“What, just like that?”
“Kinda,” MeLaan said. “Don’t know if you’ve read the accounts. They’re blurry about this topic anyway, but near the end of the World of Ash, Ruin tried to take over the kandra. Control them directly. Well, TenSoon and those in charge, they were really terrified by that. So they planned, and we all talked. And about a century after the Catacendre, we figured out a way to stop our own lives. Takes a little concentration, but sets the body into a spiral where we just … end.”
“Nice,” Wayne said, nodding. “That makes a lot of sense. Always have an escape route planned. Oh, and your ‘a’s are still off; you carried them over from your own accent. They aren’t nasal enough. Draw them out, if you wanna sound like a real twofie.”
She cocked her head at him. “You’re wasted as a human.”
“Nah,” Wayne said. “I’ve barely had a few mouthfuls today.” He reached in his pocket and checked his flask. “Well, maybe a wee more than that.”
“No, I meant—”
He grinned at her, and she cut off, then grinned back. He tipped his hat to her, then closed his eyes and continued listening. A short time later, she stood up and started pacing the hall, and he could hear her saying her “a” sounds to herself as she walked.
He listened for a good long while, catching nothing abnormal, though he was pretty sure the sanitation-minister guy was lying about his education. That fellow had never been to the university—or if he had, he hadn’t hung around long enough to pick up the proper words. Wayne was mulling this over when he heard something out front. A voice, faint but unmistakable.
He scrambled to his feet, causing MeLaan to jump.
“Gottago,” he said. “Watchdaidiot.”
“But—”
“Berideback,” Wayne said, clutching his hat and running down the hallway, his long Roughs-style duster flaring to the sides. He raced around the corner and dashed toward the front of the mansion.
“He said to deliver it here,” the woman was saying to the butler. “So I’ve brought it. It was a simple task—he just needed something made. Hardly worth waking me…”
She turned to him. A radiant, glorious woman, built like a good Roughs fence—just tall enough, lean, but strong too. She had dark hair, which he’d compared to a pony’s on several occasions—and it was right unfair that she should get mad, considering she kept it in a tail and everything. She wore trousers, because skirts were stupid, and boots, ’cuz stuff needed to be kicked.
The whole world could be going wrong, but seeing her made him forget. He grinned.
In return she gave him her special scowl, the one just for him. It was how he knew she cared. That, and when she shot him she tended to aim for places that didn’t hurt too much.
“She’s with me,” Wayne said, running up.
“Like hell I am,” Ranette said, but she let him steer her away from the butler.
“And one wonders,” the butler said from behind, “how His Grace’s life can be threatened, when we’re letting every dust rat in the city saunter up and—”
He cut off as Ranette spun, her pistol out. Wayne caught her arm in time to stop her from firing.
“Dust rat?” she muttered.
“When’s the last time you bathed?” Wayne said. Then winced. “Just … you know, curious.”
“Guns don’t care if I stink, Wayne. I have things to do. And I don’t like being ordered around.” She shook a little cloth pouch in her left hand. Behind, the butler had grown very pale.
Wayne got her into the sitting room. She didn’t stink, despite what she said—she smelled of grease and gunpowder. Good scents. Ranette scents.
“What is it?” Wayne asked, snatching the pouch once they were out of sight.
“Something Wax asked me to make,” Ranette said. “Who got killed over there?” She pointed toward the still-open secret door down to the saferoom. Murder always caught her attention, if only because she’d want to see the bodies and judge how well the bullets tore up the flesh.
Wayne rolled a small metal object from the pouch onto his palm.
A bullet.
His hand started to shake.
“Oh, for Harmony’s sake,” Ranette said, plucking the bullet from his hand before he could drop it. “It’s not a gun, you idiot.”
“It’s a part of one,” Wayne said, shoving his hand in his pocket and breathing deeply. He could hold a bullet. He did that all the time, for Wax. The shaking subsided. Something seemed odd about that bullet though.
“So if I gave you a splinter of wood, and told you it had once been in a rifle stock, you’d go to pieces then too?”
“Dunno,” Wayne said. “You think I understand how my brain works?”
“I’d say there’s a logical fallacy in that statement,” Ranette said. “Maybe two.” She tucked the bullet back into the pouch. “Wax here?”