Any moment now …
Initially appearing as pinprick spots in the air, mist grew before him, spreading like frost across a window. Tendrils stretched and spun about one another, becoming streams—then rivers of motion, currents shifting and blanketing the city. Engulfing it. Consuming it.
“A misty night,” Flog said. “That’s bad luck, it is.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Winsting said, adjusting his cravat.
“He’s watching us,” Flog said. “The mists are His eyes, my lord. Sure as Ruin, that is.”
“Superstitious nonsense.” Winsting turned and strode into the room. Behind him, Flog shut the doors before the mists could seep into the party.
The two dozen people—along with the inevitable bodyguards—who mingled and chatted there were a select group. Not just important, but also very much at odds with one another, despite their deliberate smiles and meaningless small talk. He preferred to have rivals at events like this. Let them all see each other, and let each know the cost of losing the contest for his favor.
Winsting stepped among them. Unfortunately many did wear hats, whose aluminum linings would protect them from emotional Allomancy—though he had personally assured each attendee that none of the others would have Soothers or Rioters with them. He’d said nothing of his own abilities, of course. So far as any of them knew, he wasn’t an Allomancer.
He glanced across the room to where Blome tended bar. The man shook his head. Nobody else in the room was burning any metals. Excellent.
Winsting stepped up to the bar, then turned and raised his hands to draw everyone’s attention. The gesture exposed the twinkling diamond cuff links he wore on his stiff white shirt. The settings were wooden, of course.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to our little auction. The bidding begins now, and it ends when I hear the offer I like most.”
He said nothing more; too much talk would kill the drama. Winsting took the drink one of his servers offered and stepped out to mingle, then hesitated as he looked over the crowd. “Edwarn Ladrian is not here,” he said softly. He refused to call the man by his silly moniker, Mister Suit.
“No,” Flog said.
“I thought you said everyone had arrived!”
“Everyone who said they were coming,” Flog said. He shuffled, uncomfortable.
Winsting pursed his lips, but otherwise hid his disappointment. He’d been certain his offer had intrigued Edwarn. Perhaps the man had bought out one of the other crime lords in the room. Something to consider.
Winsting made his way to the central table, which held the nominal centerpiece of the evening. It was a painting of a reclining woman; Winsting had painted it himself, and he was getting better.
The painting was worthless, but the men and woman in this room would still offer him huge sums for it.
The first one to approach him was Dowser, who ran most of the smuggling operations into the Fifth Octant. The three days of scrub on his cheeks was shadowed by a bowler that, conspicuously, he had not left in the cloakroom. A pretty woman on his arm and a sharp suit did little to clean up a man like Dowser. Winsting wrinkled his nose. Most everyone in the room was a despicable piece of trash, but the others had the decency not to look like it.
“It’s ugly as sin,” Dowser said, looking over the painting. “I can’t believe this is what you’re having us ‘bid’ on. A little cheeky, isn’t it?”
“And you’d rather I was completely forthright, Mister Dowser?” Winsting said. “You’d have me proclaim it far and wide? ‘Pay me, and in exchange you get my vote in the Senate for the next year’?”
Dowser glanced to the sides, as if expecting the constables to burst into the room at any moment.
Winsting smiled. “You’ll notice the shades of grey on her cheeks. A representation of the ashen nature of life in a pre-Catacendric world, hmmm? My finest work yet. Do you have an offer? To get the bidding started?”
Dowser said nothing. He would eventually make a bid. Each person in this room had spent weeks posturing before agreeing to this meeting. Half were crime lords like Dowser. The others were Winsting’s own counterparts, high lords and ladies from prominent noble houses, though no less corrupt than the crime lords.
“Aren’t you frightened, Winsting?” asked the woman on Dowser’s arm.
Winsting frowned. He didn’t recognize her. Slender, with short golden hair and a doe-eyed expression, she was uncommonly tall.
“Frightened, my dear?” Winsting asked. “Of the people in this room?”
“No,” she said. “That your brother will find out … what you do.”
“I assure you,” Winsting said. “Replar knows exactly what I am.”
“The governor’s own brother,” the woman said. “Asking for bribes.”