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The Coinshot brute slumps into the room dead, two bullets in him, hand still on the doorknob. Wax curses, downs a vial of metal flakes, and hauls Telsin out into the warehouse — *I'll kill them all*, she whispers. He shoves with a Steelpush, fires into the ground, and Pushes them both onto the flat smooth deck atop the wrecked ship. *Hang on*, he tells her, dropping her where the gunwales rise like fort crenellations, *I'll be back soon.* He leaps over the side, takes Pushed Vindication shots at the men firing up at him, lands beside Wayne behind a stack of boxes, takes a slug of his apple juice in the surreal quiet of a bendalloy bubble.

They run from cover to cover, Wayne popping a fresh bubble each time the soldiers get a bead. Kill squads will be mixed among the regulars, hazekiller-trained men with aluminum bullets that no Allomancer can deflect. They have maybe two minutes of bendalloy left. They make it to the broken pontoon, see Marasi and MeLaan peeking out of a door at the warehouse's south rooms, and pick the rooms as the plan: break out through the warehouse's outer wall and flee into the night.

Then Telsin climbs down off the ship on a rope ladder against orders, and the plan breaks. Wayne runs for her; the soldiers shoot him in the shoulder, then the neck. Healing off the gold bracelet, he drops and plays dead, but they keep shooting. *You want to kill a Bloodmaker? Knock him down and keep shooting.* Wax tears out into the floor in a furious Push along the wall nails — bullets a frantic loom of blue lines around him — and Pushes the soldiers' twin volleys outward in either direction. He drops the kill-squad man whose aluminum round actually clipped his shoulder, lands skidding in front of Wayne, and Pushes through the ship's hull to tear open a second hole for his sister and Wayne to crawl into.

Three black-suited Set Coinshots land in succession. The first Pushes on Wax's shotgun as he levels it; the powder load of a Thug-killer gun sends the man sprawling from his own Push and the second slug takes him in the face — *Thanks, Ranette.* A man and a woman in suits flank from behind; he drops the woman with Vindication. The man opens fire — too many shots, no metal lines — and the bullets freeze in the air around the cube Marasi has thrown out the doorway. Wax steps out of the way; the Coinshot's last shots go wide; Wax shoots him.

Marasi picks the cube back up off the floor, charges it with cadmium just enough to keep it buzzing without slowing herself down, and lobs it at another wave to pin them in place. Wax shoots the men inside the bubble with the aluminum bullet she has had in her purse. He launches at the catwalks above, where two riflemen and one of the kill-squad Allomancers have set up: he flips Ranette's spinning ball outward, swings around the rail and lands behind the gunmen, pivots, and Pushes one of them up into the path of the climbing Allomancer. The Allomancer catches the spinning ball in passing — and Wax shoots him in the chest. *Shouldn't drop your Allomantic shield. Even to catch a neat toy.*

Below him, Marasi has felt something hit her in the left side and looked down to see red blooming around a bullet hole in her coat. She is going into shock. She tries to reach for her dropped gun. The masked southerner is suddenly there pulling her toward the ship; MeLaan curses and helps him. Wax passes overhead and tosses the buzzing cube down to Wayne, who whoops, throws it into the front rank of advancing soldiers, and bursts among them swinging dueling canes while Wax knocks the rest backward with a single ground-level Push.

Then Wax hears horns. Dozens more men streaming out of the village buildings. He is one man, not an army. He yells *Back!* and they retreat into the wrecked ship's hole, Wayne with a crossbow bolt in his thigh, Marasi in the masked man's arms. MeLaan swallows a painkiller into Marasi's mouth and watches the soldiers regroup outside.

Wax plans the only escape he can think of — push through the side rooms and break out the warehouse wall — but the gunfire resumes, bullets hammering the hull. Irich can be heard outside shouting at the soldiers not to damage the ship; they keep firing anyway. The masked man is tugging at Marasi's arm and pointing further into the ship. *He wants to show us something*, she gasps, limping after him. He sprints ahead, throws open a wall panel, and yanks a lever; a section of the corridor ceiling, painted with one of the strange golden patterns, drops open with a rope ladder. *There's a hidden room here!* Marasi calls back. *Better than nothing*, Wax shouts. *Everyone up.* They climb (or are Pushed) into a narrow, low-ceilinged compartment, single window slit at the front, chairs bolted to the floor, like a railway car.

The masked man pulls another medallion from a trunk against the wall, pulls off the one he is wearing, shivers visibly, and slaps the new one on. *How's that?* he asks — in Marasi's language, strangely accented but intelligible. *These things never work right.* He tosses one to each of them, telling these *maskless barbarians* to press the medallions to bare skin — except the Metallic One, whom he assumes does not need one. Marasi sits down dizzy; Wayne pulls up the ladder and shuts the trapdoor as bullets begin hammering the floor; the masked man fiddles with something under a counter and a jolt runs through the room.

Wax asks whether the compartment has any other way out. It does not. Why bring them here, then? Medallions on, the masked man insists. MeLaan asks what the medallions do. *Make you lighter*, the masked man says — and as soon as he says it, Marasi understands; something in her reaches for the metal in her hand and *pours* it in, filling the metalmind. She rises lighter on her seat. Telsin gasps with the same sensation. Wayne: *That's right strange.*

*Great Metallic One*, the masked man says to Wax (who in his reverence apparently goes maskless at all times), if he might be so bold — would the Great Metallic One Push down? On a pair of straps with wooden handholds bolted to the floor? Wax looks at the masked man, looks at the straps, picks them up, braces his feet. *Ready.* The masked man yanks a lever; the entire room shakes, then slides sideways out of the hull like a dresser drawer, a glass window at the front clearing of its covering planks. *Go!* Wax Pushes. The room rises into the air. They are not in a room. They are in a small flier that detaches from the ship.