The rumor found them before Anselm did.
It arrived by way of a traveling cloth merchant who shared their table at a Zwickau tavern. Over his third cup of watered wine, the man unrolled a crumpled broadsheet across the grease-stained wood.
The woodcut depicted a burning stake stamped with the heavy wax seal of the Holy Office.
"They're hunting him all through the low countries," the merchant said, tapping the paper. "A black magician down by Amsterdam. Left a few bodies of knights dead and maybe a few elite warriors, rumors say, then vanished into smoke."
Faust's heart rate instensified as the memories of the massacre he... No, the influence of the Devil card made him do. He hoped that it was just a coincidence.
"How extraordinary," Faust said. He kept his hands perfectly still around his mug. "And they have a name for this fugitive?"
"They call him Mephisto. No one has seen a shadow of him since the massacre. Some say he's the Devil's own tailor. Others say he's just a conjurer who paid the right priests in blood."
'Well, it's not a coincidence... It's me indeed.'
Across the table, Isfrid stopped chewing. He stared fixedly at a knot in the table's planks.
"You'd think a man who slaughters magistrates would be easy enough to track," Faust said. He took a slow drag of his wine. "A missing eye, perhaps? A distinct scar?"
"That's the devilry of it," the merchant said. "Since the church passed this case to the Inquisition, every witness gives the inquisitors a different face. Some say he's fair as milk. Some swear he's a moor. One fellow in Leipzig told me he had horns under his hat. A mass murderer on the loose, and the Church doesn't even know who they're looking for."
Faust found this the single most useful piece of intelligence he'd gathered all week.
This knowledge wouldn't get him nearer his main goal: ashes of the first Grandmaster of the Order, but it ensured that his past identity wouldn't get in the way at least, albeit not for long.
'Sooner or later they'll discover my connection to El Gloriosa and then I'm cooked.'
Once they escaped to the privacy of their room, Faust locked the door and paced the narrow floorboards.
"Thirty guards and two magistrates," Isfrid said to the empty fireplace. "You left that part out."
"I didn't kill thirty guards," Faust said. "Neither did I touch magistrates. People tend to exaggerate things when it comes to something... unusual."
Isfrid closed his eyes.
"Every version of me is a different man," Faust said, mapping the implications. "As long as that stays true—as long as no consistent portrait of Mephisto ever settles into the public record—I remain a ghost story. The Inquisition is pouring its gold into hunting a legend. They have no description they can actually use."
"Oh, so we can get rich on just trying to hunt you, giving away some info?"
Faust's face literally said "Are you kidding me?"
He cleared his throat and composed himself:
"We cannot waste time on it, besides our own investigation isn't going as successful as we expected. Those records and documents we looked through is just the tip of the iceberg."
"And if Anselm hears the name?"
"Anselm collects facts. He ignores campfire tales," Faust said. "He'll dismiss the rumor as nonsense grown in the telling, right up until the day someone hands him a sharp detail." Faust stopped pacing. "We must be memorable enough to survive as a legend, and forgettable enough to never become a fact."
Isfrid dropped heavily onto his pallet and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.
"I thought being your aide would mean filing papers," he said. "Standing quietly behind you at dinners."
"And now?"
"Now I understand why Grandfather laughed when he packed my bags."
Faust smiled.
"Let's go to the Merchant Guildmaster, we have a letter to send."
"A letter? To whom?"
"To my family of course, just because you can't ask your family on the accolade for help doesn't mean I can't. I'm sure Herzog's family has much greater chances and resources that will be of enormous use to us on our way."