“I know,” Wax said. “You’re lucky. She probably wanted to harvest your Metalborn abilities with spikes, otherwise she’d have killed you right off. Why didn’t you warn anyone?”
“Was going to, but I needed to check first. Got too close to the window, and she rusting came right out for me. Had knocked me upside the head, stripped off my metalminds, and had me over her shoulder all in an eyeblink. Drug me up here after, real quiet-like. You get her?”
“No,” Wax said, working on Wayne’s bonds. “She ran off.”
Gunshots sounded outside.
“And you ain’t chasin’ her down?”
“Had to check on you first.”
“I’m fine,” Wayne said. “Stop untying me and look in my pocket.”
Wax felt at Wayne’s pocket, pulling out a small pouch.
“From Ranette,” Wayne said.
Wax removed a single bullet cartridge. He held it up as a tense set of constables, led by Marasi, piled into the room.
The newcomers called for an explanation. Wax left them to interrogate Wayne, instead seeking the mists once more.
23
Wax was a bullet in the night, rushing through the mists and disturbing them with his passing. He had become the hunter rather than the game, though the transition might have taken too long. He soared upward first to get a view of the area. An ever-growing crowd surrounded the governor’s mansion. Roaring. Calling for change, or perhaps just blood.
Would he bring down Bleeder only to find her victorious in a city destroyed?
He couldn’t worry about that at the moment. Instead he sought signs, clues, a story. Nobody passed, even at night, without leaving a trail. Perhaps it would be too faint for him to locate, but it would exist.
There. A group of people pulling away from the mansion, instead of crowding toward it. Wax landed in a storm, mistcoat flaring. This was the mansion’s garden, near a large workers’ shed. Wax studied the pattern of people moving away.
The gunfire just a moment ago, he thought. It wasn’t to shoot someone, but to clear the crowd. She was out of Feruchemical speed and fleeing frantically, and had opened fire into the air to clear this pocket of people. As he listened he picked out cries of confusion, some people claiming the constables had opened fire on the crowd. Others claimed they’d seen the governor himself running, trying to escape the mansion.
Wax loaded Vindication with the single bullet Ranette had sent, placing it in one of the special chambers he could quickly spin to at will. Then he inched open the door to the shed, crouching beside the doorway so as to not present a profile. The mists were bright with torchlight this night, but that light didn’t penetrate to the dark shed. Wax searched through the shadows, until he saw something.
A bone? Yes, and draped over it cloth. He picked out a fallen cravat, a white buttoning shirt … the governor’s clothing. Bleeder had stashed another body in here, and had fled to swap into it. How fast was she? MeLaan had said that Bleeder could change faster than she could, but that nobody was as quick as TenSoon.
That didn’t tell him much. MeLaan had taken minutes, TenSoon seconds. Wax held Vindication beside his head and slipped through the doorway. If he could find Bleeder in midtransformation …
“I can still free you,” a voice whispered from the darkness inside. “Perhaps I have lost the city, but I didn’t come here for them. Not at first. I came for you.”
“Why me?” Wax asked, searching furiously through the darkness, palm sweating as he held Vindication. “Damn it, creature, why me?”
“I have deafened him,” Bleeder whispered. “I have cut out his tongue, pierced his eyes, but still he can act. You are his hands, Waxillium Ladrian. He may be deaf, blind, and mute … but still, with you, he can move his pawns.”
“I’m my own man, Bleeder,” Wax said, finally spotting what he thought was her silhouette, crouched at the back of the dusty chamber, beside a rack of shovels. “Perhaps I serve Harmony, but I do so because I wish it.”
“Ah,” she whispered. “Do you know, Wax, how long he cultivated you? How long he teased you, led you by the nose? How he sent you to be hardened by the Roughs, so he could draw you back in once you had aged properly, like leather being cured.…”
Wax raised Vindication, but the side of the building burst outward, showering pieces of wood across the lawn. Wax tried to draw a bead on her, but didn’t fire, and Bleeder ducked out. He had to be very careful with this shot. Ranette had sent but one bullet, and only it would matter in this fight.
Bleeder fled into the night and launched into the air. The breaking wall had been an indication, but this was confirmation. Her metalmind, drained of the speed she’d stored up, was now useless. She’d left it on the ground beside the governor’s bones, and had become a Coinshot instead.
Wax followed, Pushing on the same nails, sending himself into the sky. He could see why she’d chosen to become a Coinshot; Steelpushing lent great maneuverability and speed, and logically gave her the best chance of escaping.
There was a problem with that, of course.
Steel was his domain.