The First Thread of Dissent

Tamsin’s question had not been a weapon, but it had wounded Joric all the same. It was a splinter of doubt, lodged deep beneath the armor of his certainty, and it festered. He saw it in the way she now watched him, her gaze no longer one of unquestioning loyalty, but of quiet, searching inquiry. He saw it, too, in the eyes of others--a subtle shift, a hesitation where once there had been immediate assent. The Symphony’s non-response was a more potent form of warfare than any he had anticipated, for it did not attack his followers; it invited them to think.