Hill gave it some serious thought.
He was in a rather awkward position now... if he went out before Prout was killed, it would look as though he had emerged specifically to claim his share of the spoils.
But if he failed to appear, that would hardly fit Gilbert's vindictive personality.
After all the trouble Prout had caused, enduring the insult for the sake of his future was understandable. But failing to kick that idiot while he was down and see him off, even in the final stage of recovery... Gilbert had recovered, not become a different person.
Hill, however, despised idiots more than anything and was extremely reluctant to have anything to do with them.
After wrestling with the dilemma for a while, he suddenly remembered something... Gilbert seemed to have a teacher.
He also intended to move the Hainalson Family into the outskirts of the Black Enigma Tower. Although he and Rute had already reached a tacit understanding on the matter, and he had completed preliminary negotiations with Aislin... proper etiquette still required him to inform Gilbert's teacher first.
Procedures were tedious and trivial for everyone, seemingly serving only to create more trouble... but for anyone of the order alignment, following procedure was the right choice.
Hill certainly loved freedom, but that did not mean he disrespected the order others had worked so hard to establish.
The more worlds he visited, the more he understood that ordinary people could only have a patch of deck to call their own if they stayed aboard a great ship with its own chain of order, one that kept moving forward.
Although the stagnation when that ship could no longer move was painful, as long as the chain remained intact, they could always turn toward a direction that allowed them to advance.