فصل 15

15

Templeton Fig smoothed the feathers of his dead white crow. He knew for a fact that this animal was an authentic albino, not some knockoff crafted by an opportunist who had heard of his collection. By now, he had seen enough dead animals bleached white to spot a fake.

He had stuffed this bird himself, prize of his collection, and set it looking over its shoulder with a small strip of rabbit skin in its beak. Such a magnificent creature. People always found it striking, as its coloring was the opposite of what they expected. Things like cats and dogs sometimes had white coloring naturally, and so his albino specimens of those weren’t as spectacular.

He replaced the glass dome over the crow, then stepped back and clasped his hands, looking at the white animals in a row. Frozen in death. Perfection. Only … the suckling boar. Had it been moved to the side? The housekeeper had better not have decided to dust his collection again.

He stepped up, twisting the glass jar that held the boar. Behind him, fire crackled in his hearth, though it wasn’t particularly cold outside. He even had the window open. He liked the contrast—warmth from the fire, a cool breeze from outside. As he was trying to get the boar just right, the door to his study creaked.

“Templeton?” a quiet voice asked, peeking in. Destra had bags under her eyes, hair frazzled. Her nightgown seemed to have swallowed her. The woman had lost more weight. Soon she would be positively skeletal. “Are you coming to bed?” “Later,” he said, looking back to his boar. There.

“When later?”

“Later.”

She winced at his tone and pulled the door closed behind her. The woman should know better than to disturb him. Sleep. How could he sleep until he knew what had happened at the graveyard? One did not disappoint the men with whom he had been dealing. They asked for something to be done, and you saw it done.

He would know soon. He stepped forward, moving his albino squirrel to the end of the line. Did it look better that way? He reached up and wiped the sweat from his brow, then moved the squirrel back. No, that wasn’t right either. Then how was he to— His fire stopped crackling.

Templeton’s breath caught. He turned slowly in place, fishing in his vest pocket for his handkerchief. The fire was still there, but it was motionless. Trell’s soul! What could have frozen the flames?

Something thumped on his door. Templeton backed away, fingers clawing at his pocket, still seeking that handkerchief. The door thumped again, and his back hit the shelf where he kept his collection. He tried to whisper an inquiry, but he was having trouble breathing.

The door burst open and the gravedigger Dechamp—eyes staring sightlessly, blood covering his shirt—fell into the room.

Templeton screamed then, scuttling away from the door, and put his back to the far wall of his small den. His fingers found the windowsill, gripping it for strength as he stared at the corpse lying in the doorway.

Something tapped on his window.

Templeton squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to look. Frozen fire. A body on his floor. He was dreaming. It was a nightmare. It wasn’t possible.… Tap. Tap. Tap.

He found his handkerchief finally and clutched it, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Templeton.” The rasping voice drifted in through the window.

Templeton turned slowly and faced the window. He opened his eyes.

Death stood outside.

Cloaked in black, Death’s face was hidden beneath the hood—but two metal spikes protruded from the cowl, catching the firelight on their heads.

“I’m dead,” Templeton whispered.

“No,” Death whispered. “You can die when I say. Not before.”

“Oh, Harmony.”

“You are not His,” Death whispered, standing in the darkness outside. “You are mine.” “What do you want from me? Please!” Templeton slumped to his knees. He forced himself to glance back toward Dechamp. Would that body rise? Would it come for him?

“You have something of mine, Templeton,” Death whispered. “A spike.” He raised his arms, letting the cloak shift back and expose white skin. A spike was stuck through one arm. The other arm was bare, save for a bloody hole.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Templeton screamed. “They insisted! I don’t have it!” “Where.”

“Sent by courier!” Templeton said. “To Dulsing! I don’t know more. Oh, please. Please! They demanded I recover the spike for them. I didn’t know it was yours! It was just a rusting piece of metal. I’m innocent! I’m…” He trailed off, realizing that the fire had started crackling again. He blinked, focusing again on the window. It was empty. A … a dream after all? He turned and found Dechamp’s corpse still leaking blood on the floor.

Templeton whimpered and huddled down. He was honestly relieved when the constables burst into the room a short time later.

Wayne shucked the awful, heavy cloak and held up his arm, healing his wounds. Not much left in his metalmind. He was going to have to be sparing after this. Those bullet wounds earlier had taken a lot out of him.

“You didn’t need to actually cut holes in your arm, Wayne,” Marasi said, joining him in the garden—he’d trampled some very nice petunias to get to the window.

“Course I did,” Wayne replied, wiping away the blood. “You’ve gotta be authentic.” He scratched at his head, and shifted the wires that held two half spikes hovering in front of his eyes.

“Take that thing off,” Marasi said. “It looks ridiculous.”

“He didn’t think so,” Wayne said. Inside the house, the constables dragged Templeton Fig away. The information in the ledger Wayne had found should be enough to see him well and truly incarcerated. Poor chap. He didn’t really do anything wrong. You can’t steal from a person that’s already dead. But then, people were strange about their stuff. Wayne had given up on trying to figure out all their little rules.

He’d send the fellow some fruit in prison. Might make him feel better. “How was the accent?” he asked.

“Worked well enough.”

“I wasn’t sure how Death ‘imself would sound, you know? I figured all important-like, like Wax when he’s tellin’ me to take my feet off the furniture. Mixed with some real old-soundin’ tones, like a grandfather’s grandfather. And grindy, like a man what is choking to death.” “In fact,” Marasi said, “he’s quite articulate, and not at all ‘grindy.’ And the accent is strange—not like anything I’ve heard before.” Wayne grunted, taking off his head spikes. “Can you do it for me?” “What? The accent?”

Wayne nodded eagerly.

“No. Not a chance.”

“Well, next time you meet that guy, tell ‘im he’s gotta come talk to me. I need to hear what he sounds like.” “What does it matter?”

“I gotta hear,” Wayne said. “For next time.”

“Next time? How often do you expect you’ll be imitating Death?”

Wayne shrugged. “This is the fourth so far. So you never can tell.” He took the last swig of Dechamp’s brandy, then slung his cloak over his shoulder and started through the mists back toward the road.

“Dulsing,” Marasi said.

“You know it?”

“It’s a little farming settlement,” Marasi said. “Maybe fifty miles northeast of New Seran. I read about it in my textbooks—there was a landmark water rights case there—but it’s isolated and tiny, barely worth anyone’s time. What in the world does the Set want with it?” “Maybe they like their tomatoes real fresh,” Wayne said. “I know I do.” Marasi grew silent, obviously deep in thought, worried for some reason. Wayne left her to it, digging out his tin of gum, tapping it, then flipping it open and selecting one of the soft, powder-covered balls to chew. So far as he was concerned, this had been a bang-up night. Dynamite, a nice brawl, free brandy, and getting to scare the piss out of someone.

It was the simple things that made his life worth living.

Wax had little luck with the first set of rooms he scouted. Though they supposedly belonged to Kelesina, they proved to be empty. He was tempted to ransack them for information, but decided that would take too long—and would be too incriminating at the moment. Being discovered lost in a hallway was excusable; being discovered going through a lady’s desk drawers was another thing entirely.

He prowled back to the atrium and checked on Steris, gave her a wave, then continued down another hallway. This one bordered the outer wall and had windows open to the mists, which streamed in with their own miniature waterfalls. Likely some servant had the duty to close those windows on a misty night, but had gotten distracted by the party.

He listened at a set of doors, and heard nothing other than a voice drifting in from the window—the voice of Lord Severington, still plowing through his speech in the ballroom. With the amplification devices, Wax could make out a word here and there.

“… suffer the rule … new Lord Ruler?… improper taxation … era must end…” I will have to give that more attention, Wax thought, prowling through the hallway toward the next set of rooms. Severington was mayor of Bilming, the port city west of Elendel. It was the only major one in the Basin besides Elendel itself—and was an industrial powerhouse. If conflict did come, they’d be spearheading it.

They’re spearheading it now, Wax realized as more words drifted up to him.

He continued down the hallway, listening at the next set of doors. He was about to turn away, when he heard a voice. There was someone inside. Wax crouched down, ear to the door, wishing he had a Tineye along to listen for him. That voice … That was his uncle.

Wax pressed his ear up against the door, heedless of how he’d look to someone entering the hallway. Rusts … he couldn’t make out much. A half word here and there. But it was Edwarn. Another voice spoke, and that was almost certainly Kelesina.

The gap under the door was dark. Wax put his hand to his pocket and the handgun secreted there, then turned the door’s knob and eased it open. Beyond was some kind of study, completely dark but for the thin strip of light under the door on the far side. Wax slipped inside, closed the door behind him, and scuttled through the room—stifling a curse as he smacked his arm on an end table. Heart thumping, he put his back to the wall beside the other door.

“Never mind that,” his uncle was saying. His voice was muffled, as if he were speaking through a cloth or a mask or something. “Why have you interrupted me? You know the importance of my work.” “Waxillium knows about the project,” Kelesina said. “And he’s found one of the coins. He’s acting stupid, but he knows.” “The diversions?”

“He’s not biting.”

“You’re not trying hard enough then,” Suit said. “Kidnap one of his friends and leave a letter, purportedly from one of his old enemies. Challenge his wits, draw him into an investigation. Waxillium cannot resist a personal grudge. It will work.” “The train robbery didn’t,” Kelesina said. “What of that, Suit? We wasted vital resources, important connections I had spent years cultivating, on that attack. You promised that if we attacked while he was on board, he wouldn’t be able to resist investigating. Yet he ignored it. Left Ironstand that same night.” Wax felt a chill as a whole set of assumptions shifted within him. The train robbery … had it been a distraction, intended to draw his attention away from pursuing the Set?

“Recovering the device,” Suit said, “was worth the risk.”

“You mean the device Irich immediately lost?” Kelesina demanded. “That one shouldn’t be trusted with important missions. He’s too eager. You should have let me recover the item once Waxillium was off the train.” “There was a good chance he’d take the bait,” Edwarn said. “I know my nephew; he’s probably still itching to go after those bandits. If he’s at your party instead, then you aren’t doing your duty properly. I haven’t time to hold your hand on this, Kelesina. I need to be off to the second site.” Wax frowned. The train hadn’t been just a distraction, it seemed. But the words left him with a deeper sense of worry. He’d chased half a dozen leads during the last year, anticipating that he was close on the heels of his uncle. How many of those had been plants? And how many of his other cases had been intentional distractions? And Ape Manton? Was he really even in New Seran? Likely not.

Edwarn spoke a truth. He knew Wax well. Too well, for a man he’d barely seen in the last twenty years.

“Well,” Suit said, “you have your chance now to recover the device, as you promised you could. How is that going?” “It wasn’t in the things he checked at the party,” Kelesina said. “We snuck a spy among the hotel staff, and she will search for it in his rooms. I’m telling you, Irich—” “Irich was punished,” Suit said. Why did his voice sound so much smaller than Kelesina’s? “That is all you need know. Recover it for me, and other mistakes might be forgiven. It is only a matter of time before they accidentally use Allomancy near it.” “And then will we see this ‘miracle’ you keep promising, Suit?” she demanded. “A few more speeches like this one, and Severington will have the entirety of the Basin whipped into a frenzy. Completely ignoring that Elendel has us outmanned and outgunned.” “Patience!” Suit said, sounding amused.

“You try to be patient. They’re bleeding us dry. You promised to crush that city, provide an army, and—” “Patience,” Suit repeated softly. “Stop Waxillium. That is your part of the bargain now. Keep him in the city; keep him distracted.” “That’s not going to work, Suit,” Kelesina said. “He knows too much already. That damn shapeshifter must have told him—” “You let it escape?”

Kelesina was silent.

“I thought,” Suit said, voice growing cold, “that you had disposed of the creature. You presented its spike to me, claiming the other had been destroyed.” “We … may have assumed too quickly.”

“I see,” Suit said.

The two did not speak for a protracted moment. Wax raised his gun beside his head, sweat trickling down his brow in the dark room. He toyed with breaking in right then. He had evidence on Kelesina in the form of the wounded kandra and his own testimony. Several people died in that blast. Murder.

But did he have enough against Edwarn? Would his uncle just slip away again? Rusts, an army? They spoke of destroying Elendel. Dared he wait? If he took her and Suit right now, she might break, testify against him— Footsteps.

They came from the hallway outside. As they approached the door, he made a snap decision, dropping a coin—it wasn’t the special one, he had that in a different pocket—and Pushing.

Light from the hallway poured into the room as the door opened, revealing the steward from before. She crossed the room in a rush, and blessedly didn’t turn on the room’s lights—instead walking straight to the doorway that Wax had been listening at.

She didn’t look up and see Wax pressed to the ceiling above her, Pushing against a coin she walked right over in her haste to knock on the door. Kelesina called for her to enter.

“My lady,” the steward said in an urgent tone. “Burl sent me word while watching the party for Allomancers. He sensed someone using metals in this direction.” “Where is Waxillium?”

“His fiancée was sick,” the steward said. “We brought her to a guest room to recover.” “Curious,” Uncle Edwarn said. “And where is he now?”

Wax dropped to the floor with a thump, leveling his gun at the people inside the room. “He’s right here.” The steward spun, gasping. Kelesina rose from her seat, eyes wide. And Uncle Edwarn … Uncle Edwarn wasn’t in the room. The only thing there was a boxy device on the table in front of Kelesina.