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Wax wakes on his bunk aboard the Malwish airship to Wayne hanging out of the cabin window — *Wax, you gotta see this!* — and discovers, with mild surprise, that any window opens if you push hard enough. Beneath them Elendel spreads as a sea of lamps, *rivers of fire*, lit roads tracing where the rich live. Wayne is rapt; Wax has seen the city from above on every other night of his Coinshot life and only grunts. He aches like a man beaten senseless, even though the Bands healed him on the plateau; this is just the bunk. Getting old, then. He finds the thought no longer frightens him.

They have flown for a full day since the mountains, stopped at a town to telegraph ahead at Wax's insistence, and waited until night to fly the rest of the way — no warship over the city without warning. Captain Jordis consented in exchange for resupply. In the corridor Wayne confides why he gambled the shotgun on Telsin: he saw the metalminds at her sleeves and reckoned a Feruchemist would store healing first, and he was not going to kill Wax's sister in cold blood — but he needed MeLaan's spikes, and after Wax had fallen he asked himself whether his friend would give her another chance, the way he had been given one. He stayed his hand for Wax. Wax thanks him. He does not say that, inside, he wishes Wayne had stripped the metalminds off her and left a frozen body.

He puts his head into the bunk room Steris has been sharing with Marasi. Steris starts awake at the door, smiles, and curls back into the blanket. He sits across from her, so close in the cramped cabin that his knees press her bunk, and takes her hand. They sit there in silence. Everyone else can wait. He thanks her for coming with him; she protests that she was *basically luggage* for most of it. He disagrees — they are all shuffled around by duty, society, God; the choices a person actually gets to make are rare. *You pointed yourself toward me.* She tells him, smiling, that near him is generally the safest place. He cups her cheek with a callused hand. *Another adventure.*

On the bridge, Marasi is directing Jordis over the city. The airship glides down to Ahlstrom Tower — flat-roofed, partly owned by Wax — and Jordis sets it down with one fan still turning, half on, half off the roof: *we can land on a nail.* A deliberate flourish, Wax thinks; a reminder that the Basin may catch up to this technology one day but will be many years behind in its use. At the gangway Allik lifts his broken, glued mask to Wax — *Mighty One, may your next fire be known to you* — and his airmen do the same in turn. To Marasi he removes the broken mask entirely and presses it into her hands as a gift; the crew gasp behind him. He puts on a plain wooden mask for the flight home. *Thank you, Miss Marasi. For life.* The five of them surrender their weight medallions back to the captain — formality — though she has already gifted Wax a translation medallion and a heat-storing one to keep. Wayne, Wax suspects, has palmed an extra set.

On the rooftop Governor Aradel has come in person, with a knot of aides huddled like collective body heat against the strangeness. *Damn,* he says of the airship. The Senate has been over his head for two days about New Seran, screaming war and irresponsible leadership, *as if I ever had any influence over you people.* He recovers his manners, apologises to Lady Harms, and asks for the honest truth from Wax's own mouth. Wax gives him tomorrow; his people need rest. Steris mentions favourable initial treaties with the southerners that may give the hawks pause. Aradel grimaces — it will be hard enough explaining that he is *just going to let* the airship fly off, and he hasn't yet told the Senate the rest. *Bands of Mourning?* Wax says. Aradel nods, too politic to say what he is thinking. Wax calls MeLaan over to take the conversation — *Holy One,* Aradel groans, *it's unfair you can fall back on heavenly messengers* — and steers Steris toward the stairs. Constable-General Reddi leads a column of constables up the gangway to take the Set prisoners off the brig.

Wax leads Steris down to the penthouse on the top floor — currently empty, its tenants in Elmsdel. In a chair in the hall outside the apartment waits a tired-looking man in Survivorist robes stitched with scars, a shawl-style mistcloak about his shoulders. The thing Wax had asked Aradel to arrange. He asks Steris again to be his bride — not as house head to woman of means, but for himself, here, tonight, before the Survivor and the priest. He is painfully tired of being alone. She is incredible. Steris sniffles, pulls her hand free to wipe her eyes — this wasn't on any of her lists, and she cannot remember ever missing something for a list and having it be so wonderful. Should the others not deserve to attend a wedding? *They did attend one,* Wax says. *It's not our fault there wasn't a marriage at the end.* She kisses him.