Brandon Sanderson - Shadows of Self

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?”

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?”

“By the Survivor, no!” My anger rose without warning. Many a man had met the righteous end of my knuckles for such a comment, but here in the barely civilized reaches of the Outer Cities, I knew I musn’t punish this ill-informed yokel for his folly.

“My good man, no,” I said more calmly and letting out a generous laugh. He shakily reholstered his pistol. A crooked smile began beneath those knifelike mustaches of his. I approached him like I would a prairie lion, but heartbeats later I was slapping him on the back like an old friend (and narrowly avoiding the end of one of his mustaches piercing me through the right earlobe, a hole that no doubt would make the honorable Handerwym jealous of the metalminds I might hang there).

“A drink,” I roared. “A drink for my friend! For I too would pull a gun on Waxillium Ladrian were I to meet him in person!”

Danger averted, Lady Lavont came again to my side, a tinkle of laughter on her lips. Then I noticed over the crowd two pairs of waving arms that I immediately recognized as Handerwym’s. In trying to get my attention over the pressing crowd in the room, he shook his arms in so aggravated a fashion that one of his metalminds flew from his wrist and landed like an Outer Cities cataract diver into the sparkle punch, spraying red droplets all in a mottle upon Lady Lavont’s pastel satin evening gown.