"Are you sure you're all right, Brother?" Fletcher asks, for maybe the sixth time.
Russell appreciates his concern, really. But he also wishes Fletcher would let him sleep. It's hard enough to find a comfortable position on the patch of ground they've appointed as their bed: the grass is springy, but the dirt beneath it is unexpectedly compact and makes Russell's automail shoulder ache. His face hurts, too; he hopes his nose isn't broken.
"I'm fine," Russell answers. He rests his cheek on his folded arms.
"That imposter looked like a very good fighter."
"He wasn't that good," Russell mutters, as every bruise Ling gave him smarts.
"And a pretty good alchemist, too," Fletcher says.
Russell snorts, which also hurts. "Please. He had that prototype Philosopher's Stone. None of that was his own skill or talent. He's a third-rate alchemist who happened to get a few lucky hits in. That's all."
"Uh-huh." The helmet makes it hard to tell, but he thinks Fletcher's gaze settles on his banged-up face. But, after a moment, Fletcher changes the topic. "What did you think of the girl? Mei?"
"We saw her for all of two minutes," Russell says, slightly perplexed at the question. "I have no opinion of her."
"She didn't seem to get along with her brother very well."
"Jerk like that, it's no wonder," Russell says irritably.
"Or maybe they're not even brother and sister. They didn't look very much alike to me," Fletcher continues.
Russell considers this. "They had the same eyes," he muses. "Same hair color. But not much else. It might be that they're cousins or something, or maybe only half-related. I don't particularly care."
He resettles his cheek on his folded arms, shutting his eyes. Fletcher grows quiet. Then, just before Russell finally dozes off, Fletcher says softly, "And they had a Stone."
"A prototype," Russell reminds him in a murmur.
"Still. It's more than we have."
That stings. Russell sits up and gives him a look. "Well, we're going back tomorrow," he says firmly. "We're going to take a good look at their research, and then what they have, we'll have. And then we're going to expose them as the frauds they are to the whole town." He enjoys the mental image he has of the scenario, particularly the shocked, humiliated expression on Ling's face. "Everything will work out just fine."
"I hope so," Fletcher mumbles.
Russell rolls over, squirms for a moment to find the least painful position, and closes his eyes to sleep. Suddenly, he hears a hiss, followed immediately by the clink of metal on metal. Russell hurriedly sits up and finds a knife piercing Fletcher's armor.
"What in hell—?"
Light washes over them, making Russell squint and duck reflexively. As his eyes adjust, he sees where the knife came from: a girl near his own age stands with a handful in each fist, a flashlight held between her teeth. Her expression is fierce, and Russell wrenches the knife from Fletcher's shoulder and holds it defensively; immediately, she throws another, and it catches his sleeve and pins his hand to the dirt. She hooks a finger around her flashlight to free her mouth. "This is private property," she snarls. "Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?"
"I was trying to sleep," Russell responds. "If I were succeeding then, I'm certainly not now."
A quick assessment of the situation tells him there's no point in freeing the knife: no sooner than he does will she throw another, at his sleeve again if he's lucky, before he can think of lunging at her. Exhaustion makes him worry about the prospect a lot less than he should.
"We didn't know this was private property, we didn't see a fence," Fletcher says quickly. "We're really sorry. We didn't mean to wake you up or anything. We'll go now."
"Wait," the girl says, cutting across Fletcher's babbling. She considers them, her dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. Then, something dawns on her, and her stance relaxes a fraction. "You're them, then. The blond boy and the armored man pretending to be the Tringham brothers."
"We aren't the ones pretending," Russell says tersely, aggravated both at being accused of stealing his own identity and that he gets called a boy while Fletcher, all of twelve years old, gets called a man. "The pair in Mugear's mansion are the real identity thieves. The one claiming to be my brother isn't even a boy, she's a little girl."
The girl isn't convinced. "Sure," she says, long and sarcastic. Russell almost expects her to put a knife in his eye right then. But, after a moment, she says, a little less suspiciously, "So you were thrown out of the inn and you're just going to sleep outside?"
"Yes," Russell replies, his voice heavy. "Now, if you've decided you're not going to skewer us, I'd rather you leave us to it. We're exhausted. We really didn't intend to trespass and will gladly leave if you'd rather."
The girl doesn't answer at first, only continuing to size them up with the knives still in her hands. Finally, just as Russell is about to get up and walk away, heedless of the consequences, she heaves a loud sigh and stows the throwing knives in the pocket of her overalls. "Sleeping out here is stupid," she says shortly. "And dangerous. My grandfather and I have an extra room in our house. You two can stay there."
Russell's dislike of charity battles with the great temptation of sleeping in a bed. Fletcher makes the decision for him. "That's so kind of you!" he says gratefully. "We would love to, thank you so much, really—"
She quiets him with an impatient wave of her hand. "Well, follow me, then, and don't make a lot of noise. My grandfather should still be asleep."
Fletcher helps Russell remove the knife from his shirtsleeve and get to his feet. The girl turns, beckoning them to follow as she lights the way with her flashlight. Russell matches her strides.
"So you believe us, then?" he says quietly. "You believe we're not lying?"
"I believe you're not dangerous," she replies, avoiding his question, "and that's enough. I hope I'm right. If you try and hurt my grandfather—" Rather than finish her threat, she puts her free hand in the front pocket of her overalls, where the knives are. Russell gives a sharp exhale.
"We wouldn't dream of it," he says flatly, swallowing bitter disappointment.
He sleeps unusually well, all things considered, but wakes up to pain. In his shoulder and thigh, in his back, in his arms and legs, in his face. Russell slithers from the spare bed onto the floor, moaning his misery, and sets his clothes to rights before he pads into the adjacent kitchen. Fletcher sits at the table, peeling potatoes with a small knife at a fast and skilled pace. As Russell sinks into the chair opposite him, the back door opens, admitting their benefactor carrying a woven basket of dirty string beans.
"Well, you slept a while," she says in lieu of a greeting, as she takes her basket to the sink. Russell thinks to snort, remembers how much it would hurt, and rolls his eyes instead.
"You have dirt on your nose," he tells her.
"Your nose is broken," she tosses back. Still, as she starts washing the vegetables, he sees her try to subtly splash her face with water. She doesn't get the dirt.
"Lan Fan has a point," Fletcher says, looking at Russell with concern. "You should put some ice on it."
"I'll be fine," Russell answers.
"You will, if you listen to Fletcher instead of being stupidly stubborn," Lan Fan says.
"How long have you two been on a first-name basis?" Russell asks with some irritation. "Did you become best friends while I was asleep?" He wouldn't put it past his brother: Fletcher can make friends with anybody, even a girl who threw a knife at him just hours ago.
Lan Fan fills a glass at the sink, sets it on the counter, and takes a piece of chalk from her pocket. Still bleary from sleep, Russell doesn't make sense of what she's doing until he sees a light: an array glows beneath the glass of water, and when it dims, the water is frozen solid. Lan Fan taps the bottom of the glass so that the block of ice slides onto a dishtowel, which she then wraps up and hands to Russell.
"Put that on your face. It'll stop the swelling," she instructs him.
"You're an alchemist!" he says in surprise.
She looks him straight in the eyes. "No," she deadpans.
"They have a garden out back, Brother, it's amazing," Fletcher says happily. "You should really go look at it. The soil out here's already really good, Belsio would be so jealous, and then Lan Fan uses alchemy to adjust the pH as needed and things like that. She can even make certain things grow if they're struggling on their own. She has a whole journal full of arrays she uses—actually, thinking of it now, some of them look really similar to yours."
"Well, yes, some of them were inspired by the Evergreen Alchemist," Lan Fan concedes, even as she blushes slightly at the praise.
"So you believe that's me?" Russell asks bluntly.
Fletcher shifts a little, apparently uncomfortable. Lan Fan chews thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek.
"I don't know what I believe," she says after a moment. "I can't imagine why anyone would steal your identities, or how they've been able to keep it up for so long; the Tringham brothers have been here for a few weeks. But then I also don't know why you two would insist that's who you were when that's only causing you trouble. If you're not the Tringhams, then you must have a damn good reason for saying you are, and I can respect that. And if you are—well, there's obviously somewhere that everyone believes it. So I don't know why you'd stick around here."
"We heard there are alchemists here trying to create a Philosopher's Stone," Russell tells her. "That's what we're after."
"You and everyone else," Lan Fan mutters darkly. She goes back to washing her beans.
Russell and Fletcher exchange a look. "What do you mean by that?" Russell asks, carefully.
"Exactly what I said," Lan Fan huffs. "Everyone here thinks the Philosopher's Stone is going to be this magic solution to all their problems. No one wants to actually take responsibility and make things better for themselves—they've all been sitting back and waiting on the Stone for as long as I can remember, ever since those first rumors about gold in the river—"
"Gold in the river?" Fletcher repeats in surprise, while Russell raises his eyebrows. "I didn't know there was gold in the river. You mean the one just outside of town?"
"Yeah, that one. But that's just it!" Lan Fan says, turning away from the sink to face them. She looks exasperated. "There's no gold in that river! There was never gold in that river. It was just some stupid rumor, you know? Someone probably saw a weird-looking rock or a piece of jewelry that got dropped and mistook it for gold, or else they thought it'd be a funny prank. I don't know which. But there wasn't ever any gold in that river. It's just a story for desperate people to cling to—just like the Stone."
"Maybe they're hoping the Philosopher's Stone will help them find gold?" Fletcher suggests.
"No," Russell murmurs, as he realizes it. "They want to spread the rumor so they can use the Philosopher's Stone to synthesize gold, and then pretend it came from the river to cover up the fact that they're breaking the law." He huffs out a laugh. "That's ridiculous. No one will believe that."
"No one will believe what?" a voice calls from the door. Russell turns and sees an elderly man step over the threshold, propping his cane against the wall as he crosses over to the little kitchen. Lan Fan smiles, looking warmer than Russell has seen her yet.
"Afternoon, Grandfather," she says.
"Brother, that's Fu," Fletcher tells Russell in an undertone, adding needlessly, "Lan Fan's grandfather."
But Russell is more concerned with the first part of her statement. "Afternoon?" he repeats, wide-eyed. He hadn't meant to sleep that long. "What time is it?"
"Just after one o'clock," Fu tells him, settling into a chair. He throws a newspaper onto the table. "You were out cold, boy. If it weren't for the snoring, I'd have thought you'd slipped into a coma."
"I don't snore," Russell says tersely, while Fletcher giggles mutinously.
"These two were asking about Resembool. How they want to make gold and say it came from the river to cover themselves. Finally, someone else agrees it's stupid," Lan Fan explains.
Fu grunts his agreement. "You're damn right it is. Because they'll definitely be able to keep their little Philosopher's Stone a secret. Bah. The military will get wind of it soon enough, and then we'll all catch hell." He flips open his paper and starts to read. Evidently, though, there's nothing to claim his interest, because he glances back up, meets Russell's gaze, and asks, bluntly, "What happened to your face, boy? You look awful."
The resemblance to his granddaughter is astounding. Russell covers his nose with Lan Fan's compress.
"Yeah, what did happen to your face?" Lan Fan says. "I forgot to ask."
Before Russell can think of an explanation, Fu says, "No."
"What?" Fletcher asks worriedly.
Fu's mustache makes it hard to parse his expression. He might look furious, but he might look delighted. "Tell me you aren't the two who broke into Mugear's mansion last night," he says.
"We didn't!" Fletcher says immediately, in a shrill voice of denial that might as well be a confession. Russell sighs to himself. He has a thing or two to teach his brother about lying.
Fu laughs; it sounds like a bark. "So! You got in and got out right under the bastard's nose, did you?"
There's no mistaking it now: he's praising them. Russell can't help a smile. "He never even knew we were there."
"Ha! And the guards?"
"Please. I've met toddlers who were more observant," Russell scoffs, to continued guffaws. Fu reaches out and claps him on the shoulder.
"Well, good for you, kid. It serves that bastard right. Oh, I'd love to see the look on his face right about now." Fu returns his attention to his newspaper, still chortling to himself.
On Russell's right, Fletcher titters irritably. He has a certain respect for rules that Russell lacks; if he already dislikes that they trespassed at the mansion, being commended for it aggravates him outright. Still, whatever protest he might have, he keeps it to himself. "I don't understand," he says, clearly wanting to change the subject. "Why do you seem to dislike Mister Mugear so much? Brother and I were in an inn yesterday, and all we heard about him is that he's funding a project to make a Philosopher's Stone and help Resembool get back on its feet again. He sounds like a really good man!"
Fu's demeanor changes in an instant. Before jovial, if a little gruff, Fletcher's words turn him dark and bitter; he scowls at his newspaper like it just insulted his family ten generations forward and back. Yet, it's Lan Fan who speaks first, prefacing her words with a harsh laugh that sounds remarkably like her grandfather's.
"Oh, sure, he's a 'good man,' all right," she says. "The kind of 'good man' who smiles to your face and then stabs you in the back for a few cens, and then goes and spends the night in some dirty brothel using the money he earned."
"Can we not talk about brothels in front of my twelve-year-old brother?" Russell asks.
"I know what a brothel is," Fletcher tells him.
A major failing on Russell's part, then. Fu clears his throat, recapturing their attention. "Well, Mugear may be a greedy, conniving liar who cares for nothing and no one but himself and his money," he says, "but he's also one hell of an actor, and he has all these people convinced he only has their best interests at heart. Tell me, kid, you say he's funding a Philosopher's Stone project? Whose money do you think he's using to fund that project? Here's a hint: it sure isn't his."
"I—I guess the townspeople's?" Fletcher answers.
"Exactly. Year after year after year. He's been hiring scientists to help him make a Stone for almost five years now. A dozen alchemists must have gone through those doors, and we haven't seen so much as a Philosopher's Pebble," Fu says.
Russell immediately thinks of the red shard Ling had. A prototype, he'd called it. Have Ling and his sister really succeeded where a dozen alchemists before them have failed? The thought should amaze him, but instead it irritates him; he feels distinctly one-upped.
"The Philosopher's Stone isn't exactly half a cup of flour, half a cup of water, a tablespoon of sugar, and then let sit for twenty minutes," he says flatly. "It's the world's most powerful alchemic augmenter. Records of it are limited to mere legends. I highly doubt any wannabe alchemists like the two he's employing now could ever hope to succeed in creating one."
He convinces himself of it as he says it: yes, there must be another explanation for Ling's ability to perform alchemy without a transmutation circle. There's no way a rat like him managed to produce an actual Stone, prototype or not. Russell rationalizes that the rock he had could have easily been from some ring or bracelet—maybe Ling loots jewelry stores, too, he thinks with malice. As for the circle, Russell doesn't know for sure that Ling didn't use one, only that he didn't see one. Ling might have simply drawn it on his back or chest, where his shirt would hide it from Russell's eyes. Russell imagines exposing it, to Ling's horror and humiliation, and reveling in the fact that Ling can only hope to be at his level of skill and talent. Then he immediately pushes the thought away altogether: his brain, in an unexpected and cruel act of treachery, wants to take the mental image of Ling without his shirt and run home with it.
Vaguely flustered, Russell returns to the topic at hand. "You two certainly seem to have the measure of Mugear," he tells Fu and Lan Fan, arching an eyebrow. "No one else shares your skepticism; the whole town thinks he's a Samaritan. What makes you so sure he's lying? And whatever convinced you, why haven't you shared it with everyone else, instead of letting Mugear string them along?"
"You think we haven't tried to tell them?" Lan Fan snaps, her face an indignant pink. "Time and time again? Of course we have! It's that snake's fault no one will believe us!"
"What?" Fletcher says, looking from her to Fu. "Why won't anyone believe you?"
Fu heaves a long, irate sigh. "About a year ago, my granddaughter and I worked for Mugear. No, not as alchemists, not on his Stone," he says, when both Russell and Fletcher react in surprise. "As guards. I was a bodyguard in my youth, and Lan Fan is a born fighter. Mugear is also as paranoid as he is pompous and doesn't need half the protection he has. It was fairly simple, well-paying work."
"Until you realized what a scumbag your employer was," Russell fills in. "Right?"
Fu grunts. "Well, it didn't take long. Mugear wants a Stone, all right, but he won't use the gold he makes with it to do anything but line his own pockets, and he's happy to bleed these people dry until he achieves his goal. We tried to spread it around as quietly as we could—we didn't want him to know we had caught on, you see; you get your best information from the inside, after all. But, for an arrogant pig, he's certainly observant, and he has his diehards, greedy pricks just like him who are hoping for a cut of the cash. He found us out. Fired us. Snake that he is, I suppose we're lucky he didn't try anything else."
"But that's not all," Lan Fan says. A muscle twitches in her cheek. "He knew if he just fired us, we'd just run and tell everyone his dirty laundry. And we tried, yeah. But we'd barely convinced anyone when he started telling everyone why he had to 'let us go.' He said we'd been stealing from him." She curls her hands into fists; she looks on the verge of angry tears, bright-eyed and red-faced. "Oh, he'd tried to give us so many chances, supposedly, tried to work things out, but when we kept taking advantage of his 'generosity'—" with jerky movements, she puts air quotes around the word, "—he had no choice but to fire us, and he was kind enough not to get the police involved. The lying bastard. And everyone just ate it out of his goddamn hand. 'That's what you get for hiring immigrants,' they said." A strangled noise escapes her, and she crosses over to the table and drops into a chair, folding her arms tightly. Fu, looking more resigned than angry, puts a hand on her shoulder.
"And that was it," he says. "There went our credibility. Forget anyone believing our 'conspiracy'—no one would even give us any work. There are some shops that still won't even service us, even now."
"You can't be serious," Russell says in disbelief. "They really had that extreme a reaction to a rumor?"
"I don't know, Brother," Fletcher says thoughtfully. "Gossip can be pretty powerful. And a small, struggling town like this—it's not like they have much else to do for fun than talk about each other. I'm so sorry that happened," he tells Fu and Lan Fan, his voice cracking with sympathy.
Russell only shakes his head. "There has to be something else. I just can't believe that everyone believed him so readily, so—immediately. Even without knowing you two, and you both seem like honest enough people to me," he says, "Mugear's story is just so … suspicious. I mean, look at the facts here. Fu, you said Mugear has been working on this project for five years without any results? All right, let's say for the sake of argument that for some ridiculous reason, no one bats an eye at that. Okay. But then he fires the pair of you, and comes out with possibly the fakest story I've ever heard to justify it. Meanwhile you two have a very plausible explanation for why, for all of Mugear's supposed 'hard work,' this town remains in the shitter—don't repeat that, Fletcher—and no one so much as even considers it might be true?" Russell realizes he's raised his voice considerably, and he pauses to take a steadying breath. "Maybe some people are that gullible, or that desperate," he continues, more evenly. "But not everyone. Not an entire village. A blatant disregard for rational thinking on a scale that large, it's—it's—"
"And why can't everyone be that desperate?" Fu breaks in, sounding pensive. "The money the government gave the town after the bombing ran out in half a year. We're nearly at seven now, and for them, things are as bad as ever, with no hope in sight but for Mugear's Stone. They want to—maybe need to—believe that change is just around the corner."
"So it's willful ignorance." Russell says it coldly. "Which means the only people they can blame for their continuing struggle are themselves. They need to take matters into their own hands."
He suddenly blanches. The words, spoken thoughtlessly, produce a vivid memory of an eight-year-old Fletcher, weeping at their mother's freshly-dug grave. Russell hadn't been crying; grief can never make him cry, only shame can, or fury. Grief, by contrast, burns him out, like scorching the inside of a wooden barrel. On the outside, fine. On the inside, black and crumbling, and completely, utterly empty. At ten years old, he lacked the words to describe this emptiness, and so he'd just hidden his face for most of the funeral so that no one would judge his dry eyes.
There were two lights in this darkness. One was the small person at Russell's feet, looking smaller than ever with Russell's coat around his shoulders, shaking with wracking sobs. The other was a thought, an idea. It offered just enough hope to sustain him, and he clung to it like a lifeline.
"We won't let this destroy us, Fletcher." A large pair of blue eyes looked up at him, still shining with tears. Russell misses those eyes, misses them so much it aches. "We can't. We're brave and we're smart. We have to take things into our own hands."
"How?"
Russell remembers smiling. He remembers reaching out a hand, maybe to stroke Fletcher's hair, or to wipe some of the tears from his face. Then, growing solemn, he said, "We're going to bring her back."
In the present, Russell blows out a breath. He presses his fingertips to the spot above his left eyebrow, hoping to soothe the headache beginning there.
"What can they even do?" Fletcher asks. "They made all their money exporting wool. I know it's wrong of them to sit and wait for a Philosopher's Stone, but they really are stuck here."
"Not as stuck as they want to believe," Lan Fan responds. She gestures out the back door, where the garden must be.
"I traveled all over Xing guarding nobles when I was young," Fu says. "I kept traveling as I got older. I explored Xing from top to bottom, I spent a few years in Xerxes, and I finally came here. It took another ten years or so to settle in this village in particular. I can tell you: the soil here is better than any I've ever seen."
"Thanks to Mugear, we couldn't get any work anywhere in town," Lan Fan says. "Still can't, probably. At first we thought we'd have to leave, or else starve. But we already had a little flower garden out back; it was my mother's before she passed. Grandfather realized if we could grow flowers, we could grow fruits and vegetables, too. To eat, to sell, to trade. We get along fine, and that's with everyone selling us short because they don't like us. If we can do it, so can they. But they have no idea what's under their feet."
"Oh, they know. But it's too much work for them." Fu shakes his head. "They'd rather hold out hope for the Stone, too caught up in themselves to accept that Mugear just isn't going to deliver." With a massive sigh, he hauls himself to his feet. "How long do you two plan to stick around?" he asks. "We get by fine with just the two of us, but we can't afford to feed both of you for more than a few days."
"I don't need to eat," Fletcher says quickly.
"Nor do I." Russell stands. "We aren't asking you to keep us. We appreciate the hospitality and will repay you however you see fit, but there's no need for us to bother you another night. You've done enough already."
"Oh, sit down, boy," Fu tells him. "It was just a question. From the sound of it, you and your brother are about as popular as we are right now, so I doubt you'll be able find a bed anywhere in the village. I'd rather you sleep in my house than in my lettuces."
"You're too kind, sir," Fletcher says, bowing his head respectfully. "We'll only be another night or two, promise, and we can pay for our own food, don't worry about that."
Fu shrugs. "If you insist."
"Wait for me, Grandfather," Lan Fan says, quickly crossing to him to offer a steadying arm. Russell has the sudden realization that Fu couldn't have been limping a year ago if he worked as a guard, puts it together with Lan Fan's insistence on accompanying him to the market, and wonders, with sickening dread, what might have happened.
Fletcher quickly finishes with the potatoes, cleaning and cutting them supposedly as instructed before putting them in a pot of water. While he tidies up after himself, Russell puts his head in his hands, thinking hard. Fletcher notices soon enough.
"What are you thinking, Brother?" he asks.
Russell exhales sharply. "I'm thinking that something doesn't add up," he says.
"What do you mean? Everything they said about Resembool made perfect sense to me," Fletcher replies. He sits back down next to Russell at the table; at the same time, Russell gets up to pace the length of the small kitchen.
"That's just it. Everything they said made sense, and we have no reason not to believe them. It's the imposters that are baffling me."
"Ling and Mei?"
Russell grunts in acknowledgement, believing it too generous to refer to their identity thieves by their actual names. "Why are they here? How do they factor into this?"
"They're trying to make a Philosopher's Stone, right?" Fletcher says.
"Yes, but why? Why would they put themselves at risk like this? Impersonating government personnel is a serious crime; they could spend a very long time in prison for it. They must have very powerful motivation for wanting to complete that Stone, powerful enough that it would be worth the risk to them." Russell rakes a hand through his hair, sighing his frustration.
"Well, we know Mister Mugear is only pretending to want to help Resembool," Fletcher says thoughtfully. "But maybe Ling and Mei really want to help Resembool, and they took our names so they could get in his lab to do it. He probably wouldn't have hired kids unless they had some credibility, and you're the best alchemist of your generation."
Russell acknowledges the compliment with a fleeting smile, but it disappears as he ponders this theory. "What reason do they have to want to help Resembool?" he says. "They can't be from here, or even have close family here, or else everyone would know who they are—or, rather, who they're not. So they must come from elsewhere. And if that's the case, why would this place matter to them?"
"They could have just heard the town was still struggling and wanted to help," Fletcher suggests.
"I don't think so," Russell says. "Again, it's too risky. They have too much at stake to be motivated by simple altruism. No one would put this much on the line just to help people." He pauses, while Fletcher looks down at his hands. After a moment, Russell manages another small smile; he crosses over and touches Fletcher's arm. "Well, no one except you, maybe," he amends. "I keep saying that if everyone were half as nice as you, this world would be a much better place."
"You're nice, too, Brother," Fletcher tells him. "At least when you want to be."
When he has something to gain from it, then, which Russell thinks negates his supposed niceness altogether. It doesn't matter; he abandoned kindness when he started this journey, when he struck a match and watched flames eat up his childhood home and then carved the date into a silver watch that doubles as a leash.
To Fletcher, he only says, "Well, I'm glad someone thinks so." He resumes walking up and down. "Unfortunately, whether or not those imposters are actually angels in disguise isn't really something I want to take a chance on. Some people may do bad to do more good in exchange, but too often, they do bad simply to do more bad." He sighs. "We need to get the measure of these people."
"And how do we do that?"
"Easy." Russell finally stops his pacing and turns to face his brother. "We ask. You're the one who said these people have nothing better to do but talk."
"But—we can't!" Fletcher tells him, sounding stricken. "These people don't like us! They threw us out of an inn; what makes you think they'll tell us anything?"
"Taken care of." Russell leaves Fletcher in the kitchen for a brief moment so he can rummage through their bag in their borrowed room. After a moment, he finds a jacket with a hood; he pulls it on, draws the hood low over his forehead, and tucks his bangs behind his ear. There are certain advantages to wearing his hair so that it covers half his face—just brushing it aside like this makes him look different enough that a stranger might not recognize him. He reenters the kitchen.
"And voila," he says, turning on the spot. When he faces Fletcher again, he puts on a scornful voice. "'Did you hear about those charlatans pretending to be the Tringham brothers? Pathetic. If I were them, I would have torn those phonies a new one, yet apparently the real Tringhams just let them go! They must be very kind. What do you think?'"
"I think someone's going to wonder why you're wearing a coat and gloves in June," Fletcher answers.
Russell can't help but wilt a little. "Maybe I'm sick or something. I don't know. Your lack of faith is very disheartening, Fletcher."
"I'm just saying, please be careful, Brother," he tells him. "I don't want you to get hurt. Or heatstroke."
"Of course not." When Fletcher makes to stand, Russell makes a quelling gesture. "It … probably isn't a good idea for you to come with me," he says carefully, trying to spare Fletcher's feelings as much as he can. "Through no fault of your own, you're very easily recognizable." Fletcher is also one of the worst liars on this side of Amestris, but that would likely cross the line from truthful to unnecessarily hurtful. "When Fu and Lan Fan come back, I'm sure they'll find something you can do to help them out," he assures him.
Fletcher sinks back into his seat. "I guess that's fair," he says, sounding slightly hurt nonetheless. "Just as long as you promise to be careful."
"I'm always careful," Russell responds.
"And that's what worries me," Fletcher mumbles, just as Russell ducks out the door.