"Fault lies in one place; with him weak enough to lay blame." Like Roland, Alain recited the words almost by rote, smiling a little sadly as he said them. "If he were here, I do believe he and Bert would have come to blows by now."

What he didn't say was that, for Bert, that would likely come as a relief. Alain knew his friends. Roland dealt with grief in quietness and in ever fiercer devotion to what he had left, but Bert was of a fierier breed. What he needed was to rage and hate and strike out, and that he wasn't doing that concerned Alain more than anything else.

But he said none of that. That was Bert's own business. Instead, he just took another long breath of the cinnamon-scented steam, and sighed. "Be careful when you go to find him. A gunslinger on edge is a dangerous thing."