I am ashamed to admit that I helped him. I can only wonder that perhaps I was so willing to trust him, I didn’t listen to my own conscience. I have learned that lesson in the most painful ways possible. Intelligence had come telling us that the blanks intended to find an opportunity to assassinate the mayor, and I confess, I aided him in manipulating our enemy to play into our hands. We fed the blanks information; we knew they were coming – we had practically invited them. We worked to orchestrate the entire thing. The waistcoat Mayor Longsight wore that day had an inner lining that protected his body from the full force of blade – his was only a surface wound. In his pockets were pouches of blood. The mayor had commanded me, and I obeyed. I let you believe he had died. For that I am truly sorry. But our deception didn’t stop there. During the times you came to see his body in state your mayor was merely sedated.

You may ask why I agreed to be part of this, but to that I can only say, you knew him too – don’t you remember how easy it was to be tied up by his words? I would have followed him to the ends of the earth. The truth is, I still trusted him – I believed he had a good plan and that I would see its meaning as it unfolded.

Of course, I had not prepared myself for his illness. That is the only way I can describe it – an illness – as though his mind was taken and his sense all but gone. I wept when I realized that something had changed in him – that at some point when he was playing dead for the crowds, he began to believe his own lie.

The doctor I consulted was sworn to secrecy – I could not bear for you to know that this great man had been so utterly broken. The doctor recommended that I play along – he felt that disagreement and conflict would only harm the mayor’s mind even more. Dan Longsight’s only hope for healing, the physician told me, lay in my allowing his delusions to play out. We hoped it would cause everything to click back into place once he saw his own madness for what it was.

His marks were fabricated, a miracle staged, and yet still he didn’t see reason. He stole a blank, allowed her into our town. He had her marked, believed he could change the truths we have always trusted in. He thought he was authority enough to decide her fate.

He refused to let me enact our revenge on the blanks for their heinous attacks and he heard your hurt and rage. He did not think it necessary. He believed he was a god.