“Why do you insist,” Jaxy said, “on seeing her in person?”
“So she can punish me.”
“Does she want to punish you?”
“She seems to enjoy it when it happens.”
“Does she? Does she really, Wayne? Because the way you tell it, sounds like she asks you not to come see her.”
“Because she’s bein’ too nice,” Wayne explained. “But I don’t deserve anyone bein’ nice to me.”
“I told you, Jax,” Ranette said. “He’s got the self-awareness of a half-eaten sandwich.”
Wayne frowned. What was she on about?
“I’ve never met anyone,” Jaxy said, “who can get inside the heads of other people as well as Wayne can. He’ll understand.”
“He gets in their heads when it suits him,” Ranette said. “Not when it means seeing things he doesn’t want to see.”
Wayne looked away. Ranette said a lot of mean things, but they weren’t … well, they weren’t actually mean. He joked, and she joked. And sure, sometimes there was an edge of truth to it, but that’s what friends was about. Making you look a little silly when you were together, so that you didn’t look really stupid when you were apart.
But the way she said that last bit … it stung. He understood people, didn’t he? Wax and Marasi, they were great at the investigating part. But they needed someone like Wayne who really knew the people who lived in the dirt — and counted themselves lucky, because at least it wasn’t mud. Currently.
“Wayne,” Jaxy said, “what do you imagine that girl wants? Can you think like her? Does she really want you to come remind her of her pain each month?”
“I … I want her to be happy. And beating up a fellow like me who made her unhappy … well, that’s the best way.”
“Is it?” Jaxy asked softly. “Or is it about you? Doing some kind of penance? Wayne, each time you ignore what that girl asks of you, you take a little joy from her and turn it into your own suffering.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“You can see it,” Jaxy said, patting his hand. “I know you can.”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” he said, shoving back from the table and stalking off through the restaurant.
From behind, Ranette’s voice chased him. “I told you. He might not be as bad as I pretend, Jax. But he’s not as good as you want to pretend either.”
He traded the bell for his hat back, and only took one of the fellow’s cufflinks in the exchange — a fair trade for them keeping his hat over some stupid bell that barely even worked. Outside, unfortunately, he all but collided with two men in bowler hats and vests.
Rust and Ruin! They’d found him.
“Sir,” the taller of the two bean counters said, “we need to talk about your finances.”
“Whataboutem?” Wayne said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“You have far too much money,” the shorter one said. “Please, sir. We have to talk about your investment strategy! Your current lack of diversification is a crime.”
Well, to ashes with him, then. This day had actually found a way to get worse. He let them shove him into their hearse of a car, off to the mortuary. Or, well, the accounting firm that kept track of his wealth. Same difference.
In either case Wayne, as everybody knew him, was dead.
15
The trellium was moving.
Steris had been getting out a harmonium sample for study in conjunction with the trellium spike. And the trellium did not seem to like it.
Wax moved the small bead of harmonium — suspended in a vial of oil — toward the trellium. It again rolled away.
“Curious,” Wax said. Then, on a hunch, he burned a little steel inside of him.
The trellium spike rolled away from him again. “I didn’t Push,” he said. “It responded to me burning steel.”
“That’s a result!” Steris said, scribbling furiously. “Wax, that’s actually useful.”
And … yes, it was, wasn’t it? A way to test if someone was burning their metals? Seekers could do that, but having a mechanical way to accomplish it …
“Oh!” Marasi said. “I should have mentioned. That spike had a similar reaction to the other spikes I harvested.”
“It’s like Allomancy,” Steris said. “Like the trellium spike is using Allomancy to Push.”
“No,” Wax said. “It’s more like magnetism. The trellium spike responds to other sources of Investiture in the way one magnet responds to another one.”
“It wants to stay apart from them,” Steris said.
“More like it has the same charge,” Wax said. “I doubt that it ‘wants’ anything.” Though, as this was part of a god, who knew? Particularly since, so far as he was aware, other Invested items with a similar charge didn’t repel one another.
A little experimenting showed him that the two metals — harmonium and trellium — repelled each other with increasing strength the more he tried to push them together. Again, like magnets. The response to harmonium was stronger than the response to him burning his metals.
Wax consulted a large chart on the wall; it displayed an extrapolation from a notebook that Death had given Marasi. Once upon a time, that event had been one of the most surreal Wax had ever heard described. These days it seemed almost commonplace.
The book detailed how to use Hemalurgy. He’d studied the notes in depth, and had created a chart of all the points on the body where spikes could be placed. A detailed list of the ways they worked, requiring linchpin spikes to coordinate and keep the network functioning.
The Set was experimenting further with Hemalurgy. And his sister, Telsin, was out there somewhere, high up in the leadership of the Set. Seven years ago, he’d thought she’d been kidnapped … but he should have seen. Telsin’s incredible ambition fit perfectly with the Set’s goals.
It had led her to spiking herself. Pinning pieces of souls to her own. It nauseated him to think of the people murdered for that purpose — to realize what Telsin and the Set were doing. In his fingers, he held not only a relic from a long-forgotten god; he held a tattered symbol of his sister’s rejected humanity.
Rusts. He really was going to have to talk to Harmony, wasn’t he? As little as Wax liked it, he was a part of this. He needed to finish what he’d begun all those years ago, when he’d fled Elendel — leaving his house to the machinations of his sister and uncle.
Footsteps on the stairs announced Allik, arriving with refreshments. Wax wasn’t certain if the former airman did that so assiduously because he thought of this mansion as his home and wanted to entertain, or if he just enjoyed having people around to try his baking. Nevertheless, the sight of him — mask up, grinning widely and bearing two plates of chocolate biscuits — did lighten Wax’s mood.
“You are being careful,” Allik said to Wax, “never to put too much ettmetal in one place, yah?”
“I don’t think I have enough to worry about.”
“Still, always good to remember,” Allik said. “One of the basic rules of handling it.”
They had all kinds of odd rules about the metal, and Wax had trouble separating the superstitions from the science. Supposedly, you couldn’t put a large concentration of ettmetal in one place, otherwise it caused strange reactions — though Allik didn’t know specifics.
The perky Southerner marched up to Marasi with his offerings and held them out.