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With a crowd this big, you couldn’t move through them, but with them. You hadda pull the crowd on like a good coat, snug and tight, then let the cloth give you some direction. Wayne shuffled when the people shuffled, and shouted at the proper points, giving just the right drunken slur to his speech. He gave back a friendly elbow when one nudged him, and before too long he neared the front. Here, above everyone else, a shirtless fellow in trousers and suspenders stood atop a fountain statue, holding on to the Survivor’s spear for balance, his other fist raised toward the crowd.

“They rob us blind!” the man shouted.

Aye, that’s true, Wayne thought, shouting along with the crowd’s roar of agreement.

“They expect us to work long hours every day, but then when it ain’t convenient for them, they just cut us loose and don’t care none if we starve.”

Yeah, they do, Wayne thought, joining in the cursing and shouting.

“They do each other favors,” the man bellowed. “They suck us dry, then gather to throw lavish parties!”

I’ve been to those parties, Wayne thought. Good sandwiches.

“Would the Survivor have stood for this?”

Probably not, Wayne admitted. As the crowd surged around him, Wayne folded his arms and thought. Sure, bringing down a homicidal shapeshifter was important and all, but rusts, this seemed a bad time to be hanging around with conners and noblemen. Listening to this speech, he was half inclined to string himself up, which was really disturbing, since he was generally suicidal only in the mornings.

He was about to turn away and flow back toward the mansion to talk with MeLaan about this when something changed. A new figure climbed up onto the statue: an older, balding man who was a little thick around the waist, but in a friendly-type way. He wore ornate robes that frayed like a mistcoat at the bottom. A Survivorist priest?

The older man held up a pleading hand, and the fellow who had been shouting bowed his head in acknowledgment and stepped back. Beneath the giant image of the Survivor, his priest would be heard. Wayne felt a disturbance stir within him, like his stomach discovering he’d just fed it a bunch of rotten apples. Religion worried him. It could ask men to do things they’d otherwise never do.

“I come to you,” the priest said into the night, “understanding and sympathetic. But I implore you, do not invoke the Survivor’s name for looting and destruction. There is a way to fight back, and I will join you in it, but these are not the days of the Lord Ruler’s tyranny. You have the ability to make your voice heard. You can send advocates to the government for you.”

The crowd hushed. A few men shouted out expletives, explaining exactly what they wanted to do to the governor, but most grew quiet.

“The Survivor said that we should smile,” the priest pled. “He taught that we should not let our sorrows drag us down no matter how bad life became.”

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?”