Soothsayer

By Matthew P. Gilbert

I had just broken into a furious, uphill sprint when I ran into the Soothsayer. He had already tossed the rope over an abandoned lantern pole and was just starting to hoist his kill. Cussing and muttering under his breath, he hauled on the rope, throwing all his weight into the task as he inched his burden higher and higher. His victim, a large man, dangled a few feet from the ground, suspended by his ankles, belly open to the elements. The scent of stale fires and fresh death hung in the air like incense. The blackened, charred frames of the surrounding buildings, backlit and limned in the pale moonlight, seemed like skeletal fingers pointing in accusation at the grim scene before them.

Switching from the euphoria of running to the cold sweat of a potentially lethal encounter isn’t as jarring as one might think. Adrenaline is adrenaline, whatever the source. Still, it can be disconcerting. I tried changing course to avoid running headlong into the grisly pair, but shock, speed, and fortune conspired to humble me. I lost my footing on a loose cobblestone and went down face first into a pile of something warm and smelling of death. I felt bile rise in my throat as I realized just what I had blundered into.

Cursing myself for a fool, I leapt to my feet, ready for a fight. He spun to face me, his smoldering, feral eyes staring at me from behind a tangled mass of stringy hair, his intent unmistakable. With a hiss, he released the rope, letting the corpse drop to the ground, and drew a blade from his belt. It was no ordinary weapon he held. An eerie, green light, as bright as a torch, oozed like blood from runes carved along its length. He brandished it in my direction, his free hand clutching nervously at the dirty, bloodstained robe he wore. His lips moved, making sounds like words, but in no language, I recognized, a chanting, whispery, sing-song string of nonsense syllables.

He was not a large man. I stood a head taller, and had a damned good weight advantage on him, but I had no idea what that knife of his might do to me. Somehow, I suspected it had many uses beyond simple illumination.

“Soothsayer, I presume,” I said, as we began to circle one another.

“The man who fights without a blade,” he answered, as if he recognized me, too.

“You’re not what I expected,” I told him, still judging his capabilities, summing him up before I struck.

“And you’re just what I expected,” he cackled, his voice a hissing, whisper-chant. He slashed the knife in a vicious half circle, carving out his personal space and showing me he knew how to use his weapon, was ready to use it if I came close enough. “It’s just a shell, you know, just a form, a life support system to keep the brain supplied with nutrients. No meaning in it beyond the mechanical.”

“That’s how you think of people, just parts?” Waiting for an opening, for a gap in his attention.

“Just parts,” he agreed, repeating the phrase several times. “Some useful, some not. I separate the wheat from the chaff with my little knife. You think I don’t know you, Lucian Lenoir?”

I felt something cold in my gut as he called my name, and he knew it. He raised his free hand to his face and twisted his features into a fright mask, then cackled and slashed the blade again.

“We’re no different.”

“We’re about to be—”

“‘You’ll be dead. That will be different, won’t it?’” he said, completing my sentence with a chuckle. “Stole your words, didn’t I?”

“How—?”

“Heard you say them,” he whispered, his face serious once again, eyes blazing with purpose. “In the guts of an older specimen. He was in poor shape. A pity, really, how they break down in this environment.” He jerked the dagger in my direction, punctuating his words. “It’s the alcohol, mostly, damages the digestive system and the liver over the years, lets too many poisons slip through. They wear down, less reliable. They’ll have to be younger from now on.”

I said nothing. I was troubled by the familiar pattern of his speech, but it was something I could consider after I had dealt with him. To hell with his knife. It would make a fine souvenir. I tensed, ready to spring. Keep talking, fool.

“Now you’re going to try to kill me,” he said. “But you can’t.”

“I don’t think you can stop me.”

“We are all dust blown in the wind of merciless fate!” he told me, as if imparting some terrible truth. “I’ve seen these things before! Accept it! It’s not to be!”

I leapt at him, but he was ready. He scuttled aside, then turned and fled, shucking his robe on the fly, his mocking and gibbering echoing from the blackened, crumbling walls. I should have known better, should have realized there was method to his madness, but his taunts nettled me, and I gave chase.

He was damnably fast. I chased him for nearly a mile, closing the distance between us inch by agonizingly slow inch. By the time I came close enough to lay hands on him, we had left the burned-out area far behind and come into the wharves. No matter. This was as good a place as any to finish this dog. Just as I reached to grab a fistful of the long, tangled hair that trailed behind him, he turned and ducked into an alley. Damn him! It was as if he had rehearsed this!

I turned with a drunken lurch, backtracked the few feet I had skidded past the entrance, and charged directly into his trap.

Pain ripped through me in jagged, flashing thunderbolts as a padded club smashed against my chest, and I staggered backwards out of the alley. Three bruisers in stocking caps were headed my way, all sporting stout cudgels. I rose quickly, trying to clear my head and evaluate my situation. My ribs were intact, and the Soothsayer was sprinting merrily away, still laughing. As for my would-be assailants, their stances and form marked them as hopeless amateurs, the type who relied on brute strength and size to carry the day for them. They would be no match for me, but they could damned well waste my precious time.

“Hey, what about the little guy?” one of them asked.

“Forget him, this one looks like he could pull an oar better,” replied the one who had hit me. “Come on, I’m gonna need some help.”

“That man’s a murderer, you fool!” I shouted.

“Yeah, well, so are we,” said the third, a veritable mountain of flesh. “So don’t give us any trouble.”

I have no time for this, I thought, as I surged forward and slammed my fingers, stiff like a board, into his throat. He went down with a gurgling cry. The next swung at me and missed as I ducked, then hammered a foot into his jaw. I heard the crack of bone as his head tilted to an impossible angle. The last simply stood, stunned and mouth agape, as I struck. I grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the wall. He clawed at my grip as I ground my thumbs into his throat, our faces so close that our noses nearly touched. Terrified, confused eyes, stared back at me, unable to understand how it had come to this.

“It seems we all have something in common!” I said as I released him. He slid down the wall, still clutching at his throat, slowly realizing that he would never draw breath again.

I rushed to the end of the alleyway, but there was no sign of the Soothsayer. He had known, somehow, that these men would be here, had known just where to go to delay me. I realized, with a chill, that he must have known he would meet me before I had ever arrived.

There was no point in trying to pick up his trail. He could be anywhere by now, and at any rate, why should I even care? Let the Soothsayer kill all he wanted. Until someone offered me enough money to make it worth my while, it wasn’t my concern.

I spent a while walking off my anger. It began to rain, and at first I welcomed it, but before long, it became simply miserable. After an hour or two, cold, wet, and in a foul mood, I decided I had been sufficiently punished for my stupidity, and I made my way to Thull’s. Warm, yellow light from the oil lanterns and roaring fire spilled from the open door, lighting the weather-worn shingle and beckoning all fools and mad dogs to take solace from the downpour. I walked in and took my usual seat at the end of the bar, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind me.

Thull was standing watch, polishing a glass with a towel, his huge hands making the sturdy pint mug he was holding seem more like a child’s cup. He was built like a moose, an inch or so taller than I, and close to three hundred pounds, all of it bone and muscle. He was in his fifties and long retired from the army, but unlike most old soldiers, he had kept himself in fine shape. I could have beaten him in a fight, mind you, but I wouldn’t have arm-wrestled him, not even with heavy odds. As I slid onto the stool, he looked my way and grinned, exposing perfect, white teeth that fairly glowed against his almost black skin.

“You look like shit, Lucian,” he said, his deep, rumbling voice filling the room. He wiped his towel over his glistening, bald head, then tossed it my way. I snagged it out of the air and made use of it.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” He poured a shot of vodka and brought it over. “Little late for you tonight, ain’t it? You out running in that mess?”

“Every night.” I traded him the towel for the vodka and knocked it back. It was just what I needed. “Had some thinking to do, took a long walk afterward. What’s new?”

“They say the Soothsayer got another one tonight. What’s that, like thirty now?”

As they say, bad news travels fast.

“Thirty-three,” I told him, scowling and gesturing for a refill, not particularly happy at being reminded that the bastard had outfoxed me. Thull shook his head and poured another.

“Somebody’s got to do something about him,” he said quietly.

I stared down at my drink, saying nothing.

“I seen him, ya know,” called snaggle-toothed Sal from across the room.

“You ain’t seen nobody, you liar,” another patron retorted. “Everybody knows the Soothsayer is invisible. How else ya reckon he creeps up on people?”

“Fuck you, I seen him!” Sal bawled, angry now. “Seen him grab a feller down the canal last week! He ain’t invisible! Some guys I know even follered him home one night! He’s a man, like you and me!”

Before long, they were all arguing over it. The Soothsayer was a demon, or a vampire, or an invisible spirit. He could fly and walk through walls. He could see into your soul. He could walk on water. But one thing they all agreed on was that Sal had definitely not seen him. The poor old drunk turned to me for help.

“You believe me, don’tcha, Lucian?” His eyes implored me to impart some measure of credibility to his story. Well, there was no harm in it, and it was important to Sal. Perhaps, later, he would be grateful and do me a favor in return. At least he had the time scale right. The Soothsayer had murdered a bum about five days before. Maybe he had thought his lie out well enough to have an entertaining story to tell.

“You’ve never lied to me before, Sal, not that I know of anyway,” I said. That much was true, for what it was worth. “Tell us what you saw.”

“Well, like I said, I was down the canal—”

“Ah shut up, ya old windbag,” suggested the patron who had started the whole mess.

I heard a whistle in the air behind me, but I was not concerned enough to turn. I had been a regular here long enough to know the sound. One of Thull’s heavy mugs streaked across the bar and slammed into the chest of Sal’s heckler. The man fell over in his chair and spilled onto the floor, gasping. One of his companions tossed the mug, none the worse for wear, back to the old barkeep, who took a bow to a round of applause.

“Next time, I’m gonna put it upside your head, boy,” Thull admonished once the clapping was done. “Now shut up and let the man speak.”

Sal cleared his throat, waiting for total silence, then continued. “So I was down there, tryin ta hit up the sailors for some rum or maybe a few coppers, and one of em give me a bottle of sumpin, I dunno what it was, but it warn’t bad. I drank most of it, and, well, then I decided to have me a nap, so I climbed up in a stack of tarps they had layin along the pier.

“Well, I wake up, and it’s real late. I dunno what time, but late. And I hear some kind of scuffle, so I peek out, just my eyes, and I see him. He’s got this old feller slung over his shoulder like a sack o ‘taters, and I couldn’t tell if he was dead or asleep, but he warn’t fightin him none.”

“How’d you know it was him, Sal?” Thull asked, interested despite himself.

“I’m gettin to it,” Sal said. “So anyways, he flops this guy on the ground next to a lamp pole, and then I can see him good, and he’s cut wide open like the rest of em. Then he pulls out a knife. It’s glowin all green, like some kinda evil thing. And he starts cuttin out the poor bastard’s….” Sal’s grimaced, obviously distressed, took a swig of whiskey, then continued, “You know what he does.”

Everyone nodded. The Soothsayer gutted his victims, and left the entrails in curiously arranged heaps near the bodies, hence the moniker.

“Well, I just couldn’t stand it. I come out from under them tarps and I yelled out, ‘Here, you! What’re you doin?’ just as loud as I could. I reckon it was stupid, but I did it. And he stops and looks at me, and he just laughs, and he says, ‘I’ll be comin after you soon enough, Sal’. Knew my name, I tell ya!”

“Oh, bullshit!” someone yelled from the back of the bar.

“Shut up!” I shouted. The speaker ducked his head and tried to present as small a target as possible for Thull, but the barkeep, now fully caught up in Sal’s tale, was too distracted to do more than wave a glass menacingly in the air while waiting for Sal to continue.

“What’d he look like, Sal?” asked the first heckler, who had either been converted, or was trying to regain Thull’s good graces.

“He was ugly, that’s for sure. Raggedy clothes, and tangled up hair all hangin in his eyes. Looked just like a bum, mostly, like me I reckon, but younger. He was all whisperin and grabbing at his shirt, and he had eyes like some kind of fiend, crazy eyes, like he’d pull out your soul if you looked in em long enough.”

The scream came just as Sal finished his sentence and was drawing breath for the next. It rattled the windows in their frames, and the teeth of every man in the place. I am certain that at least one reveler lost control of his bladder, and the rest of us were closer than we would care to admit.

My mind shifted immediately into combat mode, categorizing the scream, and calculating angles: female, terrified, unmoving, perhaps twenty yards away, too coherent for an attack. Over and over she screamed, and then, as suddenly as it began, there was silence.

Sal gave voice to my suspicion. “A silver says the Soothsayer’s been out in this storm.”

I rose and headed for the door, with most of the clientele and Thull following behind me. Almost exactly twenty yards from the bar, in a darkened alley, we found them, two dead.

No, I corrected myself, one was still alive. She was lying unconscious on the ground, most likely fainted from screaming. There could be no mistake about the second, however. Several drunks, already struggling to keep their stomachs, gave up their dinners on the spot.

She had been slaughtered like game, slit from crotch to chin and gutted. She dangled upside down, nude, a rope cinched about her feet and looped over the arm of a lantern post, just like all the others. Her long, once blond hair was now red, drenched in her own blood. It dangled gently against the ground, blood dripping from it and mixing with the dirty water as she swayed to and fro in the light breeze.

The worst, by far, however, was the sight of her eyes, flung wide open in horror that had not dulled even in the glaze of death that hung over them now. Her features were forever locked into a final mask of the agony she had known in the last moments of her life. Though I could not be certain without a more complete examination of the body, the wound edges suggested she had been alive and conscious through most of it. It was the most brutal killing I had ever seen, and I had seen far more than my fair share.

“Ilaweh give us strength,” Thull whispered.

I bent to examine the living woman. She appeared whole enough, so I tossed her over my shoulder and carried her inside. Thull led me to his back room, where we laid her on a table and roused her with smelling salts, then pumped some strong liquor into her until she could speak.

She was a whore, not very surprising considering the locale and her dress. Her name was Alicia, and she was a pitiful thing, perhaps fifteen, and absolutely terrified. Young, indeed, but in her eyes was that hard, bitter glint that street people, especially whores, acquire early in life, a keen awareness that death, in one guise or another, is a constant neighbor: random violence, disease, starvation, and lately, the Soothsayer.

I felt an uncharacteristic pang of guilt as I considered the life to which these people were condemned. I had been there once myself, twenty years before, struggling for survival in the pitiless streets. I had known their desperation first hand, yet, for months, I had stood by while the Soothsayer had butchered them. Had I truly surrendered so much of my soul, I wondered, that I could not expend the effort to hunt down and destroy this unnatural predator, this thing that killed without rhyme or reason?

“Her name was Cheri,” the girl said softly, head bowed, as she ran her fingers through her fiery red tresses. She spoke mechanically, the words seeming to hold no meaning for her. “She was nineteen. She looked after us, ya know, called us her little sisters. She had friends and stuff, people who could keep pimps like Hammer in line.” Then, as if suddenly awakening from a nightmare, her head snapped up, eyes clouded with rage and grief as she glared at me, tears leaving tracks in her thick makeup, throat working as she swallowed.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why don’t somebody stop him?” Her voice rose to a shriek, and she tore her hair in frustration. “‘Cause we’re easy, ‘cause nobody gives a fuck if we live or die!” She doubled over and put her arms behind her head, rocking back and forth in a frenzy of anguish.

Was she a reader of minds, this child, that she hurled my own thoughts back at me like stones? But no, she was simply voicing her misery to the skies, at no one in particular, or perhaps at everyone.

Looking back, I remember this single, powerful moment as a turning point in my life. I will not make the claim of having ever been a good man, but I have certainly been more evil than I am now. As I listened to a child far too wise for her age crying against the wretchedness, the savagery of the world I had come to accept, I was forced to re-evaluate a few things.

I pulled a coin from my pocket and regarded it for a moment, admiring the graven image of a kris piercing a crown. It was my own design, my calling card. I took it between my thumb and forefinger and gave it a thump, setting it spinning on the table.

“How much money do you have, girl?” I asked at last.

She eyed me with distrust, the street in her telling her not to answer. The coin slowed, drawing her gaze as it flipped on its side and gyrated a moment, then stopped. Her eyes widened in alarm as she recognized the image and made the inevitable connection with my own grim stare.

She swallowed again and stared at the floor, doubtless wondering what retribution I planned to take upon her for her disrespect. “Not enough,” she whispered.

“A hundred crowns?” The sum was so paltry to me as to be meaningless, yet I knew it was a fortune to her. So be it. Death should never be cheap.

She looked up at me then, her eyes deep green wells of hope and sorrow, not quite daring to believe I was serious.

“But—” she said, then swallowed hard and continued. “I heard you charged millions….”

“Do you have the money or not, girl?”

“I got fifty,” she said. She drew her purse from between her breasts and offered it, pleading. “But I can get more!”

I took the purse and emptied the contents into my hand, five silver coins, most likely a month’s earnings for a woman in her business. The pimps took most of what they made, leaving them with just enough to survive.

“Half in advance, the other half payable when the job is finished,” I said. “Gods help you if you don’t have it.”

“I’ll have it!” she assured me, her eyes once again filled with hatred. “You make him suffer, make him fear like Cheri before he dies!”

I put the coins back into the little purse and hung it on my belt. As little as it meant, it bound a contract. I was her instrument, and could kill in her name, a purely professional distinction, to be sure, but one that had always been of great import to me.

“Name your proof,” I told her.

“I want his head,” she replied without the slightest hesitation. “I’m gonna have it stuffed and mounted on my wall.”

I bowed to her and said, “It shall be so, madam.”

As I turned to leave, she said gently, “Sir? Mr. Lenoir?”

“Yes?”

She was crying again, the hot tears welling in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered.

I nodded and left her to her grief.

Thull followed me into the street, where at last he spoke.

“It’s a good thing, you’re doing, Lucian.”

“But I should have done it before, shouldn’t I?” I shot back. “I should have killed him months ago. Too little too late, that’s how it feels.”

Thull stared at me as if he had never seen me before, then shook his head in amazement. “It’s never too late to turn things around,” he said.

“You offering me salvation, bartender?”

“Just a drink before you go, if you want,” said Thull. “I ain’t no savior.”

I waved off his offer and turned to leave. “Neither am I.”

Murmandimus pulled the sheet back over Cheri’s face, done with his reading. “Why?” he asked. His voice was calm and soothing, as always, but with the hint of some deeper motive now.

“I need to see it,” I told him.

The mage eyed me with a curious stare, the dim firelight reflecting from his metallic, pupilless eyes as he considered the issue.

“It’s very disturbing. I could just describe it to you, you know.”

“I can handle it.”

With a shrug, he leaned forward, reached his hands toward me and placed his long, delicate fingers against my temples. I felt a slight shock as each touched my skin. He paused, his eyes now a pale green.

“I’m not exaggerating. Are you certain? This could cause you some trauma.”

“Just do it.”

He nodded. His eyes drained of color, back to quicksilver, and the world about me faded to elsewhere.

It was perhaps ten minutes of experience that Murmandimus had pieced together during his brief reading of her body, the final moments of her life. As his power coursed through my mind, I lived those moments as Cheri, saw the Soothsayer again, through her eyes this time. I saw the blood, heard the screams, felt her horror, her pain, all of it. I knew every aspect of what it was to suffer her fate. Darkness closed in upon me, and I gasped a last, feeble cry, feeling my own life slipping away in a haze of agony beyond anything I had ever known. Then, there was nothing.

When at last I came to my senses once again, I found myself lying on the floor. Murmandimus, inscrutable, sat comfortably in his chair, watching as I shook the fog from my head and rose, my own body feeling strange and unfamiliar.

“Was it worth it?” he asked. “Did you find what you seek?”

“There was no way to tell where the place was,” I said. “The windows were boarded.”

“That’s not what you were looking for,” Murmandimus noted. “Have you found your justification for your intended action? Your motivation?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Murmandimus shook his head in mock sadness, his hair ruffled by some unseen wind, flowing as if he were a man underwater. One could have almost believed it as a living thing unto itself. He fixed his hypnotic stare on me and said, more seriously, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because it must be done,” I told him, “and no one else is going to dirty their hands to set things aright.”

I rose and walked to the fire, busied myself by poking at it, stirring it to life again. I welcomed the rush of warmth from it on my face and arms, the memory of Cheri’s death still close in my mind.

“Is it an issue of morality for you?” he asked.

His question irked me. “Morality is for philosophers and weak minded fools.”

“And yet you choose to put yourself at great risk, for no obvious gain.”

“Killing a rogue is good for everyone, including me,” I told him. “He’s killing people for free, after all. That could well be money out of my pocket.”

“Now you are grasping at straws,” Murmandimus said with a wry smile. “Why is it so difficult for you to admit that you want to destroy him for his evil?”

“He’s not evil,” I snapped. “What I do is evil, if you want to use those silly terms. What he does is monstrous.” I paused, looking him in the eye. “It’s inhuman.”

Murmandimus nodded as if I had confirmed something he had long suspected. “How many men have you killed, Lucian?”

I returned to my seat and stared into the fire again, watching the shadows skitter over the bricks. The hand of darkness reached for the burning flame, recoiled at the heat, then, like a stupid child, tried again. But the darkness is not foolish, merely tenacious. It always wins in the end.

“More than you,” I muttered.

“How many mages?”

“None,” I said, nodding in understanding. The familiarity of the Soothsayer’s speech made sense, now. The bastard really was a sorcerer. “If I had never met you, I’d not even believe such things were real.”

“And you are one of perhaps five men in the world who know of me. We are few, and reclusive. One becomes….” He considered a moment, then continued. “Distant. The Soothsayer is a classic case of what we can become. We are all, even I, vulnerable to obsession, even monomania.” He shrugged, as if somewhat embarrassed. “It’s a self inflicted wound, a necessary evil in the all important search for truth.”

“I need specifics: motivations, patterns, projections. Do you know why he’s doing this?”

Murmandimus shrugged. “It is his field. He is interested in the truth of life, as I am in mind.” He shook his head sadly, sighed, then continued. “He was once a brilliant man, you know. The work he has done with tiny machines is simply amazing. He claimed, given time, he could create a sort of artificial life with them, self replicating devices that could repair living creatures, even remake them.” Murmandimus turned to stare at the fire, his eyes glowing orange from reflected flame. “Heal wounds, fight diseases, even turn back time for a man. Imagine, an immortality serum of tiny, living machines. What a pity that all his work will be lost.”

I stared at Murmandimus in disgust, cold anger rising within me. “You know him?” I asked, appalled. “And you have stood by and done nothing?”

The mage turned emotionless eyes of quicksilver upon me, and in that moment I understood just how little remained of his own humanity.

“Most of us know one another. And what better example of aberrant psychology to study?” he asked, without a hint of guilt.

“Is that what this is about? Fraternal loyalty? Protecting your ‘specimen’? I should kill you where you stand.”

“Bah.” He dismissed my threat with a wave of his hand. “He was once an interesting subject, but there is little more to learn from him. I merely regret the loss of his capabilities. In any event, I am hardly alone in doing nothing when the opportunity presented itself.”

I clenched my jaw, accepting his rebuke. He was right. I was in no position to judge him. “Tell me what I need to know to kill him.”

“Oh, he’ll die as any other man will,” said the mage. “But the issue is getting yourself into a position to strike. Of all the rumors about him, one is certainly true: he can see the future, to a limited degree.”

“What else is he capable of? Can he call down lightning? Can he command spirits to kill me?”

“Of course not,” Murmandimus said, waving his hand in derision. “It’s not his field. You could easily defeat him in single combat, but don’t imagine he would be foolish enough to confront you on anything approaching fair terms.”

I sighed, feeling suddenly very powerless and alone. “How do I fight such a man, who knows my every move?”

“He can’t know every move. He has to look for specific events, and even then, he can only see so far into the future,” Murmandimus reassured me. “Still, it will only be a matter of time before he finds you in a moment of weakness. Fortunately, there is now a period, a brief one, during which he won’t know what you’re doing.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because he no doubt cast for his future in the entrails of the woman he killed tonight, and finds you hunting him. But he will question the result.”

“That’s absurd,” I said. “I assure you, the man has a high degree of confidence in his work.”

“Yes,” said the mage with a patient nod. “But now he will have reason to distrust his craft, because this will be the first time he has received a contradictory result. You see, there is a reason I am interested in your rationale for all of this.”

I stared at him, uncomprehending, and he positively grinned. “You have changed, Lucian,” he said at last. “Don’t you understand the significance?”

“Could you damned well please just spell it out for the ignorant savage, you smug bastard?” I shouted.

“Of course,” he agreed, smiling at my frustration, but perhaps a bit embarrassed, too. “Understanding is as much a weapon as a sword, man hunter. Understand your enemy.” Murmandimus rose and clasped his hands behind his back, pacing in front of the fire as he spoke, a professor lecturing a student.

“For a man to perform such loathsome acts as he commits, he must acquire a mindset that permits any action, no matter how depraved,” he told me. “This manifests itself as a conviction that men are nothing more than complicated machines, their behavior merely appropriate, automatic response to various stimuli.” He stopped pacing and stared intently at me as he drove home his point. “That there is, in point of fact, no such thing as free will.”

“‘Just parts,’ as he put it,” I said with a nod. “‘We are all dust blown in the wind of merciless fate.’”

Murmandimus nodded. “With such a world view, the deviant is free to rationalize all things as not merely permissible, but inevitable. A machine cannot change its destiny, cannot suddenly choose to be something other than what it was yesterday, or the day before. It must behave according to its function.

“Now, consider. You only just tonight made your decision to stop him. You have had a change of heart. Something in you has awakened that was not there before, and you have made a choice. You have changed the future, Lucian, by your free will. By now, surely, he’s made use of that girl’s innards, and is seeing a very different fate than he saw previously. He can’t accept that they are both true without admitting free will, and that would force him into direct confrontation with his madness. His mind will reject that explanation. But he will be highly confused and agitated.”

“Then time is of the essence,” I said, rising.

“Oh, it certainly is,” Murmandimus agreed, features hardening, eyes darkening to blood red as he stared intently at me. He raised an eyebrow, and the door to the street opened at his silent command. “He is confronting an assault on his reality. He will not rest until he resolves this, and that requires confirmation. A great deal of it.”

I nodded, understanding him all too well. I turned and bolted for the door.

“You mentioned friends who followed the Soothsayer.”

Sal fidgeted with the sole button that remained on his worn coat, struggling with himself. I knew what he was thinking. It was the custom of street people to answer no questions regarding others of their kind, an unwritten code of ethics among people who, by necessity, occasionally resorted to crime as a means of survival.

“Well, there’s a couple of guys I know what said they follered him one night,” he confessed at last. “I don’t know if they was telling the truth, but I wouldn’t put it past em. They ain’t got no sense about things.” He paused and looked about the alley where we stood, as close to home as it came for him. Satisfied that we were truly alone, he continued in a conspiratorial, near-whisper, “They said they figured out where he lived, and was trying to get some of us to go burn him out, but we warn’t fixing to get mixed up in that. No telling if it was even the right place, and if it warn’t, there’d be hell to pay. And then, well….” Sal paused briefly, looking embarrassed. “Well, you know there’s folks what say he’s a demon. Some of em said that fire, it’d just make him smile a little bigger when he was rippin our guts out.”

“Take me to them.”

Sal gaped at my words. “I can’t do that! I gotta live with these folks. I can’t go putting the touch on em, or they’ll fix me up!”

“The Soothsayer is coming after you one by one. If I don’t end this tonight, he’s going to kill a lot more people, Sal. He knows I’m coming, and he needs to know what will happen, and that means dead people, a lot of them. I’ll bet you what you like that he knows about those two who followed him, as well. He’ll try to cut that link before I get to them, if he can. Those two are dead men if I don’t find them, and quickly.”

Sal began to sway and hum, looking back and forth and trembling. He chewed his lip hard enough to draw blood as he tried to come to a decision.

“It has to be now, Sal.”

He looked at me with undisguised terror, his whole body quivering. “Can you take him, Lucian? You’re real good at that stuff, ain’t ya? Killin’ a man, I mean? You done took down a lot worse than him before, right?”

I considered lying, but he deserved better. “It depends on how quickly I move.”

He looked at me a moment, then gave me a curt nod, and as he did so, he seemed to find some inner reserve of strength. He stopped trembling, stood up straight, and looked me in the eye as an equal, as a man rather than a wretch.

“Alicia told me about what you said. I don’t know much about money or figures, but I know a man like you don’t even notice if he loses what she’s paying you. You’re puttin’ your ass on the line, and this ain’t even your fight. I’ll put my ass on the line with you.”

He reached out a hand, and I shook it, surprised that, despite his frail appearance, his grip was strong and sure.

“Let’s go then,” I told him.

Tubbs spat on the ground and stared daggers at Sal, refusing to make eye contact with me.

“I don’t know nothing.”

I pulled some coins from my pocket and tossed them to the ground in front of him.

“What does that jar loose?” I asked.

“I said I don’t know nothing,” he said, more belligerent now.

I turned to look at Sal, who shook his head to indicate that the man was lying. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tubbs draw his finger across his throat at Sal.

There are two universal languages. Tubbs, it appeared, spoke only one of them.

“You should have taken the money,” I told him.

I lashed out, a striking snake, to grab him around the neck, squeezing like a vise. With my other hand, I seized one wildly flailing arm by the wrist and turned his elbow near to the point of breaking. He writhed in pain, unable to scream, hammering at me as best he could with his free hand, but he could only reach my shoulder. He had no leverage to actually injure me. As his face began to turn a dark purple, he shifted to attempt prying my hand loose from his throat. It was almost amusing, watching him try to break a grip I had trained for years against unyielding stone. He might as well have been trying to bend iron bars.

Sal watched, growing more agitated with each passing second, as Tubb’s struggles grew weaker. “You’re gonna kill him!” he yelped. “Look, he ain’t my friend or nothin, but he’s all we got. I don’t know where to find Billy Boy! The Soothsayer might’ve already got him for all we know!”

I said nothing. I knew what it took to strangle a man, and Tubbs still had a few minutes. I held on long enough to let him feel consciousness slipping away, then released him, shoving him hard. He fell to the ground with a thud, where he remained, cradling his arm and sobbing between gasps.

I walked over and stood above him. “The Soothsayer is killing people even as we speak. I have no time for games,” I said, punctuating the statement by slamming my boot into his stomach. He gave a heavy wheeze and curled into a fetal position for a moment, then rolled over onto his hands and knees, retching, trying to recover the wind I had knocked out of him.

I grabbed a handful of his hair and hauled him to his feet from behind, pulled his head toward me so that his ear was at my mouth. With my free hand, I drew a dagger from my belt and put the point against his throat.

“Let’s try again,” I whispered. “Where does the Soothsayer live?”

It wasn’t what I had expected. Somehow, I had prepared myself for a charnel house, but the location Tubbs had given me turned out to be a nicely appointed country estate, discreetly nestled in a grove of gnarled trees, very private. I wondered if Tubbs had been foolish enough to lie to me, but dismissed the thought. He knew full well I would be back to kill him if he had sent me on a fool’s errand. No, this was the right place, just far enough from town, in fact, so that no one would hear any screams that might come from the place at odd hours of the night. The Soothsayer had chosen his lair well. This was fine with me. For what I had in mind, there would be screaming aplenty.

I did things by the book, checking my few weapons. The bandoleer of shuriken I wore across my chest seemed secure enough, as did the pair of daggers at my waist. My hair tied in a bun, black on my face and hands, tools of the trade wrapped in muffling cloth and hooked on my belt, I set out for the house. I crawled on my belly like a snake, creeping ever so slowly from the edge of the property toward the house, looking for tripwires, listening for dogs. Nothing. He had no traps of that kind laid, I decided. No doubt, he would have considered them a waste of his time. I rose to my hands and knees to move a little faster, still low and quiet.

It took me ten minutes to reach the back door. It felt more like centuries, but this is how it must be done. Speed kills in a situation like this. After a quick check to ensure that all of my equipment had arrived with me, I rose and peeked through a window in the door. It opened into a kitchen, a fairly large one at that, with various pots and pans hanging from hooks. I lowered myself to a crouch again and tried the door. It was locked, of course, but this was no problem. I pulled a lock pick from my belt and set to work. Within moments, I was on the other side, easing the door closed with perfect silence.

I waited for long minutes, listening in the dark for sounds of breathing, or the skittering of claws on hardwood, anything that would indicate someone or something nearby. From elsewhere in the house, I could hear a man’s voice, but I couldn’t make out the words.

It appeared I had the kitchen to myself. On my belly again, I went, snaking along past the inner doorway and into a sitting room. I could hear the voice more clearly now, coming from somewhere upstairs. Though I still could not make out the individual words, I could tell that the speaker was not actually having a conversation. He was singing, chanting.

I made my way up the stairs, low, alert, and quiet. At the top, I paused and listened again, at last able to make out the words.

“Snake a slipping ‘bout my house,

Come in here to catch the mouse.

Thinks he’s clever, he don’t know,

We saw him coming hours ago.”

The bastard was mocking me again! He had known all along! Boiling rage swept over me, but I held it in check, refusing to act on impulse. The last time, he had led me right into a trap. He would have expected me to find any he had laid outside, but if he could nettle me into carelessness, I might miss one here.

I inched forward, searching, and indeed, there was a tripwire across the floor. I followed its path with my eyes, the Soothsayer all the while continuing his mad little ditty, over and over.

“Snake a slipping ‘bout my house—”

The wire ran through the banister, up, and to the ceiling, where it attached to an enormous, scythe-like blade. The device appeared to be hinged so as to swing down in front of the entrance. It would indeed have been the end of me if I had rushed the door.

“Come in here to catch the mouse—”

I moved cautiously toward the wire and removed a set of clippers from my belt, then took a long second look at the blade before I brought it down. Miscalculating its path could prove disastrous.

“Thinks he’s clever, he don’t know—”

Satisfied, I clipped the wire and drew my arm back as quickly as I could, standing as I did so. The blade swung through its deadly trajectory, and I watched it carefully, timing its impact as best I could.

“We saw him coming—”

Just as the blade hit the floor, I let go with a scream fit not merely to wake the dead, but to kill them with fright a second time.

The singing stopped. For several moments, there was complete silence, and then I heard him begin to move, a slow, nonchalant sort of gait, stopping, as near as I could tell, directly in front of the door.

“Let’s have a look at our present, shall we?” I heard him say.

Let’s do just that, I agreed.

I hurled myself at the door and slammed a foot into it. It burst from its hinges, splinters flying in all directions. The Soothsayer screamed as the wall of wood exploded inward upon him and sent him crashing to the floor beneath it.

I followed and leapt forward, landing atop the door with my full weight where I presumed his head to be. I was on the mark, save for one crucial detail. My feet hit farther apart than I had intended. As the Soothsayer howled in new misery, the door, already damaged when I had kicked it, was simply levered too well atop the fulcrum of his skull. It snapped in two, and the pieces rapped my ankles sharply as they flipped to the sides. I staggered forward, gasping at the shooting pains in my legs, my arms pinwheeling, struggling to regain my balance.

I caught myself against a set of shelves holding a variety of organs preserved in jars. In another place, it would have been quite normal, a laboratory with specimens. Here, knowing their likely origins, it was repulsive. My impact had already tipped the shelf slightly. I deliberately gave it a shove to finish the job, sending the entire contents to shatter upon the floor. So much for that grisly collection.

I turned my attention back to the Soothsayer. He had moved the pieces of the door aside and was on his knees, chuckling and grinning like an idiot. He licked at the blood pouring down his face from a nasty gash in his forehead.

“Amused by your own demise?” I drew my dagger and advanced, intent on finishing the job.

Still laughing, he raised a hand and twisted it into a claw. A curious gesture of defiance, I thought. Then I felt something wet and cold grab my ankle.

I looked down in horror to see that my attacker was a severed human hand, one that had been safely in a jar not moments before. As I stared in shock, the nails of the thing lengthened and sank through the tough leather boots I wore and into my flesh, penetrating deeply enough to scrape against bone.

I stabbed my blade into it, not bothering to hold back my own screams. The demon hand struggled furiously, but at last, I pried it loose and knocked it aside. Even as I dispatched the first attacker, a new one, an intestine, rushed toward me, propelling itself with the gyrating motions of a serpent. The mottled, fleshy cord bunched into a knot, then leapt from the floor, trying to wrap itself about my neck. I managed to get a hand beneath it before it tightened, allowing me just enough room to slip my knife past and cut the thing. Even so, I nearly opened up my own throat in the process. The pieces fell to the floor and thrashed about like a severed worm.

I tried to kick them away, but before I could do so, the hand, recovered, took the opportunity to resume its attack. As I bent to fight it off, the two sections of gut lengthened, coiled, and struck again.

I was beyond revulsion now. I was fighting for my life. I bit at the pieces as they slithered over my face, splitting them once more. A second hand began ripping at my other leg. The intestines, four of them now, all sprung upward and continued their assault. From the corner of my eye, I saw dozens of other organs and viscera slithering, loping, and oozing toward me.

As I fought a losing battle against those monstrous attackers, panic rising in my chest, I noticed the Soothsayer, grinning and waving his hands as if he were directing an orchestra.

I snapped a shuriken from my bandoleer and sent it flying his way. Not surprisingly, my aim was a bit off, and it hit him in the arm instead of the throat, but it was effective, nonetheless. He cried out and grabbed his wound in pain, then turned and fled through a door in the back of the room.

With his departure, the animated gore fell to the ground, lifeless once again, mere specimens preserved in formaldehyde.

I looked to where he had disappeared, and felt my blood run cold. I could see through the doorway and into the room beyond, and I knew the place. It was in that room that Cheri and I had died. Now, I am a strong man, but I must confess, at that point, I felt the urge to turn tail and run, to find someplace safe to hide and sob like a child for a while. Still, I knew if I could not face this now, I would never be able to do so in the future, and in any event, I could never live down such an act of cowardice. I thought of Cheri’s body, gutted and hung up like a side of beef, and I felt the horror and pain subside, displaced by an overpowering lust for vengeance.

I mocked him as I stalked through the rear door. “Is that all you have, little man? It wasn’t enough!”

It was a small lab, with several long counters and a worktable about the size of a large man. The table was covered with an incredibly fine, sandy material, the likes of which I had never seen. As I passed, I laid a hand upon it, and it began to creep along my fingers and up my arm like a living thing. Disgusted, I brushed it away and continued looking about.

Various beakers and tools were scattered haphazardly about the place, but there was no sign of the Soothsayer. There were no doors or windows that I could see. Surely, he was hiding somewhere. “Come out, you cowardly bastard, so I can wring your neck!”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he called back from behind one of the counters. “Don’t think so, no, don’t think so at all. Time for us to parley.”

“Miserable wretch! We’ll parley in hell!” I vaulted the counter and landed directly in front of him, blade in hand, and froze. He had a hostage.

He was crouched in a corner, holding a terrified, naked girl as a shield, that glowing, rune engraved knife pressed against her throat. She was no more than twenty, and naked, her skin mottled with bruises. Her eyes, wide with terror, stared pleadingly at me, and her lips moved, but there was no sound, only a rush of air. I noticed with loathing the recently healed scar on her throat, lit by the eerie, green light of his blade, and I knew he had taken even her voice from her. How like this monster, I thought, to strip every last ounce of dignity, of humanity from his victims.

“Back,” he hissed, chanting it over and over as he rose. I had little choice. He would certainly kill the girl if I rushed him. I retreated to the other side of the counter, keeping a combat stance, my own dagger still in hand and poised to strike the instant an opportunity presented itself.

He stared at me over her shoulder, leering, his mad eyes like windows into hell. Blood dripped from his chin as he twitched nervously, like a fly. The girl shuddered and almost fainted. He pricked her throat with the knife point, just breaking the skin.

“Don’t move, my darling,” he told her. “Don’t move a hair.” He kissed the top of her head, never letting his gaze leave me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said to me. “You’re thinking, you could throw the knife, but you’ll need an instant kill. Only one good way to do it. You’d have to throw your knife hard enough to penetrate my skull. It’s got the length, and you’re strong enough. You’d be almost certain to damage the proper motor controls. Or, perhaps, perhaps if you’re good enough, in through the eye socket, but it would be difficult to get the right mix of power and precision necessary.” He trailed off in a hiss, grinning, beyond insane.

“You squander your last moments by telling me my trade? Let the girl go, and I’ll make it relatively painless.”

“Oh, no nonono”, he chattered, breathing heavily, speaking in short bursts between gasps. “You can’t do it that way. As I said, I know what you’re thinking. Right now, you’re asking yourself, ‘Self, how fast can he move the bitch’s head into the path of the oncoming dagger?’ And you’re answering, ‘Self, I really don’t know, but I don’t think he can do it fast enough.” He shook his head violently, the twitching seemingly too mild an expression to suffice for his nervousness any longer. “And it’s true. Axons can only transmit a signal so quickly. Dendrites can only release motor control chemicals in a finite period of time. I have to see you throw the knife, and then react, move my hands like this.” He shifted the girl’s head in front of his, then looked back with a grin, a macabre peek-a-boo game, back and forth, never leaving quite enough room for me to get what I felt was a clear shot. I began to sidle around, but he moved with me, and we began to slowly circle, he keeping the bulk of the counter between us.

“Physically impossible,” he declared. “Can’t be done. You’re too close. Nerves don’t work that quickly. A pity, really. Wouldn’t it have made so much more sense if our nerves were made of gold, good fast, non-corrosive conductors to handle our impulses instead of pitiful flesh?

“But, you know, I know when you’re going to throw the knife, I do I do, seen it before. That gives me enough time. So you don’t really want to kill this pretty thing, do you? Just to get to me?”

“You’re bluffing,” I said. “You wouldn’t warn me if it were true. You’d just do it.”

“And then where would I be? Dead is dead. She dies, I die, right? So it’s smarter for me to keep her alive, yes, much smarter.”

I stopped circling and considered. He could well be telling the truth. He had been fooled by the door, but who could say what he knew? Murmandimus had said the Soothsayer could only see what he specifically looked for. Maybe he had simply looked to see how it would end. With the girl in the equation, I couldn’t afford to risk it. I had to get her out before I could finish him.

Such thoughts were alien to me, enough to make me question my own sanity. Where was my conviction, my resolve? Why was I hesitating? From a dark corner of my mind, I screamed at myself, What the hell is wrong with you? This is your chance! Kill him now and the girl be damned! But I could not. Something stayed my hand, something new, something powerful and frightening, and yet undeniably a part of me. I felt sick with the knowledge that this was not some vile sorcery, but my own will preventing me from sacrificing his hostage. I cursed Murmandimus for his manipulation. This was his fault!

“What do you propose?” I asked at last. “I am a man of my word. Make me a realistic deal, and I’ll stand by it.”

“A realistic deal.” He licked his lips and shook his head again. “You let me go tonight. Tomorrow, resume your hunt if you like. In return, I let the girl go.”

“Not good enough,” I told him. “You’ll kill another tonight, maybe more than one.”

He nodded. “True enough. I’ll give you my knife. It’s very special. I need it for my work, and I can’t possibly make another tonight. It takes time and energy for my little machines to assemble themselves into a form as complex as the blade.”

“What are you nattering on about? What machines?”

“You saw them,” he said, inclining his head toward the worktable and the living sand. “The knife is composed of them, too, a permanent form. It took a week and the life force of three strong men to charge it with power. It’s a prize, to be certain. It can cut through anything, if you move it slowly. Surely, that’s a reasonable deal, reasonable yes, the girl and the blade to spare me for a single night.”

I had no idea what he was trying to lecture me about, but getting the knife from him was the most important thing. And there was nothing in the agreement about not following him. I would do that, and kill him the instant the sun topped the horizon. “Agreed,” I told him.

“Back up, then. I’ll slide it over to you and let the girl go.”

“That’s not part of the deal.”

“I will kill her!” He pricked the girl again, drawing more blood. “Show me some good faith!”

The girl’s eyes convinced me. I stepped back to the doorframe, my own blade still held for throwing.

He moved slowly from behind the counter and made his way to the worktable. The living sand rippled with purpose, and I realized something was amiss, but I was caught out now. “Slide the knife!” I ordered. “Now!”

He looked at me with an angelic, innocent expression, and asked, “You are a man of your word?”

“I am! Get on with it.”

He began cackling maniacally. “What a pity I am not!”

He ran the knife across her throat in a slow, gentle movement. With no effort at all on his part, it sliced cleanly through her neck. The girl’s hands rose, faltered, and fell lifelessly as her head rolled down her chest and into the pile of sand amidst a river of blood.

I leapt for him then, but a tentacle-like swath of the sand rose and struck me in the chest with the force of a sledgehammer, slamming me to the ground. The Soothsayer’s laughter rose to a shriek as I watched through a haze of pain, trying to force myself to some degree of movement. He buried his arms to the elbows in the churning, growing pile as it boiled like a mud pit. Another tentacle formed, reached out and pulled the rest of the girl onto the table and into the sand, where she was quickly and completely absorbed. I struggled to my feet as the strange material, now red as blood, rose over the Soothsayer’s shoulders and enveloped him like a new skin.

Before my eyes, fangs erupted from his gums, and new muscle rippled over his crimson body. Talons sprang from his fingers, and the knife slipped from the claws they became to clatter upon the floor. His robe fell away, dissolving before it ever struck the ground, consumed to fuel this monstrous transformation. He was the demon the street people claimed, now. Only his eyes remained unchanged, the same brilliant, mad gleam burning within them.

I charged forward and rained a flurry of blows against his chest, but they did little more than daze him. Fine, I’m adaptable. While he was still reeling, I followed up the punches with a kick to the side of his head that should, by all rights, have cracked his skull. He staggered back briefly, and I was certain he would fall, but it was not the case. He shook his head, groggy, then advanced toward me again as I stood, slack jawed to realize he was not yet dead.

With a low, guttural cry, he lunged forward, slashing with his claws, but for all his new found bulk and weaponry, he had no training. I sidestepped his attack with ease and tripped him, sending him sprawling. I leapt upon his back and drove my knife to the hilt between his shoulder blades, heartened to see that at least the bastard could still bleed.

“Die, damn you!” I pulled on the blade, trying to free it for another strike. As I worked, I realized with dismay that what I had thought to be blood from the wound I had dealt him was in fact the same material that had transformed him! I continued struggling with the knife in desperation as the red fluid erupted and flowed upward, dissolving and absorbing the blade right out of my hands. There was no sign of a wound when it was done. Frustrated, I beat the back of his head with my fists, to no avail. The Soothsayer laughed, then leapt to his feet, sending me flying into the air like some unfortunate, green horseman.

I landed hard on the opposite side of the worktable, dizzied from the impact, but still alive, and hoping to remain so. I cast my gaze about frantically, looking for something, anything to use as a weapon. As it happened, the Soothsayer’s lovely knife lay right where it had fallen moments before. Surely, it would prove useful now! Invigorated by my find, I snatched it up and rose slowly, feigning injury. I leaned heavily against the table, my right hand, holding the knife, blocked from his sight as he approached.

“Vertebral damage, or a broken rib, perhaps,” he noted. “Either way, no more dodging for you now, is there?” I stood my ground as he approached, keeping an expression of pain on my face, letting him get as close as I dared before striking.

“You know,” he said with a monstrous chuckle, “You were right. I was bluffing.”

“I thought you could see the future,” I said in a weak, husky voice, even going so far as to feign a swoon.

“I haven’t had time to fetch any new parts,” he replied, gloating, savoring his moment of victory. “But isn’t it delicious, the anticipation of not knowing how things turn out?” His grin was a nightmare of teeth as he moved in for the kill.

“I know how it turns out,” I said, and with every bit of strength and speed I could muster, I brought my weapon up in a searing arc and buried it in his gut. Sparks erupted from the blade, accompanied by the sounds of rending metal and the Soothsayer’s own shriek of agony as I drove it higher and higher, laying him open like a fish. The red demon skin exploded from his body in a cloud of the curious, red sand, filling the air around us. I gasped in shock, unintentionally drawing in great lungful of the stuff. As the Soothsayer fell to the floor, I could feel my chest convulsing. Tears poured from my eyes in torrents. Blind and paralyzed by the choking and coughing that wracked my body, I seized the edge of the worktable and held on with all I had left as I rode out the storm, praying that this time the bastard was truly dead.

After long minutes, the fit passed, and not slowly as one might imagine, but instantly. One moment, I was doubled over and strangling. The next, I was fine. It was damned peculiar, but I gave it little thought. I had other, more pressing concerns to address.

I looked about, frantic, uncertain of where the Soothsayer had fallen, fearing he had somehow escaped. With grim satisfaction, I saw him splayed upon the floor scant yards from me, looking like nothing so much as one of his own victims.

I stood over him, covered in his blood, and watched him twitch as the life seeped from his body. He still lived, was still conscious.

I squatted beside him and caressed his neck with the wicked, glowing blade, my gesture communicating more certainly than any words precisely what I intended, and that I wouldn’t be buying him even an instant’s respite by doing it before he was well on his way to hell.

His eyes were no longer lit with any hellish purpose. In the end, as my employer had requested, they were filled with the same horror he had inflicted upon so many unfortunates.

“Just parts,” I hissed.

It took him quite a while to die.

I made it back to Rellith just as the sun was rising. Sal was waiting where I had left him. When he caught sight of me limping his way, he flashed a snaggle-toothed grin.

“You got him, dincha?” Sal asked, barely able to contain his excitement. “Izzat his head in that bag?”

I answered with a nod and kept moving. I was too tired to chat. Sal whooped and shouted with glee, then ran off to tell his friends the good news.

I, however, had one more point of business to conclude before I could call it a night.

The ache in my muscles had begun to fade by the time I reached the red light district, and I found myself in surprisingly good spirits. I had decided that I would forgive Alicia the rest of my fee. I had been forced to move more quickly than I had expected, and it was unlikely she had raised the other fifty in a single night. What purpose would it serve to terrorize her over the money?

I come upon a group of whores plying their trade on a street corner, and asked after Alicia.

Everyone fell silent. As they looked back and forth at one another, nervous and reluctant to speak, I felt my high, fine mood slipping away, replaced by a sick, glacial feeling in the pit of my stomach. My intuition sang like a bowstring. There was more here than simple, streetwise reticence.

“What?” No answer. I singled one out and confronted her. “Tell me.”

“She’s—” The woman licked her lips, and continued, “She’s dead. She came home short last night and Hammer—” She looked down at the street, unable to meet my eyes. “He beat her to death. They found the body this morning. Everybody knows what happened, but nobody saw it, so nothing’s gonna get done.” She lowered here eyes and stared at the ground. “You know how things work down here.”

I stood long moments in silence, my jaw locked as if welded in place. When at last I found my voice, the words fell from my lips like sleet from a gray sky. “Where is he?”

I stood in silence over the mound of freshly turned earth, the wind whipping my long hair about my head and into my eyes. Thull, Murmandimus, and Sal were just behind me, respectful and quiet. The sack I held in one hand, now soaked through and dripping with blood, seemed doubly heavy. The cold part of my mind, the calculating part, chuckled that ‘doubly’ was, give or take some minor weight variations, literally true.

It was a good grave, as far as graves go. I had paid for the best. But in the end, it was still a just a hole with a dead girl inside. She had no family. We four were the only ones to mark her passing.

I thought of offering some words, but what was there to say? I loosed the drawstring on the sack and dumped my grisly trophies on the ground in front of the tombstone. Soothsayer’s cold, lifeless eyes stared up at us, his face contorted in agony that he no doubt still suffered, wherever his soul had gone. Hammer, it seemed, hadn’t the nerve to face us. His head was face down in the dirt. It seemed fitting.

And yet, there was something undone, something important that I was loath to do. I looked over my shoulder at the mage. He nodded his approval, his quicksilver eyes reflecting blue, but otherwise giving no sign of emotion. It galled me that he had so easily guessed what I was contemplating. No doubt, he would poke and prod at me about it later, damn him.

I wondered what dark work the Soothsayer’s tiny machines were up to as they coursed through my body. Murmandimus had assured me there was nothing to fear, that I should count them as spoils of war, a fortunate accident of unimaginable value. I had no such illusions. He claimed they would make me immortal, and I believed him. But it seemed to me that this was no blessing. Rather, it was the Soothsayer’s final curse, my sentence to witness forever the pointless suffering and death of innocents. Was it any wonder that creatures like Hammer and Soothsayer prospered in such a garden of apathy?

I envied Alicia her peace, even as I resolved to ensure it. She had given me a pouch of coins. I took it from my belt and tossed it to the ground in front of the tombstone.

“Rest well, child. This blood is on my hands alone.”