POV: wax
Summary
Wax watches some three dozen Vanishers flood the Yomen Mansion ballroom from both ends and the kitchens — city men in vests and bowlers rather than Roughs dusters, heavily armed, well drilled, herding even the cooks and servers out to join the guests. Wayne slides off his chair and reaches for the dueling canes he had stashed under their table; Wax shuts him down. There are three or four hundred unarmed people in the room, and the gang's robberies have not turned violent so far. Better, he tells himself, to give up jewellery, mark his pocketbook with traceable bills, watch faces carefully, and run them down later. Wayne reluctantly slides back into his seat, hands hidden under the tablecloth, canes uncovered.
Marasi pulls out her notepad with trembling fingers and begins describing every bandit. She is babbling — half-quoting witness-misidentification statistics at herself, that only one in two witnesses can pick a criminal accurately, that fear inflates a man's height — but she keeps writing. Wayne mutters that out in the Roughs they had never needed to take notes because by the end of any crime the criminals were dead.
The masked leader of the gang strolls the floor as his men shake down each table. Wax knows the voice immediately as nagging him; there is something familiar in it, though the cloth mask and the brim of the Roughs hat hide everything else. The leader's tone is courteous and measured: nobody needs to get hurt; jewellery is not worth a life. The gang are efficient — speaking to each guest to check for stones in mouths, patting down pockets, checking under seats, dropping the contents of pocketbooks straight into sacks.
A stocky, gray-skinned man with koloss heritage — the leader will later call him Tarson — works toward their table. Wax has Marasi pass him her notebook, hisses *bat on the wall* to Wayne, drinks his wine to swallow a pinch of steel, and Pushes lightly on a small iron rod against the underside of the table to pin both the notebook and the dueling canes against the wood, hidden by the tablecloth. He stages a trembling-victim performance for Tarson — *please don't hurt us* — gives up his pocket watch, his pocketbook (he leaves both pockets ostentatiously turned out), and pats his coat. Tarson grunts and shakes Marasi down with a few too many gropes; her face goes red. Tarson finds nothing on Wayne, who plays a beggar from the kitchens in his old Roughs accent. Then Tarson snatches Wayne's hat off his head and stomps off wearing it, an aluminum-lined knit cap visible through the holes underneath. Wayne is, very quietly, very angry about the hat.
Wax watches the masked leader more carefully now. He is comparing faces to crumpled sketches in his hand, table by table. Wax explains it to Marasi: this is not a random hostage selection; this is a casting call. *I've seen their faces. I can track them down when they spend my money.* But he knows even as he says it that he is not going to.
A disturbance from the far side: bandits drag a few stragglers from the washrooms into the hall, Steris among them. The leader calls for a hostage, too loudly, with the staged casualness of a man putting on a show — *Say… that one* — and waves at Steris. Her cousin Armal was already taken. Of course Steris. Same bloodline. Then the leader announces they will take *two* this time. Tarson strides back to Wax's table, grabs Marasi by the shoulder, and announces she is coming for a ride.
Wax stands. A second bandit's pistol comes up at his head. Wax could Push it back through the man's face. He does not. The bandit hesitates and turns away to follow the others. Tarson shoves Marasi toward the northern doors. The Lessie memory crashes through and holds him in place: blood on the bricks, a face dying in a grin. *Never again.* Wayne hisses at him. *Wax. Mistakes happen. Lessie wasn't your fault.* Wayne grabs his dueling canes and starts to act on his own. Wax tells him it is not worth the lives.
Then Lord Peterus — the retired chief constable of the Eighth Octant who had already stood up earlier and been pistol-whipped to the ground for it, his wife now holding a napkin to his bleeding head — staggers to his feet shouting *Cowards!* He offers himself as a hostage in place of either of the girls. The bandits keep walking. *Cowards! I'll see you hanged! Take me!* The masked leader pivots and shoots him through the head without breaking stride, smoke curling from his pistol.
Something breaks loose in Wax. He empties his entire pouch of steel into his wine and downs it. He draws the hidden pistol from beneath his jacket and a second from the small of his back. The twitch in his eye stops. He tells Wayne the plan: take the south side and keep the bandits there off him while he goes for the women. Wayne grins, mentions he has bendalloy for about five minutes' worth of speed bubbles, and his healing metalminds are full from the two weeks he had spent flat sick to fill them. Wax owes him a pint, by the way, for the *I didn't bring a gun* lie at the mansion. Wayne also confesses, finally, why he had really come to drag Wax out of his comfortable Elendel retirement: he could not stomach the thought of his friend dying of boredom.
They put their backs together. The room is frozen in the speed bubble: smoke hangs still in the air, the screams just beginning to rise. Thirty-seven armed men, three or four hundred bystanders, priority is keeping the innocent alive. Wax cocks both hammers and yells *Go!*