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Wax launches off the mansion steps and climbs to where he can read the city from above. The crowd around the mansion is louder by the minute, calling for change or for blood, and he does not yet know if he is about to bring Bleeder down only to find her victorious through it. He scans for a trail. Nobody passes without leaving one. A pocket of people moving *away* from the mansion gives him his — the gunfire he heard from her window had been about clearing a corridor of crowd, not killing anyone — and at the end of the pocket sits the mansion's workmen's shed.

He lands by the door, fits Ranette's one bullet into a dedicated chamber of Vindication he can spin to instantly, and inches the door open. The mist outside is bright with torchlight but does not reach in. He picks out a long bone, the governor's cravat, the white buttoning shirt — Bleeder has stashed a second body in here and has just slipped into it. The shapeshifters' speeds, MeLaan has told him before, vary widely: she took minutes herself, TenSoon took seconds, and Paalm is faster than either of them. He moves through the dark hoping to catch her mid-transformation.

From the back, by a rack of shovels, her voice comes through. She can still free him. She did not come for the city tonight; not at first. She came for him. *I have deafened him*, she whispers — *cut out his tongue, pierced his eyes — but with you, he can still move his pawns. You are his hands.* He tells her he serves Harmony because he wants to. She tells him how long Harmony cultivated him — sent him to the Roughs to be hardened, let him age there like leather, drew him back when he was cured. He raises Vindication and does not fire. Ranette sent him one bullet. Only it will matter in this fight.

The shed wall bursts outward in a shower of wood. He tracks her with the gun, does not shoot, and watches her launch up into the air on a leap that bounces off a building wall and rises again — no Steelrunner speed left in her, but she has stuck a stolen Coinshot burn somewhere on her body in its place. She heads east, away from the dense city — fewer metals for him to follow her on, less of his advantage. He launches after her on the same nails she just left. Steel is his domain.

Back in the workmen's shed, Wayne limps round the pile of bones that used to be the governor of Elendel and decides he cannot quite decide whether finding the corpse means they did a really terrible job (since they had been keeping the bloke alive for two days) or a really good one (since this time he wasn't the one in charge of it when it happened). His leg is killing him; he grabs the wall for support. Marasi kneels by the bones and asks what it means. Wayne starts a line about cancelled tap-dancing lessons, gets cut off — *Wayne?* *Yeah?* *Shut it.* *Yes, ma'am.*

MeLaan strolls in, still in the dead guardswoman's bones but back to her own voice. The crowd outside is getting rougher; they need a plan. Marasi stands up with one. MeLaan is to step onto the stage in Innate's body and deliver the speech Marasi is about to write for her — promises of factory reform, of hearing the people. MeLaan grumbles. She did not digest the corpse and so will have to rebuild a face from a skull, which is TenSoon's specialty and not hers (*don't wince, it's not my fault you people are edible — if it helps, you taste terrible*) — but agrees if Marasi can give her something that will placate that crowd. They will need to fool a crowd, not Innate's mother, and it is dark.

Wayne stands jaw-clenched against the lineup of obvious jokes, makes a great show of letting them all pass. He is allowed one quiet wounded aside about always having assumed humans tasted wonderful. MeLaan confirms they do not. Marasi sighs, tells MeLaan to get on with the bones, and goes off to rewrite the speech.