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Wax falls out of ZoBell Tower's broken window into the mists in pursuit of Bleeder. Falling is natural to a Coinshot — the rush of wind, the chill of the mist, the moment of acceleration that makes him think briefly of the Ascendant Warrior and her small mistcloaked silhouette in the patterns above. He fires Vindication downward, Pushes off the bullet to brake on the street, and demands of the hopefuls still in line where the falling man went. They point to a smashed chair. In the distance a motorcar tears away. *I haven't even murdered your father yet*, Bleeder had said. Rusts — Lord Harms, Steris's father.

Wax launches himself onto the rooftops, watching the blue lines of steelsight cut through the mist, follows the motor as it turns a corner, lands ahead of it on a roof, and Pushes himself down onto it from above. Increasing his weight, he pops the wheels like tomatoes and crushes the doors in their housings. Inside is only a confused cabbie — Bleeder is gone. The cabbie says he was told to keep driving and let his passenger jump out at Tage Street. Wax sends him to a Fourth Octant precinct and Pushes himself to the corner of Tage and Guillem, the edge of a maze of warehouse alleys near the docks.

He prowls, steel bubble up, gun ready. The mist closes behind him. Soon he stands in an empty intersection with warehouses like leviathans at each corner. A warehouse door falls outward — a dozen men. *Damn.* Aluminium bullets clip him on the arm as he Pushes himself back over an unfinished brick wall. A shot at his arm and the cold realization that he has been led into a trap rather than chased into one. Crossbowmen flank him on the far side. He drops the first two before a shadow appears behind the third and puts a knife in its head. *Wayne?* he asks. *Not exactly*, the answering voice says.

A tall woman crawls through the mist toward him — the woman in red from the party, Milan, gown ripped off below the knees. She tells him the snipers above are waiting for him to Push into the air with aluminium bullets, that she overheard the crossbow squad whisper as much. He keeps a gun on her anyway. They run together out the back, and at the next corner he yanks her into an alley as four more thugs round the cross-street. He is surrounded. She reaches into her own chest, the skin going briefly transparent, and pulls a small handgun out of one of her breasts. *MeLaan*, she says — pronouncing it differently now — *the Father promised you help. I'm it.* A whisper from Harmony in his head confirms her. He has seen koloss in the Roughs and accepted a gift from Death and met God; he had not been prepared for that.

They split — Wax takes the larger group behind. He flings a casing, Pushes off it, and lands at the centre of the rear thugs, sweeping with a Push that throws ordinary weapons aside but leaves the aluminium guns hanging on the air; he shoots their wielders first, then drops in among the others, the mistcoat tassels writhing in the mists so they cut where he has been rather than where he is. When Vindication clicks empty he draws Ranette's hook-tether off his belt — *this is how it used to be done* — and Pushes the spike on its slack rope through one chest, rips it back, whips a long arc through the mist, and Pushes through another. A last thug grabs a fallen aluminum gun and starts a one-liner — *The Set sends its regards, law—* — when MeLaan puts a knife in his back from behind. *Save the wisecracks until your foe is dead*, she tells the corpse. *Like this. See how easy it is?*

The pieces line up: aluminium bullets, snipers in the dark waiting for a Coinshot to bound up. The Set. His uncle Edwarn. Bleeder and the Set worked tonight together. He tells MeLaan he thinks Bleeder is going after Lord Harms next; the two split with a passphrase to authenticate later (*all yellow pants*) and a tavern as rendezvous — the Counsellor's Cup on Edden Way.

To beat any sniper still watching for him, Wax strips his gunbelt off, lifts a corpse onto his shoulder, and Pushes both apart through the night to draw fire away from where his body actually is — then runs the other way, snatches the belt back, leaps out over the canal, and drops into black water. Submerged, he Pushes off mooring ring after mooring ring along the canal walls and surges underwater for blocks, scraping the bottom of a boat overhead, before he climbs out, coughing, and lifts off again toward the Harms mansion.