disappearance.
Her question earned a raised brow and he smiled a little at it. "I can make an exception and not allow it, if you'd prefer?" he teased gently. "But people can diverge from the path I have set for this guild, too. You can go out and try other guilds, other groups, and find if they suit you better. Some organizations we are allied with and work well with - the Healer's College and the Artisan's, for example - but Zariah..." he sighed and shook his head, collecting his thoughts to answer the question she had posed.
"As long as you are studying with her she will view you as her pawn, at best a useful ally, and others will as well. Once you are no longer at her side and under her tutelage - her command - you lose that connection to her... just as, if you aren't a Loreseeker when you go to her, you lose the connection to me, and any grudges she might still hide or hold shouldn't fall on you, either. If you go to her and study and decide that you prefer her tutelage and her view of mages, then you may choose to stay with her, and coming back to the Loreseekers would be a moot point. If, however, you decide that you don't agree with her once you have gotten to know her better, why wouldn't you be able to come back here once you've broken ranks with her and rejected her way of thinking?"
He smiled wryly, tilting his head in his foxy way at her. "She might not care about the Loreseekers anymore. Ideally, that will be the case. But just as there will be consequences to my actions in this, these are consequences to her actions and what she did. She crossed a line, and I will admit that I am only human," his lips twisted in a wry, painful smile as Safrin's words came back to him, "and I, too, am flawed. I also hold grudges, and this is one of them." He paused to pour the tea, offering the steaming cup to Maea and collecting his own. "But I understand that you don't know her. You weren't here for her rule, and all of these are just abstract stories to you. I've been thinking about what you said last time, and... I see that you need to find out for yourself what she can teach and what she's really like. Once you've learned what those of us who were here last year did, I hope you'll choose to come back to the Loreseekers... but you are the only one who can decide what's best for you, now and in the future."
It hadn't really occurred to him at first that she might have been thinking that the Loreseekers wouldn't allow people back. She'd already been allowed back once before, after all, after her most recent disappearance.
Her question earned a raised brow and he smiled a little at it. "I can make an exception and not allow it, if you'd prefer?" he teased gently. "But people can diverge from the path I have set for this guild, too. You can go out and try other guilds, other groups, and find if they suit you better. Some organizations we are allied with and work well with - the Healer's College and the Artisan's, for example - but Zariah..." he sighed and shook his head, collecting his thoughts to answer the question she had posed.
"As long as you are studying with her she will view you as her pawn, at best a useful ally, and others will as well. Once you are no longer at her side and under her tutelage - her command - you lose that connection to her... just as, if you aren't a Loreseeker when you go to her, you lose the connection to me, and any grudges she might still hide or hold shouldn't fall on you, either. If you go to her and study and decide that you prefer her tutelage and her view of mages, then you may choose to stay with her, and coming back to the Loreseekers would be a moot point. If, however, you decide that you don't agree with her once you have gotten to know her better, why wouldn't you be able to come back here once you've broken ranks with her and rejected her way of thinking?"
He smiled wryly, tilting his head in his foxy way at her. "She might not care about the Loreseekers anymore. Ideally, that will be the case. But just as there will be consequences to my actions in this, these are consequences to her actions and what she did. She crossed a line, and I will admit that I am only human," his lips twisted in a wry, painful smile as Safrin's words came back to him, "and I, too, am flawed. I also hold grudges, and this is one of them." He paused to pour the tea, offering the steaming cup to Maea and collecting his own. "But I understand that you don't know her. You weren't here for her rule, and all of these are just abstract stories to you. I've been thinking about what you said last time, and... I see that you need to find out for yourself what she can teach and what she's really like. Once you've learned what those of us who were here last year did, I hope you'll choose to come back to the Loreseekers... but you are the only one who can decide what's best for you, now and in the future."
