(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Half an hour after the mansion assault, Wayne is back in his own hat and dueling canes — the dead guard's uniform he wore as bubble-bait shed — and meditating happily on the theory that rich people call the toilet *the commode* not as a class shibboleth but because they are so familiar with what comes out of their arses that ordinary words are no longer specific enough. He drops in on Wax in the sitting room as Wax is sealing a small envelope around a spent bullet from the mansion floor. The letter goes by messenger to Ranette — wake her, take her cursing, don't leave until she has read it. (*She'd shoot you*, Wax tells Wayne when he volunteers to deliver it himself.)

They walk what they know. Bleeder was wearing what was left of the Marksman's mask; either she was the Marksman all along, riling the Breakouts slums against the houses, or she has used him as a useful prop. The poem in the tunnel — *I rip out his tongue / I stab out his eyes / You will be free* — feels unfinished. *She nailed that priest through the eyes*, Wayne points out; Wax adds that she ripped out Winsting's tongue. The plan is one move from being legible, and they are missing it. Wayne intercepts a serving girl's tray of canapés in the hall — candied bacon round a walnut, *tastes like cotton candy made of baby* — while Wax prepares to leave Wayne on governor-guard duty again.

Wax has arranged help. He knocks on the door of the ladies' washroom. MeLaan is on the other side wearing the bones of one of the female constable-guards killed in the assault — short, lean, sling on the arm to cover the bullet hole that killed her, voice still her own. She complains the bones taste awful (*choose a body that's been sitting around awhile, would you? Nice and aged is the best flavor for…*) and breezes through it all until Wax tells her flat-out to show some respect for the dead. She rolls her eyes and gets dressed in the dead woman's uniform. The hard part of a quick change, she tells them, is not the transformation itself — kandra digestion has tricks for force-feeding and venting near a drain — but rebuilding muscle memory and placing thousands of strands of the original's arm-hair, one per pore. Wayne perks up: maybe you could *spot* a kandra by checking for missing arm hair on a fast change. MeLaan tells him, surprised, that he is right — but only on a really rushed one.

Then Wax hands her the dark vial of the glowing powder he scraped off Bleeder's Pathian robe and tells her to take it inside and turn out the lights. MeLaan is back at the door a second later with the vial in Wax's mistcoat-front: *where did you get this?* It is perchwither, a bioluminescent fungus that grows in only one place on the planet — the kandra Homeland. She shivers, audibly nauseated, that Bleeder has been down there *recently, wearing the body of someone she killed*. The Homeland is no longer where the kandra live — they walk the city, meet at pubs — but it is still their holy site, the place of relics and burials. Wax decides he is going down. MeLaan gives him entrance directions and Harmony's permission: into the Homeland through the tombs at the Field of Rebirth, look for the sign of atium, use *your other eyes*. *Just don't break anything, lawman.*

A footman interrupts with a calling card on a tray: Wax's coach has arrived. Wax takes a deep breath, tells MeLaan and Wayne to keep the governor alive — and only then names who is in the coach. *Have you ever heard of a group called the Set?*

Inside the coach, alone with his uncle, Wax finds Edwarn settled comfortably with cane and pipe and a smile. Their dead-drop is a few of Edwarn's false-name safe-deposit boxes — Wax had left a note in one of them promising no arrest, and his uncle came in person at the joy of being asked. Edwarn opens with what is, for him, banter: *you tried to have me killed* — *and you've tried to return the favour!* — and then needles Wax about the night of the Survivor's Gambit, asking whether Wax, living under the Lord Ruler, would have arrested the Survivor and his crew as thieves. Wax refuses to take the bait twice and asks his real question.

*I've spoken with the creature. If we don't stop her, there might not be a city to rule.* He needs to know whether the Set are working with Bleeder. Edwarn gives him the answer he came for, and a little more: the Set are *riding the storm* rather than running it. Among them Edwarn himself is the conservative voice, and Wax's campaign against the Set has hardened the radicals — *the more you shove, the weaker my influence becomes, and stronger grow the voices clamoring for change*. He will not help. He would actually love to watch Wax put Bleeder down — it would topple some of his rivals — but he is not lifting a finger.

Wax asks about his sister. Edwarn does not blink: *yes, actually. Because I don't doubt that someday I'm going to need to use her against you. Kill me, and your sister is as good as dead, Waxillium.* He raps on the ceiling. The coach stops. Wax holds steady — knowing he could shoot the man right here, that he has broken promises to better men — and kicks the door open instead. *One day you're going to find me standing behind you with a gun to your head, and you'll have the sudden, horrible realization that there's nothing left that can protect you.* Edwarn beams. *I look forward to it!* — and adds, before Wax slams the door, that next Mareweather they should do stuffed pig.