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Suit crosses the snowy plain to the southern airship rehearsing the lie he will use to keep the Series in line — *Waxillium's people have the Bands; the kandra will work out how to mass-produce metalminds; we must move up the seizure of Elendel now* — and grins. The Bands would have made a god of one man; a fleet of these ships could make a god of an army, and it would all flow through him. He pitches the decoy bracers into the snow, orders his soldiers to shoot anyone but the Sequence who comes down from the sky, and boards. He tells the technician they will not wait for Telsin — *another advantage; I could stand being Sequence* — straps on a warming medallion, and the ship lifts off.

Inside the Set's prisoner tent, Captain Jordis crawls among her crew watching them die of chillfever — sips of metalmind warmth on the march had kept them as plants in a shed are kept, just barely; here the cold is too pervasive. Petrine, her enginemaster, wants to die by the guards' guns instead of by the cold. They are debating it when Allik crashes the tent open with a fist of warming medallions and a maskless southerner — *I've made friends with some of the devils* — followed by Steris dumping an armful of stolen rifles on the floor. The warmth runs through Jordis like a sunrise. She makes Allik the sign of respect, accepts his bad dancing, and orders Petrine to arm the crew. Let's kill as many of the maskless devils as we can.

Wax erupts out the top of the temple in a burst of stone and trailing mist — the Bands are giving him ancient Allomancy, perhaps more than ancient — and considers tearing Suit's airship out of the sky on the way up. He doesn't. He is a lawman, not an executioner. He swoops down across the firefight on the plain, lands among the Set soldiers, scatters them, picks an aluminum pistol off a rack and salutes the masked southerners on the cliff edge, then hurls himself after the ship. He kicks in a bridge window. Suit sits alone, lighting a pipe — coin in his mouth to hide metal from an Allomancer; pointless against this — and greets him courteously: *and so our confrontation comes at long last*.

Suit has armed the bomb. He will only stand it down if Wax throws the Bands out the window and faces him in a Roughs-style duel — two men, two sidearms, nothing else; the frost playing the part of the dusty road. Wax zinc-flares through every alternative — can't move the bomb in time, can't get to the friends below before the blast, can't trust Suit won't detonate anyway — and gives his word. Suit orders the bomb disarmed up the speaking tube (*thank Trell for that*, the voice below says). Wax unhooks the leather pouch with the Bands, his vials, his remaining ammunition, and drops it out the window. The aluminum pistol stays.

Out in the snow near the temple, Telsin is scrambling for the parked skimmer — Suit is an idiot; flying off was the first place anyone would look for him; something has to be salvageable from this disaster. Blood sprays on the snow around her before she registers the shot. Wayne is behind her. *You killed one of my friends today. I'm not going to let you take a second.* She turns; he cocks; he lowers the barrel to her face and fires.

Marasi climbs the newly opened steps back into the upper chamber, where the gilded dais now opens onto the catacomb beneath. The power is gone from her. She is, somewhat to her surprise, at peace — the serenity of a woman who lay all afternoon in the sun and is content the light is now setting. She kneels by what is left of MeLaan: without her spikes the kandra has begun to incorporate the bones in a strange unfinished shape — a mistwraith again. Still alive. Marasi threads through the trap corridor and out onto the plain, past the statue now holding only a staff. Two close gunshots. Wayne walks out of the storm head-down, shotgun on his shoulder, three small Hemalurgic spikes in his other hand.

On the bridge, Wax waits. Drawing first wins in a duel; trying to outdraw a man without Feruchemical speed gets you shot. Suit draws. Wax Pushes himself off the window frame and crosses the room in a blur; the round takes his shoulder, and he and Suit go down. Suit grabs his arm and his metals just *vanish*. *I made myself a Leecher,* Suit crows; *I can drain anyone who touches me; I win.* Wax grins back. *You forget. I'm a Terrisman.* He taps every hour of saved weight he has accumulated in his bracer at once. The airship's floor shatters. They fall through two decks and out the bottom in a storm of splintered wood, Suit's healing keeping him alive for it; Suit Pushes a coin downward just enough to slow them to the ground. Wax lifts him by the front of his clothes. *The definition of a lawman, Uncle, is easy. He's the man who takes the bullet so nobody else has to.* And drops him unconscious to the snow.

Down in the temple, MeLaan is a small terrified thing in her own mind, building a body to flee with, knowing only that *something is horribly, horribly wrong*. Two cold metal objects fall on her. She enfolds them and memory comes back, *self* comes back — with little holes where the missing time was. She forms eyes first, already knowing his taste on the air. *Welcome back,* Wayne says, grinning. *I think we won.*