"I'd assume that for everyone who survives doing a lot of foolhardy things there are less lucky people who don't. But perhaps she's well equipped to go kill him."

"I think you should expect the percentage of people who are intrinsically good at doing foolhardy things to be a very high percent of the people who have done a very large number of the foolhardy things?"

"Kinda depends how foolhardy. If the baseline death risk is high enough and the background rate of having this talent is low enough that could swamp even a pretty substantial relative advantage. So maybe our different instincts here derive from different guesses at the risk level implied by the word 'foolhardy' and our relative beliefs in the existence of a doing-foolhardy-things intrinsic gift."

"It's only half an hour until Wendigo's employee is going to be here, so I should probably not get distracted attempting to do statistics about this."

"Yeah, it occurred to me while I was saying that that neither nerdsniping you nor seducing you fit into this timeslot very well."

"I really like you."

They do have time for her to kiss him about that.

Oh good.

The employee of Dr. Salazar Wendigo is there ten minutes early with four people, only three of whom look terrified out of their wits.

"You're early, I hope you weren't told this was terribly urgent and you'd better hurry," she says to the terrified ones.

"He paid us to hurry."

"How generous of him. Unfortunately it turns out that your corroboration of the information won't be necessary, because even if Dr. Wendigo's fortune is verifiably enormous, it turns out that the posters constitute conspiracy to participate in the slave trade and they can't go up with any amount of judicious editing."

"What sort of rule is that?"

"The sort of rule made by people who really do not care for the slave trade."

"I'd be happy to compensate you for the wasted time, of course."

"If Dr. Salazar Wendigo hears you're harboring the girl I don't expect he'll look kindly on your quaint town, or on the people who obstructed him so. And of course he'll still be willing to pay out the rather substantial reward for information to anyone who happens by a more... democratic flavor of town."

He addreses this more to the men he brought as witnesses than to Laithan and Pelape.

"You wouldn't be trying to commit conspiracy to trade in slaves right here and now, would you?"

Apparently when this guy smiles it looks a bit unhinged.

How unsurprising.

"...perhaps it is best we adjorn for now. Elysium's evening entertaining is about to start, and I believe it's one of Indigo's performances which, as I'm sure you've heard, are quite the attraction."

"Not half so much of an attraction as the ones my employer has at his disposal."

... Laithan would really like it if he thought the six people in the room with him could definitely take this one guy in a fight but he really has no idea. Still, he can pretend he thinks that and stare the guy down. He's practiced that in a mirror. 

"I will not be needing accomodations at Elysium this evening."

"Good evening," says the man , tipping his hat to the assembled Kentonians. For a moment, as he lifts his had three metalic protusions are visible, sticking out of his head like horns or antenna. And then the man departs.

"Good evening," says Pelape in a low murmur.

The four witnesses depart very soon after the man leaves, heading in the opposite direction regardless of their actual destinations.