"I will speak to someone," Jeannot says. "The boy—" who's older than him, but that's neither here nor there "—does not seem well, to behave that way."

Traumatized, he would say, if he were in the business of diagnosing people rather than calming them down and telling them the Maker loves them. He looks off in Cade's direction again and shakes his head. Pity. The war between the mages and Templars doesn't strike particularly close to his heart, the loss of a Grand Cleric in a Free Marches hellhole five years ago doesn't stir any serious passions, and his personal preference for having mages and their fireballs residing somewhere they may not light him on fire is tempered to something even milder by the former Divine's sympathy for their situation. But it is sad, how many lives have been ruined.

"In the future it may not be wise to force the issue quite so adamantly, monsieur," he says, "if only for your own safety. And I would say the same to a Templar who insisted on approaching a panicked mage. No cause will be served by a murder in the courtyard."