They were as ordinary denizens of the Escapement as you could find. Two were veterans, or perhaps simple victims, of the war. One had half of a melted clock fused into his abdomen, a black minute hand protruding from his naked flesh like a cockroach’s antenna. The other had living bees trapped in a glass globe embedded in his thigh, and the bees beat angrily against the glass.

The man, with a long-practiced motion, would occasionally tap sharply on the glass with the end of his fingernail, momentarily silencing the creatures, who would soon start up again.

He seemed comfortable enough in his lot.

The other three were unaffected with materiel.

Altogether, they were an ill-kempt, ramshackle group. The Stranger noted that the bottle they drank from was clear, and that the liquid inside was a pearly white colour, and he knew that the assassins must have found substance, and had mixed it up with water to create this drink, which was called Sticks.

The men, he knew, would be comatose in minutes. They must have felt confident in the security of the broken maze, enough not to even leave a guard.

The Stranger squatted behind the rock and waited.

The men fell one by one, noiselessly.

They lay on their backs, their mouths masticating without sound, their eyes staring unseeing at the sky, their limbs twitching occasionally. The bees were silent in the veteran’s thigh.

The Stranger was about to rise when someone beat him to it. He saw a shadow detach itself from a hiding place on the opposite hill and begin to journey down.

It was a woman, wearing two low-slung pistols on her hips, a wide-brimmed hat which shaded her face, and a large, curved, nasty-looking knife on her thigh, which she unhooked smoothly and held as she descended.

She crossed the stream with long, easy strides. On the other side of the bank her head turned, for just a moment, and in the light he saw her face. She wore a black patch over one eye and her other was a deep, calm blue.

She approached the men who were unmoving on the ground.

The Stranger watched the woman rummage unhurriedly through their stuff, upending their bags until she found the brace of clown scalps and this she held for a moment as though considering its worth before she put it back on the ground.

Next she went to the nearest of the lying men and knelt beside him with the knife in her hand.

She cut the man’s throat with one quick, clean motion.

The Stranger watched. The man spasmed on the ground, and his legs kicked as though by their own accord, and then he went still. The woman had cut through his carotid artery, with a skill the Stranger could almost admire.

There was not much blood.