فصل 16

16

“Why, Waxillium!” the box said, projecting his uncle’s voice. “So good to hear your dulcet tones. I presume your entrance was properly dramatic?” “It’s a telegraph for voices,” Wax said, stepping forward. He kept his gun on Kelesina, who backed up to the wall of the small room. She’d gone completely pale.

“Something like that,” Edwarn said, his voice sounding small. The electric mechanism didn’t reproduce it exactly. “How is Lady Harms? I hope her ailment was nothing too distressing.” “She’s fine,” Wax snapped, “no thanks to the fact that you tried to have us all killed on that train.” “Now, now,” Edwarn said. “That wasn’t the point. Why, killing you was an afterthought. Tell me, did you look into the casualties on the train? One passenger killed, I believe. Who was he?” “You’re trying to distract me,” Wax said.

“Yes, I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m lying. In fact, I’ve found that telling you the truth is a far better method in general. You should look into the dead man. You’ll be impressed by what you find.” No. Stay focused. “Where are you?” Wax demanded.

“Away,” Suit said, “on matters of great import. I do apologize for not being able to meet you in person. I offer up Lady Kelesina as a measure of my condolences.” “Kelesina can go to hell,” Wax said, grabbing the box and lifting it, nearly yanking the wires in the back from the wall. “Where is my sister!” “So many impatient people in the world,” Edwarn’s voice said. “You really should have focused on your own city, Nephew, and kept your attention on the little crimes fed to you. I’ve tried being reasonable. I fear I’m going to have to do something drastic. Something that will be certain to divert you.” Wax felt cold. “What are you going to do, Suit?”

“It’s not about what I’m going to do, Nephew. It’s about what I’m doing.” Wax glanced toward Kelesina, who had been reaching for the pocket of her dress. She raised her hands, frightened, right as something enormous smashed into Wax. He stumbled against the table, overturning it.

Wax blinked in shock. The steward! She’d grown to incredible strength, arms bulging beneath her robes, neck thick as a man’s thigh. Wax cursed, raising his gun, which the steward immediately slapped from his hand.

His wrist screamed in pain and he winced, Pushing on the nails in the wall to throw himself in a roll across the floor away from the steward. He came up fishing in his pocket for coins, but the steward wasn’t focused on him. She grabbed Wax’s gun off the floor, then turned toward Kelesina, who screamed.

Oh no …

The shot left his ears ringing. Kelesina fell limp to the floor, blood dribbling from the hole in her forehead.

“He killed her!” a voice screamed from the doorway outside. Wax spun to find the maid he’d seen earlier standing there, hands to her face. “Lord Ladrian killed our lady!” The woman ran away screaming the words over and over, although she’d obviously had a clear view of the room.

“You bastard!” Wax shouted toward the box.

“Now, now,” the box said. “That’s patently false, Waxillium. You have a very clear understanding of my parentage.” The steward walked over to Kelesina, fishing at something on Kelesina’s body. Then, for some reason, the steward shot the dead woman again.

Either way, this gave Wax a chance to seize the box, which had fallen from the table near him.

“You’d better be careful, Nephew,” the box said. “I’ve told them to kill you if they can. In this case, a dead scapegoat will work as well as a living one.” Wax roared, ripping the box free of the wall and Pushing it out the doorway, into the next room. He brought his hand up and Pushed back on the gun in the steward’s hand as she tried to aim it at him.

She cursed in Terris. Wax turned and scrambled from the smaller room into the one beyond, where he’d first hidden from the steward. He kicked the door shut to give himself some cover, then Pushed on his coin from before and leaped over a couch, soaring through the room. He scooped up the box communication device and skidded out into the hallway.

Half a dozen men in black coats and white gloves were advancing down the hallway toward him. They froze in place, then leveled their weapons.

Rusts!

Wax Pushed on the frames of the windows and reentered the room as the men opened fire. The inner door into the room that had held the telegraph opened, and Wax Allomantically shoved it back, cracking it into the steward’s face.

Another way out. Servants’ corridors? Blue lines pointed all around him and he looked for one out of place … there! He Pushed on it, opening a hidden door in the wall which led into a small passage, lit with dangling lightbulbs, that servants used. Still carting the telegraph box, he leaped through it as men piled into the sitting room behind him.

The weaving maze of passages let him keep ahead of them, though he did have to spend a coin taking one of them out as they got too close. That drove the others back, but notably, he couldn’t sense any metal on their bodies. Aluminum weapons. This was one of Suit’s kill squads, likely contacted and sent into action the moment Kelesina had telegraphed him.

Wax burst out of the passageways into a room that he hoped would let him circle back toward the atrium. If they’d found Steris … He dashed through a conservatory, lit by several dim electric lights and lined with maps on the walls, and entered one of the hallways he’d explored earlier. Excellent. He charged toward the central atrium, but as soon as he reached the balcony’s stairway down, something leaped from the shadows and blindsided him.

The Terriswoman, face bleeding from where the slammed door had broken her nose, growled and grabbed him around the neck. He Pushed a coin up at her, but it didn’t have time to gain momentum. It hit her in the chest, then stayed there as he Pushed on it, trying to push her off. He strained, his vision growing dark, until a fist punched the Terriswoman across the face.

She let go, stumbling back and shaking. Wax gasped for breath, looking up at MeLaan looming over him.

“Rusts!” she said with a deep bass voice. “You did start without me.” The Terriswoman came charging in again, and Wax rolled to the side, fishing for coins. He brought up his last three in a handful as the steward punched MeLaan across the face. Something cracked audibly, and Wax hesitated as the steward stumbled back, clutching her mangled hand, the knuckles apparently shattered, the thumb ripped almost free.

MeLaan grinned. Her face had split where she’d been struck, revealing a gleaming metal skull underneath. “You really should be careful what you punch.” The Terriswoman lurched to her feet, and MeLaan casually grabbed her own left forearm in her right hand and ripped it off, revealing a long, thin metal blade attached to the arm at the stump. As the Terriswoman came for her, MeLaan thrust the weapon through the woman’s chest. The steward gasped and collapsed to her knees, then deflated like a punctured wineskin.

“Harmony, I love this body,” MeLaan said, glancing toward Wax with a goofy grin on her face. “How did I ever consider wearing another?” “Is that whole thing aluminum?” Wax asked.

“Yup!”

“It must be worth a fortune,” Wax said, standing and putting his back to the wall. The balcony was in front of him, the hallway he’d come down to his left. The kill squad would be following soon.

“Conveniently, I’ve had a few hundred years to save up,” MeLaan said. “It—” Wax pulled her to cover beside the wall with him; she was actually lighter than he had anticipated, considering that she had metal bones.

“What?” she asked softly.

Wax raised a coin, listening for footfalls. On the balcony before him, the Terriswoman twitched. When he heard the footstep he increased his weight a fraction, then spun around the corner and grabbed the first man’s gun in one hand, twisting it toward the floor. It fired ineffectively, and Wax pressed his other hand against the man’s chest and Pushed on the coin there.

Man and coin went flying back down the hallway toward his fellows, who leaped to the side. Wax was left with the aluminum gun, which he flipped in the air and caught, squeezing off four shots. The first pulled a little left, hitting the enemy in the arm, but he was able to place the next shots right in their chests.

All three dropped. The fourth man groaned from the floor where Wax had Pushed him.

“Damn,” MeLaan said.

“Says the woman who just ripped half her arm off.”

“It goes back on,” MeLaan said, picking up her forearm, which she slid back over the blade. Blood dribbled from where she’d broken the skin. “See? Good as new.” Wax snorted, tucking the stolen aluminum gun into his waistband. “You can get out on your own?” She nodded. “Want me to recover the guns you checked?”

“Can you?”

“Probably.”

“That would be wonderful.” Wax walked to the Terriswoman and checked to see that she was dead, then fished in her pockets until he came up with the gun she’d used to kill Kelesina. There was something else in her pocket as well. A metal bracelet of pure gold.

The Terriswoman took this off Kelesina, Wax thought, turning it over in his fingers as he remembered the moment earlier, when the murderer had knelt beside Kelesina’s body.

He burned steel, and his hunch proved correct. While he could sense the bracelet, the line was much thinner than it should have been. This was a metalmind, and one heavily Invested with healing power.

“Was Kelesina Terris?”

“How should I know?” MeLaan asked.

He pocketed the bracelet and grabbed the box telegraph device—which he wanted to send to Elendel for inspection—and tossed it to MeLaan. “Bring that, if you don’t mind, and meet us at the hotel. Be ready to leave the city. I doubt we’re staying the night.” “And you were so certain we’d be out of here without a fight.”

“I never said that. I said it wouldn’t get so bad that I needed Wayne. And it didn’t.” “A semantic technicality.”

“I’m a nobleman. Might as well learn something from my peers.” He saluted her with the small gun, then dropped off the balcony and used a coin to slow himself. “Steris?” She crawled from a nearby shrub. “How did it go?”

“Poorly,” Wax said, looking up toward the ceiling, then removing his dinner jacket. “I may have accidentally let them implicate us in Lady Kelesina’s murder.” “Bother,” Steris said.

“Their evidence will depend on whether they can trace the bullets back to me,” Wax said, “and whether they recover any of my prints from the area. Either way, they’ll be producing fake witnesses to try to make it look like I came down here specifically to assassinate Kelesina. Grab on.” Steris grabbed him with, he noted, no small amount of eagerness. She really did enjoy this part. He took the bullets from his .22 and held them in one hand, then launched off the coin below to shoot them toward the ceiling. He flung the bullets toward the skylights and Pushed them in a spray to weaken a window, then raised his arm—wrapped in his jacket—over his head and crashed them through the glass and out into the swirling mists.

They landed on the roof as Wax got his bearings. Out in the mists, he felt better almost immediately, and his hand—which had been smarting where the Terriswoman smacked his gun away—stopped throbbing.

“Did you learn anything useful?” Steris asked.

“Not sure,” Wax said. “Most of what I overheard was about a rebellion against Elendel. I know Edwarn is heading somewhere important. He called it the second site? And he said something about what I think is that little cube Marasi found.” He pulled her tight again, then sent them in a Push upward through the mists in the direction of their hotel. She held to him tightly, but watched the lights of the city beneath with awe.

“He had Kelesina murdered,” Wax said. “I should have seen it. Should have anticipated.” “At least,” Steris said over the sound of the passing wind, “the mists are out. They’ll have trouble tracking us.” “You did well tonight, Steris. Very well. Thank you.”

“It was engaging,” she said as he dropped them onto a rooftop. Her smile, which she let out readily, warmed him. She was proof that, despite his dislike of the politics in the Basin, it had good people. Genuine people. Strikingly, he had been forced to realize something almost exactly like that about the Roughs after first moving there.

She was gorgeous. Like an uncut emerald sitting in the middle of a pile of fakes cut to sparkle, but really just glass. Her enthusiasm balanced, somewhat, his concern over what had happened. Missing Suit. Being implicated. Lessie would say … No. He didn’t need to think of Lessie right now. He smiled back at Steris, then pulled her tighter and Pushed, launching them straight up. Higher, up away from this district. The city’s taller buildings were visible only as lines of lights in the night, pointing upward through the mists. He launched up off a rooftop, then passed a shaking gondola, moving by electricity and carrying a group of gawking passengers. It rocked as Wax launched them sideways from it toward the skyscrapers.

Two were near enough one another, and with a quick series of furious Pushes, he was able to throw himself and Steris up through the swirling mists in a succession of arcs, first one way, then the other. He crested the tops and Pushed off one, sending them up a little farther. He had hoped that with the elevation of this highest terrace of the city— Yes. They burst from the mists into a realm seen by very few. The Ascendant’s Field, Coinshots called it: the top of the mists at night. White stretched in all directions, churning like an ocean’s surface, bathed in starlight.

Steris gasped, and Wax managed to hold them in place by Pushing against the tips of the two skyscrapers below. Without a third, he wasn’t certain how long he could balance, but for the moment they remained steady.

“So beautiful…” Steris said, clinging to him.

“Thank you again,” Wax said to her. “I still can’t believe you snuck a gun into the party.” “It’s only appropriate,” Steris said, “that you would make a smuggler out of me.” “Just as you try to make a gentleman out of me.”

“You’re already a gentleman,” Steris said.

Wax looked down at her as she held to him while trying to stare in every direction at once. He suddenly found something burning in him, like a metal. A protectiveness for this woman in his arms, so full of logic and yet so full of wonder at the same time. And a powerful affection.

So he let himself kiss her. She was surprised by it, but melted into the embrace. They started to drift sideways and arc downward as he lost his balance on his anchors, but he held on to the kiss, letting them slip back down into the churning mists.

Wayne put his feet up on the table in their hotel suite, a new book open in front of him. He’d picked it up earlier, when poking through the city.

“You oughtta read this thing, Mara,” he called to Marasi, who paced back and forth behind his couch. “Strangest thing you ever heard. These blokes, they build this ship, right? Only it’s meant to go up. Uses a big explosion or some such to send it to the stars. These other blokes steal it, right, and there’s seven of them, all convicts. They go lookin’ for plunder, but end up on this star what has no—” “How can you read?” Marasi asked, still pacing.

“Well, I’m not right sure,” Wayne said. “By all accounts, I should be dumber than a sack full o’ noodles.” “I mean, aren’t you nervous?” Marasi asked.

“Why should I be?”

“Something could go wrong.”

“Nah,” Wayne said. “I’m not along. Wax can only get into so much trouble without me to—” Something hit the window, causing Marasi to jump. Wayne turned to see Wax clinging to one of the windowsills, Steris tucked under one arm like a sack of potatoes—well, a sack of potatoes that had a very nice rack, anyway. Wax pulled open the window, set Steris inside, then swung in himself.

Wayne popped a peanut into his mouth. “How’d it go?”

“Eh,” Wax said. He had lost his dinner jacket somewhere, and blood—hopefully not his own—covered one arm of his shirt. His cravat drooped, half tied.

“We figured out where Suit and his people are likely holed up,” Wayne said as Marasi ran over to check on her sister, who looked flustered, but alive and such.

“You’re kidding,” Wax said.

“Nope,” Wayne said, then grinned and popped a peanut. “What’d you find?” “Clues about Marasi’s cube,” Wax said, pulling off his cravat. “And something about a building project, and a potential army. Suit’s timetable seems to be more advanced than I’d thought.” “Cheery,” Wayne said. “So…”

Wax sighed, then pulled out his billfold and tossed a note at Wayne. “You win.” “You had a bet?” Marasi demanded.

“Friendly wager,” Wayne said, making the note disappear. “Can I bring these peanuts when we go?” “Go?” Marasi said, standing up.

Wayne thumbed toward Wax, who had pulled out his travel bag. “We’re leaving. Marasi, Steris, I’d suggest packing lightly. You have about fifteen minutes.” “I’m already packed,” Steris said, standing up.

“I—” Marasi looked from him to her, seeming baffled. “What did you do at that party?” “Hopefully,” Wax said, “not start a war. But I can’t say for certain.” Marasi groaned. “You let him do this,” she accused Steris.

Steris blushed. Wayne always found that expression odd from her, seeing as how she had the emotions of a rock and all.

What followed was an energetic bout of motion as Wax and Marasi both ran to pack things. Wayne sidled up to Steris and popped a peanut in his mouth. “You got that preparin’-your-bags-early thing from me, didn’t you?” “I … Well, yes, actually.”

“What will you trade me for it, then?” Wayne said. “Gotta have a good trade when you take stuff.” “I’ll think about it,” Steris said.

Fifteen minutes later, the four of them piled into a carriage driven by MeLaan in her male body. A bedraggled Aunt Gin stood on the doorstep of her hotel watching them. She held a wad of cash in her hand—a wad that included the money Wayne had won off Wax. He’d left it as a tip on account of him putting his boots up on the furniture.

A furiously loud set of bells sounded in the distance, and it drew closer. “Is that the constables?” Aunt Gin asked, sounding horrified.

“Afraid so,” Wax said, pulling the door closed.

The carriage lurched into motion, and Steris leaned out the window, waving farewell to the poor innkeeper.

“Framed for murder!” Steris called to her. “It’s on page seventeen of the list I gave you! Try not to let them harass our servants too much when they arrive!” * * *

A few hours later, Wax stepped up to a cliff in the darkness and let the mists enfold him.

He missed darkness. It was never dark in the city, not as it had been in the Roughs. Electric lights were only exacerbating the issue. Everything glowing, casting away the darkness—and with it, stillness. Silence. Solitude.

A man found himself when he was alone. You only had one person to chat with, one person to blame. He fished in his mistcoat pocket and was surprised to find a cigar. He thought he was out of these, good stout Tingmars brought down from Weathering.

He cut this one with his belt knife, then lit it with a match. He savored it, drawing in the smoke, holding it, then puffing it out to churn in the mists. A little bit of him to mix with Harmony. May He choke on it.

At his side, he turned a little metal spike over in his fingers. The earring VenDell had sent.

It was nearly identical to the one he’d used to kill Lessie.

Eventually, footsteps on pine needles signaled someone approaching. He pulled on his cigar, giving a warm glow to the mists and revealing MeLaan’s face. Her feminine one. She’d finished changing, and was doing up the buttons on her shirt as she joined him.

“You going to get some sleep?” she asked softly.

“Maybe.”

“Last I checked,” she said, “humans still need it. Once in a while.” Wax pulled on his cigar, then blew out into the mists again.

“Suit wants you to go back to Elendel, I figure,” MeLaan said. “He’s trying to set it up so that you’ll have no choice, so far as you see it.” “We’re in a bad spot, MeLaan,” Wax said. “The emissary that Aradel sends to a political rally ends up murdering the host? If the outer cities weren’t tense before, they will be now. At the very best, it will be a huge political embarrassment. At the worst, I’ve started a war.” Wind blew, rustling pine branches he couldn’t see. He couldn’t even see MeLaan; clouds must have rolled in, blocking the starlight. Sweet, enveloping darkness.

“If there is war,” she said, “Suit will have started it. Not you.” “I might be able to prevent it,” Wax said. “Governor Aradel needs to know, MeLaan. If the outer cities are going to claim assassination—use it as the brand to start a bonfire—I can’t just vanish. I have to get to Elendel. That way, I can claim I knew the New Seran justice system was corrupt, and so I fled to safety. I can make my case in the broadsheets before news spreads; I can convince Aradel I didn’t kill the woman. If I do anything else, it will look like I’m hiding.” “Like I said,” MeLaan said. “He’s set it up so that you have no choice—so far as you see it.” “You see it differently?”

“I’ve been a lot of people, Ladrian. Seen through a lot of eyes. There’s always another perspective, if you look hard enough.” He pulled on his cigar and held the smoke a long moment before letting it out in a slow dribble. MeLaan crept away. Did her kind need sleep? She’d implied they didn’t, but he couldn’t say for certain.

Alone with his cigar, he tried to sort through what he wanted to do. Go back to Elendel, as forced upon him by Suit’s minions, or chase after the mystery—as forced upon him by Harmony’s minions. He rolled the earring in his fingers, and confronted the hatred simmering inside of him.

He’d never hated God before. After Lessie’s supposed death the first time, he hadn’t blamed Harmony. Rusts, even after Bleeder had raised the question of why Harmony hadn’t helped, Wax hadn’t responded with hatred.

But now … yes, that hatred was there. You could take knocks, out in the Roughs. You lost friends. You sometimes had to kill a man you didn’t want to kill. But one thing you never did: You never betrayed a companion. Friends were too rare a privilege out in those wilds, where everything seemed to want you dead.

By hiding the truth from him, Harmony had stabbed him square in the back. Wax could forgive a lot of things. He wasn’t sure this was one of them.

His cigar eventually ran out. His questions lingered. By the time he hiked back toward their campsite, the mist was retreating for the night. He fed the horses—six of them, purchased at the New Seran bottom terrace shipping yards, along with a full-sized stagecoach used to do runs to the Southern Roughs.

They’d narrowly escaped New Seran. Galloping their carriage, they’d managed to descend the ramps before the police, but only after Wax had been forced to bring down a gondola line.

The police hadn’t given chase after that, as if realizing they didn’t have the resources to hunt someone like Waxillium Dawnshot, at least not without a lot of backup. Wax still wanted to be moving. Though he was tired to the bones, he couldn’t let himself—or anyone else—rest long. Just in case.

As the others groggily piled into the vehicle, MeLaan took the reins from him and climbed up to the driver’s seat. Wayne hopped into the spotter’s seat beside her, and she gave him a grin.

“Where to, boss?” she asked, turning to Wax. “Back home?”

“No,” Wax said. “We ride to Dulsing, the place Wayne and Marasi located.” The direction of the building project.

“You found another perspective, I see,” MeLaan said.

“Not yet,” Wax said softly, climbing into the stagecoach. “But let’s see if Harmony dares try to give me one.”