Producing a key, he unlocked the door. "My apologies for the mess. Muckbuckle dismissed the help as soon as I arrived."

We entered the ante-room, then ascended stairs to the second of three floors. Though not huge, the place was decorated with the same aristocratic foppishness that dripped from Bedford. In a sitting room I collapsed stiffly in a small, uncomfortable chair, appreciating the chance to rest my foot, which was by now betraying a serious limp. Bedford stoked some coals in a fireplace on one wall, above which hung a portrait of a young lady of considerable girth. After throwing a few small logs on the fire, Bedford eased gingerly into the chair beside mine, his leg over one arm.

"As I was saying, I was thousands of miles from where I needed to be, with no way of getting there on time, so I just sat around to wait it out. As it so happened, a zombie knocked on my door..." He registered my puzzled expression, and smiled with an air of patronizing authority with which I was becoming far too familiar. "You are in bad shape, friend! You'll recall from your training that a zombie is our term for a temporary host with simple orders—you know, sending a message or creating a distraction.” I remembered now, but barely. People would just show up and start telling you important things, and they were often children, drunks, or insane. "Anyway, as I was saying, a zombie knocked on the door and told me that, since I had time to kill until I could be recovered, I was to seek you out in one Deren Fisher, miscreant lately of the dock quarter, to make sure your drop had gone ok.”

Of course, I thought. Deren Fisher was my name. I didn't even register it as exceptional. I didn't like it, and I never had. Growing up in the village and on the boats, feeling awkwardly large and out of place, my mother's tirades about how I was wasting my potential; coming to the city and getting caught up in the wrong crowds on the docks...and many very, very dark things since. Then I caught myself. This wasn't my story, but my host's. "Yes," I replied.

There was a flash of genuine concern on his face, then he continued. "Right. So, the zombie said that the drop may have gone sour...something about an unexpected spike in your host's consciousness level during phase-in. They figured that, while I was in the area, I should ensure that you were all systems go. So I spread some coins around, located you, and watched. You woke up, trounced those poor fellows for nothing more than their idle curiosity about the contents of your purse, and headed out the door...and the rest you know."

He paused, looking for a response. I didn't give him one. I was thinking about whatever was hidden in my wallet.

"He said that I should confirm that you know your orders."

That got my attention. I wanted my orders. They were important. But I stayed quiet.

"Well," he asked, "do you at least remember them?"

"If I do, you're not hearing 'em," I replied, more gruffly than I had intended. He just shrugged. "Very well. Just to clarify, so they can't say that I failed in every last aspect of this drop, your mission is an H-K, and your target the Mayor of this backwoods hamlet, and his son.

I nodded and looked him in the eye. He looked away with something between distaste and disease. He was an aristocrat—at least while he was in this body—and was uncomfortable with the gaze of a killer. And a killer I was: a rogue, a leech on society who would probably do nothing better in his life—or worse—than murder a political figure and an innocent child.

I dismissed the moral implications of my thoughts with an ease which should have alarmed me. Something more pressing was on my mind. “Where's your latrine, Bedford?”

I needed to get to the contents of my wallet.

Look for the conclusion of Comrade of Thy Wanderings in next month’s This Great Society