He was of average height and build, clean shaven and short-haired, dressed in the rough, everyday clothes that almost everyone around Albert was in. He looked almost unobtrusive, standing there, like a little lost boy in the midst of a sea of strangers, his eyes shining under the glare. Or rather, his eye—the left one was empty and sightless, with a milky white film over it; but the other was what gave him away. It was the most intense eye Albert had ever seen. It blazed out at the world like a burning coal—hot, black and restless. If Ollie’s eyes had been gimlets then this was a laser, searing through everything it touched. It was the eye of a fanatic, a man completely convinced in the rightness of what he said and did, a man who would have no compunction dying for it, even killing for it. Even standing in the midst of the crowd, Albert felt like it was looking at him, through him, and he felt surprisingly small.

But for all that, he still didn’t understand the phenomenon unfolding all around him. What was it about this average, almost unremarkable, man that held an entire crowd in thrall, driving them so wild with adulation that they would blot out half their eyesight to acknowledge him? For all that his eyes—eye—was something out of the ordinary, his was no charismatic figure that demanded such devotion from the masses. For instance, Bosquanet—with her tall, spare figure, spindly fingers, long white hair and deep, sunken eyes—had presented a far more commanding presence.

The man walked forward to the edge of the platform and sat down, his legs dangling over the edge. The mob was crowding so close to the stage that some of them were pressing against his legs, but all he did was smile. Then Vail spoke, and before he had finished his first sentence, Albert knew what it was that made this man what he was, how he was able to drive scores of people into raptures just by walking towards them. His power was his voice.