فصل 16

16

Wax perched on an electricity pylon, overlooking the governor’s mansion—a clean white building, brightly lit in the mists by floodlights. Those didn’t shine so strongly every night, and their brightness tonight seemed to indicate that Innate was worried. The crowds were not dispersing. Men roamed the streets; there seemed to be more of them than there had been earlier, though the clock had struck midnight soon after Wax had left the Soothing parlor.

He’d stopped by his house to rebind his arm wound, chew down some painkillers, and pick up some supplies: his hat, his short-barreled shotgun, and his thigh holster. He’d considered sending someone for Lord Harms, but honestly, Wax wanted him safe where Bleeder couldn’t use the man against him. Better that he stay hidden on his rooftop. In fact, he’d been half tempted to go fetch Steris and drop her somewhere similar. Time was short, unfortunately. He had to trust that the constables watching her would keep her hidden.

From there, he’d walked the streets a short time, listening. He’d overheard anger at the government. Vitriol for the Pathians. Those complaints were bad enough, but mixed with them was a more disturbing trend. Anger, but with no focus. General discontent. The grumbling of men over their beers, of youths out on the street throwing rocks at cats. Hiding amid it all was a murderer, like a lion in the grass.

At least the governor’s mansion looked calm. He’d come fearing the worst, a strike on Innate while he was away. She’s got me pinned, Wax thought with dissatisfaction, as the breeze rustled his mistcoat. I can’t stay and protect the governor because I have to follow leads and try to figure out her plan. But I can’t be as effective in that hunt because I keep worrying that I’m leaving Innate exposed.

Could he convince the governor to hide? Beneath his feet, electricity ran like an invisible river through the suspended cables. Spirits that moved like Allomancers in the sky, hopping from building to building … Ah, lawman, a voice intruded upon his thoughts like a nail into a board. There you are.

Wax reached to his waist for Vindication. Where? This had to mean Bleeder was close, right? Watching somewhere?

Do you know, the voice said, about the body’s remarkable defenses? Inside, there are tiny bits of you that men never see. Even surgeons don’t know of them, for they’re too small. It takes a refined taste to distinguish them, know them. What is it that your friend likes to say? Ain’t nobody what knows the cow better than the butcher?

Wax dropped down from his perch, slowing himself by Pushing on a discarded bottle cap. Mists churned around him, drawn by his Allomancy.

If a tiny invader enters your blood, Bleeder said, the entire body begins to spin around it, to fight it, to find it and eliminate it. Like a thousand fingers of mist, like a legion of soldiers all too small to see. But what is very interesting is when the body turns upon itself, and these soldiers run wild. Free … “Where are you?” Wax asked loudly.

Close, Bleeder said. Watching. You, and the governor. I will need to kill him, you know.

“Can we talk?” Wax asked a little softer.

Isn’t that what we’re doing?

Wax turned, walking in the night. Either Bleeder would have to follow—which might let him catch motions in the mists—or he’d get far enough away that she couldn’t hear to reply to him, which would tell him which direction to search in.

“Are you going to try to kill me?” Wax asked.

What good would it do to kill you?

“So you want games.”

No. Bleeder sounded resigned. No games.

“What, then?” Wax asked. “Why bother with all of this showmanship?” I’ll free them. Every one of them. I’ll take this people, and I’ll open their eyes.

“How?”

What are you, Waxillium? Bleeder asked.

“A lawman,” Wax said immediately.

That’s the coat you’re wearing right now, but it’s not who you are. I know. God knows I’ve seen the truth in you.

“Tell me, then,” Wax said, still walking through the mists.

I don’t think I can. I might be able to show you.

Bleeder didn’t seem to have trouble hearing, though Wax had softened his voice. Allomancy? Or did she just have the ability to make ears that worked better than human ones? He kept searching. Perhaps one of those dark windows in the government building nearby? Wax headed that way. “Is that why you’re targeting the governor, then?” he asked. “You want to bring him down, free the people from the government’s oppression?” You know he’s just another pawn.

“I don’t know that.”

I wasn’t talking to you that time, Waxillium.

He hesitated in the mists. The office building loomed before him, the windows a hundred hollow eyes. Most of those windows were closed—a common practice at night. No need to invite the mists in. Religion could say what it wished, and people believed, mostly. But the mists still made them uncomfortable.

There, Wax thought, picking out an open window on the second floor.

Very good, Bleeder said, and Wax saw something shift just inside the window, ambient light barely sufficient to let him discern it. Ever the detective.

“I’m not much of one, actually,” Wax said. “In the Roughs, you solve fewer cases with investigation than with a good pair of guns.” That’s a fun lie, Bleeder said. Do you tell that one at parties to youths who’ve read too many stories about the Roughs? They don’t like hearing about interrogating family members of a man gone bad? Tracking down gunsmiths to see who fixed an outlaw’s rifle? Digging through an old campfire after days spent on the road?

“How do you know about things like that?” Wax asked.

I do my homework. It’s a kandra thing, which I assume MeLaan explained. Whatever you claim, you’re a good investigator. Maybe an excellent one. Even if you are, by definition, a dog chasing its own tail.

Wax walked right up to the base of the building, the mist thinning between him and Bleeder, who skulked just inside the window about ten feet up. Her face, though enveloped by the shadows, seemed wrong to Wax. Shaped oddly.

“Have you asked him?” Bleeder whispered from above, barely audible in the night. She had a rasping, dry voice, like the one in his head.

“Who?”

“Harmony. Have you asked why he didn’t save Lessie? A whisper at the right time, telling you not to split up. A warning in the back of your mind, telling you not to prowl down that tunnel, but instead circle around behind? You could have saved Lessie so easily with his help.” “Don’t speak her name,” Wax hissed.

“He’s supposed to be God. He could have snapped his fingers and made Tan drop dead on the spot. He didn’t. Have you asked why?” Vindication was in Wax’s hand a moment later, pointing up toward that window. His other hand felt at his gunbelt for the pouch that held the syringes.

Bleeder chuckled. “Ever quick with the gun. If you speak to Harmony again, ask him. Did he know the effect Lessie had on you, that she was what kept you out in the Roughs? Did he know, perhaps, that you’d never return here—where he needed you—as long as she was alive? Did he, perhaps, want her to die?” Wax fired.

Not to hit Bleeder. He just needed to hear a crack in the night. That sound, so familiar, of breaking air. The bullet left a trail in the mist, and the wall beside Bleeder popped, scattering flakes of brick.

Rusts … he was shaking.

“I’m sorry,” Bleeder whispered. “For what I have to do. Cleaning the wound is often more painful than the cut itself. You will see, and understand, once you are free.” “No, we—”

The mists churned. Wax stumbled back, swinging his gun toward something that had passed in a blur, leaving a corridor of swirling mist.

Bleeder. Moving with Feruchemical speed.

Toward the governor.

Wax cursed, swinging Vindication behind himself and planting a bullet in the ground, then Pushing in a powerful burst. He launched through the mists toward the blazing light of the governor’s grounds, sweeping over the gates, startling a small flock of ravens, which scattered into the air around him.

Two shots rang out in the night. As Wax crossed the grounds, he spotted Bleeder on the mansion’s front steps, wearing a body-length scarlet coat. The guards at the front doors lay dead at her feet. In the glow of the electric lights, he could see what was wrong with Bleeder’s face now—she wore a black-and-white mask. The Marksman’s mask, but twisted, broken up one side.

She ducked into the building, not using her speed any longer. Wax landed beside the bodies—he didn’t have time to check them for life—and growled as he shoved into the building, gun out, and checked right, then left. The house steward screamed, dropping a tray of tea in the entryway as Bleeder skidded across the floor and into the next room.

Wax followed, the main door ripping from its frame and flying out behind him into the night as he Pushed against it and its hinges to cross the room in a half run, half skim. He burst into the next chamber—a sitting room—with Vindication out, spinning the cylinder to one of the gun’s special hazekiller rounds. A Thug shot, extra-heavy slug, built to deliver as much force as possible.

The room he entered was decorated with the kind of perfect furniture you found only in a house that had too many rooms. According to the blueprint he’d been given, under it would be the saferoom.

Still the gun, Bleeder said in his mind as she leaped over a sofa, heading toward the wall, which hid the steps down to the saferoom. Useless. I cannot be killed with that.

Wax raised Vindication and sighted, then fired, Pushing the bullet forward in a burst of extra speed. It hit Bleeder as she landed.

Right in the ankle.

The bone shattered and Bleeder collapsed as she tried to put weight on her ankle. She turned toward Wax, lips raised in a snarl visible through the broken side of the mask.

Wax put a bullet through the eyehole in the mask.

This is meaningless—

He strode forward, shooting her in the hand as she tried to raise her gun. Wax pulled out the syringe, ready to Push it toward her skin, but she growled and became a blur. Wax tried to follow that blur—but at that moment, the side of the room burst open, revealing the hidden stairwell. A group of men in black suits and shotguns piled out, frantic. The governor’s special security.

Wax dove for cover as they started firing. He didn’t catch much of what happened next, as he put his back to the side of a thick chair. Bleeder moved among the men, firing. They tried to fire back, doing more damage to their friends than they did to her.

It was over by the time the report from the first gunshot had faded in Wax’s ears. Men lay groaning and bleeding on the floor, and Bleeder was through the hole and heading down the steps. Wax set his jaw and Pushed himself across the room. He landed, skidding on blood, and leaped into the stairwell. Another Push sent him soaring down the steps.

Gunshots resounded in the narrow confines of the stairwell, coming from just ahead. Wax slowed himself with a shot forward into the ground, landing beside a final handful of guards who lay bleeding on the floor.

The kandra stood alone before the door to the saferoom. She looked at Wax, smiled, and became a blur.

But her speed only lasted a fraction of a second. Soon after she’d begun tapping her metalmind, she slowed back down.

Wax caught sight of her just as she unlocked the door to the governor’s saferoom, using a key she shouldn’t have. She pulled the door open with a flourish, then glanced back at Wax, shaking her head. She obviously thought she was still a blur moving with incredible speed. And she was.

Wax had simply joined her.

One of the fallen bodies stirred, and Wayne pushed back his hat, showing a grin. Wax raised his hands, a gun in each, and was rewarded by an expression of utter shock on Bleeder’s face. She’d regrown her eye, though blood still streamed down the front of her mask. As he had chased her, talked to her, she’d always seemed fully in control.

Until this moment.

Wax blasted away with both guns. That wasn’t usually a good idea, at least if you wanted to hit anything, but they were barely ten feet apart—and besides, he was inside a speed bubble. His bullets would refract when leaving sped-up time, and so aiming was of questionable value anyway.

At a time like this, you didn’t want to be precise. You wanted to be thorough. Steris would be proud.

He fired in a cacophony, empting both weapons. He took advantage of Bleeder’s shock, dropping his guns and pulling his other Sterrion out of its under-arm holster and unloading it. His short-barreled shotgun, from the holster on his thigh, followed, belching slugs and thunder as Wax strode to the edge of the speed bubble.

After reaching the rim, the bullets deflected out into normal time, moving painfully slowly. But less than a foot separated Bleeder and the edge of Wayne’s bubble. Wax dropped the shotgun and pulled out one of the syringes again, and shoved it toward her, Pushing on the metal, hoping against hope that—stunned from the gunfire—she wouldn’t notice it coming.

As the kandra turned to run, the first bullet hit. Others followed in a storm. Half missed, but Wax had fired almost two dozen shots. Many punched into Bleeder, who dropped her Feruchemical speed as they caught her. She moved lethargically, trying to escape the hail of bullets, sprays of blood bursting silently into the air, like the seeds blown from a dandelion.

She stumbled against the doorframe, and one of the shotgun slugs hit the back of her head, ripping a hole through her face and breaking off the mask. She sagged, gripping the doorframe, draped in her red cloak.

The needle flew from Wax’s Push, spinning in the air, but it—like the bullets—had been deflected by the edge of the speed bubble. It impaled itself into the wood of the doorframe just inches from Bleeder.

She righted herself a second later, and sped up again, wounds vanishing. She didn’t look at him as her back straightened and she strode through the door. She did flip the needle off the frame, sending it toppling in slow motion toward the ground.

Wax dug a handful of rounds from the pouch on his belt, then leaped out of the speed bubble. He felt an immediate lurch—as if the world had been upended—and heard a faint popping sound. The nausea hit him like a punch to the face, but he was ready for it. He’d ducked out of speed bubbles before.

A single gunshot sounded from the saferoom.

He crossed the distance to the door in a rush, throwing the cartridges in front of himself, ready to Push on the ones that he might need to hit Bleeder. Once inside, however, he let the rounds drop to the ground. Bleeder wasn’t in the room; an open door at the back led out, presumably through a tunnel to the grounds above.

The plush saferoom—round and rimmed with bookshelves—had a wet bar on one end and was lit by comfortable reading lamps. The governor knelt on the floor, holding a bleeding Drim, frantically trying to stanch the blood coming from the bodyguard’s neck.

Wax dashed across the room, stopping at the door into the escape tunnel.

“Lawman!” Innate cried. “Help. Please … oh, Harmony. Help!”

Wax hesitated, peering into that empty, dark tunnel. He was reminded of another one like it, dusty and shored up by beams at the sides. Both a tomb and a stage … Behind, Wayne stumbled into the room, then scrambled to help Innate. Wax remained by the door into the tunnel, rolling a few rounds between his fingers.

“He saved me,” Innate said, weeping. By this point, he was drenched in Drim’s blood. He’d pulled off his shirt, trying to use it to stanch the blood. “He leaped into the way right as the assassin shot,” Innate said. “Tell me you can … Please…” “He’s gone, mate,” Wayne said, settling back.

“Other casualties upstairs, Wayne,” Wax said, pointing. With reluctance, he shut the door to the escape tunnel. He couldn’t give chase, not and leave the governor alone here.

Wayne rushed out of the room to check on the men who had been shot upstairs. Wax walked over to the governor, who knelt before his bodyguard’s corpse. He’d never seen Innate look so human as he did at that moment, shoulders slumped, head bowed. Exhausted, wrung-out. Could anyone fake that?

He checked anyway. “Leavening on sand,” Wax said.

Innate looked up at him, eyes unfocused. Wax’s heart skipped a beat, but then the governor sighed. “Bones without soup.” He knew the passphrase. This was really Innate.

Wax knelt beside the governor, looking over Drim’s corpse. Annoying though the man had been at times, he had not deserved this. “I’m sorry.” “She stopped moving at a blur,” Innate said, his voice strained. “She appeared inside, gun out, but seemed angry about something. Drim leaped for me right before she shot. She was gone a second later. Surely she could have paused to finish me off, rather than running.” “She obtained Feruchemical powers only two weeks ago,” Wax said. “That time frame greatly limits how much speed she can have stored up, and moving as fast as she has been must have drained her metalmind quickly. She needed to escape before it ran out.” Of course, there could be another reason. She might have just wanted to frighten them, and the governor. To prod him to do something. But what? She said she intended to kill him, but not until the time was right.

Why? What was the plan?

“So she’s flawed,” Innate said. “She can be beaten.”

“Of course she can,” Wax said. He looked down at the corpse, and the floor stained red. But at what cost? He took a deep breath. “I want you to leave the city.” “No.”

“That’s stupidity,” Wax snapped. “She will be back.”

“Have you looked out there, lawman?” Innate said, waving a bloody hand in a vaguely upward direction. “Have you seen what’s happening in this city?” “You can’t do anything about that tonight.”

“I most certainly can.” Innate stood. “I’m the leader of this city; I’m not going to run away. If anything, I need to be seen—need to meet with the chief instigators of this movement, if any can be found. I need to address the crowds, prepare a speech—I need to gather my cabinet, and with them make sure that there’s still a city here in the morning.” He pointed at Wax. “You stop this creature, Ladrian. I don’t have a bodyguard any longer. I’m in your hands.” He strode out then. Whatever else he thought of the man, Wax had to respect Innate’s grit.

You stop this creature.…

Wax glanced at the syringe, still lying on the floor near the doorframe. So close. If it had hit, he might have been able to depress the metal plunger and send the liquid into her veins. Feeling powerless, he fetched that syringe and brought it back to Drim’s corpse, dead with a bullet right in the neck. Wax plunged the syringe into the corpse’s arm and emptied it into the flesh.

Nothing happened. He hadn’t expected it to—it seemed very implausible that Bleeder would have managed to get Drim’s face on and fool the governor this way. But it still made Wax feel more comfortable.

He stumbled to his feet. Rusts, he was tired. Why hadn’t she killed the governor? There was more to this.

Wayne peeked in. “Two guards might make it. We have a surgeon helpin’ them now.” “Good,” Wax said. “Wait for me upstairs.”

Wayne nodded, ducking back out. Wax instead walked to the escape route and pulled open the door. He lit a candle and stepped up the slope, cautious, hand on his gun. What did undermining the governor, inciting a riot against the Pathians, and Wax’s own “freedom” have to do with one another? What was he missing?

He didn’t find Bleeder in the tunnel, though halfway up it he found her red cloak. She’d tossed it, bloodied, to the side. There, scrawled on the wall, was a crude picture shaped like a man, drawn with a fingernail into the wood.

Dabs of dried blood marked the figure’s eyes, and another marked its mouth. The words scrawled beneath in blood gave Wax a chill.

I rip out his tongue to stop the lies.

I stab out his eyes to hide from his gaze.

You will be free.