#au!jude

Jude took a moment before speaking. General Wills had a reputation for unusual kindness. This man’s reputation was just the opposite, and so he made no attempt to hide it as he sized him up, like one predator looking at another, determining who will sit at the apex and who will be left with the scraps. His eyes were dark brown, nearly black, and revealed nothing. Jude recognized something in them, and in the man’s studied expression of boredom. He’d schooled himself to give nothing away as well.

“You don’t look like a man interested in speeches, so I’ll be brief. I’ve come to remove a thorn in your side. She may not be yet, but I can guarantee she will be.”

“Is that a broadsword?” asked the man, turning his gaze casually toward the weapon. “And one you actually use, hmm?”

He was a very ordinary looking man, beyond his uniform, not dissimilar to what the soldiers wore in this country. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes. Not particularly memorable.

“If you’re trained in it, I imagine you could cut a man in half with a single swing.” There was something predatory underneath the veneer of ordinary, though. He appeared relaxed, but as if that could change at any moment. Not like a cat, or a wolf. More like a snake, one that could lay for hours in cold languor, only to strike suddenly, viciously, without mercy.

“Of course, it would take time to draw, and then to swing. To gain momentum. A gun, on the other hand, that can be drawn quite quickly, and can achieve the same result more, shall we say, subtly?” He gestured briefly to the center of his forehead. The guards who had searched him had removed at most half of the weapons he carried.

“I’m letting my thoughts run away with me, though,” he said. In reality, he was anything but relaxed. The entire building made his skin crawl. To be in a country where witches ran the government, in secret and to the detriment of the public…he had seen some of the cells on his way to this office, had heard rumors of what went on here. Supposedly the man in front of him was here to improve the conditions. It didn’t particularly matter to him. Some were better or worse, yes, but a witch was still a witch, in the end.

“You probably want to know what I’m doing here.”