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[Sören]

“Then you already have a damn sight more than me.” He downed the drink and accepted the offer of the next without any thanks. Sören’s webs spanned great distances, but the people in them fell in neither category. He had been raised by money and minders, and perhaps the habit had never broken. Or if it had, that man was now dead. Of the rest he was unwilling to consider. “Eller kanske är jag den rika,” he added, his lips twisting in what might have been a smile or a grimace. It was a life he had neatly arranged after all, and with purpose, for the soothsayer’s future had never ceased its grip of his throat. People could be useful, and use them he did, but connections with others only ended one way; if it were not dive bars and a bottomless bottle, it was a black suit and funerary wreaths. Rather he had no friends or family to care at all.

His posture twisted a little, and he noticed a warm deadening in his limbs as he did so, so perhaps the drink was finally beginning its work. The stranger was on his blind side, which was an irksome reminder of why he was even here. He drew on the cigarette.

“Is this not the point where you curdle my ears with your tale of woe? Share the misery whether I wish to be bored by it or not? Perhaps I could use the distraction. Rather that than an apology.”