"Do you?" Breck pressed, unconvinced. "Because eleven years of loyalty to the Hand of the Nameless One doesn't simply vanish because tonight went badly for you. What happens when you're back in that fortress, surrounded by everything familiar, and Varek offers you a way to make tonight's failure disappear? What happens when the fear that got you talking tonight fades, and the old loyalty creeps back in?""Then the bone ensures it doesn't matter what I feel in that moment," Alfred said evenly. "That's precisely the point, isn't it? You're not asking me to trust my own future conscience. You're asking me to bind myself to something that doesn't care what excuses I invent later. If I'm lying to you right now, about wanting out, about resenting what Varek was willing to spend tonight — the bone will find that lie eventually, and I'll pay for it regardless of what I tell myself in the meantime."Cael Dross studied him for a long moment, arms crossed, weighing the man's words against eleven