POV: wax
Summary
Wax crosses the floor of the Senate in the aftermath of the vote, and the colleagues he passes — even the ones who voted with him — shy away from his eye. The corridor outside is marble and chandeliers; the trappings he fled as a young man now ornament every footstep, and the shadows seem darker than they should. He believes the good a senator can do in this building dwarfs anything he ever did with a gun. Which is exactly why the failures hurt this much: in the Roughs he could trust his gun and his instincts, and out here he is forced to trust politicians instead, and politicians have so far given him a greater test of his faith in humanity than any serial killer he ever brought in.
He shoves into his chambers to find his family already waiting with Kath the governess. He throws himself into his chair and announces that a year of work has just gone over the side. Steris tells him, gently, that they did everything they could. He glances at her stack of notebooks — six of them, every persuasion angle they had — and asks whether they really did. She is steady about this until he sees her shaking; then he remembers, *Pay attention, you rusting idiot,* takes her hands, and tells her yes, they did. The decision wasn't theirs in the end. Both of them shaking a little in the chair. Steris suggests they leave the building before her imagination provides too many ways for a natural disaster to bring it down on their heads.
On the corner of his desk is an envelope that wasn't there before. Wax feels something heavy slide inside as he picks it up — not a bullet, as it turns out, but an earring, and with it a small note: *You'll need to make a second, once the proper metal arrives.* He has no idea what either piece means and no interest in finding out today. *Not today, Harmony,* he thinks. *Leave me alone.* When Steris asks what it is, he tells her: *Something from Harmony.* So, likely, something useless. He stuffs the envelope into his back pocket and puts it out of his mind.
They pack up. Out in the hall Max runs ahead, making his stuffed Soonie pup leap between the black squares of the marble floor. Wax does not see other senators in the building with their children; they say children aren't respectful, which is rich coming from the chamber whose latest act has been the Supremacy Bill. Outside, motor carriages come and go for the rest of the floor — to parties, appearances, informal get-togethers — but no one invites Wax along unless they want to strategise. He has perhaps made himself uncomfortable to socialise with.
Max tugs on his coat and asks in an exaggerated rural accent whether he is sad. *I hates the sads, I do.* Several nearby senators turn up their noses. *Wayne been teaching you accents again?* Wax asks, and Max confides — softer — that yes, and that Uncle Wayne said to talk like that to senators today because they had made Max's parents sad and needed to be upset. Max asks for the only thing he knows that fixes the sads in his father: flying. Their motorcar pulls up and Hoid the driver steps out to hold the door — *your carriage, sir.* Wax sends Steris home in the car, accepts Max's flying harness from Kath in exchange for his coat, straps his son to his back in full view of the assembled senators, and — over Max's loud invitation to the watching crowd to stop being a pile of bad turds and ask nicely for a ride — drops a bullet casing, Pushes off it, and launches into the sky to a child's whoop of pure delight.