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Wayne stands on the curb staring up at Tobal Copper's apartment building, hands on hips, disappointed. It looks nothing like a plateau. Buildings ought to look like bricks and have alleys that smell of what comes out of a fellow after he has had a bottle of something expensive — this thing is too shiny, too windowed, like a big bottle of something expensive itself. Then he remembers — *there's a canyon next, that's how the story goes* — and follows Wax, Marasi, and *Kim* (who tries too hard to be fiddly) inside. The foyer has a doorman and paintings of dancing folk with legs as straight as rulers. Not a canyon either. Ma had said the canyon was beautiful.

The doorman fetches a brick-shaped building manager, who squints at *Kim's* credentials, grunts at Wax's and Marasi's explanations, and walks them to the elevator. Wayne does not much like elevators — partly the trapped box, partly the trust everyone places in the strange power leaking out of wall sockets. He had more faith in them when human operators ran them; he is also a primary investor in the new electric kind himself, which ought to alarm everyone. Twenty-second floor. The manager unlocks a door at the end of the hall, hands the keys to nobody, grunts about not having seen any other visitors in two weeks, and is gone.

Wax sweeps the apartment with Allomancy. Even modern clay explosives are hard to wire without metal. They turn up three tripwires and one pressure plate, each hooked to a grenade that does not care about collateral. The Set got there first. *Kim* wrings her hands and says she had not realised what she was in for. Wax asks her to clear the neighbouring apartments for the next hour, and the rest of them go over the place properly — bookshelves, desk, walls.

Wayne works the writing desk near the bookshelves, knocking for compartments. *Kim* kneels next to him and asks the obvious — why bother, when the Set has already searched? He points to the little drill holes in the underside: their search was the thorough kind that leaves furniture in pieces. They reassembled the room afterwards — a clean shell, just irregular enough to read normal, to make sure the next dangerous constable through the door gets blown to bits. The fight, Wayne explains, is a dance. He gestures at the others. Wax is *instinct* — never schooled, lived a lot, been shot at a lot, did his schooling with Terris scholars on old writings. Marasi is *knowledge* — has read more books on being a constable than have actually been written, talks about crime patterns and the mathematics of preventing chains of poverty. Together they are practice and application; instinct and knowledge. Their enemy had first crack at this room, sure. But they left bombs. That whispers worry, and so the dance goes on. *And what do you add to the team?* *Comic relief.* A raised eyebrow. *Maybe a little whimsy. Improvisation. Vision.* *You have a broad imagination, then?* *There are broads in my imagination almost all the time.* A smile. Seems a nice enough person, *Kim*, when she isn't pretending. Shame about her probably being a traitor of some sort.

He pulls the bottom envelope from a desk-drawer stack. When a hurried fountain-pen writer stacks paper on a freshly-inked sheet, the ink imprints onto the underside of whatever was on top — and the envelope at the bottom of Copper's stack carries a smudged, underlined sequence. A *seven*, Wayne reads. Then a dash and a *thirteen*. *Kim* suggests a locker combination — the big stacks at the train stations use that format. Across the room, Marasi reports the bookshelves: every volume is brand new. The Set cleared out Copper's real library and refilled with red herrings. Wax demonstrates the original furniture by sliding a chair back to its old wall mark where the paint has been scraped by years of the same motion. The desk is worn. The carpet, too. The room had been a mess before the Set tidied it for them.

Wayne taps a wall behind the desk and breaks loose putty. *Bullet hole.* Probably shot the poor doof in the back while he sat working. Marasi joins him, brushes flakes out with a little brush — blood, possibly a sliver of bone — and vials them. They cleaned the wood, dug the bullet out, left the hole. Wax hands Wayne a leather painter's cap from the bedpost. *What do you think? Have we given you enough to work with?*

Wayne slips the cap on, walks to the centre of the room, and lets himself be Copper for a moment. Respected at first, a good scientist. A chemist for a tire company that was almost certainly a front for Bilming weapons work. Found things, heard things — that they wanted to make a bomb, that they were trying to split harmonium. Already a little eccentric. Tried to save the city. Nobody listened. Eyes closed, arms out, turning slowly, smelling stacked old dishes in the corner and frantic nights of reading. *They didn't listen,* he says, *and when they locked him up, he learned he couldn't use the normal justice system to stop the disaster.* So what did he do? *He didn't stash it,* Wayne says. That is not what this fellow would do. The Set is going to be wrong about him — the same way *Kim* is wrong about him. They strangle knowledge; they hoard it. A man like Copper wants people to know. If the government won't listen, he will dump it anywhere that will.

He opens his eyes and meets Wax's gaze. Wax asks Kim which Bilming broadsheet is the very worst — the kind that prints anything frightening or off-kilter that crosses its desk. *Which one syndicates that fool Jak?* The Sentinel of Truth, she says, embarrassed that she kind of loves those stories. Wax asks for the address. *Kim* digs out her city directory. *Publishing offices of the Sentinel are at Seventh Street, Office 42–13.* The same numbers from the bottom of the envelope. Wax squeezes Wayne's shoulder. *Nice work.* Wayne takes off the hat and holds it lightly. Tobal Copper is dead, but maybe he had time to tell somebody — somebody the Set never thought to look at, because letting go of information would be inconceivable to them. *It's easy enough,* Wayne says, *when you have a lot to work with.* *That was a lot?* *Sure. A man's whole life.*