Marasi was quite accepting of what she was. That didn’t mean she liked having it thrown at her. Old nobleman officers like this, though … well, they came from a time when they felt they could say whatever they wanted, particularly about their subordinates.
“There’s space with the reporters, Little Harms,” he said, pointing. “Up near the north side. Not great for watching, as you’ll have steps in your way, but a great place for listening. Tell Constable Wells at the rope I said you could pass, and give my best to your father.”
She saluted, still wrestling with a mixture of shame and indignation. He didn’t mean anything by his comments. But Rust and Ruin, she had worked most of her life swept under the rug with a few coins in hand, her father refusing to openly acknowledge her. Among the constables at least, couldn’t she be known for her professional accomplishments, not the nature of her birth?
Still, she wouldn’t turn down the opportunity for a better spot, so she began to work her way around the square toward the section he’d specified.
*
What was that? Wax thought. He spun to look away from the group of beggars he’d been questioning.
“Wax?” Wayne called, turning away from another group of people. “What—”
Wax ignored him, shoving through a crowd on the street toward the thing he’d seen. A face.
It can’t be.
His frantic actions drew annoyed shouts from some people, but only dark glares from others. The days when a nobleman, even an Allomancer, could quell with a look were passing. Wax eventually stumbled into a pocket of open ground and spun about. Where? Wild, every sense straining, he dropped a bullet casing and Pushed, instantly popping up about ten feet. Scanning, he whirled, the motion flaring his mistcoat tassels.
The heavy flow of people on Tindwyl Promenade continued toward the Hub, near which the governor would apparently be making a speech. That’s a dangerous crowd, a piece of him noticed. There were too many men wearing battered coats and bearing battered expressions. The labor issue was becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Half the city was underpaid and overworked. The other half was simply out of work. A strange dichotomy.
He kept seeing men loitering on corners. Now they flowed together in streams. That would create dangerous rapids, as when a real river met rocks. Wax landed, heart thrumming like the drum of a march. He’d been sure of it, this time. He had seen Bloody Tan in that crowd of men. A brief glimpse of a familiar face, the mortician killer, the last man Wax had hunted in the Roughs before coming to Elendel.
The man who had caused Lessie’s death.
“Wax?” Wayne hurried up. “Wax, you all right? You look like you ate an egg you found in the gutter.”
“It’s nothing,” Wax said.
“Ah,” Wayne said. “Then that look I saw … you were just contemplatin’ your impendin’ marriage to Steris, I guess?”
Wax sighed, turning away from the crowds. I imagined it. I must have imagined it. “I wish you’d leave Steris alone. She’s not nearly so bad as you make her sound.”
“That’s the same thing you said about that horse you bought—you remember, the one who only bit me?”
“Roseweather had good taste. Did you find anything?”
Wayne nodded, leading them out of the press of traffic. “Miss Steelrunner settled down nearby, all right,” he said. “She got a job doing bookkeeping for a jeweler down the road. She hasn’t come in to work in over a week though. The jeweler sent someone to her flat, but nobody answered the door.”
“You got the address?” Wax asked.
“Of course I did.” Wayne looked offended, shoving his hands in the pockets of his duster. “Got me a new pocket watch too.” He held up one made of pure gold, with opaline workings on the face.
Wax sighed. After a short trip back to the jeweler to return the watch—Wayne claimed he figured it had been for trade, since it had been sitting out on the counter with naught but a little box of glass around it—they made their way up the road to the Bournton District.
This was a high-quality neighborhood, which also meant it had less character. No laundry airing in front of buildings, no people sitting on the steps. Instead the street was lined by white townhouses and rows of apartment buildings with spiky iron decorations around their upper windows. They checked the address with one of the local newsboys, and eventually found themselves in front of the apartment building in question.
“Someday I’d like to live in a fancy place like this,” Wayne said wistfully.
“Wayne, you live in a mansion.”
“It ain’t fancy. It’s opulent. Big difference.”
“Which is?”
“Mostly it involves which kinds of glasses you drink out of and what kind of art you hang.” Wayne looked offended. “You need to know these things now, Wax, being filthy rich and all.”