The mood of the crowd was shifting. They shuffled instead of shouted. Wayne relaxed. Well, maybe religion was good for something other than fancy clothes and weird hats. If that priest defused this group, Wayne would buy him a drink, he would. And buying drinks for priests was great, because they usually wouldn’t drink theirs, so you got two for yourself to …
Wait. Why was that fellow in the suspenders—the one who had talked before—sneaking up behind the priest? Raising his hand, as if to—
“No!” Wayne shouted, shoving through the crowd toward the fountain. He froze time, which caused quite a mess of confusion in the people around him, but it didn’t do much. All that let him do was stand there feeling helpless, knowing the priest was too far away to save. The fellow in the suspenders stood just behind the gentle old man, hand raised, knife glittering in the firelight.
Except that wasn’t no knife. It was a needle.
Wayne dropped his speed bubble. The needle plunged down, striking the priest in the back. The round-faced man jerked upright, and then his flesh started to melt. It turned translucent, his eyes drooping out of their sockets, crystal bones beneath glittering in the light of the bonfires.
“Look!” the bare-chested man said. “See what they send to try to placate you? The Faceless Immortals serve the nobility! This was no priest, but one of their minions. They want you to believe you’re free, that their democracy works for you, but all that surrounds you is lies!”
Wayne gaped as the priest—no, the kandra—struggled to stand upright and speak, but that made it worse. The protesters shouted, their rowdiness back with renewed strength, save for near Wayne, where the people were still confused as to why time had stopped for them.
A woman in a dirty skirt eyed him. “Hey, aren’t you that guy from the Roughs?”
Wayne grimaced, backing away. On the fountain, the leader spotted him and interrupted his diatribe. He pointed right at Wayne. “One of them is here!” he shouted. “They send constables into our midst! They’re all around, controlling you!”
Basically the entire crowd turned to look at Wayne.
Well, hell.
for any person in the room. Had I not bested the tribes at the Pits of Eltania? Was I not the first to bring back tales of the slopes of the Ashmounts, now gone green with vegetation? And wasn’t it I that had domesticated the fabled long-necked horses of the Plains of Kaermeron?
“I shall not lower this gun,” said the man, “until you pay for your crimes.”
My enhanced senses picked up a faint tremor in the man’s speech. I noticed the almost imperceptible flicks of his eyes to the right and left. This wasn’t one of the Cobblesguilder henchmen as I’d at first thought. He was a man looking for revenge, and he wasn’t entirely sure if I was the one from whom he should exact it.
“Let us talk this through peaceably,” I suggested. I gently removed Lady Lavont’s trembling fingers from my arm. “All will be solved, my lady,” I said, detecting a faint gasp in her breathing as my fingers brushed hers for so short a moment.
Mustaches straightened. “You killed my brother three years back in the Roughs near Covingtar,” he said.
I needed time to think on his accusation, so I stepped forward, raised my hands in the air, and said, “As you can see, I am unarmed.” I turned in a circle, displaying to the crowd that I in fact held no sidearm. And yes, bravely, I turned my back on Mustaches, trusting in his uncertainty of my identity.
As I turned, I thought through my predicament. It was true that some three years back I had found myself in the vicinity of Covingtar. But had I killed someone’s brother there? No doubt I had left many a man brotherless, but never intentionally. The very thought of killing a man for the express purpose of leaving another man brotherless is highly repugnant to me.
“I am not the man you seek,” I said, raising my glass for another sip because, by the Faceless, if I was going to die I would do it drinking a fine Chamblis Montreau 328.
The gun barrel shook more. If my gambit failed, I would sport yet another bullet scar on my strapping abdomen. Skin and muscle would heal, but the finely-woven shirt had been a gift from the daughter of the owner of Gilles & Gilles—on the corner of Canton Avenue and Troncheau Way—tailors of exquisite and tasteful dress shirts for fashionable and high society types. I did not wish it to be spoiled with my worthy blood.
“Then who are you?” asked Mustaches, his gun’s barrel dropping more. The moment of danger was not yet over, but my own breathing evened out. My enhanced senses found Mustache’s gazelle-quick heartbeat slowing to a more reasonable pace.
“Gentleman Jak,” I said with humility. “Surely you have heard of me.”
“So you ain’t that Waxillium Ladrian fellow?”