Jack Read Free Page A

it don't get out of hand, which, of course, it always does.
That's why he had to be stopped. But there'll be another one, with more big
shows, more grand gestures and thefts and the like. People need that.
    I'm grateful to Jack
and his kin. If they weren't there, and this is what I think my mates don't
understand, if they weren't there, and all them angry people in Dog Fenn and
Kelltree and Smog Bend had no one to cheer on, gods know what they'd do. That
would be much worse.
     
    So here's a cheer for
Jack Half-a-Prayer. As a spectator who enjoyed his shows, and a loyal and
loving servant of this city, I toast him in his death as I did in his life. And
I exacted a little revenge for him, even though I know it was past time for him
to stop.
    It was a basic
Remaking. We took that little traitor's legs and put engines in their place,
but I made sure to do a little extra. Reshaped a suckered filament from some
fish-thing's carcass, put it in place of his tongue. It'll fight him. Can't
kill him, but his tongue'll hate him till the day he's gone. That was my
present to Jack.
    That's what I did at
work today.
     
    When I met Jack he
wasn't Jack yet. My boss, he's the master craftsman. Bio-thaumaturge. It was
him did the clayflesh, who went to work. It was him took off Jack's right hand.
    But it was me held the
claw. That great, outsized mantis limb, hinging chitin blades the length of my
forearm. I held it on Jack's stump while my boss made the flesh and scute run
together and alloy. It was him Remade Jack, but I was part of it, and that'll
always make me proud.
     
    I was thinking about
names as I knocked off today, as I walked home through this city it's my honour
to protect. I know there are plenty who don't understand what has to be done
sometimes, and if the name of Jack Half-a-Prayer gives them pleasure, I don't
grudge them that.
    Jack, the man I made.
It's his name, now, whatever he was called before.
    Like I say, in the
short time I knew him, before I made him and after, I never called Jack by his
name nor he me. We couldn't, not in this line of work. Whenever I spoke to
Jack, I called him "Prisoner," and answering, he called me "Sir."