I haven’t really had the time to properly work on the webnovella this week, so this entry isn’t part of the story proper.  This interlude (of which there may be more in the future as and when required) probably won’t be necessary reading to understand the story, but fleshes some things out a bit.  Essentially, it’s a way of me getting away with a shorter update.

Normal service will resume next week I imagine, but until then, enjoy the interlude.

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Wolf watched as Leander Crane left his office, and he pulled the crossbow back out from its hiding place. He had cleaned it everyday since the end of the war, a mark of respect for it’s previous owner and a fine friend.

It surprised Wolf that Crane hadn’t known about his older brother. The crossbow was a clue, and Crane’s complete obliviousness towards its significance was enough to tell him as much. But to not know about a sibling for so long, it didn’t bear thinking about, especially when that sibling knows all about you.

Mr What’s The Time Wolf (a name the product of an hilarious, and now dead, priest) rose from his desk and walked out into the hall, to the nearest window that faced the street. With the unloaded crossbow he took aim at the people on the street below. In a way, he thought, war was a much more liberal place. If the mood took him, right now, to kill one of those people down there he would be branded a criminal, but during war he would be a hero.

The war had been very good for Wolf’s business, seeing as before it had started his business was non-existent. His specific field had been born out of the various new laws that had kicked in to avoid whichever form of government they were currently at war with, and he had been ready to capitalise on that opportunity.

It had been simple things at first: outlawed books, embargoed goods, but it had soon grown in scope. A tasty bit of cash that was, for all external observers, completely legal. Sure, it had taken an army of lawyers (a profession that itself was going from strength to strength as the world evolved) to help him prove just how legal he was being, but the guards ultimately had no room for manoeuvre. Wolf had invented the legal equivalent of standing a single inch outside the reach of a tethered dog.

This specific acquisition was totally illegal, however. It wasn’t often that Wolf would be so reckless, but this was a favour. Wolf couldn’t quite remember how he came to owe this man a favour as such, but he had always been one to trust his feelings, and he felt as though he owed this man a favour. But even if he was being reckless, he wasn’t about to be foolish. As much as he could make this acquisition on his own, and with greater expediency, it would be too big a risk. No, a more expendable agent would be necessary.

 Wolf wondered why so many people confused expendable with talentless. Various competitors often hired expendable people with no talent, leading to them falling behind and racking up a sizeable amount of negative word of mouth. Wolf would only hire talented freelancers, people he expected to succeed. They were only expendable in so much as they were not tied to him by any noticeable, or legally provable, means. A sort of plausible deniability in a sense, except not really.

 He truly did believe that Crane would succeed, and as he watched the man walk out of the ground floor of the building owned and operated by Wolf, hijack a nearby cart in full view, and ride at full speed into the darkness, he began to wonder if Leander Crane had ever learned how to be subtle. Probably not, and that was why he could be relied upon.