Page 199 of The Well of Ascension

“This is still my home, Tindwyl,” Elend replied. “Insult me again, and you will find yourself ejected from the premises.”

Tindwyl raised an eyebrow.

Sazed paled. “Lord Venture,” he said quickly, “I don’t think that Tindwyl meant to—”

“It’s all right, Sazed,” Elend said, raising a hand. “She was just testing to see if I had reverted back to my previous state of insultability.”

Tindwyl shrugged. “I have heard reports of your moping through the palace hallways like a lost child.”

“Those reports are true,” Elend said. “But that doesn’t mean that my pride is completely gone.”

“Good,” Tindwyl said, nodding to a chair. “Seat yourself, if you wish.”

Elend nodded, pulling the chair over before the two and sitting. “I need advice.”

“I’ve given you what I can already,” Tindwyl said. “In fact, I’ve perhaps given you too much. My continued presence here makes it seem that I’m taking sides.”

“I’m not king anymore,” Elend said. “Therefore, I have no side. I’m just a man seeking truth.”

Tindwyl smiled. “Ask your questions, then.”

Sazed watched the exchange with obvious interest.

I know,Elend thought,I’m not sure I understand our relationship either.“Here is my problem,” he said. “I lost the throne, essentially, because I wasn’t willing to lie.”

“Explain,” Tindwyl said.

“I had a chance to obscure a piece of the law,” Elend said. “At the last moment, I could have made the Assembly take me as king. Instead, I gave them a bit of information that was true, but which ended up costing me the throne.”

“I’m not surprised,” Tindwyl said.

“I doubted that you would be,” Elend said. “Now, do you think I was foolish to do as I did?”

“Yes.”

Elend nodded.

“But,” Tindwyl said, “that moment isn’t what cost you the throne, Elend Venture. That moment was a small thing, far too simple to credit with your large-scale failure. You lost the throne because you wouldn’t command your armies to secure the city, because you insisted on giving the Assembly too much freedom, and because you don’t employ assassins or other forms of pressure. In short, Elend Venture, you lost the throne because you are a good man.”

Elend shook his head. “Can you not be both a man who follows his conscienceanda good king, then?”

Tindwyl frowned in thought.

“You ask an age-old question, Lord Venture,” Sazed said quietly. “A question that monarchs, priests, and humble men of destiny have always asked. I do not know that there is an answer.”

“Should I have told the lie, Sazed?” Elend asked.

“No,” Sazed said, smiling. “Perhaps another man should have, in your same position. But, a man must be cohesive with himself. You have made your decisions in life, and changing yourself at the last moment—telling this lie—would have been against who you are. It is better for you to have done as you did and lost the throne, I think.”

Tindwyl frowned. “His ideals are nice, Sazed. But what of the people? What if they die because Elend wasn’t capable of controlling his own conscience?”

“I do not wish to argue with you, Tindwyl,” Sazed said. “It is simply my opinion that he chose well. It is his right to follow his conscience, then trust in providence to fill in the holes caused by the conflict between morality and logic.”

Providence.“You mean God,” Elend said.

“I do.”

Elend shook his head. “What is God, Sazed, but a device used by obligators?”

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