Summary: Everything has a cost, including freedom. If the lives of the citizens of Fisk were the price he had to pay, then so be it. Still, the soapmaker found, he hadn't adequately counted the cost.

Warnings: rated T for violence and non-explicit sexual themes.

The golden-haired girl was back again. He stood up and wiped his hands on his apron. "Frauline Fischer. What can I do for you?"

Ethel his mind whispered, but he shoved it down. The girl smiled at him cheerily, cerulean eyes glittering as she tucked a perfect curl of gold hair behind her ear. Her father needed another block, she told him. The soapmaker found himself momentarily lost in the musical lilt of her voice, like birdsong. Not to mention that body…the soapmaker liked this new style of clothing; the white country blouses showed off her snowy skin and the apron cinched at the waist cut a good figure on her. Much better than the old restrictive fashions.

"Herr Seifman?" Her voice startled him out of his musings and he cleared his throat.

"Ach– ah– yes, I'll have it done by tomorrow. You can pick it up at noon."

She thanked him and left the shop. The soapman watched her leave, and then sat down tiredly on his stool, looking at the half-cut blocks of lye soap. Glancing briefly to the door to make sure no customer was about to enter, he untied the rag from around his hand and unwound it until the upper side of his hand was visible, paler than the rest of his arm from months without sunlight. The ouroboros tattoo stared out starkly back at him, reminding him what he was here for.

Ethel, his mind whispered, and he shoved it back down. The girl wasn't important. None of them were. He was here for one thing and one thing only, and that was to lull that bastard back in Haupstadt into a false sense of security. And then…

Then what? What kind of immortality was he going to have left by the time he made it out?

The bell on the door tinkled as a customer pushed it open, and the soapmaker quickly rewound the cloth and pasted on an smile. The moment for turning back had passed a long time ago. He'd come too far to stop now.

The fisherman's daughter wasn't the only one who had begun to stick in his mind. Fisk was a large town, relatively well-off, and everyone needed soap, after all. Soon he had met almost every man and woman in town. It was hell on him, and every time a new day dawned over the countryside and the waking shops and houses, the soapman cursed his maker. The cover he'd been assigned was bad enough (boiling down animal fat, as it turned out, reeked to high heaven, and what was worse, the smell lingered). But what really got to him were the people. Everyone in Fisk seemed so eager to make friends with him, and truth be told the soapmaker liked the townspeople. Soon he was drinking with the other shopkeepers at the tavern by the square after work was over. To keep up appearances. He met their wives and daughters and made a real effort not to seduce any of the lovely ladies. Can't blow my cover. The local priest came around one day and dropped a not-so-subtle hint that he hadn't seen the newcomer at the chapel on the last new moon, so the following Thursday the soapman found himself sitting under the stained glass image of the Eye of God, trying to look like he was praying instead of cowering. He felt immense guilt mixed with relief at the knowledge that he, after all, did not have a soul to lose.

(That was what his maker had said, anyway, so hopefully stepping foot on holy ground as an abomination before Truth wouldn't damn him to eternal torment.)

Before he knew it he had been accepted by the town as one of their own. Two months passed, then three. Summer came hot and sunny over the town, the days slipping away in a haze of lye-making and soap-cutting and golden curls that caught the sunlight like the glitter of a thousand ancient coins.

One evening as the sun was setting orange and rose over the town square, he sat down on one of the benches, watching the children whoop and dash around the fountain, splashing each other with handfuls of water. He could run away now, he thought to himself idly. He didn't have to do this. He could leave and run to the ends of the earth, as fast as he could. He could run and never come back.

And when they catch you? A voice whispered in his mind. The soapmaker ignored it.

I could make it. If I ran fast enough…

You'd never get far enough in time. They still suspect your disloyalty.

I don't want to do this. He watched a little boy cup his hands and spray a younger child, probably his brother, with fountain water, giggling as the smaller boy let out an angry shout. Maybe I'd rather they just kill me.

Then you should have made that choice a hundred years ago, the voice returned harshly. The soapmaker gritted his teeth, but his mind allowed him no reprieve: How are these people any different than all the others?! You felt this way every time, and every time you got over it and did what you had to do! This time will be no different!

I don't want to do this!

You don't have a choice! It's freedom or death, there's no other way!

Then maybe I want to be dead! Even as he thought it he knew it was a lie. He wanted to live. He didn't want to die a slave.

There's no going back now. Not after everything you've done, his mind said quietly. And if you don't do it, one of the others will. You'll give up your life, your one shot at freedom, and save nobody.

He was struggling to find some argument against this when a voice called his name: "Herr Seifman?"

He looked up and felt his mouth go dry. Ethel Fischer smiled down at him, tilting her head. "I thought that was you."

"Frauline Fischer." He stood, stunned and starstruck. She had never looked so desirable, with the gentle golden light of the dying sun playing over her cream skin, glittering off her sapphire eyes and burnished curls. An idea flashed through his mind: maybe he couldn't save them all, but maybe…

"How are you? It's a lovely evening, isn't it?"

"Ethel, listen-"

"Oh, before I forget!" She held up her hand, beaming at him. The soapmaker stopped short. A gold band glistened around her fourth finger in the evening light.

It was as if all the wind had been knocked out of him. "Ah…you are…"

She giggled. "Friedrich finally asked me! You will come to the wedding, won't you?"

Friedrich. The baker's son. The soapmaker felt frozen, staring at the glittering ring around her finger.

So. This is how Neid feels, is it.

He looked up, and smiled.

"I wouldn't miss it for the whole world."

"Tell me. Who is it this time?"

She had come in the night, a moonless night when she wouldn't be followed. He had seen her as he left the chapel, dully surprised that she had honored his request. They lay tangled together on the bed, shades drawn, not a sliver of light to cast a shadow. They knew the punishment would be brutal if they were caught; their maker didn't like them acting as anything other than "siblings."

(He suspected this was to reinforce the doctrine of him being their Father, but he knew better than to say as much aloud.)

He didn't reply immediately, merely ran his fingers through her curls, pretending he could see gold glinting off them in the pitch-blackness. This was Verlangen's condition for their meetings, the price he had to pay: a secret, and a humiliation.

"Her name is Ethel."

"Pathetic. You always get so attached to these humans."

He said nothing. Neither did his "sister" for quite some time. Then-

"The girl with the golden hair, right?"

He froze. How did she-

"Hochmut told us."

He swallowed. Verlangen's act of kindness had not escaped him. So. I am being watched. There was no way out.

"Tell him it won't be a problem."

It was almost over. He stood in the deluge, watching the rain streak down in sheets of gray from the sky, mixing with the pools of blood and running through the cracks in the cobblestones. The town square was silent. Not a single one of the townspeople he had come to know moved from where they had fallen in the streets.

But she wasn't among them. He had put it off, and now the time had come. The shadows filling the crevices and corners of the shops leered at him, waiting. The gray-skinned monster turned and walked towards the bakery, opening the door. The bells chimed, and he stopped, before continuing, stepping over the body of the dismembered Friedrich as he followed the faint whimpers to the back of the house.

They were coming from under the floorboards. She was in the cellar.

He opened the door and climbed down the stairs. She was cowering against the back wall, her golden curls falling over her face in disarray. Her crying stopped with a sudden gasp when she saw him. He dropped his gaze, unable to meet her eyes, and her face twisted into an expression of anguish.

"Please don't," she whimpered. He turned his face away. "Please, Herr Seifman."

Maybe he was better off dead. What freedom could there be after this? But it was too late to turn back. He stepped forward.

"Please!" The scream of terror stopped him. Ethel was sobbing, wide-eyed, glassy tears rolling down her cheeks and glittering, diamond-like, against those sapphire irises. "We- we have money-"

He let out a harsh laugh. Money? What paltry sum could she offer that would compare to sapphires and diamonds, snowy porcelaine and radiant gold? And how could even all the wealth that she was compare to the hundreds of lives he had just subsumed? It was too late to go back. Too late…if this was the price of freedom…he had no choice now…

"T-take it…" He looked up again. Ethel had taken off her wedding ring and was holding it out. It was a cheap thing, a simple golden band. The soapmaker walked forward and closed her hand gently over it.

"That's a pretty ring, Frau Bäcker. Your husband wouldn't want you to lose it." He looked away again as she began to sob and waited as she slipped it back on her fourth finger. "Close your eyes," he muttered. "I'll make sure you don't feel it."

"Please," she whispered. "You were our friend."

"Close your eyes, Frau Bäcker…"

She obeyed, weeping. The soapmaker didn't look at her. He didn't want to remember her. He didn't want to remember any of this.

Her breath hitched as she heard him move, and then with a spray of blood her head of golden curls struck the floor.

For a long while he knelt there beside the body, eyes shut tight. He didn't weep, didn't dare make a sound. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

The boy was waiting for him outside when he left the bakery, smiling. "Well done. Father will be very pleased with you, Gier."

The soapman didn't reply. Head bowed, footsteps a dull shuffle, he followed his elder brother back in the direction of the capital. He was going to get very drunk, he thought numbly to himself. He was going to get so drunk he killed himself, fifty times over. Something amber that burned like medicine. Something that when he held it up to the light, it glittered gold.