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Bundled into the offices of Call and Son and Daughters Accounting and Estate by the bowler-hatted pair who chased him down outside the Drunken Spur, Wayne arrives in the certain knowledge that the place is a mortuary. You'd have to be dead, in Wayne's estimation, to enjoy working here. The two senior partners — interchangeable in identical bowler hats and vests, whom he privately dubs *Tall Boring Guy* and *Short Boring Guy* — sit him down and proceed to embalm him with ink rather than any decent liquor, drying his body out good first, beginning with a long dry recitation of his portfolio. His investments are too high-risk, they tell him, and he is overdue a more balanced allocation. How much money, he asks, sullenly, has he got. *Over twenty million, at this point.*

He had told them, he reminds them, to give it to people what don't have any houses. He gets a brief detour through the wild success of his affordable-housing project — its impossibly lucky timing on top of impending subsidies — and the eye-watering profits coming out of his stake in Miss Tarcsel's electric devices. They want to liquidate a slice of that and diversify before competitors crowd in as the initial patents lapse. The shorter accountant — *Garisel*, Wayne eventually recalls — mentions casually that lady accountants are *wild*, and Wayne tells him sharply to shut it: don't rub it in. He surrenders. A man can't run from his own funeral. He demands a hat.

He pulls on the borrowed bowler and his death is right and truly accomplished. He pockets Garisel's spectacles as well, dictates a precise tea order — honey, lemon on the side, exactly one small sprig of mint — and applies himself to the ledgers. They list him as *Wayne Terrisborn*, since he has no proper family name. The numbers are the high sort, the sort that accountants like to see; hardly any red. There is no denying what the ledgers say: Wayne is dead, and in his place lives a fellow who is downright opulent. He confirms that his bendalloy supply, at least, is the satisfying size of a small sack — enough to buy two or three cars, if he wanted.

Then to business. He produces a flyer recruiting boys for a local noseball league and announces that they shall be funded. Equipment, a location, seating, the lot. He explains it the way he sees it: the octants are tense, the Outer Cities are riotous, the people are angry. A bar exists for a reason, gentlemen — a controlled environment in which to drink — and the city now needs the same thing for rage. So they shall build a citywide noseball league, one team per octant, and let every citizen pick a favourite and hate all the others. Properly. The accountants come round; *monetisation of the rivalries,* the taller one murmurs admiringly, *will be a seminal part*. *That is my favourite part of most activities,* Wayne notes. Put your worst people on the project, he adds — they'll know more about loafing. And reserve a couple of long-runner positions and the goalie for Metalborn, to make it more interesting.

He pulls the hat off and wipes his brow. *Rusts,* this hat. Surely the noseball idea, he reflects, will be his very worst — finally bankrupt him — but he is an absolute idiot, and one can hope. The hat even has aluminum foil sewn into the inside lining to keep emotional Allomancy off the brain underneath. Stupid money and stupid rich hats. The accountants try to walk him through other items: the more unusual provisions of his trust, his current housing situation, the likeness-rights clause he tricked Wax into signing somewhere along the way. *Nope. Next. Nope. Next.* He does buy himself a new top-down Victori — *damn, that's nice* — and, when Short Boring Guy asks how many shares of the manufacturer he should pick up alongside it, narrows his eyes. He sees what they are doing. Fine: no more than a five-percent stake, and once the noseball stars get famous they shall drive the cars around for popularity. Also: don't call it noseball. And give two of the long-runner positions and the goalie to Metalborn only, to make things more interesting.

Underneath the playacting, the question that has been waiting for him all afternoon catches up. He has never met anyone who can get inside other people's heads as well as Wayne can. Can he get inside the head of a girl who hates him? He closes his eyes and tries to think what it is like for her to see him come slinking in each month. That horrible man. Couldn't he just let her move on? *He'll understand,* Jaxy had said. What if he didn't want to?

Too late. He opens his eyes and tells Garisel he needs a delivery set up — money to be paid to a young woman and her family, every month, on time, she has her own child now. He has been doing it in person, he says haltingly, but he is *getting so busy*. Yes. Too busy, you see. *Many of our clients have similar needs, Master Wayne,* the accountant tells him, perfectly bland. *Give us the address and we'll see it is handled with discretion.* Jaxy had been right. If he was going to be dead, he could at least be the polite kind of corpse that didn't crawl out of the forest in thunderstorms to eat people. Even corpses needed standards.