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Wax lands Steris at the front steps of Ladrian Mansion — she has clung to him in white-knuckled terror the whole flight up while grinning the entire way — and Steelpushes the locks open in his usual private sequence. The house is a half-museum these days; the staff have all moved to the tower with the family and only Allik keeps real residence here, the Malwish *junior goodwill ambassador* having long since dropped the pretence that his visits to Elendel were anything but a pretext for seeing Marasi. The upstairs has filled with Steris's three rooms of ledgers, notebooks, and mail-order catalogues; the entryway holds two Roughs dusters on pegs — one white, one a shredded mistcoat — and two Roughs hats above them. Not quite a shrine. Wax kisses his fingers and presses them to the wood under Lessie's hat — not quite a ritual — and moves on.

Allik calls down from the upstairs landing in a bright red mask flecked with yellow rays and announces a fresh batch of pastries. While Steris retreats to fix her hair, Wax brews tea and finds, in the pocket of his old mistcoat, half a months-old meat bun belonging to Wayne. MeLaan trots in through the front door in a waist-high grey-and-white dog body — she had hoped Max was coming and would play fetch — and explains, when Wax asks why a kandra would keep a body she finds demeaning, that putting on a body is a little like wearing an outfit: it influences you. She goes upstairs to change.

Marasi and Wayne arrive next, loud as a freight train. Steris scolds Wayne for tracking mud through the foyer; he points out, helpfully, that they have been in the city's bowels today and it could be much worse. They have news. Marasi produces a slim silver-and-rust spike — a fresh sample of trellium — pulled from a member of the Set in the sewers. The man had four spikes and was still operating freely, which by everything Wax thought he knew should have made him a puppet of Harmony's; he was not. The old four-spike limit has been circumvented somehow, perhaps by the placement of the trellium piece as a linchpin. The man's gang was packing supplies bound for Bilming — rations and weapons — and Wax and Steris trade a look. The Outer Cities, apparently, are treating war as inevitable.

Wax picks the spike up with steadier hands than he expects. Holding it brings back what happened to Lessie — these spikes are not from her body, the kandra had always insisted hers were not to blame for her madness, and yet *something* turned her into Bleeder and he has never quite been able to let the question go. He reaches into his back pocket for the envelope he found on his desk that morning: a plain iron Pathian earring and a note in Harmony's hand telling him to make a second one once the proper metal arrives. He pockets it again. Harmony knows him too well — a mystery will hold his attention where an explanation would not.

MeLaan returns dressed androgynous in a tall blonde body, cheeks faintly translucent so the emerald of her bones shows through. Marasi asks her to play the Cycle's corpse for the Bilming sting. MeLaan cannot. She is leaving — soon — on a mission for Harmony to begin exploring the cosmere long-term, by way of Shadesmar, the misted inversion of the real world. The cosmere knows about them now, she says, and nods at the spike pinched between Wax's fingers. She promises to ask Harmony to assign another kandra to Marasi's operation. Marasi cannot quite hide the hunger in her eyes at the talk of other worlds. Wax glances at Wayne and reads, in his friend's face, that this is news to him.

Allik arrives in the middle of it with a tray of steaming cinnamon puffs and a comically large mug of chocolate for Marasi, who takes his hand and squeezes. Four years of flirting and two of formal dating and the two of them still behave like teenagers, which Steris dutifully notes in case she ought to be doing the same. Wax thinks how elastic people are; Allik in particular, given what was done to his old crewmates by the Set for information about airships, has come a remarkable distance back.

Marasi produces one more thing — a small notebook lifted off the Cycle she killed. Wax thumbs through annotated shipping records: box sizes, package labels, inspection rates. Steris reads over his shoulder. The Cycle was tracking what could be moved *into* Elendel without being stopped — which is strange, because incoming shipments are not heavily taxed and the whole Set smuggling operation runs the other direction. Why is anyone in the Set interested in what they can get into the city? Steris suggests they may mean to supply a rebel force inside; Marasi points out they already give weapons to people inside Elendel without trouble. They sit with the question and let it go for now.

Wayne, uncharacteristically, has passed on the chocolate. He has an *appointment* — he checks his pocket watch, which is one of Wax's — and would rather not get shot for being late. MeLaan catches him at the door: *a moment, Wayne. It's important. Very important.* He wilts, and follows her out. Wax grips his shoulder on the way past. This has been coming for a long time. Left alone with Steris and the gift Marasi has brought him, Wax reaches for his goggles. He is going to need them.