POV: the-stranger
Summary
The stranger, frozen in Ealstan's entryway, watches the taller of the two cloaked messengers in profile and the rest of his memory catches up to his eyes in one rush. The man is Ulric Stromfin, current head of the Seattle branch of the Fabian Augments cartel. The stranger does not know how he knows this, only that he knows everything. He knows the cartel finds people who are out of options — fighters chasing a stardom league with unrestricted enhancements, families desperate enough for expensive nanites to ignore a debt they will be paying with their lives, would-be thieves who want stealth or weapons augments they could never legitimately buy — and locks them into contracts that never get written down and never get out of. He knows entire crews of thieves obligated to share their takes upward. The sheer specificity of this knowledge is itself information: he is no honest tourist. He is, by any honest read, a mobster, a thief, possibly someone from a rival outfit. He files that under "things to feel terrible about later" and acts on the only piece that matters right now, which is that Ulric absolutely wants him dead.
He grabs Sefawynn by the arm and hand, hauls her back out into the entryway, and pins her against the wall by the doorway. Her lamp spills oil; her knife comes up under his jaw. He explains, in a whisper that is too quick and too sincere to be a play, that the messengers are not who he thought, that the tall one will kill him on sight, that this is why he grabbed her, and that he is going to let go now and would she please not draw the man's attention. She lets him let go. He notices, irrelevantly, that she smells of mint and sage. She has not yet lowered the knife when he asks for somewhere to hide.
Her brother is in there. He has just remembered to register the shorter cloaked figure — face like a shovel, boxer's augments, beard — as Quinn Jericho, Ulric's enforcer. He talks her sideways into the armoury across the entry instead of out into the hall: a rack of axes and swords, no light but the slit of the door pulled almost shut. They watch through it as Ulric and Quinn walk out trailed by Ealstan, his wife, and three servants — including Wyrm.
The conversation that ought to end with the messengers leaving instead pivots, and the stranger's stomach drops with the timing. Ealstan, professional and clipped, promises word will be sent if the red-haired man is seen. Ulric, professional and clipped right back, demands also to hear of any further strange happenings, and Ealstan rebukes his presumption — he answers to the earl, Alwin, not to a messenger. Ulric pauses in the door, lets the young guard outside swing it open for him, and turns. There is a tone in his voice the stranger recognises with bone-deep dread. He reaches for one of the swords on the rack.
Ulric's pivot is patient and theatrical. He talks of new times coming, new ways. Ealstan's wife answers that seasons change either way and Weswara meets them as it meets friend, foe, man, and spirit. "And if those changing seasons bring me?" Ulric asks. "Someone who is neither?" Neither friend nor foe? "Neither man," he says, "nor spirit," and from under his cloak he produces a Torrington 11940 — military-grade, force-ejector, almost certainly loaded with anti-nanite spread rounds, enough firepower to defeat the toughest plating and turn a skull into nothing. He shoots the smiling young guard at the door without warning and without a suppressor, because he wants the bang.
The stranger looks away. His medical nanites silently clamp down on his hearing to spare him further damage; he hears the world rush. When he looks back the guard is a pair of boots in the doorway and smoke is hanging in the entry on purpose. The locals are stunned mute. Ealstan has stepped in front of his wife. Ulric, smooth as the rehearsed politician he evidently is, declares that he kills whom he chooses — new times, as he said — and asks Ealstan whether further demonstration is wanted. Ealstan says no. Ulric points the pistol at one of the remaining guards and elicits "No, lord." Excellent. He looks forward to working with the thegn. There is a tradition, he believes — bearn-gisel? Did he say that right? Yes, Ealstan whispers. Excellent. Ulric nods to Quinn, who shoves the lord and lady aside and grabs Wyrm by the arm.
The stranger and Sefawynn, who have until this moment been watching through a one-inch slit, understand the same thing in the same instant. The newcomers — registering Wyrm's better clothing and the courtesy by which the boy has been calling Ealstan "little father" — have made the same wrong sum the stranger himself made earlier, and got the same wrong answer. They have decided Wyrm is the thegn's son, and they are taking him to enforce Ealstan's compliance. Sefawynn grabs the door, ready to burst out with her knife. The stranger seizes her arm. She turns on him with a glare that dares him to stop her, and he does dare, because the moment she steps out they shoot her, and then they search the armoury and shoot him. Ulric, civil as anything, tells Ealstan he may visit his son at Wellbury in the house of the reeve Wealdsig, who has been agreeable, and that the boy will be cared for with special attention.
For half a heartbeat he thinks about tackling Ulric himself — surprise, the gun, his platings — and then he remembers that his platings are half offline. He squeezes Sefawynn's shoulder. He mouths *no*, and again, *NO*. Ulric and Quinn walk out with Wyrm between them and call for their horses. Sefawynn folds onto her knees in the dark armoury and starts to shake. Nobody in the entryway moves until hoofbeats fade into the dark that spawned them.