“You’re a madman!” someone shouted. The accusation came from a man named Loy who’d been with him for about five years. He also happened to be Jost’s distant cousin or some such rot. Faryon knew that the men talked about him when he wasn’t around. He’d heard their whispers. He’d even paid one of them to spy on them. All of their rumblings were in the same vein: That Mayor Faryon dar Lamassi is missing a few of his marbles, he’s obsessed with finding this glowing liquid that may or may not exist, but as long as he keeps paying us we’ll keep digging. The word ‘mad’ had been thrown around more than once. Occasionally one of his workers would quit, but it was rare considering how well he paid them. Not once had he ever faced a mutiny.

Until now.

While his cousin knelt staring at his stump of an arm pumping blood, Loy charged Faryon, crashing into him before he could even think about defending himself. They tumbled together, the enraged man pressing his thumbs into Faryon’s throat as his hands encircled his neck. Faryon struggled to breathe, but managed to wheeze out, “You fool! I’m trying to save him. I’m trying to save the miserable lot of you!”

His words rang on deaf ears. If anything, Loy only grew angrier, his face reddening as he pinched off the last thread of Faryon’s airway. “Now you die, you bastard!”

“Stop. Please.”

Though the two words sounded weak, pitiful even, they still held a certain degree of command, maybe because they’d been spoken by the person who’d been wronged the most in this situation: the lad, Jost. Loy’s grip slackened and he was distracted enough for Faryon to slap his hands aside and then roll away. “Don’t,” Loy said, moving to block his view of Jost.

“Let ’im through,” Jost said. “Please.”

Loy glanced back, considering. “If you so much as raise a hand against him again, I’ll kill you. I swear it on my daughter’s life.”

“I’m going to save him.”

Loy’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he said no more, standing aside to reveal Jost. The color had leeched from his face, his lips already darkening toward blue. Someone had given him an article of clothing that was now stuffed against his wound, though it had done little to stem the flow of blood, which had soaked all the way through.

In short, he was dying. He has a couple of minutes at most, Faryon surmised. It’ll be enough. It has to be. Of course, he wasn’t worried about this meaningless boy dying. If anything, his dire condition was an added bonus. Unless he didn’t make it in time. “The hand,” he said quickly. “Where is it?”