I would not let that happen to you, Jedao says simply, and there's a quiet, absolute quality to certainty, like bedrock going down and down and down. It doesn't matter if it's not his decision: if he couldn't persuade Edwin's warden, he could certainly break them. If he were demoted for it, so be it; demotion would only give him more latitude for action. Once he was an inmate himself, it would be easier to bait them into their demotion, if it came to that.

He's pretty sure he wouldn't need to go that far. He has a lot of alternatives he could pitch, and he's very persuasive, when he needs to be.

But it's important to Jedao to always know how far he's willing to go. What he's willing to go to war for, and what he isn't.

Do you want to understand their reasons for it?