We all did. But Alphinaud — his father had disowned him and his sister over their differences. Claimed he was doing it for their sakes, despite refusing to listen to their feelings. So standing up to him wasn't just a matter of winning the moral debate, for Alphinaud — it was about being heard by his own father. As if what we were doing wasn't reckless and strenuous enough already.

[He'll be after your seat on the Forum next, Estinien had taunted the old man, and gods know Alphinaud has earned it by now. Not just by hereditary right or scholarly aptitude — he's been out in the real world, gone from thinking he was clever enough to save it to watching it all fail catastrophically before his eyes to walking the long slow path to really do it, one painful step at a time.]

We convinced them — he convinced them — to gamble with all our lives, instead of going through with the completion of their plan. To use their resources not for escape but to go out and confront the planetkiller ourselves, before it reached us. We must've sounded right mad...but there's something to it, I suppose. The thought that we'd all stand united in success or in failure, rather than partitioning off what we could and abandoning the rest.