"So his presence in this world had always been faint. Only now, when every faction he could still recruit to serve his daughter had gathered here, did Mr. Jiluo come swaggering out."
Hill knew it was not that Shar could not guess what the red dragon was thinking. She simply could not be certain.
After all, this red dragon had never had much of a presence.
Although dragons of every kind shared many personality traits and temperaments, the slightest discrepancy could lead to a wildly different conclusion. Without sufficient knowledge, Shar never treated an inference as a verdict.
But precisely because of this trait, her words carried particular weight.
Of course, only someone like Hill, who was on reasonably friendly terms with her, could hear a little of the truth.
Ordinarily, Shar excelled at mixing nine parts falsehood with one part truth.
That was a skill she had honed on an instinctive creature like Selûne... one part truth could conceal a hundred and twenty thousand parts falsehood.
Still, that was also because certain talents of Hill's were quite well known.
After all, even the fairies knew there was no point in lying to him.
Otherwise, Lathander would not turn to Hill for confirmation after exchanging a few words with Shar... if Hill stripped away the beginning and end of something Shar had said and singled out a passage in the middle, that meant those particular words were fairly trustworthy.
Shar also knew what Lathander was doing, but occasionally she would come to Hill to discuss things she herself was uncertain about.
Such as her current doubts about the red dragon's behavior.
She actually had her own answer in mind and merely needed to confirm it with Hill. But she would never open with something like, "I think... would you agree?"