He took the mug, breathing in the steam, and closed his eyes. Cinnamon tea. His father had always liked cinnamon, had steeped it in his tea as well. Strange, how smell could be a shortcut to memory. He welcomed it now, though, that smell of winter nights and childhood, the smell that had hung on his father's shirts some nights. He could use that anchor.

He took a little sip, opening his eyes again, but looking into the mug rather than at Kaine. She wasn't the only one who was sometimes shy. "If you'd said something before," he said at last, "then we would have relied on you alone. You would have pushed yourself too hard and too fast, and you would still have fallen as you did. Then we would have had an army oncoming, and a Spectre there to kill us besides. Or you would have died, and we would still have lost the war. Jamie would still have died, and so, in all probability, would we." Now he looked up at her, wrapping both hands around the mug. The line of his mouth was soft, but his eyes were almost as piercing as Roland's for a moment. "You didn't start the war. You didn't destroy our walls. You didn't take our lines of defence from us one by one. And you didn't kill Jamie. Farson and the Crimson did."