Mr. Powers is a complete sociopath of a millionaire who puts on the titular Tournament every 7 years for the sake of making spectacle of mass death. Powers pits thirty assassins against each other with the promise that the last one standing will be rewarded; when the bloody fights inevitably consume innocent lives, Powers covers up the deaths as unrelated disasters or crimes. Anyone who refuses to fight or who becomes a liability to him is disposed of through an embedded explosive. When an innocent priest ends up swallowing one of these explosives through the connivance of another assassin, Powers heartlessly ropes the man into the game as well. Even winning the game is no guarantee of mercy, as Powers tricks a previous winner, Joshua, into playing the game again by ordering Joshua's innocent wife murdered, roping Joshua back into the spectacle with the promise of revenge.
Miles Slade is the most brutal, stupidly sadistic assassin in the Tournament. A Psycho for Hire who cuts off a finger who every man he kills, Slade is introduced by killing a stray dog for nothing more than a giggle. Slade participates in the Tournament for equal parts thrills and cash, and when he sees some of his fellow contestants at a public strip club, Slade begins gunning down everyone in sight, both assassins and random innocents. When Joshua Harlow initially blames Slade for the murder of his wife, Slade captures and tortures Joshua, gloating that he's not even responsible for the murder but enjoys taunting Harlow about it regardless.
Awesome Moments: This book is extremely light on action by Reilly standards, but still gives us Roger Ascham's Combat Pragmatist defeat of the murderer Sinon, and showing his Brass Balls by telling Sultan Suleiman to his face that he knows the tournament is rigged.
