I pulled the trigger.
The sound was — in a world without gunpowder, in a world of swords and spells and church-sanctioned purification — indescribable. A crack. A roar. A flat, percussive detonation that filled the receiving room and bounced off the stone walls and shattered the window behind Harwick's chair. The bullet — a single, heavy, lead ball accelerated to a velocity that this world had never conceived — struck him in the center of the chest.
His velvet coat erupted. The gold chain beneath it shattered. The bullet passed through his sternum, through the great bolus of fat and muscle and bone, and exited his back in a spray of red that painted the wall behind him in a pattern that could have been mistaken for abstract art by someone with a morbid sense of aesthetics.
Harwick looked down at his chest. Looked at the hole. Looked at me.
'What — I cannot — my chest — there is — I cannot breathe — I—'
