(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Marasi is saved from the Sequence's colossal opening Push by the breakaway gunbelt she wears with its metal pouches — the burst only strips her equipment away. The Bilming constables are not so well prepared. They are flung backward by their own guns and handcuffs; trucks rock, two overturn, doors at the sides of the warehouse blow free, windows crack, weapons skid across the floor and slam into the walls. Only a few weapons lie unmoved on the ground — aluminum guns the Set had quietly issued to some of its men. The Sequence scoops one up at the epicentre of a circle of power Marasi has never seen from any Coinshot, the kind only the Ascendant Warrior is recorded as having used.

Marasi understands. He had planned to be quietly arrested by the locals and slip free later; the sight of Elendel uniforms in his warehouse has flipped him. Killing constables of both jurisdictions in Bilming streets, with Elendel visibly *interfering*, would be a perfect Set scandal. The arcane metal is duralumin; the Sequence has it because Hemalurgy has revived multi-power Allomancy.

Wayne and VenDell scramble in beside her behind an overturned truck, and a speed bubble buys a council of war. Wayne is to peel away and distract the Sequence; Marasi will organise the disoriented constables. VenDell panics — *take down*, in what sense? — and recites his First Contract pacifism: he cannot kill or hurt a human being, only MeLaan and TenSoon among his kin can. Marasi is unmoved: he is essentially indestructible. Get out there. Draw fire. Throw her one of those aluminum guns.

Before he can move, a stout woman in a bowler hat — Getruda — strolls straight into Wayne's speed bubble carrying a dueling cane. No one has ever violated one of Wayne's bubbles before; Marasi is too startled to react. Wayne catches the cane mid-swing. The three of them go down in a heap, Getruda scrambles back out, and her own bubble flickers as she races across the room. Another Slider — a built-to-spec opposite number for Wayne.

Marasi redraws the plan: Wayne takes the Slider, VenDell takes the Coinshot, and she goes for her own scattered Allomantic grenades. The bubble drops and the warehouse comes roaring back — constables shouting conflicting orders, gangsters scrambling for fallen weapons. Marasi tackles Captain Blantach behind a truck just as the Sequence's coin-shots crater the floor where she had been standing. Wayne takes down Getruda; VenDell hops into the open waving and announcing that he is a traitor about to tell the constables everything, and takes a bullet straight to the head — *Rusts*, Blantach says, *they have an Allomancer*.

A second all-direction Push follows. The truck Marasi has been hiding behind cartwheels into the street. The Sequence shakes out an aluminum flask and drinks — refilling the metals he just spent on the burst — and VenDell, a bullet hole in his forehead, tackles him during the swig. Marasi sprints out the front for her belt and finds one Allomantic grenade left of three; the other two have rolled out of a broken latch. A kandra-floppy VenDell slams against the overturned truck nearby and announces, jaw broken, that he is being defeated and intends to bill her for the bones.

Back inside, Blantach has rallied a mixed group of Elendel and Bilming constables behind a line of overturned trucks. The gangsters are arming themselves from back-room stores, raising riot shields, building a sandbag emplacement. Wayne and Getruda are still blurs of cane and motion. The Sequence hovers on his Push, bullets bending around him. Marasi throws her one grenade; the Sequence casually Pushes it into the far wall. He shoots a coin at her in return that she barely ducks under. She has time to recognise that he cannot move a specific truck without an equal anchor to brace against — small comfort with people bleeding behind cover.

Marasi gives the order to retreat. Kellen slides in to coordinate; the live-explosives truck, Marasi learns, is number six — Wayne's, by Ruin's apparent vote. She squeezes inside, fishes grenades and what she hopes is a Push-immune clay-and-liquid firebomb out of the cargo, and crouches in the cab thinking about how, the moment they break for the doors, the Sequence will simply Push the trucks over them.

Then he beats her to it. The Sequence drops down between the four covering trucks and Pushes them aside in every direction at once. The constables are exposed in the open with their wounded; on the far side, a chained, liquid-cooled, multi-barrel machine gun snaps onto a tripod — military hardware developed against a Malwish invasion, illegal to smuggle out of Elendel. The room goes strangely quiet to Marasi's ear, and she stares straight down the barrel. She brought police to a battlefield.

The gun rips. Bullets stop in mid-air, reverse, and slam back into the sandbags and shields of the gangsters. The machine gun chokes off; Waxillium Ladrian is standing behind her, mistcoat tassels flaring, pistol levelled over her shoulder. A single crack — the bullet drills through the gun's viewfinder and the man behind it. *Sorry I'm late*, Wax tells the room. *Had to wait for gunfire to lead me to you. Shall we carry on, then?*