Building a trap for Vale meant building it for the wolf he might be, without ever deciding that he was.
That was the discipline, and it was harder than any battlefield plan I'd ever drawn. I had to design a temptation only the hand-above-the-cart would take something the leader of a hidden resistance couldn't resist, but that a genuinely loyal advisor would walk past without a second glance. If Vale was innocent, the trap had to leave no mark on him. If he was the hand, it had to be irresistible. Same bait, two wolves, and only his reach would tell me which one he was.
I built it around the thing every hidden faction needs most and can never make for itself: legitimacy.
"A resistance feeding on stolen grain can survive," I told Cain, laying it out in our chambers. "But it can't win.To a
