Mochon’s heart nearly stopped as Sarros’ Mask appeared under the Ulritten mercenary’s fingertips. It was most certainly not the Mask Mochon had stolen. That one had a grim elegance to it, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the face of some pagan priest. This new Mask was a wretched, piebald travesty.

It looked to be made of a flimsy wood scored with ragged patchwork cuts, painted in a red checker pattern with a layer of peeling, yellowed varnish over all. A leering smile was carved into the area covering the mouth, arrow-like teeth gouged into a gaping grin. As with the Devil mask, there were no eye holes, only a smooth, sloping forehead scored repeatedly as with a dull, thick-edged knife.

Nothing in his life had put as much terror into Mochon’s heart as the sight of Sarros’ Mask. “To me!” he roared. “Death to the traitor! Half my wealth and a new horse to the man who lands the killing blow!”

The shouts of the bandits eagerly snatching up improvised weapons did not quite cover the throaty chuckle coming from the thing that was once Sarros.

***

The Leper King twisted his neck as an owl might, squirming in pleasure at the popping sensation of his vertebrae shifting. It had been too long. Far, far too long. Human sweat and stink burned his nostrils, and the pain was pleasant. He looked at the closest approaching bandit, and chuckled. It wasn’t a laugh born of arrogance or derision, but of lighthearted happiness. Had Sarros thought he could fight all these men at once?

That was something only a Fool would consider.

One bandit shouted as he swung his sword at the Leper King’s neck. The Masked creature turned his palm toward the blade’s edge, and the steel snapped in two as it touched skin. The Leper King took a carefree step behind his attacker as the man’s momentum carried him past, fingers trailing along the bandit’s ribcage. Fabric and skin and flesh split like the skin of an overripe fruit under the Leper King’s touch, and the bandit fell to the ground in writhing agony.

An older bandit who had not seen the close exchange raised a crate almost to eye level and heaved it at the Leper King’s forehead. The Masked creature struck the crate to the ground with a single swipe of his palm, splinters flying and tent-pegs falling. He followed this up by tapping the older bandit’s wrist, splitting apart the arteries and veins under the skin, causing a great purple bruise to well up under the surface of the arm. The bandit’s face went pale and he staggered back, mouthing a prayer against demons, pushed away by two more men who were just behind.

Quite a few bandits had their go at the rich bounty offered by their leader before the crowd began to thin. Their target turned away swords and clubs and pots and knives without seeming to sustain any damage to his person, and caused barely visible but horrific injuries in return. Not one of them had ever seen an Actor in battle before. None would have attacked if they had.

Of course, the leper king was not actually fighting. He punished those who assaulted him in the same way a farmer might kick his dog for getting at the chickens: A rebuff without anger to teach something far stupider than himself that no, that behavior was not acceptable. Sure enough, every bandit who received discipline from the Leper King fell down or fled, and did not continue in such a pointless exercise as attacking the Masked creature.

He nearly skipped as he walked through the throng, approaching Sarros’ fallen demon blade where it lay. The Leper King stooped and picked up the weapon, running a finger down its edge, smiling fondly at the trickle of blood which erupted from flesh split to the bone. “See here,” he said, showing his finger to the nearest terrified bandit. The flesh wiggled like an injured maggot as it knitted itself back together. “You crowd of fucking idiots. There was a perfectly good bad-sword right here, and you lot tried to stick me with pots and crates.” He swung the blade with one hand, far more quickly than Sarros could have, with a theatric sweep that Sarros never would have risked. The edge stopped a hair’s breadth from the bandit’s neck, and the Leper King chuckled as the bandit yelped and stiffened. The Leper King dropped the blade’s edge and put a hand on the shoulder of his joke’s victim. “Now, you never got at me, so I have no reason to kill you. Good man, hanging back. Cowards live to run another day, as it’s said.” His voice rang hollowly from underneath the Mask.

“Th-thank you,” the man gasped, looking equal parts relieved and ashamed.

The Leper King cocked his head. “On the other hand, neither did you step in to help your comrade when he was beset by a pack of vicious brutes.” The Masked creature’s eyes and mouth were hidden, but his voice dripped with sudden, cold anger.

“I’m sorry,” mumbled the bandit, pulling away. He stepped back, but with a terrible sucking sound his arm pulled from his shoulder and remained in the Leper King’s hand.

“There you go again,” murmured the Leper King as the last few strands of connective tissue rotted and dripped away. He tossed away the detached arm as his victim screamed on the ground. The pain would soon fade, actually, and the skin was already closing up over the wound. Shock would probably kill the bandit, though. “You people never just stand still and talk. That’s all I ever want, really.” He pointed the demon blade at Mochon. “Even the other me wanted that. If you had let me take over like I suggested, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” He aped Sarros’ earlier wide gesture. “I don’t want to hurt my brothers, only those who betray me.” A spasm coursed through the Leper King’s body, and he dropped his arms as though terribly weary. “Ooh, it tickles when I try to come back out. I should be patient, it’s only been a few moments!” His voice’s volume rose gradually though this, ending in a fervent, tipped-head scream to the heavens. “Moooochon! Gah, what a terrible name. Doesn’t fit you at all. You know, I was thinking when you were talking with the other me, ‘Mochon? Isn’t that what they call sweet bean buns in Itios?’

“I told myself that, but I didn’t think it was as funny then, and I didn’t say anything to you about it. Probably wise, given the situation.” He began digging at his arm with the demon blade’s tip, flicking tiny bits of flesh away, wriggling in joy at the sensation of regeneration. “Well, come on. Haven’t got all day. Give up the seat. Throne, I’d say, but you’re not quite that high and mighty yet. Put me where I belong, in charge, or I’ll chop you up into little pieces and feed you to…” He paused, transfixed by a small beetle crawling on his boot. “I don’t really know what. Someone apt, I suppose.”

***

No, Mochon thought as his men screamed and fell at the Masked man’s jovial touch. No, no, no. Could he run? Was there anywhere he could hide? Sarros had mentioned he hunted his sister’s killer. If Mochon fled as far as he could to the west, would Sarros ignore him in search of the greater prize? I stole his sister’s Mask, he thought. Damnation runs in the family. He had, in a way, desecrated the dead. No, there could be no fleeing for Mochon. His grip tightened on the long axe, and he cursed having not taken the demon blade for himself. It had reminded him far too much of the Imperial straight swords, and he liked as much weight and reach as he could get when it came to the brutal art of killing. It had barely been sufficient to throw down Sarros. It would be wholly incapable of stopping this monster.

He gritted his teeth as Emrett’s arm pulled from its socket, noticing how the wound immediately closed, denying the man a warrior’s death in battle. Mochon snorted. Funny how Imperial thoughts like that remained in his mind, even when Mochon was thoroughly aware of the idiocy of such an idea as a good death.

“Moooochon!” the Masked man was keening, his head twisted about, his tendons straining in his neck. The bandit leader tensed, wondering if his time had come, but the Actor was back to babbling again. His movements seemed purposeful and lithe, even in this state. Every Actor Mochon had ever seen was a trembling, unstable mess after all the torture. Sarros—or whoever—was a controlled animal packed with speed and power. When he pounced, there would be no running.

Mochon cleared his throat, cutting off speech about how Sarros was going to chop the bandit leader up and feed him to someone. “Hail!” he called. The creature froze, pivoting on the balls of its feet to face the bandit leader. “I apologize,” said Mochon, a half-dozen alternative plans racing through his mind, and none of them seeming better than his current course. If only he’d had more time to plan. “I was caught up in the moment when I asked my men to attack you. You are not injured, I see, and you have reprimanded those who attacked you. To see my own men, my brothers injured wounds my very heart.” He filled his voice with heavy gravel, the closest he could approximate sorrow at such short notice. “It is as though you have punished me as well, a hundred times over.”

“Eh?” The Masked man tapped a rhythm on his leg with the demon blade. “Well, as you say. And what are you getting at, Sweet Bean Bun?”

“Everything I did to Sarros was to call you forth. You know as much as I that he did not wish you to see the light of day.”

“Of course. I would be a Fool if I wanted myself awake.” He giggled. “And I am, and I am!”

A stream of sweat dripped into Mochon’s left eye, stinging terribly, but he did not so much as blink it away. “I wish only to be your ally, now, or at least to part on good terms. See here!” He withdrew the Devil Mask from its place under his coat, and placed it carefully on the ground. “I offer his sister’s Mask, which I wrongfully stole, as a gesture of good will between us. What say you?”

The Masked man began to walk slowly toward him, the bandits clearing a wide path so as to be out of his way. The man who had been Sarros stopped a foot away, the wood of his Mask terrifyingly close to Mochon’s sweat-streaked face. “Hello,” he said softly. In that flat tone, he sounded almost like Sarros. “My name is the Leper King. My name is Sarros. I am an Aspect of the Fool of the Astral Court. I am a mercenary seeking vengeance. I may be the last of my kind. My people still live in the East.” His voice grew softer as he leaned in, and Mochon resisted with every atom of his being the urge to slam his axe-head into the Actor’s jaw. “I am me,” the Leper King said. “And also myself. When you wronged the man named Sarros, my father, my brother, my patron, my slave, my lover, my jailer, my hatred and love, you grew an enmity between us that can never be rectified.” He lashed out then with his hands, the demon blade falling to the earth, and Mochon reacted with the last bit of hope left in his body.

Dropping the long axe, Mochon clutched the demon blade by its sharp double edge, the steel sliding cleanly through the flesh of his hands to become lodged in the bone. There was no pain for a split second, and in that time Mochon reached with his other hand, snatched the demon blade’s grip, tore it from his own hand, and drew it across the Leper King’s stomach at an upward angle. Steam filled the air briefly as Sarros’ body’s entrails spilled out, a wretched stink making Mochon retch. The demon blade fell from his loose, spasming fingers, and the Leper King stepped on the blade so it could not be retrieved.

He had his hands on Mochon’s throat by then, but didn’t seem to be choking the man. “Clever, desperate, ambitious bastard of a man,” the Leper King breathed. “It strikes me you might be king after all. I am a Fool to do so, but I will leave you with your life if you promise to take good care of it and to feed it and to take it for walks.” He moved his hand in a touch that was almost a caress across Mochon’s eye, smoothing the flesh around the socket like it was putty, encasing the socket in an ugly lump that left the bandit leader half-blind. The Leper King’s other hand slid uninhibited through Mochon’s clothing, skin, fat, meat, and bone, his cold fingers wrapping around Mochon’s rapidly-beating heart. “I could squeeze,” he whispered. “Just know that I could. Feel it. Let the knowledge feed your nightmares until the day you die.

“Fear the day I have no more enemies and come to take whatever you have away.” His grip tightened a fraction, and Mochon gasped, but the Leper King only laughed and withdrew his hand, the wound closing itself back up as he did. “Your body I have marred. Your mind I have planted with a weed which can never be truly eradicated. Your spirit…” The Leper King laughed and began to push his innards back into his stomach. The edges of the wound seemed to glow like red-hot metal, and closed only very slowly. “Well, you’ve done quite a good job poisoning that yourself.” He ripped up a part of his coat and tied it around his stomach, and retrieved the Devil Mask.

Blade in one hand, Mask in the other, Sarros and the Leper King left Mochon’s crew behind.

The bandits who had survived the encounter (a half dozen had already bled to death from arterial wounds, and two more would soon die from horrific internal bleeding) did what they could for Mochon, who had fallen unconscious. Without anyone to guide them, packing was slow and aimless, and when the Imperial retinue who had accompanied the merchants arrived, they found their targets exactly where they had expected.

End of Part One