“I don’t,” said the bad man. “In my profession—my calling—guilt leads to introspection, and introspection leads to hesitation, and hesitation leads to death. I don’t fear it, but I don’t wish it just yet. Does that make sense to you?”

“You didn’t finish Lash off,” Matthew said. “You had the chance. Why not?”

“Lash was already finished. I didn’t choose to waste the shot. Oh … you’re thinking I should’ve been merciful, and not allowed him to lie in that snow and linger for an hour? That’s all the time he had left. I didn’t choose to waste the shot,” he repeated. He watched the small fire burn. Then he drew a short but painful breath and slowly released it. “The truth … is that … in some way … I think I admired him. I think … for all he was … Lash believed in something. A vision … a plan … a hope. I have never had any of those. One day to me is the same as another. One job … the same. One killing … the same. Oh, of course I am good at what I do.”

“No doubt,” said Matthew.

“Proficient at what I do,” Julian corrected. “The professional, hard at work building … what? A future? My future consists of the time I have left before someone more proficient finishes me off. A younger gun, so to speak. Though I am not old. I am not. Not yet. But … I wish I had something to believe in, Matthew. I wish I had what Lash possessed … and what I took from him, because I recognized my own lack of hope … and I burned his away. Was he a bad man, Matthew?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call his methods pristine.”

“But his motivations … was he bad?” Julian asked, and it seemed he wanted to hear an answer more than anything else in the world. “Really … truly … was he bad?”

Matthew had no certain reply. Samson Lash had wished to conduct the building of his airship with the auction of the book, yet the building of the airship though important to his self-worth was equally important to him to insure the military strength of England against future enemies. Of course such a thing was a mad idea, but who could say what the passage of time might bring? And Lash had given Elizabeth a chance to grow beyond the confines of the Highcliff asylum, and it was out of a strange—one might say warped—love for her that he provided an outlet for RakeHell Lizzie safe from the streets of London.

His figurehead, Matthew mused. Lash had never touched her, nor seemed to want to.

And why not?

Because Lash was still faithful in his own way to the wife who had lost her mind.

Bad or good?

Matthew thought that it was all a mix. As, perhaps, it was in every human being who walked upon the earth.

Except maybe one.