Roderic did not answer at once. He had spent most of his life learning to separate bad choices from impossible ones, because the head of a Great Family was rarely offered anything clean. Men beneath him could think in terms of pride, insult or fairness. A patriarch counted armies, trade routes, heirs, favors owed twenty years ago and enemies patient enough to wait twenty more.
Valttair had handed him a miserable agreement. The trouble was that refusing it came out worse on every column.
He went back through the terms without taking his eyes off the man opposite him. Compensation for the mine was painful and survivable at once, since Vaelion could replace coin, materials and equipment with nothing worse than inconvenience. Paying the families of the dead would injure pride more than the treasury, and pride cost less than a war.
