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The trellium is *moving*. Steris has been getting out a harmonium sample to set beside the spike and the spike will not have it — the small oil-suspended bead rolls the trellium back across the table. Wax, on a hunch, burns a little steel inside himself without Pushing. The spike rolls away from him too. *That's actually useful,* Steris says, scribbling — a mechanical way to do what a Seeker does. Marasi mentions, belatedly, that the other spikes she pulled from the Cycle reacted the same way.

Steris calls it Allomancy — the spike is *Pushing*. Wax disagrees: it is more like magnetism. The spike acts as if it shares a charge with other Invested things, and repels them. Pushing harder only makes the resistance stronger. It responds to harmonium more strongly than to him burning his metals. He glances up at the wall chart drawn from the notebook *Death* once gave Marasi — the Hemalurgic map of placements and linchpin spikes — and lets himself, briefly, think about his sister. Telsin is high up in the Set now; her ambition lined up with theirs perfectly the whole time, and seven years ago, when he had told himself she had been kidnapped, he should have seen. She has been spiking herself, pinning pieces of murdered people's souls to her own. The spike in his fingers is both a relic of an old forgotten god and a tattered symbol of his sister's rejected humanity. He really is going to have to talk to Harmony.

Allik arrives, mask up, with chocolate biscuits — moist, even gooey, instead of the Basin's usual bullet-stopping kind — and reminds Wax of one of the basic kandra and Malwish rules about ettmetal: never put too much in one place, or strange things happen. Wax does not yet know how much of the rule is superstition. He doubts he has enough on hand to find out.

A second set of footsteps on the stairs makes them all freeze. Wax slips bullets into his hand, ready to Push. The door opens on a prim man in a brown suit with stark blond hair and wire-framed spectacles — the air of a person who fact-checks people's jokes. *VenDell?* Wax guesses, putting the bullets away. The kandra in a new body. He sets a small folded paper down beside Marasi — a note recovered from the cavern by another kandra, LeeMar, who has apparently been impersonating one of Marasi's constabulary colleagues for sixteen months. Marasi's jaw drops. *Cassileux and I had lunch last week.* *Yes, she keeps an eye on you,* VenDell says.

VenDell declines Allik's biscuits with horror — *I am a carrion feeder, and strictly carnivorous* — and offers good money for one of Allik's masks instead, since several kandra now suspect the masks are as integral to the Malwish as hair or nails. He will only require it after Allik's death, of course; given the company Allik keeps, *that might not be far off*. He moves to Wax and asks to see the spike. Steris mentions she thought the kandra could not touch them; VenDell corrects her — the taboo applies to *kandra* spikes only, and this is not one. He has no intention, he tells Wax, of taking it. *Unlike the ones that belonged to Lessie, which you stole from us,* Wax notes. *You gave those up willingly.* *I was not in any state to do anything willingly.* VenDell grants that the trellium spikes may have *exacerbated* what happened to Paalm, but insists the root cause was her own decision to pull one of her own spikes. Harmony, Wax reminds him, has implied otherwise. VenDell turns the spike in his fingers and does not reply.

VenDell asks what Wax is doing. Wax points him at the safe box: electric current to soften a harmonium nugget held in oil, the closest method he has found to dividing the metal. *It cannot be divided,* VenDell says, *not so long as Harmony remains Harmony. I have explained this.* Wax and Steris share a look. Harmonium is no alloy in the ordinary sense, but Harmony holds both Ruin and Preservation — so somehow this metal *is* both atium and lerasium, blended in a way that defies explanation. There ought to be a way. He runs the machine. The nugget glows white-hot; the grips at the sides ease apart a few sixteenths of an inch. The blob on the left glows blue-white; the one on the right turns silvery and mercury-smooth — visible aspects, Wax explains, of lerasium and of atium as it has been described. Cut the connection now and they collapse back to ordinary harmonium on cooling. But the metal *wants* to divide. Wax believes harmonium is unstable because Harmony is — two aspects working against each other, leaving him in equilibrium: protect and let decay. The metal mirrors the god. *We face a god who is not in equilibrium,* Wax adds. *I was sceptical. Marasi convinced me.* *Almost I am persuaded,* VenDell allows.

Wax proposes the next experiment. The spike repels harmonium hardest of all. What if he stretched a harmonium nugget apart with the current and then drove a sliver of trellium into the middle to push the two sides further apart still — might it actually separate out a bead of atium and a bead of lerasium? Allik asks the obvious question: what are the chances this blows things up? Steris, with harmonium involved, says high — but worth a try. *That's why we have the safe box,* Wax says, *plus, how much energy could one tiny piece of metal contain.* The words hang. Allik suggests they all go very far away. Marasi agrees. Wax rigs a five-minute timer to drive a thin trellium shard into the centre of the stretched bead, latches the safe box, and they all troop up the stairs and seal the heavy basement door behind them.

While they wait — five minutes feels excessive in retrospect — Wax asks Marasi about the note. It came from one of the few unburned boxes in the cavern; she had seen, during her slowness bubble, a masked figure in dark clothing approach as a blur and then vanish. She turns the paper for Wax to read: *We are watching, Marasi. And we are impressed.* At the bottom, a small symbol — three interlocking diamonds. He does not think he has seen it before, but the *pattern* tugs at him. He asks VenDell if he has seen it. The kandra looks, for the first time Wax can remember, uncomfortable. *That is a question I'm forbidden to answer. My apologies, Lord Ladrian.* Forbidden by whom? Steris asks. *Harmony himself, Lady Ladrian. I suggest you speak to him directly.* Marasi: *Great. Nice to know we're working for the defence of the planet itself while God is acting like a child with a secret crush.* *False gods are like that,* Allik says — and earns glares.

VenDell uses the silence to renew his standing offer on Wax's eventual skeleton. *Not for sale. Not for sale.* *Ah well. Such a fine skeleton, and for it to go to waste …*

A blast shakes the entire building. Chandeliers rattle, the window beside Wax cracks, dishes fall somewhere in the kitchen. *They probably felt that in the next octant over,* Marasi says. *You think the safe box held?* *One way to find out,* Wax says. *Always plan for an explosion around Wax,* Steris tells the others. *Saves a ton of effort.* He pulls open the basement door and starts down the steps.