The Vagrant was here, and while he lived, the imperials would die.

“It’s… it’s you. Isn’t it?”

Cyrus spun, sword up and at the ready. A young man hardly older than Cyrus stood at the entrance to the alley. His mouth was open, and his eyes wide. Had he also come from the brothel?

“I am,” Cyrus said. “Who else would I be?”

“We all know of you,” the man said. He walked with a slight limp, made worse by how much of a hurry he moved. “That skull. That crown. You’re the Vagrant.”

Cyrus grinned behind an already grinning skull despite knowing it would go unseen.

“Guilty.”

The man slowed as he neared. He stammered for a moment, struggling for the right words.

“Could you… could you bless me, with your sword?”

Cyrus froze in place. Bless him? How? What did he even mean? The young man took his confusion for rejection, and he dropped to his knees.

“Please,” he said. “They hung my brother from the flags. I’m not asking much.”

He reached out for the bloody blade. Cyrus allowed him to curl his fingers about the edges, careful not to cut himself on the sharp bottom. Gently, calmly, and with great honor, this stranger pressed the flat side of the sword across his forehead. The blood of the soldier smeared upon his skin, granting him a familiar and yet wholly different crown. The man released the sword, and he leaned back onto his heels. His voice broke when he spoke as the first tears came.

“Make them pay,” he said. “Make them all pay.”

Cyrus saw the faith in the man’s eyes, so fragile and yet so strong. He needed to believe in this. It was the solid ground upon which he stood as everything else around him quaked and fell. Thorda spoke often of Cyrus’s need to build a legend for himself, to establish the mystery and power of the Vagrant persona. He understood it now. Those eyes of faith, that crown of blood, revealed it in a way no speech or lesson ever could.

“I will,” the Vagrant promised. “They will all pay for the blood they have shed upon my island.”

It was exactly what the man wanted to hear, yet to speak such a pronouncement made Cyrus feel strange. “My island”? When he’d first returned to Vallessau, he had felt no attachment to the city, nor did he feel that Thanet was truly his to rule. All he wanted was revenge. This change in him… was this a change he even wanted?

The young man dropped his head, and the worship, the whispered words that sounded so akin to prayer, made Cyrus’s skin crawl. He sheathed his sword, and he offered no further words. Into the street he ran, then to the rooftops, until he could flee home.